I’m being just a little lazy today. My office and bedroom are trashed. I emptied them of furniture to give to my grandmother for her new apartment/suite, and am now shopping for replacements. So all my many things are strewn about. I can’t think it’s such a mess.

The winner of the Tag It contest is…Shadow! Shadow, email me with your choice of one of my downloadable Samhain or EC titles!

So, here’s the question…

If, for one month, you could live at any famous residence or house
in the entire world, which one would you pick?

**Remember! The Skull Stealing Fairy and Tag It contests continue! Click on the contest name for details! ~DD

There’s just something about a man in uniform, right? Cops, firefighters, soldiers, TSA agents… Okay, so maybe I went a step too far. Enjoy this excerpt about two hard-ass cops, both struggling with their emotions (and one with her sanity) after a shooting. I loved writing these two. As much as they told each other, “not again,” they just couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Mmm-mm.

“…loved everything about SIN’S Gift…the way Delilah Devlin sets up her world makes it feel like nothing I’ve read before…” ~5 Angels and RECOMMENDED READ!, Fallen Angels

“…A turbulent relationship and sexy, spooky thrills await readers in SIN’S GIFT…This is a well written and engrossing tale with complex characters who have hidden depths. Enter into other realms with the highly recommended SIN’S GIFT.” ~Romance Reviews Today

“…Wow, I loved this novella. It’s fabulously exciting and a fast, exhilarating read…I recommend this book to everyone that loves hot, sexy paranormal story. I love Delilah Devlin’s books and this is one of her best yet…” ~5 Hearts, The Romance Studio

Police Officer Sinead O’Rourke returns to duty months after being shot in an incident that also claimed her partner, Danny. Despite being cleared of any negligence, Sin knows her fellow officers wonder whether she’s partially responsible for his death. One more problem is that everyone knows she claims she’s seen Danny. After months of rehabilitation and counseling, and lying like hell about the fact she’s not seeing spooks anymore, Sin’s determined to get back into the saddle. But her first day back in the patrol car, Sin sees something more horrifying than the ghost of her dead partner and enters a deadly new world. Jake doesn’t want to partner with Sin. Been there, done that—couldn’t keep his hands off her the first time around. She’s too much of a distraction and her penchant for rushing into trouble scares the hell out of him. Despite wishing she’d quit her job, he’s still deeply attracted. When an armed robbery goes down and something happens that rattles Sin to the core, he’s right there—ready to cover her back and her sweet body.

“Sure you’re ready for this?”

Sin stifled a groan. How many times would she hear that today? She especially didn’t want to hear it from Jake Chapa’s lips. Lips she knew the texture and taste of all too well.

She didn’t respond, still fuming because he hadn’t even offered to let her drive. That had been only one of the bitches she’d had partnering with him before. He’d never trusted her. Not with the car. Not with his back.

Now he’d been just fine playing house with her for a while, but he was too much of a chauvinist to ever accept her working at his side.

She’d looked him over when she strode through the garage to the car. He hadn’t changed a bit. Same thickly muscled frame, hair so “high and tight” a Marine DI would weep, same sensually charged expression that always made her stomach clench. He’d been a god in bed, but a total asshole as a boyfriend. What was the lieutenant thinking? She thought she knew the answer.

He hoped she’d wash out in a week, and he wouldn’t have to worry about her getting anyone else killed.
Read the rest of this entry »

**Psst! Ms. Paisley and I have an announcement to make! We’ve just contracted to write two anthologies and one co-written book with Ellora’s Cave! The books are dark and kinky and filled with vamps and witches. We can’t wait to start sharing more details! ~DD

Is Kink the New Black?

When Ellora’s Cave first announced their new kink line, I thought I’d never be able to write kink. Until I realized just how kinky my fantasies really are!

Kink is definitely a new trend in erotic romance and I think it’s here to stay. But do you have to be into a particular kink to enjoy reading about it? I don’t think so. For me, anyway, it’s all about the fantasy. And kink romance, like bdsm romance, is all about the power exchange between the characters.

While doing research for Nurse Lovette, I was amazed to discover how many forms of kink there are. From furries to tickle fetishists, they all had one thing in common and that was the sub / dom (or in my case, domme) relationship.

In Nurse Lovette, Avery is a woman whose medical fetish fantasies have prevented her from finding intimacy with her sexual partners. Her therapist encourages her to find a partner who is willing to explore these fantasies in real life. Avery quickly discovers there’s more behind her inability to find intimacy than she realized.

Everybody has a kinky side although it might not be as extreme as Avery’s. Is there a kink or fetish you enjoy reading about that you might or might not try in real life?

I’ll put the commenters names in a hat and draw one for a free download of Nurse Lovette!

Or click here to buy it now from Ellora’s Cave!

After two failed marriages, Avery Walker is encouraged by her therapist to explore her secret obsession. She can’t get off without fantasizing about submitting to intimate examinations—performed by a hot female nurse. When she joins a medical fetish website, she expects to find a partner who’ll provide a little probing and maybe some sexual release to help Avery get in touch with her kinky side.

Then she meets Nurse Lovette…

The consummate professional, Darby Lovette is determined to keep her relationship with Avery one of nurse and patient—nearly impossible when the gorgeous woman is on the exam table, willingly submitting to unspeakably intimate “procedures”. The fact that she’s loved and lost helps Darby maintain her resolve; falling in love isn’t part of her treatment plan. But Avery’s determination to explore sex with a woman just might be the cure for what ails them both.

Reader Advisory: This book employs myriad toys created especially for erotic exams, no holes barred, and, ahem…perhaps a sensual enema—or two.

An Exotika™ erotica story from Ellora’s Cave

Chapter One

Avery Walker pushed her untouched pastry away. She couldn’t have swallowed even if she’d been hungry. Today, not even the soothing scent of fresh-ground coffee and cinnamon buns could quiet her nerves. Today, she was meeting Darby Lovette in person for the first time.

Today, she was facing—and sharing—her darkest, most taboo fantasies.

Encouraged by her therapist, Avery had joined a fetish dating website. After two failed marriages to men, she had very reluctantly decided it might be time to confront her secret desires head on, to see if her therapist was right about the fact that fear was the only thing keeping her from having a real relationship. She’d signed up under the moniker Model Patient Seeks Nurse and had anonymously detailed the particulars of her fetish.

Avery had studied enough psychology in college to know a fetish like hers could drive a wedge between fantasy and real intimacy. How could it possibly help to bring her closer to anyone?

And a stranger at that?

Read the rest of this entry »

**Remember! The Skull Stealing Fairy contest continues! Post to enter! ~DD

I know you all need something to do today. I have the perfect activity. It’s “Tag It” day! What’s that, you say?

Well, on Amazon.com, they have this marvelous little section on each book’s page entitled “Tags Customers Associate with This Product.” Why is it significant? It’s how customers find the kinds of books they love. The more people who click on the tag, the higher the number of tags it accumulates, and the more likely the book is to appear on one of those searches. Then a reader seeking “cowboy” books, might actually find the author’s cowboy book.

I have several books that could benefit from being tagged. I promise, it only takes a few seconds of time to do it!

* Handy Men has been moving steadily up the list. A few more tags might bump it up a bit more. Click on the link to open the page: Handy Men

* While Begging For It has been accumulating some terrific reviews, it needs help for readers to discover the story. Click on this link to help: Begging For It

* Undeniable is still finding an audience among readers who love a little cross-genre hopping: Undeniable

And then there are the two big books I have coming in September and October. They are both available for pre-order at a reduced price, so it’s not too soon to tell readers about them. Here are the links for you to hop on over and “tag” the hell out of the books!

* Enslaved by a Viking (Kindle) and Enslaved by a Viking (paperback)
* Girls Who Bite

For Girls Who Bite, be sure to open up all 21 tags so you can click on my name. It’s not appearing at the moment because I wasn’t as fast as some of the contributing authors to get my name listed in the tags.

So let me know if you did this and whether it was something you never considered doing before or something you found a total pain in the ass. I do it for authors I love. Maybe you’ll think about it the next time you head to Amazon. Along with heartfelt reviews, tagging can really help.

And because I never ask for a favor without offering something in return, for any of you who post today telling me about your experience, I’ll hold a drawing for a free download of any of my Samhain or Ellora’s Cave books. I’ll name the winner in Sunday’s post, so you have plenty of time to make your way down the list!

Authors, if you drop by today, be sure to leave a link to your book at Amazon in the comments for helpful readers to find!

Taking it Down a Notch

When people ask me what I write, I tailor my answer to the crowd. On the internet, or any time I’m going by my pen name, I proudly and gleefully state that I write erotic romance (or shorter: I write smut!). If my kid’s teacher asks, on the other hand, I just say, “Romance novels. Trashy ones. You’re not old enough to read them.” And when my mom’s friends ask me about my books as we’re sipping tea at the country club, wow do I get coy. Some of her friends are among my readers, and some are not, and you really wouldn’t want to confuse the two groups.

Anyway, it’s a long-running joke in my family that at some point I’m going to have to write something I can publish under my real name, so that my mom can show her friends (and I can show my kids’ teachers) something I’ve written…and nobody will get thrown out of the country club, or booted off the PTA. So when I started writing Gossamer Wing, the steampunk book I’d been planning for years, I decided it was time to take the plunge—or rather, it was time to come into the shallows from out of the deep end—and try my hand at writing a mainstream-heat-level romance.

Harder than you might think. Heh. And that “heh” right there is a good example of why it’s so difficult. When you write erotica, you grow accustomed to seeing the world through the lens of double entendre. Especially when you write BDSM erotica, way over there on the far end of the kinkiness spectrum. If all you have is a flogger, eventually everything starts to look like a tush. Since I started out as an erotic romance writer and most of my books are at least somewhat kink-oriented, I had virtually no experience with vanilla romance writing. If I was going to write the stuff, I realized I had to ditch the flogger.

For one thing, there’s the vocabulary to unlearn. I had an epic twitter conversation about this one day with several other writers of varying heat levels, discussing the words we could/couldn’t use for our various imprints. I rely heavily, for instance, on words that rhyme with “snit”, “wussy”, and “shunt” in my erotica writing. Another author couldn’t even get away with using the word that rhymes with “flock”. None of us liked to use the one that rhymes with “stick”, but the historical writers occasionally used that other one that rhymes with “stick”. Lost yet? Maybe you had to be there, but my point is that without those words, I felt kind of lost, and I had to get creative in a whole new way to keep my book’s sexytimes sexy without overdoing it (yeah, I totally still used snit and flock, though).

The other, and perhaps more important thing, was the shift from a sex-centric story to a story that just happened to have a lot of sex in it. In erotic romance, a lot of the story is told through the sex; that’s where the character development takes place, that’s often where the conflict arises, that’s the point of the sub-genre. In Gossamer Wing, though, the story involves a neo-Victorian North America that never was, a robotically enhanced French spy, a hero who builds astonishing gadgetry out of spare parts, and daring airship exploits by the intrepid heroine. They’re saving the world, and when they stop to have sex they’re stopping the action of the book. That was a big problem.

The key, of course, turned out to be using the sex just like I’d always used it—as a vehicle for character development. By keeping the characters’ arcs firmly in mind, I learned to weave the lovin’ into the story in such a way that it didn’t bring things to a grinding—heh—halt (at least I hope it doesn’t). And going through that learning process gave me a whole new appreciation for mainstream romance writers who strike that balance well. After several years of immersing myself in erotic romance, I’ve started reading mainstream romance again (for the first time since my teenage years) and adoring it.

I have no plans to stop writing the hot stuff, but taking it down a notch and going mainstream has been a surprisingly good experience for me both as a writer and as a reader. I’m already working on a sequel to Gossamer Wing, and this time my focus is on learning to switch back and forth between mainstream and erotica writing modes without going too nuts over those words that rhyme with flock, snit, and wenis (nobody finds that one sexy)!

For a peek at the hot stuff (since Gossamer Wing isn’t sold yet) check out Tangled Truth, my latest from Ellora’s Cave. Go ahead, read an excerpt! It’s the third of four books in my contemporary series, Truth & Lies.

Tangled Truth isn’t remotely mainstream, and it features shibari, Japanese rope bondage. Lots of fun! Rhymes with…nah, I got nothin’.

A new contest is here with another very cool prize!

What can you win?
This trinket box that I purchased from my favorite curio shop, Christi’s Gifts & Consignment
(870-230-1877).

What do you have to do?
Post comments on my blog or my Facebook page. Every comment you make over the next two weeks will count as one entry. Could I make it any easier?

The contest ends August 1st!

To start you off right, you can post here today AND at Wild & Wicked Cowboys. I’ve posted a very sexy picture of a cowboy. Come help me dream up a story to go along with it!

I think I’m tired of day-tripping. This past weekend while friends held down the fort here, I drove to North Arkansas to my sister’s, then trekked across to Oklahoma where we both led a plotting bootcamp on Saturday. Then it was back to North Arkansas to drop off sis before making my way back south. Those were a lot of miles, and the whole time I was away I fretted about my past due deadlines.

I have plenty of excuses for why I can’t get my work done, but none that truly excuse me. I used to write when I worked full time AND did my once a month National Guard stint WITH needy children underfoot!

Last week, last minute (I stayed up until Midnight on Thursday), I wrote a short story for a Cleis collection. That’s the sum total of my writing accomplishments last week. I have to do much better this week. Do you have any suggestions for how I might stay focused or organize my time better?

But y’all don’t want to hear me whine, do you? You want to know who won that cute little book dragron, right? (Yes, I know I still have the last prizes to get out the door. I’ll do that this week, come hell or high water!)

The winner, from among 190 entries is…Karen C! Congratulations, Karen! Be sure to email me with your snail mail address.

I’ll be back with a brand new contest tomorrow, so be sure to check in!