What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing On A Bookshelf Like This?

Wow. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line.

And usually from my own mouth. To myself.

Yes, I admit it, I talk to myself.

As an erotica author in an ultra-conservative world—living as it were, a double life—you can see why I might turn to myself for companionship. Why I might occasionally wonder—why erotica?

The fact of the matter is, I love it. And not just because I get to think about sex all day and research sex all day and Google sex all day and pin sex-a-licious pictures of hot men on my Pinterest page all day—although there are perks.

I LOVE erotica because it is a genre within which almost all other genres fit.

I’ve written lots of other genres—romance and women’s fiction and sci-fi and fantasy. I am so all over the map that a very successful writer friend once sat me down and said, “Sabrina, dear. Pick one!”

The thought appalled me. I didn’t want to pick one. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my natural life in Regency England wearing gloves up to my elbows and sitting through wretched dinners with overblown Barons who spat in my soup when they sputtered.

I liked visiting, though.

What I really wanted, more than anything, was to write a Regency Romance. And then move on. Maybe a Medieval legend. And then a Viking adventure. And then an epic fantasy. And a mythological fairy tale. A creepy sci-fi or a sexy space opera. A pirate yarn.

Have I mentioned I have ADD?

The problem with being this kind of flibbertigibbet as a writer is that readers have silly little things called expectations. And unmet expectations will KEEL you as a writer. You gotta write what your readers want or they will stop buying your books. There are plenty of other authors out there just panting for the opportunity to please them.

Trust me, I’ve Googled them all.

The fact of the matter is, in the publishing world we are not selling books as much as brand. And to have a brand you have to have an identity, something that consistently satisfies your customer. Brand consistency (in content and quality) on an author’s part will equate to brand loyalty in a customer. If your identity resembles Sybil’s, you may have a problem keeping your customers happy. Folks you beguiled by your sweet soft romance may take umbrage when your heroine shows up in clown makeup with a butcher knife in her hand and starts jabbing your hero.

Sadly, my friend was right. You cannot write all over the map…at least not under the same pen name with the same brand.

Unless you stumble upon the illusive unifying brand.

“What the hell is that?” you may ask, especially if you studied marketing, because it’s a concept I just made up.[i]

A unifying brand is a brand that supersedes and saturates all other brands. It is an element of a product that successfully translates to like products and links the diverse threads. So while I write erotic romance as Sabrina York, I don’t lose my identity if I sneak over to Ellora’s Cave’s Shivers line and write a horrific erotic horror featuring an alien plant with very disturbing reproductive habits…or over to the Aeon line and write my sexy space opera. Readers will follow me. And hey, I may pick up some new readers who like my writing enough to follow me back to Asgard.

Sabrina York is my brand, my identity. Erotica is my unifying brand.

What my readers expect when they buy one of my books is sizzling sex and lots of it. They want twists and turns and characters that are going to make their heart flip-flop and make them get all restless. They want something that’s gonna make them stop reading and hunt down some double A batteries or a man or a kitchen whisk or something.

They don’t care if the action happens in Regency England, on a pirate ship in the Caribbean or on a barren moon in the crab nebula.

So how did a nice girl like me end up on a bookshelf like this?

Because on this bookshelf, I can be everything I want to be, and still be me.

Also, I love to write about sex.

Keep it hot, baby!

Blog Talk Radio

I was the guest at Lette’s Chat this week. Carlette asked me questions about writing, we talked books, etc. If you’d like to listen to the interview, here’s the link: Lette’s Chat

Three New Releases

A busy week for me, huh? In case you missed the announcements, here are the three new books I’ve added:

Shapeshifters—beings both human and animal—ignite our imaginations with visions of primal passions and insatiable hungers. Most commonly seen as dark, masculine demons, these sixteen stories investigate shapeshifter myths from around the world, and add fur and claws to a fresh girl-on-girl blending of physical power and inescapable desires.

Embrace your wild child as you journey through worlds of unexpected delights with some of today’s hottest erotic romance authors, including Sacchi Green, Christine d’Abo, Adele Dubois and Myla Jackson. Fly atop the Tower of London in Paisley Smith’s “The Night Crow.” In Anna Meadows’ “Verde,” feel the burn of a hot Mexican summer. Experience the raw lash of a dragon’s tail in “Scorched Retribution,” then linger in the sensual delights of a furry convention in “She’s Furry Yiffy”.

Prepare to be embraced inside the warm, feathered wings of a phoenix, race through a rain forest morphing from tiger to kingfisher, and watch your lover surrender her seal’s pelt to walk hand-in-hand with you along a cold and lonely shore. In She Shifters, love comes running, slithering, flying—in all shapes of desire.

Gus Taggert knows a setup when he sees one. When one of his police officer buddies sends him on a doughnut run to one particular doughnut shop, Cornucopia, he hesitates. It’s too frilly and pink. However, the woman behind the counter serves him more than a couple dozen gourmet doughnuts, she gives him a mini-lesson in submission%mdash;something he’s eager to learn more about. When she orders him to see her that night at the BDSM club, La Forge, he’s more than eager to obey.

Newly vetted Domme, Aislinn Darby, has a sub she’s eager to take for a test run. The large, burly cop is the kind of alpha guy she’s been dying to tie up and spank. However, after she takes him through his paces, she finds herself more than willing to let him take control, something she hasn’t enjoyed with a man before. Gus’s brand of loving is addictive, but now she’s doubting herself and her own ability to control a scene. She has to have him back for one more go, only this time, she’s going to do it with a crowd around them to ensure he doesn’t forget who’s in charge. She bribes him into submission. Accept her dictates, and he can have her any way he wants as reward.

What Gus wants is Aislinn in the middle of a scene he orchestrates himself with the help of three of his best friends.

From National Bestselling Author, Delilah Devlin, and Amazon Bestseller, Paisley Smith, comes LICKS, a collection of eight scrumptious lesbian tales, ranging from succulent and sensual to tempting and taboo.

Climb aboard a Harley with a butch beauty in “Riding Bitch”. Satisfy your craving for unrepentant girl-on-girl sex in “The Out-of-Towner”. Travel back in time to 18th century Paris in “Bordello”. A sexy femme submits in “The Hired Hand”. Celebrate a first lesbian encounter in “My Best Friend’s Birthday” and take a wild ride with your favorite toy in “The Only Game in Town”.

These irresistible stories and more invite the reader to savor that delectable flavor of the ultimate in lesbian erotica.

Contests

Don’t forget! The Pretty Pendant contest continues! Click on the link and follow the rules! Basically, all you have to do to enter is keep on posting! I’ll choose a winner this Tuesday!

Yesterday’s winner of a free download from among my Ellora’s Cave backlist is…Kimberly Hoefs! Kimberly, congrats! And send me an email with your choice of downloadable stories from my Ellora’s Cave backlist.

Sunday Report Card

Remember back in May when I told you I have 18 projects to get out the door by January 2d? The current list looks like this:

4 3 full-length novels (2 1 paranormal suspense, 2 BDSM)  — Shattered Souls, done!
3 1 novellas (1 Delta Heat, 1 Western, 1 TBD) — Delta Heat: Fournicopia, and Laying Down the Law done!
3 2 short stories — “Red Dawn”, done!
2 1 anthologies I have to edit — Smokin’ Hot Firemen done!
4 novels to extensively edit & expand (it’s a secret!)
1 novella to extensively edit and publish — Dragon’s Desire, edited! Publishing soon!
1 short story anthology to edit and publish — Licks, done!

Likely, I’ll be adding one more thing to the list. Cleis Press has given the green light to another anthology. This one filled with yummy Super Alpha males (think SEALs, Delta Force, SWAT, Smoke Jumpers, etc). I’ll be working on getting a “Call for Submissions” out the door early this week!

Also this week, I knuckle down to work on the next full-length novel. Send me good thoughts, wishes, vibes, prayers. I’m having a hard time starting. Have to push past the opening and get into the sexy middle. I’m sure it will come to me as soon as I get my hero and heroine horizontal. 🙂

Today’s round of snippets is all about the bad boys. They’re sexy as sin and know it. They wade into danger with a flare. They tempt good girls into doing very naughty things. My favorite bad boy is Quentin. In this scene the heroine meets him, up close and personal. Enjoy!

Post a comment today, and you’ll be entered in a drawing for a free download of any of my backlisted Ellora’s Cave books!

“…congratulations to Ms. Devlin for creating a masterpiece. This story has all the elements that a Gold Star book has in it. The novel has intense suspense that was thrilling and delightful…”
~Gold Star Award, Susan Holly, JERR

“… LOVE BITES is a delicious, emotional romp of a story, a tale that builds powerfully on the old, often-used love triangle and succeeds beautifully in creating something new and exciting.”
~Ann Leveille, Sensual Romance

On the trail of a serial killer, vampire Quentin Albermarle is mistaken for the killer by a police special task force. Once the smoke clears, Quentin finds himself in a delicious position-atop one of the unit’s crack officers, Darcy Henry.

In need of Quentin’s access to the vampire sub-culture, the task force leadership invites Quentin to join the crime unit as a special advisor, much to the chagrin of the men in the unit, and especially, of Darcy.

A no-nonsense cop with no time for romance, Darcy suddenly finds herself embroiled in a steamy love triangle between her mortal partner, Joe, and the handsome vampire. Going from abstinence to wantonness, she is unable to resist the two men’s relentless seduction or her own sensual curiosity about a vampire’s special “kiss”.

When the real killer threatens the life of someone close to her, Darcy makes a choice that forever binds the three of them together.

“He’s coming in. Get ready,” Joe’s voice jerked Darcy Henry to wakefulness.

Berating herself for dozing off during a stakeout, she fumbled for the switch on her night vision goggles. Instantly, the landscape before her was awash in shades of luminescent green. She scanned the water’s edge. The crests of the ebbing tides rolled onto the beach, unbroken by any sign of “Bat-boy.” Had she already missed her opportunity?

“Where do you see him?” she whispered into the mike on her headset, glad the roar of the incoming surf masked their voices.

“Ten o’clock. Get cocked.”

She reached for her crossbow and drew back the linen cord with both hands and latched it in the spring clip. Then she slid a steel-tipped arrow onto the track. Sighting down the shaft of the arrow, she braced the bow in her left palm and dug her elbow into the sand. With the stock snug against her shoulder, her right forefinger slid around the trigger and she turned her sights back to the water’s edge—just in time to see a tall figure stride out of the surf.

He fit the description of the new vamp in town she’d purchased from the barman at the “blood bank.” Only the barman hadn’t filled in all the details. Darcy stiffened against her body’s sudden surge of attraction and firmly reminded herself the vamp’s body was like any other man’s. Yeah, right.

Her gaze flickered over him, inventorying his characteristics—for her After Action Report. Broad-shouldered, leanly muscled, just over six feet tall. Blond, she could tell, despite the fact his hair was plastered to his head. Handsome, too. With broad prominent cheekbones, a longish straight nose, and lips that appeared permanently curved in a smirk.

Unable to resist the temptation, she adjusted the lenses of her goggles to zoom, and her gaze slipped lower. His package was as fine arriving as his ass had been going into the water. His long, uncircumcised cock dangled between his legs. Something not mentioned in the barman’s description—and definitely not something that would make it into her AAR.

“Cease!” Joe said, impatience clipping his words. “A civilian’s in your line of sight.”

Darcy lowered the bow, cursing under her breath. “Where? And how the hell did we miss that?” she whispered angrily.

“She had to have been here when we arrived,” Joe replied. “If I hadn’t seen her hand rise above the dune…” Read the rest of this entry »

So, one of the questions I, and I’m sure every author out there gets asked, is where we get our ideas from. My answer is usually “how do you make the ideas stop?” but for my latest release, Aries Revealed, there were a few specific triggers. I’ve already mentioned on the blog tour (redzworld stop) that the film Soldier with Kurt Russell laid a major seed for the Zodiac series (and, as it happens, the species idea for the Sargosians from Taming the Wildcat) but Soldier just laid the seed. It wasn’t until a friend showed me this image from Magic Mike (of course, I didn’t have a clue what it was at the time)

So, after I stopped drooling on the keyboard (this friend has a habit of sending me images like this just to see me stop what I’m doing and drool. Her favourite subjects are Alex Pettyfer and Jensen Ackles *whimpers* Both of which I am extremely susceptible to, and ceases word production immediately) I started to think about strippers in a sensible, writerly type of way. Okay, okay…AFTER I got over thinking about Channing Tatum and Alex Pettyfer taking their clothes off, I started thinking about things sensibly and just how I could use a stripper character in my cyborg series. I love convoluted storylines and new angles on things so it got me to thinking what if the stripper with the cyborg act really was a cyborg? He’s pretending to play a human who plays a cyborg? The idea was just too much fun NOT to write and thus, Aries Revealed was born!

I would like to point out that there was a second image sent to me shortly after the first, but this one just shorted out my brain so I can’t really claim it helped with the creation of Aries any. But it provided a good hours viewing pleasure 😉

So, now I’ve gone around the houses and up the garden path, let me leave you with some info on the story our lovely lads from Magic Mike inspired!

Sometimes the best place to hide, is in plain sight…

Johnny makes a living on the strip circuits. His most popular routine? The Aries 7000. Bronzed and oiled, he pretends to be the scourge of the universe, one of the deadly and outlawed zodiac cyborgs. But Johnny isn’t really a stripper playing a cyborg. He’s a cyborg playing a stripper.

Milly, a freighter captain, has had a thing for the sexy stripper for months. But when Johnny, the subject of many of her hottest fantasies, asks her out to dinner, she runs. All is not lost, however; a chance encounter yields an Aries 7000 sexbot, hers for a weekend of pleasure.

It seems too good to be true. Sex with the man of her dreams without risking her heart. But Milly’s bot has some secrets…secrets that could save her life when the past returns to haunt her.

Available from: Ellora’s Cave | Amazon | Amazon UK | ARe

Suffering the curse of eternal curiosity Mina never tires of learning new skills which has led to Aromatherapy, Corsetry, Chain-maille making, Welding, Canoeing, Shooting, and pole-dancing to name but a few.

A full time author and cover artist, Mina can usually be found hunched over a keyboard or graphics tablet, frantically trying to get the images and words in her head out and onto the screen before they drive her mad. She’s addicted to coffee and Nutella on toast.

Where to find Mina…

Twitter
Facebook

Don’t worry if you try to click on the widget below and it doesn’t work. If you click on the picture, you can head over to where it really does! I posted the picture so you’d know about tonight! I’ll be the live guest at Lette’s Chat, an online radio talk show, at 8 PM ET. You’re welcome to call in questions, but if you miss the chat, I’ll post a link on my site so you can listen in and hear what happened! 🙂

Is there anything you’d like me to work into the conversation? Something you’re dying to know?

[Sorry–photos removed!]

To check the names of the three winners from yesterday’s blogfest,
see the top of yesterday’s blog! ~DD

Thanks so much to Delilah for inviting me on her blog today. My name is Jennifer Bernard and I’m a fireman-a-holic. I know I can’t be the only one who drools over those smoking hot guys in (and out of) their strangely sexy turnout gear.  I mean …

That would be enough to get my blood sizzling, but what about their heroism? Their willingness to risk their lives? Their involvement in community events? Their kindness to old ladies whose cats are stuck in trees? I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

Luckily, I’ve found ways to cope with my little problem.  First, I wrote some books. THE FIREMAN WHO LOVED ME and HOT FOR FIREMAN are out now, and a third book, SEX AND THE SINGLE FIREMAN, is coming in January 2013. They’re part of the BACHELOR FIREMEN series, which takes place in a California firehouse filled with sexy, single firemen.

It takes a long time to write and edit a book, not to mention research it. My research involves countless calls and emails to a kind fireman I happen to know. Tough life, I know. If you add together all that time, it’s hours and weeks and months spent in the company of my fictional fireman hotties.

Then comes the promotion. What better way to promote books about firemen than spending hours on the internet hunting for sexy photos? Every Friday on my Facebook page is Fireman Friday – it’s even a hashtag on Twitter. It’s my job, my duty, to find new and awesome photos to post. I’d be letting down my Facebook friends if I forgot. Not that I’m likely to. I mean …

I get to do some promotion in real life too. I’ve visited the real San Gabriel firehouse, given books to the firefighters at my “fire consultant’s” station, and eaten dinner with the guys there. Read the rest of this entry »

The winner, on this blog, of the free download of any of my backlisted Samhain books (other than Fournicopia, is…Stacie D! To find out who won on the other two sites, check the comments at those blogs! ~DD

I’m two places today! Catch me at my sister’s site, MylaJackson.com, where I’m talking about why I love my job. And if you post a comment there AND here today, you are entered in a drawing to win a download of any of my Samhain titles (except today’s release!). Can’t wait to chat! ~DD

CORRECTION: I’m THREE places today! Check out Cecile Smutty Hussy’s Place for yet another chance to win! There, I’m talking about writing BDSM!

Both of these books are available today! Click on the covers and read a sexy excerpt, then click on those Buy Links! And if you’d love to help an author out, select the Amazon.com links and click on those “Like” and “tag” buttons. It would be greatly appreciated! Enjoy my naughty stories…