Sometimes The Story Practically Writes Itself

Maybe this isn’t true for all authors, but I find that each of my stories has a story of its own, and they’re all different. Of course, the stories we write are all different, but they’re different in more ways than that. Certainly some of the things we write are better than others, but authors are rarely the best judge of the quality of their own works. That isn’t really what I mean, anyway. Some stories are more popular and sell better than others, it’s true, but almost no one can ever figure out all the factors that go into that. That’s not what I mean either.

I’m talking about the actual process of creating the work. Some stories are easy to write and some aren’t. Some of them I sort of zip through, and some of them I agonize over.

Most stories start when a couple of the thoughts, feelings, trivial facts, and odd conceptions floating around in an author’s head meet, rub against each other, and start giving off sparks. A few of them begin to coalesce into a situation that has story potential.

I like to open a story at a point where the main character has either just discovered she has a problem or when that problem has reached a crisis point. Frequently my protagonist has to make a life-changing decision, take a big risk, or do something questionable to solve a problem.

When I begin writing, I generally know what that opening scene will be, and what the major problem or crisis faces the main character is. I usually have an idea of the setting, the other main characters, and how I want the whole thing to resolve. What I don’t always know is all the stuff that happens between beginning and end.

That can be a major issue when I hit a roadblock or reach a point where I just don’t know what to do next.  Generally in those cases I take a walk, go to the gym, brainstorm, let it sit a while. Sometimes one or more of those will work, but often I just have to press on with little idea of what comes next, or retire from the story temporarily and work on something else.

But every now and again I get a gift—a story that just flows from one scene to the next, laying out a plot that moves in the classic rising action, climax, aftermath, rising action, etc. routine.

My upcoming release from Ellora’s Cave, SECRET SANTA SIR, is one of those stories. The idea occurred to me just after last Christmas when my daughter was talking about their office Secret Santa gift exchange and how some gifts had been deemed inappropriate. That proverbial little light bulb went off in my head. Suppose a young woman with secret, kinky yearnings gets a surprise gift from an unexpected Secret Santa—an offer to help her explore those kinky desires in a reasonably safe way? Would she go for it? And where might it lead?

I knew I had twelve days to take my heroine from a dubious and frustrated to accepting and on the way to being in love with the man behind the Secret Santa identity.  When I began to write, it just seemed to pour out onto the screen. I always seemed to know what the next scene would bring, when the major events would happen and how it would move from one scene to another until it got the end.  It’s a short novel and I wrote the entire thing in just a couple of months.

It doesn’t happen that way for me very often, but I’m thrilled when it does.

Blurb for Secret Santa Sir (Available November 23^rd): When Maggie Marino gets a note from a very unofficial Secret Santa during the office’s holiday gift exchange, she’s surprised to be tempted by it. This Secret Santa offers to help fulfill her wilder sexual fantasies, those fantasies she’s never admitted to anyone else. Normally the very professional, uptight Maggie wouldn’t consider doing anything so risky. But she’s at a crossroads in her life. She wants a husband and family, but she also has kinky sexual fantasies and none of the nice guys she’s dated so far have moved her. She agrees to her Secret Santa’s proposal, and her first few anonymous encounters with him are a revelation, showing her levels of sensuality she’s never experienced before. But when she meets the man behind the gifts and the glorious kisses, her life gets seriously complicated. As she begins to fall in love with him, she’s faced with having to make a decision between her longing for husband and family, and continuing a relationship that fulfills her in ways she never believed possible.

About Katherine Kingston:

Katherine Kingston has written somewhere around two dozen erotic novels, novellas, and short stories.  Most of her novels and novellas are currently published by Ellora’s Cave, but she has one novella with Whispers Publishing, and has had stories in a number of print publications. Her stories cover a range of genres from historical to paranormal to science fiction and contemporary. Most of them include hot, kinky sex, particularly BDSM.  Learn more about Katherine and her books at her website: https://www.katherinekingston.com .

Book Clubs and “Dirty” Books

Delilah, thanks so much for inviting me here in my new incarnation as Savanna Fox (also writing as Susan Fox and Susan Lyons).

Do you belong to a book club? I always wanted to, and so, years ago, I started one. I invited three friends and we each invited one more friend, so we started with eight members. We’ve gone through a few evolutions, but we’re still going strong. I love my book club! We take turns choosing books and there are NO RULES!! The books can be literary fiction, commercial fiction, non-fiction. We discuss them over dinner, and look for a restaurant that suits the theme of the book – e.g., when we read “The Paris Wife,” of course we had to eat delicious French food. (And drink French wine. Can’t forget about the wine part of the club!)

I’ve heard that many book clubs are a little, shall we say, stuffy and pretentious. If a book isn’t literary fiction – preferably a prize winner or an Oprah Book Club selection – then it’s beneath consideration. It’s really interesting to me that a lot of clubs are now choosing “Fifty Shades of Gray,” I think because of the huge buzz about the book. Seems to me, it’s not typical of what most clubs have chosen in the past.

However, that choice fits perfectly with an idea I had two or three years ago, when clubs were mostly reading literary fiction. Nothing against those books, but they aren’t always a lot of fun. And we deserve to have fun sometimes, right? That’s the idea that got me thinking about the Dirty Girls Book Club. Imagine a group of women sitting around, discussing the latest weighty, yawn-worthy tome, and one asks, “Is there a rule that says a book club can’t ever read anything fun?” Another chimes in with, “Or sexy? What’s wrong with sexy?”

That’s my premise, and of course the club in my book votes to read a sexy book, in this case “The Sexual Education of Lady Emma Whitehead.” Now comes the second part of my premise. Each time the club chooses a sexy book, one of the members has a personal sexual – and romantic! – journey that in some ways parallels that in the book.

In the first book, “The Dirty Girls Book Club” (Berkley Heat), Georgia Malone is a widow like Lady Emma. Emma was in an arranged marriage to a much older man who, to put it bluntly, sucked in bed. She has no idea that sex could be pleasurable. Georgia’s marriage was a love match and she and her husband adored each other. For her, sex was transcendent because it was a joining of bodies and souls – and yet, she never actually had an orgasm.

Lady Emma allows herself to be seduced by a suave, sexy French count. The only new man in Georgia’s life is the figurehead for her new marketing campaign – hockey star, Woody Hanrahan. He’s totally masculine and rough around the edges, and somehow she has to transform him, to make him more suave without erasing his sexy masculine edge.

Complicating matters is the fact that she has an inexplicable, unprecedented reaction to him: arousal. Though he’s certainly no sophisticated seducer like Lady Emma’s count, Georgia can’t resist the opportunity to experience the kind of physical pleasure she never believed she was capable of. And Woody is more than happy to take on her sexual education!

But of course, it’s never that simple, is it? It turns out, there’s more to Woody than meets the eye, and soon it’s not only Georgia’s body that’s turned on, it’s her heart. Do they get their happy ending? Well, I do write romance, after all!

If you’ve read my books before, you know that my mind tends to work in series, and so of course it’s my plan that the other club members will have their own sexy, romantic journeys as the club chooses more erotic selections.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about book clubs. Do you belong to one? What kinds of books do you read and how do you choose them? What type is your favorite? What do you get out of belonging to your book club? And if you don’t belong to one but would like to, why don’t you start one of your own?

I’m giving away an autographed copy of “The Dirty Girls Book Club” to someone who comments.

You can find an excerpt and purchase links on my website:  https://www.susanlyons.ca I’m also on Facebook: www.facebook.com/SusanLyonsFox

Savanna Fox

The Love Triangle: Decadent and Apparently Deadly

I recently set up a Google Alert with the phrase “love triangle.” Love triangles are a popular theme in romance novels. Usually with a heroine faced with choosing between two men. If you’re reading erotica it could be more, but you get my point. I’m a big fan of romantic love triangles and tend to include them in my writing. I figured the Google Alert would give me some interesting articles like: how to tell if he really loves me, when to go with your heart, or similar advice along those lines.

That’s not what I got. Instead, my Google Alerts are full of death and mayhem. Here are some of the headlines: “Neighbors, family allege love triangle in fatal deputy shooting”, “Love triangle turns into driving rampage”, “Reno men found guilty of 1^st degree murder in love triangle beating death”, and the worst “Caught in the middle 9-year-old burnt in alleged love triangle”.

Needless to say the results were unexpected and disturbing. What I thought would give me great info on choices about love, turned into the research materials for a suspense filled murder mystery. If love triangles are so deadly in real life, why is this situation such a favorite in romance novels (mine included)?

Oh, you want an answer. Sorry no time for that type of market research, but I can tell you why I like love triangles in romance. It’s exciting and it adds an extra layer of tension. The idea of a heroine with not one, but two, smart, handsome and successful men vying for her attention gives me a girl power moment. And even if one of the men in the triangle is clearly a villain, I like the anticipation of discovering will the heroine figure out he’s a douche bag in time.

So, despite the real life ugliness of love triangles, keep them coming in my romance novels. At least there I get a happily ever after. Do you like love triangles in romance?

Biography:

Synithia Williams has loved romance novels since reading her first one at the age of 13. It was only natural that she would begin penning her own romances soon after. It wasn’t until 2010 that she began to actively pursue her dream of becoming a published author. Her first novel, You Can’t Plan Love—which includes a steamy love triangle—was published by Crimson Romance in August 2012. When she isn’t writing, this Green Queen, as dubbed by the State Newspaper, works to improve air and water quality, while balancing the needs of her husband and two sons. You can learn more about Synithia, and her novel, by visiting her website, www.synithiawilliams.com, where she blogs about writing, life and relationships.

www.synithiawilliams.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/synithiarwilliams
Twitter: www.twitter.com/@synithiaw

I’m late! I try to post first thing in the morning, but today’s already been crazy busy. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but between two crips (the three-year-old who broke her leg and my mother who broke her shoulder) things have been very, very hectic. Then this morning, the Red-Headed Hellion needed a little help with homework (mostly translation, because she doesn’t get why teachers have to use ten-dollar words when they could go cheap), and there you have it. No time left for me to do anything!

I did want to mention that I completed some updates to my website. Be sure to check the Coming Soon page. I’ve posted new covers and have links to excerpts for the books that will be available in the next few months. Plenty for you to drool over there.

And I wanted to remind you about the new releases I had this past week, Tarzan & Janine and Wild at Heart. If you scroll down to Thursday’s post, you will see a description of all the new books. I’d love it if you had time to click on the covers and head to Amazon to “Like” and “tag” the books. It really does help. And if you happen to buy the books, I would be forever your bestie if you posted a review!

One last thing. I forgot to mention a couple of months ago, but Ellora’s Cave did new covers for my very first series, the Desire series. Aren’t they lovely? If you’re curious, click on the covers to go read excerpts!

I have guests lined up for most of this next week. It’s the only way I’m going to cope with all the drama here. I promise to get back to a more regular posting schedule for myself. Or maybe you’ll like the guests so much you won’t even notice I’m not around much. 🙁

Y’all have a terrific week! It can only go up from here for me!

The Fearless Love Playlist

I love Americana music. It’s one of the things I picked up when I lived in Texas, where it’s sometimes called Third Coast music (the Gulf Coast is the Third Coast, you see). It’s a spicy amalgamation of all kinds of genres—roots rock, blues, Tejano, zydeco, alt country, and folk, depending on who’s singing and who’s counting.

When we lived in San Antonio, we were in the midst of what I think of as the Honky Tonk Belt, a cluster of towns and suburbs with places that played live music on the weekends, frequently outside under the stars. These are places like Floore’s Country Store, Gruene Hall, and Luckenbach (yeah, it’s a real town). I got to hear all kinds of wonderful musicians live and on CD, and it’s one of the things I miss most about Texas.

Flash forward to the present. I live in Colorado now, but whenever I want a little taste of the Hill Country, I can go back to my very own town, Konigsburg. When I got ready to do Fearless Love, I decided I wanted to include the Hill Country music scene, this time from the point of view of a musician rather than an audience member. My heroine, MG Carmody, is an Americana musician who came back from Nashville with her confidence in tatters. This isn’t exactly an unusual story—lots of Texas musicians, from Willie Nelson to Robert Earl Keen, have deserted Nashville when they realized their music just didn’t fit the mold for Commercial Country. In MG’s case, she wants to start singing again, but she needs to take it in baby steps. She plays gigs at a small club in the country outside Konigsburg, then slowly works her way up (with the help of her true love, Joe LeBlanc, a chef at a local restaurant). I got to describe several shows that MG plays, as well as her practice sessions in her own backyard (with chickens).

This, in turn, gave me a chance to include some of my favorite songs, and I have to admit it—I had a blast. I went through my iPod and picked out all those tunes and all those singers I love. And then I got to match the song to the mood (MG and Joe have a fight and she sings a whole collection of “you dog” songs). After the books was finished, I went back and listed all the songs I included, just for my own amusement. And since I love to watch performances on YouTube, I managed to run down performances for just about all of them (I haven’t included the songs that I couldn’t find anything for). So here it is, the Fearless Love play list. Enjoy!

Five Hundred Miles 
Bring It On Home To Me
Bye Bye Love
Me and Bobbie McGee
Silver-Tongued Devil
Something To Talk About
Mockingbird
Jambalaya
Help Me Make It Through the Night
Born To Run
Maybe, Maybe, Maybe
Texas Cooking
I’m Movin’ On
Runaway Train
Fearless Love

Fearless Love Blurb

Sweet music doesn’t come without a few sour notes.

Konigsberg, Texas, Book 7.

MG Carmody never figured her musical dreams would crash against the reality of Nashville. Now the only thing she has going for her is her late grandfather’s chicken farm, which comes with molting hens that won’t lay, one irascible rooster, and a huge mortgage held by a ruthless opponent—her Great Aunt Nedda.

With fewer eggs to sell, MG needs extra money, fast. Even if it means carving out time for a job as a prep cook at The Rose—and resisting her attraction to its sexy head chef.

Joe LeBlanc has problems of his own. He’s got a kitchen full of temperamental cooks—one of whom is a sneak thief—a demanding cooking competition to prepare for, and an attraction to MG that could easily boil over into something tasty. If he could figure out the cause of the shy beauty’s lack of self confidence.

In Joe’s arms, MG’s heart begins to find its voice. But between kitchen thieves, performance anxiety, saucy saboteurs, greedy relatives, and one very pissed-off rooster, the chances of them ever making sweet music are looking slimmer by the day.

Warning: Contains hot kitchen sex, cool Americana music, foodie hysteria, and a whole lot of fowl play.

Buy Link: https://store.samhainpublishing.com/fearless-love-p-7011.html

Meg Benjamin is an award-winning author of contemporary romance. Her Konigsburg series for Samhain Publishing is set in the Texas Hill Country. Book #3, Be My Baby, won a 2011 EPIC Award for Contemporary Romance. Book #4, Long Time Gone, received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Indie Press Romance. Book #5, Brand New Me, won the Holt Medallion from Virginia Romance Writers and was nominated for Book Of the Year at Long and Short Reviews. Meg lives in Colorado with her DH and two rather large Maine coon kitties (well, partly Maine Coon anyway). Her Web site is https://www.MegBenjamin.com and her blog is https://megbenj1.wordpress.com/. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Meg loves to hear from readers—contact her at meg@megbenjamin.com.

Life’s Not Fair—Even in Fairy Tales

So lately I’ve been kind of preoccupied with fairy tales. It’s almost as if I have a series coming out soon with Ellora’s Cave Publishing based on them with some really cool, sexy name like Breathlessly Ever After. Or something like that. As I was saying, I’ve been reading a lot of fairy tales lately. You have your old favorites. Sleeping Beauty. Snow White. Beauty and the Beast. And then there are your lesser known tales. Brother and Sister. The Six Swans. The Bushy Bride. Seriously, I did not make that up. Reading these stories have brought back so many memories of my mother, sister and I sitting on the couch while she read The Boy Who Cried Wolf and Billy Goat Gruff to us. *sigh* Those were great times. Great stories. And some serious WTF moments. Listen, I know the great thing about fairy tales is the happily-ever-after but, man, some characters were stuck with really raw deals! I mean they were shafted! I know what you’re thinking. That’s crazy talk! Or get a grip! But follow me here for a moment…

The Six Swans. In this story the most obvious people wronged are the six brothers that were turned into swans by their evil stepmother. But the sister, who not only has to sew—sew?? For real??—six shirts for them is also struck mute and is unable to laugh for six years—the number of years she has to complete these shirts before the enchantment is permanent. Raw deal #1. Then a king sees her, is mesmerized by her beauty and marries her. All good, right? But no, another wicked stepmother steals all three babies she births and blames their disappearance on the sister/queen. Does king-y stand by his woman? Nooo. Instead she’s sentenced to burn at the stake. Shaft #2. Just as the match is ready to be set to kindle, the six swan brothers flock to her, she throws the shirts that she’s finally finished in the air and her brothers return to human. Yay! Except, here’s Shaft #3. She didn’t have time to finish the sleeve of the youngest brother’s shirt so he has to live life with one wing. *&^%$#!!!

Rumpelstiltskin. The princess was treated so wrong, right? Wrong! There was one character in this story crying out here. And that was Rumpelstiltskin! Rumpy—as we’re calling him because, hey, Rumpel-etc.-etc. is simply too much to type!—is used for his talents, lied to, cheated on and he’s the bad guy. Now the miller’s daughter is conscripted into doing the impossible—turning straw into gold—because of liar-dreams-of-grandeur father. She faced execution from the greedy king but Rumpy shows up and does the task for a small price. I mean really, what’s a ring and necklace compared to her life? Well when Rumpy requests her firstborn in exchange for the last ginormous pile of straw, the miller’s daughter agrees. I mean she never imagined the greedy-selfish-fill-my-coffers-with-gold-or-I’ll-decapitate-you king would offer his hand in marriage and she would actually have a baby. So of course that’s enough reason to renege! What did Rumpy do but hold up his end of the bargain? He didn’t throw his daughter to the wolves. The miller did that. He didn’t threaten an innocent woman with beheading over the idea of gold. No, the kind did that. And he didn’t go back on his word, not delivering on his end of the bargain. The queen did that. So what does Rumpy get for being a man of his word? One foot in hell. Literally. Now I know what you’re thinking. But he wanted her baby. Look, I have kids and let’s face it. After one week with the kid, he would’ve given it back!

Sleeping Beauty. Just purge the Disney version of this tale out of your mind. Sleeping Beauty had her happily-ever-after but she went through straight Not-Heaven before she got it! First because Queen Mom neglected to invite one pissed-off fairy, Sleeping Beauty ended up with a curse over her head that they didn’t tell her about! Forget the fact that due to mom’s mistake—drink more ginkgo, lady!—a lot of people lost their livelihood with the banishment of the spindle! If they had only told Sleeping Beauty about the curse she wouldn’t have went anywhere near that spinning wheel, not to mention the creepy old lady locked up in a room she knew nothing about! That’s sooo not a red flag. So she pricks her finger and falls into a coma-like sleep for one hundred years. One hundred years! Do you know how many balls, parties and fashions she missed in a century? So she awakens to a kiss from a prince with no gum in sight. Que music. They all lived happily-ever…*screech* Nope, that’s so not the end of this story. The prince secretly weds Sleeping Beauty and keeps her his little secret from his stepmother. In the meantime he continues to make booty calls and she has two children. Where do these princesses in these tales find these men? Well when his father kicks the bucket, he ascends to the throne—and surprise!—springs his ready-made family on the stepmother, who happens to be wicked (No! Didn’t see that coming!) and of ogress lineage. Talk about the mother-in-law from hell! Her husband leaves on some kingly duty and abandons his wife and children to the tender care of his stepmother. Tender as in tender meat, because that’s what she tries to turn them into. Succulent tender meat on her dinner table. Long story short, Sleeping Beauty has to face the voracious appetite of her Shrek-like mother-in-law, save her kids from becoming rack of lamb and elude a pit of vipers. King shows up just in time and stepmother ends up in her own viper pit. All this because Sleeping Beauty’s mother forgot a name…this whole thing could have been avoided if her mother had just made an invite list to that doggone christening!

Have I made a believer out of you yet? Or am I being incredibly anal and neurotic? Hey…don’t answer that…

Naima Simone is a multi-published author in erotic romance. She’s a member of RWA’s Southern Magic chapter, mother of the Dynamic Duo, lover of everything Vin Diesel and wife to the fabulous husband who tolerates this affair. Come visit Naima at www.naimasimone.com.

What a whirlwind week! Mom shattered her shoulder on Monday, so we spent hours at the emergency room. We took her to an ortho guy on Tuesday, then yesterday she had surgery to replace everything. I’m sticking close to home today to rest up. Everyone’s tired. Poor dad is exhausted, but at least he has the worry of the surgery past him. Now, we’re planning for her to come home tomorrow. I’ll ramp up again tomorrow to help out.

In the meantime, my website needs updates. I’ll try to take care of those today. But here’s what went out this week. The first is a project my sister and I co-wrote that’s years in the making. T&J was one of those stories we had sitting under the bed until we had time and had learned enough to do it right. It’s a comedy. So if you like funny, sweet romances (there are sexy interludes, have no fear!), this might be the book for you! The second two are anthologies my RWA chapter is sponsoring to raise money for a wildlife refuge. I have a story in the YA anthology (gulp…for realz!)!

Click on the covers to find them at Amazon.com! If you have time while you’re bumping around Amazon, please click on “like” and the “tags”! Thanks, everyone!

A laugh-out-loud romantic adventure!

See what happens when a secret billionaire and an aspiring actress get a little wild in Texas.

A man with a soft spot for women…

Closet Texas millionaire, Tanner Peschke has three months to prove he can make a profit at the family used car dealership or he will lose his job, disappoint his father and break his promise to his dying mother. The root of his problem is women. He can’t resist them–any of them. All it takes is the scent of delicate perfume or a misty-eyed gaze from an elderly woman with a sob story, and he becomes silly putty in the hands of his feminine customers. Until, with a stroke of luck and a buck of a mechanical bull, he hires Janine Davis to star with him in the dealership’s live TV ads.

A woman who won’t let a handsome cowboy get in the way of her dream…

Determined to make a name for herself, Janine needs to pay the bills between acting jobs. The offer to do a series of commercials for Peschke Motors is a chance to get her face “out there”. Recognizing a player when she sees one, Janine agrees to co-star with her handsome employer fully intending to keep their relationship strictly professional. First break she gets, she’s heading to Hollywood.

Their jungle-themed commercials take a crazy twist, and Tanner finds himself falling…from a sales banner while chasing a monkey. But more importantly, he’s falling for Janine. She’s just the one woman to tame this cowboy’s wild heart. Convincing her to stay with him might be harder than catching a mischievous monkey.

This is a volume of short stories about wild animals, big cat rescues, shapeshifters and anything that would showcase the plight of large wild creatures and their need to have safe homes and/or freedom.

This anthology was produced by the Diamond State Romance Authors as a project of love to benefit the rescued animals of the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. All profits from this collection will go directly to the refuge to help with the care and feeding of these wonderful creatures.

Stories Included in this volume are:

Spirit of the Tiger by Elle James
Archer Falls by Lauren Smith
A Boy, A Girl, A Tiger by Cynthia D’Alba
The Wedding Crasher by Lindy Dierks
Beached by Dustin Stevens
Sunlight and Solace by Gina Wilkins
Saving Angel by Lynda Frazier
Buck by M. Marie
True Instinct by Vanessa North
Storm Haven by Charlene Roberts
Saving Akira by Candace Sams

This volume of short stories includes a wonderful variety of contemporary and paranormal tales, and was produced by the Diamond State Romance Authors as a project of love to benefit the residents of the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. All profits from this collection will go directly to the refuge to help with the care and feeding of the rescued animals.

The stories in this volume were inspired by the animals. If you enjoy them, we hope you’ll recommend the book to friends, and doesn’t everyone need to feel a little Wild at Heart?

Stories in this collection include:

Freedom by Connie Wilkins
Teens Gone Wild by Margaret Etheridge
Home by Midnight by Brinda Berry
Cats Rule by Aileen Fish
Refugee by Lori Freeland
The Girl and the Puma by Jayne Grey
Heart’s Solace by Tara Fox Hall
Vision Quest by Karis Walsh
The Bully in the Piney Woods by Delilah Devlin
Fierce Wild by Megan Mitcham
Salvaje by Anna Meadows

I haven’t had a lot of time to check out the new fall TV shows. What should I be setting up to TIVO? What has you hooked?