UPDATE: This offer has ended!
*~*~*

Love a sexy story where a man takes care of all your needs?
Get a copy while you can! This is a limited time offer!

Yes, the butler did it!

When a newly wealthy woman purchases a remote estate in Virginia, a butler comes with the contract. His subtle manipulations fuel a desire she never expected.

Get your copy here!

“We kids feared many things in those days—werewolves, dentists, North Koreans, Sunday school–but they all paled in comparison with BRUSSELS SPROUTS.” ~ Dave Berry

So, I was looking for an inspirational quote to share today, but I found this one instead. Since it made me smile, I figured it was worth as much as any uplifting quote. And it got me thinking about what I feared when I was a kid…

Heights (still have that one), being called on in class (I got over that one because I was almost always smarter than the teacher–or so I thought), nuclear bombs (I did those “get under your desks” drills in school), being left behind at a rest stop by my parents (they did that one time with my little brother), or my parents being taken over by aliens. I never feared werewolves or vampires because I wanted to be turned into one; didn’t matter which.

So, how about you? What did you fear when you were a child?

And speaking of children, here’s the 6-year-old feeding goats. The goats were one of our stay-at-home projects. 🙂

These contests and offers are still active!

1. Diana Cosby: Nature – Amazing Muse Inspiration (Contest) — Win a SIGNED book!
2. Open Contest–Reminders–A New Puzzle/Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Two Important Notices about FREE Reads! — Everyone gets 2 FREE reads!
4. A Puzzle & a Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!

UPDATE: The winner is…Debra Guyette!
*~*~*

So, I’ve been in town three times since mid-March, using precautions (masks, gloves), and I’m amazed how lackadaisical people are about this pandemic. Of course, I live in Arkansas—one of the states that never issued stay-at-home orders. Now, our governor seems confused about how we have a county with the highest rate of infection in the U.S. Duh. More people sick, more people who can reinfect others—especially, when you do nothing.

The kids are getting restless. They understand the need to remain in quarantine, but still, it’s summer. They miss their friends. I miss the flea market. It’s open again, and I may mask up and glove up and head there soon, but my dd says they don’t have staff to sterilize, so anything we bought would have to be sprayed with bleach when we got it home… So, instead, we’re doing projects at home. She’s doing home improvements, I’m painting.

And of course, I’m editing, editing, editing. Seems writers got busy during this pandemic. Lucky you! 🙂

A Puzzle & a Contest

Solve the puzzle and then tell me what you think this picture is all about for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card!

These contests and offers are still active!

1. Diana Cosby: Nature – Amazing Muse Inspiration (Contest) — Win a SIGNED book!
2. Open Contest–Reminders–A New Puzzle/Contest! — Win an Amazon gift card!
3. Two Important Notices about FREE Reads! — Everyone gets 2 FREE reads!

I started my writing career as a ghostwriter. It was a great way to cut my teeth and hone my craft, but the pay was abysmal, and of course, other people took the credit for my work. So, last year I finally made the leap to writing for myself, and so far, the pay hasn’t been any better, but it’s been a blast! I’m back for another Boys Behaving Badly Anthology and have several more anthologies planned for the coming year. The most fascinating part of this journey has been developing my writing process and learning about that of other authors. It’s amazing how differently everyone approaches writing. Some authors meticulously plan out their work step by intricate step. It’s like a beautiful dance in colorful illustration before the first word is even put on the page. For others, they wade in with a vague notion or idea and just see where it goes. My process lies somewhere in the middle.

Typically, I have a rough outline of where the story will go with major plot points. How I get from point to point isn’t necessarily defined. Sometimes, the storyline drives the words, but more often, I find the characters and who they want to become influences the story the most. I’ve been astonished at how some of my stories have turned out!

No one was more surprised than me when I finished my latest short story, The Invisible Goddess, about Hestia, the Greek goddess of fire, hearth, and home. I call her the forgotten Olympian because she has almost no stories about her. She’s rarely mentioned at all in the myths. So, I reinvented her with the idea to make her bolder and write a bit of romance into her hum-drum life of keeping Zeus’s court at Olympus. What I ended up with was a fiery hot goddess who brings Olympus to the brink of war over her hand and in the middle of it all, a primordial god of darkness stirring the pot, and the heroine’s heart. The god of darkness wasn’t even in my original outline of the story! This is the coolest part of writing. I love it when my imagination gets churning, and suddenly, a story that I never even realized was there materializes on the page. I look back at this short story and wonder where the heck it came from!

Aside from how writers approach the structure of their stories, I also find the logistical aspect of how authors work intriguing. Some authors write every day, 8 hours a day. It’s their job, and they treat it as such. Of course, that whole time isn’t necessarily spent spinning words onto the page of their latest and greatest novel. A lot of it is spent working social media, responding to emails, editing, and updating their website and blog. Some authors have a particular place they like to write, or they have a prewriting routine they do. Other authors don’t touch their keyboard for days or weeks. Then, they sit down and binge write for days on end. Again, I find myself somewhere in the middle.

I’m not cool enough to write full time- yet! One of these days…. But for now, my writing must fit in with a full-time job as a nursing instructor, a 21-acre farm, and a family. I don’t have time for rituals or routines- other than coffee. There is always time for coffee! I fit writing in whenever and wherever. I often peck away at my keyboard at my daughter’s horse riding lessons and scribble ideas on the back of my grocery list while waiting in line at Costco. I wish I was one of those disciplined souls that would get up 2 hours early and write before work. Countless failed early morning exercise aspirations have proven that it isn’t a sound strategy for me! My main goal is to write a little bit every day. Sometimes, it’s literally a single sentence, and sometimes, when the writing gods smile upon me and the stars align, it’s pages. In the end, it always seems to come together.

Anthologies, like the latest Boys Behaving Badly with my gracious hostess, Delilah Devlin, attract me because I can write tons of different storylines, and they’re typically short story to novella lengths. I have several going at the same time. One of the other things I’ve discovered about my writing process is the stories and characters often need to marinate at different points along the way. Sometimes, we gotta give each other a bit of space! I also like to sleep on my stories. Seriously, I do my best writing as I am falling asleep. I’ll turn a particular point around and around in my head, and in that semi-dozing state, my mind forgets boundaries, conventions, and the distractions of daily life. Suddenly, the imagined world is possible and some of my best ideas have come from this technique (Ok… I’m not sure that falling asleep is a technique, but I’m going to go with it!). I’ve also utterly annihilated storylines and caused myself tons of extra rewrites because I came up with a scene that I just couldn’t live without. I guess that’s why they call it a process!

I will continue to hone my practice and do hope to transition to writing full time. I have dreams of writing full-length novels with glossy dust jackets adorned with my picture and having a fan base that stretches beyond blood relatives! For now, I’ll continue to grab the time as I can find it and inspiration where it is granted. I can’t wait to see where my journey takes me next. I hope that you’ll join me along the way!

My website and latest releases, including The Invisible Goddess coming this fall, can be found at acdawn.com or wander over to my Facebook page and follow me there!

As always, many thanks to Delilah for letting me pop in! Until next time…

Here’s a picture of my home base in north Georgia…

Sometimes, things work out the way they’re supposed to.

Take for example, the #100dayproject, which I’ve been completely faithful to since I began on April 7th (I’m on Day 51 of the challenge!). I planned to participate, not knowing 1) how difficult it was to produce a single piece of art every single dang day, and 2) how much I’d need something to put all that effort into.

Sure, as a writer, I create almost daily. But, unless I’m in the buzzy tail-end of a story when the action is speeding up, writing feels like work, and I know I can do it and do it well. The only challenge I face, these days, is getting to the end when I’d rather be doing anything else. However, I am not a mixed media artist. I can’t draw worth a flip, and I don’t know a lot about the different mediums. Over the past few years, I’ve only dabbled. So, I accepted the challenge, and then made my commitment very, very public by announcing it and then posting my daily attempts at art on FB and Instagram. Sometimes, with embarrassing results!

The challenge came along at the perfect time because, now that we’re living in Corona-time, we all need reasons to stay home. I love getting on FB and seeing folks who are baking for the first time ever or building something in their yards that they’d been promising themselves to do for years. My dd has been getting after it, too. She built a goat pen and bought goats! She also built a fire pit in the yard near the pool, and she bought a projector so we can watch movies outdoors, with a fire and lots of citronella candles going to keep away the mosquitoes!

Some states are loosening their stay-at-home orders. Our state never implemented any. However, we’ve been doing our own sheltering, keeping everyone close to home, with only rare visitors and only those who’ve also sheltered. We plan to do this for as long as we need to keep everyone safe. So, we’ll be looking for new challenges and around-the-home projects.

How about you? Are you still self-isolating? Have you finished any longterm projects on your To Do list?

Oh, and here’s my #100dayproject–Day 51 entry. 🙂

Contests/Giveaways

These contests and offers are still active!

1. Thom Collins: The Anthem Box Set (Contest—3 Winners!) — This offer ends soon! Get a FREE box set of books!
2. Reina Torres: An Idea, Some Spare Parts, and a Little Bit of Magic (Contest) — Win a FREE book!
3. Diana Cosby: Nature – Amazing Muse Inspiration (Contest) — Win a SIGNED book!
4. Open Contest–Reminders–A New Puzzle/Contest!  — Win an Amazon gift card!
5. Two Important Notices about FREE Reads! — Everyone gets 2 FREE reads!

A science-fiction setting is popular for both writers and readers of erotic romances. The reason is simple, at least it is for me. Give me a fictional world and I can design it to meet any number of needs. The rules, regulations, and social standards we all live with can’t get in my way when I’m writing. I can make them go away.

A domineering man and submissive woman don’t require justification when the lifestyle is standard operating procedure in the world I came up with. I don’t have to justify why a man throws a woman over his knee and repeatedly applies his hand to her ass. Readers of spanking erotica accept that this is how things are done within these pages. A woman doesn’t yell “insanity” if the man in her life treats her like a child. Instead, she gets the norms of the world she finds herself in. Sometimes, it takes a while but that’s part of the fun.

Okay, that’s all well and good. A woman wears a collar and crawls on hands and knees behind the hunk who commands her to because it’s expected and she’s turned on.

But what’s their physical world like?

Setting is vital to me. I can’t start a story until I know what my characters’ world looks like. And here’s a secret: I suck at creating fictional worlds. If you’ve read some Vonna Harper erotic fiction, you may have noticed I don’t put my characters on distant, exotic planets with complex social and political structure to say nothing of blue suns and five-legged household pets. Instead, I rely on corners of the world I know.

Case in point, one of my eroticas is Midnight Touch. Much of this story about a couple with heavy loads of emotional baggage takes place in eastern Oregon. No urban center or exotic city for me because I’ve never lived there and have no desire to. Give me wide open spaces every time—spaces where the few residents live their isolated lives in private.

Sara’s dead ex-husband was a domineering SOB who got away with treating her as he wanted. She seldom saw anyone and didn’t know whether she could trust those she did. She repeatedly tried to escape but never succeeded. I didn’t need to invent a planet because I planted poor Sara in ranching country with more cattle than humans. I know what eastern Oregon’s high desert land looks and smells like. I’ve been there. No need to try to figure out where water and other necessities come from. I’ve seen the wells.

My hero Mace doesn’t belong there, but he has no choice because Sara needs him in ways only he understands. Taking him deep into that isolated setting while he grapples with the forces that brought him there was so much fun. I put that poor man through a lot. Fortunately, he’s up for the challenge.

As for why I chose a country where antelope live, it almost never rains, the nearest grocery store is fifty miles away, and two people struggle to find peace and love there.

Looks like you’ll have to read Midnight Touch to comprehend their dangerous journey, hint, hint. You might also wind up with a darn good idea what panoramic eastern Oregon is like.

Midnight Touch

Obsession. Insanity. Darkness.

The words explain why Mace Seeger has come to see a woman he should have nothing to do with. But when he finds Sara Parmenter’s photograph in her dead husband’s wallet, her haunted eyes touch his soul, distracting him from her naked bound body.

The woman he finds at the isolated ranch is no longer trapped with a cruel and violent man because Ronnie Parmenter is gone, murdered.

He’s no longer a danger.

Sara desperately wants to believe she’s free from her nightmares—and to understand why she’s willing to risk everything with Mace, a man maybe she shouldn’t trust or believe.

A lifetime ago she’d been a sexual woman. The realities of her marriage had stripped those things from her, but being near Mace has reawakened primitive needs. She’s returning to life.

But Ronnie isn’t done.

Get your copy here!

These offers have ended…
*~*~*

First Notice

For those of you who don’t know it, I curate collections of themed erotic romance. Right now, on my Collections website, I’m offering a FREE copy of one of those anthologies…

It’s all Vikings. All over the world. And they are hot as hell! So, if you’d like to pick up a FREE copy, do it now! This offer won’t last long!

Get your FREE copy here!

Second Notice

Brian is about to leave Kindle Unlimited. So if you haven’t already snagged your free copy there, do so now!

Get your copy here!