For years I always said “when I retire I’ll have lots of time to make hand crafted presents.”

That time came in 2007. I decided I would take up my abandoned Eighties hobby, counted cross-stitching. I have to say some things have changed since then! I still had all the supplies—pattern books, embroidery thread, needles, and scissors. Some of my material had developed severe stains and fold marks, so it had to be tossed. I went on a quest to buy new 14 count material.

Years ago (when the hobby was booming) we had three or four hobby shops in town that sold everything you wanted, including lessons. They were gone, and all that was left was the big box store. They had very little to choose from and the nearest big city hobby shops were 54 miles away. Thank heavens for Amazon and Ebay! Ebay has thousands of pattern books and some sellers even will email you patterns in a PDF file upon payment. Besides these two giants, you can search Etsy and Pinterest for ideas and free or low-cost patterns. These places even have stitchers who will create custom-made designs for you. Isn’t the Internet wonderful! I visited my local library, and they had a surprisingly large collection of pattern books and a handy copier close by where you could copy a pattern and thread color chart for a quarter.

Back in the day I used frame shops to custom mat my creations. Nowadays I haunt local thrift shops for donated frames. You wouldn’t believe the beautiful frames I’ve purchased for fifty cents to two dollars!

When I was younger, I made the patterns exactly as they were written. Now, I find that with my skills, I “fit” the patterns to the frames beforehand and stitch extra borders to compensate for the expensive matting I used to pay for. My gifts have gotten a lot of compliments and sometimes friends even think I have purchased them at a gift shop!

Making homemade things is a great way to save money and impress your friends!

Ilena Holder is also the author of the new adult book, Nuclear: A Tale of Love and Radiation up for sale at Amazon and Solstice Publishing.

Well, it’s here! I hope you love it. I’d love to hear from you about the book —whether you’ve read it, enjoyed it—and do you want more? I loved writing it. So I have high hopes you will too. Happy Release Day, Me! 🙂

And if you read HWAP, please think about posting a review to let other readers know whether it’s worth their time and cash. Reviews do matter!

When your heart is stuck in the wrong gear, a quick fix isn’t going to cut it.

When Noah buys a classic ’68 Camaro from a fellow firefighter’s widow, he hopes it will ease some of the grief crushing his heart. But the grinding noise under the car’s hood sends him straight to a mechanic. Something about the burly, imposing Hoyt sparks Noah’s interest, and it’s not just Hoyt’s ice-blue eyes and bad-boy biker looks. It’s the mutual interest they have—Club LaForge.

After losing his partner to cancer a year ago, Hoyt never thought he’d feel the same kind of rush with another man. But his reaction to Noah throbs deep in his body like the rumble of his Harley.

LaForge seems like the perfect place to meet and work off some sorrow, to feel alive again. But the flood of desire quickly gets hot enough to melt their emotional barriers into unexpected connections.

Connections Hoyt isn’t sure he’s ready for…especially since history has a scary way of repeating itself.
Product Warnings

Warning: Get your motor running for a Harley-riding hunk of muscle who doesn’t give a damn about the rules of being a Dom, and a firefighter who can take the heat. Buy a case of your favorite coolant. You’re gonna need it.

Samhain Publishing | Nook |  Kindle | Kobo | iBooks

Read a long excerpt here

UPDATE: The winner is…Jen B.!

* * * * *

So, here we are. Just one more day. I get nervous right about this time, wondering if readers will love my story. We writers are very insecure creatures when it comes to our work. Until the first reader sends me an email saying how much they loved it, or how it improved their married sex life, or how they were red-cheeked their entire train commute to work, I don’t know whether I succeeded.

So, when the clock strikes midnight tonight and my book is transmitted to your reading device, you know I’ll be sitting here, biting my nails. I can’t wait to hear what you think! In the meantime, enjoy a naughty excerpt. And, there’s still time to enter the last two days’ contests. I’ll award all prizes tomorrow!

For a chance to win one of the original five Delta Heat stories
or a copy of BURNIN’ UP MEMPHIS, tell me what piece
of a firefighter’s equipment you find sexiest?

When your heart is stuck in the wrong gear, a quick fix isn’t going to cut it.

Firehouse 69, Book 2

When Noah buys a classic ’68 Camaro from a fellow firefighter’s widow, he hopes it will ease some of the grief crushing his heart. But the grinding noise under the car’s hood sends him straight to a mechanic. Something about the burly, imposing Hoyt sparks Noah’s interest, and it’s not just Hoyt’s ice-blue eyes and bad-boy biker looks. It’s the mutual interest they have–Club LaForge.

After losing his partner to cancer a year ago, Hoyt never thought he’d feel the same kind of rush with another man. But his reaction to Noah throbs deep in his body like the rumble of his Harley.

LaForge seems like the perfect place to meet and work off some sorrow, to feel alive again. But the flood of desire quickly gets hot enough to melt their emotional barriers into unexpected connections.

Connections Hoyt isn’t sure he’s ready for…especially since history has a scary way of repeating itself.

Warning: Get your motor running for a Harley-riding hunk of muscle who doesn’t give a damn about the rules of being a Dom, and a firefighter who can take the heat. Buy a case of your favorite coolant. You’re gonna need it.

“Take me into your mouth.”

Noah made a sound, something between a chuff and a whimper. A sound that shot a jolt of hunger through Hoyt. Noah crawled on his knees until he knelt directly in front of Hoyt and raised his chin.

Hoyt pointed his cock at the firefighter’s mouth and held his breath as Noah opened up, sliding his eyelids closed as he tentatively latched his lips around the crown. Then he flattened his tongue against the head and began to suction—gently at first, and then with gusto.

Hoyt put his hands on the top of Noah’s head, combing his thick, sun-streaked hair with his fingers. He dug his nails into Noah’s scalp to urge him to take him deeper into his mouth.

Noah needed no encouragement. He breathed noisily through his nostrils, wrapped one strong hand around his shaft and bobbed forward to slide his mouth down Hoyt’s cock.

Hoyt rocked on his heels, his head falling back as he let the sensations wash over him in a hot wave—moist heat, suction nearly as strong as a Hoover. Teeth scraped his shaft, and Hoyt pulled Noah’s hair hard. “Easy,” he muttered, because he was nearly coming out of his skin. “Take me to the back of your throat.”

Noah cupped Hoyt’s balls and tugged them, then burrowed against him, taking Hoyt deeper inside, the sounds he made more desperate, more animalistic as he pushed and pulled with his lips and slithered his tongue along the rigid shaft.

Hoyt would have liked to blow right then, but he wanted more. Wanted Noah every bit as delirious with pleasure as he was. He tugged Noah’s hair, moving him away, and pulled up his pants. “Strip, Noah. You said you don’t like being restrained, so I won’t latch the manacles around your wrists, but I would like you to grip the bar beneath the chains and hold tight while I play.”

Noah’s reddened face wore an expression Hoyt recognized all too well. His lips and eyes were glazed. His nostrils flared. He shoved up and walked to a bench where he quickly tossed his clothes while Hoyt removed the rest of his. Then Noah sauntered to the chains and reached high for the bar suspended from the ceiling.

With his tall body stretched, his cock prominent in front of him, Noah was beautiful. All shining swells and dark hollows, embellished here and there with puckered burn scars—symbols of his bravery. Hoyt circled Noah, letting his hands graze his hips, his belly, his hard ass. When he came in front of him, he gave Noah’s cock a firm stroke before meeting the other man’s gaze. “Tell me about the car.”

UPDATE: The winner is…Cynthia!

* * * * *

Are you a fan of m/m romance? I know there are a lot of you out there. While I’ve written several m/m/f romances where the man played with the other man as freely he did with the woman in their threesome, this is my first fully m/m romance. And I don’t know why I haven’t written more. Noah’s and Hoyt’s story came at me fast and so complete that I finished it quickly—much to my editor’s relief! Lately, I haven’t exactly been timely in my submissions…

I can’t say exactly what the appeal was for me. Though I do love men’s bodies. I’m very comfortable with how they think (years in the military where I was often one of maybe two women on an isolated site). And I do love everything about penises. Yeah, I said it. I love the diversity of sizes, shapes, colors, and orientation—straight, curved, kinked. And I love the fact they’re made to penetrate. Think about it. A man enters another person, male or female. It’s aggressive. Overwhelming. Okay, so now I need a dip in the pool to cool off, but you get what I’m saying right?

For a chance to win either a copy of the prequel book, Burnin’ Up Memphis,
or one of the Delta Heat series books that spawned Firehouse 69,
tell me what attracts you to m/m romance!

And if you don’t mind, I’m running a Thunderclap campaign to get the word out about Hotter With A Pole. It doesn’t take long, just a click here and a single click on the campaign page… I’d be forever grateful!

UPDATE: The winner is…Liberty Ann Ireland!

* * * * *

You’ve probably already guessed,  but I like writing naughty books. Fact is, when I began writing, I intended to write for Harlequin. I  liked the Presents books with the misogynistic Greek shipping magnates and Middle Eastern sheikhs, and since I loved them, I thought I should be able to write them. Ha!

I have an attention span problem. Probably adult ADD, but whatever. I get bored writing. If there aren’t monsters on the heroine’s heels or gun battles, I can get really bored in the relationship-building aspects of a book. Unless my couple is having sex. Then the relationship thing can be happening while exciting things are happening down there. I’m happy, readers seem to be happy—and I’ve managed to avoid medication!

When I decided to write a sexy cop series, I doodled titles on a piece of paper—I love starting my brainstorming process with titles. I knew Delta Heat would be the series title. And I had an idea about doing a countdown so that readers knew from the outset how many books there would be, and the order of the series, plus it was just plain fun numbering those titles.

Click on the covers to read more!

I never thought I’d want to write more than those five titles, but when I got to the end, I had these sexy firemen who had appeared here and there in the first series, so I thought: firemen are hot, I’m still crazy about Memphis, so…why not?

So, now there’s Delta Heat: Firehouse 69. And while I didn’t use a sexy countdown for these titles, I did have fun. Burnin’ Up Memphis—that had to be the first. Next up—and this title is the most fun for me—Hotter With A Pole. Poles are always hot. Stripper’s pole. Firefighter’s pole. Two sexy-hot guys have a couple of poles between ’em… Yeah. That’s the way my brain thinks.

So, if you haven’t started with Burnin’ Up Memphis—now’s the time. Samhain has reduced the price to just $0.99 in celebration of the release of Hotter With A Pole on Tuesday! Get your copy here!

For a chance to win one of the original five Delta Heat stories, why not try your hand at brainstorming a Firehouse 69 title? It’s fun. And if you’re stumped, simply say, “Hotter With A Pole 2”. I’m not judging your creativity. Just have fun!

First off, a huge thank you to Delilah for letting me visit her blog again today!  It’s always so much fun here.

I spent most of last week in New York at the annual Romance Writers of America conference.  There were some really amazing workshops and speakers, and my critique partner and I both came home filled with inspiration.  I’ve been thinking about how to put some of the things I picked up in those workshops to good use as I’m finishing the third book in my Medusa trilogy, and get the first book in my shifter series through the first draft.  In particular, I’ve been thinking about creating memorable characters.  And, more specifically, about characters I have found memorable, whether in books or on television or movie screens, and how their creators made them so memorable.

One of my favorite shows on television right now is The Walking Dead.  Not because I’m a fan of gore, which the series has by the truckful, but because they have created characters that viewers get so attached to.  If you’ve watched the show, you know the creators don’t shy away from killing off beloved characters, and by now viewers expect their favorites to die eventually.  But even knowing it’s coming doesn’t make it easier—I’ve sobbed my way through a lot of episodes when they killed off someone I loved, or when a character I cared about has had to deal with something particularly awful.  One of the main characters, Rick Grimes, has faced more than any man should be expected to deal with, no matter what is going on in the world.  Last season, there was one character death that I knew was coming (and I haven’t read the graphic novels, but I’m a writer; I can’t help analyzing story as I’m watching, no matter how wrapped up in it I might be), but even knowing it was coming didn’t make it easier.  And having to see how it affected the other characters made it that much worse.

A few years ago, one of my favorite TV series ended, a show called In Plain Sight.   The main character was a U.S. Marshall named Mary Shannon.  She was seriously kick-ass, but the character was also very damaged, and she was pretty good at keeping those wounds hidden most of the time.  Her family was so screwed up—an alcoholic mother, a sister hiding from her bad guy boyfriend, and a father who went MIA when Mary was a kid—and most of the time, she was the only one holding everything together, despite whatever her own issues might be.  The things Mary faced are things many people face daily, and she just did what needed to be done, period.  Mary was a role model, even if she would have punched your lights out for suggesting it.

Some of my favorite book characters remain Jo March and her sisters from Little Women.  No, they’re not facing anything extraordinary like a zombie apocalypse, or hunting down federal witnesses who might not want to testify.  They’re facing everyday challenges and they make us care about what happens to them.  That’s one reason many of us read, so we can meet these people, spend some time with them, fall in love or go on an adventure with them.  And, if the writer does her job properly, we will remember them long after we’ve closed that book, or turned off the television.  That’s one of my favorite things about finding a good book, thinking about the characters long after I’ve finished their story.

It’s one of the things that makes me go back to a book, despite having a TBR pile that will last for decades–sometimes you just love a character so much you need to revisit them once in a while.  One of my favorite re-reads is the “Harry Potter” series, another is The Iliad and the Odyssey.  These are full of characters I can’t forget, and, even though I already know how their stories turn out, I want to go on that journey with them again.

So that is my aim, as I keep writing (and re-writing), to create characters readers will find not just believable, but memorable.  And so I’ll keep practicing and keep writing.  I’ve included a little story excerpt below for you.

I also have a giveaway:  an e-book copy of Hunting Medusa.  I want to know who some of your favorite memorable characters are.  All commenters will be entered into a drawing via RandomResult.com and the winner can choose their e-book format.

About the Author

Elizabeth Andrews has been a book lover since she was old enough to read.  She read her copies of Little Women and the Little House series so many times, the books fell apart.  As an adult, her book habit continues.  She has a room overflowing with her literary collection right now, and still more spreading into other rooms.  Almost as long as she’s been reading great stories, she’s been attempting to write her own.  Thanks to a fifth grade teacher who started the class on creative writing, Elizabeth went from writing creative sentences to short stories and eventually full-length novels.  Her father saved her poor, callused fingers from permanent damage when he brought home a used typewriter for her.

Elizabeth found her mother’s stash of romance novels as a teenager, and-though she loves horror- romance became her very favorite genre, making writing romances a natural progression.  There are more than just a few manuscripts, however, tucked away in a filing cabinet that will never see the light of day.

Along with her enormous book stash, Elizabeth lives with her husband of  twenty-plus years and two young adult sons, though no one else in the house reads nearly as much as she does.  When she’s not at work or buried in books or writing, there is a garden outside full of herbs, flowers and vegetables that requires occasional attention.

Hunting Medusa

The Medusa Trilogy, Book 1

When Kallan Tassos tracks down the current Medusa, he expects to find a monster. Instead he finds a wary, beautiful woman, shielded by a complicated web of spells that foils his plans for a quick kill and retrieval of her protective amulet.

Andrea Rosakis expects the handsome Harvester to go for the kill. Instead, his attempt to take the amulet imprinted on her skin without harming her takes her completely by surprise. And ends with the two of them in a magical bind—together. But Kallan isn’t the only Harvester on Andi’s trail…

Exerpt: 

“Andrea?”

Sudden silence.

“How many sleeping bags do you have back there?” He had to know.

The soft sounds resumed, this time more quietly so he assumed she was quickly pulling on dry clothes. “One. But there are extra blankets.” The reply was unsteady, as if she might be imagining the same things he was.

One sleeping bag. Of course. He shut his eyes for a second. As he went to his backpack, he unbuttoned his cargo pants, then tugged out dry clothing. His fingers were clumsy on the heavy material, made clumsier by the enticing images floating behind his eyes.

He shucked his wet pants and moved toward the front of the cave to dress.

A choked sound from Andrea made him freeze as he stuck his foot into his dry cargo pants. And every nerve in him hummed to life, zinging electricity to his groin. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi, Delilah and everybody! It’s really wonderful to be here today — and a bit daunting, as well. You see, ten years ago I started publishing erotic romance. I’d been writing forever (at least, I think “since second grade” when you’re now fifty-one counts as forever), but 2006 was my first attempt at making writing any kind of a career. And to give myself credit, it was a pretty good attempt. Within three years I’d published over two dozen novellas, many of them pretty well-received, some of them award-winners. A few were even best-sellers on Amazon and ARe.

And then everything (or rather me, precisely) went crash.

I’d originally thought about titling this When the Words Stop, except that’s not really what happened. What happened was that the gulf between the words in my brain and my ability to get them down on paper became, for a long time, unbridgeable. A lot of things happened during that time: I got divorced. Filed bankruptcy. Had what I can only classify now, in retrospect, as a nervous breakdown. But that’s not really what I want to talk about.

The truth is, we all go through horrible things in our lives. Things that can really break us; sometimes permanently, sometimes in ways we don’t even recognize until years or even decades later. And sometimes, something happens in our present lives that hits right against those underlying fractures, and what we’d thought were solid, intentionally-chosen lives shatter like yard-sale figurines. And sometimes, when that happens, we realize those lives were actually pretty chipped and, well, unappealing all along.

Which is actually, if you think about it, a remarkable gift. I mean, how many times do we have the chance to start at square one? To really stop and reassess who we are, what’s important to us, what we want to do? To be?

Not that, for the first few years at least, I could appreciate that 🙂 Truth is, there was very little in my life that wasn’t a complete wreck. Finances? Ye gods. It’d be fair to say that for quite a while there, I basically didn’t have any. Living situation? Ditto, honestly. I couldn’t focus on anything. I couldn’t even, for the better part of a year, simply manage to stay in one place – three days, four days anywhere, and I started feeling like I was crawling out of my skin. And I had no idea what had happened to me. It was really pretty terrifying.

But what I eventually discovered, in and amidst the wreckage, was a much clearer sense of what was truly important to me, what I really wanted in my life. My friends. My son. A sense of self-respect (unlike friends and son, this was something I was chagrined to discover I’d only thought I had – when push came to shove, or rather life encountered “crash”, I came hard up against the realization that it was mostly illusory).

And yes, the writing.

There have been few experiences in my life as exhilarating as watching a story unfold in ways I didn’t expect, watching it surprise me, watching it take on a life of its own. When I hit those points — when a story has a resonance, a reality, all of its own — honestly, I feel like I’ve done something good. Something important. Brought something into the world that really wanted to be there. Not every story I’ve written has hit that mark for me. But a lot of them have. And I’m beginning to have faith that a lot of them will again.

It’s been a seriously slow slog these past five years, putting a life back together from square one. But the big upside is that, in the process of doing so — heck, simply in order to be able to do so — I had to take a hard, uncompromising, bare-bones look at a lot of beliefs (and behaviors) I’d been carrying around for decades, without even being aware of them.

And then I had to change them. One by one.

There are two blogs that really helped me recognize, challenge, and reshape my thinking, and I’d like to share them with you. The first is called Baggage Reclaim (link: https://www.baggagereclaim.co.uk/), and while it bills itself as — and definitely is — a “dating & relationship blog”, at heart what most of the problems and issues blog owner Natalie Lue discusses really revolve around is your relationship with yourself. Around the need to be honest with yourself, and with the people in your life.

The second is Zen Habits, written by Leo Babauta. (link: https://zenhabits.net/) In far more prosaic fashion, he looks at — what a shock! — habits. Of both the physical and mental varieties. With a cheery sort of fearlessness that occasionally made me want to smack him upside the head, but which, in my less-exasperated moments, I also found really encouraging.

If there’s any one thing I’ve taken away from the past five years, it’s a deep-seated awareness that our lives are ours. Ours to shape any way we want. Even when we can’t change the world around us, we can shape our own responses to it. We can look at our lives afresh, as often as we need or want to, and choose what we want to put in them. What we want to make important. As hard or scary or daunting as it can sometimes be, we can build our worlds.

I’d like to leave you with an image, one that has both challenged and comforted me many times over the past few years, and renewed my courage when it was flagging. It might be anti-romantic in some ways, but…

Delilah, thank you so much for having me here today. And thank you to everyone who happens to stop by!

— Sierra
sierradafoe.com