When I’m working in my office I generally have the television on.  It’s a rather bad habit I started as a teenager.  I’m not really watching it’s simply background noise.  The other day I happened to notice The Thirteenth Warrior was on.  It’s an interesting movie based on the book Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton.  It stars Antonio Banderas as an Arab assisting a company of Norseman in stopping an ancient evil plaguing a Norse village.  In one scene the warriors go out in search of the enemy and Banderas’ character asks “Have we anything resembling a plan?”  I’d like to put that saying on my phone and computer as an audio reminder to make a daily plan.

Like most people, I have a very busy life.  I have a full-time day job, a family, a large garden, pets, children, grandchildren, and writing deadlines.  The only way I can keep it together and meet all my obligations is to plan.

I plan out my meals a week in advance.  This way I know when to take out the frozen meat or when to do any other preparation that the meal requires.  It also helps when I go to the store.  I know what we are eating and I’ve checked my cupboards before I leave so I only buy what I need and don’t waste time or money.

For my garden, I begin planning in the fall.  This way I know what I’m going to grow next year so I can order all my seeds ahead of time.  Since I do most of my own starter plants I can set up a schedule for planting the seeds so I have seedlings ready to go into the ground as soon as the weather permits.

When I work on a story I do the same thing and start with a plan.  I make character sheets for my main and secondary characters, an outline of what the story is about, and a list of any research I need to do.  I find I can write much faster this way and don’t end up running off on a tangent.

Like I said, I try to plan.  It doesn’t always work, but when things go wrong I have some sort of structure so the wheels don’t completely come off the wagon.

Do you try to make a plan?

Augustina Van Hoven
Proving Love is Strange
THE KISS OF A ROSE – Now available
www.augustinavanhoven.com
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Augustina-Van-Hoven-Author/336028986575129
Twitter:  @augustinavhoven

A DISTANT PAST

In 1882, Rose Van Buren loved the wrong man and paid for it with her life. Now, more than a century later, the angel Gabriel has granted her another shot at living. In exchange, she must convince a smart, handsome, up-and-coming lawyer to set aside his lofty ambitions.

A FUTURE PRESENT

Stephen Winship is headed straight for the governor’s chair. He has a brilliant career, solid allies, and a seemingly perfect girlfriend. But night after night he finds himself dreaming of a heavenly beauty, a luminous but long-dead girl. Like some altered Ghost of Christmas Past, she shows him her own tragic tale in order to “save him.” And he’s beginning to see Rose is risking her heart as much as baring her soul. Yet falling for her will cost him everything—and open him up to a happiness he never imagined.

The second book in the series, THE THORN OF A ROSE, is coming out this fall

Because I’m nosy, I want to run a poll here.

The question will be: What is your favorite taboo theme in erotica?

Before I can run the poll, I’d like a better list than I can think up off the top of my head. I know stepbrother stories are pretty hot right now, but what else is out there that you’d like to see people vote on? And yeah, I’m hoping the list will provide me some inspiration for what I want to write in the future.

So, you have today’s question:

What would you like me to add to the poll list (which I will run on Saturday!)?

And in the meantime, I will be uploading the story below today, so it should release (hopefully) sometime tonight or tomorrow. Take a peak! This is one of the hottest things I’ve written in a while—and you know that’s saying a lot!

Oh! And I’ll be sending out a newsletter shortly. If you’re not a subscriber to my newsletter list—click on this link: Newsletter

Lily’s Last Stand

A wife gives her husband a sexy surprise…and then he ups the ante…

Note: This 7800-word short story was previously published in Strokes, Vol. 1, but has been revised and expanded to more than double its original length. It may be short in length, but it’s not short in passion!

She didn’t dare look at Brent. He’d see how tight her features were and guess just how turned on she was. Not just because he was watching. She couldn’t wait to get her mouth around Lou’s cock.

Reaching out a hand, she cupped his balls and fondled them, rolling them in her palm, then tugging them gently. His cock jerked, his breath hitched. When she leaned forward to lick his velvet sack, he groaned.

Lily opened her mouth and took both balls inside, lavishing them with strokes of her tongue while she sucked. When she released him, she made of show of licking her palms then gripped his shaft and began to pump.

Rising higher on her knees, she angled his cock and brought it to her lips. She kissed the head, leaving a smudge of red, then swirled her tongue over the arrow cap, pausing to tease the narrow slit before paying attention to the lipped edge.

When his hands settled on her head and began to grip her hair, she opened wider and slid her mouth over his cock, sinking on his shaft while she began to twist her hands on his length. Sucking harder and harder, she bobbed forward and back, sinking by inches and leaving paler and paler rings around his cock. When his dick butted the back her throat, she swallowed, liking the way his knees snapped to hug her. When she eased open her throat and went all the way to the root, he gave a muffled cry.

His fist pulled on her hair. “Ease off, Lily.”

She murmured, gave a slight shake of her head, and dove down again.

“Brent!” Lou said, his voice thick and tight.

“She’s worked for it,” Brent murmured. “Give her what she deserves.”

“Ah!”

Lou’s cock tightened and cum spurted down her throat, just once, and she came off him, milking his shaft and letting the thick, burbling cream stripe her chest and face. When she gripped him just below the head, she gave him one last squeeze, milking the last drop, which she used to paint her mouth.

A tsking sounded from her right. She turned her head to Brent, whose expression was hard. So was his cock, which he’d ringed at the base.

“You’ve made a mess, Lily. Come here.”

Hi, Readers!  We’ll be chatting today about one of my favorite subjects:  romance.  I’m betting at least a few of you will be able to relate.

Sometimes I think we read romance to fall in love with *love*.  Know what I mean?

When we’ve had a hard day, a spat with our partner, a tough time with the kids, or added stress at the day job, escaping into a story can be just the thing we need.  Watching the hero and heroine deal with life’s troubles, large or small, gives us hope we can overcome our problems, too.  And seeing them work their way to a happy ever after reinforces the power of love.

Sometimes, I think we also read romance to fall in love with the *hero*.  At least, I know I do!

For me, that usually means a cowboy because, hey, what’s not to like about a down-to-earth, rugged rancher in form-fitting jeans?  LOL  But if you’re not that into cowboys, feel free to substitute the hunk hero of your choice.

Whether the guy’s a cowboy or cop, doctor, baseball player, or rich playboy, he’ll be easy to love if he’s an all-star kisser who turns us inside-out with one long, soulful glance from his smoldering eyes.

Easy for *us* to love, that is.  The heroine…not so much.

The heroine can’t just give in and fall for our hero.  She’s got to face the fire because *we* need to be kept guessing.  And, like us, she’s got to solve those large and small life problems before she arrives at her happy ending…before she seals the deal with a kiss from her [insert hero of your choice].  : )

~~

Here’s a quick peek at the hero and heroine from A Rancher of Her Own, which releases next week. Pete and Jane haven’t spoken to each other in years, but their mutual antagonism flares to life the first time they meet again:

“That was my first full-time job,” he told her. “I was trying to make an impression.”

“Oh, you did that, all right. I’m glad you didn’t say ‘a good impression,’ because you didn’t come close to one. I don’t like men—people—who think they can order others around. And you definitely had a case of that back then.”

“I was in charge of the horses—”

“Under my grandpa’s direction.”

“—and watching out for them was part of my job.”

“He’s given you another job now, too, so he tells me.”

“Yeah. Playing nursemaid.”

“Thanks, old man,” she shot back, “but I don’t need that kind of help. An assistant is more like it. What’s the matter? Is the job beneath you?” She shrugged. “If you don’t like the idea, I won’t have a problem getting someone else.”

He’d bet she wouldn’t. As long as she managed to keep that smart yet sexy mouth of hers shut, any of his boys would be happy to assist her. He wouldn’t.

But turning down his boss’s order wasn’t an option.

~~
I’m happy to chat.

Also, I’m giving away an autographed print copy of one of my available backlist titles (US mailing addresses only, please).  To get your name in the hat, tell us:  when you read romance, what type of conflict do you like best and why? 

You have till Friday!  Winner’s name will be posted this weekend.

~~

Barbara White Daille lives with her husband in the sunny Southwest. Though they love the warm winters and the lizards in their front yard, they haven’t gotten used to the scorpions in the bathroom.

Barbara’s new series, The Hitching Post Hotel, features a matchmaking grandpa determined to see his three granddaughters wed. The series began in April 2015 with The Cowboy’s Little Surprise and continues with A Rancher of Her Own in July and The Lawman’s Christmas Proposal in December.

Find Barbara at the following locations:

Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Newsletter ~ Blog ~ Amazon ~ Harlequin ~ Goodreads

A Rancher of Her Own

A REASON TO STAY

Ranch manager Pete Brannigan has no interest in playing tour guide to a city slicker like Jane Garland. But spending a few days with the headstrong photographer is a small price to pay for everything her grandfather has given the single dad. Though Pete’s drawn to Jane’s sharp wit and striking beauty, he won’t hurt his young children by falling for another woman who puts her career before family.

Jane’s seen the world through her camera…and used it to shield her emotions. With Pete, she can finally let her guard down. If only he could do the same. Despite their powerful bond, Pete still can’t trust Jane with his kids or his heart. But if he keeps pushing her away, he may ruin any chance their relationship has to develop.

Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Books-A-Million ~ Harlequin ~ IndieBound ~ Kobo

It’s Written In The Stars

Have you ever heard that line? Or, how about one of these…

Star-crossed lovers

Born under an unlucky star

Thank your lucky stars

As authors, we create stories around these themes every day.

Everyone has heard of astrology, but often people equate it with a sun sign column in a magazine or newspaper, or on a website. We ask, ‘what’s your sign?’ at a party as a social icebreaker even though we don’t know much about what it means to have your Sun in Leo or Libra.

This sun sign type of astrology is the tip of a vast iceberg. There are countless forms of astrology, many of which originated in ancient Eurasia, India, China and Egypt. In the western world, Tropical Astrology is the system most commonly used nowadays.

Long ago, astronomy and astrology were considered two aspects of one sacred science, the study of stars and planets, and their effects on humanity and earthly events. Johannes Kepler, Benjamin Franklin, and Aristotle are just a few famous names. It is rarely mentioned that they were astrologers. In more recent times, J.P. Morgan had a personal astrologer, as did Nancy and Ronald Reagan.

Along came the dark ages, and suddenly astrology was treated as unworthy of being considered a science. It was relegated to the questionable category of fortune-telling and was discouraged by many in both church and government.

Astrology empowers us. It is a science built on symmetry, geometry and precision. It is a snapshot in time of where the planets and fixed stars were at the time and place we were born. It helps us understand our personal cycles. Just think of the power at our fingertips from just knowing our strengths and weaknesses by knowing our cycles. We can know when to tap into our cycles of good fortune and when it’s best to lie low during times of turbulence.

Each planet has a cycle for one full revolution around the sun. Take Saturn, for instance. It takes 29 ½ years for Saturn to circle the sun. So, when a person is 29 or 30 years old, one Saturn cycle is complete. Saturn represents responsibility, discipline, and learning life lessons. We evaluate our lives at this time. If the decisions we have made are working well, it can be a smooth transition to the next thirty year cycle. If we are no longer in synch with our choices, this is the time we will change course. This cycle breaks down further into quarters; we are affected by Saturn every 7 years. Might this be tied in with the common saying, “seven year itch”?

I’m currently writing a fantasy paranormal romance where the heroine uses astrology to solve the dilemma she is in. I have recently outlined a line of mysteries where astrology features as a major tool for solving murders.

In my novella, The Sheikh’s Spy, there is a beautiful scene where Arabella and Adnan gaze at a beautiful fixed star constellation from an isolated desert landscape.

Have you ever had your astrology charted drawn up and interpreted by an astrologer? Do you have a sun-sign story to share with us?

GEMMA JULIANA is a multi-published author who lives in an enchanted cottage in north Texas with her handsome hero, teen son and a comical dog. She loves making new friends and hearing from readers. Exotic coffee and chocolate fuel her creativity. You can buy Gemma’s books on Amazon.

You can visit Gemma’s website https://www.gemmajuliana.com and follow @Gemma_Juliana on Twitter: https://twitter.com/gemma_juliana

Connect with Gemma

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I’ve fallen behind on updating my website. I can’t keep up with all the new words I have to write and the new books I have to let you know about. But I wanted to take time today to tell you about the Night Fall series and what I plan for the future. But first, aren’t the covers purty? Thank you, sis! If you don’t already have these stories, be sure to click on the covers and go check them out!

If you didn’t know, the Night Fall stories were previously published by Ellora’s Cave, but I now have the rights back to the majority of them. And since I wrote them a crap-ton of years ago, they needed some sprucing up, so I’ve been working on getting them thoroughly revised, and where needed, expanded. My plan is to release one story a month until I have all the old stories out there for you to enjoy. These are my tentative titles following my latest release, Truly, Madly…Deadly.

Knight in Transition (Joe’s story, and we meet our first wolves)
Wolf in Plain Sight (Another SU team member’s story–not sayin’ in case you don’t already know!)
The Knight Edition (Navarro’s story)
Night Fall on Dark Mountain (Meet a whole community of wolves!)

And that’s the end of the refurbed titles. Then I’ll start releasing new stories, not monthly because I do have other stories and series I want to write, but at a minimum, quarterly.

And I have so many places to go! I need to write Viper’s story. I could branch off and write about my my wolves. Then there are the older vampires—Magnus being the first I wrote about in Silent is the Knight.  Do I write about them in the present, or should I do a whole little First Knight series and set it in the distant past?

Today, if you’ll chime in and let me know what you’d love to see, you’ll be entered to win your choice of Sm{B}itten or Silent is the Knight! And I’ll choose 3 winners!

Where do I get my ideas? The voices tell me.

Okay, so now you think I’m insane, but honestly, there are three ways a story starts to gel for me. It can be setting, like the fictional town of South Cove where my tourist trap mysteries are set. I visited a small tourist town on the coast and fell in love with a house for sale. The house kept me thinking about the area, and Guidebook to Murder started to form after that.

Another way I get ideas is from a situation. What would happen if? In the tourist trap series, my situational question is what would happen to a Type A personality who after spending a week on vacation, decides to chuck it all and open a coffee shop.

But the final place I get ideas from is the voices. Once I’ve got an idea in mind, the voices start to populate my new imaginary world. Jill needs a BFF, and Amy Newman walks on the page, all surfer girl with a nerdy brain. Jill’s got a lot on her plate, so she asks her Aunt Jackie to come and help with the coffee shop/bookstore for a week or two. First day running the joint, and her aunt hires Toby Killion, the hot, hunky part time police detective. And it goes on and on.

I love meeting the new characters, finding out who they are, and where they fit into the story. The thing I don’t like is naming them. I like characters with ‘s’ names. Sarah, Sally, Seth, Shauna. I also apparently really like the name Derek as a secondary character since I had a guy by that name in two different series. I went through a ‘j’ stage – Jill, James, Jesse, Jake. But I think I’ve broken my same name habit. Or at least I hope.

Don’t get me wrong, I kind of plot. I do bullet points of each of the chapters and then work my way through the story as I write. However, most times, I don’t have the points in the right chapter. The characters have taken over the story.

I had one story where I had a love scene in the wrong place. My characters when right up to the edge, then balked. Kind of like a horse with a jump and the rider, me, gets thrown off. When I dusted off my jeans, I asked what the heck just happened, and my heroine said, “I’m not ready yet.”

So my hot love scene got moved and the hero stole a good night kiss instead.

Some writers don’t agree with the voices argument. They swear they are in total control of their creative process. I think the girls in the attic are keeping them from seeing the true magic.

Now it’s time for you to chime in. Do you believe in the voices? Or as a reader do you really not care where the stories come from, as long as they keep coming?

Lynn

Dressed to Kill

Jill Gardner—owner of Coffee, Books, and More in the tucked-away town of South Cove, California—is not particularly thrilled to be portraying a twenties flapper for the dinner theater murder mystery. Though it is for charity…
Of course everyone is expecting a “dead” body at the dress rehearsal…but this one isn’t acting! It turns out the main suspect is the late actor’s conniving girlfriend Sherry…who also happens to be the ex-wife of Jill’s main squeeze. Sherry is definitely a master manipulator…but is she a killer? Jill may discover the truth only when the curtain comes up on the final act…and by then, it may be far too late.

“Murder, dirty politics, pirate lore, and a hot police detective: Guidebook to Murder has it all! A cozy lover’s dream come true.” –Susan McBride, author of The Debutante Dropout Mysteries

Buy at: Amazon | Nook

About the Author
New York Times and USA Today best-selling author, Lynn Cahoon is an Idaho native. If you’d visit the town where she grew up, you’d understand why her mysteries and romance novels focus around the depth and experience of small town life. Currently, she’s living in a small historic town on the banks of the Mississippi river where her imagination tends to wander. She lives with her husband and two fur babies.

Links –
Goodreads –https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5857424.Lynn_Cahoon
Twitter – https://twitter.com/LynnCahoon
Facebook –https://www.facebook.com/LynnCahoonAuthor
website – https://lynncahoon.com/
Amazon author page – https://www.amazon.com/Lynn-Cahoon/e/B0082PWOAO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

My husband said today that he didn’t see the importance of history. Excuse him, he’s an engineer. This was an immediate red flag for me, a lover of history and writer of Highlander stories set in the 1300’s. His statement was somewhat ironic given we were in Sicily driving up the side of a smoking Mount Etna to see the land his people owned. What was fascinating about tracing his family’s history was how the actions of one person, in this case, his grandfather, changed the family history of so many future generations.

In the 1920’s my husband’s grandfather, Salvatore, wooed his sweetheart by singing love songs to her under her veranda. She was from a wealthy landowning family and his family was poor. According to my mother-in-law this was not a good match. What hadn’t come out in the telling was that he was a handsome young man with a sweet face who’d gone out of his way to woo a woman. I’d always heard how difficult he was and many other negative things, so I’d never understood why she had married him. But history is more than memory or the recount of a story by  one family member. Going to Sicily, meeting other family members, seeing family photos brings so much more to the picture. What I saw in this picture was the handsome face that has features  so like other family members, men I love.This is the type of research we need to do as writers to understand what really was there in the past. It’s not enough to go to one source. We have to trace the routes and read every source we can uncover.

Sicily is an island struggling through a recession. It’s poor and tired and in serious need of a good paint job. If my husband’s grandfather hadn’t decided to go to Australia, a place far from anything in 1936, the whole history of my husband’s family would have been different. His young family of wife and three children joined him in Australia, selling up most of the land they owned in Sicily under Etna’s steaming volcano.

They’re a family of wealthy professionals enjoying a terrific existence in Australia. For my husband who spent the day exploring his family’s history, it struck him that the family black sheep, the one that wooed the heiress and left her for years when he went to settle in Australia was in fact the family salvation. He’d changed the existence of future generations for the better.

I very gently led him back to his previous statement of the unimportance of history in his eyes. He has a better appreciation for my passion for history as he comes to know his own.

Is there anything in your family history that has changed your life for the worse or better?

*~*~*~*

Cathleen Ross is passionate about history and is the writer of Highlander, Highlander in her Bed and In Her Wild Highlander’s Bed. Highlander is FREE.