The best laid plans…

Thanks so much for having me here, Delilah!

I’m perked to be here with you all today. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty hyped-up over all. This is a very exciting time in my life. You see, my kids are grown and stepping out into the world, and that means my husband and I are empty-nesters for the time in our marriage… Uh-huh. Life is good.

But all these changes have me thinking about plans in general. At last, my husband and I are making plans for just the two of us. We chuckle because it seems our children’s plans change with the wind, but that’s to be expected at their age. When I think back on who I was and what I thought I wanted when I was in my early twenties, I marvel at how far I strayed from my plan.

Here are a couple examples:

The plan: Marry somewhere around twenty-five, first kid by twenty-eight, done having kids by my early thirties.

The reality: At the age of thirty-two, I married a man with two children from his previous marriage and raised them as my own.

The plan: To become super-business-woman like Tess McGill in Working Girl and live the big city dream with Harrison Ford.

The reality: I stumbled into a career I didn’t even know existed when I was in my twenties and married a small-town guy from the south who bears a striking resemblance to Sheriff Woody from Toy Story.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. At. All. Although my life has taken a different path than the one I envisioned when I was a young adult, I have no regrets. So far, it’s been pretty darn awesome. That realization got me thinking about how lucky I was to have the nerve to jump out of line.

By letting go of “The Plan”, I lived my life instead of programming it.

The conflict between dreams and reality is a central theme in most of my novels. In Contentment, Tracy Sullivan almost flushes her idyllic life down the toilet because she can’t let go of her old dreams. Commitment was the story of Maggie McCann, a woman who discovers unanticipated happiness in a change of plan. Spring Chickens focuses on a couple brave enough to take a chance on a second chance at happiness. Even my paranormal romances, Paramour and its sequel Inamorata, feature characters who must learn to let go of the past in order to move forward.

Was it my plan to weave a common theme through every novel I’ve written thus far? *snort* Not at all. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even realize that I had until I was explaining the premise of one of the books to an acquaintance this past weekend. How cool is that?

Tell me, what plans have you changed when the prospect for something different came along?

I’d be happy to give one commenter their choice of any story from my backlist (including the steamier stuff I write as Maggie Wells,
but you have to promise not to tell my mom).

If you’d like to check them out, here are the links to my webpages:
www.margaretethridge.com
https://maggiewells.weebly.com/

The winner of Kate’s contest is…mylilypad! See note #36 in the comments! ~DD

Release Day—DREAM BOUND is out!

Delilah, I really appreciate your invitation to blog—today is pretty special because I’ve got a new book out: Dream Bound is the first of the two book Dream Catchers series. The final story, Dream Unchained, will release in November, but Dream Bound is another one of those stories that started with an idea that sort of took on a life of its own.

I was thinking about that tonight, and I realized that in all of my stories for Kensington’s Aphrodisia imprint, I’ve started out intending to write a totally sexy yet traditional romance—Aphrodisia is, after all, an erotic romance imprint. What I don’t actually plan, and what always seems to happen, is the various relationships that aren’t in the original synopsis I send to my editor!

When Kensington bought the Wolf Tales series, my editor knew she was getting into a story line with same sex relationships. I hadn’t planned to write the stories that way—they just sort of happened within the context of the Chanku characters and their powerful libidos. When I wrote the novella that introduced the Dream Catchers series, I gave my editor a brief synopsis about a young computer geek in 1992, in the Silicon Valley, who falls for a woman who is literally the product of his sexual fantasies. Zianne is also an alien, and her story is the basis for the entire series.

What I didn’t expect was the hero, MacArthur Dugan, and the relationship that developed between him and Nils “Dink” Dinkemann, his childhood friend who has remained his best buddy into young adulthood. Dink is openly gay, but Mac isn’t, though Mac is aware Dink has loved him for years. It’s something they both sort of ignore as best they can, but bringing Zianne into the relationship changes everything.

When I was writing the story, I realized that the sexual dynamic between the two men was every bit as powerful as what I was writing between Mac and Zianne, which, of course, led to a really sexy scene with Dink and Mac, and then an even hotter one with the three of them together. Thank goodness my editor is open-minded enough to go with whatever I send her, because I don’t think she was expecting the Mac/Zianne/Dink part of the story, which of course carries over into Dream Bound and Dream Unchained.

In my convoluted manner (and no, my books are actually a lot better organized, but when I blog I sort of let my thoughts wander and you get whatever dribbles across the page…) I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t intentionally sit down and say, “Okay, I’m going to write a book with forty gazillion sex scenes and they’re going to include every combination known—or unknown.”

What I do is sit down at my computer and start a conversation with my lead character, and I essentially let them tell the story. I have no idea that Mac really wanted to experience sex with Dink, or that Zianne was interested in sex with two men. I ran into the same thing with the Dream Team, the six young men and women who are brought together by Mac Dugan in 2012, twenty years after Zianne disappeared (after the novella ends) but since she was traveling through time to see Mac, it’s only been twenty-four hours for her.

It’s been two decades for Mac while he struggles to develop the technology and raise enough money to mount a rescue of his beloved alien lover. Well, when Dream Bound starts, he’s got the money and his satellite array is built, and he’s bringing together his team. But Dink comes back into his life, too, and the story once again took off in some directions I wasn’t planning on. I do hope you’ll give Dream Bound a chance. I’m really pleased with the way the story came together—it was one of those that felt as if it was meant to be written, and it was a nice break between my Wolf Tales/Sexy Beast stories, and the new Chanku series, Spirit Wild, which will debut next May. I just turned the first book, To Love a Dark Wolf, in to my editor on Friday.

And yep, that one’s got a same sex relationship I didn’t see coming, either. You’ll get to see Lily Cheval all grown up, and I discovered that Anton is a wonderful father, but he’s also a pain in the butt at times. It was wonderful, going back into that world and reconnecting with characters who are like old friends.

Do you ever have that happen? Get so caught up in a fictional character that they’re like real people to you? Happens to me all the time—I think it’s the very best part about being an author. Well, that and meeting readers. Definitely love that part! And if you’re going to be anywhere near Anaheim, California on July 25, the humongous book signing for the Romance Writers of America National Convention will be going on. From the RWA website:

Romance Writers of America is pleased to announce that the 2012 “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center, which is conveniently located next to the Anaheim Marriott (RWA’s conference hotel). RWA would like to thank Avon Books for generously underwriting the event, which takes place Wednesday, July 25, 2012, from 5–8 p.m. PT in the Ballroom (third floor) at the convention center.

Now that my public service announcement is over, if you leave a comment, you’ll be entered for a chance to win both a copy of DREAM BOUND, and a really cute little stuffed squirrel. And if you’re going to be in Anaheim, please let me know. I love the chance to actually get to meet my readers!

Buy Dream Bound at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million

Got Bondage?

Bondage. The word conjures such a strong gauntlet of emotions, doesn’t it? Fear. Arrousal. Curiosity. The scope of emotions is almost as limitless as the way bondage can, well, bind us. Debt bondage. Spiritual bondage. Bondage to our day-to-day lifestyles. And, of course, my favorite…sexual bondage. And if you’ve read my last book, Lust, Lace & Lingerie, I’m sure you’re not surprised by that fact!

There’s just something about giving up power to another person (when done sanely, safely and consensually, of course) that creates a heightened sensation of…everything. It gets the blood pumping and the brain spinning into overdrive. Giving your pleasure—or pain—over to someone else to experiment with is intense, something the heroine in my newest Ellora’s Cave novel, His Forbidden Submissive, found out the, um, hard way.

(Oh look, more shameless self promotion, LOL. It’s the last for this blog. Scout’s honor. *crosses fingers behind back*)

But my surprised heroine wasn’t the only person learning about BDSM and sexual bondage between the digital pages of His Forbidden Submissive. I was too. I’ve enjoyed BDSM stories by other authors and I’ve always been curious about the lifestyle, but I really didn’t know much about how it really worked. So I went to work scouring the internet for fun and sexy facts about BDSM and bondage.

I had a basic understanding of BDSM when I started my research, but some of the things I learned shocked me, made me laugh, and on more than one occasion, made some mighty interesting things happen between my thighs. *wink, wink* But in the end, it all came together to help me create a story that’s hot, emotional and brimming with leather, whips, chains and more bondage than my poor, poor heroine thinks she can handle.

I’m so mean, aren’t I?

But as it happens, when you start doing internet searches about anything sexual, you’ll get back a massive amount of results. Some interesting, some down right disturbing, and some you just can’t click out of fast enough—especially with kiddos around. But don’t worry. I won’t share any of that with you, LOL. Instead, I want to share with you 10 strange and fun facts I’ve discovered about the human penis.

Yep, you heard me right. Ten fun facts about the penis. Here we go…

1. The number of calories per tsp of semen is only 7.

Woot! Semen is a low calorie food. Good to know. So eat up, ladies—or guys—because this is one treat that defies the “minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” rule!

2. Acidic fruits and alcohol have been shown to give semen a sugary flavor. On the other hand, foods like meat and fish produce a buttery flavor (although I’m not putting it on my popcorn).

So there there ya go, ladies. If you’ve got a sweet tooth, make sure and get your man hopped up on ice cream and booze before you go down on him.

3. The amount of time needed for a man to regain erection after orgasm can vary from 2 minutes to 2 weeks.

Two weeks! Could you imagine the romance novel that took a hero 2 weeks to form another erection? OMG, that’s a book I don’t want to read. Well, I guess it could work, depending on how crafty our hero is at, um, filling the void for his partner.

4. The average number of times a man will come in his lifetime is 7,200 times. And of those times, only 2,000 will be by his hand.

Only 2,000? I’d figured it’d be higher, wouldn’t you?

5. The average speed of an ejaculation is 28 mph!

Wait, what? 28? Wow. Just wow. This can’t be right, can it? I now have a completely new respect for the strength and ingenuity that goes into making condoms.

6. The smallest FUNCTIONAL penis was an incredible 5/8 of an inch.

Talk about coming up short! I’d really like to know the specifics on this one, wouldn’t you? Just who is/was this man? How tall was he? And now I’m thinking about the shoe size/penis size correlation. If that really holds true, he’s got to be like 2 feet tall, right? (Please, feel free to check my math, LOL.)

7. This one isn’t exactly about the penis itself, but it involves the penis so I’m throwing it in: 13% of men have said there’s actually been at least a moment in their lives where they were NOT interest in sex.

I have to say this one really, really surprised me. I wonder how many of these times were during an important sporting even. “Not right now, honey. The game’s tied with .3 seconds left on the clock!”

8. The average number of erections men have per day is 11, and 9 of these are while they’re sleeping.

I admit it. This one makes me laugh out loud. I’m not surprised that a guy would have 9 erections while sleeping, but what gets me is that he only has 2 while he’s awake. That just doesn’t seem right, especially when you couple it with #7.

9. The approximate cost for a year’s supply of condoms is $100.

But I don’t think this holds true for heroes of romance novels, do you? At least not the heroes I write. *wink*

10. And finally, the tissue that surrounds the testicles and the penis is more durable even than the tissue that surrounds the human brain.

Wow. If the body naturally protects the most important parts first, this put a whole new light on that old saying about men always thinking with their penises.

And there ya have it. Ten things I learned about the human penis while doing researching for books. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it. I hoped you enjoyed these as much as I did. 😉

Today, I’m giving away a $5 Amazon gift card to one lucky commenter. To enter, all you have to do is tell me the most bizarre thing you know about sex. From positions to fetishes…dirty minds want to know!

Later, lovelies!

~Brandi Evans

p.s. And if you didn’t get enough sex-related fun facts, click here to read my blog post 10 Strange Facts About Sex.

His Forbidden Submissive releases June 27th from Ellora’s Cave!

Click banner to learn more!

First, make sure you go to the She Shifters blog.
Everyone who posts a comment gets a free book!

I’m neck deep in stories at the moment, so not a lot of chat in me today. I asked folks who followed me to send me pictures of their favorite things. I might make this a regular feature because I loved what I got!

From Patricia K: “I’m in love with Thor at the moment.”

[Patricia, I’m not into blond men, but he makes me swoon! I’m right there with you!]

[Pretty picture, but am I the only one worried about it getting windy? :)]

From Bridget: “Here’s my favorite thing. My backyard folly! I dreamed it, and my hubby had it built. A lot of it is composed of reclaimed materials. Perfect for reading!”

[Now are the rest of you with SO’s wondering how you can get your own folly? Since I’m single, I’m gonna have to hire a handy man. Hmmm…]

From Kathleen C

[Her expressions says it all!! I want to be on that beach!]

I’m looking for more pictures! If you have a favorite thing, place or person, send me a pic!

There are TWO giveaways going on today. Two different sites.
Right here, you can enter a drawing for a free download of FUN WITH DICK AND JAYNE, by simply posting a comment. Then head over to the She Shifters blog for a chance to win a signed copy of Kate Douglas’s latest book, DREAM BOUND!

Sometimes, seduction comes with hearts and flowers. But that doesn’t work for everyone. Be sure to check out all the authors’ links this week to find the one you love the most. My personal favorite kind of seduction tends to appeal to the primal, primitive instincts. Have fun seeing what appealed to Garrett about the couple across the road…

“…Loved the characters, loved the conflict, loved the scorching hot sex…I do give high praise to Ms. Devlin. Her writing leaves me breathless and her heroes are simply delicious.” ~9 of 10, Seriously Reviewed

He didn’t know the nightly peepshow was just a naughty invitation…

Garrett knows what he’s doing can get him into trouble, but he can’t help himself. Every night, as he arrives home, the blonde across the alley gets busy with her boyfriend with the blinds open. He’s spent the past two weeks getting an eyeful and falling deep into lust.

But when Garrett sees a man in a black ski mask sneak into his sexy neighbor’s bedroom, he doesn’t know he’ll be the one captured.

Jayne has a nice life with a nice lover who sees to her every need, but she’s still drawn to the lonely man across the alley. She’s been sharing her deepest fantasies with him from afar, but is ready to up the stakes. When she talks Richard into enacting a dangerous scenario, everything works out as planned. Only Garrett’s not happy about being played. And he’s got reservations because she already has a lover and he’s not into threesomes. Guess she’ll just have to convince him otherwise.

Tuesday

They were going at it again, and he was gonna get arrested. Which would be pretty damn embarrassing, considering he was cop.

Like clockwork, the couple across the alleyway started banging the minute his car pulled into the garage.

The street along the back of the parallel rows of one-story houses wasn’t much of a buffer. Driveways spoked off the narrow, paved road. Only twenty feet separated his garage from the bedroom window across the way.

Last night, he’d loosened the garage light bulb to make sure it didn’t give him away when the door slid up. Tonight, he flicked his car’s overhead lamp switch off so that the light wouldn’t beam the moment he exited. Carefully, he closed his car door, pushing it with his hip to muffle the click as it locked, walked around to the back then sat with his butt against the trunk to watch the show.

They had to know anyone walking by could see every damn thing—every drop of sweat, every short curl of pale blonde hair. She faced the window, clutching the bottom windowsill, her breasts bouncing every time Boyfriend slammed her ass.

God, her tits were Grade-A prime. Cherry nipples, topping creamy mounds.

Her blue eyes closed, her mouth rounded, and he knew when she came because she always wore the same expression—her cheeks growing rosy, her eyebrows drawing together tightly and the corners of her mouth curving like the cat that licked the cream.

And if the wind hadn’t been whistling through the alley, he would have heard the whimper she gave when Boyfriend milked the last little contraction of her orgasm.

Fuck. He needed his own woman. Maybe she had a twin. Because he sure as shit wouldn’t be satisfied with anyone who wasn’t her, Jayne Peabody—Jayne Hotbody as he’d begun to call her. He’d had her plates run so he’d have a name to assign the woman who’d played a starring role in all his fantasies this past couple of weeks.

They’d finished and Boyfriend was pulling her into his arms, wrapping them around her belly and cupping those beautiful breasts as she snuggled against his chest.

It was time to leave. The show was over for the night.

Then her eyes opened, and Garrett Masters could have sworn she looked right at him. He cussed softly, straightened and raised his arm, pulling down the garage door and shutting off the sight of her mouth stretching into a wide grin. Read the rest of this entry »

Instant Attraction

Ever walk into a room full of strangers and see someone you just have to know? It’s not the smile, the clothes, the demeanor, it’s everything under the surface, creating a connection drawing you two together. It’s not necessarily lust or anything romantic.

This is the special thing we try to capture in our characters, in our books. (We say “our” because Ashleigh Raine is two authors writing under one pen name.) We’re not talking about love at first sight. We’re talking about something deeper, stronger, undeniable, something that’s difficult to describe, and you don’t always know it when it’s happening. It doesn’t matter what the person looks like, it’s what he or she just is like.

In Starstruck, Micah is a very hot hunk of manflesh, and Jenna’s a gorgeous sweetheart, but that’s not what makes their meeting special. In fact, they don’t even have much time to be attracted to each other by the time their worlds collide. They’re on the set of a television show where Jenna is a background actor and Micah is one of the stars.

“Rolling!” was shouted, and the makeup lady stepped away from Micah.

“Speed!”

“Background!”

Jenna repeated the same actions, glad she’d already done it twice before since her mind was still whirling from her close call. Crystal’s unprofessional phone interruption had done one good thing in this case—increased the tension. Both actors were more in the moment, the argument resonating with a stronger passion than earlier.

“I think you’re wrong.” Crystal spun toward Micah, glaring, hands fisted at her hips.

There was less room to get around Micah and Crystal, but Jenna figured she could still ease by without looking too unnatural. If her fake ducking drop before hadn’t been a problem, sliding behind the arguing duo shouldn’t be either.

Micah whipped around to face Crystal. “Didn’t you see—” Punctuating his words, he swung his arm out in a wide gesture.

Jenna tried to duck, but there wasn’t enough time or space. Micah’s arm struck her across the face, and she fell backward, landing flat on her ass, staring up at Mr. Sexy M.D. himself.

Crap. Somehow she didn’t think she would escape unnoticed this time.
———–
In thirty years of acting Micah had done just about everything…except punch an extra in the face. How great for him that he’d reached a new fucking low.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?” He sank to the floor next to the poor girl while Steve, the First Assistant Director, shouted for a medic. Micah didn’t see any blood, and the girl’s eyes were open, wide open, shining a bright blue right up at him. Before he could offer her a hand, she started scrambling to her feet.

“I’m fine. Really.”

Taking her elbow, he helped her the rest of the way to standing. She was trembling, which made him feel like an even bigger shit. Even the small smile and whispered “Thank you” she gave him before stepping away didn’t ease his conscience.

How could he not have seen her? Had she done the same cross in every take? Dammit, he was as bad as Crystal, ignoring everything outside his little bubble and fucking things up in the process.

After she walks away something deep within him makes him seek her out before it’s too late. Something more that pushes him to make plans to see her that night. Neither one of them is aware of the deep connection growing between them. Not yet anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Still have my head down, writing my short, stubby little fingers to the bone. I’m almost finished with the first big book. It’s killin’ me, I tell ya! (That was my overdramatic “It’s alive!” voice)

The She-Shifters blog is up and running. My fellow author-contributors to this fun collection are eager to talk about their stories. Drop by to see what Victoria Oldham has to say today. We’ll have contest information up soon, but don’t wait until then to get acquainted with our site and book! She Shifters

Since you dropped by, I have one of my very important, let’s-change-the-world type questions. Not really, but let’s have fun…

If you had to wear a button with a maximum of six words on it describing your outlook on life, what would your button say?

I’ll start. I WISH my button could say, “Don’t worry, be happy.” Thank you, Bobby McFerrin, that song is in my head for the rest of the day!