Post a comment here today, and you’ll be entered in The Voodoo Doll Contest!
Then mosey on over to Magical Musings to see you can win a free book!

Cheaper than Therapy, but Loads More Fun!

Thanks, Delilah, for letting me hang out at your place!

Don’t know about you, but books have always been my friends – a solace and a refuge when Real Life was bleak. But it wasn’t until I started writing that I realized that fiction was cheaper than therapy – not to mention a helluva lot more fun. *grin*

To illustrate… Many years ago, when I was a baby writer taking my first tentative steps onto the page, I met a Very Senior Manager (from another section) at a work function. Very Senior Manager was good at his job and respected for his ability and ruthlessness. He was also on the short side and suffered from one good lunch too many, so he resembled a well-groomed toad in a business suit. I recall that his tie was an odd green/yellow colour.

We were chatting politely, as one does, when I noticed that he wasn’t looking at my face, but at my chest. He appeared to be counting – one…and ah, yes, there’s the other one. Yay, two!

I guess I’m naïve, but I tend to take people as I find them. I glanced down, expecting to see that a button had popped or that I’d dropped a blob of chocolate cake on my front. Nope, all buttoned up and pristine.

Very Senior Manager met my startled gaze and smirked. He didn’t say a word, he didn’t need to, the creep! In fact, I think he was looking forward to blandly denying any assertion I made.

Fuming, I excused myself and made sure I was surrounded by others for the rest of the event.

I seethed over that incident for months. I’m perfectly well aware that on the harassment scale, it was a flea bite, and that I hadn’t been injured or even threatened. He didn’t belong to my part of the organization, so he had no direct power over me. But, oh my goodness, I was sooo incensed – especially when I discovered that he only played this trick on subordinate women. I think it was the nasty smirk that really did me in, knowing how much he’d enjoyed my discomfiture. I’d say it was adolescent, but that gives decent teenagers a bad name.

What did I do? I wrote Very Senior Manager into my first manuscript (it still lives in the sock drawer). Unlike my place of employment, that book was a place where I had complete control, where I was the puppet mistress and the deity all rolled into one. I didn’t make him the villain, oh no, I made him the villain’s inept sidekick. The character was fat, complacent and clammy-handed. He was also stupid, cowardly and came to a Very Bad End.

That’s right, I killed him off and it was wonderful! From the moment I typed the last word in that scene, all my fury and frustration just…evaporated. Pfft! Gone! It was amazing how different I felt.

Since that day, I’ve loved living through and with my characters. The good guys are infinitely more resourceful, braver and stronger than I’ll ever be – and so much sexier and better looking! The bad guys all come (eventually) to horrible ends. Ah, I love the fantasy that is a good romance!

In The Dark Rose, the fourth in the Four-Sided Pentacle series, we have a heroine so exquisitely lovely Very Senior Manager would have slobbered all over her, but Rose is as devious as she is beautiful. She would have made him pay, I know it!

Here’s a short, sexy excerpt, but you can read the whole first chapter on my website.
Purchase from Amazon  or Barnes & Noble.

Denise Rossetti
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Simple Pleasures – Draw by the Fireside

As Delilah gets ready to give her Plotting Bootcamp in Oklahoma, Rachel and I got to thinking about the opposite of traveling: the pleasures of staying home.  While travel is tremendous fun, and there are some lucky folks in Oklahoma with Delilah, there are many good things to be said for the fireside – especially if you’re fortunate to live somewhere with an actual fireplace!

When I talk to people about doing things like crafts, the biggest complaint I get is that folks have no time to do crafts, even if they wanted to.  As any crafter knows, this doesn’t have to be a deterrent.  While there are, of course, wildly complicated crafts, there are also simple but fun things one can do as a pastime that are enjoyable and give you a finished product you can display afterwards – a double win.

Here are five suggestions for fun but simple things you can do by yourself, with friends, or with your family as the year winds down toward the holiday season – and, if you think ahead, you can use some of these for gifts!

1.  Coloring Books

I know, I know; not really a “craft” in the strict sense of the word, right?  But give it a shot.  Think about it: you don’t have to think a whole lot, you can just color in the designs.  There are some amazing books available – have you seen the Dover Stained Glass Coloring Books?  If not, check them out – well worth the investment of a few dollars (most of them are under $10 USD).

2.  Knit or Crochet a Scarf

Knitting and crochet are easy to do and have the advantage of being inexpensive and portable.  If you, like me, have trouble sorting out three-dimensional stuff from two-dimensional, consider taking a quick class at JoAnn’s or Michael’s.  Or, to really get into it, check out your friendly, neighborhood LYS (Local Yarn Shop).  You can find listings of them on the internet or, if you’re in the states, look at the TKGA site (The Knitting Guild Association).

3.   Makit and Bakit

These are a lot of fun and I wish they were more popular, because they’re super easy.  Some of the designs are cheesy but if you poke around you can find some cool ones (my favorite, personally, is the coyote howling at the moon with a cactus in the foreground).  Tip:  use your toaster oven tray, and line it with tin foil.  Use a tweezer to place the little color beads into the frame.  When you bake it, the plastic melts and you have a real, live, stained “glass” ornament.

4.  Polymer Clay

There are so many kinds of polymer clay available now that your choices are endless.  The two biggest brands are Femo and Sculpey.  They both can be baked in your toaster oven.  You can make figurines, buttons, beads, and all sorts of little animals.  If you have no idea how to do anything with ceramics, this is a great book to try:  The Incredible Clay Book.

5.  Check out Klutz Press

If you think you’re all thumbs when it comes to crafts, and that the nearest 8-year-old has more talent than you, then you owe it to yourself to check out the offerings of Klutz Press.  You can find stuff on all sorts of topics.  Have some fun and let your inner child out to play.  All you have to lose is your skepticism.

—
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
– E.E. Cummings

Noony’s links:  Blog | Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | LinkedIn | Pandora

Knoontime Knitting:  Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Ravelry
Noon and Wilder links: Blog | Website | Facebook
Team Blogs: Nightlight | The Writers Retreat Blog | Beyond the Veil | LGBT Fantasy Fans and Writers
Publishers: Samhain Publishing | Torquere Press

Check out BURNING BRIGHT, available from Samhain Publishing.
Check out EMERALD FIRE, available from Torquere Books.

Check out “Taking a Chance“, part of the Charity Sips 2012 to benefit NOH8, available from Torquere Books.

Orgasm in your Mouth

I want to thank Delilah for letting me jump between her blog sheets to play today.

Coming up with a fitting topic for this blog was tough. You see, I’m a children’s writer—middle grade (8-12 year olds)—and I just don’t touch on erotic topics, and my hubs would prefer it if I kept our sex life in our bedroom. It’s far more comfy there, doncha think? Soft bed, pillows, porn. . . . er, never mind.

So what do I blog about?

With the weather finally giving us a break and becoming cooler, my thoughts turn to making candy. I love making candy. I think I made 55 pounds of candy to give away last Christmas, everything from four types of fudge to sea salt caramels to English toffee to peanut brittle, and molded chocolate truffles. The truffles are the hardest, but the most satisfying to make. They are time-consuming, back-breaking, delicate (entire batches have cracked and thrown out), and temperamental, depending on humidity. Very finicky stuff, but well worth the hassle.

About five years ago, I started experimenting with making truffle fillings. I now have fifteen flavors that are the epitome of an orgasm in your mouth.

Peppermint Schnapps, Strawberry Margarita, Frangelico (hazelnut), Amaretto (almond), Whiskey Toffee, Bäranjäger (honey), Key Lime (gin), Chambord (raspberry), Buttershots (butterscotch), Rum Raisin, Grand Marnier (orange), Black Forest (kirshwasser–cherry), Limoncello (lemon), Porto, and Gingerbread.

Gingerbread is my most recent invention using a vodka-based filling. Hubs came home from work and he sampled the remnants in the saucepan and asked, “How did you get gingerbread in there?”

Yeah, I’m that good.

I know all of you have eaten a piece of chocolate, done the little happy dance, moaned a little, maybe allowed a shiver of pleasure to tingle all your naughty bits, or had your eyes rolled back in your head as you experienced a climax of endorphins shooting throughout your body.

And, odds are, that was from a mass-produced, grainy piece of chocolate. Can you imagine the orgasm you’ll have eating one of these lovelies?

What makes chocolate so sensual, so sexual? The velvety texture? The smell as it floods your senses? The visual stimulation? The flavor as you roll it around in your mouth? The contrast between sweet and salty?

Let’s switch to a quickie anatomy 101 lesson. The reason you are enjoying chocolate so much has to do with the more than 10,000 taste buds you have in your mouth. Not all of your taste buds are on your tongue; they also reside inside your cheeks and in the roof of your mouth.

1–find a piece of chocolate.

2–roll that velvety smoothness around on your tongue,

3–and inhale through your nose.

4–savor the moment until the last bit of goodness slides down your throat.

So what happened?

The essence of the chocolate scent glides over soft palate and into your sinus cavity where the olfactory cells will detect the aroma, thus increasing your satisfaction of eating chocolate. In one simple bite, you will have experienced taste, touch and smell. Before you take the bite of chocolate, you will have the visual stimulation. And so we don’t forget our sense of hearing, your moans and groans of delight as you experience an orgasm in your mouth, further release the endorphins of happiness.

Since y’all were so kind to put up with me, I’d like to share a little something-something with you–my recipe for Sea Salt Caramels. The sweet is countered by the crunchy saltiness, while the creamy caramel blends beautifully with the chocolate coating.

Now, you can make an orgasm happen in your mouth.

SEA SALT CARAMELS

1 1/3 cup heavy cream (whipping cream)
2 cups sugar
½ cup light corn syrup (Karo)
½ cup honey
6 Tbls. butter, cut into small cubes
1 tsp. vanilla extract (Madagascar real vanilla)
2 tsp. sea salt (if you have fleur de sel great, but I used Alessi coarse sea salt)
Dipping chocolate (Merkens or Ghirardelli dipping chocolate)
1 tsp. sea salt for decorating

Line 8-inch square Pyrex baking dish with aluminum foil. Spray with non-stick cooking spray.

Place cream in large saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Stir in sugar, corn syrup and honey; continue stirring until mixture comes to a boil. Cook candy, swirling occasionally, until it reaches the temperature of 257 degrees Fahrenheit on a candy thermometer. Remove pan from heat and add butter, vanilla, and salt. Stir until ingredients are incorporated; take care not to scrape sides where sugar has crystallized.

Pour into prepared pan. Scrap out caramel, but again, take care NOT to scrape areas where sugar has crystallized. Set at room temperature to harden. Lightly cover with waxed paper after it has cooled if you are letting it set overnight before you make your caramels.

Melt chocolate until it is smooth. Place waxed paper sheets on counter for dipped chocolates. Place sea salt in small container to be sprinkled (about 5-6 grains) on top of caramel.

Remove caramel from pan by using the foil ‘handles’. Carefully remove foil, as it can tear. Cut caramel into 1/2- inch squares, dip into chocolate until coated. Lift out with dipping fork and place on waxed paper to dry. Dip a few pieces (I can do about 10 without the chocolate hardening too much, but I’ve been doing this awhile) and then, sprinkle decoratively with salt. Let dry.

Take a sharp thin knife and trim excess chocolate puddling around base of caramels. Place in paper cups or store in air tight container until ready for giving or eating! Enjoy!!

HINT: I used orange blossom honey.

HINT # 2: If you forgot to wash your saucepan out and the sugar solidified, don’t freak. Just fill it with hot water and let the magic happen! The sugar will dissolve away.

HINT #3: Hot, boiling sugar is like napalm! If it splashes you place the body part under running cold water. This is the only way to get it off since it adheres to your skin. Yes, I have a quarter-sized scar to prove this.

M. A. Golla’s Amazon page

Gnome de Plume blog

BIO:

Margaret Golla (M. A. Golla) has been writing since 2000, but in 2007 she realized she never grew up and wanted to play with her imaginary friends again, only this time she calls it ‘writing’. MAG’s lives in Oklahoma with her two kids—oops, make that one hubs and one child—one large fuzzy-butt Old English sheepdog, Maggie (yes, she knows the dog was named after her!) and one small fuzzy-butt guinea pig, Scruffy.  She’s plotting book four in The Goblin’s Apprentice series, DRAGON DAYS OF SUMMER, writing a non-fic blogagraphy (what else would you call taking your blogs and making them into a book??) about her weight-loss journey, and developing an adult paranormal series.

The winner of yesterday’s contest, chosen by random number generator, is… Stacy Wilson! Stacy, congrats and email me!

Laying Down the Law

Thanks to everyone who bought a copy of this book last week! It’s currently #3 on Samhain’s new release calendar. I appreciate your support!

And I hope that if you’ve read it and loved it, that you will mention it to a friend, and/or post a review somewhere to tell someone else about it. I’d love to write more of this kind of book!

For Writers!!

Don’t forget! There are only 15 days left before my current Call for Submissions for my alpha manthology closes!! Check out the details here: Cleis Press Sex Objects: He-Man Erotica for Women

Contests

I have two contests running right now. Both end on September 27th! There will be tons of winners, so be sure to pay attention to how to enter! Rules for entry and descriptions of both contests and their prizes are located on my Contest page!

Guests

I have a ton of guests scheduled to play here. My sister and I are traveling to Oklahoma next week to conduct a plotting bootcamp weekend with the RWA chapter there. I’ll be busy getting ready for it, then going, so I thought I’d better line up some guests to keep you entertained.

9/17 — Margaret Golla
9/19 — A. Catherine Noon and Rachel Wilder
9/20 — Denise Rossetti
9/21 — Mary Marvella
9/22 — Me, I’ll prepost a snippet!
9/23 — Cathryn Fox
9/24 — Wendy Soliman

Coming Soon

I haven’t decided when to publish this one. Maybe this week, if I get time to put it up on Amazon and Nook, or maybe next week when I get back. But I thought I’d go ahead and share the cover and a snippet with you today. Hope you like it!

His need becomes a knight’s quest and a virgin’s gift.

An ancient, cursed creature, Drago, Lord of Drakkenberg, dreads the anniversary that marks the moment he must devour a virgin or visit a plague of destruction on the world around him. Once every century, he becomes a dragon…

Only now that his castle has moved to the U.S. in a vain attempt to break the curse, suitably mature virgins are hard to come by. In the midst of his transformation, he sends his loyal knight, Guy D’Alba, in search of a woman during the Renaissance Faire they are hosting.

Guy understands his duty well, but chafes against the curse that binds him in servitude to the dragon.  Until he meets a sweet young reporter who meets his overlord’s requirements—young, blonde and beautiful—and lo and behold, a virgin. But the moment he discovers her fitness, he knows he must relinquish her to Drago or their small mountain community will suffer the dragon’s wrath.

Angela Bowman is smart, young…and a lonely virgin ready to find an adventure. The moment she sees Guy, she falls beneath the spell of his smoldering sensuality. When he asks her to meet Drago, and then produces a blindfold, she finds herself so intrigued she consents.

She’s ready to surrender her innocence—but to which man? The sexy and attentive Guy—or Drago, the mysterious and dominant man she hasn’t yet seen but whose dark aura calls to the woman inside her, yearning to break free?

The woman shivered as she sat on the chaise, her head swiveling side to side to follow the sounds his minion made as he prepared the room.

She was lovely, skin like ivory, hair like burnished gold, lips…

Lovely, yes, but did she have the one thing he needed to end his curse for all time? He shifted his stance, his boots scuffling softly on the floor.

Her head jerked toward the sound. “Is this necessary?”

“I told you his requirements,” Guy murmured from where he stood beside her.

“Why the blindfold?” she whispered. “Is he hideous?”

Drago, Lord of Drakkenberg, snorted. Most women found him desirable. So much so, they’d throw themselves into his path, heedless of any dangers. But he was careful to hide his true nature, successful most of the time with suppressing the monster inside. Not so, today. Not on the first day of the full moon.

Guy pulled the leather restraints from beneath the bolster pillow and laid them silently behind the girl in case they were needed. Then he nodded to Drago and faded toward the stone wall of the bedchamber, his duty done. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I’m heading to Little Rock to meet with my Diamond State Romance Author friends! I’ll leave you with an excerpt from something I wrote a while ago. Something dark and sexy—and written at the time New Orleans was in the midst of the cleanup after Katrina. Post a comment today, and you’ll be entered to win a download of this book!

“…The perfect holiday read! Delilah Devlin took a Christmas tale to a whole new level when she crafted SILENT KNIGHT.” ~5 Stars, eCataRomance

“…[SILENT KNIGHT] is a sizzling hot vampire story tht will take you on a short escape — the perfect read for a busy holiday season. Sexy and fun, make sure Silent Knight is on your holiday “must read” list!” ~4 Kisses, Romance Divas

“Erotically decedent and thrillingly carnal, Noelle and Magnus’ story is enough to make a person self-combust with want.” ~4 Roses, A Romance Review

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Noelle Moyaux questions her gift of sight until a chance encounter with a mysterious stranger sets her on a path to save his soul.

Magnus Thornton is a millennium-old vampire who has found evidence of an old foe’s evil at work in the demolished city of New Orleans . Weary of the fight, he decides to greet the coming dawn after a night reveling in his favorite things–a bottle of Bordeaux and a willing woman.

Noelle seems the answer, but she quickly creeps into his heart-the vampire, so jaded from life he never speaks, must now persuade Noelle to flee the city before it’s too late.

Noelle Moyaux flicked off the battery-powered Christmas lights that ringed her metal cart, folded her purple tablecloth into a small tidy square and tucked it and the folding table inside the cart before latching the lid closed.

She wheeled the cart across the busy street and waved to her friend Gerard, the owner of a small Cajun restaurant. Continuing around the back of the eatery, she stowed her palmistry kiosk in the storage unit she’d rented from Gerard since before the troubles.

Today’s earnings were slim, despite the unseasonably warm weather that allowed the thin-blooded residents of the city to roam the streets in light jackets. No one believed in a future amid the chaos–and some questioned her ability since she’d received no divination of the coming catastrophe. Indeed, Noelle questioned her gift daily as she sat beneath her umbrella in front of the embroidered cloth advertising “Noelle’s News”.

If not for the little nest egg of money she’d saved from substitute teaching before the flood, she’d be in dire straits.

Clutching her purse close to her side, she headed down the street toward home.

One last night. One last chance to lose myself in The Hunger, a fine glass of wine and the body of a willing woman. Before my last sunrise—the first I will see in nearly a thousand years…

Noelle heard the quiet, fleeting thought as she passed through the crowd ambling along Bourbon Street and spun to find the owner. The inner voice that accompanied the thought was masculine and raspy. Added to the familiar spark of connection when her skin had brushed against his was a wash of the blackest melancholy she’d ever sensed. It nearly drowned her in despair. Read the rest of this entry »

A Duke, a Billionaire, and a Superhero Walk into a Bar…

I’m an equal opportunity reader. Give me a traditional Regency, an erotic contemp with a family of super-rich playboy heroes, an urban fantasy where the characters acquire kick-ass superpowers…I’m not picky. As long as the world is well crafted and the characters grab me, I’ll follow them along on all their adventures.

Some people (read: my family) don’t understand how I can bounce around between genres like that, how I can love a rich historical just as much as a fast-paced action romance. But it’s easy. What’s interesting to me about this motley crew of genres is not how dissimilar they are, but how similar they are.

Because no matter which way I figure it, every one of the hero types found in these books is as deliciously unrealistic as the next.

Historicals love to depict dukes. And spies. And really rich landowners who don’t exploit their tenants or the slave trade in the West Indies but have an inexplicable source of income all the same. I’m not saying I won’t read one of these books (on the contrary, magically rich and handsome young men are a staple in my TBR pile), but I am saying that the reality is probably a lot more grim. I mean, I have the Internet. I can look up paintings of the ancient lords of England. I see a lot of weak chins and receding hairlines.

Contemporaries are just as guilty of this. Yes, we’re seeing a larger influx of blue-collar heroes (whom I happen to adore), but the vast majority don’t worry about money. And even when they do worry, it’s always for a noble reason. You don’t see any of these guys agonizing about car payments and paying down their student loan debt. Oh, no. They want to set their female relatives up in style, make a family business successful, give up the shackles of their millions to pursue a higher calling.

Which leaves us with the superheroes and fierce men of the paranormal world. Naturally, we have to take a leap of believability when we pick up one of these books. I know my cute UPS guy probably doesn’t howl at the moon every 28 days. I know that if my husband took up Hawkeye-style archery, he’d only end up shooting himself in the face rather than saving the world. But in my day-to-day life, radioactive spiders are just as realistic as taking up spying for my country or building a million-dollar play room.

Which is to say, not at all.

So when a duke, a billionaire, and a superhero walk into a bar…it’s probably just me, enjoying a mojito and searching through my Kindle to find what I want to read next. You should come say hello. I’ll buy you a drink, and maybe we can talk books.

About Playing with Fire

Fiona Nelson has always been one hot ticket—even before she took the conversion serum that gave her superhuman abilities. Fiona’s powers come at a price: lack of human contact, or she won’t be the only thing burning. When she loses control of her emotions, her fire powers run rampant…and she’s hurt enough people already.

Including herself.

But when the man behind her conversion returns to blackmail her into helping him gain power, the only person she can turn to is Ian Jones, the man who broke her teenage heart. The man determined to expose the criminal known as Fireball, whose explosive escapades are just a little too close to Fiona’s M.O.

Ian is convinced Fiona’s dangerous, convinced she’s Fireball, and convinced he’ll damn himself if he doesn’t resist a heat that’s always drawn him to Fiona like a moth to a flame—but Ian has his own secrets.

And he’ll learn far too soon what happens when you play with fire.

Available at Amazon, Books on Board, and Kobo.

About Tamara Morgan

Tamara Morgan is a romance writer and unabashed lover of historical reenactments—the more elaborate and geeky the costume requirements, the better. In her quest for modern-day history and intrigue, she has taken fencing classes, forced her child into Highland dancing, and, of course, journeyed annually to the local Renaissance Fair. These feats are matched by a universal love of men in tights, of both the superhero and codpiece variety.

You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.

Winners!

First Winners!
The five winners of the Hustler Magnets Contest, chosen by random number generator, are:

* Angel Shaw (August 30)
* Julianne Keller (September 2)
* Ella (September 5)
* Jen B. (September 6)
* Stacy Wilson (September 9)

I’ll load up the packages with some other promo items, too! So ladies, email me with your snail mail addresses. Congratulations!

One more winner!
The Promo Ho Contest is ongoing (see below), but the first winner is Angel Shaw!!! Angel, email me! And thanks for your support! Angel’s a very lucky girl!

New Contest — The Voodoo Doll Contest!

This one will be fun! I have these three pretty little voodoo dolls and two strings of wooden voodoo-themed Mardi Gras beads I picked up in New Orleans on Bourbon Street. So, five winners in all! Plus, I’ll be sure to fill up the packages with more promo items you will enjoy!

What do you have to do to win? Post comments on this blog from now until the contest ends! Each time you post counts as another entry!

This contest ends on September 27th!

Ongoing Contest — The Promo Ho Contest

What can you win? One $25.00 Amazon.com gift certificate, given to a new lucky winner every week of the contest!

What do you have to do to enter? See the covers below? These books are in sore need of online reviews by readers. So I’m offering a tempting bribe. You know there won’t be as many entries for this contest as for the Voodoo Doll contest, so you stand a better chance of winning! And wouldn’t you like to have some cash to spend on new books? And who knows? Maybe you already have these stories sitting on your TBR pile. Time to move them to the top!

Give an honest review for one of these stories on one of the online bookstores. Send me the link at del…@delilahdevlin.com. It can be the same review on three different sites, but send me three separate messages with the different links. Doesn’t matter if the review is on Samhain’s or Ellora’s Cave’s website, Amazon or Nook—send me the link to the review. Easy as that. Send me the link!

This contest ends September 27!

Today’s Question…

So, I have plenty of things for you to be interested in here, right? Contests, special guests, fun posts. I love the questions, how about you? Here’s today’s…

What’s the funniest TV sitcom scene you’ve ever watched?
[Question from The Answer Guys]