Not the greatest of starts for the morning. I woke at 7:00 when my phone alarm is set to wake me “gently.” I got up, stumbled to the computer, read through some email, but my eyelids kept dragging downward so I went back to bed. Nearly two hours later, I’m starting the day again. Strangely, it feels like I began a whole new day, that I slept 26 hours. It doesn’t feel like Tuesday.

There has to be a story somewhere in there. Help me find it? 🙄

The winner of yesterday’s contest (by random number generator) is…Julie Kiesow! Julie, email me!

Be sure to post a comment today to be in the running
for a free signed copy of this book!

Did I mention that the Chantix worked and that I’ve been smoke-free for over a month now? Wish it were true for my dreams. Last night I had a nightmare. I found a cigarette on the ground, but didn’t have a lighter. The only thing I could find was a blowtorch, but I couldn’t get it close enough to my face to light the sucker. Gah!

Back to the book…

The Allure Authors are a group of my best writer friends. We produced two anthologies for Avon. This excerpt is from the second one, Alluring Tales 2: Hot Holiday Nights. This book was released in November 2008. My story, Indecent Exposure, is about a girl with a bad reputation for baring her assets in high school, who gets a second chance with her high school crush. Tell me whether you would have made the same choice as Harmony!

From the authors of the bestselling ALLURING TALES: AWAKEN THE FANTASY comes a new erotic romance anthology featuring seven super-sexy holiday-themed short stories. Together, the Allure Authors offer more than just steamy romances—they introduce readers to an erotic world full of limitless possibilities

The holidays are heating up — with seven wickedly sensual stories guaranteed to spice up those chilly winter nights!

A psychology student goes online hoping to live out her steamiest fantasy — and ends up on a hot mystery date with a wickedly imaginative stud who brings out her inner pole-dancer…

A determined lady comes home, burning for her girlhood crush — a sexy lawman who totes a big gun…

A creative ad man’s passion is aroused when he sees his buttoned-up coworker in a revealing new light — dressed in sizzling red satin on a giant billboard…

A professional dominatrix wishes upon a star, and her fantasy appears — an insatiable alpha male in biker boots who’s literally out of this world…

A tall, dark, handsome warlock finds himself obsessed with his “familiar” — a sleek and sexy cat-woman who turns out to be the purr-fect lover…

She was always hot for big brother’s best friend — and now her erotic dream is here in the taut and tempting flesh…

A pair of fugitive lovers finds themselves warm and toasty in a sultry Caribbean paradise — and ready for some red-hot fun in the sun…

Twelve years earlier…

Dalton McDonough, you don’t know it yet—hell, you don’t even know me—but one day your fine ass is gonna be mine!

A blush heated Harmony Wilkin’s cheeks at the crudeness of the thought, but there you had it. When it came to Dalton, all the rules she’d been taught about being a good girl flew out the window.

Lord, he was a temptation—an obsession she couldn’t shake. That she wasn’t alone in mooning over the handsome high school senior didn’t help one bit. There was something special about the strong curve of his jaw, the jut of his high cheekbones and the deep mysterious set of his brown eyes. Add those characteristics to the rest of the package—tall, lean frame and wavy dark hair—and every girl in a tri-county area between the age of five and ninety-five couldn’t help but sigh and wonder what it would be like to be the center of his undivided attention.

Only most girls didn’t do any more than that—sigh and wonder. Harmony, however, wasn’t the kind to leave matters to fate. Somehow, someday, Dalton would be hers. All she needed to move things along a little quicker was information. Being a studious sort, she’d decided that winning Dalton wasn’t any different than any other goal she’d achieved. She just needed to know more about him. Figure out his likes and dislikes.

Find the one thing that might spark his interest in her.

And studying up on Dalton meant she had to take a few risks, because what she needed to know couldn’t be found in any textbook or Cosmo magazine article. Which was why she was sneaking through the dark, risking her reputation and her parent’s trust. Then again, her parents probably wouldn’t care, they’d been shouting at each other so much lately.

Careful not to let the gate slam shut behind her, she crept silently into his backyard, skirting the flagstones surrounding the pool, keeping to the soft, manicured lawn to muffle her footfalls until she reached the French doors outside his bedroom.

Seeking the shadows hugging the side of his house, she hid behind the tall winterberry bush and peered inside. She brushed away the niggling guilt she felt for spying on the object of her affections. Suppressed the unease that any night now, someone would see her stealing out of her bedroom window. But a desperate longing filled Harmony with a sense of purpose that pretty much wiped out every lick o’ sense she’d inherited from her schoolteacher dad.

During the past week of her stealth campaign, she’d learned some pretty interesting things about the quiet, intensely private boy.

Like Dalton slept in the nude.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been rewarding myself for book progress with nightly NCIS marathons. I didn’t discover the show until a couple of months ago. Yeah, it’s been on for years, but I TIVO everything, so never ran across it. The show’s not brilliant. The acting’s solid, I guess. I’ve never been a Mark Harmon fan, but I like the rest of the ensemble and he works well with them. But now that I’m hooked, I’m rabid about catching up on all the previous seasons. The problem I have is that USA is showing them all out of sequence. Do you know how confusing that can be? I get that Kate was killed, but haven’t seen that episode yet. I like Zevah a lot, but after last night’s episode I can’t figure out how she came back after being sent back to Israel. It’s frustrating. Kind of like watching Memento and piecing the bits of backstory together with crazy glue. Finally, last night I saw what happened to Director Shepard. Wah!

But back to my progress report.

This week wore me out. I finished chapters 12 through 14, and have added 44 pages to the big book. I’ll be editing today, so I have no doubts that I will hit my 50 page a week goal. Plus, I started work on the next Lone Star Lovers story. I completed chapter one, although it’s really, really ugly at the moment.

Small things. I got the first round edits of First Knight back, and really it was just little stuff. Yay, me. And of course, Fun With Dick and Jayne released, so I’m super excited to see how everyone likes it. Remember, if you ordered it off the Ellora’s Cave website, please leave an honest review afterward! That’s one of the best ways you can support your favorite authors—by letting someone else know if you enjoyed a story.

This coming week, I’ll pound out another 50 pages of the big book. I’m switching gears to write a short story for a Cleis call for submissions. Don’t have a clue about what yet. And that’s enough, right? Until next week…

Hey there! I’ll be in Little Rock today to attend my monthly RWA chapter’s meeting. So, no writing—no hanging out online. While I’m away, I have a question for you to ponder…

If all drinking fountains could dispense another liquid in addition to water, what would you want it to be?

Personally, I’d want it to dispense Bellinis. Prosecco, peaches, organge peel… Mmmm…

I promised I’d post some things I’ve learned along the way about writing for aspiring writers. Here’s my take on POV.

I own a gazillion books about the craft of writing. Every once in a while, I’ll run my fingers over the spines and say a little incantation hoping the knowledge will seep into me by osmosis, because I haven’t read them!

So, everything I’m saying here is strictly “POV according to Delilah.” This is all I know—what I’ve picked up from listening to other writers complaining about someone else’s poor use of POV. We writers love to tear each other to shreds, don’t we? In a constructive way!

What is my impression of Point of View?
Down and dirty—it’s whose head you’re in, whose body you’re crawling around inside to describe what that character is seeing, feeling, touching, tasting.

Let’s start with the terms I learned first in high school English. This is the easy part to distinguish.
1) First Person: If you are writing a book and you have a single POV and constantly refer to him or her as “I”, you’re using first person POV.
2) Third Person: This is more commonly used in romance fiction. If you want to see inside more than one person’s head, you really need to be using third. Here you are referring to your hero and heroine as “he” and “she”.
3) Omniscient: This is trickier. You’re using “he” and “she”, but you aren’t in any one character’s head. You might be seeing something your characters can’t see. Use this sparingly, if at all. It’s a disembodied voice, not rooted in the emotions and insights of any character.

Knowing how to recognize POV is one thing. Using it well is an art.
I write mostly in third person. I write romance and love to see inside both character’s heads to know how the romance is progressing according to their separate POVs.

How do I decide whose head I want to be in?
I evaluate what I want to accomplish in a particular scene. What lesson will be learned? Who has the most to lose from the outcome of the scene? Whoever will give me the most emotional impact is who I go with.

How do I know I’m using POV well?
I pretend I’m using binoculars when I enter a scene. Once I’ve chosen the head I want to walk around in, I look at the scene through his or her eyes. What is she feeling? What is she seeing? She can’t see an emotion occurring in the hero, but she can read his facial expressions or his body language to surmise what’s happening inside him.

Take a look at this sentence and see if you get it:
“Sarah glanced at Luke. He looked embarrassed.“

Sarah can’t see embarrassment—but she can see red cheeks, a gaze that can’t quite meet hers—and guess what’s going in inside Luke. Be sure to “show, not tell”.

How often should I change POV? What’s head hopping?
When writing shorter romances (series, novellas), you will likely only use two POVs—the hero’s and the heroine’s. You won’t have the page count for other character’s POV and subplots.

Before I start writing, I decide whose book this is. Sure, I have a hero and a heroine, and they both are falling in love, but one character has more to learn, more to sacrifice. That’s the person who owns that story. I will spend more time inside her or his head. I try to balance the POVs scene by scene the best I can, but my main character needs more pages.

If my hero chooses to hurt my heroine to keep her away from him for her safety, I’ll be in his head. He’s fighting his emotions to give her the stoney-faced set down to drive her away. There’s more happening inside him, than her. In the next scene, I will want to know what she thinks and feels about what just happened. UNLESS, I want his motivations hidden—in which case, we will see the set down occur in her POV.

You no doubt have heard the term “head-hopping.” The simple explanation is that you swap POVs. Some purists think you should only have a single POV per chapter or scene. I go with that advice, most of the time. If I do decide to leap to the other person’s head mid-scene, I do it cleanly and I don’t go back. Changing POV mid-scene can very effective in love scene or a scene with a lot of action.

Don’t give your animals a POV unless they’re sentient aliens who think like us—I can’t think of any time I’ve seen that used effectively. Do you know what an animal thinks? I blur that rule only when I write my shape shifters, because even in animal form they retain some spark of human sentience.

If you’re a writer and have your own thoughts on how to identify whose head you should be in or how to deepen POV, I’d love the hear your thoughts. ~DD

If you’re checking for the winner of the countdown contest, scroll to the end! ~DD

Whew! So the book’s finally out. And several of you already wrote or posted a comment on my blog to let me know you loved it. Thanks so much! I always bite my nails until I hear back.

While I was being a promo whore trying to get the word out about the book, I was also busy writing. I’m making great progress on the big book, although past chapter eight it’s very, very messy. I also realized last night while I was watching NCIS (watching TV gives my subconscious time to mull over my stories) that I don’t have any reason for the brothel scene on the outcast’s planet, so I have to go back and layer in some plot. I had way too much fun with the sex, which meant I lost sight of what the hero and heroine needed to learn while they were gettin’ busy.

I have started a new quickie-length cowboy story for Samhain, but I want to start something for Ellora’s Cave too. I just need the right idea. Something sexy and fun to follow Dick and Jayne and Bad, Bad Girlfriend. Writing funny is a lot less stressful than writing the darker stuff! Will have to think harder and quickly because I don’t want large gaps between releases.

Here’s a list of what’s coming for the rest of the year. It may change as I finish up novellas for ebook release. You can always check for changes on my Coming Soon page.

03/24/10 – BAD, BAD GIRLFRIEND (Ellora’s Cave)
April-May/10 – MISS ADDIE’S GARDEN, New Love Stories Magazine
Summer?/10 – WARLORD’S DESTINY, a re-release (Ellora’s Cave)
Summer?/10 – FIRST KNIGHT (Ellora’s Cave)
05/01/10 – STONE’S EMBRACE, Captive Souls print anthology (Samhain)
06/01/10 – THE OUT-OF-TOWNER, Girl Crush anthology (Cleis Press)
07/01/10 – THE OBEDIENT WIFE, Fairy Tale Lust anthology (Cleis Press)
08/01/10 – THE WEEKEND, Lesbian Lust anthology (Cleis Press)
10/1/10 – COWBOY FEVER print anthology (Samhain)
11/01/10 – DARKNESS CAPTURED (Avon Red)

So, back to that contest. I used my random number generator and have a name. But before I announce it, thanks again for playing and saying so many nice things. I work in a cave and don’t stir from it for long periods of time. My online friends are my lights flickering at the end of the cave. Too cheesy and purple prosey? Yeah, but it’s true.

The lucky winner of the countdown contest from among the 100+ entries is…Terry W! Terry—email me!

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

From Seriously Reviewed: “…Loved the characters, loved the conflict, loved the scorching hot sex. The title and concept is often fun and flirty but there is some serious emotional conflict happening within this story…I do give high praise to Ms. Devlin. Her writing leaves me breathless and her heroes are simply delicious.”

From Whipped Cream Reviews: “…I found this story to be very believable…I felt bad for Garrett as he dealt with his lonely heart and innermost longings, and I even could sympathize with Jayne, although I would like to have her problems. I especially liked the scene with the toy in the restaurant, that was hot, beyond belief…”