UPDATE: The winners are…gift cards: Colleen C and Mary Preston; and anthology: Debra Guyette and Becky Parsons!
*~*~*

Hi! My name is Megan Ryder, and thank you for having me back on the blog for another chance to talk about my books. Today, I’m thrilled to talk a little bit about making the transition between contemporary and paranormal romance.

I’ve been writing for a long time (longer than I care to admit) and I’ve been writing contemporary romance for most of that time. I’m published with a few books including sexy baseball heroes, a matchmaking bride and her bridesmaids, and lately, cowboys. While I love all of those, my first love has always been paranormal romances, especially shifters, but I was always hesitant to make the shift (pun intended) to a new genre. When I heard about this anthology, my short story popped into my head completely formed as a prequel to my series and the perfect way to test my skills.

My story centers around a female shifter who is trapped into running from a group of alpha males who want to forcibly claim her as a mate, only to run into another alpha who offers to save her. The only problem is – he really IS her mate and she doesn’t want a mate at all.

In paranormal romance, I wanted to deal with the concept of consent, because “fated mates” being a trope in the genre often blurs the lines for consent. In this story, I wanted her to be a strong alpha female and her mate to be willing to see her that way and accept her and look for her consent, even as their natures want them to mate.

It was fun playing with the paranormal world, setting up the shifter structure and society, and dealing with the biology, too. And I slipped in something I thought was relevant to our current times.

Check out the snippet below and let me know what you think.

Contest

For my giveaway, let me know if you like the “fated mates” trope, where characters have one and only one mate for them (and often they know it and can’t fight it for long). I’m giving away 2 electronic copies of the anthology – First Response (given on release day) – and 2 $10 gift cards to Amazon.

Excerpt from “Claiming Lyla”

A she-wolf being hunted by pack males during a claiming rite is rescued by a rogue alpha determined to make her his own, despite her desire to be independent…

Lyla folded her arms in front of her, a defensive gesture, closing herself off from him, while plumping up her full breasts so they strained against the lace. “What do you want?”

He cocked his head at the howls growing closer. “You don’t have much time, or much of a choice, sweetheart. You either deal with me or them. And trust me, I’m the lesser of your evils.”

A laugh broke from her throat, a raw, harsh sound that held no humor. “I’d prefer none of you. Why can’t you leave me alone, you bastards? You want me to just roll over and spread my legs like a good little bitch. Well, fuck that.”

He winced at her harsh tone and steeled himself. A breeze picked up her scent and tickled his senses with it, and his cock hardened further, painfully. His wrists burned hotter under the skin, prickling like a thousand fine needles that made him want to scratch an itch. Nothing would appease the sensation, he feared. He cursed under his breath. Fuck. Not the best time to find his mate. Not here. Not in this goddamn situation. This night had just gone to shit, and now the bonds were pulling him in even tighter.

I started my writing career as a ghostwriter. It was a great way to cut my teeth and hone my craft, but the pay was abysmal, and of course, other people took the credit for my work. So, last year I finally made the leap to writing for myself, and so far, the pay hasn’t been any better, but it’s been a blast! I’m back for another Boys Behaving Badly Anthology and have several more anthologies planned for the coming year. The most fascinating part of this journey has been developing my writing process and learning about that of other authors. It’s amazing how differently everyone approaches writing. Some authors meticulously plan out their work step by intricate step. It’s like a beautiful dance in colorful illustration before the first word is even put on the page. For others, they wade in with a vague notion or idea and just see where it goes. My process lies somewhere in the middle.

Typically, I have a rough outline of where the story will go with major plot points. How I get from point to point isn’t necessarily defined. Sometimes, the storyline drives the words, but more often, I find the characters and who they want to become influences the story the most. I’ve been astonished at how some of my stories have turned out!

No one was more surprised than me when I finished my latest short story, The Invisible Goddess, about Hestia, the Greek goddess of fire, hearth, and home. I call her the forgotten Olympian because she has almost no stories about her. She’s rarely mentioned at all in the myths. So, I reinvented her with the idea to make her bolder and write a bit of romance into her hum-drum life of keeping Zeus’s court at Olympus. What I ended up with was a fiery hot goddess who brings Olympus to the brink of war over her hand and in the middle of it all, a primordial god of darkness stirring the pot, and the heroine’s heart. The god of darkness wasn’t even in my original outline of the story! This is the coolest part of writing. I love it when my imagination gets churning, and suddenly, a story that I never even realized was there materializes on the page. I look back at this short story and wonder where the heck it came from!

Aside from how writers approach the structure of their stories, I also find the logistical aspect of how authors work intriguing. Some authors write every day, 8 hours a day. It’s their job, and they treat it as such. Of course, that whole time isn’t necessarily spent spinning words onto the page of their latest and greatest novel. A lot of it is spent working social media, responding to emails, editing, and updating their website and blog. Some authors have a particular place they like to write, or they have a prewriting routine they do. Other authors don’t touch their keyboard for days or weeks. Then, they sit down and binge write for days on end. Again, I find myself somewhere in the middle.

I’m not cool enough to write full time- yet! One of these days…. But for now, my writing must fit in with a full-time job as a nursing instructor, a 21-acre farm, and a family. I don’t have time for rituals or routines- other than coffee. There is always time for coffee! I fit writing in whenever and wherever. I often peck away at my keyboard at my daughter’s horse riding lessons and scribble ideas on the back of my grocery list while waiting in line at Costco. I wish I was one of those disciplined souls that would get up 2 hours early and write before work. Countless failed early morning exercise aspirations have proven that it isn’t a sound strategy for me! My main goal is to write a little bit every day. Sometimes, it’s literally a single sentence, and sometimes, when the writing gods smile upon me and the stars align, it’s pages. In the end, it always seems to come together.

Anthologies, like the latest Boys Behaving Badly with my gracious hostess, Delilah Devlin, attract me because I can write tons of different storylines, and they’re typically short story to novella lengths. I have several going at the same time. One of the other things I’ve discovered about my writing process is the stories and characters often need to marinate at different points along the way. Sometimes, we gotta give each other a bit of space! I also like to sleep on my stories. Seriously, I do my best writing as I am falling asleep. I’ll turn a particular point around and around in my head, and in that semi-dozing state, my mind forgets boundaries, conventions, and the distractions of daily life. Suddenly, the imagined world is possible and some of my best ideas have come from this technique (Ok… I’m not sure that falling asleep is a technique, but I’m going to go with it!). I’ve also utterly annihilated storylines and caused myself tons of extra rewrites because I came up with a scene that I just couldn’t live without. I guess that’s why they call it a process!

I will continue to hone my practice and do hope to transition to writing full time. I have dreams of writing full-length novels with glossy dust jackets adorned with my picture and having a fan base that stretches beyond blood relatives! For now, I’ll continue to grab the time as I can find it and inspiration where it is granted. I can’t wait to see where my journey takes me next. I hope that you’ll join me along the way!

My website and latest releases, including The Invisible Goddess coming this fall, can be found at acdawn.com or wander over to my Facebook page and follow me there!

As always, many thanks to Delilah for letting me pop in! Until next time…

Here’s a picture of my home base in north Georgia…

These offers have ended…
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First Notice

For those of you who don’t know it, I curate collections of themed erotic romance. Right now, on my Collections website, I’m offering a FREE copy of one of those anthologies…

It’s all Vikings. All over the world. And they are hot as hell! So, if you’d like to pick up a FREE copy, do it now! This offer won’t last long!

Get your FREE copy here!

Second Notice

Brian is about to leave Kindle Unlimited. So if you haven’t already snagged your free copy there, do so now!

Get your copy here!

UPDATE: The winner is…Pansy Petal!
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My degree is in Costume Design and Construction, so I make the BIG MONEY! Just kidding, but you knew that already. What I love about costuming, especially on a big scale with a small budget, is just how creative you have to be.

I guess, when you look back at my life, my passion has been in the arts. I was a type-A student for the academics stuff, but I loved the arts. As I grew older, it wasn’t just being a dancer or an actress, the background/technical theater “stuff” became my new focus.

Now, I never made a living as a costumer, but when my son was in middle school, they did a small scale production of Pirates of Penzance. There was already a costumer on the show, but I enjoyed finding cheap alternatives for costumes… and that continued on into my son’s high school years. When they did a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I had a blast!

But I also had a huge headache!

How do you take $600 dollars and make a complete production with one seamstress (me) and my costume assistant (my son)? Well, my mother’s curtains became Peaseblossom’s bodice and hood, a bag of ripped T-shirts from Goodwill were cut into leaves for Oberon’s costume so he could hide as part of the forest…and on and on…

But my biggest “make it work” moment was Bottom’s donkey head. It started out as a random concept of putting foam on a hat and then adding the “skin.” So out I went to get foam scrap, some super glue, a yard of grey felt, and a few random odds and ends.

I had to chop the foam and stick it here and there on the baseball cap from my son’s peewee days, and then carve away the mound of foam until it looked like a donkey head. It’s a random, learn-as-you-go process, but that head cost me less than ten dollars and it was a complete labor of love…and creativity.

Now, why am I telling you all of this?

Well, writing a short story, for me, follows the same process.

Get the idea, gather some parts (plot points), and start adding in the magic. For the First Response: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology I started with the idea…a rescue.

Firefighters. Good one.

Oh, a firefighter rescuing a firefighter. Okay…then what?

Rival firehouses? Okay…that’s good for conflict!

Maybe they knew each other in the Academy? And they were almost a thing? Okay, okay, keep it coming. And now that he…no, now that she pulled his hot ass from the frying pan…oh…someone’s getting lucky! Oh, wait! No, they both are!

Once I had those pieces together, I realized I needed more pieces. I went to a talk done by Kristin Higgins’ husband about firefighters, and when I asked him for his advice about what kind of an accident would require time off but not endanger his job or career, he answered and I’m so grateful.

All of this for a short story?

Yep! Absolutely! And writers? We do it over and over again. It’s a rush, it’s a drudge, it’s a crazy random happenstance sometimes! So, here’s hoping you’ll order your copy of First Response: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology and discover the rollercoaster that I took Webb & Gina on!

You’ll also see them in my Center City First Responders Series! So make friends with them now!

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you’ll enter the giveaway, too!

Contest

Sometimes, we have to create on the fly. A missing ingredient in a recipe. Or a Halloween costume created from some bedsheets and bungee chord? Tell me what’s a moment that made you celebrate your own creativity!!

Win your choice of one of my books, like Justice for Sloane!

UPDATE: The winners are…ALL 5 commenters!
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Thanks for having here today to talk about the box set reissue of The Anthem Trilogy from Pride Publishing. This is a real pleasure for me, as the Anthem books are very close to my heart. I spent the best part of three years working on the trilogy, and the characters became part of the family for that time.

My original plan was to write one big novel, but I realized very quickly that would be commercially impossible. No romance publisher would take a 600-page book at that time, and instead, I set about telling Daniel and Elijah’s love story across three books. I always plan my books in advance, working out all the character and plot details, and that was even more important when telling such a big story. The three novels are thrillers as much as romances, and I had to make sure that all the elements fit in place before I began.

But at the heart of everything is Daniel and Elijah. I love these guys. They meet in the first book while working on a luxury cruise ship. Daniel is a singer, Elijah a comedian, and they hit it off right away, but it’s far from smooth sailing for this pair. Across the three years in which the story takes place, I put them through hell. The guys get caught up in a horrific storm at sea, murder, betrayal, and revenge.

The timing of this reissue is kind of fitting, too. I should have been on a cruise right now, but like everyone else, those plans are on hold indefinitely. So why not join Daniel and Elijah onboard the Atlantic Anthem and take a trip to sea with them? It will be a bumpy voyage, but definitely worth the risk.

THE ANTHEM TRILOGY

1. Anthem of the Sea
2. Anthem of the Dark
3. Anthem of Survival

When Daniel Blake meets Elijah Mann the attraction is instant. Handsome and talented, they are immediately drawn together. The perfect men for each other. Daniel has never been in love before. Most of his adult length has been focused on his career, first in a failed boy band, before cutting his teeth on the cabaret circuit and finally finding success on a TV talent show. At twenty-nine, he’s achieved more than most. The time is right to focus on his personal life. Tall, dark, sexy and funny, Elijah has it all and Daniel can’t resist him.

But a figure from Daniel’s past comes back into his life just as he meets Elijah. Jealous, bitter and twisted, Oliver Gill has never forgiven Daniel for his success. A success that was rightfully his. Fueled by hatred, Oliver’s actions set in motion a catastrophic chain of events that have far retching consequences for Daniel and Elijah, a threat not just to their happiness, but to their lives.

GET IT NOW:
Amazon USA
Amazon UK
Pride Publishing
Barnes and Noble
Kobo

Contest

Comment for a chance to win one of THREE copies of the ANTHEM TRILOGY!

About Thom Collins

Thom Collins is the author of Closer by Morning, Gods of Vengeance, Silent Voices and the Anthem Trilogy. His love of page-turning thrillers began at an early age when his mother caught him reading the latest Jackie Collins book and promptly confiscated it, sparking a life-long love of raunchy novels. He is currently working on a new series.

Thom has lived in the North East of England his whole life. He grew up in Northumberland and now lives in County Durham with his husband and two cats. He loves all kinds of genre fiction, especially bonk-busters, thrillers, romance and horror. He is also a cookery book addict with far too many titles cluttering his shelves. When not writing he can be found in the kitchen trying out new recipes. He’s a keen traveler but with a fear of flying that gets worse with age, but in 2013 he realized cruising is the best way to see the world.

Check out his website for news updates and a free ebook The Night!

Links:
Website: www. thomcollins.co.uk
Twitter: @thomwolf
Instagram: ThomCollinsAuthor
Email: thomcollinsauthor@aol.com

I have a confession to make, one which likely shows what a sheltered life I’ve lived:

Last year, I discovered that tentacle sex was… a thing. And as I shared my shocked wonder with my fellow author pals, their response was always a shrugged “Oh, yeah, Hentai. It’s been around for a long time.”

*blink*blink*picks jaw off floor*

So, it would seem that the Japanese tentacle erotica, which falls under the category of Hentai, essentially anything that isn’t human-heterosexual-twosome-sex in both the Japanese and English language, has been around since as early as 1814 when a Japanese artist depicted a woman having “relations” with two octopuses in his “Dream of a Fisherman’s Wife.”

Honestly, I shouldn’t have been shocked. After all, the 80s were my formative years, and the movie Better off Dead starring John Cusack was when I learned the difference between covering a love interest with testicles versus tentacles. However, my mind was blown upon the discovery of Hentai, specifically tentacle sex, for two reasons:

1) As a romance author, I thought I fully grasped the breadth and depth of what turns people on (obviously, I didn’t). And,
2) As a Sci-fi Romance author, this opened a whole new area of possibility when crafting my characters and worlds.

Turns out, an old dog can learn new tricks, and I put the knowledge in my back pocket, anticipating an opportunity to use it. That’s when Delilah’s Boys Behaving Badly Anthology call for submissions came. So I played with the concept of tentacles and had a blast doing it. You can read the result in Delilah’s upcoming anthology, currently on pre-order (links below, in case you haven’t already one-clicked).

I hope you like the story about spaceport bar owner, Lorlii Atarga and Fire Force Captain Roark Trekker!

Excerpt from “The Siren’s Song”

While verbal sparring, especially the joking innuendos, with Roark was entertaining, she’d give a bottle of rare Carhind’n Rum to change that into a physical tussle. But how to transition to a more climactic sort of ribbing? She was hornier than a bayhar and ready to ignite with little more than a smooch of his full lips. Her sexual drought had lasted several months at this point. No one seemed interested in her, outside of her mixology skills and Twofer Tuesday specials. A little attention from a handsome man that didn’t involve anything shaken, stirred, or two fingers neat…

Lorlii swallowed hard at the thought of what Roark could do with a couple of fingers. He’d never know, but he starred in all her masturbation fantasies.

First Response: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology Pre-Order links:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086JBGW7W/
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/first-response-7
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1136763722?ean=2940162803409 https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Delilah_Devlin_First_Response?id=o5HZDwAAQBAJ&hl=en_US
https://books.apple.com/us/book/first-response/id1505242080

About the Author

Ava Cuvay writes out of this world romance featuring sass and sex set in a galaxy far, far away. She resides in central Indiana with her own scruffy-looking nerfherder and tween kiddos. When not writing, Ava is thinking about writing. Or wine. And she’s always thinking about bacon.

https://avacuvay.com
https://www.facebook.com/AvaCuvayAuthor/

I am so excited to be selected for a second Boys Behaving Badly anthology with Delilah Devlin! This one is near and dear to my heart. For over a decade, I was a paramedic/firefighter in the urban jungle of Atlanta. When I saw the call for submissions for this anthology, I knew I had to enter. I had so many stories to share. But, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I abandoned several stories before I finally found my stride in “Crossing the Line”. I struggled to find the balance between fact and fiction, and it brought a lot of long-forgotten emotions boiling back up to the surface.

I was surprised how much I missed the firehouse and the guys as I went on my stroll down memory lane. The camaraderie in a firehouse rivals any family. I loved my guys, and on the days that I wanted to be anywhere but there, I still looked forward to seeing them. I knew their kids, wives, girlfriends, and boyfriends. We cooked dinner every night and slept in one great big bunk room. You can’t help but get close. I knew who snored, who talked in their sleep, how they liked their coffee, and who I could count on to have my back when the chips were down. They were my brothers, and I miss them.

I get asked a lot about station house romances. Oh yeah, they’re a thing. I never had one in my own house (that’s never a smart move), but I married a guy from the neighboring station! I had known him for years, but when I got stationed in the same battalion and started bumping into him on calls, the attraction that was there had a chance to grow into something more. At first, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things. He was a nice guy, doing nice guy things like holding the door, bringing me a Gatorade after a fire, and helping me clean up the truck after a bad call. Surely, it was nothing more than that.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the battalion was called out on a house fire. We could see the flames from the station, and everybody’s heart started to go a little faster. Middle of the night fires tended to be tragic. Smoke detectors really do save lives! Fortunately, on that night, the fire was in an abandoned house, and no lives were in jeopardy. Unfortunately, the house, which was still under construction, sat down at the bottom of a hill, and it had been raining steadily for days. The lot had turned into a sea of red mud.

The roof and three out of four sides of the structure were blazing. My crew was assigned the backside of the house, which meant we had to cross the ocean of mud. At first, we made pretty good progress, but as we got to the rear of the structure, the mud swallowed my leg and refused to let go. Other companies had begun the attack. Water cascaded down on the fire, slowly filling the area until a pond began to collect on top of the mud. With the guys’ help, I managed to pull my leg free, but my boot was forever lost to the sucking mud. We sought higher ground, I borrowed a boot, and we got back to the fight. Finally, we got the blaze under control, and as the sun came up, we began the long process of cleaning up. Mud covered everything from hoses to firefighters.

As we were packing up, I realized I had lost my face mask, part of our breathing apparatus. It had been clipped on the front of my harness as we’d approached the house, but somewhere in the slog, it had gone missing. My stomach clenched. It was an expensive piece of equipment, and on top of my boot, the logistics officer was not going to be happy with me.

My crew reassured me they weren’t going to take it out of my paycheck, but my captain sent me to look for it. Suddenly, the rest of my crew had lots of other things to do that didn’t involve going back to the mud pit to look for my lost mask. Resigned, I skirted the worst of the mud in my mismatched boots and started to hunt. I soon had company. I smiled at the man who would become my husband as we waded through the mud in the early morning light. (We found the face mask by the truck. It had fallen off before we’d even got started!). I figured any man who would willingly crawl through mud to help me was worth getting to know a little better. He took me to breakfast, and I’ll leave the rest to your imagination!

My time on the streets of Atlanta adds depth to my stories. My experiences taught me that I could do more and go farther than I had ever dreamed. I weave those lessons throughout my writing. “Crossing the Line” is a blend of fact and fiction, but I’ll leave it to you to sort out which is which!

To find out more about me, visit my website acdawn.com and like my Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/A-C-Dawn-2317750851796803! I’ve got lots more stories coming for 2020!