Eight Sentence Sunday #13

Happy weekend, everybody!
With Christmas approaching, I am working harder than ever on The Haunted Lingerie. My original goal was to finish it by the end of October, but that didn't work out. My new goal is to finish it before January 1st, get it edited, and then have it released before Valentine's Day.
Incidentally, I put seven chapters of the story up on FictionPress.net, and holy crap! In less than a week, I have almost 700 readers. I'm in awe, and it gives me hope for the impending release. It was exactly what I needed to reassure me that I don't suck as an author and that I might still be able to achieve my dreams.
So of course, this week's snippet comes from there again!
In this scene, Misty is internally interrogating Anita, the spirit haunting her cursed lingerie. Anita can't remember how she died or who killed her, and it's up to Misty to try to jog her memory enough to figure it out for herself, and hopefully break the spell in the process. Anita is replying in bold italics.

... I remember the swings at Linden Park. I remember pumping my legs until my muscles were sore, trying to reach out and touch the sun. I remember my parents taking me to Coney Island every fall to ride the carousel and visit the boardwalk – it was the only time I ever got to see the beach. They had a rollercoaster there. I remember the first time I rode it, I thought, “this is the highest I’ll ever be.” There was an aquarium, too. A pause. But I never got to see it. ...

If you're craving more, you can read seven free chapters of The Haunted Lingerie at FictionPress.net by clicking here. I will update with additional chapters until a certain point is reached in the narrative, at which time I will leave the rest up to the release. I don't want to spoil the surprise!

I hope you've enjoyed my eight sentences this week. If you've enjoyed this snippet, you can take a look at my other works on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords. You can also access my Amazon author page by clicking on the cover art image above.

If you're looking for some more great reads, try Veronica Hardy and John Dylena on for size!

Hope you're having a great weekend, and that it only gets better from here! 

New Release: "Yulene and the Wolf: A Yuletide Legend"

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it?

I have been incredibly busy with the holidays as well as working on new stories. My newest one is just in time for Yuletide, and a story about a sacrifice made in honor of the season.

From the blurb:

Yulene has grown up on the tales of Ragnarok, the great clash of the gods that will destroy the mortal world. Every ten years, a young girl must be given as a sacrifice on the eve of the solstice; a gift meant to placate the ravenous Fenrir, a beast destined to kill Odin as part of the apocalyptic prophecy. Yulene must face the wolf this year, but when she does, she finds that there is another hunger that lurks within him. Can she satisfy his dark appetites? And will he let her live if she does?

If you like shifters, werewolves, and Norse mythology, this might just be the story for you!

You can check out an exclusive snippet, as well as the cover art, after the jump!

Eight Sentence Sunday #12

Happy post holiday, everyone!
I accidentally missed last week's WeWriWa. It wasn't necessarily holiday-related. Steam had a sale, my boyfriend bought Civilization V, and I got absorbed in taking over the world. It's very nice to be able to do so in a game since I can't do it in real life!
This week's snippet is from a point a little farther along in The Haunted Lingerie. Misty has suggested that she and Jack venture to the former house of the spirit haunting her lingerie. She's hoping that revisiting the scene of the crime will jog Anita's memory and allow her to come to terms with how she died, and who killed her. When they arrive, the home has been foreclosed upon and has been vacant for several years. We pick up at the point where Misty exits the car for the first time and begins having a look around.
Without further ado, here are my eight sentences for this week. Creative punctuation is in use.

As Misty rose up out of her seat, her gaze fell to a row of dark, thorny stalks jutting up out of the ground. They encircled the front portion of the vacant house, a parade of twisted bundles so dry and withered that they looked like the slightest touch would snap their jutting limbs in half. She blinked as the edges of her vision began to blur, only to find that when she opened her eyes again, the gnarled collection of twigs had blossomed into a lush arrangement of red rose bushes in full bloom. 

A gardener used to come twice a week to take care of them, Anita whispered, her voice quavering and taut. I used to sit by that big window and look out at them all the time. I was so proud of them - I’d never had anything that beautiful before. It almost makes me glad I didn’t live to see them like this. She paused, then gave way to a whimper: My babies…

I hope you've enjoyed my eight sentences this week. If you've enjoyed this snippet, you can take a look at my other works on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, All Romance eBooks, and Smashwords. You can also access my Amazon author page by clicking on the cover art image above.

If you're looking for some more great reads, try Veronica Hardy and John Dylena on for size!

Hope you're having a great weekend, and that it only gets better from here!

New Release: "Losing It"

Happy almost-Thanksgiving, my American friends!

And to the rest of you, happy almost-weekend!

After producing fifteen smutty shorts, I decided to try my hand at some erotic romance. My sixteenth work, Losing It, is about a boy and a girl - best friends - who realize that they could be something more. But would their romance ruin their friendship? From the blurb:

Anna has been best friends with Trent for as long as she can remember. When an accidental touch during a game of basketball sparks a fire inside her, she begins to question her feelings for him - a question he answers with a kiss. Will a summer romance ruin their friendship? And is that all their feelings will amount to?

You can view the cover art, as well as an exclusive excerpt, below.

Trent had always meant more to me than just a best friend. He was the boy I spent summer after summer pining over, sneaking out of my bedroom window to run barefoot through the wet grass to his idling pick-up truck in the middle of the night, chancing all manner of trouble for myself if my parents ever found out. His puckish grin always made it worth it, and soon we’d be lounging on his deck, drinking in the balmy night while we drank beer and talked about old movies none of our other friends had ever seen. 

But like Cinderella at her ball, I always had to be home before the dawn, and I’d spend the ride back wishing on the last dying star above me that there would be another night and another chance for my dreams to come true. Just before it faded into the first light of day, I would close my eyes and try to accept that unlike the fairy tales I grew up with, in real life, sometimes handsome princes just didn’t notice common girls. 

Trent drew my body against his, closing the distance with his hand pressed firmly into the small of my back. I whimpered. I wanted to see him, wanted to look up into his eyes, but the veil of my shirt still held tight around my face as I blindly sought out his lips with my own. I heard a low, throaty chuckle in response. My knees went weak. I loved his laugh. 

“So eager,” he whispered to me just before he engulfed my mouth in his.

Losing It is available for purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and All Romance eBooks. You can also click on its cover art above to be taken to its product page on Amazon.com.

Late Night Reading: "Hot Set" by Sage L. Morgan

You know, no one has ever accused me of being vanilla.

Sure, I might not write (or participate in) the most "out there" kink ever, but I do have my indulgences. I will freely admit that one of my dirtiest fantasies is something called PI, or pseudo-incest, which is where parties unrelated by blood, but still considered family, get it on. That might mean stepfather and stepdaughter, stepmother and stepson, or stepsiblings. One of the reasons I like it so much might actually be because it's so damn wrong and taboo.

That being said, do I necessarily endorse this behavior in real life? Only if everyone is above the age of consent and not being taken advantage of. Also, as part of a blended family, I certainly wouldn't be pleased if my daughter was fooling around with her stepdad - but that's why this sort of thing is a fantasy and not an endorsed reality. The terms of our fantasies are so much different - there are typically no consequences, no hurt feelings, and nothing we deem to be "actually creepy" is going on because it's all in our heads, and therefore, we get to set the terms.

This is a category that has seen a lot of bad press lately. Amazon, All Romance eBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Draft2Digital, to name a few, have been up in arms over it due to some sensationalist press stories that have recently surfaced. Frankly, it's rather silly to tell readers that they aren't allowed to enjoy this kink involving person over the age of consent, and it's even sillier to tell authors that they can't profit from it, especially when it seems to only apply to self-published material. Last I checked, V.C. Andrews' and George R.R. Martin's stuff is all still up (hell, both even got their own movie/show).

So when I see that something like Hot Set by Sage L. Morgan has managed to twist the kink into something Amazon will begrudgingly approve, it makes me very happy.

From the blurb:

Eighteen-year-old Kendall plays a much younger character on the hit sitcom, Average American Teen. She's tired of everybody treating her like a little girl, especially her TV daddy, James. How far will she go to convince him that she's all grown up? 

As you can see, this isn't necessarily "true" PI - but the "P" stands for "pseudo," which means "false," and so it still totally fits. Not only that, but Sage makes it hot as hell, with just enough verbage devoted to each character's inner turmoil to make the sex meaningful in addition to dark and dirty.

Let's break it down after the jump!

Eight Sentence Sunday #11

It's almost Thanksgiving in America, and I can already smell the turkey and jellied cranberry. But before I can indulge in a home-cooked meal at my parents' house, I've got another eight sentences to share with you!
This week is another eight sentences from The Haunted Lingerie. They provide a little insight into Misty's past, particularly how she dealt with the death of her father at such a young age, and why autumn is never a happy time for her.

Misty didn’t care for the changing colors. She was reminded too much of her father’s last days in the hospital, staring out his window at those trees, hanging on even after her mother had sat down at his bedside and told him through a veil of tears that he could let go as soon as he was ready. 

Her father had smiled, kissed her on the forehead, and drawn her close against his frail, skeletal body. 

I’ll go when they change, Mary, he told her, giving her body the best squeeze his atrophied arms could manage. I wanna see the colors one last time. 

He hadn’t made it that long.

Misty had been one of those kids who believed in magic; who saw so much of the world as charmed; who believed that evil could always be overthrown by good and that any curse could be shattered by true love’s kiss. 

But she stopped believing in it – any of it – when her father died while the leaves were still green.

I hope you enjoyed this week's eight. If you're in America, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving! If you're in Canada, happy belated! And if you're elsewhere, I hope you've had a great weekend so far and that it only gets better from here.

New Release: "The Devil You Know"

This week has been a busy one.

I've been working doggedly on The Haunted Lingerie, my Paranormal/Horror Mystery Erotic Romance novel (that's a mouthful!). I'm cruising through the back end of the story, but getting hung up on the scenes that occur between bouts of action, and progress is going slower than I'd like. Still, at almost 60,000 words, I'm feeling pretty accomplished!

Not only that, but I can now claim fifteen titles to my name! My catalog looks so pretty I don't even know what to do with myself (besides keep publishing, of course)!

My fifteenth work is called The Devil You Know. It's the first time I've tried my hand at gender change erotica, and I have to say it was fun - and sexy! - to write. From the blurb:

Rory Anderson loves to take advantage of women. When he crushes the heart of his newest conquest, a sweet sorority virgin named Delia Sanderson, he feels like the big man on campus - until he wakes up as a girl! Worse yet, he's in the arms of an incubus summoned by the witches he's spurned. Can he atone for his sins without submitting to the infernal beast? Or will he give in to his new desires?

You can find the cover art, as well as an excerpt with links to purchase from, after the jump.