Once again, my online world is in a kerfluffle. And once I again, I am hiding in books. I figure I can’t be the only person who behaves this way, so I’ve decided to give away some hiding places! There are so many books out there, so many enjoyable books, that I had to narrow it down. I’ve decided to include ebooks by some of my favorite positive people. That doesn’t mean these women never complain, but they are always there if you need someone and they are never malicious. For great conversations, you can follow them all on Twitter: @MollyOKwrites, @CallahanLexxie, @PennyRomance, @IsobelCarr, @SarahMAnderson1, and @suleikhasnyder. (There are many, many others, too, but my wallet has a limit!)
To enter for your chance to win all six of the ebooks pictured above (in your preferred ebook format), just comment on this post and tell me one of two things–either name one of your auto-buy authors, or something you do to make you happy when you’re grumpy! I’ll choose a winner on Sunday, March 29.
If you follow me on social media at all, you probably know two things: first, that I love cheese in all its many forms and second, that my new book, Echoes, comes out tomorrow.
You may think these two things have nothing in common. However, Echoes is set partially on the island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, which is half French and half Dutch. And the French and the Dutch do have one thing in common…they make very good cheese. So to celebrate this release I’ve decided to do something I doubt any other author has done: I am giving away a couple of pounds of cheese from my favorite cheese shop, Murray’s.
What, you can’t have cow cheese? No problem. If you win, I’ll send goat cheese and sheep cheese! Can’t have dairy at all? I’ll send you a package of non-dairy cheese from fakemeats.com. So enter for your chance to win. And if you want to see what Echoes is all about, you can find an excerpt on my website.
Also, if you like winning things, and especially books, don’t forget to stop by the multi-author Facebook party tomorrow. Between 2pm and 10pm Eastern we are giving away a book every single hour from several different authors!
Just a quick note to say that—for you author types—I am over at Women of Mystery today talking about the cost of putting out a book and finding the right professionals to help you do it. Echoes, which comes out next week, is a Penguin book, so I didn’t have to find all that much help, but I am in the process of writing a second self-published book, so I’ve been considering a lot of the aspects that did and did not go well with Toying With His Affections.
(One of the things I wanted to do this year was to keep in better touch with my pals who follow the blog. So I reached out over social media and asked whether anyone else wanted to get together and write up some blogging prompts that we could all share. We came up with a long list that I hope will allow me to chat with you all even when my own well is running a bit dry.)
One of the prompts contributors came up with was “For the Love of Poetry—share your favorite poets and poems.”
I’ll start with my smartass favorite, Dorothy Parker. Who doesn’t love Dorothy Parker, right? Especially since she wrote
Men don’t make passes
At girls who wear glasses.
I have a lot of favorite Parker poems, and I recite them at the drop of a hat (ask me at a conference sometime) but here’s one that’s less well known:
A dream lies dead here. May you softly go
Before this place, and turn away your eyes,
Nor seek to know the look of that which dies
Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,
But, for a little, let your step be slow.
And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise
With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.
A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:
Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-
Though white of bloom as it had been before
And proudly waitful of fecundity-
One little loveliness can be no more;
And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head
Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!
My other favorite is W.B. Yeats. Everyone knows The Second Coming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This poem has a special place in my heart, however, because of this song:
I also asked on Twitter for poetry recommendations, and I will be posting a list of the things I got one of these days soon.
Over at the Book Boyfriends Cafe they have a Friday feature where you post a brief scene to suit whatever their weekly prompt was. I’ve never tried it, but I thought this week I might give it a shot! This week’s theme was “a hot encounter,” so here we go. In this scene from Toying With His Affections, Evie—a sex toy saleswoman for Goody’s Goodies—is…showing off her wares to her old crush, Sheriff Griffin Barstow.
~
Evie set the papers aside and reached back into the box. This time, she held up a pair of pink, fuzzy handcuffs. “Want to take these on patrol with you, Sheriff?”
“Uh…not particularly.” He grinned, though, imagining the faces of some of his deputies if he showed up with those hooked to his duty belt. The next item wiped the smile off his face. Black and almost evil-looking, it was circle with small rubber spikes all around and one larger protrusion so that it looked a bit like the symbol for Mars. At the end of the prong, however, a perpendicular spike gave the impression that someone had twisted the arrowhead of the symbol to stand straight up.
“What is that?”
Again, Evie’s fair cheeks reddened. The contradiction between the woman who could passionately defend the use of creams and toys and the one who blushed attempting to explain the actual use of such products entranced him.
“Uh, that’s for men. I mean, it’s nice for women, too, if the guy wears it, but it’s more designed to increase his pleasure than hers.”
“Please tell me this doesn’t sell.”
She’d regained her composure. And her starch. “Everything sells. But no, that’s not a top ten item.”
“Thank God for small favors.”
She handed him a tube of something else. “This is, though.”
He practically choked as he read the name aloud. “Staze-Long?”
“Yep! Between that and the numerous offers I get in my email every day, I can only assume many men in this country have a premature ejaculation problem.”
“I don’t think I can take this.”
She dropped her head and glanced up at him through the screen of her thick lashes. “I didn’t say you could. I need it.”
He dropped the tube and rubbed his hand against his leg. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Yeah, but you’re so easy to tease. Who’d have believed that under the bad boy of Fairview High lay a closet prude? Your reputation has suffered here today, Barstow.”
“Is that a dare, Bell?”
She cocked her head. “It may be. I’ll think about it.”
His heart pumped harder and he felt more alive than he had since the day he’d moved home to Fairview. You’ve always been addicted to danger, Bub, and it’s never done you a lick of good. Stay the hell away. But he had a sinking feeling he wouldn’t be able to take his own advice.
~
Head on over to the Book Boyfriends Cafe to read some other fun and sexy scenes!
Once again, my online world is in a kerfluffle. And once I again, I am hiding in books. I figure I can’t be the only person who behaves this way, so I’ve decided to give away some hiding places! There are so many books out there, so many enjoyable books, that I had to narrow it down. I’ve decided to include ebooks by some of my favorite positive people. That doesn’t mean these women never complain, but they are always there if you need someone and they are never malicious. For great conversations, you can follow them all on Twitter: @MollyOKwrites, @CallahanLexxie, @PennyRomance, @IsobelCarr, @SarahMAnderson1, and @suleikhasnyder. (There are many, many others, too, but my wallet has a limit!)
