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!
What is the TBR Challenge? Simply put, it’s where readers pick up a long neglected book from their TBR pile, read it, and comment on that read on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. The idea is to read those long neglected books that you just had to get your hands on at the time, but have been languishing in your pile, all lost and forgotten.
This month’s theme is “Recommended Read,” as in, read a book that someone recommended to you.
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I suffer from depression and anxiety. My life has been spinning out of control for the past several months and I turned, as I often do, to my friends on Twitter and asked what they did when they felt the pull of the vortex. Several of my tweeps recommended that I read Feeling Good which they said was much better than the corny title might suggest.
I bought this book about three months ago, which means it is far from the oldest thing on my To Be Read pile, but I was having a hard time concentrating on fiction, so this seemed a good choice. I bought it in paper, too, because I prefer not to read non-fiction that I want to focus on in paper, while I read fiction in e.
In Feeling Good, David Burns explains the tenets cognitive/cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ve had minimal experience with cognitive therapy in the past, though I studied it years ago. The basis of cognitive therapy is that negative “automatic” thoughts cause your emotional swings.
These automatic thoughts include things like all-or-nothing thinking or fortune-telling. For myself, the largest category of things I tend to do are over-generalizing and mind-reading.
So, for example, instead of saying “wow, that didn’t work out the way I planned. I’ll try something else next time.” I tend to say “nothing I try ever works.” Or instead of saying “she didn’t notice me over here,” I think “she’s deliberately ignoring me because she hates me [for whatever reason].”Does it work? I’m only about 2/3 through the book, so I can’t say. It takes a lot of practice to change the way you think. So even though this book doesn’t introduce me to any particularly new concepts, it’s useful because it reminds me that I have to keep practicing, and it tells me how to do so.
In about six weeks (on St. Patrick’s day—talk about lucky!) my new book comes out. It’s called Echoes and it’s officially the first “Harp Security” novel. (Pay no attention to what it currently says on Amazon—the title’s wrong and there’s no picture yet.) If you read Lost, you’ve gotten a glimpse of Nash Harper and his security specialists, but in Echoes you’ll see a lot more of the organization and get to know Nash a bit better.
Echoes is a big departure for me. Where Twisted and Lost took place primarily in Texas, Echoes goes international right at the outset, beginning in St. Martin, a little island in the Caribbean. From there, it moves to New York, where Harp Security has its home base. Calliope Pearson, our heroine, lives just outside of “the city,” as well, so the second part of the book is decidedly urban.
Given that Harp Security Enterprise will have a whole series, it probably needs its own logo and slogan. I’m going to have to do it sometime, right? It should be on the door, stuff like that. So here’s what I have so far. I think it would look pretty good embroidered on a shirt or whatever. I’m undecided about the lettering, though. I might just like the abstract harp with the extra “leg” to make the H.
What do you think?
When I first conceived this, I wanted to use “Harp Security: We go where angels fear to tread” because I liked the “harp” and “angels” combination. But then I realized that people might think they were rushing in, which would make them fools.
Nothing else came to me in terms of angels, so I decided to go for a more justice-oriented theme. I am partial to Disraeli’s “Justice is truth in action,” but there’s also William Lloyd Garrison’s “as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.” Something along either of those lines would do. Or something like “In Your Darkest Hour.” Basic.
Today on Twitter I was wondering if whether romance in general had gotten so hot that authors were no longer writing (particularly single title) R-rated romances. Or even close-to-X-but-not-XXX romances. Many people on Twitter chimed in with suggestions and while some are category, I thought I would list them here. (All links here go to Amazon due to my affiliate account, but these books are available everywhere!) Emma Barry was recommended and the person who recommended her specially mentioned Private Politics. I’ve listed Special Interests, too, just because I know many people (me included) prefer to start with Book 1!
Kelly Hunter was recommended as well, as edgy but not over the top.
Bad boy Caleb Jackson has a secret. At eighteen he’d fallen for his brother’s girl – hard. One steamy summer night, Bree Tucker had offered him her innocence, he’d offered up his heart, and together they’d set the sheets on fire. And then she’d fled the town.
Ten years later, Bree is back and the passion between them burns brighter than ever. This time, Caleb makes his intentions ruthlessly, publicly clear. He wants her. He aims to claim her.
And to hell if old secrets will out.
The person who recommended Tamara Morgan called her “Rom Com” with an R rating.
A couple of Christmas books, by Noelle Adams and Cecilia Grant, to put you in the holiday mood!
I knew Sarah Morgan‘s work from her categories, but I didn’t realize she’d branched out into single title length books.
From the moment they met, fighting together to save two young lives, Dr. Ally McGuire and Dr. Sean Nicholson were and explosive team.
Sean was keen to follow his up out of surgery hours, but while he didn’t want commitment of any kind, Ally knew she could never settle for a brief affair.
Neither was prepared to risk falling in love…until, after one unexpected night of passion, Ally became pregnant….
Fiona Harper also came out of category into single title, but I’ve never tried her. This looks chick-lit-y and fun.
Family-oriented Juliet is a Christmas-dinner cook extraordinaire and is trying to keep it together in the wake of her marriage breakdown two Christmases ago, but the cracks are beginning to show. Her bright and vivacious sister Gemma was always the favorite daughter. Gemma has no qualms about escaping the festive madness and the pressures of her glamorous job by jetting off somewhere warm and leaving Christmas in Juliet’s capable hands.
When Gemma shirks responsibility one too many times and announces she’s off to the Caribbean (again!), Juliet finally snaps. Gemma offers her sister the perfect solution—to swap Christmases. She’ll stay home and cook the turkey (how hard can it be?) and Juliet can fly off into the sun and have a restorative break.
In the midst of all the chaos, there’s Will, Juliet’s dishy neighbor who’s far too nice to float Gemma’s boat and may secretly harbor feelings for her sister; and Marco, the suave Italian in the villa next door who has his own ideas about the best way to help Juliet unwind.
Will the sisters abandon caution and make this a Christmas swap to remember?
A Bollywood Affair by Sonia Dev has gotten rave reviews everywhere!
Mili Rathod hasn’t seen her husband in twenty years—not since she was promised to him at the age of four. Yet marriage has allowed Mili a freedom rarely given to girls in her village. Her grandmother has even allowed her to leave India and study in America for eight months, all to make her the perfect modern wife. Which is exactly what Mili longs to be—if her husband would just come and claim her.
Bollywood’s favorite director, Samir Rathod, has come to Michigan to secure a divorce for his older brother. Persuading a naïve village girl to sign the papers should be easy for someone with Samir’s tabloid-famous charm. But Mili is neither a fool nor a gold-digger. Open-hearted yet complex, she’s trying to reconcile her independence with cherished traditions. And before he can stop himself, Samir is immersed in Mili’s life—cooking her dal and rotis, escorting her to her roommate’s elaborate Indian wedding, and wondering where his loyalties and happiness lie.
I adore both Molly O’Keefe and Jill Shalvis. If you haven’t already read the books in these bundles, grab them!
And, of course, it would be incredibly bad marketing for me not to mention the last book on this list.
Do you have recommendations for R-rated single-title length reads?
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.
Emma Barry was recommended and the person who recommended her specially mentioned Private Politics. I’ve listed Special Interests, too, just because I know many people (me included) prefer to start with Book 1!
Kelly Hunter was recommended as well, as edgy but not over the top.
The person who recommended Tamara Morgan called her “Rom Com” with an R rating.
A couple of Christmas books, by Noelle Adams and Cecilia Grant, to put you in the holiday mood!
Fiona Harper also came out of category into single title, but I’ve never tried her. This looks chick-lit-y and fun.
A Bollywood Affair by Sonia Dev has gotten rave reviews everywhere!
