It’s a lovely word right? It’s at it’s best when used before the word ‘reads.’ A free read is great fun and I have several on this site here.

You can also read lovely and free flash fiction at blissekiss.co.uk

And there’s a whole host of freebies at Total-e-Bound.

So there, a small but perfectly formed post containing lots of free goodness for you!

Welcome back the lovely KD Grace to Friends Friday today!

As if by Magic!

As full of ghosts and witches and magic as my new paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising is, the real magic is that it got written at all, and that not only did it GET written, but it grew, as if by some strange mystical spell cast upon my keyboard, into the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy.

Body Temperature and Rising was my first attempt to write an erotic novel. Not only was it my first attempt, but it was an attempt to do it in one month. You heard right, one month! Three years ago, I decided to attempt an erotic novel for National Novel Writing Month, known to most of you as NaNoWriMo. The whole point of NaNoWriMo is to write a fifty-thousand word rough draft of a novel in a month. I already had a lot of other projects going on. It was not the ideal time to tackle a novel in a month. Plus the market I had in mind wasn’t looking for fifty-thousand word novels, it was looking for seventy-thousand word novels. This was a sure formula for more magic. This time it was a strange transformation spell.

As if by some evil twisted hocus pocus, for the whole NaNoWriMo month of November, three years ago, my husband’s loving, mild-mannered wife was transformed into the Evil Bitch from Hell. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe I accidentally ingested some magical herbs when I was eagerly biting off more than I could chew. But it happened. So for a whole month, my poor husband kept his head low, kept my coffee cup filled and tread lightly, hoping that eventually the spell of NaNoWriMo, turbo-charged, would be broken.

And sure enough, as soon as the seventy-two thousand words were finished, several days before the end of November, the spell was broken as though it had never happened. For two and a half years the manuscript languished, holding no magical sway over my everyday life. Perhaps the fairies had worked a binding spell to protect my poor husband. But in the meantime I wrote and sold The Initiation of Ms Holly followed fast and furious by The Pet Shop. Then one day about a year ago, I happened upon the dusty manuscript of what was then called ‘Love Spells,’ and I read it.

I had put the original manuscript aside because other projects had to be finished and because I didn’t think I could really do anything with it. Voilà, more magic. This time it was not in the form of the Evil Bitch, though I have often been tempted to use that epithet for my Muse. And this time it was definitely my Muse poking me in the ribs with her magical idea stick. I rewrote the first three chapters and a synopsis of the manuscript and sent it off to Xcite Boos. To my surprise they said yes.

Then there was the magic spell of self-doubt. I don’t know who cast that one, but I have a feeling I might have done it myself. I’d never written anything paranormal before and there’s an awful lot of good paranormal stuff out there. What was I thinking? For several weeks I wrung my hands and wondered how I was going to approach the task that seemed more daunting every time I thought about it. I had no idea how I was going to write this novel. It just didn’t seem to be working for me.

And then the real magic happened, the magic that nearly scared me to death and, at the same time, changed everything. I think it might have been someone casting an enlightenment spell on me, or maybe it was some of the spring lettuce and herbs I’d eaten from our veg patch. Whatever it was, one spring day while returning from a long walk, I realized the only way I could write the story the Muse had in mind was if I wrote it as a trilogy. But I didn’t WANT to write a trilogy. I didn’t even know if I COULD write a trilogy. My Muse wasn’t sympathetic. I proposed the trilogy, Xcite said yes and THEN, the magic really began, the GOOD magic. Once the decision was made to make the novel into a trilogy, I couldn’t move my fingers over the keyboard fast enough. Magic keyboard powder, I think, or maybe it was just the Muse poking me with her stick again.

Whatever it was, Body Temperature and Rising was finished and off to Xcite by September, with only a few magical appearances from the Evil Bitch, for which hubby was most grateful. The Muse is still poking me with her stick, my husband still keeps my coffee cup full, just in case, and book two, Riding the Ether, is well on its way … as if by magic …

Welcome Cecilia on behalf of Voyeur Eyes Only anthology!

“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Unless you are a writer. Instead, those wild, supposedly clandestine, activities become fodder and inspiration for steamy short stories and scintillating novels–even if what happened didn’t happen to us, to people we know, or didn’t really happen at all. We writers are pretty loose with ‘THE TRUTH’ and expand little tidbits of what we see and hear into prose that is more exciting than reality. One well known writer, I believe it was Margaret Atwood, said “Writers are liars.” At the very least, we are story-tellers who take extravagant liberties with reality.

So, what happens when you fill several rooms of the Flamingo conference center with erotica writers as happened last September? My husband seemed to worry that I was heading to Vegas to engage in orgies with other people who spend their days thinking about and writing sex. My response to him was, “Do you think mystery writers get together and stab each other?”

With classes and panels titled “But is it a Story?”, “The Dreaded Synopsis” and “E-Publishing” you’d think this was a conference directed at any kind of writer. On the other hand, workshops entitled “Directed Erotic Visualization” and “Hands On Kink” were particularly targeted to our specific market. I attended the latter and learned tons of useful information about the ‘real’ BDSM. Was I turned on by the workshop? You bet. I was ready to run up to my room and pull out the laptop and pound the keys with new story ideas.

When Essemoh Teepee announced his intention to create an anthology open to people attending the conference, I had half a dozen ideas come to mind. They ranged from taking my husband’s fear of orgies as inspiration, to a simple pick-up of a stranger at the slots, to a ménage with another writer and her husband who was along for the ride.

During the after-party in a private suite at the new Cosmopolitan hotel, I had a moment where I was on the balcony looking across the space between casinos. I wanted nothing more than to have at it with my man, right there on the balcony, out in the open, in front of all the people milling out down below and watching from the darkness beyond. This sudden desire for total carnal exhibitionism stuck with me as the seed for my submission for “Voyeur Eyes Only.” The anthology is sure to inspire many hopeful trips to Sin City.

Buy Links:
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The “Voyeur Eyes Only” tour is hitting fourteen websites over fourteen days – check this link to see where and when the other posts are: http://www.writermarketing.co.uk/prpromotion/blog-tours/currently-on-tour/voyeur-eyes-only/