Welcome
to this month’s edition of Charity Sunday. As always, for every
comment I receive on a Charity Sunday post, I will make a donation to
my selected cause for the month.
In
general, I avoid partisan political causes for Charity Sunday, since
I know that individuals differ in their opinions. Given that I am an
author, however, and that pretty much all of the people who will
visit this post are either readers or other authors, I am hoping that
my choice today will not be considered controversial.
Today
I’m shining the spotlight on AABB – Authors
Against Book Bans. This is a coalition of authors and other
individuals involved in the publishing industry to oppose censorship.
To quote from their website:
We
unequivocally support the availability of diverse voices on our
library shelves, in our schools, and in our culture.
Despite
the rather evangelical tone of their mission statement, the people from AABB are
really practical. They keep track of the raft of current efforts, at
both the state and federal level in the U.S., to remove
“objectionable” or “inappropriate” or “obscene”
(etcetera) books from libraries, schools and bookstores. They muster
popular support against such laws, talk to legislators and to the
public, and generally press for common sense approaches that address
parents’ or other individuals’ legitimate concerns while not
curtailing the freedoms written into the U.S. Constitution.
One
reason I’m supporting AABB today is that my former home state,
Massachusetts, just enacted a landmark law that protects freedom to
read. I’m very proud, and I want to celebrate.
https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-celebrates-massachusetts-freedom-to-read-law/
So
this month I will donate two dollars to AABB for every comment I
receive on this post.
Meanwhile,
for my excerpt, I have a bit from Damned If You Do, a
paranormal romance whose heroine is an erotic romance author. Believe
me, Wendy Dennison’s steamy books would definitely be banned by the
censorship vigilantes!
Excerpt
Her
four dollar cup of Americano, now cold, tasted like muddy pond water.
With a bitter sigh, Wendy Dennison, aka romance stalwart Gwen
Diamante, iconized her browser and popped up her work in progress.
The word count in the bottom status bar accused her of sloth and
incompetence. She should know better than to check her sales stats
and reviews before she’d produced at least a couple thousand words.
Nothing sapped her motivation for writing a new book as much as
surveying the tepid response to her last one.
Maybe
another coffee would help. Extravagant, yes, but she needed a kick in
the butt to get her out of her slump. She signaled to the cute
college guy behind the counter, pointing to her cup. “Can I get
another hit, Eric?”
The
gangly kid grinned at her. “Coming right up, Wendy.” A mass
communications major at the University of Pittsburgh, he treated her
like minor royalty. Clearly he thought it was the ultimate in cool to
be serving a real live published author. If he only knew the truth.
Wendy
typed a four line sentence and scowled at her laptop screen. She
highlighted the second clause and swapped it with the first. After
staring at the page for a few minutes, she hit “Undo”. She turned
the first clause into a participle instead, then tried replacing a
pronoun with the character’s name. That didn’t really help
either.
Eric
removed the stale cup to her left and set down a steaming, fragrant
mug in its place. “Two sugars, right?”
Still
wrestling with her recalcitrant prose, Wendy gave him a cursory nod.
Then she realized how impolite that must seem. “You’re a darling.
Thanks so much!” The barista pushed his shaggy brown hair off his
forehead and beamed at her. Wendy’s black mood brightened a bit.
With
pierced earlobes, Black Sabbath tee shirts, and artfully threadbare
denims, Eric had a sort of punk sex appeal. Wendy let herself imagine
how he’d look naked—all wiry limbs and pale skin, with a bushy
nest around his cock, which would be long and slender, like his tall,
lanky, not-quite-mature body. Hard, of course. Young guys always
were. He’d be willing to wait though, to give her pleasure before
taking his own. She saw him kneeling between her spread thighs,
wearing a worshipful expression. He leaned in to flick at her clit
before running his tongue firmly along the cleft between her swollen
lower lips. Oh my God! Did he have a stud embedded in his tongue?
“Can
I get you anything else?”
Eric’s
voice hauled her back to reality.
“Oh—um—
” Blood heated her cheeks, especially when she realized how damp
her panties had become. What was she thinking? He was young enough to
be her son!
“We’ve
got a special on cream cheese brownies. Two for one.” He lowered
his voice to a seductive purr, apparently aware he was tempting her.
Wendy
recalled both her financial constraints and her depressingly accurate
digital bathroom scale. “I really shouldn’t,” she replied,
determined to do the right thing.
“C’mon.
You need the energy to fuel your creativity! Eat one now, and take
one home for later.”
“Well…”
Saliva pooled in her mouth as her resolve wavered. She could always
skip dinner. “I did have a salad for lunch…”
“Two
sinfully rich double fudge cream cheese brownies, coming up.” Her
youthful admirer gave her another grin. “Don’t worry. They’re
small.”
She
turned back to the computer, scrolling back to read the previous few
paragraphs. The tension between her heroine and her hero sizzled, but
somehow she couldn’t get them out of flirting mode and into bed
together. They resisted her every attempt to move them in the
directions prescribed by her outline.
Maybe
she should switch genres. Try some sweet romance for a change. Or a
cozy mystery. Those seem to be selling pretty well these days.
She
knew from experience, though, that she’d never succeed in keeping
the sex out of her books. Her imagination naturally flowed in carnal
directions. Especially these days, now that Tom was out of her life.
She
didn’t miss his company that much, to be honest—just his body. He
was a selfish, egotistical ass who in seven years of marriage had
never once taken her seriously. He’d always laughed at her “little
hobby”, even when she’d quit her day job at the newspaper to
write fiction full time. When she’d been named “Romance Author of
the Year”, he had dismissed that as a fluke. “It’s lucky I make
a good living,” he used to jest. “Without me, you’d be just
another starving author.”
Well,
he’d been right about that part. The settlement had left her with
the house—and the mortgage—while he moved out to California to
shack up with his new girlfriend, a well-known cover model who’d
been one of his clients. Should have known better than to marry a
lawyer, she thought for the umpteenth time. She survived on her
royalty checks, but just barely, and was constantly looking for ways
to economize. For instance, she worked in this usually quiet coffee
shop every afternoon, taking advantage of its free WiFi, so she could
cancel the pricey cable package Tom had subscribed to.
Of
course, she could give up romance entirely and look for a job. A real
job, as Tom would have put it. The notion made her slightly nauseous.
Who’d hire a forty-two year old, anyway, a woman who’d been out
of the workforce for half a decade?
Thank
you for visiting! Please do leave a comment. And if you’re tempted
to learn more about Wendy, you can find the buy links on my website:
https://www.lisabetsarai.com/damnedifyoudobook.html
