Taking a Leap

By Renee Michaels (Guest Blogger)

I primarily write paranormal stories, but a call for an anthology caught my eye my. The premise a spicy tale relating the naughty hijinks going on between the staff, and the lords and ladies above stairs. Now I had never written a story similar to what was needed, but I’ve read a lot of historicals, and I’m a bit of a history buff. My brain retains useless bits of trivia, which comes in handy for a writer. Why not?

I didn’t think I could pull it off but it was chance to stretch myself. Now writing for me is like cooking a good meal. Gather good ingredients, season well, and add a dash of spice. Molly, my main character, was the first essential component. Her employ and her troubles kept me interested in finding out what would happen next even as I wrote the story. Molly’s pair of lovers delivered the zest and sensuality. It was a pleasure to write this story -  so much so that Ménage a Must is the first in the Molly’s Mayhem series.

Blurb

Can Molly juggle a pair of frisky lovers and prevent her adventurous young mistress from playing fast and loose with her virtue? Yes, she can.

Molly O’Dowd is a maid with ambition. She doesn’t intend to spend the rest of her life in service. But she feels bound by loyalty and gratitude to see Annabelle, her young mistress, settled before she leaves to make her fortune.

At the estate of her employer’s potential suitor, she meets Graeme and Logan, a lusty pair of rogues who entice Molly to indulge in a tryst - or two or three.

To Molly’s delight and relief her Annabelle takes matters in her own hands and secures a proposal. Molly is now free to go, but she hesitates. After all she now has to reasons to linger a while.

Excerpt

When the wheel of the carriage Molly O’Dowd sat in dropped into yet another rut, she slapped a hand on her prized bonnet and hugged her mistress’s jewellery case to her chest. The vehicle gave an ominous creak and listed to one side before it lumbered forward. She sent up a fervent prayer that they’d reach their destination soon. Her sore bum could not take another round of bouncing on the thinly padded seat.

“No title is worth this discomfort.” The loud, petulant complaint came from the young miss she served as a personal maid.

Her mistress sat across from Molly, arms folded across her chest. Ethereally beautiful, with flawless skin and cornflower blue eyes, and an heiress to a fortune built from railways and coalmines, Annabelle was the only child of the late August Calder. He’d been an overindulgent but neglectful papa, which had made her just a tad spoilt.

With her tight fist holding the purse strings, Annabelle’s social-climbing stepmamma had dragged her to England in her hunt for a title. And not a moment too soon—the girl needed a man but more importantly a husband. Molly had caught Annabelle’s dancing master lapping away at her virginal cunny.

There was no telling her mistress anything once she got a notion in her pretty head. She’d kept Molly busy smuggling the man in and out of the Calder mansion. Molly had barely managed to preserve Annabelle’s virginity using dire threats and never being more than a few feet away from the amorous couple.

“Hush, Annabelle, the earl’s servants might hear you.” The admonishment hissed from the perpetually pursed lips of Annabelle’s stepmother, Priscilla.

Her name suited her—prissy by name and nature. Mrs Calder never had a hair out of place or a thread hanging from her ensemble. She was a thin woman with a fondness for ruffles and pastels, which didn’t suit her sallow skin.

As far as Molly knew, Priscilla never showed any emotion but disapproval or irritation. Molly wondered for the millionth time how she had become the wife of that lusty old letch August Calder. Before he had died, he’d pinched Molly’s bum and fondled her breasts on the sly more than once. Given the chance, he’d have tossed up her skirts for sure. Now she wasn’t adverse to a good tumble, but to spread her legs for the master under his wife’s nose was the act of a slattern. She had standards—a little relaxed, but they served her well.

Annabelle groaned as they hit another pothole. “I still don’t see why we couldn’t hire a conveyance for our use.”

“His lordship offered the use of his carriage and we didn’t want to offend him.” Her tone suggested that their discomfort was inconsequential.

Annabelle’s rosebud mouth formed a pout. “Molly, you did pack my bed linens, didn’t you?”

Priscilla waved her hand to cut off Annabelle’s gripes. “Never mind that, I wanted to have a word with the both of you before we arrived.”

This explained why Molly wasn’t travelling with the rest of the servants Mrs Calder deemed necessary as a show of her wealth.

“Now you listen to me, miss, I’ve paid that impoverished noblewoman a small fortune to secure this invitation. Muck it up and I’ll ship you off to my aunt in Maine.”

The threat hung in the air. Priscilla’s aforementioned relative would make a Puritan look like a hedonist.

Annabelle narrowed her eyes into slits and her expression turned mutinous. Even then, she looked like an annoyed fairy. “The executors of my father’s estate wouldn’t let you.”

“Everybody has a price.” Priscilla pinned Molly with an inimical glower. It seemed she wasn’t to escape Priscilla’s censure. “I expect you to keep her in line and not pander to her odd whims.”

Molly gulped and nodded. She couldn’t afford to lose her place, not when she was so close to getting out of service on her own terms.

Priscilla sniffed and smoothed out her wrinkleless skirts. “Gertrude Whittenham got a baron for her buck-toothed daughter. I want that earl. You are lovely enough to catch the eye of any peer. With your inheritance, it shouldn’t take much effort to engage his interest.” Her eyes glittered with the unhealthy avarice of someone who had everything but wanted more.

“And if I don’t comply?”

At Annabelle’s defiant question, Priscilla’s thin lips curved into a humourless smile. “It would be a pity if word got out Molly facilitated your meetings with that Frenchman. I’ll put your precious maid out without a reference and funds for her passage home.”

The tea and bun Molly had gulped down at the last posting inn curdled in her stomach. She glanced at Annabelle, and hoped she caught the silent plea she sent her.

“Pardon me, ma’am, but Miss Annabelle knows what’s at stake,” Molly murmured, injecting the right amount of timidity and subservience into her voice.

“For both your sakes, I hope so.” The frosty warning wasn’t lost on Molly. She’d bear the responsibility of making sure Annabelle toed the line.

A fraught silence hung in the air as the seconds ticked by and Molly’s apprehension grew.

After what felt like several lifetimes, Annabelle shrugged. “Fine, have it your way, again, but Molly stays. I’ll need to dress my hair and see to my clothes to bait your honey trap.”

“Your speech is appalling. Maids are ten-a-penny. She is not indispensable.” Priscilla’s eyes raked over Molly with dismissive condescension and Molly’s face heated with humiliation. “Besides, it would be more appropriate for you to have a French maid. It is all the rage.”

“I said I’ll go along with your little schemes, Priss,” Annabelle snapped. She used the name that would jab at her stepmother the most. “But don’t overplay your hand. Once I marry, I’ll be free of you,” Annabelle said flatly in a rare show of defiance.

With a sour expression, Priscilla turned her head and looked through the window. “Then I will have to make sure you marry a man who dances to my tune, won’t I? We’ve arrived.”

Molly twisted in her seat to look at the Earl of Glenhaven’s ancestral home. It might be tumbling down about his lordship’s noble ears, but the autumn was kind to the great rambling Elizabethan manor. It softened the signs of neglect and disrepair and gave the stone edifice a rosy glow. With a great deal of hard work and pots of Annabelle’s money, it could shine like a gem.

The aged carriage jerked to a halt. A footman opened the door and let down the steps. Priscilla allowed the servant to help her disembark. 
 

Seeing the mischievous sparkle in Annabelle’s eyes, Molly almost groaned.

“Wait for me in my rooms,” Annabelle whispered.

“What are you up to now? Don’t antagonise your stepmother. She watches you like a hawk.”

An unladylike snort escaped from Annabelle’s pretty mouth. “More like a vulture waiting to pick our bones clean. Don’t worry, Mol, I have a plan.”

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About the Author

Renee Michaels is a multi-published author. She is published with Liquid Silver Books, Red Rose Publishing, Samhain and Secret Cravings as well as with Total-E-Bound. She is also a contributor to the Ippy Gold Medal anthology Carnal Machines, published by Cleis Press.

Widowed with a grown daughter and son, she is a voracious reader, avid cook, and die hard Trekkie much to her children’s embarrassment.

Visit her at http://reneemichaels.com

Metrosexy!

By Sheila Claydon (Guest Blogger)

I’ve just returned from the past and what a journey it’s been. No, I wasn’t in outer space, nor did I travel through a time portal. All I was doing was re-reading the books I wrote more than a quarter of a century ago because a publisher wants to reprint them under a Retro Label.

Now before I go any further you have to understand that I’m talking about sweet romance…the ones that were mostly published in paperback and read avidly by women who wanted to escape from their mainly domestic lives for an hour or two. There were other books and other genres, so don’t think this was all that was available, but I wrote the sweet romantic fiction that was popular at the time. I loved it…it was my escape from my own mainly domestic life, and I sold to two different publishers. It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d sold to another dozen, though, because the rules were always the same:

• Macho hero meets heroine early in first chapter (usually page 5)
• Feisty (virginal) heroine is instantly attracted to hero but fights it
• Macho hero kisses heroine against her wishes, usually after an argument
• Feisty heroine fights him off and then spends time regretting it
• Macho hero becomes moody and troubled
• Feisty heroine tames macho hero
• They marry and live happily every after

Okay so that’s a bit of a caricature but it’s close enough. So has anything changed over the years? Well not that much and yet everything.

The protagonists still meet in the first chapter, and yes, they are still usually instantly attracted to one another. 

This time around, however, the heroine doesn’t always fight it. Sex is allowed even without the surety of marriage at the end of the book, and even in a sweet romance.

The hero is a lot less macho though. Now he’s much more of a metrosexual: good with children and animals, kind, thoughtful, caring. He’s nice to old people too and he has some of the softer skills as well. For instance he might be able to produce tasty meals, take care of someone who is sick, deliver a baby (I’ve just finished reading that one!) or be a sensitive son of the soil. He’s good with his hands too, and that’s not a double entendre. If he doesn’t know how to build and repair things then he can forget all about being a hero and settle for a secondary character. And if he doesn’t know how and when to restrain his baser passions then he can forget about it altogether. He’s even learned how to tame the heroine (yes, she’s still feisty) without resorting to a forceful, uninvited kiss. Nowadays he shows more respect. He can still be moody and troubled of course, and lose his temper, and behave irrationally…but so can the heroine.

She’s a real person these days. Unlike her sisters from the 1980s, she is no longer half a person searching for a man to make her whole. Instead she is independent and self-sufficient, and she is often far too preoccupied with her own worries to think about men at all. When she does find him it’s because he just happens along and she is frequently the one who resists the growing love between them, often because she’s been let down in the past. (That hasn’t changed!) Today’s heroine expects more than just a hero. She wants her career as well, and she wants someone who will support her dreams. Marriage, finding her soul mate, loving someone…they all have their place in her life but they are not the end of the story.

And here’s another thing; when I re-read all my books from the 1980s I discovered something unexpected. I like my modern heroes much more than I did the macho men of old. Somehow the development of all those soft skills has made them far more desirable. Even though the heroines are not holding out for marriage and children any more, somehow they are ending up with men who are a much more interesting and attractive proposition. The hero of today is someone who I’d be happy to meet at the breakfast table every morning, and the fact that he might just be able to whip up a berry and buckwheat pancake for me is an added bonus.

I truly didn’t realize how much relationships had changed between the sexes until I re-read those books. I was expecting the hero and heroine to live in a time warp because it was before cell phones, before the Internet, even before home computers. In the UK in the early 1980s, typewriters were commonplace, people wrote letters, and meetings were arranged via landline telephones. The food was different too, much less cosmopolitan. An Italian trattoria was the height of sophistication. Now though, along with modern technology, equality has crept in. Twenty-five years ago the hero would have kissed the girl and worried about the consequences later. Now, he waits to be asked…well maybe that’s a bit of a stretch because this is romance after all, but he usually waits until he’s sure he won’t be rejected, that it really is what the heroine wants…and you know what…I like that.

And if this is before your time, well look at the covers of my book Golden Girl for some proof. In those days I used the pseudonym Anne Beverley. Due to be republished by Samhain in August, it is the story of an ingénue who is persuaded, against her better judgment, to model a range of cosmetics. In the 1980s cover she looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, whereas in the modern version she is quite obviously a young woman with spirit who is enjoying the effect she is having on the men around her.

Then, for even more proof of how times have changed, look at the cover of one of my latest books, Pathway to Tomorrow (Books We Love). On this the heroine is not only very obviously sexually turned on but she is also fully prepared for some alfresco loving while, in the background, the horses that play such an important part in her life and her career, are never far from her thoughts. And what about the hero? Is he another modern man? I think so…he’s sexy that’s for sure, but is he metrosexy? What do you think?

Blurb for Pathway to Tomorrow:

When musician Marcus Lewis buys the derelict farmhouse next to Jodie Eriksson's riding school he doesn’t know whether to be amused or irritated by her angry reaction to his plans. Then her sister Izzie visits him and makes things a whole lot worse…or is it better…because now he has an excuse to see Jodie again. Although, when he sees her, it’s not exactly a meeting of minds, they do discover they have one thing in common; they both believe they know what’s best for Izzie, and for Marcus' son Luke.

It turns out they’re wrong. The children they thought they were protecting need to be set free. It’s Jodie and Marcus who have the problem; but can two broken hearts make one whole one? The battle lines that were set when they first met have long since been breached but the war won’t be over until Jodie learns how to trust again, and until Marcus allows himself to believe in his son.

Excerpt:

Later, they pulled one another up a wooded slope, leaving the lake behind them as they searched for somewhere to sit and enjoy the spectacular scenery. Long before they found it though, Marcus tumbled Jodie into a grassy hollow that was hidden from view by the green fronds of new fern and the black skeletons of dried heather.

“I thought walking by the lake would be enough, but I was wrong,” he told her, supporting his weight with his hands as he leaned over her.

She smiled up at him, her eyes dark as sloes in the shadow of the ferns. He felt his breath hitch in his throat as he claimed her mouth. This wasn’t how he’d imagined their first time but he wasn’t strong enough to fight it, not when she was so eager and willing and the sun was so warm on his back. With a muttered oath he sat up and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

The touch of Jodie’s fingers as she stroked his shoulders was the final straw. He covered her hands, stilling them. “Only if you’re sure Jodie. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

“Yes it does,” her voice was soft as she pulled her hands free, sat up, and unbuttoned her polo shirt.

He helped her take it off and then he unhooked her bra, releasing breasts that put his imagination to shame. 

He didn’t touch her though. Instead he removed the band at the end of her plait and gently unwound her hair until it tumbled down her back in blue-black waves.

“I’ve wanted to do that ever since I first saw you,” he whispered, tangling his fingers in the thick skeins and pulling her towards him. He took his time after that, savoring her lips and the soft curves of her body before lying down and lifting her above him so the thick curtain of her hair screened them both from view. Then he took her nipples into his mouth and kissed them from pink to a moist, beckoning red.

Lost to everything around them they didn’t hear the voices until a small black and white dog burst through the ferns and started barking. Ignoring the angry commands of its owner, it darted at them, trying to nip them with its sharp little teeth.

With a muffled exclamation Marcus struck out at it. A lucky blow sent it yelping back to its master, and moments later they heard laughter as a group of hikers speculated about what sort of animal it had disturbed in the undergrowth.

PATHWAY TO TOMORROW is Book One of my Pathway Trilogy. It is available via Amazon at http://amzn.to/18P0ywe and Smashwords at http://bit.ly/13cp2ky.

Book Two: PATHWAY TO SUCCESS will be out later this year.

You can find me at on my blog at http://sheilaclaydon.com Also on twitter, facebook and at Books We Love

https://twitter.com/SheilaClaydon

https://www.facebook.com/sheilaclaydon

http://bookswelove.net/claydon.php

About Sheila Claydon

In the 1980s Sheila Claydon wrote a number of romances under the pseudonym Anne Beverley. Then a busy career and family life got in the way and before she knew it, she had turned her back on the characters who were begging to be liberated from her imagination.

Now she is back to writing fiction again and, considerably older and no longer shy, writes under her own name.

Her motto is a quote by author Ray Bradbury: 'First, find out what your hero wants. Then just follow him.'


She starts with plots, chapter outlines, characterization; she knows all the rules and faithfully follows them each time she starts to write a new story. Then the hero takes over and she follows him instead.

Although family remains central to her life, she still finds the time to read, to write, and to travel. Many of the places she has visited feature in her books. Her fans say that reading them is like buying a ticket to romance.