Out Now! Eyes Wide Open by Lucy Felthouse (@cw1985) #menage #BDSM #MMF

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Charity Sunday: Doctors Without Borders #CharitySunday #humanitarian #MSF

Welcome to another Charity Sunday blog hop. I’m glad you could join me and my fellow bloggers to enjoy a bit of reading and make a small contribution to the world. Last month, I received fifteen comments and donated $20 to Room to Read, an organization dedicated to worldwide literacy, especially for young women. I’d love to see this month’s Charity Sunday generate an even better response.

Every time I do a Charity Sunday post, I’m faced with the choice of a cause to support. There’s no shortage of worthy charities, of course. However, I find that there’s all too often a political dimension to charities. I definitely have quite strong political views. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s appropriate, in most cases, to impose my views on others. In any case, trying to change someone else’s political position is rarely effective. I also don’t want to alienate readers who don’t agree with me.

Today, I’ve chosen to support one of my favorite organizations: Doctors Without Borders/Médécins Sans Frontières. MSF provides humanitarian and medical assistance to victims of epidemics, disasters and conflicts, and increasingly, to migrants and asylum seekers. The doctors and nurses who volunteer for MSF put their own lives in danger to care for their fellow human beings. MSF is renowned for its policy of treating those in need, whoever they are, regardless of their nationality or position in a conflict.

Immigration and asylum have become political hot topics in the past few years. You will undoubtedly have your own opinions on the question of whether immigration is a threat to society and how migrants should be treated. MSF rises above these political considerations. The organization will try to help people who need help—regardless of the legal issues. We are humans first and foremost. All of us, regardless of nationality, race, color or religion.

So please leave a comment – even one that disagrees with me. Every one means a dollar for MSF.

For my excerpt, I’ve got a bit from my short story “Vampires, Limited”. This story appeared in the charitable anthology Coming Together: In Vein, which I also edited. All sales of this anthology benefit – yes, you guessed it – MSF.

When you’ve finished with my excerpt, and hopefully left a comment, please visit the other authors participating in this month’s Charity Sunday event. You’ll find their links at the end of this post.

Thank you!

Casually he trailed a finger up the side of her neck and circled her earlobe. A shiver raced through her, winding tight around her nipples, spiraling down to her sex. He nipped at her ear, playful, but hard enough to make her gasp. “As for me, you know who I am, don’t you? Or at least, what I am.”

Lara knew what he was saying. She just couldn’t accept it.

“Here.” Still behind her, he grabbed her hand and placed her fingers on his throat. His skin was cooler than the air, cool and smooth as marble. “Do you feel any pulse?”

“No—but—it’s just not possible. It’s just a myth. A fashion, a fad. Everyone these days pretends...”

He brought her wrist to his lips, flicking his tongue over the spot where the veins were closest to the surface. His mouth was hot, unlike the rest of him. A violent shudder of desire rocked her body. “Close your eyes,” he murmured.

I should call off this farce now, Lara thought, but she obeyed anyway. Something pricked at her flesh where he held it against his mouth, the tiniest sting, hardly deserving the name pain. Then there was heat, and a pulling, not at her wrist but somehow at her heart, which leaped up in response and began to pump at twice its normal rate.

Red flooded the space behind her eyelids, scarlet, crimson, three-dimensional eddies of color like billowing clouds. A brief icicle of fear stabbed at her, then melted as warm, sweet pleasure flowed through her limbs. Her nipples, her pussy, everywhere there was this hot, wet current, aching and yet somehow not urgent.

“Relax,” he whispered. “Let go.” She heard his voice, coming from a long way off. She saw his eyes, burning through the red haze. They had darkened from blue to empty black. She felt herself tumbling into their depths. Some last fragment of self-consciousness cried out for her to resist, but she ignored it. He was too strong, his will irresistible, the gifts he offered too precious to refuse. She let herself drift. He cradled then released her. She felt herself beginning to drown in the scarlet river of his blood lust.

The shock of separation drove black spikes of pain into her temples. She opened her eyes, gasping for breath. Motes of red swam in her vision. She twisted around to look at him, in wonder and terror.

“Sorry,” he shrugged. “I didn’t know how else to convince you.”

“You’re—you’re the real thing, aren’t you?” Lara thought her chest would burst. “Nosferatu. Undead.” She rubbed at her throbbing head. “I never believed...”

“Believe,” he said, his voice low and solemn. Then all at once was back in his chair, leaving her heart slamming against her ribs. He smiled at her, that wide open, American country-boy smile. Lara worked to catch her breath, to calm herself to some semblance of normalcy.

Please leave a comment. And please visit the other bloggers participating in today’s event.

The Hook - #beginnings #amwriting #authorcraft

 Image by Elien Smid from Pixabay

If you don’t grab your readers’ attention in your first paragraph, you’ve lost them.

Well, that’s what the experts say, at least. Like all absolute statements, this one awakens my critical side. Certainly, I’ve read, and enjoyed, many books that began with a whimper rather than a bang. On the other hand, an effective, engaging opening can make the difference between someone buying your book or moving on to the next author.

Here are the first two paragraphs of one of the best books I’ve read in the past decade, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern:

The circus arrives without warning.

No announcements precede, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

I had heard nothing about this novel. Seeking a birthday gift for my husband, my attention attracted by the dramatic black and white cover, I picked it up from a bookstore table. As I often do, I read the first page to gauge the style. I was hooked. I had to know more. Later, I bought several other copies as presents for friends and relatives. I’ve recommended it to many other people.

An author’s dream. All because of that dynamite opening.

Of course that’s not strictly true. If the rest of the book had not been as amazing as its first page, I would not be singing its praises to all and sundry. On the other hand, without that hook, I might never have read it at all.

This incident occurred in a bricks and mortar bookstore, but the same phenomenon can occur online. Amazon and Smashwords both allow you to sample the first ten to twenty percent of the books they sell. I don’t know how often people flip through my first few pages on Amazon, but Smashwords gives you these figures. Many more people have sampled my indie books than have bought them.

Maybe I need better openings. Maybe I shouldn’t be giving you advice at all. On the other hand, I do feel that I’ve learned a few things since my first novel (which has a rather awful first sentence, based on my current evaluation).

So how can you hook your readers? How can you write more effective initial paragraphs? Here are some suggestions.

Stimulate the reader’s curiosity. 

Your first page can and should raise questions in the reader’s mind. What’s going on? Where are we? Who are the actors? What are their relationships?

Here’s the start of my short story The Last Amanuensis:

My hands no longer tremble when I pierce his papery skin. I've learned how much force to apply, how to tilt the hollow needle just enough to fill the tiny wound with color without blurring the line. I know what he can bear. I can read the change in his breathing that tells me he needs a break.

Although this one paragraph reveals a great deal, it also makes the reader wonder about the scenario. Clearly the narrator is creating a tattoo, but who is the subject? Who is speaker? He or she seems to have done this many times—why?

Provide a lightning introduction to your characters. 

We all know that great characters are the key to keeping readers’ attention. One way to open a tale is let your characters immediately speak up, so readers get a sense of their quirks, personalities, and motivations.

This is how my erotic suspense novel Exposure begins:

I strip for the fun of it. Don’t let anyone tell you different. It’s not the money. I could make nearly as much working at the mill and keep my clothes on, but then I’d have to suck up to the bosses. Here at the Peacock, I’m the one in charge, and I like it that way.

Only five sentences, but already we know quite a bit about Stella. She’s opinionated and self-confident, the total opposite of a doormat. She doesn’t care must about society’s judgments. She’s probably not highly educated, given her short sentences, colloquial vocabulary and marginal grammar. And she’s a stripper—a fact relevant to both the noir suspense and erotic aspects of the story.

Dump the reader into the middle of the action.  

I learned this from one of my colleagues, Kathleen Bradean. Years ago she critiqued a short story of mine. I knew something about the piece was not working. It felt leaden and plodding, especially at the start. However, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.

Kathleen suggested that I throw away the first couple of paragraphs, starting the story smack in the middle of a scene. I followed her advice. The story gained new energy and with it, new interest. I found the change wrought by a relatively minor edit quite astonishing.

One way to get the reader involved in ongoing action is to begin with a line of dialogue. I’ve been using this technique quite a bit recently.

“Haley’s back.”

Suzy might as well have stuck my finger in an electric socket. I forced myself to breathe.

(From The Late Show)

“Ginger? Do I taste ginger?”

“Uh—yes, that’s right, sir…”

“Ginger in coq au vin? That’s practically sacrilege, Ms Wong.”

(From Her Secret Ingredient)

“On the desk, Miss Archer. Arms out, palms flat.”

I should have realized Greg had something up his sleeve. Normally he hates big parties. His work requires him to interact with all sorts of people, but I know he finds it stressful. To relax he prefers more—how should I put it?—intimate gatherings. So I really should have understood he had some deviant plan in mind when he told me about the Halloween masquerade.

(From Coming in Costume)

Okay, so maybe I’m overusing this device!

Use short, direct sentences and pay attention to the prosody.  

Readers have limited attention spans, especially nowadays. Hence, all else being equal, you should keep the sentences in your first paragraph as short and direct as you can manage. I’d never recommend that you dumb down your English to increase the size of your market, but first sentences are almost like advertising slogans. They should be brief and catchy.

To enhance the impact, take advantage of the fact that repetition and rhyme stimulate parts of the brain not involved in the literal interpretation of words. These elements of prosody give sentences more impact and make them more memorable.

Consider the example from The Night Circus. The first sentence —the first paragraph—is a mere five words. The paragraph break provides a breath, a beat. The next sentence is longer, but the repetition carries it forward: “No announcements... no paper notices .... no mentions.” The next sentence also uses parallelism: “It is... it was...”.

Here’s the first sentence from one of my personal favorite stories, Like Riding a Bicycle:

My wife is on her knees.

Okay, I’m probably my own biggest fan, but I get a little chill when I read that, especially when it becomes clear that this is not (at the moment!) a BDSM scene. The stress patterns (three iambs) seem to me to perfectly fit the meaning.

So, in addition to the recommendations above, is there anything you should avoid in your openings?

Well, there’s Elmore Leonard’s famous advice: “Never open a book with the weather.” I’ve broken that rule a few times, deliberately, when the weather was an essential aspect of the plot or the setting, but in general I tend to agree. Perhaps I can restate it more generally: do not begin with a long description of things that are tangential to the story.

Of course there are always exceptions. One opening strategy mimics the common cinematographic technique of the wide pan over the scene, focusing in on a character. For instance, you might show us a narrow country lane winding between hedgerows, the sun setting behind the purple hills, the freshening breeze starting to stir the trees. Then, as we look more closely, we notice a lone figure just coming over a knoll, trudging along, weighed down with what seems like a heavy knapsack. We cannot see his face at first, but as the walker approaches, we realize it’s actually a young woman, dressed in jeans and a ragged jacket, a tight cap crammed over her lank brown hair....

This approach works well with an omniscient point of view, when you want to keep some distance between the reader and your characters.

I have a rule of my own, born of reading a lot of romance: never begin a book with your character’s name. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read that start something like this.

“Anna Wilkins shut off her monitor, leaned back in her office chair and closed her eyes. If she had to review one more report, she’d scream.”

“The clang of an alarm woke Reggie Borden from a restless sleep. He was on his feet, pulling on his work pants, before he realized it had been a dream.”

This is a personal peeve, but I find this sort of opening (which is very common) really annoying. It’s even worse when the author feels inclined to tell us, in the very first paragraph, about the characters’ occupations, appearance, relationships, and so on.

“Anna Wilkins, CEO of Anastyle, Inc, shut off her monitor, leaned back in her office chair, ran her fingers through her blond curls, and closed her sapphire blue eyes. If she had to review one more report from Mark Reynolds, her ambitious Director of Sales, she’d scream.”

“The clang of an alarm woke veteran fire fighter Reggie Borden from a restless sleep. He was on his feet, pulling on his work pants and slipping the suspenders over his broad shoulders, before he realized it had been a dream—a dream about Linda and that terrible day two years ago.”

Rather than making the reader curious, authors who start their books like this seem to feel the need to convey as much information as they can, as early as possible.

Resist the urge to explain, especially in the first few paragraphs of a story. Make the reader wonder who these people are, what they are doing, and why. The reader doesn’t need to know, right away, your characters’ names or what they look like!

I’ve counseled brevity, yet here I am on the fifth page of the essay. Guess I should stop!

In fact, I often have trouble with endings. I’ll talk about that some other time!

Contrary - #tropes #curmudgeon #stereotypes #amwriting

 Image by Jonny Lindner from Pixabay

 

I used to be such a good girl. I don’t know what happened.

In the old days, I followed all the rules. I got straight As. I adhered to the high school dress code. I was an expert at figuring out what people wanted and giving it to them. In every area of my life, I aimed to please.

How did I get so contrary?

I guess I got bored. Bored with the same old plots and characters, the same tropes, conventions and clichés. Overwhelmed by ennui when I looked at the best seller lists. The longer I spent in the world of publishing, the more frustrated - even disgusted - I became by the tyranny of genre and the overwhelming influence of whatever is Currently Hot.

Over the past two decades (has it really been that long?), I have become progressively less interested in pleasing the masses. Instead, I seem to have cultivated my own personal imp of the perverse.

In the first vampire story I wrote for publication, my hero is a blond, blue-eyed, Midwestern frat boy who doesn’t have Goth bone in his undead body. Unlike Lestat, Edward Cullen or the many recent incarnations of Dracula, he’s not in the least ancient or world-weary – he became a vampire just five years before the tale begins.

My paranormal romance The Eyes of Bast turns the traditional “shifter” paradigm on its head. The male protagonist was actually born a cat. A sorceress gave him human form in order to have a vehicle for satisfying her lusts. And if the heroine succeeds in freeing him from the witch’s curse, will he revert to his original feline nature? This is not a typical concern in a shape-shifter tale.

In reaction to the hundreds (thousands?) of gorgeous, athletic, thirty-something Doms crowding the BDSM genre, I have stories that feature a middle aged, overweight master and slave (“Never Too Late”, in D&S Duos Book 2) and a dominant who’s half paralyzed from a stroke. I’ve even started writing a tale where the Dom is a quadriplegic, though so far I haven’t had the guts to push that one very far.

Of course, dominant billionaires and submissive virgins are all the rage. So I’ve got a novel entitled The Gazillionaire and the Virgin in which the heroine’s the one who’s richer than Croesus, and the hero is a brilliant nerd with deep theoretical knowledge about sex but no actual experience. Then there’s my other billionaire themed tale, my historical novella Challenge to Him, about a filthy rich Gilded Age industrialist and an intellectual labor activist. Not exactly typical.

I can’t blame anyone but myself. I’m just too contrary to write what sells.

When I see a call for submissions that seems worth my consideration, my first thought is “how can I twist this into something different?” This isn’t always the route to getting my work accepted. For example, one editor just couldn’t see the Hindu goddess Parvati as a succubus, despite her consuming the sexual energy of the aspiring ascetic hero. I thought it was a great, original take on the theme, but hey, that’s just me.

One trope that’s been bugging me lately is the Natural Submissive. I’m sure you’ve encountered her. Despite never having had any prior experience with D/s, she surrenders immediately and completely to the charismatic Dominant. Without training, she kneels with perfect grace and wears her bonds without complaint. Oh, and she’s got incredible pain tolerance, too, just what the nasty Dom likes. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve read recently where the dominant canes the sub in the very first scene, despite the fact that caning is quite an extreme form of discipline.

Now, I’m somewhat guilty of this cliché myself, especially in my earlier work. “You were born for this,” my slightly cheesy dominant Gregory tells Kate in my first novel, Raw Silk. It’s thrilling to believe that your Master can see through your everyday facade to the kinkiness at your core. To be known – accepted – valued because of one’s dirty desires – that’s intoxicating.

My subs are always conflicted, though, unlike the classic Natural Submissive. They’re shocked by their own behavior. Furthermore, they’re not ready all at once for the worst the Dom can throw at them (and of course the Dom knows this).

So now I’m toying with the notion of writing a story where submission most emphatically does not come naturally. I’m thinking about a female character who really does want to be a competent slave, but who keeps making mistakes – due not to lack of motivation but lack of aptitude and training. Maybe she has joint problems, so she can’t stand being on her knees or suspended from the ceiling. Or perhaps she’s just a natural klutz. Her poor Dom is actually embarrassed to take her to his favorite kink club. He loves her, though, and appreciates her sincerity, so he can’t bear to send her away.

Yeah, I know. Sounds like another best seller, right?

Ah well. At this point, I don’t have to prove anything to anyone. I’ve reached official curmudgeon age, hence I have license to gripe with impunity about “the industry”. And as long as I’m writing – and enjoying the process – I’ll continue to seek originality over marketability. That’s just the way I am.

Sign up for the #CharitySunday Blog Hop!

This coming Sunday, the 22^th of September, will be the next Charity Sunday.  

Charity Sunday is a meme designed to give us authors a chance to give back to the world—as well as, hopefully, attract new readers.

How does it work? Each participant selects a favorite charity. Before Charity Sunday, you should prepare a blog post that: 1) talks about the charity and why you support it; 2) provides a link to the charity; 3) includes an excerpt from one of your books; 4) includes the code to show links to other participating blogs.

It’s fun if you can make the excerpt relate somehow to your chosen charity, but this isn’t required.

For every comment left on your post, you commit to giving some amount to the relevant charity. The specific charity and the amount to donate are up to you. The posts stay open all month, to maximize the amount of donations. You can set an upper limit to your donation if you want.

If you’d like to participate in the next Charity Sunday, just sign up using the Linky List below. Please be sure that the link you enter will lead directly to your Charity Sunday post, not just to the home page of your blog. 

For more detailed instructions, see last month's sign up post:
https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2019/08/sign-up-for-charity-sunday.html

You can get my Charity Sunday banner here.

For an example, check out last month’s Charity Sunday post: 

https://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2019/08/charity-sunday-room-to-read.html

Review Tuesday: Coaching Rayna #2 by Pebbles Lacasse - #BDSM #negotiation #ReviewTuesday

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Since the dark ages! #PublishingChanges #LearningToWrite #GuestBlogger @JanetL717

By Janet Lane Walters (Guest Blogger)

I like to say I’ve been published since the dark ages. What I mean is those days when there was no electronic publishing and manuscripts were sent by snail mail. I had some success with short stories and even being paid money for poems. 
 

Then one day, an editor sent me a rejection letter saying “This sounds like the synopsis for a novel.” The short story market was lessening at that time. So was the market for poems other than in copies of the magazines. I figured the time had come to write novels. But I didn’t know how. This was in 1968 and my first novel wasn’t published until 1972. I spent the time trying to learn the tricks of novel writing.

What I learned in those early days of submitting manuscripts was how to write a book. The editors often sent detailed feedback isolating one problem. Some even showed on the manuscripts how to correct the problem. I appreciate the time they took to read and make comments and finally after many re-writes, I learned how to write a book.

In 1972, the book that had undergone many rewrites sold. There were others following that. Then came the days when children headed for higher education. I put writing aside and returned to work as a nurse. I also earned a BA in English and a BS in Nursing as well as working full time. I also learned much about people’s reactions and actions to medical and surgical conditions. While doing little writing other than jotting ideas on pieces of paper, I did continue to learn about the ins and outs of writing.

A local conference run by the Hudson Valley Chapter of RWA brought me back to writing. One of the members, Jane Toombs, was responsible for selling my first return book. That was in 1994. Then I discovered electronic publishing and my writing career took off. My first ebook came out in 1998 and since then there have been a lot. Retiring from nursing gave me more time to write and I keep finding new worlds to discover since I write romance, contemporary, paranormal, historical and fantasy. There are also a few cozy mysteries and several non-fiction books. These were written while I did some ghost writing for doctors.

So in my past years I’ve seen many changes. The short story and poetry dwindling. Once there were 17 publishers for romance novels. Most of these no longer exist. Then came the electronic explosion and then self-publishing. And that brings me up today. I figure I’ll be writing until I can no longer put words on the page.

My latest release is Forgotten Dreams, the fifth book in the Moon Child series. The venue for the entire series is a small city and centers around the heroines born under Cancer. The heroes of each book will be one from each of the astrological signs.

Here’s the blurb:

Chad Morgan is tired of his Hollywood life and his role as action hero Storm. He's ignoring the contracts for two more movies in the franchise. He wants to take a different direction and make a movie of his friend's book. He has bought the rights. But his agent and the studio want more Storm. His personal life is also bouncing from one woman to another. His thoughts have turned to Emma Grassi, the woman he left behind in his quest for fame. He decides to return to Fern Lake and speak to his friend and renew his friendship with Emma.

Emma is now a nurse practitioner sharing an office with her doctor friend. She has waited for Chad to return and has decided this isn't going to happen. She's decided to confront him and put an end to the dream she has remembered and he has forgotten. Life takes a twist when Chad 's auto accident on the outskirts of Fern Lake bring them together. She wants out. He wants in.

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Dreams-Moonchild-Book-5-ebook/dp/B07V9BJJDL

About the Author

Janet Lane Walters has been a published writer for fifty years. She lives in the scenic Hudson River Valley. Her books include mysteries, romances, fantasies and non-fiction books. She has been married to the same man forever. Her four children, one an adopted biracial daughter, have given her seven grandchildren - four black and three Chinese.

Blog: https://eclecticwriter.blogspot.com

Twitter:  https://www.twitter.com/JanetL717