All posts by K D Grace

Singapore Fling: New from Lisabet Sarai

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In the cleanest city in Asia, things can still get messy.

 

 

Contemporary multicultural erotic romance (X rated)

 

 

Singapore Fling Blurb:

 

Thai entrepreneur Ploy Kaewkornwattanasakul has come to Singapore to close a deal. Ploy needs to convince tech whiz Jason Chow to license his ground-breaking innovation to her company on favorable terms. The future of her startup depends on her negotiating skill. When she meets Jason, though, she realizes she wants not just the invention, but the inventor, too.

 

Jason Chow is a brilliant engineer, a successful businessman and a bit of a rebel. He’s attracted to Ploy from the moment he sets eyes on her. However, he doesn’t dare respond to her advances, for fear she’ll discover his secret vice.

 

Ploy doesn’t understand why the sexy CEO has rejected her. She figures she’ll have to content herself with the cold comfort of a signed contract—unless the strength of Jason’s desire overwhelms his shame.

 

 

 

Buy Singapore Fling here:

 

Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0768YSZMX/

 

Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0768YSZMX/

 

Smashwords – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/752384

 

Barnes and Noble – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/singapore-fling-lisabet-sarai/1127210397?ean=2940154581056

 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36380813-singapore-fling

 

 

Singapore Fling Excerpt:

No sooner had Ploy pushed the dish away than a uniformed staff member rolled up next to her with a plastic bin of dirty utensils. It took no more than a few seconds for the employee to grab the bowl, balance it on top of a pile, wipe the table clean, and disappear.

 

Ploy glanced around the open space. Every table was full, most with multiple people, eating with single-minded determination. Clearly at the height of lunch hour, available tables were rare. Throughput was critical.

 

Probably she should vacate her table, but she didn’t like feeling pressured. Anyway, she’d just paid the equivalent of two hundred baht for a single bowl of not-very-exciting noodles. For that price, she could buy a full dinner in Bangkok. She had the right to sit here for a while.

 

She glanced around at the other customers in the busy, noisy hawker center, a mixture of shoppers and business people judging by their clothing. Most alternated between animated conversation and shoveling food into their mouths. Others sat glued to their phones, swiping away with one hand while manipulating chopsticks in the other. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry.

 

Three tables away, though, she noticed an anomaly: a solitary young man, reading a hard cover book. She couldn’t make out the title at that distance—it could have been in Chinese, for all she could tell—but whatever it was, it completely engrossed him. He was oblivious to the bustle around him, including the frequent accusatory looks he received from the cleaning staff.

 

A real, printed book! Ploy was surprised to see anyone his age opting for dead trees as opposed to a touch screen.

 

There was nothing remarkable about the man himself. A bit taller than average for a Singaporean, slender but not skinny, he had typical Chinese features. He wore the dark pants and white shirt, sleeves rolled up, that was the common business uniform in the steamy climate. His slightly shaggy black hair fell into his eyes as he bent over the book. A pair of dark-framed glasses and a phone rested on the table next to him.

 

Something about his utter stillness drew her, though. Attracted her, in fact. She found his focused concentration exciting. This was a man with a powerful will, a person who had no difficulty ignoring what did not concern him. A bit of a rebel, too, given his willingness to flaunt social convention in this aggressively polite city. Like her, he wasn’t about to bow to the unreasonable demands of his inferiors.

 

About Lisabet

Lisabet Sarai has been addicted to words all her life. She began reading when she was four. She wrote her first story at five years old and her first poem at seven. Since then, she has written plays, tutorials, scholarly articles, marketing brochures, software specifications, self-help books, press releases, a five-hundred page dissertation, and lots of erotica and erotic romance – nearly one hundred titles, and counting, in nearly every sub-genre—paranormal, scifi, ménage, BDSM, GLBT, and more. Regardless of the genre, every one of her stories illustrates her motto: Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

 

You’ll find information and excerpts from all Lisabet’s books on her website (http://www.lisabetsarai.com/books.html), along with more than fifty free stories and lots more. At her blog Beyond Romance (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com), she shares her philosophy and her news and hosts lots of other great authors. She’s also on Goodreads and finally, on Twitter. Sign up for her VIP email list here: https://btn.ymlp.com/xgjjhmhugmgh

 

 

Buried Pleasures Available for Pre-Order

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 With Blindsided just hot off the presses, I can’t tell you how excited I am to inform you that Buried Pleasures, book three of Medusa’s Consortium, is now available for pre-order.

 

 

Guarantee you’ll get the first read when Buried Pleasure continues the story of Magda and her gang in Vegas. And wow, the woman has one helluva gang in Sin City. It’s a good thing, because she’s going to need all the help she can get, and so is Samantha ‘Sam’ Black, the last siren.

 

 

Buried Pleasures Blurb:

When Samantha Black shares her sandwich with a dog, his owner, Jon—a homeless man living in the Las Vegas storm tunnels, gives her a poker chip worth a fortune from the exclusive casino, Buried Pleasures. All Sam has to do is cash it in. Sam is in Vegas for one reason only, to get her friend, Evie Holt, away from sinister magician, Darian Fox, who holds her prisoner in an effort to force Sam to perform at his club, Illusions. A neon circus tent of strange and mystical acts, Illusions is one of the biggest draws in Vegas, and he’s hell-bent on including Sam on his more than slightly sinister program.

The shadowy Magda Gardener will do anything to keep Sam from cashing in that chip. She knows that Buried Pleasures is the gate to Hades and cashing in the chip is a one-way ticket across the River Styx, which runs beneath the storm tunnels of Vegas.

 

 

Coming 9th January 2018 – available for pre-order now!

Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon AU
Amazon CA
Barnes & Noble
iBooks UK
iBooks US
Kobo
Smashwords

 

A Different Kind of Magic — Buried Pleasures Excerpt:

She opened the piano and ran her fingers carefully over the cool ivory. The buzz of the long familiar, and yet ever mysterious, magic climbed her spine with the effervescing tingle that was always there in the presence of potential music. Jon, who had returned to her side, pulled the padded bench out for her, and she slipped onto it letting both hands arch delicately against the keys, barely making contact. The cloak she’d nearly forgotten she wore, slid down her arms to cover the backs of her hands, but before she could shrug it back, Jon moved behind her and undid the clasp at her throat, easing it off her shoulders to pool on the bench around her.

His touch was a different kind of magic. It sent a cascade of goose flesh over her clavicle down the tops of her breasts, and the tight gasp that escaped her lips was almost, but not quite a sob. Above the keys she flexed her fingers. Behind her, heat radiated off Jon’s body. His breath was warm against her nape. Then he leaned down and spoke close to her ear. “Sing for me, Samantha. I need you to sing for me.”

She withdrew her hands as though the keys were suddenly on fire and clenched them tightly in her lap. “I can’t. You saw what I did to those men, and when I sing I see things, things I shouldn’t know, things I don’t want to know. I … I invade peoples’
private space. I don’t mean to,” she added quickly, “but it happens, and I can’t help it, and the music takes over and I can’t stop until it’s finished no matter how badly I want to, and … I don’t want to do that to you.”

He stepped closer until the tense muscles of his thighs warmed her back, until the shape of him pressed against her almost as it had in his bed. But she was so much more conscious of it now, so much more conscious of the depth of what he desired from her, of her own desire to give it to him, to give him what she’d never been able to give anyone.

He slid strong fingers down across her neck, over her pulse point, which hammered and jerked beneath his touch. Then he cupped her cheek with a rough palm and pressed her back against his belly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she managed around a struggle to breathe. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. When it’s good, it’s the most amazing thing ever. Believe me, I would gladly share that with you, but when it all goes wrong …” Her eyes misted at the thought of all that she’d had to keep hidden to protect the people around her.

He leaned over her and took her clenched hands into his. “You won’t hurt me, and it will be good, I promise.” Then he brought her fists to his lips and kissed her knuckles, easing her fingers open one by one as he did so. “You’re a siren, Samantha. That’s why you can do what you can do. Your music is your power and you can control it.”

 

 

If you haven’t yet read In The Flesh, Book One of Medusa’s Consortium, nows your chance to get it FREE!

 

 

The lovely Victoria DeLuis has invited an amazing bunch of Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy authors in for this wonderful giveaway. She was kind enough to include yours truly. She has invited us to take iveaway for the whole month of October. I’ve included In The Flesh, book one of my Mesdusa’s Consortium series.

Follow the link below and you’ll find over SEVENTY fabulous FREE reads, featuring novels, novellas, and previews. So if you love UF and PNR as much as I do, browse through the covers, and then click to download the book from Amazon, InstaFreebie or BookFunnel

 

It’s like trick-or-treat candy for lovers of UF/PNR. So go ahead, indulge! Better than chocolate and calorie free!

 

Here is the page link: http://victoriadeluis.com/promo/


 

 

De-Scribing

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While I posted parts of this blog several years ago, with Blindsided just out, it seemed more appropriate than ever, and with me away on retreat allowing my characters to dictate what I write, I had to share these thoughts with you.

We writers of fiction often play god creating both characters and plot and setting that created world in motion to see what happens, to even control what happens. We actually get to look inside the heads of our characters and see what’s going on there, what motivates, what inspires, what frightens, what excites. In a lot of ways that’s the norm. That’s what the writing life is supposed to be like, that’s supposed to be our experience as we plot the story and shape our characters.

 

But in every good writing experience I’ve ever had, in almost every novel I’ve ever written, there comes a point when I stop being the creator, when I stop telling the characters what’s going to happen and how they’ll react to it. There comes a point, a certain threshold – usually when I’m most deeply into the world I’ve created, when the characters rise up and rebel. They stop being my puppets and they start telling me exactly how it’s going to be. They make it very clear to me that I have been demoted from god, creator of the fictional world and all who live in it to … well … to a glorified secretary and little more. They tell me what to write and I don’t argue. I just write, because at that point, they know what’s best.

 

OK, the position is actually a bit more glamorous than that of a secretary because my characters now drag me along, whether my bag is packed or not, to wherever the plot takes them and through whatever twists and turns unfold in the process. I become the war correspondent reporting the action on the front. I become the Scribe, responsible for recording the facts, responsible for writing the truth as my characters see it. I also become their advocate. It becomes my job to speak for the character to the readers, to make sure the readers ‘get them’ and their plight.

 

The Scribe! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what that means, especially as I work on the Medusa’s Consortium series in which the roll of the scribe becomes a lot more important. I’ve been trying out that position, opening myself to the idea of being prepared for anything. The result has been several stories I’ve shared with you on this blog, as well as some highly imaginative incidents that may or may not have involved strong drink, too little sleep, and a sense of humor that is most active when the imagination is stimulated. The story of the storyteller is another story within itself. The storyteller, the novelist, the war correspondent, the reporter, are all quite often used as plot devices that frame the story. In fact the story within a story, the plot within a plot, the play within a play is as old as Shakespeare and probably older.

 

It’s old because it works. It works because it give more dimension and also allows the Scribe a little bit of distance, a little bit of space to say, while pointing the finger, ‘Hey, it wasn’t my idea! They told me to say it! It’s their fault, not mine!’ If ever there was license for a writer to misbehave with abandon, I’d say the Scribe is it. So, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. My new release, Blindsided as well as In The Flesh are both Scribe stories, in which our scribe, Susan Innes takes center stage. Encounter in a Dry Canyon and the encounters with Alonso Darlington as well as the lady in the sunglasses, (and you all now know that this lady will be putting me through my paces for a long time to come) are all examples of the writer as Scribe, of the writer only there to observe and tell the characters’ stories.

 

Being a Scribe for the characters and events of an intriguing story means that I, the writer, gets the hell out of the way
and let the characters tell the story, let them guide me through the events as they unfold. If I’m not in the way, the story is one step closer to its purest form, colored by the characters views of events and experiences rather than my own, and that has to be the difference between Nescafe and a freshly made, triple espresso with whipped cream on top!

 

While I’m away in Zagreb on my writer’s retreat, I hope to spend a lot of time getting out of the way and letting the characters dictate the story to me while they drag me right on into the middle of the action. I think that’s the very best place for a writer to be, and when it happens, it’s a heady experience! It’s also an experience that affects the writer in ways too much control over a story never could. So, bring it on, I say! But I don’t say that without a certain amount of fear and trepidation as I settle my sweaty fingers onto the keyboard and take a deep breath.

Gods and Monsters, Demons and Billionaires

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Most of us might not consider this – especially if we’re in the camp that is sick to death of billionaire stories, but billionaires have been with us in their more archetypal forms since the time of telling stories in the cave around the fire.

The truth is that power and control, in all their guises have a facet of raw, primal lust, and few things are more darkly and secretly fascinating than the idea of being forced to give up control and finding that we like it. Being possessed, being under someone else’s thrall, being taken to the realms of ecstasy, whether it’s on Mount Olympus, in Dracula’s dungeon lair or in a penthouse apartment, is a part of that dark fantasy that makes up, not only the mythological seductions, but every vampire story, ever monster story, and yes … every billionaire romance.

 

Why is that? What makes that dark fantasy such a powerful one. Well, I have a theory, and I’ve been toying with it ever since I wrote In The Flesh. Certainly it’s no less relevant in the second of the Medusa’s Consortium novels, my new release, Blindsided, and it won’t be in the third, Buried Pleasures, either. Buried Pleasures, BTW, will be coming out in January. I think that no matter how appalled we are, no matter how stubborn and independent we are, we want to know what it’s like to be with and to be taken by a force so much greater than us that we have no control. What’s it like to be bitten and seduced by a vampire? What’s it like to make love to a monster? What’s it like to be seduced by a god? What’s it like to be the object of lust for a billionaire? And ultimately what price are we willing to pay for entrance into Club Billionaire, Club Olympus, Club Undead? Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, those gods, those monsters, those demons and billionaires — they are most definitely NOT all male.

 

It’s more than lust. It’s more than love. In fact it’s all a little mercenary really. We want, we long for, a chance to take into ourselves all that we’re not. We want to know their secrets. We want those divine, powerful, filthy rich, forbidden lovers to reveal to us their inner workings just as much as they want to possess us. The ultimate question then becomes can we pay the price and survive to tell the tale? Can we achieve our HEA and find some sense of balance in a world to which we are the interloper? Oooh! It’s always so much fun to find out. And what I am discovering as I delve deeper and deeper into Magda’s world and that of her Consortium, is that the answer is far more complicated. Sometimes the Happy Ever After looks more like “what the f*ck is this then?” Sometimes the true adventure only begins when just when you think the HEA is in sight. Sometimes there are far greater things at stake.

 

Here’s a brief overview of the Medusa’s Consortium series. I think you can see why when the monsters show up, relationships might get a bit … complicated.

 

Medusa’s Consortium:

 

Contrary to popular belief, Medusa is alive and well. Ever since she escaped Greece and the Olympians, Medusa/AKA Magda Gardener has been secretly kicking ass and taking names.

 

Scheming to keep one step ahead of the Olympians and the havoc they wreak, Magda is a rescuer of monsters and demons and a thief of all things sacred to the gods who betrayed her. She is irreverent, powerful, rich and has her own agenda in which the lines between right and wrong are not always clearly drawn. For those she helps, those she draws to herself, life will never be the same. Like the Godfather, those who owe Magda Gardener never know when she’ll call in the debt, nor what will be required of them when she does. But the price for those who cross her, for those who hurt
the ones under her protection, is worse than death.

 

As her Consortium of powerful misfits grows into a cohesive family, as plotting from Olympus threatens the modern world, it Magda finds it more and more difficult to keep herself apart from the lives of those she has drawn to her. Perhaps the Gorgon doesn’t have a heart of stone after all.

Out Now—United in Love, a Charity Anthology Edited by Lucy Felthouse (@cw1985) #charity #anthology #britishredcross

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United in LoveBlurb:

The world could use a lot more love, which is why being united in love is the theme of this short story collection. Each of the characters are dealing with horrific and heartbreaking situations—loss, grief, war, divorce, dementia, disputes over land and more, but what they all have in common is that, with the help of love, of unity, they come through. It may not be all happily-ever-after—since life just doesn’t work that way—but positivity and solidarity shine through in each of the tales and will warm your heart.

So enjoy these stories of unexpected companionship, old lovers reuniting, second chances and creative problem-solving, with the knowledge that the proceeds from your purchase will also have a deeply positive effect—with every penny going to the British Red Cross’s UK Solidarity Fund.

Featuring stories from Gina Wynn, Lily Harlem, Rebecca Chase, Rosie Jamieson, Skye MacKinnon, M H Heyer, Alyssa Drake, Arizona Tape and Lucy Felthouse.

Available from:

Amazon (universal link): http://mybook.to/unitedinlove

Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2wq8dqe

iBooks: http://apple.co/2hdoqEP

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2yjSoyG

Smashwords: http://bit.ly/2hbrLrN

Add to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36240214-united-in-love

*****

Excerpt from What’s Past is Present by Gina Wynn

Connie always believed she’d know it was summer when the rain got warmer. And that meant summer was today.

She ran along the pavement, trying to dodge the drops as they fell in big splats on her bare arms like sloppy kisses, hunching as she attempted to shield the package of fish and chips she carried. The aroma of the hot food and warm paper tickled her nose, and she could almost taste the contents. Declan would be lucky if she arrived back with anything more than soggy, empty wrappings at this rate.

Picking up her pace as the smell of rain-splashed tarmac filled the air, she hurried the rest of the way back to the house. His house. She shook her head. It would take a while to see the house as anything but Mr Pearce’s place—an adjustment it felt like she’d only just made. Now, it was Dec’s. Just Dec’s. In her head, it’d only just stopped being his place where he lived with his dad. Glancing at the windows in hopes of glimpsing him inside as she walked past had been a habit for a very long time.

When her doorbell had rung the previous night, she hadn’t expected to find a very crumpled, travel-weary Dec in the dingy entryway to her bedsit. In fact, he was probably the last person she hoped to ever find gracing the stoop of what she not-quite-laughingly referred to as her hovel.

She’d barely had chance to move, or slam the door in his definitely unwelcome face, before he wrapped his arms around her, folding her into a perfect bear hug of long-ago familiarity. Caught off-guard and unprepared to see him, she rested her cheek against the soft brushed cotton of his shirt, listening to his heartbeat, as his fingers splayed over her cheek, and she pretended not to notice the rough gasps of air he drew or the silent tears landing in her hair. Her chest hollowed, her heart breaking both for him and over him anew, and a lone teardrop of her own slid noiselessly down her nose.

Of course, she’d promised to help him today because she could never deny him anything, even though she’d spent the past five years regretting him. Getting over him. The bastard. She’d never stopped loving him.

Five years had crept by in a lazy blink of his beautiful brown eyes. And now, in the place where she’d spent so many of her stolen days and illicit nights, she could almost imagine the clocks had rolled back and he’d never left. She’d certainly wished for it enough times.

Short of pressing the doorbell with her nose she had no way to attract his attention, so she pushed on the door handle with her elbow and shouldered her way through the unlocked door into the narrow hall. The same worn carpet, lending a musty smell to the house these days, ran straight ahead to the kitchen and up the stairs. She walked towards the kitchen, ignoring the grime of a house where the owner hadn’t cared as much for the fabric of the building over the years as he did the family members within it. Framed portraits and holiday snapshots of Dec and his dad lined the walls, but she brushed past each of them. She could describe the position and content of each—perhaps accurately pinpoint the date of a few if she appeared on Mastermind with ‘The early life of Declan Pearce’ as her specialist subject.

But as she turned to push through the door into the next room, she caught sight of some new pictures and swallowed down a mixture of envy and bitterness at the juxtaposition of Declan’s life before and after—the part where he’d moved on without her. Even after Dec left, his dad must have continued to hang pictures of him because there he was, framed with as much care as anything that gone before.

Dec in an office of black leather and gleaming chrome—a vista of New York spread like a map through the huge picture window behind him; Dec beside an aeroplane bearing his name—sunglasses on, wide grin in place, and a suit that must have been expensive but one he wore without effort and made it look good.

Dec behind a podium.

Dec in an apartment so swish she’d have believed someone had Photoshopped him into it if she didn’t know better.

Dec… Dec… Dec. Just him.

Her gaze skimmed the remainder of the newest frames, and her thoughts stalled. She leant closer. No. They weren’t photographs. They were pictures that had been cut with great care from glossy magazines and newspaper articles, as if someone was reduced to simply scrapbooking a loved one’s life rather than being part of it.

Regret flashed through her. It didn’t show the future—the life together— she and Dec had planned in all those late nights that somehow turned into seeing the dawn. If she was honest, it didn’t show any sort of life she’d ever imagined for anyone she knew, let alone someone she loved. And especially not for Dec. She’d always believed they were the same type of person. But maybe not now she could see his life through someone else’s eyes.

She shrugged, trying to throw off her sudden melancholy. The fish and chips wouldn’t eat themselves.

Release blitz organised by Writer Marketing Services.