All posts by K D Grace

Starla Kaye Tells the Story Behind The CEO and the Cowboy

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It’s my pleasure to welcome Starla Kaye to Hopeful Romantic to share the story behind her hot new novel, The CEO and the Cowboy. And Starla is offering an exciting contest as well. Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win a copy of either MAGGIE’S SECRET WISH or STARTING OVER from Decadent Publishing and a special gift: a Spurs auto coaster. Contest ends October 6.

I live in the mid-west and tend to write most of my stories somewhere in familiar territory. Kansas City is one of my favorite places and I especially love the Country Club Plaza area. There are some really beautiful houses along Ward Parkway and I couldn’t resist having my CEO hero, Daniel Patterson, living in one of them. The cover even has a cityscape of the Plaza area, which is perfect.

My other hero, the cowboy Calhoun Cordell, has a ranch in the Flint Hills near Manhattan, Kansas, which is another area of Kansas that I am familiar with. His ranch doesn’t actually play much of a part in this story. But I will be writing a sequel and the ranch will have a bigger role in it.

THE CEO AND THE COWBOY is my second m/m romance for Decadent Publishing. It is another story of two heart-wounded, struggling men trying to make sense of their lives and stumbling into an unexpected romance. Although my main romance writing is m/f, I am enjoying writing these special stories. Everyone deserves to be loved and to love someone. All that matters to me is that my characters are in need of finding that one special person who makes their life complete.

Since the biggest percentage of my 50 some published stories involve cowboys, I wanted to write a story about a rancher, and I enjoy writing stories with businessmen as heroes. So I had my two basic characters in mind and a general location, then all I needed was a way to get these two men together. Who knew they would both show up at Calhoun’s ex-fiancée’s wedding! I certainly didn’t when I sat down and started writing the story.

That’s how I tend to write my stories. I come up with a title first, character names and a basic idea of what they look like next (I use photos from somewhere to refer to as I write occasionally). Then I come up with what in their backgrounds or current life might be a conflict between them. Sometimes I have a really loose idea of plot points to aim for, but I don’t outline. I’ve learned over my dozen plus years of being published that outlining in too much depth ruins the story for me. I feel like I’m finished with it after putting so much work in an outline. And my characters usually hate the outlines, too. They become “real” people (to me) and they want to follow their own paths in life, make their own mistakes, run into their walls and have to figure out ways around them. They take me along for the ride. I love working this way and I love the unexpected twists in the story telling.

THE CEO AND THE COWBOY has one such unexpected twist after Calhoun and Daniel have this sort of falling out. I wouldn’t have guessed they would do this (and I’m not telling you what happened), but it fit them and the story. So basically I’m a go-with-the-flow kind of writer.

BLURB

The whole thing about relationships and feelings confuses the heck out of Calhoun. He’s a simple cowboy and he’d been planning to marry a long-time friend for a while. When he finally realizes it doesn’t feel right, he lets her go. He probably shouldn’t have gone to her wedding to another man, but she wanted him there. But that’s when he really gets confused. His eye is drawn to a seriously hot businessman…and that sure does unnerve him…and yet….

Emotionally burned by the last man he thought he’d loved, Daniel isn’t anxious to replace him. But there is something about the proud, bedroom-eyed cowboy who shows up at his friend’s wedding. The CEO isn’t even sure if the cowboy’s gay, although the heat firing between them makes him wonder….

What he does know is that he plans to find out.

Available from:

Decadent Publishing

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon FR

Amazon DE

Amazon IT

Amazon ES

EXCERPT

Calhoun wondered what the hell he was doing in Patterson’s home, why he’d agreed to come here. From the second the man had asked him to see his Western art collection, he’d sensed there was more to it than that. The way he’d kept looking at him over his beer with such heat in his eyes…the strange way he hadn’t been able to look away…all of it unnerved him. Yet here he was, following him up the large, winding staircase, up to his bedroom, no doubt. Another guy’s bedroom! Holy hell.

Even more unsettling, he’d just been kissed. By a man! Damn! And it had felt…well, good. No, better than good. He’d even kissed him back. His chest pounded; his mind whirled with all the things happening to him, with myriad confused feelings spinning through him.

Patterson climbed the stairs in front of him, his long legs taking them two at a time. With each step the fabric across his ass pulled tight. For a city boy, a businessman, this man had a mighty fine butt. Another thought that unnerved him. He’d admired men for dressing well or acting confident and in charge, traits he identified with and appreciated in others. But he’d damn sure never spent any time admiring another man’s body.

“You okay?” Patterson moved onto the landing and glanced back at him.

He saw beyond the other man’s proud exterior, saw the hint of vulnerability in his eyes. It was clear Daniel had experience in what was happening between them, while he had only a very limited knowledge of such things. Daniel seemed…worried about him. The notion settled his nerves a bit.

“I’m hanging in.” That was as much as he could admit. Fact was, he still thought he should turn tail and run like the blazes in the other direction. He met his gaze.

Relief passed through his eyes, and he turned down a long hallway. With his first step, he passed in front of some kind of sensor because lights came on along the floorboards and ahead in a room Calhoun figured must be where they were headed. His bedroom. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have believed he’d be following another man to his bedroom. His gut tightened. Sweat beaded his spine and upper lip.

Patterson—maybe he needed to think of him on a first-name basis now—waited for him just inside a room big enough to sleep a dozen or so people, except there was only one bed. A hell of a bed it was, too. He’d never seen anything like the obviously king-sized—maybe bigger—bed with four thick columns for bed posts and a fancy carved headboard as tall as he was. A thick red and black comforter covered it. He gave the rest of the dark wood furnishings barely a glance. Mahogany, were they? It was the bed that caught and held his attention.

By the time he’d stopped gaping at the bed, Daniel had removed his suit jacket and tie. His white dress shirt was half unbuttoned. Through the slight opening, he noted a light dusting of dark, curly hair. His own chest was smoothly bare, a genetic thing from his long-ago Comanche great-great-great-grandmother. His mouth watered, and it surprised him that he wanted to touch that chest hair. He shouldn’t want to, shouldn’t even be thinking about it.

“We can stop right now.” He again offered him an out, although he sounded hopeful. “I’m going to tell you up front I want you. I’ve wanted to strip you out of your fine Western suit from the moment I saw you walk into the church.”

Starla Kaye

Family is extremely important to me. Life is far too short not to spend time with these special people in some way each day. My husband supports me in my writing craziness…always eagerly waiting for that million-dollar sale. (Dream on.) My daughter supports me in so many ways, including designing my website and fixing the many computer screw-ups I manage on an almost daily basis. And the rest of my family is there for me whenever I need them. I live for them all and love them with all of my heart. I laugh with them, too.

Beyond my family, I enjoy traveling anywhere, at anytime. I’ve been fortunate enough to see so many interesting places over my life, places I’ve read about or heard about. All of my many adventures and observations of people and places help my writer’s imagination. I’m filled with ‘what ifs’ and ideas for yet more characters. My writing, too, leads me on many adventures. I dabble with romances of many sub-genres: contemporary, historical Western, medieval, sci-fi, paranormal, and Regency. As with never having enough of traveling, I will never have enough of writing.

Find Starla Kaye at:

Website: Starla Kaye

Twitter:  Starla Kaye

Facebook: Starla Kaye Writer

Pinterest:  Starla Kaye

 

Mud Mountains and Jurassic Treasures

Blog, Inspiration, , ,

It’s a mountain of mud, Black Ven, constantly flowing and collapsing and being washed into the sea. It’s the largest mud slide in Europe. On one end, at a place called Church Cliffs, Mary Anning found her famous ichthyosaur fossil in 1811. It’s impossible to stand on the beach looking up at its towering black mass and not be a little bit weak-kneed.

Black Ven far left

The cool thing about Black Ven is that it’s not JUST a mountain of mud. Black Ven is a mountain of prehistoric mud, a mountain of mud filled with fossils. Raymond and I walk along the beach with the other fossil hunters beneath this intimidating wall of mud hoping we’ll get lucky and find something positively Jurassic.

Bright yellow signs warn fossil hunters to keep off the unstable mud cliffs, and even from a safe distance, occasionally we can feel the mud shifting beneath the sand and rock. Just a reminder that this is a landscape in flux.

We’re on holiday in Lyme Regis. We have our official goggles to protect our eyes from flying rock fragments, and we have our official hammers and chisels to create said flying fragments in search of the surprise in the middle. I keep my focus on the litter and debris under my feet, not just looking for fossilised treasure, but also to keep from falling on my butt.

Raymond’s beautiful Crinoid

The best find of the day is an exquisitely detailed crinoid Raymond finds while standing a little bit closer to the threatening mud mountain that I’m particularly comfortable with. But then after he finds it, I’m willing to risk a closer walk. A bloke from Brazil is there with his wife. He

The day’s treasures

points us to a right smorgasbord of belemnites closer. It’s like picking up small bits of pointed rock bullets, and the more we pick up, the more we want to pick up – even while we’re wondering what we’re going to do with a pocketful of belemnite bits.

A lot of the bigger rocks, the boulders too big to stick in our pockets and bring home are covered in trace fossils of

Ammonite in a boulder. Not Titanitus giganteus, but still very impressive.

ammonites. We take snapshots to remember how amazing they are, and we stand for a long time admiring their beauty and their size. While we eat our sandwiches looking out to the changeable sea, Raymond reads to me from the fossil book that some ammonites got to be two meters across. I’m stunned. He reads the name from the book –Titanites giganteus, which we both agree is a good name. Most died out before the Cretaceous, he adds.

As the tide begins to come in, we work our way back toward Lyme Regis and end up in the Pilot Boat Pub for a pint and some chips – our reward for the successes of the day. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and we’re told the worse the weather the more fossils wash out of Black Ven.

Now back home in our cottage, as we look over our stash and sip coffee, we talk about

Ammonite in boulder

what a perfect day it’s been, eagerly looking at other fossil hunters’ treasures and sharing our own, sifting through the rock that’s been washed from Black Ven by the sea and the rains, and experiencing the rush of finding bits of the ancient past before they wash out to sea and are lost forever. It was a good day. It’s supposed to rain tonight. Who knows what treasures will wash free from the prehistoric mud? Someday the whole mountain will wash into the sea, along with all of its secrets of the past. But as for today, we took home a few of those fabulously ancient secrets tucked away in the pockets of our walking trousers.

Some experiences have nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with widening and deepening my inner world so that I have something to write about. Finding Jurassic treasures that Black Ven has given up to the sea is one of those experiences.

An Executive Decision Now Available!

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I’m very excited to announce the release of my novel, An Executive Decision! AED is Book One of The Executive Decisions Trilogy. Good things are worth waiting for, and with a lovely new cover and some spicy new scenes (Think Editor’s Cut of a film), I’m hardly able to contain myself! Romance is in the air in the executive suites at Pneuma Inc. The problem is, Ellison Thorne and Dee Henning think it’s just their secret weapon, The Executive Sex Clause, paving the way for fabulous win-win deals!

An Executive Decision is available exclusively on Kindle through October, but you can get your hot little hands on the print version 1st November.

Blurb:

Sex in the contract – it’s the only way super-focused, over-worked CEO, Ellison Thorne, is ever going to get laid. That’s what his retiring business partner and secret match-maker, Beverly Neumann, thinks. She’s convinced no-strings, stress-free sex in certain employee contracts would raise productivity and minimize stress — perfect for a busy executive like Ellis. But she’s joking, right?

Enter her hand-picked replacement, Dee Henning. Young, hungry, gifted, Dee is the queen of no time for sex. When negotiations on a major project break down, and Dee and Ellis end up in each other’s arms, the Executive Sex Clause suddenly becomes more than a joke. In fact hot executive sex just might be the ultimate secret weapon for success. But secrets seldom remain secret, and Dee and Ellis soon learn there’s no such thing as no-strings where the heart is concerned.

Excerpt:

At last Ellis pushed his chair back and looked up at her. ‘Marston refused the proposal.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Dee said again.

‘Not that it was a huge surprise, but I could have done nicely without him berating me for hiring someone incompetent and irresponsible to take Beverly’s place. That didn’t exactly make my day. What the hell happened?’

She felt the heat rising up her spine and onto her ears. ‘I overslept.’ She forced the words out into the chilled room.

‘You overslept?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded imperceptibly, feeling the scrutiny of his glare.

For a long moment he just stared at her. She forced herself to meet his gaze and held her tongue, afraid if she tried to say anything she’d burst into tears, and she despised women who cried.

‘That’s it, then? You overslept.’

She nodded again, swallowing hard.

‘Well that’s a relief.’ He leaned forward in his chair and rose almost as though he were going to leap over the desk and pounce. The tension in his body was palpable. ‘I was afraid you were lying on the freeway somewhere in a pool of blood. I’m so relieved that it was nothing so dire, and that you simply overslept.’ With each word, his voice grew louder until he wasn’t exactly yelling, but neither was there any way she could miss his message as each word drove her deeper into her chair until she felt as trapped as if she had been tied there.

‘I’m sorry,’ she forced a whisper through the roadblock in her throat, but the stinging behind her eyes warned that a swift exit would be necessary if she were to avoid the flood.

‘Sorry? You’re sorry? Tally had to pick up the slack. Do you have any idea how that looked? Just when I was starting to make progress with Marston, just when the man was beginning to listen to reason, you oversleep. You made Jamison’s deal seem all the sweeter, that’s what you did. Now, tell me what the hell’s going on.’

‘Pardon?’

He moved from behind his desk and paced the carpet in front of her like a bull ready to charge. ‘You’re supposed to be working to shore up the situation with Scribal. I told you up front that’s your major concern at the moment, then not only do you oversleep and miss an important meeting, but I find out you’ve been working on something else behind my back.’ Before she could respond, he turned on her. ‘Is Trouvères what you’ve been staying up half the night and missing meetings for? When I hired you, I never thought you, of all people, would neglect your responsibilities.’

‘I’m not neglecting anything. If you would just –‘

He interrupted her. ‘Don’t think just because I gave you this job, you suddenly know it all. I took a big risk hiring you.’ He stopped pacing and rooted himself in front of her, close enough that she had to strain her neck to look up at him. ‘You want to do something; you bring it to me first. You’re not ready to make that kind of decision on your own. You don’t have the experience it takes to…to…  You’re not Beverly.’

His words were a hard slap, felt more than heard above the roar in her ears. She wasn’t sure the ragged breathing her brain finally registered in the chasm of silence that followed his tirade was his or her own.

The phone rang into the charged atmosphere and Ellis jerked it from its cradle in a strangle hold. ‘This had better be good, Lynn. Wade? What the hell does he want? Can’t it wait?  We’re not finished yet. I can what?’ He heaved a sigh of resignation and slammed the receiver back down. ‘Wade wants to see you right now. He says I can get back to you on this, and believe me, I intend to.’ He nodded toward the door. ‘Well, go on, at least don’t keep him waiting. Pick up the notes on the meeting from Sandra.’

She stood on trembling legs and turned to go. As she reached for the door, he called to her. ‘Dee, I strongly suggest you make no more attempts to prove Marston right about you.’

Sandra joined her in the hall. ‘I have the meeting notes for you.’

‘Just put them on my desk. Wade wants to see me.’

Sandra nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I told him he did. And I told him to give you a few minutes in the ladies to freshen up first.’ She offered a reassuring smile and turned on her heels.

*****
Still breathing like a freight train, Ellis watched Dee disappear shutting the door behind her. He grabbed up the phone and called his secretary. ‘Lynn, hold all my calls. I don’t want to be disturbed. How long? Until I say otherwise, that’s how long.’ He slammed the receiver down, snapped his laptop shut and stormed down the hall to the lounge.

He shoved his way out of his jacket and tossed it across the wingback chair, then practically strangled himself in his efforts to loosen his tie. From the coffee table he grabbed up the remote and plunged the room into the wild raucous ride of the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Then he dropped onto the sofa struggling to breath, struggling to regain control, struggling to figure out what the hell had just happened. All through the meeting, when Dee didn’t show up, he was terrified that something horrible had happened, terrified that he would lose Dee the same way he had lost Beverly. And the relief he felt at seeing her. Jesus, the relief was like nothing he’s ever felt before.

If Lynn hadn’t called, if Wade hadn’t demanded Dee’s presence … If Ellis had had one more second with her, he would have yanked her up from the chair and fucked her senseless right there in the middle of the day with all of Pneuma Inc just outside his door, fucked her as though he might never get another chance, fucked her as though his life depended on it, and that’s exactly how it felt. He wiped cold sweat from his forehead and struggled to breathe. If he’d lost her, Jesus! He couldn’t even bear the thought.

Christ, he couldn’t go on like this. It felt like he was always either avoiding her or jerking off thinking about her. And damn if he wasn’t thinking about her all the time; the shape of her, the feel of her, the sass of her. He’d never wanted anything so badly. And then … and then she screws up so royally that all he wanted to do was punish her, to turn her over his knee for giving him such a scare, to … to … to fuck her until she couldn’t walk.

Buy Links:

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Lakeland Heatwave Times Two!

New Releases, News

It’s official! Riding the Ether is now out in the Kindle store! The print version will hit the shelves later this month. I’m so excited to finally be able to share more of the Lakeland Heatwave story with you! Riding the Ether continues the story of my witchs of the Elemental Coven with a new addition to the gang. Welcome Cassandra Larkin, lusty, passionate, powerful and leading a secret life, a secret life which gets the attention of a demon.

If you’ve not yet read book one of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy, now is your chance to catch up. Body Temperature and Rising is FREE on Kindle and on iTunes until the end of October! A sexy, intense,  bewitching read just in time for Halloween.

Read them both for the heat and the thrill!

Riding the Ether Blurb

Cassandra Larkin keeps her ravenous and dangerous sexual appetite secret until she seduces Anderson in the mysterious void of the Ether.  Anderson is the sexy, insatiable ghost who can give her exactly what she needs.

But sex is dangerous in a place like the Ether…

When the treacherous demon, Deacon, discovers the truth about the origin of Cassandra’s powerful lust, he plots to use her sex magic for revenge on Tara Stone and the Elemental Coven, who practice their own brand of sex magic.

Cassandra must embrace the lust and sexuality she fears and learn to use its power. Will she stand with Anderson, Tara, and the Elemental Coven against Deacon’s wrath or suffer the loss of friendship, magic and love?

Excerpt

From a long distance, he heard Tara moan, heard the rush of her breath, felt her legs tighten around his hips, but he was already through the Gateway, speeding forward with each thrust deeper and deeper into the dream. It was familiar territory, a journey he had made with Tara many times before. He found himself poised there on the threshold of the unconscious waiting to be drawn under, waiting to uncover secrets. He felt a slight tightening in his chest, an acceleration of his heart, and the scraping of flesh against stone, solid and bruising. His pulse accelerated further. The hair on the back of his neck rose. Someone called his name from a long way off, but it was not Tara. His last thought before he was catapulted from the flesh with a force violent enough to take his breath away, if there had been breath left, was that he was no longer in the Dream World.

He was unsure if he had lost consciousness, but Anderson knew immediately, when he had gathered himself enough for the knowing, that he was in the Ether, though how he got there he could not tell. Immediately he cast the counting spell his mother had taught him when, at last, she agreed that even though he was no daughter, he had wit enough and was gifted enough in the Old Ways to walk safely in the Void. He had already crafted his own counting spell, for until she had relented, he had visited the Ether in secret without her permission. More efficient than his, her spell allowed him to set a small clock in the back of his mind, a clock that kept track of time in the World of Flesh, the only way to mark the passing of time in the Ether. If the counting spell were not cast, one could very easily die. While starvation set in and the comatose body withered away in the World of Flesh, no time passed at all in the Ether. Time was simply not a concept in the Void.

And though he did not remember casting the special enfleshment spell, the one he always cast for himself in the Ether, he was fully in the flesh, completely naked, and fully, nay, outrageously aroused. The pressure in his groin was both agonizing and exquisite. He reached for his manhood, knowing full well he was in need of wit that he did not possess when his lust was so great.

But before he could stroke himself to release, a voice spoke out from the Void. ‘That belongs to me.’

Buy Ether here

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Get Body Temperature and Rising FREE here

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

iTunes

Passionate Partners: Smut the Blisse/Mitnik Way

Blog, Interviews, , , , , , , , , ,

I’m so excited to kick off my new Passionate Partners series on A Hopeful Romantic. Maybe more than any other question, we erotic authors are asked how our partners feel about our writing. When sex is our chosen subject it’s no surprise that people want to know how that effects the dynamic of our most personal relationships. Most of you know that my lovely hubby, Raymond is my number one fan and supporter, and that I couldn’t manage half of what I do without his help and support. But there are lots of passionate partners out there, who help us erotic authors and cheer us on in many different ways.

One of the couples I’ve come to know personally and admire deeply is the fabulous team of Victoria Blisse and Kevin Mitnik. It’s my pleasure to interview them as my first Passionate Partners. They’ve joined me on A Hopeful Romantic to give us a little peek into their passionate partnership.

Kevin Mitnik is a Husband, Father, Evertonian, Manic Depressive, Whovian, Geek and Award-Winning Web Designer. His Plugins, Hacks, Mods, Styles, Skins and Addons for vBulletin, WordPress, MercuryBoard, PHPBB and other Scripts have won various awards and nominations.

His Erotic Community JustErotica won a Community Webbie, and the original design for Victoria Blisse won an Innovationz Webbie. He now divides his time between helping his Wife with her Projects and tending to his Kingdom in The Settlers Online.

Learn more at Mitnik22.co.uk

Victoria Blisse is a mother, wife, Christian, Manchester United fan and award winning erotica author. She is also the editor of several Bigger Briefs collections, Smut by the Sea and Smut in the City.

She is equally at home behind a laptop or a cooker and she loves to create stories, poems, cakes and biscuits that make people happy. She was born near Manchester, England and her northern English quirkiness shows through in all of her stories. Passion, love and laughter fill her works, just as they fill her busy life.

Find out more at http://victoriablisse.co.uk or follow and friend Victoria: http://twitter.com/victoriablisse http://facebook.com/victoriablisse

Victoria and Kevin have been married for 12 years and met online 15 years ago back before it was all the rage to do so! They work together at blisseuk.com on various author promotions such as Blisse Kisses, Blissemas and more.

KD: Victoria and Kevin, I consider the two of you an amazing team when it comes to supporting each other and promoting the celebration of sexuality through erotica. How did the journey begin, and has it always been a team effort?

Victoria: It’s all Kevin’s fault in the first place! I had a dream one night, a sexy dream, and it wouldn’t leave me alone so Kev said to write it down. I did, and he thought it was good so he told me to post it at literotica.com for people to read and again, I did. I got great feedback and I’ve been writing ever since!

Kevin: Really it started as Victoria’s writing but I was always behind the scenes, helping with editing and putting together and running her website. As time went by we’ve expanded into promotions for other authors as there seemed to be a gap in the market for a bit of Blisse and now we both put a lot of time and effort into running different events like the Sunday Snog every week and Blissemas in December.

KD: Victoria, what does Kevin do to help your writing career that you appreciate more than anything else?

Victoria: It’s the support and encouragement. He does everything from listening to me read out my stories and helping me edit them to letting me go all around the country to attend book signings and conferences to further my career. He even cooks, cleans and looks after the daughter if I have a deadline I’ve got to work to! He never ever falters in his support of me and my writing and I love that.

KD: Kevin, what, so far (knowing that there are lots more such moments ahead) has been the moment in Victoria’s career when you’ve been the most proud of her?

Kevin: There’s been a few but I guess it would be when I went with Victoria to Erotica last year and I saw her standing up and reading in front of a crowd, answering questions and being so confident with all those strangers. She was so professional and I was proud to be there with my famous author wife!

KD:  What has been the craziest experience you’ve shared in your mutual journey through erotica?

Kevin: That would probably be Erotica again with the adult babies, the tight pants, the corsets and the sexuality on show.

Victoria: And meeting all those strange authorly types in the flesh. All as mad as hatters you know!

Kevin: Just like you.

Victoria: Well, yes. That is probably true.

KD: Hmmm. They sound like my kind of people.

KD: Kevin, you are actually coming into your own as an erotic author too. Has that changed the dynamic of the way the two of you work together?

Kevin: I’ve always written bits and pieces and having Victoria in the industry already it gave me the confidence to submit my story to the Get Off Three Porn stars contest.  I was surprised when I actually won. I’m not planning on a full time erotic writing career as such, I’ll leave that to the wife, but it’s fun to join in with a story of my own now and then.

KD: What’s the hardest part of the Blisse/Mitnik working partnership?

Kevin: Having time to still be a couple between all the writing and website designing and promoting and traveling for readings and whatever. We need more time.

Victoria: I’d say it’s aligning the different ways we work. I am a multi-tasker and a procrastinator and so I don’t always run to time. Kevin is very focused and when he has a task to do his mind will not wander from that even for a minute. Sometimes we frustrate each other just by being ourselves!

KD: What’s the best part?

Kevin: The mutual support.

Victoria: Working with my bestest mate in all the world. And the sex. Though generally that’s not technically a part of the job.

Kevin: But you told me it was!

Victoria: Research Dear, Research!

KD: I happen to know that the two of you are committed to the celebration of sexuality and erotica in a much larger way than just to writing. In fact, you two are the master minds behind an event I’m certainly looking forward to next June, Smut By the Sea in Scarborough. Now that’s a huge team effort. Tell us a bit about it.

Victoria: Smut by the Sea is a daylong event on the 22nd June 2013 to celebrate all things kinky and erotic including writing. Especially the anthologies of the same name.

Kevin: It’ll be at Scarbrough Library and the day event is free for people wander in, listen to some readings, browse the erotic market and have a brew. The evening will be a swanky book launch with readings from the Smut by the Sea anthologies and a chance to get your books signed! This will be £10 on the night or you can get yourself an earlybird ticket for just £5 right now: http://smutbythesea.eventbrite.co.uk/

Victoria: And all the info is up at http://smutbythesea.co.uk as we get more details they will go up on the website. The event is still in the planning stages and loads more fun and sexiness will be added to it by the time June comes around!

KD: What’s the best advice the two of you can offer to make that strange and wonderful relationship between erotica writers and their partners run smoother?

Kevin: Honesty. You have to be open with one another about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Also Support is really important, sometimes there are going to be rejections and fussy editors you need to be there to give solace when needed and reassurance and encourage them to continue.

Victoria: I’d say communication is really important. Like I need to let Kevin know when I have deadlines so he realises I’m not avoiding him, I’m just busy. I need to know when Kevin has websites to finish or covers to make so that I can give him the time and space he needs to do that. Being able to give constructive criticism is good too. I know when Kevin tells me to change something in a story it’s not because he’s being a pain in the bum it’s because he wants it to be the best it can be. Same goes for me suggesting a different font or colour on a page or a cover Kevin is designing. We urge each other to be the best we can be.

KD: Besides Smut By The Sea, what future plans for Blisse/Mitnik?

Victoria: We Have Smut and Magic on the 27th October at Sh! Womenstore in Hoxton, London. This is a joint event with your good self, KD, and will be great fun as we are providing the Smut with Lucy Felthouse and you’re bringing the magic with Riding the Ether. This is the first Smut in the City event and I know it’s going to be great. For more details check: http:// http://smutinthecity.co.uk/

Kevin: And we have plans for more Smut events in future. This is just the start of our smutty journey!

Victoria: Oh and of course there is Blissemas which we will both be running in December. One lucky winner will receive a kindle fire! For details check: http://blissemas.co.uk

Kevin: And there might be something a little cheeky and blisseful for Eastertime next year too! Look out for the Blisse Bunnies in the new year!

KD: Wow! It’s amazing what a little teamwork can do. You two are phenomenal! Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing a few of the secrets of Passionate Partners. I’ll see you both in London for Smut and Magic!