Ruby Madden & Curious Readers

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It’s my pleasure to welcome the lovely Ruby Madden to A Hopeful Romantic for the first time ever, but hopefully not the last.  Are you curious? Ruby likes you that way. 

Curiouser & Curiouser…

Ruby Madden cover imageI rely a great deal on the curiosity of readers when it comes to what I write. First, it started with my own curiosities needing an outlet and expression. Over the last two years, as I’ve had interactions with the writing-reading-publishing community in general, I’ve been thrilled to discover how much I enjoy the interaction, exchange of ideas, support, sharing of successes and the discussion surrounding challenges.

I’m never bored. Ever. Which is part of the thrill of writing in this particular genre – erotic fiction.

My stories focus on the journey, exploration and the growth a character (or more accurately, a cast of characters) embraces when experiencing new erotic pursuits. Typically, carnal and lustful need is the focus and then I weave in the emotional inter-play of how we, as human beings, sexually interrelate with one another. Our exploration of desire.

I enjoy exploring group dynamics such as threesomes, menages (menage-a-trois), orgies and ‘open’ or casual relations amongst sex-play partners. Also, the challenges that can come into play when there might be a bit of jealousy or rivalry. In this, my characters seek to explore learning maturity, boundaries, and being adults who respect other’s boundaries and right of sexual self-expression and experience.

In Toy Box: San Francisco (a West Coast Erotica stand-alone novelette series), I explore the world of initiating sexual interaction online, via the internet. The two primary characters, Cassandra and Ryan, come from two entirely different worlds. Cassandra was raised and lives in the San Francisco, Bay area. She is a Stanford graduate, and a successful businesswoman. Ryan lives in Santa Barbara, was raised in Southern California, and is a successful, albeit now-retired, pro Soccer player.

Cassandra is growing out of her comfort range of only have short-term and/or strictly carnal & sexual involvements initiated with men online. Men whom she introduces to her toy-box. A risk-taker in the business realm and bedroom, she’s never quite met her match. Until now.

Ryan is tired of being perceived solely as a jock and a ‘player’. Having grown bored of the women he typically meets and interacts with in the sport world, he’s seeking to know thyself better and has sought the guidance of a therapist who helps him navigate the next phase of his life and what he seeks from it. In this, he discovers he is seeking a partner and life companion.

Nonetheless, they’re both up to their usual tricks and meet online. What happens next? Will they be able to lure one another outside of their usual comfort zones?

 

EXCERPT:

{ CASSANDRA }

Home from work, I was sitting in my PJ’s on my sofa, laptop on my lap and peering at Ryan’s pics again. My fingers flew across the keyboard.

Me: If I were to masturbate, while thinking of you, your face and that sexy bod… what would you hope I’d do to enjoy myself? Thoughtful response, please. This will actually happen when I get a reply…

I included a picture of my toy-box, a beautiful hand-carved wooden piece that I’d been given as a gift in India while there for business.

I’m sure they had no idea what good use I would put it to when I returned home. The executive who’d given it to me had explained that the type of wood it was made from benefited from being touched and caressed by human hands as the oil from the skin helped to maintain the color and texture of the wood over time. He had rubbed his hand over the lid, while smiling at me.

The gesture was sincere and innocent. True gratitude for the contract I’d helped them with which meant more business to their company than they’d dare dreamed possible.

I’d smiled and known instantly what I would use it for. Of course, he thought I would use it for something far less naughty and imaginative. Say, for tea. And although tea bags would look absolutely scrumptious in just such a container, my collection of sex-toys would look better.

I love my sex-toy collection.

I invested in my toys like anything else, with a lot of thought and with a goal of acquiring the best. This meant designs that were both useful, practical and elegant. Materials that would last with proper care and were ‘insertion-friendly’. Toys that had aesthetic appeal, excellent functional purpose, and made sex-play with new lovers even more fun.

Men’s reactions to my Toy Box ranged from enthusiastic delight to offended confusion. It just depended on their exposure, curiosity and experience.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

Buy Links:

AMZN US: http://bit.ly/1oLphql

AMZN UK: http://amzn.to/1oLplWW

PLAY: http://bit.ly/MEii6S

KOBO: http://bit.ly/1lWPSkr

B&N (Nook): http://bit.ly/Xj8G82

Scrbd.: http://bit.ly/Xj8NQQ

iBooks: Link to Come

 

Ruby Madden can be found at the following spots on the Internet:

GoodReads

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twitter

BlogSpot

G+

LibraryThing

FaceBook

The Story behind Helen Callaghan’s Deliciously Chilling Story, Sex & the Single Hive Mind

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It’s a total pleasure to welcome my dear friend and fabulous writer, Helen Callaghan to A Hopeful Romantic to share a bit of the story behind one of my favourite short stories of all time, Sex and the Single Hive Mind. Even better still, the story is now available in the vibrant new Science Fiction anthology, Mind Seed and as a podcast with CrimeCity. Enjoy! –K D

*****

Sex and the Single Hive Mind is set in the near future. It’s a very dark story about Susannah Watson, a woman who is kidnapped and then made into an immobile living host for carnivorous algae that devours her. The result is then to be sold on as an illegal drug. All of which is terrible news for Susannah, of course, but has unforeseen side effects.

Believe it or not, it’s a comedy.

I wanted to write something about body theft – not Burke and Hare cadaver thieves, but something more like Invasion of the Body Snatchers – things that come from outside, and steal your body for their own wicked purposes.

Helen Callaghan Sex Hive mindproduct_thumbnailPersonally, I find that kind of thing terrifying. When Donald Sutherland starts that unearthly shrieking at the end of the movie, I freaked out as a kid.

It’s the exact same wellspring of horror that The Exorcist draws from – something that doesn’t mean you well now has control of you, while you look on, horrified. Whether you are locked in there still, or your own personal will simply evaporates, the terror lies in the loss of your agency, your control over your own flesh, the very thing that is dearest to you, and is indivisible from your sense of self.

In all of these cases, the reader’s sympathy lies absolutely with the possessee, if you like – the possessing entity barely has a motive, never mind a personality (spewing out pea soup and rude words hardly counts as character).

So I thought it might be kind of cool to explore the idea of body-snatching from the body snatcher’s point of view – in this case the point of view of a divorced middle-aged cat lady who suddenly finds herself with access to the bodies of the spoiled young things that have effectively murdered her.

And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn out that doing this was tons of fun, but nevertheless, there is, I think, a core of sadness – Susannah has access to their flesh and its pleasures, but can’t enjoy it because ultimately her victims all reflect only herself, and her attempt to use her newfound powers to reach out to her object of desire does not go as planned.

Her absurdity and loneliness, is, in a way, also similar to the loneliness of the writer and her characters. Characters, however fascinating, are still just creations, manifestations of a single will.

Anyway, the story appears in the anthology Mind Seed (http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/edited-by-david-gullen-gary-couzens/mind-seed/paperback/product-21702685.html) edited by David Gullen and Gary Couzens. The book has been put together to remember Denni Schnapp, biologist, traveller, science fiction writer, and alongside me (www.helencallaghan.co.uk) a member of the T Party Writers group (http://tpartywriters.wordpress.com) based in London, which also included KD.

 

Excerpt from Sex and the Single Hive Mind:

It’s not Conor this time, but Imogen. Raoul and Conor and Imogen, named for the pretensions of their parents, carriers of their bougeousie. Colonised by them.

But for now, I’m dreaming Imogen. I know this because she’s in a tiny neat kitchen, looking at our mutual reflection in the darkened window. She still looks supercilious even with no-one on hand to disapprove of. I suspect that it might just be a cast of her features, something she can’t control but which her character does little to mitigate.

She’s washing dishes. She’s doing this very slowly, as she’s obviously drugged out of her tiny mind. I can taste the sharpness of cut grass in her mouth.

She’s eaten half a piece of steamed fish and boiled vegetables, without salt or pepper. I know this and am not sure how. My/her hands stir through warm soapy water.

Time to try it, then.

Her head raises, she looks into the window.

“My name is Susannah Watson.”

The words emerge without ceremony. I don’t know what I was expecting, to be honest. I thought perhaps there might be some sort of intense psychic battle, where I warred for dominance against her innate personality, but she doesn’t appear to have one. Her body is an empty house and I control it utterly, without let or hindrance.  The drug has reduced to her to a series of mannerisms, which fill her head like ugly furniture left behind by the previous tenants.

“My name is Susannah Watson,” I say again. My voice is a stranger’s, filled with unfamiliar music. “I am fifty-two years old. I am a detective in the Metropolitan Police, Smithfield division. I have two cats and one ex-husband. I have been… I am…”

My voice fades away.

Imogen stares back blankly at me from her reflection.  From my reflection.

It’s too much, too much, and I fly, back to my concrete room. I linger there, my consciousness circling above my green body, buzzing. I see what is happening. I have colonised the flies. They ate me, and I fill them. Spider-Girl ate the flies, and I filled her.

I understand, I think.

I gather myself. I tell myself, “I want to be Imogen now.”

Nothing happens.

“Take me to Imogen.”

I summon up the memory of being her, of hot soapy water over my hands, of the taste of cut grass.

I’m standing in the kitchen again, as if I had never left. She has not moved in the meantime, as far as I can tell, and a little trail of saliva drips down from the corner of her semi-open mouth.

I wipe it away with one of her wet, soapy hands, fascinated by her soft, unmarked skin against my face. She must be thirty years younger than me, at the very least.

“I am Susannah,” I say, and my voice rolls with confidence. I laugh then, and the girl in the window’s reflection laughs with me. In a bare instant, her superior squint vanishes and I shine out of her, like the sun breaking through fast passing clouds.

Enjoy a podcast of the complete Sex and the Single Hive Mind here:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/forums/topic/crime-city-central-no-109-helen-callaghan/

 

*****

 

The anthology, Mind Seed,  celebrates Denni’s interests and all of the proceeds go to Next Generation Nepal (http://www.nextgenerationnepal.org), who are an anti-child trafficking organization. We had the launch at LonCon 3 in the ExCel centre in London, and we’re all very proud of the book and hope it will do well.

 

Buy Mind Seed Here: 

Amazon UK

Lulu.com

 

Helen CallaghanAbout Helen Callaghan: 

Helen Callaghan writes genre fic­tion inspired by her love of intel­li­gent books and brain­less movies. Her first novel, Mephistophela, is set in a near-future Lon­don and inspired by ele­ments of Marlowe’s Doc­tor Faus­tus. She is cur­rently work­ing on Bethan Avery, a psychological thriller about a teacher who receives letters from a (presumed) murder victim.

She lives in Cambridge with a hamster called Zenobia, a beloved car, some muti­nous house­plants and too many books. Her per­sonal web­page and erratically updated blog describing the writing of Sleepwalker and Mephistophela is here. She is rep­re­sented by Judith Mur­ray atGreene and Heaton.

Flappers, Jazz & Valentino’s Editor, Jillian Boyd, Talks Jazz

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It’s a total pleasure to have the very talented Jillian Boyd on my blog today. Jillian is the editor of the fabulous new anthology, Flappers, Jazz, and Valentino. Welcome Jillian!

 

Restless rhythms – All about that music called jazz

Jilly BoydJ.J. Johnson was once quoted as saying “Jazz is restless. It won’t stay put and it never will.”

Jazz music has been around in some form for quite some time, originating in the late 19th – early 20th century as interpretation of American and European classical music entwined with African and slave folk songs and the cultural influences of West African culture. It’s a genre borne of musical tradition, and one that’s ever evolving (still, to this day and probably way beyond).

And Jazz’s restless rhythms were a perfect accompaniment for the restless 20s. It was a time of change in so many ways; a time of choosing not to sit still and enjoy life as it comes after the horrors of the First World War. When the Prohibition kicked in, banning all sales of alcohol, Jazz music found its home in illicit speakeasies – the venues of the Jazz Age.

“If music be the food of love, jazz is surely the food of lewdness, of love that dare not speak its name, of the sort of “love” practised at petting parties and in speakeasies. What the young flapper may take for the cat’s pyjamas, father and mother rightly see as vulgar, cheap jazz whose wilful cacophony leads young people to degeneracy and depravity.”

The opening paragraph of The Sin in Syncopation, one of the stories in this very anthology, perfectly describes the opinion that many of the older generation of the time carried about Jazz music – viewed as an immoral threat to the old culture values and a promotion of the new and decadent values of the Roaring Twenties. One University professor dubbed it a sensual teasing of the strings of physical passion.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t see why that’s a bad thing. Jazz is in a way like sex: it’s restless, it’s rhythmic and it makes you feel alive. So it was indeed the perfect soundtrack for an age with as much light as it had shade. Jazz is like the Twenties and the Twenties is like Jazz. Jazz music is still alive today, and the Twenties are (in a way) alive too. In pictures in books, in films, in memories, in today’s vintage culture; you name it and there will be a bit of the Roaring Twenties for you to take and cherish.

Best enjoyed with a side of Bessie Smith, playing on the gramophone, of course.

 

Flappers Jazz and Valentino Blurb:

Is it not enough to lead my son into wild ways without teaching my daughter the tango?                     – Dona Luisa, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Step back in time to a decade full of glamour, glitz and decadent sin with this collection of erotica set in the Roaring Twenties. With twelve stories, in all shades from romantic and sensual to burning hot, this collection is the perfect appetizer for a night out at the speakeasy. A journalist gets a sexy introduction to the sinful syncopation of jazz music. A three-way tango performance becomes the steamiest ticket in town. The owners of a speakeasy set up a very special audition for their new trumpet boy. All this jazz and more in Flappers, Jazz and Valentino, edited by Jillian Boyd.

 

Excerpt:

From The Sin in Syncopation                                                                                                                                by Blacksilk

Cal jerked my hands away and for a second I thought that something was wrong. “Your dress,” he said, lifting my hands above my head before doing the same with my dress, tossing it to one side. I started to lift up my necklace, but he shook his head. “Leave the pearls. I like them.”

I watched as his eyes flicked down and ran up my body as they had at The Chapel before. Now, though, the look in Cal’s eyes was unconcealed, unrestrained. I looked down at myself, a little self-conscious. My crêpe de chine step-in had a lazy lustre in the dim light of the room and I hoped to heaven that I didn’t disappoint.

I felt fingers under my chin and a flurry of kisses as Cal tilted my head up to meet his. “Stand up,” he said and, as gracefully as I could manage, I climbed down from his lap. He stood too, slipped off his shoes and socks, and began to undo his belt. I loved this part. I was tempted to stand and just watch, but I’ve never been good at being passive. I pulled down the straps of my camisole as he started on his pants.

As well as my necklace, I’d kept on my rayon stockings. Men liked that. We stepped out of our remaining clothes at the same time and gazed at each other.

His toned chest, that I already loved so much, gave onto an athletic stomach and a not inconsiderable erection which jutted from angular hips. He raised his arms, etched with the delicately raised veins so often found on the male of the species, and wrapped me close to him, pressing my flesh against his.

I sighed as he lifted me in those strong arms and deposited me gently onto the mattress, falling onto me with his body and then with his mouth. His lips kissed a trail across my collar bones and then down into the subtle mounds of my small, thankfully fashionable bubs.

I could feel his prick pressed against my thigh as he bent over me and, truth be told, I longed to feel it in my hands, to take it in my mouth, even to take it inside me. I moaned as he found my nipple with his lips and alternated between kisses, licks and tiny teases with his teeth. I wrapped my legs around his body and ran one hand through his hair, the other over his back, arching into his ministrations and yet longing for more. More of him. More of everything.

Reaching down with one hand, I grasped his cock and began to massage it. I knew what to do, of course. If this was my first rent party, I’d certainly been to petting parties before. His moans into my breasts soon proved that. As I joined in, letting the thrill I was feeling at his touch out into the stuffy air, I wondered if the couple next door were having this much fun. I couldn’t hear them anymore, but the sound of music still sounded strongly through door, more so now as if more instruments had joined in.

He was bucking into my hand as I pumped him, his mouth fixed around my left nipple, sucking me slowly but surely. One hand propped him up and the other was at my right nipple, tweaking and flicking and twisting me into a frenzy. The pit in my stomach had turned into a pull in my pussy, an ache that I’d felt before but had been so much easier to ignore then.

Cal’s breath had quickened, become ragged, but now he pulled his erection back from my hand and his mouth from my tingling nipples. “Stop,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of an edge, but the way you’re going, Mae, I’m going to be completely useless to you in a minute. You’re going to make me come and I want to be inside you first.”

The words sent a pulse through my pussy. I wanted him, too. I knew it as sure as I knew my own name. And as sure as I knew I couldn’t let him have me. At least, not tonight. “I’m sorry, Cal. I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. Not tonight. You know what it’s like. This? This is nothing, but if I slept with every man who’d wanted to sleep with me after one night, I’d be dubbed a quiff before I knew it.”

I expected him to be disappointed, even angry. Instead he smiled and said jokingly, “Oh! Like that is it? You’re a popular girl!”

He planted a kiss on my lips. “I understand. You don’t let people take advantage of you, Mae, and you’re smart too. I guess I know we can’t, really. I want to. Oh, boy, do I want to, but I get it.”

“Well,” I said. “I took you to The Chapel tonight. We can go to another jazz club in the week, if you’d like that. There’ll be another party like this we can go to afterward or there’s my apartment, maybe even yours…” I wrapped myself around him again, pushing my lithe frame up into his body. I liked his body and I liked what I knew of his mind. My so-called unattainable man hadn’t been so unattainable after all, but he sure gave me a run for my money. And I liked a challenge.

I ran my fingers down Cal’s chest and along his cock, watching his face contort in pleasure. “We can meet in the day, too. We can date. And maybe after enough jazz clubs we’ll see about promising to go to a real chapel. But I bet sometime between now and then we’ll get to know each other just well enough for me to see if you give as good as you look like you do.”

He grinned and pulled away, slipping down my body in a smooth movement until his head was level with the fuzz of my vulva. “Oh,” he said, “I can give pretty good right now if you like.”

His warm breath hit me, teasing me, filling me with anticipation. “God, yes, Cal.”

His mouth bent to my pussy, nuzzling aside the hair there, and he touched his tongue to that tiny bud of flesh between my folds. He licked, and as he did so he picked up the rhythm of the jazz still filling the air through the door. Perhaps it should have felt odd, but with the music in my ears and my head in the clouds, it felt… Well, it felt like the bee’s knees.

Maybe Cal’s ridiculous article had been right after all. Maybe jazz did lead to sensuousness, maybe there was more than a little sin in syncopation. But if there was, well, I liked it.

 

Buy Flappers, Jazz and Valentino Here:

Amazon (USA)

Amazon (UK)

Amazon (Canada)

All Romance 

 

About Jillian Boyd:

Jillian Boyd is an erotica author and blogger, who has been putting dirty words on paper and on her blog for the past three years. She likes taking everyday, seemingly mundane situations and making them sexy and sensual – and when she’s not doing that, she lets her imagination fly off into history and distant planets. Where she also tries to find everyday situations and make them sexy and sensual.

She’s been published in several House of Erotica anthologies, contributed to Tiffany Reisz’s office supply erotica charity anthology Felt Tips and has a story in the Golden Crown Literary Award-winning Best Lesbian Romance 2014, published by Cleis Press. She is currently working on her first novella, a sci-fi erotic thriller called In Another Life.

 

Find Jillian Boyd here:

Blog: http://ladylaidbare.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JillyBoyd

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jboydwrites

 

 

Roman Heat: A Hot Summer Except from To Rome with Lust

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As you all know, I’m putting the final touches on To Rome with Lust, the third novel in The Mount Series, which will be out late this autumn, but I thought with summer travel and summer heat all around, it was time to tease and titillate just a little with some Roman lust. Enjoy! 

To Rome with LustBlurb To Rome with Lust:

The adventure that began with Rita Holly in London, then moved to Las Vegas with Nick Chase continues in Rome when a chance encounter among the Roman ruins has tourist, Liza Calendar, and perfumer, Paolo ‘The Nose’ Delacour, in sexy olfactory heaven. Pauolo is the heir apparent of Martelli Fragrance, a roll Rita Holly abdicated to lead the Mount in London. With her magnificently sensitive nose leading the way, Liza uncovers Martelli’s hidden secret –it’s the front for the original Mount, an international secret society with sexual rites into which Paolo is more than willing to initiate her.

But sexual exploration takes a turn for the unpleasant when someone steals perfume formulas and lays the blame at Liza’s feet. Together she and Paolo must sniff out the culprit and prove Liza’s innocence before more is exposed – and lost — than just secret formulas.

X-Rated Xcerpt To Rome with Lust:

There was the tinkle of an incoming text. She figured it was Addie and braced herself for a barrage of questions about Carl. But the text wasn’t from Addie, nor was it from Carl. It was from Paolo. Her heart went into free fall.

Did you make it to your hotel OK?

Just arrived. Staying in a flat, actually. It’s amazing! You?

In limo heading home. Have your missing undergarment in my pocket. Stroking it to stimulate your delicious scent. Pretty sure you can guess what I’m stroking with my other hand.

She laughed out loud. The rush of moist heat between her legs made her quiver. She slipped out of her sweater and unhooked the bra she had put back on before the plane landed. Then she gave both her girls a caress as she freed them.

Really, P! Sex in a limo is so cliché.

Really, L! With your scent all over me, and your memento in my pocket it’s more essential than it is cliché.

Ah yes, my missing undergarments. Thanks to you I left the poor cab driver’s leather back seat very slippery.

Where are your hands, you naughty woman?

On my BlackBerry, of course.

Lol! Liar.

Not lying at all. Keys getting sticky though.

You naked?

Still wearing skirt. Nothing! Else!

OMG, woman! What u do 2 me! Pic?

Her heart did a drum roll in her chest and her pussy clenched. Fuck! Had he just asked her to send him a picture? Double fuck! Was she actually considering it? She nearly dropped her BlackBerry as she texted back.

U sho me urs, I’ll sho u mine J

P1010132There was a long pause. Oh god! Had she misunderstood him? Had she offended him? She was in the middle of composing a quick apology when his text came through. Fucking hell! It was a picture of his very large, very thick erection resting in the cupped palm of his hand against the silky red backdrop of her panties. The text simply read:

Your turn.

This was insane. This was not the sort of thing she would ever in a million years do. Was it because she was in a foreign country with a man she’d more than likely never see again after she finished her assignment here? For that matter they might both wake up in the morning too embarrassed to even contemplate further contact. He wasn’t a some backpacker passing through. Fuck! She knew nothing about him other than that he’d been seated in the first class cabin. Maybe he was married. Maybe he was a pervert serial killer. For the briefest moment a picture of Carl’s bare arse shoving and humping at the bimbo on his kitchen counter flashed through her head. She caught her breath, shoved up her skirt and leaned back against the pillows splaying her legs wide and bent-kneed. Then she fingered open her engorged pussy lips and snapped the shot with her other hand.

A peek at it made her stomach summersault. It was just so brazen. Her pussy, center stage, wet and wild and on display between her fingers. Christ, she was insane, and she was so turned on at the very thought of Paolo, stroking his cock with her panties while getting an up close and personal of her love box in his in-box. She wiped her fingers on her skirt and quickly typed:

To Rome with Lust: Cumming soon in a bedroom near you.

There was another long pause, but she was way past thinking of aplogising as she fingered her wet spot and thumbed her clit with one hand while flipping back and forth between the two filthy photos with the other. She was damn near there when the next text came.

P1010427Just came on your panties.

Just came on my fingers, then wiped them on your handkerchief.

There was another long pause in which she imagined both of them catching their breath. Finally another text arrived just as she was drifting off against the mound of fluffy pillows.

Gotta go, Lovely L. I’m home. C u 2morro?

Her heart skipped a beat. He wanted to see her in spite of what they’d done!

Have 2 work 2morro. Maybe 2morro eve?

 I’ll text. I no a gr8 Italian restaurant.

Lisabet Sarai Shares The Ingredients of Bliss

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I’m very happy to welcome back one of my very favourite guest bloggers and one awesome story-teller, the lovely Lisabet Sarai! I honoured to launch the blog tour for her exciting new novel, The Ingredients of Bliss. There’s fun, there’s a sizzling excerpt, there’s a totally amazing giveaway and of course, links so you can get your own must-have copy of The Ingredients of Blisse!  

*****

Details for how you can enter the fabulous giveaway are right after the x-rated excerpt

*****


Lisabet Sarai Bliss tour cover image 2The Ingredients of Bliss: From Short Story to Novel

The characters in The Ingredients of Bliss made their first appearance in my short story Her Secret Ingredient. At the time, I had no thoughts of following that story with a novel-length sequel. Totally Bound had contacted me and asked if I’d like to contribute to their new What’s Her Secret imprint. The concept sounded intriguing – a series where each heroine keeps something hidden from the other characters, until she’s forced to reveal it.

As I pondered the possibilities, the story started to take shape in my mind. Mei Lee “Emily” Wong is a French-trained chef from Hong Kong who is invited to America to appear on a cooking show with the famous Gallic foodie, Etienne Duvalier. A culinary traditionalist, Etienne scorns Emily’s more creative approach to cooking. To win him to her side, she spikes a test dish with an ancient Chinese aphrodisiac. However, the nerdy producer Harry Sanborne samples the adulterated profiteroles before she has a chance to offer them to Etienne, and reacts with delightful passion. Though she’s drawn to Harry, the ambitious Chinese gal resolves to try again, with disastrous results. When Etienne consumes the aphrodisiac, she finds him on his knees, begging to be sexually dominated – on national television! Harry saves the day and sweeps Emily the rest of the way off her feet. In the final chapter of the book (exclusive to the VIP edition available directly from Totally Bound), Harry reveals his interest in BDSM and Emily discovers, much to her surprise, that she has a strong submissive streak – at least when Harry is topping her.

I was pretty happy with Her Secret Ingredient. It’s light and funny and sexy. However, I thought I was done with Emily, Harry and Etienne. Then the publisher asked if I could write a follow-up novel.

I was floored at first. I mean, I didn’t know these characters all that well. How deeply can you explore someone in 15K? Still, I like to make people happy, especially my publishers, so I put on my thinking cap. My first breakthrough was the notion of setting the novel in France. In 2013 I spent two weeks touring that fabulous country, so I thought maybe Emily, Harry and Etienne might follow in my footsteps.

With two males and one female, a ménage seemed inevitable. However, Harry is a Dom and Etienne has masochistic tendencies. How was I going to work that? And whom does Emily really want? The suave, seductive Frenchman, or the virile, sexually-creative American? Or both? And (aside from love scenes and the travel log), what was I going to do with the requisite 60,000 words?

The answers came to me gradually. I came to know my characters more intimately. I realized that Emily was as confused and uncertain about the situation with her two lovers as I was. So I let her work it out, giving the plot a radical twist that brought her true feelings into stronger relief.

And now? I think could write another novel about Emily, Harry and Etienne. Will I? That all depends on the reception I get to The Ingredients of Bliss!

 

Blurb for The Ingredients of Bliss:

One sexy French chef. One kinky American TV producer. One ambitious Chinese gal who thinks she wants them both. The ingredients of bliss? Or a recipe for disaster?

Accomplished cook Mei Lee “Emily” Wong knows exactly what she wants—her own show on the Tastes of France food channel. But life is full of complications. First, her deceptively nerdy producer, Harry Sanborne, initiates Emily into the delights of submission. Then her boss, legendary chef Etienne Duvalier, begs her to dominate him. Emily just can’t resist—especially when Harry orders her to explore her inner mistress. Suave and sexy Etienne will do whatever she asks—in the bedroom if not in the kitchen. And Harry, her lovingly diabolical Dom, adores pushing Emily’s limits.

When the network sends the trio to France to shoot a series of cooking shows on location, Emily knows her career is on the upswing. Her plans fall apart in Marseille as a Hong Kong drug syndicate kidnaps both Etienne and Harry. The Iron Hammer Triad mistakes Etienne for notorious gangster Jean Le Requin, who has stolen their drug shipment, worth millions. Emily realizes she must find the real Le Requin, retrieve the purloined dope, and bargain it for Harry’s and Etienne’s lives. The secret she’s been keeping from Harry might prove useful. Still, what chance does one woman whose knife skills are limited to chopping vegetables, have against the ruthless cruelty of two criminal organizations?


Lisabet Sarai Bliss tourX-Rated Excerpt: The Ingredients of Bliss by Lisabet Sarai

“What’s eating you, Em?”

Harry looked up from one of his favorite positions—crouched between my spread legs—and searched my face. The usual mischief gleamed in his cinnamon-brown eyes—a bit unfocused without his glasses—but his lush mouth showed no trace of a grin.

“Shouldn’t that be who, rather than what?” My laugh sounded forced, even to my own ears. It turned to a squeal as he swept his tongue along the length of my cleft, ending with a neat flick to my clit.

“I’m serious. Something’s bothering you.”

Sometimes his intuition scared me. “It’s nothing, really.” How did this guy know me so well, after a mere three months?

“Tell me!”

“Ow!” He’d pinched the sensitive flesh of my inner thigh.

“Do I have to beat a confession out of you—again?”

His casual reference was enough to send my mind spinning back to that wild night when he’d first revealed his kinky streak. Tied to the iron railing at the look-out atop Twin Peaks, my panties around my ankles and my dress bunched up around my waist, I’d received my first searing lesson in submission.

Unruly hair fell into his eyes, making him look younger, and rougher, too—a bit like Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. I wanted to brush those black locks off his brow, to touch him, to soothe and reassure him—to feel his lovely muscles shift under the tanned skin of his broad shoulders. Bound hand and foot to the bed frame, all I could do was writhe and yelp as he burrowed his face in my pussy, while raking my thighs with his fingernails.

Pain and pleasure. Pleasure and pain. Wasn’t there a time when I could tell the difference?

Whatever he was doing, I liked it. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t.

 

Blog Tour Prizes

First prize: $30 gift certificate to Sur La Table (http://www.surlatable.com)

Second prize: $20 gift certificate to Whole Foods Market (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com)
Third prize: Three-pack of ebooks from my back list, including a copy of Her Secret Ingredient, the prequel to The Ingredients of Bliss.

I’ll also be giving a PDF copy of my own original cookbook, Recipes from an International Kitchen, to everyone who leaves a comment. AND I have a bonus $10 Totally Bound gift certificate for the tour host who gets the most reader comments.

To enter, simply leave a comment that includes your email address. You can enter once for each spot in the tour. For the full tour schedule, go to:

http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/2014/08/ingredients-of-bliss-blog-tour-starts.html

 


Lisabet Sarai Bliss tour 1The Ingredients of Bliss By Lisabet Sarai

Contemporary BDSM ménage

Totally Bound, 2014

Get your copy today!

The special VIP edition of The Ingredients of Bliss is now available from Totally Bound. This version contains a sizzling bonus chapter not available from other retailers. Totally Bound has the most advanced book selling site of any independent publisher on the web, with new One-Click ordering and direct delivery to all e-reader platforms. 

 

About Lisabet:

I started both writing and cooking at an early age, and I’ve continued to indulge both passions as I’ve matured. Usually I’m an improvisational cook; I’m not all that fond of following recipes, and when I do, I almost always introduce my own variations. My philosophy tends to be the more spice, the better.

You could say the same about my writing. Since the release of my debut novel Raw Silk in 1999, I’ve published lots of erotica and erotic romance in almost every sub-genre– more than fifty single author titles, plus dozens of short stories in various erotic anthologies, including the Lambda winner Where the Girls Are and the IPPIE Best Erotic Book of 2011, Carnal Machines. My gay scifi erotic romance Quarantine won a Rainbow Awards 2012 Honorable Mention.

I have more degrees than anyone would ever need, from prestigious educational institutions who would no doubt be deeply embarrassed by my chosen genre. Widely traveled but still with a long bucket list of places to go, I currently live in Southeast Asia with my indulgent husband and two exceptional felines, where I pursue an alternative career that is completely unrelated to my creative writing.

 

Find Lisabet here:

Website: http://www.lisabetsarai.com

Blog: http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com

Goodreads page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/83387.Lisabet_Sarai

Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/author/lisabetsarai