Kay Jaybee Delivers the Goods, and How!

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When it comes to creative and super-heated BDSM, Kay Jaybee can’t be topped. And she certainly delivers the goods in her new novella, Not Her Type, published by Oysters and Chocolate Books.

Jenny is an accountant, an educated women, who works from home in a nearly reclusive way, having given up on love after one too many bad experiences. John is her delivery man, a man who has little education, isn’t interested in books, and certainly isn’t interested in the kind of artsy films he delivers to Jenny every week. The two couldn’t have less in common if they tried.

Jenny and John see each other every Tuesday, long enough for him to make his delivery and for them to share a quick cuppa and a short chat, until one day the chat is replaced by sizzling, totally unexpected sex. And the pattern is set. Every Tuesday the delivery man delivers. And every Tuesday Jenny is there to accept the delivery. Just nasty, kinky sex on the run. They both assure each other that’s all they want, and their arrangement meets both of their needs perfectly.

But nothing is ever simple. And Kay Jaybee brings an edginess into the complexity of their simple relationship that is sometimes brutal, sometimes poignant, but always steamy and rampant with the pent-up desires released in small doses only on Tuesdays, only for a few minutes. And yet, in that short time, Ms Jaybee gives us fabulous views into the lives of her two characters and gives us little Tuesday afternoon peeks into something way too big and complex to fit into that little weekly window of time.

Ms Jaybee’s characters are deliciously flawed and endearing. Her plot is ingenious, and the sex is frequent and varied, with steamy f/m/f and f/f sex cranking up the heat along with the usual Jaybee penchant for creative BDSM.

Not Her Type is pacey, sexy and quirky, and dare I use the R word? Yes, in addition to kink and edgy BDSM, there is romance – Kay Jaybee style – something I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the future.

Well done, Ms Jaybee! Once again the Queen of BDSM delivers the goods!

Happy Endings and Great Beginnings

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Happy Endings

Some of 2011 pubs. Still waitning for copies of some.

I’ve finished 2011 with good news and happy endings. I wrote two novellas and got them out the door since the beginning of October. My dance card is already full of new projects for 2012, even before the year begins, and both The Pet Shop and Body Temperature and Rising are getting great reviews. That would have been happy ending enough for 2011. But there were double cherries on top of all the lovely whipped cream goodness of the year.

Honourable Mention

My novel, Body Temperature and Rising, made honourable mention on Violet Blue’s much coveted list of Top 12 Best Sex Books of 2011. That’s one huge cherry! Here’s what she had to say:

I am a huge fan of K.D. Grace’s explicit, well-crafted writing (I’ve selected and published her work in multi-author “Best” collections), and this novel did not disappoint me. It’s the first of a hardcore paranormal trilogy, and many readers think it is her best work to date.

Thank you, Violet, for the happy ending!

 

Xcite Awards Finalist

I’ve always been able to count on Xcite Books for cherries and whipped cream, and they didn’t disappoint! The second gigantic cherry topping off 2011 came in the form of a nomination as one of the finalists of the Xcite Awards in the Best Blog or Author’s Page category! I’m over the moon about this, especially since a year and a half ago I was the one dragging my feet about even having a blog. I know now that it was my fearful technophobia rearing its ugly head. I played around with a blog for awhile, then, enter Lucy Felthouse (also nominated, BTW. Talk about stiff competition!) who created my fabulous site and endured my ignorance with calming encouragement, teaching me what I need to know and giving me the occasional virtual pat on the back and pep talk to keep me from panicking when I was in over my head. Thanks Lucy! You rock!

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very proud of my site now, but I’d also be lying if I took all the credit. What I’ve loved, what’s been the best part of this blog, is having so many fabulous people as guests. We’ve talked about wonderful books, we’ve talked about major problems, we’ve celebrated sexuality, we’ve groused and laughed and played on my site in the past year. My life is so much richer because of all of the great guests who have shared their time and creativity here. And I’ve had loads of fun promoting my books, whether walking the Coast to Coast Path with The Initiation of Ms Holly, or climbing down in derelict slate mines in the Lake District while researching Body Temperature and Rising. We’ve talked sex and books and fun ad launches and inspiration, we’ve learned the story behind some of the fabulous novels and works that came out this year, and all in all just had a great time. So, if I can take credit for anything, it’s for having way more fun with my blog than I would have ever imagined, thanks to all the people and all the great experiences that made A Hopeful Romantic the blog it is.

Thanks, Xcite, for this fabulous honour. And best of luck to all the amazing women I’m up against! If I could, I’d vote for all of them because they’re all terrific women with wonderful sites!

Here’s the link for voting: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XciteAwards
 

Great Beginnings

Fun in 2012 has already begun. Riding the Ether, book two of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy, is on its way! There’ll be more research trips to the Lake Districts. You see how I suffer for my art. I’m already training hard for our next long distance walk, which will be shared on this blog, and closely associated with Riding the Ether. There’ll be more garden porn, more launches, more readings and more sneak peeks of the latest works of some of your favourite sexy writers. There’ll also be some exciting new writers as well. And there’ll be some amazing interviews with fascinating people. Of course, there’ll be plenty of surprises along the way. So, Happy 2012, everyone! Enjoy the ride. It’s gonna be a good one!

Body Temperature and Rising Gets An Honourable Mention

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I’m ecstatic to have my novel, Body Temperature and Rising listed as honourable mention on Violet Blue’s coveted 12 Best Sex Books of 2011 list. Here’s what she had to say:

Body Temperature and Rising by K. D. Grace
I am a huge fan of K.D. Grace’s explicit, well-crafted writing (I’ve selected and published her work in multi-author “Best” collections), and this novel did not disappoint me. It’s the first of a hardcore paranormal trilogy, and many readers think it is her best work to date. “A voyeuristic encounter on the fells ends in sex with a charming ghost for American Marie Warren who realises she has the ability to unleash demons. Her powers bring her to a coven of witches who practise rare sex magic that allows ghosts access to pleasures of the flesh.” After this, things take a turn for the worse….

Full article here.

Thank you, Violet!

The Crowded Room

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I feel really privileged to put the cherry on the top of the First Annual RomFan Reviews Holiday Blog Hop, especially when the last few days of the year have a very special place in my heart. It’s been great to share this fabulous time of year with so many wonderful writers and bloggers, and to make some new friends in the process. You all rock! Annette Stone, a special thanks to you for making it all happen. And now, I’d like to tell everyone just why the last few days of the year, the last week, to be exact.

It’s that time of year again. It’s time to wax slightly nostalgic and do a little navel gazing and reflecting. The last week of the year has always fascinated me. It’s not like the rest of the year. It’s almost like there are really only fifty-one weeks in the year, then there’s the crowded room of a space tacked on to the end, a place not unlike my grandmother’s living room was, all crowded full of the bits and pieces and memorabilia of eighty-three years of living.

The last week of the year is a mini version of that living room that happens anew every year, a mental version, a room that everyone has in their head. It doesn’t matter how expansive or how crazy the previous fifty-one weeks have been, this final week is the tiny space into which we crowd everything that has happened, and for those last seven days of the year, we reflect and remember.

At the front of that crowded room is a big picture window looking back onto all of the past years of experiences. During this last week of 2011, we’ll go inside that room, shut the door behind us, knowing we’ll never go back through that door again. There we’ll settle in to the one comfy chair, the only space that isn’t avalanching with memories and emotions and experiences, and we’ll reflect. Occasionally we’ll stop for a long stare out the window into the years past to try and make out how it all fits together. I often write a massive journal entry at the year’s end. I settle in with wine and chocolate and good coffee and all my favourite things and write. The entry is always full of reflections and memories and plans for the future, all done during the time spent in that crowded room that’s the last week of the year. I wager I’m in good company in that endeavor.

I used to ask my grandmother who was in this old photo or that, or where she got this porcelain doll or that china figurine. Every item in her living room had a story. It was a gift from someone, or a souvenir from some marked event in her life, or something someone had made for her or she had made for herself. My grandmother’s living room was a book full of stories I only ever experienced through her eyes, stories that were lost in the mist to anyone but her and the few of her older friends who still remained, all with story book living rooms of their own.

This time of year, in this last week, we all sit in our mental story book living rooms and tell ourselves one last time the stories that have been our life for the past fifty-one weeks. We laugh at our joys, we mourn our losses, thankful that they’re now passed and we nod our heads in satisfaction at our successes, promising they’ll be even bigger next year.

My grandmother lived to be eighty-three. There was a finality about her over-crowded living room. That last-week-of-the-year room we all occupy right now has its own finality. After midnight tomorrow, we can crowd no more into that room. We leave it as it is, papers strewn, boxes open, bed unmade, cup of tea half finished. Mind you, some of us spend our last hours in that room frantically trying to crowd just a little more into it. That’s me, sitting in the recliner madly tapping away at the laptop trying to get another chapter written, another short story out before I have to leave this room and lock the door behind me.

And it’s been a good year, a wild rambunctious year crowded with laughter and tears and the celebration of two new novels, a challenging Coast to Coast walk across England, conferences, readings, vegetables planted and eaten. I have lots of pictures in my year’s mental photo album, I have lots of triumphs and losses, and lots of time spent with wonderful friends and loved ones. Hold it! I’ll stop right now because once I get going, I’ll give you the whole inventory, and you, no doubt have your own crowded room to inventory.

It doesn’t matter though, if we’re sitting reflecting on all that fills this room, or if we’re frantically trying to fill it fuller before the clock strikes. At midnight tomorrow night, we’ll all take a deep breath, open the door and walk out into the empty room waiting for us, the empty room that’s 2012. All we’ll take with us is our memories of the room we left and our hopes and plans for how we’ll fill this bright new room that stretches promisingly before us. Some of us make New Years resolutions, some of us just plow in without a plan of action, but one thing is for certain, this time next year, if we live that long, we’ll be sitting in the full room again reflecting on how the experiences of 2012 have shaped us, anticipating how we’ll take the experiences into the next empty room. And that’s all we’ll be allowed to take with us, our experiences, our memories,

My wish for you all is that your reflections in your crowded room will be good ones, satisfying ones. And at the stroke of midnight, that you’ll enter that bright new empty room of 2012 with hope and joy and anticipation of how wonderfully you’ll fill it up.

I’d like to help you heat up your empty room by offering a choice of either of a PDF version of either of my novels, The Initiation of Ms Holly or The Pet Shop. Winner’s choice. Leave a comment to be included in the drawing for the giveaway. All the best in the New Year!

 

Kay Dee Royal tells the Story Behind Her Exciting New Release, ‘One Plus One’

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I’d like to welcome the fabulous Kay Dee Royal to share with us the story behind her story, One Plus One. Welcome Kay Dee!

Thank you KD for having me today. I appreciate you allowing me to stop in and hang out for the day *smile*

Victim of Circumstance or Godsend, Divine Intervention at Work

…and what does that even mean?

I’m a firm believer of Divine Intervention. You know, those times when something steps into your life-journey and sends you spinning off in a new direction.

A quick example: I’m sitting in a long line of traffic and remind myself it’s all for a reason, keeping me delayed only long enough for the next life-journey experience. OR, when my computer stalls out and refuses to show me the page I’ve been desperately working on for the past three hours. OR my cellphone battery goes dead miles from nowhere, and I’m late to a meeting with no way of telling anyone.

But, once I got up and running again from any of these delays, it ended up being just enough to set me up for the greater experience after…like because of the traffic delay I missed running into someone I wasn’t ready to meet (didn’t have my reports prepared), or the computer stall-out gave me the break I needed to recharge and come back to realize what I’d been writing was way off course, and the cellphone incident…well, the meeting had been postponed, so I ended up making it.

Yeah, once in a while I might burn the ears off the Divine with my expletives if I can’t reel in my impatience (LOL), but deep down I know it’s all good. Take my story, One Plus One, for instance…

One Plus One, a singles three-week cruise, is the absolute last think in the world Lacinda would do. Her heart and love life turned to cinder when her husband-to-be never made it to their wedding due to a fatal accident.

Two years later, Lacinda owns and operates an animal rescue. She’s dedicated her life to the four-legged kind, until her best friend, Avery, brings a contest entry to Lacinda. With the consumption of a bottle of wine the ‘pen’ loosens and out comes the fun of it. Between the two women, those explicit/graphic responses win Lacinda the prize cruise.

She’s way out of her comfort zone, in over her head…so, is she a Victim or Godsend?  Is this Divine Intervention at work?

Blade built his way up in the corporate world, becoming a well-known hotel mogul and cruise line owner. All of his relationships seem attached to his worth, so he shuts off to any female possibilities.

Mazie, Blade’s business partner and friend, arranges the One Plus One Cruise…to the point where she makes Blade select the one woman most appropriate. She leaves nothing unturned in this woman’s background checks.

Mazie gives Blade all of Lacinda’s information…he’s smitten with her. But, the whole union set-up is built on deceit…how can good come from a lie? Victim of circumstance or Godsend…Divine Intervention at play?

Does anyone have a little Divine Intervention moment of their own they’d care to share? Love to hear all about it.

One Plus One Blurb: Releasing from Muse It Hot on December 23, 2011

Coerced by her friend, Lacinda, a woman crushed by love, winds up on a three-week singles cruise.

Blade, a man of means, discovers Miss Right under the guise of a singles cruise set up by his business partner.

Once Blade focuses his efforts he always gets what he’s after, until Lacinda throws his arrogant reputation back in his face.

Can Blade break through Lacinda’s angry barriers? Will she ever see him as anything more than a player?

One Plus One Excerpt:

“Lacinda Gainesly,” a steward called her name. She saw the sign he held with her name printed in bright purple. She slipped on the first step leading down onto the ship and stumbled past the steward. The sign dropped from his fingers and his arms latched around her body from behind. His quick reflexes saved her face from biting the deck, but his hands cupped both of her breasts and squeezed. Lacinda threw her elbow back into his side.

“Hey, a little respect for the guy who saved your life.”

Lacinda shrugged out of his grasp. She met his gaze and realized this was the same man who picked her up from her hotel in a long black limo, only then he was dressed in black instead of the white uniform he now wore.

“You’re the driver.”

“I’m a lot of things, like possibly a hero.” His eyes looked as happy as his lips.

She noticed his smile, the same he shared earlier when he asked her questions about why she took the cruise quiz. Lacinda thought he was simply a driver for the cruise company so she shared some of her story. He knew about Alex dying in a car crash on the way to their wedding. She searched her memory for anything else she might have shared which could embarrass her later.

“Alas fair maiden, your chambers await your timely arrival,” he said, faking a British accent. He held his gloved hand out. Lacinda refused it.

“I’m ready for my quarters.” She needed relaxation, maybe take a nice hot scented bath and get prepared for the swing of things, anything to distract her from the past that never left her alone.

“As you wish, my lady,” he said, again with a British accent. The steward turned, led her across the deck, and down a stairway. She saw men and women following other stewards or each other. Once on board everyone began mingling, even flirting, judging by the tinkling female laughter and deep manly chuckles.

“There will be an announcement left under your door regarding tonight’s dinner seating arrangements. May you enjoy your day and make sure you take time for a relaxing massage. There’s always a masseuse available. Their extension is listed beside your phone. You’ll find your room key there as well.”

Lacinda followed him down a narrow hallway until he stopped in front of a door with an elegantly scrolled number 216.

“This is you. May I answer any questions before I go?”

Lacinda dug in her purse for a tip. Clueless on how much was appropriate and not wanting to give him anything. He got his gratuity when he copped a feel of her breasts.

Kay Dee Royal writes paranormal and fantasy romance—maybe because it’s also her favorite genre to read! She pens tales with wild, rugged heroes and strong, intelligent heroines. She’ll give them both a few shadowy secrets, making her stories intriguing and fun. She resides in Southern Michigan with her family (her dogs, her cats, her caged husband… you get the idea). You can reach her at her blog and find the latest on her titles from her publisher, MuseItHot.

Blogs: http://www.kaydeeroyal.blogspot.com

http://ravencraftrealm.blogspot.com

FB: http://www.facebook.com/kaydee.royal

Muse Info/Buy Page: http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=291&category_id=69&keyword=Kay+Dee+Royal&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1