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Friday Realizations

3 Aug

Indelibly Intimate is doing well.

Much better than either of my other releases.

I certainly don’t bear any responsibility for the increase in attention. I’ve been so caught up in my personal life issues lately that I’ve barely participated in any of the things I should have for II’s release.

I wrote the book, but there are people who’ve worked way harder than me to ensure that it sells well.

First of all, Sidney Bristol. This woman masterminded the Pricked party, and mobilized a group of otherwise unrelated authors to blog, tweet, and chat together for our mutual benefit. She’s been amazing, and I wish I could kiss her cute little toes.

Then my other fellow authors in the Pricked theme series. These ladies have tweeted, reviewed, and otherwise pimped the hell out of Indelibly Intimate. I’m humbled by their generosity, especially since I’ve been such a space cadet for the last couple of months.

Then, you guys. The readers.

I don’t know if any of you actually read my blog. But I do know that you read my books. And for someone who’s favorite dream is to share her characters with others who’ll love them like I do, that’s something I can’t repay.

But I’d like to try.

If you’ve read and enjoyed any of my books, please comment. I can’t give a lot, but I’d like to give you something.

The universe is very good to me, and so are you.

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Last but Most – How I do Erotic Horror Part 5

19 Apr

Hello again, dear friends.

This is the final installment of the How I do Erotic Horror blog series! Did you enjoy all the other parts? Do you like the series thing? Were you bored? Is anyone reading this, anyone at all? I HOPE so, and I HOPE you’ll comment, because this is your last chance to enter for a free copy of Sinful Truth and a SCARY GOOD GIFT!!

Okay, so where were we? Oh yes! I’d figured out the who’s of it all. The heroine, Bryerly, the mysterious anti-hero, Verum, and the villain, Rafe. But was Rafe really the villain at all? Or was he part of something much larger?

I used to read a lot of Kristen Lamb’s blogs, and she had a great series on antagonists, or Big Bad Troublemakers, as she likes to call them. She used the Star Wars movies (the REAL ones, not those modern pieces of tripe) as an example.

In the first movie, Grand Moff Tarkin was the bad guy. In the second, Darth Vader. And then the third was the true and final BBT, Emperor Palpatine. See, Tarkin and Vader were antagonists, but the weren’t the true villain of the trilogy. They were like bad-guy puppets for Palpatine to do his dirty work through.

While Sinful Truth isn’t a trilogy, this is still a useful idea to keep in the back pocket. Rafe was A bad guy, I knew that, but was he THE bad guy? When you write someone, you get to know them. As Rafe came to life under my tippity-typing fingers, he showed me his character. Greedy. Petty. Full of fear and want. The kind of person that makes others feel small to puff himself up.

Was this the mastermind villain of my horror story? The more I wrote of him, the more I discovered that he wasn’t. There was someone else there, pulling the strings. Someone much more calculating, someone who was more confident and self-possessed.  Someone who was willing to sacrifice anything to put himself at the top of the heap.

But serial killers aren’t exactly a new idea. And while I had brutal, bloody murders going on, the modern audience wouldn’t be impressed with such a simplistic display of violence. There was a cannibalistic element, yes, but why? Where’d it come from?

I despise it when you get to the end of a book and find out they were aliens all along, or something else out of left field. It irks the crap out of me. So I decided to tie another element in, an element that I’d already introduced via Verum. The Egyptian mythology element.

And THAT, my friends, is all I will say.

The women in Bryerly’s town are dying, one by one, their insides being eaten, not by wild dogs, but by men. The only chance Bryerly has to survive is Verum, the Truth Keeper. If you want to know how and why these horrific murders are occurring, then you’ll have to check out SINFUL TRUTH, releasing TOMORROW, April 20th, from Ellora’s Cave.

If you’d like to WIN a copy of ST, and a SCARILY GOOD GIFT, then you’ll post a comment below! I’ll announce the winner tomorrow. Good luck, and PLEASE let me know what you think of ST!

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Come Together, Right Now- How I do Erotic Horror (part 4)

17 Apr

Welcome back, leiblings! Sorry for the gap between postings. Life gets in the way sometimes! If you’re just now joining us, here are parts One, Two, and Three of this series. I’m sharing how I wrote my first erotic horror, in hopes that someone will find this interesting. If not, well, just skip to the bottom, comment and tell me so, and you’ll still be entered to win stuff. Sound good? Thought so.

So when last I blathered on, I’d told you about building the ideas. I’ve got a half-formed hero, a mostly put together heroine, and a creepy giant question mark for the villain. But this is an EROTIC horror. By definition, there needs to be an erotic journey to go along with the horror journey. I’d spent all my time thus far on the horror, so it was time to focus on the erotic side.

I’d gotten Verum and Bryerly alone in the same room. In order for the bow-chicka-wow-wow to begin, something had to change pretty drastically, and fast. Bry has just witnessed the brutal killing of a woman. She’s not in the mood for love, if you know what I mean. BUT Verum has a weapon at his disposal, and I had zero problems utilizing it- the truth.

What if, I thought to myself, Verum’s presence had sort of a truth-uncovering-aura about it? What if Bryerly was more aware of things just by being near him? What if the physical attraction she felt when meeting Verum couldn’t be hidden? What if he reciprocated that attraction?

If a normal person cannot suppress how turned on they are, wouldn’t their inhibitions fly out the window? Why yes, I thought. Yes they would. So a girl like Bryerly, who isn’t the type to fall in bed with a man she just met, would have less of a problem following her instincts. Luckily for Verum (and me!) this technique worked. When she started focusing on the way she was feeling instead of the horrifying memories, the intimacy turned into a life-affirming self discovery.

Okay, love scene problem solved! We had a gory murder, and now a smexy bedroom scene. So let’s get back to the scary, eh? I still have Rafe to think about. Why is he such an asshole? Why did he and his friend kill a woman in the woods at night, and have blood on their faces? What could it have to do with Bryerly and Verum?

It’ll be tough to explain without spoilers, but I’ll give it my best shot in part 5, the final section of this series!

And don’t forget, be sure to leave a comment below! To show how much I appreciate each and every one of my blog commenters, I’ll be adding each of your names from now until SINFUL TRUTH releases into a hat. Comment on multiple blog posts? Receive multiple entries. The winner will be selected via Random.org, and will receive a Scarily Good Gift plus a free copy of SINFUL TRUTH!  So comment below and share with your friends!

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Tell me no lies- How I do Erotic Horror (part 3)

5 Apr

Thanks for stopping by again! For parts one and two of this series, click HERE and HERE.

So I had a heroine, Bryerly, and I had villains, Rafe and his crew. What and why they were doing what they were was still a mystery to me. But heck. Like all good pansters, I’d figure that out later. I had more delicious things to attend to.

I knew that my hero was a Truth Keeper. I wasn’t sure what that was, but I wanted to find a name that meant truth. So I went to Google’s translating tool and scanned through all the languages I could find til I settled on one I could make a name.

VERUM. It’s Latin. It’s sexy. It fit.

And once I had the name, I could see him in my head. Husband had been doing a lot of Insanity workout DVDs at the time, so there was a face and body that matched the idea of Verum perfectly for me.

Exhibit A, Shaun T, the creator of Insanity Workouts.

 

Mrow.

Okay. So who was he? What’s a Truth Keeper? Hmm. He’s dark, delicious, probably immortal, so he could have come from a long time ago. Someone called a Truth Keeper would probably be nearly omniscient. Maybe he could be Egyptian. Oooh, I loved that section of history. I trotted off to do some research about Egyptian Gods and Goddesses, thinking that if Verum could run afoul of the deity who represented Truth, that his punishment would definitely have something to do with that, right?

So here’s Ma’at!

 

from Wikipedia–

List of deities of Ancient Egypt

 

Ma’at – a goddess who personified concept of truth, balance, justice, and order – represented as a woman, sitting or standing, holding a sceptre in one hand and an ankh in the other – thought to have created order out of the primal chaos and was responsible for maintaining the order of the universe and all of its inhabitants, to prevent a return to chaos

Okay, so Ma’at would have the power and the motivation to curse Verum if he pissed her off. Got it. So he’s called to keep the truth of mankind. THAT’S why he was there when the murder was happening. He had to observe the truth. Perfect conflagration of hero/heroine/villain? Check. So how does one introduce sexy-sex into this mix? Obviously, murder witnessing doesn’t do a damn thing for libido. Unless you’re some kind of sick perv. If so, I don’t want to know.

So in the next segment, we’ll talk about how I twined these polar opposites together.

Don’t forget to leave a comment below to be entered to win a Scarily Good Gift and free ebook copy of SINFUL TRUTH! To show how much I appreciate each and every one of my blog commenters, I’ll be adding each of your names from now until SINFUL TRUTH releases (4/20) into a hat. Comment on multiple blog posts? Receive multiple entries. The winner will be selected via Random.org, and will receive a Scarily Good Gift  plus a free copy of SINFUL TRUTH!  Comment, comment, comment! Share! Good readers. pats your head

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Seductively Creepy-How I do Erotic Horror (part 2)

4 Apr

Thanks for joining me for the second part of this post! If you missed post one, you can find it HERE.

So as you remember, I had the need for the book (editor asked. What can I do? She’s so darn cute) and the blurb, which is like one of those hollow chocolate Easter bunnies. Look at it too closely and you can see it can’t withstand a good poke in the liver. So I had my work cut out for me.

I started the next segment the way all good pantsters do-I wrote.

I know, I know, I’ve sort of turned into a hybrid pantster/plotter. I start to write something, then I’ll stop and draw out a “W” plot graph (if you don’t know what these suckers are, here. Learn. Especially if you, like me, have a weakness in the story arc area). With this story, I had the beginning given to me in my blurb. So I ran with it.

I had a girl who’d seen her jerk boyfriend commit a murder. I had Bryerly. Who was she? How did she see what she saw?

She whispered to me a little, and I wrote it down for reference. Here it is. I referred to this a lot in the beginning, for voice:

 

            I shouldn’t have done what I did.

            It wasn’t necessarily wrong, but I knew that Rafe would be mad with me if I left the car.

            I never expected to see what I saw.

            The blood, the dark red spill in the moonlight, the way it covered their hands, their bodies…

            Their faces…

            No.

            I shouldn’t have done what I did.


                                                                        -Bryerly Keats.

 

You may notice a wee bit of similarity to a certain Bon Temps waitress type. In the beginning, there was a lot of Sookie Stackhouse in Bryerly Keats. But as the story went on, Bryerly showed me her true voice, which is a bit more educated, a bit less Southern, and a whole lot more herself. Back to the words in the quote.

Faces? Well that was unexpected. Bryerly had just made this story a whole lot more interesting. Instead of psychotic serial killer story, it was turning into something darker, more paranormal. But I still didn’t know what a Truth Keeper was. And I didn’t know what Rafe and his friends were, or why they were killing people, or why there was blood on their faces. So I wrote a little more. What I discovered surprised me. I wasn’t sure I could come up with something scary, something that would really yell HORROR as well as erotic. But in the first steps of this story, I had a dark mechanic going on for the villains. Still no motivation, but I definitely had an idea of why they were the bad guys.

When Bryerly ran into Verum, the hero, he sort of materialized in my mind. For more about Verum, make sure to see my next blog, part 3 in the “How I do Erotic Horror” series.

And don’t forget, be sure to leave a comment below! To show how much I appreciate each and every one of my blog commenters, I’ll be adding each of your names from now until SINFUL TRUTH releases (April 20th!) into a hat. Comment on multiple blog posts? You’ll receive multiple entries. The winner will be selected via Random.org, and will receive a Scarily Good Gift plus a free ebook copy of SINFUL TRUTH!  So comment below and share with your friends!

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Writing Scary that’s Sexy- How I do Erotic Horror (part 1)

3 Apr

So since SINFUL TRUTH releases in about, oh, seventeen days (GULP) I thought it might behoove me (yes, I used “behoove” in a sentence) to talk a little bit about erotic horror, and my process for writing it.


Then I realized in order for me to talk about the process, I’d have to actually have had one.
Then I realized that I did write it, so even though I didn’t think about having a process, I must have had one. Ergo, this blog to help me (and you!) figure out how I created this scary yet sexy brainchild.
It all started when my loverly editor Carrie said, “HEY. Write me an erotic horror. Kthxbai.” It might have been a bit more involved than that, but not a helluva lot. Erotic horror? Well, I’ve read and written a good bit of erotic, and I’d read a lot of horror in my teenage years, but I’d never read anything that combined the two before. But since I heart Carrie, and would grovel across fiery shards of broken glass just to please her, (it’s amazing what those tiny editor-shaped nuggets of praise will do for a writer) I jumped right in.
I started SINFUL TRUTH as I’ve started my last few books-with a blurb.
Huh?
Yes, that’s what I said. A blurb. Like the blob of interesting text on the back of the book? I write that first. It’s a lot easier to expand a three-paragraph blurb into a novel, short story, or novella, than it is to condense a 100K-word monster into three paragraphs.
So, for your delight and edification, this was the blurb that popped into my head at CarrieJEditor’s command:

Bryerly Keats did a bad, bad thing. Her boyfriend, Rafe, told her to stay with the car, but when she heard those screams, she couldn’t stay put. The murder she witnessed that night was just the first.
Rafe and his friends know Bry saw what they did. They can’t afford to let anyone know about their plans. They’ll silence her for good. When a whole town turns against Bry and her tales, she’ll have to depend on a complete stranger to save her life.
But the stranger doesn’t work for free. And his price is the one thing that Bry isn’t sure she can face:
An Eternity with the Truth Keeper

I sent it to Carrie with a “is this kind of what you were thinking?” note, and she fired back a yes, with a ton of questions, one of which was “What exactly is a Truth Keeper?” Well, yanno, I thought, I have no bloody idea.

Check back tomorrow for part TWO of the How I did it: Erotic Horror series. And be sure to leave a comment below! To show how much I appreciate each and every one of my blog commenters, I’ll be adding each of your names from now until SINFUL TRUTH releases (April 20th!) into a hat. Comment on multiple blog posts? Receive multiple entries. The winner will be selected via Random.org, and will receive a Scarily Good Gift plus a free copy of SINFUL TRUTH! So comment, ask questions, harass me, and generally have a good time.

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