by Mlissa | Oct 22, 2010 | cupcakes, Ellora's Cave, Kyle Busch, Nascar
It’s not been a very exciting week. I’ve spent it trying to get back to myself. I’ve been a bit down, a bit muddy in the head, restless, etc… I caught up on some shows I’d DVR’d, watched a few movies, watched hours of cooking shows on Food Network and Cooking Channel, read a little bit, napped, did some writing by hand, made a few lists on some new ideas. I haven’t talked to anyone really and have only tweeted a little.
I don’t know other authors like this. I’m sure there are some, but, none that I know specifically. I go through these periods and usually when I come back on the other side, I’m motivated, inspired, and my writing is better.
I’ve also gotten a few really good reviews this week, but…
Okay, one said the story ended too abruptly without the reader knowing what happens after… Well, honestly, what’s wrong with a little imagination? I don’t write ‘I love you’ endings. I don’t write a lot of complete endings where everything is spelled out. I lose a lot of interest in books after the couple gets together and I even get bored with writing too much after it. I realize this is me and most people want a more complete ending with ‘I love you’ and everything spelled out. I know I need to learn to write it and am working on it. I actually added an epilogue in my seasonal book, Arrested Holiday. And I’m gonna tell y’all, it was hard for me.
Another review for another book of mine said that the hero and heroine’s involvement, how it began was highly improbably. My issue with this is… yeah, it is highly improbable, but then, 90% of the romance novels, novellas, quickies, etc… that I read are so far beyond probable and possible and realistic that most times I roll my eyes and think ‘yeah right!’ At the same time, this is fiction, this is fantasy and if we can’t venture into dreams come true because of however improbable the idea is…what are we doing?
A lot of my books have down to earth people, real people, plus sized girls, real jobs, not at unlimited amount of money and resources, and only once have I written about someone that might be famous and well-off. I have a few other books about this kind of hero, but, if the average woman can’t fantasize about him, about the actor, the singer, the race car driver, the football player without being reminded of what is improbable, then why create the fairy tale in the first place? I want realistic characters. I want the everyday, independent woman. I even want the everyday, independent man. I do though, want a little bit of fantasy in my books. Not so much that I can’t relate in any way, shape, or form which is what most romance and erotic romance is to me…too much that I can’t relate to, but there’s some out there that are perfect for the real woman. That’s my goal as a writer.
Over last weekend, I found that I had gone down a size. Weight Watcher’s is working for me. Slowly. But it’s working. I’m eating real food, not having to limit carbs or fats or sweets or meat or coffee. This is good for me. I agree with the sentiment that if you don’t have choice, you aren’t likely to keep at it for long. Then again, other people have more will power than me. I am proud of myself however. I am enjoying playing with food again, trying new recipes, tweaking old recipes, having a little Halloween candy, and again, my coffee. Y’all know how I am about my coffee.
Some of my new favorite ingredients are: Light Butter, Turkey Pepperoni, Laughing Cow Light Cheese Wedges, Celery, Gingersnaps, Reduced-Fat Sliced Cheese (provolone, swiss, colby-jack), Pesto, Goat Cheese, ground chicken/turkey, Italian Turkey Meatballs, Gourmet Garden Herbs and Spices.
Y’all no doubt have noticed all the race car pictures. We live down the street and around the corner from most of the NASCAR race shops. These images are from Joe Gibbs Racing, home of Kyle Busch, Denny Hamiln, and Joey Logano. Also down the street we have, Hendrick Motorsports, Ganassi, Rousch Racing, Petty Racing. A few miles up the road, you’d find Kyle Busch Motorsports, Penske Racing, JR Motorsports, Red Bull Racing, Michael Waltrip Racing. In the other direction, up a few miles, would be Richard Childress Racing and Kevin Harvick Incorporated.
Race shops are all over the place here. If you watch Speed TV, they are just down the street and around the corner.
And though I know many of you aren’t fans of NASCAR, it’s a big part of my life because it’s a big part of my son’s interest in life and well, I’m good with sharing it with him, having something to do together, enjoy together. Y’all know how important it is to me to be a part of what makes my kids happy. I can’t imagine NOT wanting to share things with my kids, creating those memories, being able to talk with them. So, from time to time, I’ll post pictures from the race shops. Just indulge me…
We had a great time at the races in Charlotte, and y’all KNOW I was absolutely ticked when Kyle lost. But, it was fun still to be with the crowd and with my family. Drunk people are the most hilarious. There were these 4 women, two of which were so drunk they couldn’t walk without help. The one woman just thought she was the shit and it was so funny. They had tickets and seats somewhere, but they either didn’t know where or didn’t care. They were walking around our section, sitting in whatever 4 empty seats they could find or until someone came and asked them to move. Well, after about an hour of them moving around, stumbling up and down steps, falling into each other, a non-drunk woman there with her kids and husband, went and found the cops. We never saw the 4 women again.
Now, I don’t have any problems with you wanting to drink beer. I do have an issue with how many drunks drive after sporting events, but, what I don’t understand is why pay so much for tickets and drink so much that you have no idea what’s going on? Seriously, why? Aside from the fact that you provide me a great deal of entertainment, but why drink SOOOOO much that you can’t remember your name, the name of your team or driver, or where you parked your car?
Anyway, I don’t really have much else to talk about today, but knew I needed to spend a little time with y’all. I need to see about planning dinner, eating a bit of a snack, go to the store, find the new cupcake and jelly roll pans I need for baking the next couple of weeks (red velvet cupcakes and coca-cola cake) along with the birthday present for my neighbor’s son.
I’ll be posting tomorrow for Snippet Saturday so tune in, though I forgot what the theme is… I’ll have to go look it up. My ‘Noles aren’t playing this weekend, but will be playing Thursday night.
Cracklin’ Rosie comes out Tuesday!!!!
If y’all haven’t joined in the Night Owl Romance web hunt (banner to the right), why not? Go hunt!
I’ll be participating in a hunt starting Sunday as well where I’ll be giving away a copy of Cracklin’ Rosie! You can find more information at Samhellion.com
I’ll be chatting on Wednesday at Kris Cook’s place, doing an interview on Thursday at Drea’s Place, celebrating the release at the Romance Studio on Friday.
In case y’all didn’t know, Jaz’s book, Ink Spots has been contracted by Ellora’s Cave. I’m so very excited by that… Arrested Holiday, which is coming from Loose Id at some point, is in line edits. I’m going to be participating in NaNoWriMo in November.
Lots coming up!
Have a great weekend, y’all!
~lissa
by Mlissa | Jul 2, 2010 | Carnal Ecstasy, Ellora's Cave
YAY! Provided that Courtney, one the readers that’s been on pins and needles waiting for the release of this book, has not shut down the Ellora’s Cave website from the constant refreshing until Dallon’s story here is available for purchase… It should be, most definitely, release day!
Dallon was a naughty man to write. A favorite. But honestly, I can say that about all the hero’s I have written. Each one is a fave in his own way, as is each heroine.
This story, though, is different. For one, it is told entirely from Dallon’s point of view. I was able to see Carrie blossom through his eyes, see the struggles he went through from his own head and heart, see the incredible support he offered.
This book also touches on religion. A little.
You know, we’re not supposed to talk politics and we’re not supposed to talk about religion, but we can talk about sex, what we think others do wrong, how we think others should live, whether or not gays and lesbians should marry, etc… We can talk about everything else, but we can’t talk about religion and politics. Well, sorry, but…fuck that! This is my blog and you enter here of your own accord. If you don’t like a post because of it’s content, well, you know the way out. Do I want to lose you? No. But I don’t want you to stay and be miserable either.
As I said, this book touches on a little bit of religion, more like religious upbringing. Carrie and Dallon both grew up in Southern homes. Both were sheltered by God-fearing parents from the world. Both have made their way out from under it all.
The picture I paint of Carrie with her shelteredness, her parent’s choosing for her where she could live, where she could work, how she could spend their money, etc… I grew up with people like that. I went to church in the local Southern Baptist church with people like that. I went to college with people that were raised that way. It’s a scary thing to try and make your way in the world if you see things inside yourself that are vastly different than the way others see things. Carrie knew she was not the same kind of person as her parents. She didn’t want her life dictated by a book, or her husband chosen for her from a select pool of candidates her parents and the church approved of. She wanted to make her own choices, her own mistakes, her own decisions.
Dallon was that decision for her.
You know that old saying about preacher’s kids being the baddest of them all… Well, my man Dallon here is the epitome of that statement. He is the baddest of them all. And I brought these two characters together because he would know best how to help her. He was quite reluctant… But, Carrie needed someone like Dallon. Someone that had broken the mold that was cast for him, a mold he didn’t choose but that was chosen for him. His father was a preacher, was a dean of a christian university in the South. We have quite a few of these, Bob Jones and Liberty are the two that come to mind always first. And I know a number of people that attended them.
When Dallon jumped ship, he jumped right into sin, right into everything hedonistic he could find, trying to find himself and once he found the man inside he was looking for…
I guess you could say this book is about breaking those molds, standing up for who you are even if you aren’t sure who that is, finding the strength to say ‘this is MY life’. Believe me, if you’ve never done that, it is hard. People get hurt and we don’t always have a Dallon or a friend to help see us through those first ‘Oh my God what have I done’ moments.
I am not a religious person and I could get into why, but I won’t. I have some very strong opinions on church, religion, the Bible, restrictions on sex before marriage, restrictions on what is and isn’t right accordingly in all other areas…
I had a conversation one night out of the blue with a very dear friend of mine. She was essentially Carrie. Carrie is a mixture of people I’ve met over the years, but she was primarily this one friend, only I took her in the opposite direction. The conversation I had with my friend this one night…we’d gone to college together, she was out of her little hole in the wall town and little hole in the wall church for the first time in her 18 years…and she was scared. She was naive to the ways of guys, to the ways of girls, to the ways of teachers that you didn’t see in church every Sunday, the cursing, to the drinking, smoking, and bed hopping on long band trips. (Yes, I do have some One time at band camp stories) She was so naive and on the phone this one night she thanked me. I asked her why and what for and she said ‘You protected me those years in college. You explained to me and made me understand how different it was from what I knew and you kept me from making horrible decisions and kept me from dating the wrong boys and to stay inside with the door locked because I didn’t know any better, for being stronger than me and sticking up for me.’
She didn’t ask me for that extension of friendship, but she needed it from someone like me. Someone that had been dating those wrong boys for years, someone that had gotten into trouble a few times, someone that had not been raised within the relative safety of the church’s four walls. She’s married now, to a good christian man, they have 3 wonderful children, they are heavily involved in church and though she’s raising them the same way she was raised, I know she prays that when they go off into the world, they’ll meet a friend like me that can help keep them safe and protected, that will tell them no and to stay locked in the room. I don’t agree with it, but it’s all she ever knew and it’s all she ever wanted.
Carrie…is different and has taken a different path. She wants to live a different life. She wants to explore the things that she feels inside. She didn’t have that friend to help keep her sheltered in college. She played and experimented when she was able to and she learned that she actually liked this different kind of life, but she didn’t know how to break free. Until she met Dallon, until she asked Dallon to teach her, to show her, to pleasure her…
I don’t know about you, but I don’t know too many bad boys, even one’s as bad as Dallon, that would be able to hold out for long against curves and unpracticed sex appeal…
Carnal Ecstasy is about one woman’s first steps into sexual pleasure, into a little cursing, a little beer drinking and the man she’s chosen to show her…
by Mlissa | Jul 1, 2010 | Carnal Ecstasy, Ellora's Cave, Simple Need
I swear, this is what I feel like some days. I would whore myself for coffee. And it’s not even the whole cup that matters. It’s just the first few sips. The aroma. The warmth. The fact that I know in a couple minutes, I’m gonna feel better.
Does the coffee really do that or is it just mind over matter for me with it? I’m gonna say it’s the coffee because I know plenty of others out there, that would swear the same things I did above. Although, some days it might take the whole cup and one or two more to feel better, but, you get the idea…
I am still primarily in the writing cave today. I promised my editor this book and dammit! she’s gonna get it. I also have a few pieces to add to the shifter edits before I can turn them back in this weekend or so… One day, I’ll get out of the cave… One day the characters in a book will behave and not go all crazy on me, having sex when it wasn’t planned for them to have sex, and having deep conversations when they really weren’t supposed to, not to mention the utter brattiness of the heroine just because she didn’t get her way… Her reward for it…no, she still didn’t get her way, I don’t believe in rewarding that behavior. No, all it got her was the hero telling her to get the fuck over it and walking away… Damn, I’ll chase a man like that!
Anyway…I digress… In light of being in the cave (thank GOD I’ve got the coffee pot in here), I am guesting over at Naughty Author Chicks today. I was approached to give an interview by one of my favorite authors and new friends and writing guru’s Cara McKenna. I would never deny this woman anything… She’s so incredibly awesome, talented, and prolific! I provided NAC with a couple naughty excerpts, one from each book so, pop on over there! I’ll be giving away a copy of both Simple Need and Carnal Ecstasy tomorrow.
There is also a hot, yummy (different) excerpt from Carnal Ecstasy over on Smutty Hussy Cecile’s blog, All I Want and more… We didn’t plan a contest, but the weekend isn’t over yet and y’all know me, I’ll have a giveaway somewhere and I’ll let all y’all know!
I’ll be posting today on Kiss and Tell Girls… Yes more promo for this book! And if y’all think this is bad, just wait til August and I start promoting my first shifter novella!
So, while I get back to the cave for some more hard and heavy writing, y’all visit some blogs and leave some comments, and lust after the man that’s gonna be bringing you naughtiness tomorrow… Dallon…
~lissa
by Mlissa | Jun 28, 2010 | Carnal Ecstasy, Ellora's Cave, Simple Need, Vinter
Y’all remember Vinter, right? Simple Need? Elise needs a bad boy and finds the ultimate one in the bar? Tattooed and pierced Vinter? You do? Great!
It just so happens that my new book from Ellora’s Cave which is coming out this Friday, July 2nd, is about Vinter’s business partner, or one of them, Dallon. He tends the bar where Elise walked in and tried not to cry in her drink.
When I started on Vinter’s story, I knew there were going to be two others. I knew there was going to be a hot, yummy, to freakin’ die for bartender, and I knew there was going to be a hot, yummy, to freakin’ die for artist.
Dallon is our bartender. Jaspar is our artist. I am still working on Jaz’s book and he’s being given a run for his money because the lovely woman that wants him…REALLY WANTS him. And she’s come to get him. But, y’all will just have to wait for that one!
In the meantime, Dallon has agreed to let me post an excerpt for you to keep you…on the brink, as it were, until Friday. He might let me post snippets here and there throughout the week, but I don’t think I’ve begged enough yet.
Blurb:
When good girls go bad, very, very bad…
The minute Carrie meets tattooed, bad-boy bartender Dallon, her decision is made. He’s the one, her ticket to freedom and a new, independent life. She’s tired of dictates and zero dates and following the path laid out before her by her well-meaning-but-completely-out-of touch-with-her-reality religious parents.
Dallon sees the buttoned-up, full-of-curves woman outside the grocery store and feels the flames of hell licking at his heels. When she asks him for directions to the large, nearby university where she’s starting work, his gut-twisting lust for her doesn’t diminish, but those flames start to singe his tough-as-nails hide.
With the promise he made to himself about not fornicating with anyone associated with the university his father is the dean of about to go up in smoke, Carrie takes the first exit off the Heavenly Highway straight onto Sin Street. She wants Dallon to teach her all the things a good girl should never know and she won’t take Hell no for an answer.
Reader Advisory: What Dallon does with a beer bottle may be illegal in forty-eight out of fifty states…and at least two territories.
Excerpt:
Damn, but she had a pretty mouth.
“I don’t want to leave.”
Shit. Don’t say anything. Not a word. Not a single solitary word. “You should.”
She raised her eyes to look him square in his, a silent challenge reflected there. “Why?”
Dammit. He planted his hands on the edge of the bar and leaned toward her until he could smell the beer on her breath. “Because you don’t know who I am and you don’t know what fire you’re playing with.”
She licked at her lips. He wasn’t even sure she knew she did it. “W-who are you?”
No sense lying about it or anything else now. “The devil himself.” Even if he could protect her by doing so, she didn’t want protection from him. He knew that as well as he knew his own name. “You were headed out to the college earlier.”
“Yes. I was hired a few weeks ago. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
“The dean is my father. He is also the pastor of the big downtown Baptist church here.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“Right. Very few do. You don’t need to be messing with me, Carrie. You really don’t. If ever there was a black sheep, I’m it. My reputation is bad, very, very bad. It’s best that you go. Now.”
She lowered her gaze and he thought he’d gotten through to her, even though he hadn’t said much. He’d hoped it was enough and it appeared that it was. When she looked back up at him, he knew he was in deep trouble by the sheen of tears and the clenching of her jaw. She took a deep breath before she spoke again.
“I quit my job.”
It was said so softly he wasn’t sure he’d heard right, but the determined set of her jaw told him he had. “You quit?”
She blinked rapidly to keep the tears from falling. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I want something in my life that is all mine, that no one else has a say in. I’ve never had that kind of freedom and now that I’m out on my own, out from under my parents’ thumbs, I want it.”
Don’t ask, man. Please for the love of all that is twisted and dirty, don’t fucking ask. “That’s all you want? Freedom?”
“No.”
FedEx was going to bust through the doors, package him up, and send him straight to hell by ten the next morning for asking his next question and already knowing the answer. “What else do you want?”
“You.”
His dick throbbed at the one clearly spoken word. “You shouldn’t, Carrie. I’m not the kind of guy you need. I don’t do good girls,” which was a huge lie, “and you are one. I don’t do tears either unless they’re the kind that come from me spanking the shit out of you or the kind that come from you begging me to stop fucking your ass so hard.”
As he spoke, shock widened her eyes, her mouth formed a little “O”, and her cheeks turned a delectable shade of dark pink, much like the shade he imagined her pale butt would turn. She balled her hands into fists against the bar then flattened them out, pressing down until the tips were white. Had that finally gotten through to her? Had he finally said the right thing to get her to leave?
“Well, okay.”
Her body relaxed and she dropped her hands and her gaze to her lap. Yes, she got it. Dallon breathed a sigh of frustrated relief and ignored the pinch of disappointment. He wasn’t right for her. She was too clean for him and his rough, kinky ways.
Then she spoke, and at first it was hard to hear her, but as she went on, her voice grew louder with anger and her eyes shot daggers at him when she looked back up.
“It’s not up to you to decide what kind of guy I need. If you don’t want me, if I’m not the kind of woman that you…that you ‘do’, that’s one thing, but don’t tell me what I do and don’t need. I’ve had enough of that in my life. I can make my own choices, my own decisions.”
Dallon smiled. His little innocent had spunk. He’d never expected it, but he damn sure liked it. If she wasn’t going to take his hints or his outright telling her to go, he wouldn’t fight it anymore. “Okay. I won’t tell you what you need. At least not when it comes to this. And I do want you, I just don’t want you to have any regrets after. I might be a bastard, but I don’t want you hurt when I don’t turn out all sweet and tender with you. That’s not me.”
“Oh. Good. That you want me too, I mean.”
Now she was looking everywhere but at him and he had to bite back a laugh. She was going to be more fun than he’d first imagined, what with the sparks she’d already fired at him. Oh, he knew sure enough that he should still walk away, that he should try harder to convince her he was bad news, but he wasn’t going to. The woman said she wanted him and he was just bad enough he was going to let her have him.
So, what do y’all think? Interested?
~lissa
It’s not been a very exciting week. I’ve spent it trying to get back to myself. I’ve been a bit down, a bit muddy in the head, restless, etc… I caught up on some shows I’d DVR’d, watched a few movies, watched hours of cooking shows on Food Network and Cooking Channel, read a little bit, napped, did some writing by hand, made a few lists on some new ideas. I haven’t talked to anyone really and have only tweeted a little.
