by Mlissa | Mar 8, 2017 | Blue Jeans and Hard Hats, Coming Soon, Pink Buttercream Frosting, Samhain Publishing, The Bar Next Door
If you browse my website, you’ll find that these cover place holders are all over the place. Between all the Ellora’s Cave books, several Loose Id books, and now the Samhain Publishing books, along with new books being written, there are many, many Cover Coming Soon images. More than 18…
I was not planning to have all these books returned to me in such a short amount of time (though to be fair, the Loose Id books are because I opted to not renew the contracts). However, there are more books now NOT available with my name on them than there are available with.
I ask for your patience as I write new books, revise these older titles, and work on coming up with a plan for it all. I had a plan at the beginning of the year. With Samhain closing it’s doors, that plan went out the window as most of my plans do.
The additional books that will be re-released as soon as I can fit them all in and get them re-covered are:
Pink Buttercream Frosting
Sweet Caroline (Blue Jeans and Hard Hats)
Cracklin’ Rosie (Blue Jeans and Hard Hats)
Twisted Up
Malachi’s Word (The Bar Next Door)
Eli’s Promise (The Bar Next Door)
Arctic Shift (Denali Heat)
Abe’s Law (The Bar Next Door) has been started.
Denali Heat #2, #3 have been started as well.
Forever In Blue Jeans (Blue Jeans and Hard Hats) has been written and finished. It was self-published, but I removed it to wait for Sweet Caroline and Cracklin’ Rosie to come available from Samhain (sooner than planned, apparently).
Things are in the works and I’ll keep you updated when titles will be re-published.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
~lissa
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by Mlissa | Jan 17, 2014 | Lissa Matthews, self publishing
I was told yesterday and have been told many times since Pink Buttercream Frosting that when people thing of me as a writer the things that come to mind have been cupcakes, BDSM, and emotion. It’s only been recently that the BDSM was dropped and honestly, that’s fine with me. I used to want to be an author of erotic BDSM romance, but that was dashed on the rocks by several scathing, mean, less than constructive reviews. My books are not the only ones to have received them and haven’t been the last.
And yes, that was years ago.
And yes, as an author, I’m supposed to look beyond that and keep plugging along. But I was new to all this. My publisher, Samhain Publishing knew what they were doing. Why would they publish a book that was so wrong? My writing of BDSM came from a base of knowledge and personal research that other writers of BDSM do not and will never have. It is more than the act and it is more than the command of a voice. To me. That’s the important part to remember. To. Me.
So, after Pink Buttercream Frosting and after Sweet Caroline and Cracklin’ Rosie, I changed. My writing 
changed. I was told ‘you don’t write that the way they want it’, ‘but that’s not what you write’, ‘you shouldn’t try to write that’…
Now, when people think about my writing, it is cupcakes still, thank you, and emotion. I can write emotion. I have felt every inch of emotional range since I began in this business from despair to elation and everything in between. I have made friends and lost them. I have had some wonderful editors and some…not. I have cried and laughed and if I can say anything at all about the experiences, I can say that I have grown a lot.
You must be wondering what all this has to do with Passionate Sprinkles Books, huh? In a long-winded, round about way, it has a lot to do with it. Just bare with me…
I had to come up with an imprint name for my self-published print books when I started the print process on The Cupcake Cowboy. I wanted something that I would use more than once, and I didn’t want to have to go back and use something different later. Many self-published authors have created imprint names and publisher names for their titles and I’ve been wracking my brain for about a year for something that fit me.
Whey my friend mentioned yesterday that when she thinks of me, she thinks cupcakes and emotion, I thought about all the times people have said that to me in the last few years, and I started toying and playing with words to see what I could come up with.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Passionate means: having, showing, or expressing strong emotions or beliefs; expressing or relating to strong sexual or romantic feelings
Sprinkles…well, who doesn’t like sprinkles on their cupcakes, right? Or on top of a mound of whipped cream with a long-stemmed cherry? Rainbow Nonpareils (the small, sugar pellets), chocolate or rainbow jimmie sprinkles… There are even sprinkles of cinnamon on my lattes. I could coarsely grind coffee beans and use them as sprinkles (with a little coarse sugar, too). Sprinkles are sweet, decorative, pretty… Sprinkles are the extra measure…
Books would be self-explanatory 😉
What was come up with, and what I’ve passed by several other friends, was Passionate Sprinkles Books. They’ve loved it. So, this is going to be on the print books that I self-publish. It’s not sexy, but, it’s reflective.
And I know there are some readers who want to know if I will ever write in the same vein as Pink Buttercream Frosting again and all I can say is, Maybe.
~lissa
by Mlissa | Sep 7, 2013 | Uncategorized
There was a really great review this week on Cracklin’ Rosie and it was one I hadn’t been expecting to show up in my Twitter feed. I don’t typically read reviews anymore, but that one out of the blue surprised me enough that I had to take a peek. I was glad I did. The reviewer loved it, which is always nice. But it got me thinking about the book and how much I loved it myself and how much I’d loved writing it.
And the hero, Decker, yeah he ends up in the doghouse a few times…
He left. She couldn’t believe he just left after a kiss like that. He left her with a throbbing sex, a pounding heart, a confused head and lips wanting so many more kisses. And an ass…
She retraced her steps to the back of the cabin and quickly cleared away the rest of the dinner dishes. Decker had cleaned the grill while she got dessert out, and all that was left for her now was loading the dishwasher and putting the veggies in plastic storage bags.
The evening was still cooling but with him near, she hadn’t noticed. Now that he was gone, she was chillier than usual. She pulled a lightweight blanket from the storage container she kept on the deck near the chairs. She had Adirondack and rocking chairs and often liked to sit outside with her laptop as she researched recipes or wrote on her blog. She flopped down into one of the Adirondack’s and draped her legs over the wide arm.
She wiggled, trying to find the best spot, trying to stop the tingling in her ass at his remembered words. She was shocked that she’d let it show on her face how his mention of a spanking affected her. He’d caught her staring at him as well…how embarrassing. But damn. How could he just leave her like that? How could he turn tail and run after that?
“That son of a…”
Well, she just hoped he was in as much discomfort as she was. No, that wasn’t right. She hoped he was in more discomfort, bordering on pain. The man was a gorgeous tease.
She touched her fingertips to her lips and swore she could feel the heat from his lingering there, but that was just a fanciful notion. She could still hear his voice in her head, his words echoing through every cell in her body. “I think we’re going to find out soon.” He wanted her, told her so, and looking in his dark eyes, she knew he was telling the truth.
She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and sank deeper into the deck chair. Damn man. She couldn’t get comfortable and she kept squeezing her thighs together to try and do what, she wasn’t sure. The pressure only increased the need for release, the need for him. He hadn’t touched her in any sexual way yet, but if she closed her eyes and thought about it, she could feel those rough calloused hands on her body, sliding over her hips, spreading her legs, spanking her, scratching her tender skin in a caress…
And that bit of scruff on his face, that longer-than-average hair, that mouth caressing her…
She wanted him to come back. She wanted him to stay the hell away from her.
“Fuck this.” Rosie stood and dropped the blanket into the chair, then walked inside the house, closing and locking the door behind her.
A few minutes later she had her sneakers on and was on her way to the diner. She needed to do something, anything to get her mind off him, off what they could be doing right that very moment if he’d not left.
“I didn’t need him before he showed up, and I don’t need him now. What the hell was I thinking letting him get close?”
Muttering to herself always fueled her anger and frustration but at the same time, it always helped her figure things out.
When she came to the turn in the road that would take her into the center of town, Rosie stopped. She loved the little town. She loved the quaintness of it, that it had small novelty shops, antique stores, the bar and grill, the coffee shop that wasn’t a chain but rather owned and operated by a couple of local moms, the tiny hole-in-the-wall art gallery featuring local artists, a local artisan jewelry-maker. It was home to her and if she ever felt love for anything or anyone outside of food, her diner and her family, it was this town and its residents.
Putting one foot in front of the other, she started walking again. Half a mile from the edge of downtown sat her diner. The lights glowed from inside and from what she could see, it was still pretty well packed with people. It was a 24-hour place and oddly enough, it kept a steady clientele at all hours, especially on the weekends.
Cool air hit her when she opened the door and went inside. A few patrons waved and said hello, including Blue, her best childhood friend. She was sitting at the end of the counter, eating a piece of cherry pie. It was Rosie’s mother’s recipe and one of the favorites. Another was the blackberry cobbler. Her banana pudding didn’t do too badly either.
Crap.
Just thinking about banana pudding made her think of Decker, and she could feel the scowl take over her face. She didn’t want to think about him, not tonight, not anymore. She was done with him. She wanted him to fix her roof and leave. Heck, she wasn’t even sure she wanted him to fix the roof anymore. She’d find someone else to do it or damn, she’d leave it the way it was. She just wanted him gone.
As she passed through into the kitchen, she headed straight for the small walk-in cooler. She needed something to do and this was it. She’d inherited it from her mother. Cleaning out the fridge. The one in her house was spic-and-span, spotless and very tidy, this one though—this one could always use a good purging and organizing. And even if it didn’t, she’d do it anyway. It would keep her mind occupied and the cold would ease the heat still flowing through her blood that had nothing to do with the walk she just took and everything to do with him.
“What has you upset tonight?”
Blue’s sweet, soft voice floated in on the thin air as she stood just inside the doorway to the cooler. She walked in and closed the door behind her.
“Nothing has me upset.” Only irritated, horny, aching from the inside out.
“Okay.”
Rosie started at the back of the walk-in. Everything was in a haphazard array. “Sometimes I think they do this because they know eventually I’ll come in and fix it all.”
“Probably.”
She picked up a couple small containers of potato salad ingredients and put them on a tray on a shelf near the door. Next she moved the macaroni salad, the coleslaw and the egg salad to another tray on the same shelf. The individual lidded cups that held salad dressings were stacked neatly by flavor—ranch, blue cheese, Italian and French.
“Why aren’t you talking?” she asked Blue. The other woman had come to stand next to Rosie and began arranging the salad fixings on the trays beneath the shelf that held the dressings and other condiments when Rosie moved on to the next rack. Thank heavens for labels with dates.
“Because I know you will, and I don’t want to distract you from it.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” It wouldn’t do her any good to tell Blue there was nothing to talk about. Blue knew her better than anyone else in town.
“Okay.”
The one-word answers were Blue’s way of being patient, and she knew Rosie would cave and spill her guts. Shit. “The man here to fix my roof, the one Caroline’s guy brought out here from California… We had dinner tonight. He’s been coming on to me and hitting on me and so I finally said yes.” She left out the part about the kiss in the diner earlier that morning.
“Good. Is he…you know, like you? Like me?”
“No no no. Not good.” To emphasize her point, she took a plastic container from the back corner of a shelf and tossed it into the garbage bag she’d grabbed on her way into the cooler. It wasn’t often, but she sometimes found containers that had been pushed to the back of a shelf or two that she didn’t want to open. Usually it was someone’s lunch or dinner they’d meant to eat or take home that in the hustle and bustle of the diner never made it to its intended destination.
She turned and faced her friend. “It’s not good, Blue. You know how I am, how I have tried to keep that part of me away from here. I can’t imagine the freakish looks I’d get if people knew about the club in Atlanta or the things I’m into.”
“So, that means, he’s into those things too? That is good. You need that, Rosie. You always have, or at least you have since you found it. And no one around here has to ever know what goes on in your house. They don’t have to know what goes on in private at all.”
“I barely know him, and it’s just not right that he can read me like he can.”
“Why not? We both know how hard it is.”
“Yeah, I do. But not you. You’ve always embraced your kinks. You’ve never cared what people think or might think.”
“Why do you?”
“I run a business. It wouldn’t look right.”
“Again, why does anyone have to know? You should stop being scared of the what-if’s Rosie and give in to the what is. Maybe this guy would be good for you if you’d just let him try. Stop fighting so hard and maybe you wouldn’t have to make the trek to Atlanta anymore.”
Blue was right, and Rosie knew it. She just didn’t like it, and she hoped if she just ignored it, ignored him, avoided him it would go away. And…as soon as her roof was done, he’d leave town, and she wouldn’t wonder about him anymore, wouldn’t want his kisses anymore, wouldn’t want hot sex and to try out those belts of his, wouldn’t want him to cook for her again.
Buy Links: All Romance eBooks | Amazon Kindle | Barnes and Noble | iBooks | Kobo | Powell’s | Samhain Publishing
Now, there are other blogs for you to read snippets on, and I need to get some writing in before the first kick-off at noon…
Lauren Dane
Caris Roane
Eliza Gayle
McKenna Jeffries
Shiloh Walker
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
HelenKay Dimon
Myla Jackson
TJ Michaels
~lissa
by Mlissa | Jan 19, 2013 | Uncategorized
What kind of description should we go for? Surroundings? Character? How about a little of both courtesy of Decker and Rosie from Cracklin’ Rosie?
Snippet 1:
He wasn’t sure what it was about the curvy, pint-sized waitress that turned him on, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her, wanting her and damn when the roofing job was done, he was going to figure out her weakness and get her into bed with him.
“Yes, better. What do you want, Decker? I’m on my way to work and don’t want to be late. Besides, you’re blocking traffic.”
Decker laughed and shook his head. There was no traffic in the small town at this ungodly hour of the morning because everyone was either still asleep or having a nice leisurely breakfast down at the diner. “I stopped to see if you’d like a ride to work.”
“It’s only about a half mile down the road. I think I can make it. Thanks. And you’re going in the wrong direction anyway.” She started walking again, summarily dismissing him. He drove up to the next street and turned around. When he pulled up alongside her again, she didn’t wait until he’d shouted her name to look at him. She kept walking though.
The way her peach-colored dress pulled across her hips and ass when she walked did nothing to sway his libido in any direction other than the current where’s-the-nearest-flat-surface one. The bodice hugged her breasts in just the right way, not too tight, not too loose, but dear Lord in heaven she had a beautiful pair. He hadn’t seen them naked yet, but he had a pretty good imagination and it told him that she’d overflow his hands and respond so well to the teasing tip of his tongue.
She had pretty, blemish free skin, save for the few freckles dotting her nose and cheeks. She walked to work every day, too, and had strong-looking legs. She wasn’t thin, slender or skinny. She had too many curves for that, which suited him just fine. He didn’t go for the rail thin, magazine-size women. Never had and it was too bad that L.A. was all about skinny and bikini and boy hips. He didn’t go for the centerfold type either. He’d always been partial to real women that took care of themselves but weren’t afraid to indulge in real food and that had a little extra flesh. It marked up so well to his spankings, floggings, whippings. They could take a real good fucking, too, and he wasn’t afraid he’d break them in half. Oh yeah, Miss Rosie was perfect for him. He just had to convince her of that.
Snippet #2:
“You’re not being very hospitable, Rosie. Might have to talk to your manager.”
It’s not that she didn’t want him around. It’s that she wanted him around too much. It threw her off her game. She didn’t know how to handle a man’s interest like his. Hell, she didn’t know how to handle her own interest in him. She was thirty-seven years old and had never come across a man as potent as him—straight sun-streaked brown hair to his collar, black-rimmed glasses with skulls on the frames, dark chocolate eyes, and tattoos. He had tattoos up and down his back. She’d seen him once without his shirt and stared and drooled like a damn fool. He was gorgeous. At least to her. Most people in town gave him a wide berth until he smiled at them. Then they warmed up, shaking his hand, talking to him, making him feel welcome and at home in their little community. She didn’t want him feeling at home here. She wanted him to go home, back to wherever he came from.
And speaking of that damned smile of his. It was very disarming and melted every woman, even ones older than Betsy, into a puddle. He had eyes for only one woman though.
Why couldn’t he have been one of those overweight, beer-bellied, crack-showing blue-collar guys? It would have made life lately so much easier.
“I am the manager.”
Then there was the megawatt grin. His teeth were pearly white in his tan face, straight and beautiful. Could teeth be beautiful?
“Well, isn’t that fortunate for you? Not to mention, I never said I was anything close to a gentleman.”
He hadn’t, but she knew he was. He opened doors for little old ladies. He shook hands with little old men. He smiled, made small talk with people, and she knew he’d give his last dollar to anyone that might need it. He had that bad-boy look yes, but he was a gentleman through and through. It sucked. Why couldn’t he be a jerk? “Seriously, Decker, what can I get you? We are busy, and I just…I don’t like you.”
Snippet #3:
“I didn’t need him before he showed up, and I don’t need him now. What the hell was I thinking letting him get close?”
Muttering to herself always fueled her anger and frustration but at the same time, it always helped her figure things out.
When she came to the turn in the road that would take her into the center of town, Rosie stopped. She loved the little town. She loved the quaintness of it, that it had small novelty shops, antique stores, the bar and grill, the coffee shop that wasn’t a chain but rather owned and operated by a couple of local moms, the tiny hole-in-the-wall art gallery featuring local artists, a local artisan jewelry-maker. It was home to her and if she ever felt love for anything or anyone outside of food, her diner and her family, it was this town and its residents.
Putting one foot in front of the other, she started walking again. Half a mile from the edge of downtown sat her diner. The lights glowed from inside and from what she could see, it was still pretty well packed with people. It was a 24-hour place and oddly enough, it kept a steady clientele at all hours, especially on the weekends.
Cool air hit her when she opened the door and went inside. A few patrons waved and said hello, including Blue, her best childhood friend. She was sitting at the end of the counter, eating a piece of cherry pie. It was Rosie’s mother’s recipe and one of the favorites. Another was the blackberry cobbler. Her banana pudding didn’t do too badly either.
Crap.
Just thinking about banana pudding made her think of Decker, and she could feel the scowl take over her face. She didn’t want to think about him, not tonight, not anymore. She was done with him. She wanted him to fix her roof and leave. Heck, she wasn’t even sure she wanted him to fix the roof anymore. She’d find someone else to do it or damn, she’d leave it the way it was. She just wanted him gone.
As she passed through into the kitchen, she headed straight for the small walk-in cooler. She needed something to do and this was it. She’d inherited it from her mother. Cleaning out the fridge. The one in her house was spic-and-span, spotless and very tidy, this one though—this one could always use a good purging and organizing. And even if it didn’t, she’d do it anyway. It would keep her mind occupied and the cold would ease the heat still flowing through her blood that had nothing to do with the walk she just took and everything to do with him.
So, now, dear reader, you should go visit the following blogs by awesome authors and get their take on description:
Lissa Matthews
Rhian Cahill
Eliza Gayle
Leah Braemel
Myla Jackson
Caris Roane
Jody Wallace
McKenna Jeffries
Taige Crenshaw
HelenKay Dimon
Shiloh Walker
Delilah Devlin
Lauren Dane
TJ Michaels
~lissa
by Mlissa | Oct 19, 2012 | Author Friday, Research
So, let’s take a silent poll. How many of you have ever wanted to try out something you’ve read about in a book? You know, those things that bind and buzz and fill and tease? It’s okay. You can raise your hand. I won’t tell a soul.
See, reading fires the imagination. It transplants us into the characters or the scene or even into short term belief that we belong inside that world.
But when you read a romance, more specifically an erotic romance, do you ever find yourself curious about what we writers have come up with for our characters to do and experience? I know I do.
And just where do we get these ideas for specific funtime toys? Well, some of us have drawers, bags, trunks, closets full of them. Others of us go shopping, online or in a store.
My default, my first choice for…this kind of uh…research, is Adam and Eve. I have a store, brick and mortar down the street, but a larger selection can be found online at http://www.adameve.com/. I can, if I let myself, spend hours looking through vibrators, plugs, lingerie, wands, bondage tape, cuffs, and topicals like oils, lubes… Okay, ummm. Where was I?
In some of my earliest erotic romance reading, authors used real world items…food, strings of pearls, and other objects. Authors, including myself, still use these, but when I want something that uses batteries to heighten sensation, or scented/flavored oils to increase the heat, it’s time to aim the mouse over to a fun, adult toy store like Adam and Eve for some…research.
Several of my books contain toys of one sort or another. Sweet Caroline starts off in an adult store and she’s looking at clamps. There’s also the discussion of glass dildos. Cracklin’ Rosie has a heroine who loves cute bra and panty sets. In Twisted Up, Justin introduces Ella to the fun of rope and massage wands. And in more recent books, the use of pillow packets of lube are mentioned quite a lot.
One particular thing I was searching for in the last couple of weeks was…edible oils and lubricants, especially in cinnamon flavor.
I always find it fascinating how creative we try to be, how inventive, how much we seek to push the envelope of comfort zone with our readers when it comes to sex toys. I think they are fun and add a unique element to sex, while others do not. It’s a way of opening the mind, trying something new without being found out. Packaging is discreet. Payment is easy. After that, all it usually takes is some time and if you’ve been so inclined…batteries.
So, have you? Are you even the least bit tempted?
~lissa
