2015: End of Year Post

It’s just an hour or so before 2016, just enough time for an end of year post for 2015. I haven’t posted all December for two reasons: winter holiday road trip to see family and friends (with intermittent WiFi), and I’m on deadline for the next Naughty Literati anthology, Naughty Lovers. I’m still not quite sure I’m going to meet that deadline!

But let’s just say I do meet that deadline… Continue reading

NaNoWriMo 2015 Winner!

As of yesterday I can safely announce I am a NaNoWriMo 2015 Winner!

NaNo-2015-Winner-Badge-Large-Square
Continue reading

NaNoWriMo 2015: NaNoPrep

2015 will be my 10th year doing NaNoWriMo and I’m revisiting some of my favorite characters I’ve created during the event, plus adding another hero and heroine into the mix. Back this year are Clara, Sam, Constance, and Pat from The General’s Wife: An American Revolutionary Tale. Joining them will be Clara’s brother – Oliver Hastings, the Viscount Thornton – and a family friend, Lady Eleanor Ormundsley. Continue reading

Mature Romance

It happens to the best of us. It happens to the worst of us. But we’re lucky if it happens to us at all.

Getting older.

As we tally off the years, we get a little soft around the middle, our knees creak when we climb stairs, our muscles complain if we try a new dance move, our fifty shades of youthful tresses dim to one shade of gray.

And yet, we still crave romance, we still yearn for love. Because, even though we’ve grown older, we’re still human. We may not have the raging hormones of youth, but the heart still desires emotional satisfaction.

So it is with romance novel characters. Continue reading

Definitions: What is Erotica?

[UPDATE: Please also see my reprise blog post “Definitions: Erotica, Erotic Romance, Steamy Romance”]

People frequently make broad assumptions about what it is I write. Friends, family, and acquaintances snicker about my “porn”. Romance writer colleagues imbued with the cadence of traditional romance often bandy about the term “erotica” as if to signal the ugly otherness of erotic romance.

So I will attempt to answer the provocative question What is erotica? and by doing so answer corollary questions about misunderstood erotic-like literary variations: Erotic romance, steamy romance, smut, porn, and Romantica®. Continue reading

The General’s Wife now in epub!

Finally, finally I was able to convert The General’s Wife: An American Revolutionary Tale into an epub edition! I had to wait until the end of its enrollment in Amazon’s KDP Select Program, because books in that program have to be exclusive to Amazon.

So now you can buy The General’s Wife for your Nook, your Kobo reader, your iPad or other Apple product, your Tolino reader, your whatever-is-not-a-Kindle! Continue reading

A Naked Guy in Zurich

Hi everyone! I’m over at the Naughty Literati blog today talking about the inspiration for my Naughty Escapes story. The post is copied below. Enjoy!

In my story “Window Display” in Naughty Escapes, the heroine, Laurie, an American Ph.D. student, trots off to Zurich to finish up her dissertation. Instead of the hoped-for peace and quiet, she finds distraction in a totally hot neighbor who doesn’t bother closing the curtains when he’s naked at home.

Many of my Naughty Literati co-authors chose rather exotic locations for their Naughty Vacation Getaway stories. Zurich is generally not considered an “exotic” or even “sexy” location in which to set a romance! Exotic or not, sexy or not, the story is based on a real-life event. Not my life, though. Inspiration came from an unlikely place. Continue reading

Vikings in Byzantium

Hi everyone! I’m over at the blog for Conquests: An Anthology of Smoldering Viking Romance today talking about my story in that anthology. I’ve posted it below, as well.
[UPDATE: “Protecting Her” has been re-issued in Imperial Warriors: Two Scorching Tales of the Roman Empire and Ancient Shorts: An Ancient World Romance Collection.]

Let’s just get this out of the way, but the History Channel’s production of Vikings has given a sexy cachet to the fiercest warriors of the Middle Ages. When Delilah put out a call for stories in a Viking erotic romance anthology, my heart just went pitter-pat with excitement.

And then the excitement sort of dissipated.

My knowledge of Vikings is limited given their era is out of my purview. My field of study is Late Roman into the early Byzantine (roughly 200-600 CE), and the Viking Age starts around 790 CE. I worried I would not have sufficient knowledge to pull off a believable story.

Except that Delilah mentioned in her call for submissions the “Rus who served in the Byzantine Varangian Guard”.

I could totally do that. Continue reading

Keeping Sex Between the Covers

It’s June 14th and in the United States we’re celebrating Flag Day! I have a special promotion for June (Flag Day month) and July (Independence Day month). See the end of this post!

I generally write historical erotic romance, although I have also written contemporary, mythological, and Steampunk. But my comfort zone is historicals because I’m a historian and, I suppose, I’ve internally fetishized history to a certain extent.

I’ve written stories that take place in ancient Roman and Victorian England. But my favorite book I’ve written takes place in New York state and is set in 1777 during the American Revolution. Continue reading

My Bisexual Heroes: Extended Version

Hi Everyone, I’m blogging over at AReCafe today about my bisexual heroes for LGBTQ Pride Month. But I had to keep it short and was only able to promote my books listed on AllRomanceeBooks. I got a lot more stories with bisexual heroes. Below is the extended version of my blog post.

Remember Torchwood? The Dr. Who spin-off show set in Cardiff? There’s definite sexual chemistry between Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper, and we the viewers so want something to happen, but we know Gwen already has a boyfriend who is a nice guy and she can’t just have an affair without consequences then suddenly…

OMG. Continue reading