#ManCandyMonday

Someone call 911. I just swallowed my tongue. *thud*

Writing Sticky & Sweet

This story ended up being quite hard for me to write even though I’d seen the small kernel for the idea in my mind from the very beginning. Turns out, it’s actually pretty hard to write about spring/summer activities when you’re dealing with wintertime cold weather, illnesses, and on top of all that, depression.

A family member I help take care of became very sick in December, about two weeks before Christmas. We were going along okay, trying different things to help him get well, but nothing was working. Then, when the doctors gave him something different, a bit stronger, it looked like that was going to work.

And it did.

For a day.

He fell ill again. And again.

At some point, something inside me just…broke. Has that ever happened to you? I don’t know that that same broken feeling would’ve happened had I been able to go outside where it was warm, or gotten him outside where it was warm. We had an unusually cold winter for our area for the second year in a row and it added to the helpless feeling I had.

So a combination of less light, colder than usual weather, and dealing with an illness I could do nothing to make better all added up to leave me feeling helpless and broken. Depression set in and I needed to write a story that was fun, lighthearted, and about spring and summer love.

The first time I wrote the story, that’s not what I wrote. Luckily, I found that out, but that meant I had to rewrite it. But I still didn’t have the story right. So I had to rewrite it again. And the deadline came and went, and I was rewriting it a third time.

Luckily, the Naughty Literati editors are a group of amazing women. During edits, I rewrote portions again, but I didn’t have to rewrite the whole entire thing. And as more sunshine appeared, the weather began finally warming up, and surgery on my loved one began allowing him to finally heal, I was in a much better place mentally.

It was hard writing Sticky & Sweet, but not once did I ever consider throwing in the towel. My readers are too important to me to just give up. Y’all are the ones who kept me going, who kept me wanting to make the story better, even if my mind struggled to do so. Readers are very powerful motivators for writers and I thank you all so much for your support of what we write.

I write, not only for my own enjoyment, but for y’all’s entertainment as well. When you read Sticky & Sweet, you’ll have to let me know if it makes you want ice cream as much as it made the members of my writing group want ice cream. They sent me ice cream emojis every time they read another version of the story. Yum!!

Friends? Lovers? It can work.

One of my favorite themes is friends to lovers, especially in the short story format. For some reason that suits my writing style well. There is so much a writer can do with that theme. It just hits perfectly sometimes.

I have two friends to lovers stories in Naughty Literati collections, and though they’re very different, they also snuggle in closely with this theme.

In Love Potion #69, which is in the Naughty Hearts anthology, Jenna and Keith have known each other for a long time. They work next door to each other, Jenna’s father has a restaurant right across the street. They know each other, have even floated around the idea of dating.

When they come together, due to a bit of magic and Keith’s own clumsiness, the feeling is almost of inevitability, as if they’d been dancing around this for so long and it just works. They fit together perfectly.

To contrast, Mel and Tod from Stay the Night, which is in the Naughty Flings anthology, are more acquaintances than friends. She runs the bookstore that he visits every morning on his commute to work, and they have a nice rapport, but they haven’t explored any relationship beyond that. One day, they bond over a book Mel is reading. Tod reveals his attraction to Mel.

Tod and Mel explore a new phase of their friendship, connecting on a personal, as well as an intimate level. They also fit well together, but their connection is new and dynamic in a different way. Getting to know each other in and out of bed is exhilarating and beautiful.

Do you like reading about friends to lovers? What is the appeal to you?

Finding The Right Photo

I love making the videos for our anthologies. I do well enough at it, I suppose, considering all I have to work with is Windows Movie Maker that came with my Windows 8 machine. So far no one has screamed at me that the vids are horrible. 

There are two places I go to in order to make the videos: Fotolia.com and a royalty-free music site where I try to pick the best music I can find to fit the anthology. I spend a LOT of time on Fotolia since I have had an account there for ten years. Going through the shots can be tedious at best and hair-pulling at worst.  Why?  Go over there and do a search for...oh, say handsome black haired men...and see some of the choices they give you. Apparently their idea of handsome black haired men sometimes extend to women, cartoon characters, dogs-cats-horses and the occasional gerbil.  It's enough to make you...well...pull out your hair.

And don't get me started about the poses some of these 'models' use. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you positively cringe. Some are so ridiculous you wonder from what insane asylum the 'model' has escaped. A few have actually made me a bit nauseous.

Finding the right photo to go with what the author intended for her story can be futile and you just have to pick the closest one to her creation. If you're looking for a really sexy, appropriate shot of a handsome vampire holding a woman draped over one arm with his fangs extended as he prepares to suck a little blood, good luck with that. Either he isn't handsome and he's wearing a silly high-collared opera cape lined with red silk (don't ALL vamps have such a garment in their armoire?) or the woman looks like she has indigestion and stomach bloat. She doesn't so much drape across his brawny arm as wallow there.

Looking for period characters?  Try finding a 18th century highwayman wearing the fashions of his day...like a French-cocked hat? Ah, no. Finding a man of that era riding a horse is impossible. One holding a pistol? Yeah, right. There are hundreds of shots of men holding Barettas and Mac 10s and looking menacing. Silly but menacing. 

I just turned in a novel based on the Alfred Noyes poem, The Highwayman. Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock you should know that poem from high school. It begins: 'The road was a ribbon of moonlight upon the purple moor...'  Remember it now?  No? Shame on you! It is a lovely, sad piece of writing so beautifully done it has inspired many a young girl's feverish dream. It is a ballad of love sacrificed, love lost, and a hero and heroine who come back from the grave to be together on nights when 'the moon was a ghostly galleon sailing upon cloudy seas'.

At any rate, I sent my editor twelve pictures I thought would be good to use for the cover art for the book because she asked me to do so. I wasted two hours finding those perfect twelve shots of moonlight, purple moors, rearing black steeds, old inns with a window appropriate for 'he tapped with his whip on the shutter but all was locked and barred'. No mean feat finding those shots, lemme tell you.

So what do I get when the cover artist sends me the proof?  A man in a buttoned down shirt wwearing a 20th century Armani suit coat, holding a pistol from which a plume of black...not white but black...smoke is spiraling up like a mini-tornado. Facing the man is a woman in a backless dress with a VERY large poofy front that looked like something Jennifer Lopez would wear on the red carpet. Totally inappropriate. Why?  Need you ask? There were no buttoned down shirts in the 18th century. No suit coats. Men wore waistcoats and pristine white stocks around their neck. In The Highwayman poem, the hero wore 'a coat of claret velvet and breeches of brown doeskin'. Women did not go about in backless gowns that dipped to the waist. Guns didn't emit black smoke nor that smoke waft in a perfect spiral to the heavens. Obviously the cover artist had never read the poem.

No, no, no, no, no I cried and thank the Muse Gods, my editor agreed with me. The cover the book has now is perfect, atmospheric, mysterious and very appropriate for the story: dark of night with a large moon under which stands an old inn and a rearing black stallion standing among purple heather.

Such is what authors go through to get a cover readers will take to heart. Yes, readers DO judge a book by its cover. An atrocious cover will ensure the book doesn't sell. The Naughty Literati covers are done by Nicole Austin and she does a superb job finding just the right scene to go with the stories inside the book.

I would love to be able to do professional photography and stage models as I see romance scenes in my mind's eye. Oh, the scenes I could stage! Beautiful, poignant, dramatic scenes that would make you swoon as you view them. There would be no scrawny teenage boys dressed as a vampire with plastic fangs.  There would be no poses of said teenager caught in mid jump. (How many vampires do you know who do splits in the air?)  'Tis simply not done, Igor. Not done at all. Nor would he have a goofy expression on his boyish face that is meant to look evil but comes off looking as though he just got Clearasil on his eyes or his tighty-whities are...well...too tight.  (FYI: vampires go commando. Just saying.)

When a certain romance cover model was starting his business of stock romance photos, he and I exchanged several e-mails in which I gave him dozens of ideas for 'scenes' I thought romance authors would grab for their covers. He used almost all of those ideas and I've seen them on dozens of books. In exchange, he was to give me a free shot of himself dressed as one of my iconic Reapers in black silk shirt, black leather pants, black gun belt slung low on his hips and a black Stetson. I'm still waiting...several years later...for the photo. <SIGH>  

So next time you watch a video or go on an author's website where she has stock photos of her characters or representations of locations she's used in her book, remember this: that author or videographer had to view a lot of frogs before she found her prince.  

Writing "Spring Training" from #boxedset NAUGHTY FLINGS (#romance #99cents)

Every once in a while, a writer wants to write outside the box. Tough to do when you're writing for a boxed set (LOL pun intended), but for me, the twist in my writing life came unexpectedly.

I write a fair amount of BDSM, and some of it is based on my personal experiences. I've been a switch, which in the community's lingo means that I may take either the dominant or submissive role in a scene. However, most of my writing has been about male Dominants and female submissives.

When I started Spring Training, I set out to write in my usual mold. I planned to write about a feisty but feminine trainer tamed by a sports team's hot pitcher. But as I wrote, the character of Terri evolved quickly into someone who was accustomed to taking the dominant role. She is, after all, a trainer in pro sports and therefore used to giving orders. Chase, the pitcher, was in a weak position as an aging player in a game that favors the young. Plus, as the story grew, it turned out that he had always been turned on by punishment--the kind of punishment Terri likes to provide.

Here's a snippet from one of their scenes:

She sat next to him and slid an arm around his waist for a comforting side-hug. He relaxed into the warmth of her support while her hands remained busy. She unbuckled his belt and pulled it free, then scooted around behind him and knelt on the bed, her knees bracketing him. After taking off his shirt, she began to caress his shoulders and scratch them gently. “Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want,” she murmured into his ear. “If I go too far, just say so, okay?”

Her warm breath soothed him, and he relaxed into her touch. The scratching and rubbing, though only on his back, was a real turn-on.

He unzipped his pants and his cock sprang free. She snarled and smacked his rod with her open palm. Hard.

“Fuck! What was that?”

“Did I give you permission to expose yourself? Did I give you permission to speak?”

Shit. He’d blown it. He bent his head. “No, Mistress. I’m sorry, Mistress.”

She nibbled on his earlobe, the sharp jabs stimulating. “There’s a price for everything,” she whispered.

His hair stood on end while his cock stood, also. But why? Why did he find the threat of punishment so arousing?

If you want to discover the reason Chase finds punishment arousing, you'll have to read the story. Find it here: http://indi.uno/1EaiEqB

About Suz deMello:

Best-selling, award-winning author Suz deMello, a.k.a Sue Swift, has written nineteen books in several genres, including nonfiction, romance, erotica, comedy, historical, paranormal, mystery and suspense, plus a number of short stories and non-fiction articles on writing. Her books have been favorably reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus and Booklist, won a contest or two, attained the finals of the RITA and hit several bestseller lists.

A former trial attorney, her passion is world travel. She’s left the US over a dozen times, including lengthy stints working overseas. She’s now writing a vampire tale and planning her next trip.

--Find her books at http://www.suzdemello.com

--For editing services, email her at suzdemello@gmail.com

--Befriend her on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SuzDeMello

--She tweets @Suzdemello

--Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/suzdemello/

--Goodreads: http://bit.ly/SuzATGoodreads

--Her current blog is http://www.TheVelvetLair.com

The Long and Winding Writing Road

I've been writing explicit erotic stories for a long time now. Started out with m/m, moved to some m/f (though m/m is more fun for me to write). Sometimes for money, sometimes for the sheer joy of storytelling. Of my most recent releases (Blue Plate Special in the Naughty Literati anthology Naughty Flings came out yesterday, and Lodestone from Dreamspinner Press comes out in a couple of weeks) one is erotic paranormal m/f and the other is PG-13 paranormal science fiction m/m. Maybe more than PG-13, but not by much. I'm not sure I'm much of a judge of such things any more.

In short, I have no idea whatsoever where I'm headed at the moment. My big project (which has been sidelined a bit by a flood of smaller ones and life in general) has virtually no romantic or erotic content at all. In many ways it's bringing me back to my roots. I'm a spec fic writer who wandered into romance/erotic romance/erotica and decided to hang out and have tea and cookies. When I'm working on Phoenix, I sometimes feel like I've looked at my watch and realized how late it was and that I really need to go home now. (But OMG the shortbread and chai are wonderful! And such lovely people!)

One thing my sojourn on the erotic side of the writing world has done for me is to open my writing up to possibilities I never would have considered in the past. A few things have happened in recent weeks that got me thinking. First there's Lodestone. My guys, Al and Nick meet up on a space station, sparks fly and things happen. Both have paranormal abilities, which they have to hide due to prejudice in the larger society. The fact that they are attracted to other men is a complete non-issue in their culture.

Then I thought about one of my works in progress. It was going to be a submission for an anthology, but got too big. It's either going to be The Glass Spinner's Tale or Bastard's Fee, I keep changing my mind. My two guys in that one have known each other for years. And they've loved each other for years, too, but their respective guilds would strip them of everything and toss them out were they to be involved with each other. Again, their attraction to one another is a non-issue. Instead a century old (though it could be longer--another thing that keeps changing and growing in my head) guild rivalry keeps them apart.

I have explored some thoughts on what's going on in my head with regard to this on my own blog. Mostly, though, I love what stumbling into romance has done to broaden my writing options. I think even for my non-romance, non-erotic work, my characters will be the richer for it.

Naughty Flings - Available Now

Yay, it's here. Naughty Flings is available now. Get your copy 

Twelve Naughty Little Romps

including BBW, Contemporary, FemDomme,
M/M, Mythological, Paranormal, Regency,
Shape-shifter & Vampire
from Amazon bestselling authors!

Stay The Night ~ Alexa Silver
When Tod finds out his favorite bookseller is a fan of his work, sparks fly, but the much younger Mel may only be looking for a fling. Can Tod convince her to stay the night—or forever?

Blood Mates: How to Blackmail a Vampire ~ Belle Scarlett
In the spring, a vampire’s fancy turns to the blood lust mating hunt. A pretty, human blackmailer becomes the object of his thirst, but she’s not into vampires. Yet.

The Loch Ness Monster, Romeo, and Julio ~ Berengaria Brown
Fraser Campbell and Cameron MacDonald are sent to Glasgow on business. Cam’s determined to see the Loch Ness monster. Fraser just wants Cam.

The ShadowLord’s Arrival ~ Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Sometimes when you try to run from fate, you trip and and fall into the arms of destiny.

Teach Me To Dance ~ Francesca Hawley
Lady Lexa shares an evening of suggestive flirtation with the Duke of Kendrick. He wants to take her home, but they have unfinished business.

Phantom Affair ~ Katherine Kingston
Robert is the best lover Kelly’s ever had, even though he’s a ghost. If he could return, could reality live up to the fantasy?

Sticky & Sweet ~ Lainey-Jo Charles
Spring time. Parks. Baseball. Ice cream trucks. Ah, the sweet memories of youth. Ten years later, create new sweet and sticky memories as an adult.

Buying Adam ~ Marianne Stephens
Under false pretenses, Jessica wins Adam at a Charity Bachelor auction. Secret desires for each other ignite into passionate lovemaking. Will the truth divide them?

My Kind of Lover ~ Nicole Austin
Badass biker girl, accountant, lioness shifter—I’m all that and more. And this hybrid wolf thinks he can take me on? Bring it, you sexy beast! I’ve got this.

Hot As Hades ~ Regina Kammer
After living in Hell for four months, Persephone returns home to the mortal realm. But can home truly be home without the man she loves?

Spring Training ~ Suz deMello
A hot pitcher finds his secret desires fulfilled by a striking new trainer, who disciplines him in ways he’s only dreamed about (F/m).

Blue Plate Special ~ Terry Rissen
William’s life is shrouded in secrets. Things start looking up when he meets a vivacious girl at a diner; a girl with almost as many secrets as he has.