New e-book release: Scarred

My latest e-book is now available for purchase: Scarred

I'm excited about this story. Like most writers, I'm crazy about books. So crazy that a few years ago my spouse and I bought a new-and-used bookstore, where I spend most of my time these days, making espresso drinks and helping customers find the perfect book. Amazing books have come my way ever since, among them a reprinted version of a Victorian erotica magazine called The Pearl. It was while reading one of the stories collected in the volume that my muse first gave me the nuggets that became Scarred. Here's a quick summary:


Antiquarian Hollis Everett thinks an autumn spent cataloguing the library of a rich, avid collector while living in an isolated island town sounds just about perfect. The collector, Saxon Mallory, seems just about perfect, too, despite his scars and brooding demeanor. Sexy sparks fly between the two almost immediately, with Saxon indulging Hollis's secret yen for recreating scenes from Victorian erotica.

But strange events occur nightly in the gloomy old house, and Saxon's housekeeper implies that her employer is not as perfect as he seems. When Hollis discovers a long-hidden sketchbook, events take an even darker turn. The book is filled with erotic drawings of island ancestors in compromising circumstances. It seems no one wants that information leaked, and when the book disappears, Saxon is determined to get it back at all costs.

Hollis wants to help him. But something dark and desperate hunts the island at night. The islanders whisper about a monster. They whisper it might be Saxon...criminal, thief, murderer...

Suddenly, Hollis is afraid for her life. If she can find the sketchbook, she can solve the mystery—but will the monster find her first?



And a little taste of one of the hotter moments between Saxon and Hollis...

...“Move with me, Hollis. Slow down.”

“I can’t.” Every impulse was toward a faster motion, because speed would also mean more force, and she was sure it was more forceful penetration she craved.

“You will.” Saxon moved, crowding her so tight against the desk that she couldn’t move. Her feet had no purchase, and the confining panties kept her from separating her legs or wrapping them around him. His body was hot against hers. Sweat trickled down her back and pooled in the groove of her spine.

Then he halted all motion.

No movement of his fingers on her clitoris, no caress of her back, no scratching of his chin against the skin of her neck. Worst of all, no thrusts, just the deep fullness of his cock lodged within her, and the throb of her own flesh in time with her erratic heartbeat.

“Saxon! Please!”

“Calm down. Can you do that for me? Can you do as I tell you?”

She tried twisting her pelvis, but his weight trapped her. At last, she bit her lip, moaning, but was still.

“Yes. Like that.” He rewarded her with one long, slow drag of his fingertips through her slippery folds. His breathing was still quick, and he shifted, lifting his body away from hers the barest amount. The hand that had been holding her down moved to her hip, shifting her as well, and seating himself a half-inch deeper inside her, his thighs still straddling hers.

“Stay with me, Hollis. Feel this?” He slid slowly backward, but as he did so he tilted her pelvis, rocking her with him still lodged completely within. “A good rider sits deep in the saddle, I’m told.”

“So deep,” she heard herself muttering. Her toes touched the floor at last. She closed her eyes, picturing every cowboy movie she’d ever seen, imagining Saxon mounted on a brave horse, rocking with each stride. His fingers guided her motion, drawing up and forward through her wetness, making her strive to keep in contact. As he neared the top of her cleft, she felt his pelvis bracing hers, cupped behind her, giving a half-inch thrust that nevertheless seemed designed to nudge some magic switch within her and set her body buzzing.

Their motion became a slow grind, with Saxon’s fingers leading the way for each restricted, tightly constrained push that did nothing more than change their positions in the barest way. It was this restraint that caused the cascade of images through her head, of herself the sweet Victorian ingénue who nevertheless longed for the passionate, rough impalement of her lover. Froths of lace. The too-tight lacings of corsets. Compressed breasts with rigid nipples budding atop silk-sheathed boning. Glossy boots left on over softly brushed trousers, with opened codpiece through which the empurpled rod of a cock jutted. A top hat flicked across a room to tumble end over end until it mated with a tangle of discarded fichus, stockings and shawls.

He must have felt the muscles of her cunny tightening around him. He took one long, excruciatingly deliberate stroke, pulling all but the barest tip of himself out of her, and then another, and a third, before returning them to the slow saddle work.

How long it went on like that—the dwelling of his cock inside her as they undulated, alternating with three maddening thrusts—Hollis could never have said, but at last a red haze swarmed over her skin, blinding her to all but the white-knuckled view of her hands clenched on the edge of the desk. Her climax made her shudder and cry wordless sounds of pleasure. She was too far gone and too wet to feel the heated wash of Saxon’s own climax within her, but knew from the gulping throbs of his organ that he had followed her into the abyss.

Hollis lay sprawled across the desk, panting. Saxon moved his hands and propped himself above her, giving her room to breathe again. A cool stream of air dried the sweat on her brow and unthinkingly she turned her face into the draft.

The ugly laugh from somewhere behind startled them both into gasps. Saxon’s sudden withdrawal from her body shocked and frightened her, as did his precipitous lunge across the room toward the noise. She scrabbled at her panties, tugging them into place before shoving down her skirt and stumbling away from the desk to follow him.

She found him hanging half out one of the heavily curtained windows, his head turning frantically to see something, anything. Rain had soaked his head and shoulders by the time he pulled back into the room and slammed down the casement, locking it with a twist of his fingers. He reached up and yanked the curtains into place.

“Who was it?” Hollis asked.

“I didn’t see him. By the time I got here, there was no one in view.”

Hollis thought back to the numerous times she’d seen the velvet curtains moving slightly. She’d assumed it was drafts from the air handler or the door that caused the motion, but now she wasn’t so sure...

If that nibble intrigues you, you can find more information and purchase Scarred at Amber Heat!

"Genie, No Bottle" has been released!

Huzzah!

I'm so excited! Last week I got the notifications that my new story with Amber Heat would be released today, and last night the press emailed me my author copies.

So I'm celebrating! Genie, No Bottle is available for purchase and download starting today!

"Genie" is a sweet, humorous story. I like to stretch my writing muscles from time to time and not stick with a repetitive formula. My basic toolkit is still visible in "Genie" because I believe that strong characters are the best bones for a good story, regardless of plot. This time, however, the reader gets to experience the story from each point of view--Laura, the slightly uptight but honorable accountant heroine, and Samir, her poweful, magic, besotted genie (or jinni, as it's spelled in the story).

Did I mention that guacamole features prominently in this story? Let's not talk about Nina's addiction to a certain wonderful green fruit.

Anyway...on with the shameless self-promotion! I'm so pleased to announce that my second story with Amber Heat is loose in the world, looking to turn you on and spice up your day.

Have a happy week, dear readers! I know I will.

Here's a peek at the cover to tempt you further...

Angst, shmangst.

I used to write fluff.

No, really, I did. I started out this writing gig for real in early 2003 with a massively fluffy story. Only one of the chapters derailed into angst, and of all the things in that story, the angst chapter is both the one with the most depth and the one that feels the most bolted-on.

I just finished (yet again) and sent out the modified "Genie, No Bottle" to a few beta readers, with apologies for those of you who've been waiting so patiently for me to get myself and my silly story figured out. And what happened to that story? The thing it needed was a little bitter to go with the sweet.

Angst, my friends. Just a soupçon for piquance, but angst nonetheless.

I'm not a comedienne, but I play one here in the blogosphere. What is it about the angst that's become so addictive? Why can I write humor in essays or posts, but find it nearly impossible to include in a story? What happened to the writing?

Somewhere along the line, fluff got harder to write. I do think good fluff (and I mean good fluff, not just tossed out words) takes something of the skill required to write humor or parody well. And while the fluff got harder, the angst got easier. All the stories I dream up these days have these THEMES. Infidelity. Abuse. Dishonesty and control.

Maybe it's just that I really enjoy the compulsive over-analysis that comes with angsty stories. (And I can hear my husband now: What, YOU? Overanalyze something? Not YOU, surely. With the attendant eyeroll, the kind you can hear the orbs rolling from 10 feet away.) I'm a sucker for characters with deep, dark motivations.

Maybe I'm working out unresolved issues from my terrible past as a happy child.

At any rate, here I am, feeling edgy about my fluff because it's angst that it needed. That just seems wrong, and yet right at the same time. I've posted before that the finest humor covers deeply familiar ground, and maybe I'll go further and say that the things that make us laugh the loudest are also the most painful things.

I wonder if some day the angst and fluff will merge and become a real novel?

The mind reels. Hahahaha!

Next in the hopper, a story about a woman who breaks free from an abusive relationship by stealing a truck.

Angst and nothing but.

Yet...even angst needs a little humor to relieve the tension. Perhaps a soupçon for piquance, to correct the seasonings, as it were.

Have a lovely Wednesday in your part of the world.

When size DOES matter

There are times when it's gotta be long, languid and luxurious. Times when it's gotta be short, sharp, and shamelessly sweet.

But I'm not talking about the hero's equipment here...I'm talking about the story itself.

Stories usually tell me how long they "want" to be. Some of them want to be epics like "The Thorn Birds." Others are best told in vignette form because to make them longer would blunt the force of their impact with too much exposition. We've all got friends who can't tell a joke to save their lives. Those friends who explain the punch lines. Sometimes more than once.

An author friend of mine shakes her head when I tell her, "This one feels like it'll be about 30,000 words." Or "I've only got a 10,000 word limit, I've got to keep it short." She writes novels almost exclusively. And while I've written novels, often a story only offers that tiny glimpse through a keyhole, just that little bit you can see when you kneel down to spy and not the rest of the room opening out on either side. That's when I know I'm writing a short piece.

How do I keep a story short?

There are a few tricks I use, but the one that's most effective for me is that keyhole analogy I mentioned, so that's the topic of this post.

The first thing the keyhole gives a writer is FOCUS.

When you kneel at the keyhole to spy, you expect to see something secret, something private. You may be confused because you can't see everything all at once; maybe a character is out of view. This is also the most difficult aspect of any short piece: distilling the story down to its most basic essence, and deciding which piece of the story to tell. Which 10 percent of the iceberg is showing above water? That's the short story. You can ignore all the backstory, the "How did we get to this moment?" explanations. You may need a little, but keep it short, and don't tell it all at once at the start of the story. Start the story very close to the main action, or even in the middle of it. That helps with the opening hook. At the moment, I'm writing a short piece about a woman escaping an abusive relationship by stealing a car. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire! But it's more effective to start the story at the moment of the theft than it is to go over all the ground leading to that crucial decision. She can tell that backstory to the hero once she meets him. Perhaps over a little pillow talk.

The second aspect of the keyhole is BREVITY.

When you're writing, sometimes it's difficult to keep in mind that you don't always NEED to tell the whole story. Maybe down the road the pair get married, have a few pets and buy a farm so they can raise organic radishes. Ho-hum, does your reader care? Perhaps, if you're writing a family saga. But not if you're writing an Amber Kiss, for example. Keep your eye on that single rich scene you can see through the keyhole. Maybe it's nothing more than an invitingly turned-down bed at sunset, with floor-to-ceiling windows and floating sheer drapery behind it, and the story is that crystalline moment the heroine first decides that THIS man is the one for her. Does it matter that they met over broccoli in the produce department of their neighborhood supermarket? Nope. Don't go into more detail. You don't need it for that one focused vision. Everything you write in that story MUST contribute to that single vision. If it doesn't, CUT IT.

The last aspect of the keyhole is TRUST.

Trust your readers. Given the barest of sketches, a reader can fill in the rest of the story for herself. And with a short piece, the reader knows that all the explanation won't be there. They are OK with that, believe me. A short story is designed to do just the one thing: its small, precisely-tuned job. When your readers are done with your short piece you want them to feel the way one chocolate truffle from an expert chocolatier can: pleased, if not completely sated. You want them to feel something like, "Oh, I could have eaten another one, but this one was wonderful." Trust them to understand that one truffle is a treat, but three truffles will cause a tummy ache. Trust your readers to kneel at the keyhole, watch the unfolding of that small, perfect scene, and walk away happy.

And that's it! Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!


Nina

Crossposted to Nina's LiveJournal Account
Amber Heat Authors blog
Nina's blog

Guacamole: Truth or Sex Aid?

Hello again, dear readers.

I'm hoping the subject line of this post doesn't scare you away. It must be said: I have a passion for avocados. I have several tasty guacamole recipes, but I like my guac smooth, without red peppers. Finely diced onions are good, and a bit of hot is OK, but guacamole on the whole is to balance out the spiciness of salsa. The bite of lemon in guacamole preserves the gorgeous color as well as giving a tang.

My topic today is only peripherally about guacamole. Primarily, it's about a broken story I'm trying to fix. It's a work-in-progress featuring a djinni who's been cursed to an eternity of enslavement to a wandering family. To the djinni's dismay, he's fallen in love with the last of the line, a mild-mannered accountant named Laura.

While I like this story, I know it is broken. It lacks something that will make it resonate with a reader. In the words of a top-notch beta reader of mine, the story is not quite cotton candy, but neither is it a good meal. It's a lot like mashed potatoes: bland. I wrote the story as a light, frothy piece, something erotic and sweet without a heavy load of angst.

But even frothy, fluffy stories need that germ of reality in order to ring true. The best humor always overlays some deeply familiar situation we can all relate to; it's what makes Bill Cosby's humor so universally popular, for example. Humor is tough to write well, for me at least. Much more difficult than an angsty story. How to connect my djinn and his sweetheart with my readers? Guacamole isn't the right answer, though it's part of what will fix the story. I need to add the right ingredients to that guac, though. A little pepper, a little onion, a little lemon, and a lot more mixing. And some time to let the guacamole stand, for those ingredients to develop into something rich and flavorful.

I like fluffy stories. I do. But even fluff must have something for a reader to chew on, or else it's simply empty paragraphs, quickly consumed and as quickly forgotten.

Still...I can't quite get away from the guacamole in the djinn's story. It's both truth and sex aid...truth, because we've all had the experience of putting things together and hoping they'll work, whether that be a simple recipe, or a complicated relationship. And sex aid, because...well, I'll just leave you with a little snippet from that work-in-progress, "Genie, No Bottle", and you can see for yourself. Meet Samir, my djinni hero, and Laura, the light of his life.

"Why don't you have a bottle, Samir?" Laura asked, when the scantily clothed female genie on the television smoked herself into her bottle and was corked. It had certainly taken her a long time to get around to asking that question. Her mother had asked it immediately, and most designees of the past had wondered why he had no lamp.

Laura turned around on the bed to look at him, dropping a fair-sized splat of guacamole on his belly. "Whoops." She bent and slurped it into her mouth. Samir's entire body went rigid at the touch of her lips on his skin. She was thorough, too--surely that was her tongue, sweeping every molecule of avocado away. He willed his manhood to remain quiescent and soft, but it had, as always, that one-track mind of its own.

"It's...uh, not that sort of binding." He could hardly speak coherently with her mouth on his skin and her hair brushing his belly and groin. And there was still that smear of guacamole on her cheek. His hand lifted, his index finger reached out, and--she raised her head and looked at him, licking her lips.

It was fated, surely. He sat up slowly, as did she, and when his mouth touched her cheek to rid her at last of the guacamole, her eyes closed. Samir felt her turning her head so that her mouth brushed over his lips. Brushed past. Halted. And returned, so slowly and lightly that he might have imagined it, except for the heat that swarmed over his skin, and her breath against his mouth. Every bodily impulse was to grab her, press her into the bed, thrust his tongue into her mouth, strip those silky blue panties from her hips and satisfy the vastness of his hunger now now now. But in his head rang all those taunts about the feckless, unskilled boys of her youth. He could not afford to become one of them.

Samir slammed the lid on the inferno of his desire, and concentrated on giving Laura the best kiss of her life, drunk or not, rebound or not...here was his chance, and he was taking it.


And once again I have a question: what's your favorite fluffy romance? What keeps you going back to it, why is it you remember that particular story? What's the truth in your guacamole? Inquiring minds want to know.

*grin*


Nina

Crossposted to Nina's LiveJournal Account
Amber Heat Authors blog
Nina's blog

The Buttoned-Down Hero

When I first set out to write "Unloved" I had every intention of creating a brooding, category romance-style hero. Dark eyes, dark hair. Tan. Older. Rich. Sexy.

Cardboard.

Superficial.

Boring.

Somewhere along the way, Jude acquired a past. And a personality beyond the astounding ability of what he kept zipped in his sharply-creased, tailored trousers. And angst began to happen. "Unloved" was first developed as a partial novel, years ago before I understood much about people and relationships. I think some of that naïveté still shows in the bones of the story, especially in main character Nona's youthful reactions to Jude. But the story stalled, and Real Life happened, and the story went into my slush pile where it quietly hibernated.

Fast forward to early 2006. I went through my slush pile looking for potential short stories to polish for submission to the Amber Heat contest at Amber Quill. And up popped "Unloved" from the depths. Something about the basic germ of the story still appealed, so I ran with it. And this time, Jude had dimension and scope as a character. Sure, I depended on a little clichéd Freudian mother-problem to paint Jude with some broad strokes—when you have 12,000 words to get your point across, you'll take a few shortcuts. But I also knew Jude much, much better after years of living, working and loving in the real world.

I knew Jude: He's a "Buttoned-Down Hero."

I spent a lot of years working in Corporate America, where men are men but wow, are they on some tight leashes. Think about it...they must be professionals at all times. They can't give away corporate secrets. They have to wear suits. Ties. Tight, suffocating shoes. And button-down Oxford shirts. They can't say what they mean, because that might mean exposing a weakness in the business world, where the sharks circle regularly looking for blood. They have to work with women they might want to date or know in aspects beyond that of colleagues. Showing a little interest in a female co-worker might put his job at risk.

I married one of those men. That's not to say that Jude is a thinly disguised facsimile of my husband, for he's not. (For one thing, I can't imagine Jude fixing a washing machine transmission while lying in a half inch of water on the basement floor, but my spouse has done that. *grin*) But certainly I understand what it takes to burst the Buttoned-Down Hero from his necktie and buttoned collar and get him to show the heroine (though perhaps no one else) his soft underbelly, his specific vulnerability, his love.

Repressed men make hot characters. I don't mean sexually repressed—I'm writing romance, after all—but emotionally repressed, or constrained by societal pressures. As a writer I get to explore the forces that keep this man in his suit, inaccessible. I always know that he's longing to leave the power tie and wingtips behind and run muscled and sweaty after the heroine, waving his sword or dragging the carcass of a deer behind him as proof of his prowess at providing, but the restrictions that keep him from expressing his feelings are the very things readers like to pry at, find that loose edge and peel back. It's empowering, as women, to think that only we have the key that will open this particular man.

It's exciting for readers to see glimpses, like shafts of light through cracks in the front door, of the hidden interior life of the Buttoned-Down Hero. And what could be more appealing than watching the slow deterioration of this man's personal walls, as the heroine finds her way inside his guard to the rich emotional life locked within? The reward for looking deeper than just the surface is love.

And...really, it works that way in real life, too.

What about you? Is there a buttoned-down hero in your favorite book, or even your own history? What made him especially appealing to you?

Nina



(Crossposted to Nina's blogspot blog, at http://ninamerrill.blogspot.com/
the Amber Quill Press authors' blog at http://aqpauthors.blogspot.com/
and to Nina's LiveJournal blog, at http://nina_merrill.livejournal.com/)

Unloved: first review posted!

Kerin over at Euro Reviews posted a very kind review of my story Unloved!

A little confession...outside of my circle of beta readers and personal friends, Kerin's was the first review I've ever received as a professional, published writer. It made me squeal with glee! She gave me five European Union flags out of five! I'm delighted.

Here's a link to the review.
Note that there are LOTS of reviews and other fun things on the Euro Reviews site! Take a little time to tour and enjoy yourself there! Kerin also kindly agreed to let me repost the review here.

Young Nona Hartley chose Jude Danzig to be her first lover and is devastated when she confesses her love to him and he coldly dismisses her feelings. She leaves Miami determined to forget him and immerses herself by taking over the operations of her family’s citrus grove.

Jude has never gotten over Nona’s rejection and decides to show her that he’s a different man than the one she abandoned two years ago in Miami. When he purchases a local competitor’s citrus grove, he’s determined to show her he means business…but will his painful memories still keep them apart?

Unloved is a sweet love story about a child that was punished for his father’s transgressions and therefore never accepted the existence of love. Jude’s emotional intensity translates into love and as he strives to understand his feelings, he still struggles to acknowledge Nona’s love. She helps him to understand his feelings and vows to love him for who he is and the man she knows him to be. Nina Merrill has penned a beautiful story and when I finished this story, immediately added her to my auto-buy list. Her talent for character development makes her an author to watch out for!