FORBIDDEN - new release from fabulous Saskia Walker

My writing buddy Saskia Walker has a fantastic new release today  via the Walk on the Wild Side Books author collective. Here's the info on this super story. I've read it and it's hot, hot, hot!

Emmanuelle Forsythe is the daughter of a lord, but she’s embarking on a secret, forbidden affair with her father’s estate manager, Jacob Finch. Jacob is as much a slave to their mutual desire as she is, even though he has been warned off.

On the night of her twenty-first birthday party, while the banker who her parents want her to marry is ensconced with her father, Emmanuelle defies her family’s expectations by escaping to make love with Jacob in the gardens. Her behavior is decadent and passionate, a brief taste of something magical that she believes she can never truly own. But Jacob wants more than one night and asks her to keep seeing him, whatever the consequences.

Please note: this short story contains frank language and graphic m/f sex scenes.

You can find an excerpt here.

Available from Amazon, Amazon UK, ARe, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, Kobo and Smashwords.

Also available for iBooks, and will come to the Sony store soon.

Here's Johnny!

If you've been over to my buddy Saskia Walker's blog today, you'll have read about her reaction to the tee shirt I wore yesterday for our authors' lunch... a rather nifty number, tributing a certain Mr Depp...

So, I thought that you might like to see it!

Of course I'm not quite as svelte as the young lady in this picture, but you get the general idea. And the logo itself is pretty apt too, as I have a tendency to blub at the slightest thing, so even if I'm not a girl, and haven't been for a long, long time, I'm certainly one of the world's natural cry babies!

During our lunch, Saskia gave me a signed copy of her new release, RECKLESS. Now I've already read some excerpts and tasters of this sumptuous book, so I've been dying to get my mitts on a copy of it! Was so desperate that I started reading on the way home on the bus... nearly missed my stop too, because I was so absorbed in the hot opening scene between heroine Katrina and suave Spanish stud, Sergio. Awesome stuff! And the fantastic writing is complimented by a wonderful, evocative cover too... take a look, at Saskia's blog.

It couldn't last...

... my writing spurt, that is.

I finished my first school reunion story on Saturday evening, in first draft, but I haven't really done any new writing since. Correction, I haven't done any writing since, why avoid the issue!

I'm sort of in a bit of a multiple holding pattern at the moment, waiting to hear about various things, and I'm not sure what to do next. Editing the reunion story would be obvious, but I like to leave things to set for a little while before I tackle editing. In the meantime, I've not been totally idle on the writing front. Instead of actually laying down words, I've been researching and reading topics up online, for a book idea that's 'out there'...

Now I've no clue as to whether this idea/proposal will come to anything, or any special hint or sign that there's any hope... but it's a story line that needs more background development than my usual boy meets girl, boy shags girl, boy and girl skip off into the sunset tales. So, I thought I would look up a few things in sheer blind hope that I'll need them...

Other than that, I'm having a pleasant but very lazy Easter Holiday... and I hope you all are too.

ps. I indulged myself this morning at Amazon, with a Black Books Complete Box Set. Oh, so funny... And in honour of that, here's another look at a YouTube I've posted before, but which is one of the most hilarious and ironically true to life writing vids I've ever had the pleasure to view.

I am so lucky!

I am a very lucky author! One of the greatest blessings of my writing life is that I'm able to actually meet up with some of my lovely author friends face to face. Writing is a lonely lark, and though email friendships can be a great support and solace, nothing beats actually hanging with your homegirls and having a damn good laugh.

Last Saturday, I had a totally brilliant day out to meet Madelynne Ellis [pictured in the post below] and Janine Ashbless in Manchester - in which we went to our usual haunt, the famous pub, Via Fossa, and also rampaged around the shops a bit looking for our own books on sale - and yesterday, I met up with my fab buddy, Saskia Walker! Two fantastic author meetings in the space of only seven days... that's why I say I'm so lucky!


Saskia and I ended up in BB's, after a thwarted attempt to secure a seat in Cafe Revive, which was full to bursting with senior citizens, mums and ladies who do coffee, taking advantage of a free hot drinks before 11am special offer. But BB's is just as nice in its own way, and the tuna baguettes with reduced calorie mayonaise and the skinniccinos were spot on! We had a brilliant chat that was half our usual ribald and bitchy discussion of the publishing scene and its idiosyncrasies and half forward planning for our RWA trip at the end of July. The time flew by and when it was time to go, we could have gabbed for hours longer!

Memories of Saturday...

This is me, in Via Fossa, Manchester, with my good buddy Madelynne Ellis, last Saturday!

Serious writers' meeting... yeah, right!

Photo taken by another great writing chum, Janine Ashbless.

ps. sorry, Sandie, I can't do the me-me right at the moment... am sort of drowning in my to do list, and I already owe me-mes to Dakota and Lucy! :(

planning meeting....

Had a splendid and very jolly lunch with Saskia yesterday! It was part planning meeting for The Great Adventure and part our usual robust and occasionally a tad raucous discussion about writing and the erotic romance writing scene in particular. Have to say, we were both on splendid form and probably terrified a lot of the quiet living patrons of Cafe Revive in big town! LOL

Also tried on some trousers in BHS, with a view to building my wardrobe for the forthcoming trip, but was most displeased with the sight that greeted me in the harsh, unforgiving light of the changing room mirror. Was rather afraid that Captain Ahab would fling a harpoon over the top of the cubicle door, so vast were the tracts of blubber on show. I think it's time to start easing back on the quantities of chocolate that I consume, and to try and eat a bit more healthily. I don't want to be skinny or anything, because I'm not that uncomfortable with the way I look, and I dress crafty anyway.... but I don't want to be charged for excess @rse-baggage when I board the aeroplane in July!

And finally, is anyone interested in a Yahoochat with a bunch of fabulous Berkley Heat authors today? Including my fabulous buddy Saskia and many others?

Well, they'll be hanging out on the Joyfully Reviewed Chat Loop between 10am and 10pm EST. It should be fantastic... I'm looking forward to joining in the fun.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chatting_with_Joyfully_Reviewed/

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Telly: News24
Choc/Yummy: fruit :(
Mood: fat
Writing: not yet
Reading: Exclusive anthology
RSI/FMS: achy, due to being fat


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Wounded in Inaction...

These aren't Kuffer's claws, but they're quite like them. And the reason I post this picture is because claws like the above inflicted quite an unpleasant wound on me last night!!!

I was lying in bed, watching the telly, with Kuffer at my side, when he suddenly decided to flip into one of his 'rough play' fits and before I knew what had happened he'd split my lower lip open with his claw! Ouch!!! I was a bit frightened and had visions of stitches and scars and everything, but when I'd stopped panicking, I realised it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It's still a little sore this morning, but it seems to be healing okay, no thanks to that furry mutthead... who is as affectionate and friendly as ever, having no idea of the damage he's inflicted.

In other news, I did manage to finally get to my writing yesterday, and managed to achieve my 1k after all. It's not the greatest of stuff, and the plot is crawling at a mindbendingly slow pace, but at least it's words, innit? Words that can be edited. This morning I've tried a trick suggested by my fellow Sweat70 sponsor, Diana Peterfreund. She describes a strategy of hers to start the day with a small 15 minute chunk of writing, so that when you go into a more serious and prolonged work session, you're not going in stone cold, because you've already laid down a couple of hundred words or so at the beginning of the day. I've tried this, and have a tidy little chunk of around 250 words to build on later. Thanks, Diana! It's a good tip!

Something lovely happened yesterday... a bit of serendipity type stuff that made me feel very happy and good about myself. I posted the name of the winner of a prize draw of mine, over at Lustbites... and I discovered that before she'd even realised she was a winner, Dakota Rebel had already written a lovely post about me, over on her blog! Seems that a MySpace bulletin I sent out was instrumental in her getting her first book accepted for publication! Now, I often feel guilty that I don't help other writers enough, but it sounds as if inadvertently I've done some good for Dakota! And she also said some lovely things about my work... :)

Read about her story here.


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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

Sunday bits and bats...

I've signed up for the next Seventy Days of Sweat! And a jolly good job too, because I've been slacking a lot in the last week or so, and have not got much writing done. I need the incentive of a group effort like Sweat70 and the scorn and abuse of Mr Blue when I don't shape up and get some words produced...

In other news, I watched Sleepy Hollow on the telly again last night, and I do think I have to have this movie on DVD. Mr Depp looks remarkably scrummy in it, and puts in a deliciously comical turn as Ichabod... Trouble is, I don't know which version of the flick to order: Widescreen or Anamorphic... any suggestions as to which is best?

I have another timewasting, writing-avoidance tool... and it's called I Can Has Cheezburger, a rich repository of LolCats... I could spend hours there [in fact I *have* spent hours there] just browsing the many many comical cat pix!

I blame Alison Kent for inadvertently alerting me to this source of procrastination!




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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

A thoroughly deserved award!!!

I am thrilled to announce that Double Dare by my super talented writing buddy Saskia Walker has just won the 2006 Passionate Plume Award for the Best Contemporary Erotic Romance!

I had the priviledge of reading this sumptuous novel some time ago, and it is indeed a perfect example of a warm, sexy and beautifully written erotic romance, worthy of this and even greater accolades. It has a smart, pacy story, great characterisation, hot urban settings and a drop dead gorgeous Alpha but complex hero! :)

Visit Saskia's Website to learn more about Double Dare and all her other fabulous fiction!

Seventy Days of Sweat

I've rather rashly decided to sign up for something called Seventy Days of Sweat!

This is a brilliant initiative by Alison Kent that's designed as a friendly, mutually supportive kick in the butt to get a group of writers actually writing! I think it's mainly for authors who need/want to complete an entire novel in 70 days, culminating in mid Sept, but I think it will work just as well as an incentive for me, who needs to complete 32K of Gothic Heat before a nominal date of 31st August, and edit the book by 1st October. I would *have* to do this anyway, so it's no extra pressure to make it part of this fun, group project. Not to mention there are prizes...

My own goal only requires a target of around 600 words per day, but some people have set themselves far more gruelling tasks. One author has to complete three whole books in the time allotted! Now that is going some... I would say it's impossible, but then, most writers have more grit and determination than I have!!!

So, the challenge starts today, but I think latecomers are still very welcome, so if you're an author and you really want to crack on with a WIP, why not sign up?

Seventy Days of Sweat


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Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!