The Death of a Fan

January was a difficult month. A few people I know lost loved ones. The Naughty Literati lost one of our own authors. And I lost my biggest fan.

That may seem self-serving, perhaps a little trivial. Except my biggest fan was my mother-in-law. 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

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

Naughty News: Giveaway for subscribers!

Do you want to get updates about my stories with The Naughty Literati? You can sign up for our newsletter, Naughty News!

To entice our readers we’re having a little giveaway for all our subscribers. Sign up for our newsletter and be entered to win a $25.00 Amazon gift card! Already subscribed? Then you’re already entered! Deadline for entries is by April 29th — so sign up today! Continue reading

Amazon’s Adult Filter Buries Your Naked Bodies

[UPDATE: I’ve had to delete old, broken links in this post.]
Recent news about my publisher Ellora’s Cave is not good. Freelance editors and cover artists have been laid off – including both my editors. I’m worried about my cover artist since she is a freelancer, although she is still listed on the company website. [UPDATE: Alas, she is no longer.]

There was a lot of hullabaloo in the blogosphere and on Twitter about this news, which was originally a private communique to EC authors. Some people complained that Ellora’s Cave charges too much for ebooks especially since so much self-published material is so cheap, some people ruminated about financial concerns at EC, some people wondered about poor business practices at EC (this one about Farrah Abraham’s advance is interesting), and some people thought it was disingenuous of EC to blame Amazon although perhaps Amazon’s launch of Kindle Unlimited had something to do with it.

But what no one seems to be gossiping about is Amazon’s adult filter and how that is quite possibly the reason for EC experiencing a “sharp decline of ebook sales via Amazon.”

And as an indie erotica author, I have some personal experience with precisely that. Continue reading

More First Times: Booklovers & Advertising

I’ll be attending my very first convention as an author this week: the 2014 RT Booklovers Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana. It will be my first time in New Orleans, as well.

Continue reading

Snippet Sunday: The Pleasure Device: Nicholas

Another snippet from my most recent release, The Pleasure Device, book 1 in my Harwell Heirs series. At the point in the story where this snippet takes place, the reader has already met our hero Dr. Nicholas Ramsay (in all his orgiastic glory), but our heroine Helena has not. So, really the title of this blog post should more correctly be “Nicholas from Helena’s point of view”. Continue reading

Snippet Sunday: The General’s Wife: Sam and Pat

I think this might be my last General’s Wife snippet for Snippet Sunday* for a while. The book is now with a copyeditor. (Thanks to P.T. Wyant for catching that typo last week! I hate typos! Go nuts copyeditor!) I’m hoping to release it by this November (cross fingers), so maybe I’ll do some more snippet teasers just before then.

In an earlier post, I had alluded to Pat and Sam being “very close buddies” which, of course, is a euphemism. Wait – what? They like each other? Aren’t they the heroes for our heroine Clara? Let’s just say I like to mix it up a bit with my writing and I have a soft spot for the bisexual beta hero. Continue reading

Snippet Sunday: The General’s Wife: Sebastian

I missed last Sunday’s Snippet Sunday because I was indulging my love of things Roman by visiting the Getty Villa in Malibu to see the exhibition “Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome,” as well as to just experience the villa, one of my favorite places to visit when I was a child. The idea of an ancient Roman villa in Southern California is simultaneously awesome and crazy. My traveling companion had already been to Italy once this year, but I haven’t been for quite a while and really want to go back. It was a very pleasant day. And, heck, while we were in the area, we went to the Getty Center as well. A day full of art!

So, back to Snippet Sunday*, my revision of The General’s Wife, and the introduction of a new character. Today we meet our tertiary hero, Lieutenant Sebastian Hawkins, who, despite his being a minor character, plays an important role in our heroine Clara‘s life. Continue reading