Distractions and Shiiiiiiny Things

First off, just another mention that our blog is currently 'under construction'. We're hoping to unveil the new look very soon and we can't wait to show it off. Sorry I'm so late posting today but I have been distracted these days. Don't know what's up with that. Spring Fever? Maybe. The grass is greening up and we've been having some pretty darn nice weather around here but I honestly don't think that's it. I've just had trouble focusing because I just think too much is going on. Over at the Three Wicked Writers loop (you should definitely sign up btw) we decided to do a little writing exercise. A number of us were stumped at various points in our wips so we started off by stating our goals and then checking in to 'report' every hour. Everyone who came out to play did great and I believe we all met our goals. Now I only need to polish up and tweak what I wrote so speedy quick and move on with the manuscript. So what's holding me back? Lots of stuff. I am planning a joint promotion thing with author and friend Mari Carr. We both have releases tomorrow at Ellora's Cave. YAY on that! We've been plotting and planning joint contests and such so be watching for contest information on our personal blogs, facebook, twitter, etc. Also, Mr. Reg and I have been looking at houses. Ummmm. What are we thinking???? We have a very nice house already but we've kind of got the bug so we've been checking out some local listings. I'm signed up to guest blog, dealing with a 'major' change with my daughter and hell, just so many things that my head is spinning. What do you do when focus is hard to come by? I've been trying to figure that out for years. Today I'm seriously considering sitting out on the patio and watching the rain come down (yes, it's a MIRACLE...rain in west Texas!). Maybe my brain will settle down and I'll be able to focus on one thing at a time. Maybe a nice hot bath with bubbles? I just don't know but if you have any ideas, I would be most grateful! As I mentioned, Mari Carr and I both have releases tomorrow. Inflamed and Return to Delight are in the Lawless line and Everything's Comin' Up Cowboys for us. Here's a bit about both books.

COMING March 30

Blurb:

Stuck in a rut in every way possible, Keri decides her first step in a bid for change is moving back to the Texas home she left years ago. The second step? Spicing up her sex life with the crazy-hot cowboys she left behind. Too responsible (and smart) to touch her way back when, Max and Shaw filled Keri’s hottest teen dreams. Now she’s older, wiser—and more than ready to make up for lost time. Max and Shaw were always fond of Keri, but the stunning woman strutting back into their lives is a far cry from the serious, studious teen they remember. She wants to take a walk on the racy side—with both of them—and the cowboys are only too happy to oblige. As they suspected, the sex is explosive, though Max and Shaw aren’t sure Keri can really handle everything they have to give. Nor do they know if she can handle the sexy secret they’ve yet to divulge.

Coming March 30

Blurb:

Harley June Baker left Delight thinking never to return, but when circumstances draw her back to this tiny town and straight into Cooper’s strong arms, she knows she’s in deep trouble. The man she’d loved and left behind is now one sexy devil-in-denim and hotter than a Texas summer night. With his every wicked touch throwing her senses into overdrive, how could any sane woman resist? Cooper Dobbs is a man on a mission. He let Harley get away once, but never again. Knowing it’s time to burn up some sheets with the delectable woman, Cooper plies her with a raw, savage passion that threatens to incinerate them both. It’s gonna take plenty of panty-drenching sex and a fair amount of sweet-talkin’ to make Harley his, but Cooper reckons he’s up to the challenge.

Welcome our guest- Kaily Hart

Please welcome our guest, the incredibly talented Kaily Hart who will be sharing her views on TATTS. Super sexy??? Hm. Guess it just depends. Read what Kaily has to say on the matter.


TATTOOS



I’m fascinated with tattoos. Just flat out fascinated. Of course, there’s tattoos and then there’s…tattoos J. There’s not much else that gets my attention more fully than a hot guy sporting a tasteful bit of ink. Does he have them anywhere else, like…somewhere I can’t see them? When did he get them? All together or over time? Why did he get them and what do they signify, if anything? Does he know how damn sexy they make him look? Probably, huh? And the writer’s mind is off, building scenarios and possibilities and yeah…weaving fantasies. And if you’re thinking what I consider ‘tasteful’?



Something like this…





not this J





That leaves a lot in between that kind of has to be assessed on a case by case basis and if you’re wondering..nope, I don’t have any tattoos. But I probably would if I could. I know exactly what it’d be like too. I’ve been known to search the internet for designs (all in the name of research, of course J) and have a pretty good idea. I’d pick something discreet, small, meaningful or symbolic, as well as something pleasing to look at. But I can’t. You see, I have a severe needle phobia ::takes a deep breath::. There I said it. It’s not like I haven’t had my share over the years—I have—I just can’t voluntarily sign myself up for having a million tiny needles every second. Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration, but it’s still A LOT, okay? Plus, there’s the real fear factor, not just of the needle itself, but of the high degree of probability that the tattoo artist would start and I’d chicken out after the fact. Who wants to have a partial design of something tattooed on their body for the rest of their lives LOL? I have enough “I love Lucy” moments as it is. Anyway, it’s funny and embarrassing, but whenever we’re up in Orlando at Disney with the kids? I always get a ‘tramp stamp’ at one of those temporary tattoo places LOL. Shhh, don’t tell anyone, all right?



Maybe one day I’ll find the courage from somewhere. In the meantime...I’ve pretty much discovered that the next best thing to having a tattoo is having the characters in my books have them. It has to fit the character and story above all else, but I think there’s a great deal of opportunity to build aspects of a character through a ‘quirk’ or an attribute like this. It’s fun to answer the questions I posed above for a character and it can become an interesting story element, another layer of the onion. I’ve got a few stories in the works where the heroes have tattoos. Adds another hotness factor to an alpha already doing okay in that department, but what the heck?



So…tell me what YOU think. Do YOU like tattoos? Do you like to read about heroes who have them? Heroines? Hot or not? Skank or swank?



Web – www.kailyhart.com

Blog - http://kailyhart.blogspot.com/

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/kaily.hart

Twitter - http://twitter.com/kailyhart

Sexy Talk!

Warning: Adult theme

Writing erotic romance means saying it sexy! Whatever is going on within the story line, authors try their best to find the sexiest way to write it. That means choosing words that have a certain feel to them that a different word with the same meaning might not have. For instance, I much prefer the word “flesh” over “skin”—although I use both. Sometimes one just fits better than the other and has a sexier sound to me. It’s all subjective.

I got to thinking about all this and that made me think of how men and women talk to each other in real life. How we get in all those sexy tidbits that make us want to take “it” to another level. From the moment you meet someone you’re attracted to, whether that attraction is purely physical or based on personality or even both, we all try our best to choose our words carefully—at least I think we do, lol.

And that, of course, got me thinking about sexy pick-up lines. Yep, pick-up lines. Have you ever heard a sexy one or are they all kind of corny—cliché? Have you got any good ones you’d like to share?

I remember I was in this club with some friends one night and a guy came over to me and said in a very thick country-Southern accent, “Ma’am, you’re the second purdiest thing I ever did see.” I would have done an eye roll or simply told him to get lost, but I’d had two bourbons with a whisper of ginger ale on an empty stomach. So instead, I said, “Okay, I’ll bite, what was the first purdiest?” And yeah, I said “purdiest”. His reply: “An angel come down from heaven.” I’m not lying. He said that. I remember taking a deep breath, and the DJ cranked up this really great song, and I just nodded and said, “Okay, that bought you a dance.” But it didn’t buy him anything else!

I found this great site online that has pick-up lines categorized. Here’s the link if you’re looking for laughs this morning. http://www.pickuplinesgalore.com I have to admit to liking some of them. Guess I’m just a sucker for an over-the-top pick-up line. Here are a couple that stood out to me: “If beauty were time, you'd be eternity.” AND “Can I have directions? [To where?] To your heart.” I like the ones with a soft, romantic feel. But some of the really cheesy ones are pretty cute. I find it hard to believe that a man would actually say something like this to a woman—“Is there an airport nearby or is that just my heart taking off?”

Why do you think some men find it necessary to use a line? Couldn’t they just walk up to a woman and say, “Hi, I’m Jack. Would you care to dance?” Then again, scroll upward and take a look at what I did when the dude said that line to me. Chances are, some of these lines have worked! Maybe not as well as they wanted them to—but well enough. Lol

Let’s face it. Sexy talk is fun. It’s all a part of the dance—the mating ritual. Words can really rev up an engine. Anticipation is everything. So when I write, I try to keep that in mind. Sexual tension isn’t just about physical feelings, it’s about what’s going on in the head—the biggest sexual organ. What someone says to us, how they communicate their needs and desires verbally is a major turn on.

Today I’m showcasing sexy lines from the Three Wicked Writers Plus Two gals.

Coming Soon from Ellora’s Cave http://www.jasminejade.com/m-613-natalie-dae.aspx: His Beautiful Wench by Natalie Dae.

From Him: “I want to touch your wet slit. Slide inside you. I want…need to have you close, your skin against mine. I want to hear your heavy breathing as I love you, hear your cries as you come.” Nat writes it romantic! Absolutely to die for.

From Her: “You want to touch me like this, don’t you?” she asked. “You want to feel my wet slit, slide your tongue over it, taste me…”—Nat sure painted a saucy little wench, didn’t she?

Regina Carlyle’s Trouble In A Stetson from Ellora’s Cave http://www.jasminejade.com/pc-8474-47-trouble-in-a-stetson.aspx

From Her: “Wanna see, Sheriff? I think I can still muster up a high kick or two for you. I’m very flexible.”—I read this book. Lola is VERY flexible.

And Regina’s Highland Beast from Ellora’s Cave http://www.jasminejade.com/pm-7246-457-highland-beast.aspx

From Him: “Now I dine.”—Care to take a guess as to just what this man is about to dine on? Trust me, it ain’t a salad!

Here’s a sneak peek of an upcoming title of mine from Ellora’s Cave entitled Strip Down.

From Him: “…what do you need with clothes when it’s so obvious we both want to be naked?”
From Her: “I always thought that tight places were kind of sexy—and almost always slick and wet.”

Okay, c’mon, share some of your experiences with us. And if you can, tell us about something the love of your life said to you that you’ll never forget. I’m one of those ‘inquiring minds’. I just have to know. Lol

I’ve made enough mischief for one Monday. Let’s keep the mischief coming! Leave me a sexy comment.

Heads Would Roll!!!!

Every morning when I get up I browse the news. This morning I found an article about a new California school with a price tag of $578 million dollars—headlined as the costliest in the nation. I read the story and my blood boiled. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38807154/ns/us_news-life

We all elect our politicians—school board members—in hopes they will represent us not only with respect to our views on any given subject matter, but with it in mind that they will also think about the bottom line too—our wallets. Somebody in California dropped the damn ball. And if it were my state? Heads would roll!

Actually, I don’t think such a project would ever have gone on the books in my state. No, I’m not California-bashing. I just know we have some truly rabid watchdogs in our state that do nothing but eyeball our public school system to the point of overkill sometimes.

The location of the school itself is suspect to me. It seems they remodeled and added to the old Ambassador Hotel where Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, and the new K-12 school has the following amenities:

• fine art murals
• marble memorials depicting RFK
• a manicured public park—ten acres
• state-of-the-art swimming pool
• preservation of pieces of the original hotel
• talking benches (history involving RFK)
• a dance studio with cushioned maple floors
• a modern kitchen with a restaurant quality pizza oven
• a stainless steel, postmodernistic tower encircled by a rollercoaster-like swirl

First off, it sounds more like a museum to me than a school. And a museum should be funded privately not publicly. Or with a combination of grant money and taxpayer dollars. But the fancy architecture, fine art, and lavish upgrades aren’t the only things that added to the price tag of this school. It seems the historical preservationists involved in all of this—and how all of this ended up being paid for within a school budget is beyond me—but they were involved in a lawsuit with Donald Trump who wanted to build the tallest building in the world there. Donald should have won. Because to me it sounds like this building is OVERKILL MUCH. And I bet Donald could have built the world’s tallest building a lot cheaper too. Cost of that litigation? $9 million.

Oh, there were also a lot of legal costs involved in some sort of litigation involving methane. HUH? I don’t know. The article didn’t give much information on that one at all. But the real kicker for me was the whopping $15 million bucks spent to preserve things like a wall from the old Coconut Grove lounge.

What kills me in all of this is that these kids attending this school don’t even know who RFK is. They don’t remember the old Ambassador Hotel or know a damn thing about the Coconut Grove Lounge. And K-12? Most of their parents won’t remember anything or much at all about any of it either. They are too young. What meaning will any of this have for them?

The idea behind the school—and there is another one almost as costly in Cali too and one in New Jersey and one in Massachusetts as well according to the article—is that you get kids out of a lackluster environment and they learn better. HUH? Critics are saying that the school will be run by the same people who have given California a fifty percent dropout rate.

This project was started over twenty years ago it seems. So we can’t slap them for doing this during hard economic times. But should they have done this at all? Will having your child in a fancier school influence his/her learning? And the biggest question of all. In a country where our teachers are already underpaid, shouldn’t all of that money have gone to teacher pay raises? Or shouldn’t it have gone to upgrading existing schools?

What’s everyone’s take on this? Am I wrong to be scratching my head and wondering WTF this morning?

On another note, don't forget to check out Natalie Dae's post here on Three Wicked Writers Plus Two on Friday. She's going to announce a really cool competition. You could win a prize that might just come in pretty handy. So make sure you stop by on Friday to see what Natalie has in store for everyone.

Thanks for reading!