An Essay About Maids of Honour, Unicorns, and Pee – Guest Post By Lucy Woodhull

Hi, I’m rom com author Lucy Woodhull, and I’ve survived being a maid of honour.  I even got a pretty dress, although I never did use it a second time.  That’s a lie for the ages, that we’ll all wear our bridesmaids dresses again.  It’s right up there with only eating one potato chip, or that we’ll win the lottery if we play this time…

I was maid of honour to my bestie, and she was matron of honour to me.  It was those experiences that led me to write a scene in my new book, The Wrath of Dimple.  It’s book three in my Samantha Lytton contemporary rom-com series about a wannabe-actress turned movie star and the art thief who ruins her life in the most orgasmic way possible.

Here’s a blurb for the third book in the series, The Wrath of Dimple:

Unforgettable. That’s what she’s not.

Life is perfect for Samantha Lytton, big-screen superheroine. Her acting career flourishes, the bad guys from her past are in prison, and she’s married her true love, be-dimpled ex-thief Sam. Everything is so rosy and idyllic, it’s like a freaking princess movie. Well, an R-rated one. Nothing could mar Sam and Samantha’s fairy-tale romance!

Except the moment in the emergency room when Sam, his head cracked open, turns to his beloved wife and asks, “Who the hell are you?”

He’s suffering from…Samnesia! (At least he still laughs at Samantha’s stupid puns.) How on earth did that happen? If Samantha is going to live her very own soap opera, she’d choose an evil twin over amnesia any day.

With no idea who has attacked Sam or why, Samantha is left in the depths of despair with a hunk who doesn’t remember her, a creepy film director who’s getting more threatening by the minute, and, oh yeah, the people who continue to try to murder Sam. How do you solve a mystery wrapped in a head bandage inside an empty skull? Nothing a little Norwegian fish porn and a lot of cleavage can’t fix. Hopefully.

Samantha needs every ounce of her courage to win her husband back before their enemies catch up to finish them both off. She thought their love was written in the stars, but it might just be scribbled on an Etch-A-Sketch.

As an author, I enjoy being mean to my characters for the reader’s amusement; it’s a huge perk!  So one of the things I did to Samantha in this book was have her attend her best friend’s wedding as the matron of honour right after her own wedding…that Sam, her husband, doesn’t remember.  Sam’s amnesia (or Samnesia, as it is commonly known) leads to quite a few awkward, heart-wrenching, and funny moments for poor Samantha.

She’s a trooper, though, and only sheds a few sad/sexually frustrated tears…for she has Very Important Duties ™ to perform as matron of honour for her best friend Ellen, who is marrying her fiancée Nicolette.  (“Matron of honour” duties are more fun than “wife of clueless man who doesn’t remember you” duties, FYI.)

I was a bride once upon a time, and I know what a pain in the butt a wedding is.  Fun, but a lot of work.  It’s the maid/matron’s job to make sure the bride is kept away from irritants, but close to the booze and food.  In that spirit, I present from The Wrath of Dimple:

Ellen the Bridezilla’s Rules for Samantha, Her Official Matron of Honour and Fellow Olivia Newton-John Lover:

• Always have cheese at the ready.
• Ditto on champagne.
• Know the whereabouts of Wife at all times.
• Listen to any and all dirty talk about the honeymoon, and nod encouragingly.
• Keep Mrs Bonner, Rick, Other Rick, Leslie and Jackass YA Author Camilla away from Bride, lest boredom and/or rage cause her makeup to melt.
• Accompany Bride to bathroom and hold up her dress when she needs to wee.
• Tell Bride she is beautiful because it’s true, she is flawless at all times.
• Attend to any fuckups that upset Bride.
• Stab a bitch at Bride’s request.

 

My bestie did these things for me (although thankfully no stabbing was necessary), and I will be eternally grateful.  She held up ten pounds of dress so I could pee—that’s what a best friend does.  Well, that and give you a stuffed unicorn in the hospital when your husband has been bashed on the head and left for dead.  But I sincerely hope that you will never have to experience that for real—just in my book!

If you’d like to read more about Sam and Samantha’s adventures, you can find all three books at Totally Bound.  Thank you very much for reading, and you look smashing in that outfit today!

Love, Lucy

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Join Lucy Woodhull on this blog tour to celebrate the release of The Wrath of Dimple and enter for your chance to win here: https://www.totallybound.com/competition/wrath-of-dimple-giveaway?utm_source=thereallynaughtycorner&utm_medium=blogtour&utm_campaign=thewrathofdimpleblogtour

Win A $100 Amazon Gift Card With Hungry For More

Hungry For More: Romantic Fantasies For Women is released via Cleis Press’s new Tempted Romance imprint on August 12th. The book features stories by many of the hottest names in erotica, including Giselle Renarde, Jacqueline Applebee, D.L. King, Jeremy Edwards and Valerie Alexander, and my own contribution, Something Sleazy, is the tale of a couple who decide to act out a fantasy involving voyeurism and man-0n-man action.

Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel is offering the fantastic prize of a $100 Amazon gift card to one lucky winner, and all you have to do is pre-order the Kindle version of Hungry for More via Amazon.com.

For full details of how to enter, as well as a full table of contributors and a sneak peek of Rachel’s introduction to the anthology, Getting Explicit, just click on the cover below. Good luck, and happy reading!

Here Goes – Guest Post by Constance Munday

So, here goes and a big warm welcome to everyone who is stopping by and spending a moment to check me and my book out.

Sweet Secrets is a book that I hope you will love. I’m constantly asked about where the inspiration for my books comes from and how I find my characters, so over this blog tour I’m hoping I will be able to answer a few of the questions you might have about my current release and give you a taste of a book which I must add — I truly loved and enjoyed writing.

Taste is a bit of a pun since the novel centres around cookery and in particular baking. Baking seems a popular theme for books these days, maybe because a lot of us have a sweet tooth and many of us are secret bakers as we are encouraged to put on our aprons and find our way back into our kitchens. I am no exception. Ill health saw me making a great many dietary adjustments and that meant often disastrous cake baking extravaganzas. Baking has been, and still is, something I am passionate about and I am delighted to be back with flour up to my arms doing another thing I enjoy besides writing. As I bet you can guess, being in the kitchen is providing a seed for a great many plots and ideas.

With Sweet Secrets, I wanted to write a novel with a familiar theme and a twist, but also a book that was a bit different. It had to blend together romance and chick lit, but it also had to have heat and contain some challenging themes that many women face.

You’ll soon find out that my heroine Carrie Ann has talent, but she has had a tough life and things are not going to come easy for her. She uses her passions for both baking and erotica as a release valve for all her frustration. A carer in many ways, when we meet her she has spent years pandering to her ill father and on his death is forced to fall back on her hobby of expressive cake design, as a means to fashion her future. Out of this comes her inspiration to create her own erotic cake company called ‘Sweet Secrets’, which I am soon to tell you a bit more about.

And what about the love interest and the secrets? We have to have a hero, don’t we, and we also have to have our secret for the What’s Her Secret? imprint. Well, I’ll tell you more about that soon. Just let’s say that Carrie Ann’s route towards love is not going to be easy as she lies to protect her secret past. Before she knows it, she has created a very sticky web indeed.

You can read more about Sweet Secrets here:

Blurb for Sweet Secrets:

What will happen when dark secrets threaten a perfect recipe for happiness and newfound love?

Left on her own, Carrie Ann decides it is time to escape her past, empower herself and overcome her confidence issues by turning her secret hobby of erotic cake design into a business. Her world is then turned upside down when she bumps into dynamic and sexy Dominic. Unwittingly, Carrie Ann sows the seeds of disaster from day one, weaving a web of deceit, and before she knows it the lies are multiplying.

As news of her baking brilliance spreads, romance grows. Now, only one thing can ruin their happiness and that is Carrie Ann’s dark deceptions and the battle she is fighting within herself. Will she be strong enough to overcome a past that is set to destroy her dreams for the future and tell Dominic the truth, or will she lose him forever?

Email me at: constancemundayromance@yahoo.co.uk

Follow the new wordpress blog: constancemundayromance

And watch for the new Constance Munday facebook page

WHAT’S HER SECRET? GIVEAWAY

To celebrate the release of Sweet Secrets, Totally Bound are giving you the chance to win a bundle of eBooks.

To enter, click on the image below:

 

 

Cleis Summer Of Love Giveaway

To celebrate the fact that Cleis Press have not only reached the grand old age of 34, they have also been voted Publisher of the Year in the Foreword Reviews Indiefab Awards, they’re running a special summer deal. Simply choose from among their 400 titles and enter the code “SummerLovin34” at the Cleis Press bookstore checkout.  That means you get to choose from the fantastic Best Women’s Erotica and Best Bondage Erotica series, as well as the many anthologies edited by the lovely Rachel Kramer Bussel.

To add to the fun, they’re giving away a beach basket of their favorite summery reads: Can’t Get Enough edited by Tenille Brown, Heat Wave edited by Alison Tyler, Beach Bums edited by Neil Plakcy, and Cowboy Heat edited by Delilah Devlin. To enter, click on the image below to be taken to the Cleis website, then scroll to the bottom of the page.

Snog By The Sea – Summer of Lust

As part of the Blissekiss Snog By The Sea event, here’s a Snog from my Xcite Romance novella Summer of Lust, set on Dorset’s beautiful Jurassic coast. Read on to enjoy a delicious kiss and discover how you can win tickets to the Smut by the Sea event, which is being held in Scarborough on June 14th.

So on with the snog which opens the story – a snog which, for the heroine of Summer of Lust, Lily, brings with it a bad case of writer’s block…

He kissed me for the first time in the shadow of the old pier, pushed up against one of the weathered wooden pilings. It seemed as though I’d been waiting forever to feel those soft, full lips of his pressing against my own, my body melting into the sweetness of his kiss. Above us, we could hear footsteps as people passed along the boardwalk, wrapped up against the early evening chill, oblivious to the way our passionate embrace was heating up the night.

His cock pushed at my belly, making its presence felt even through the layers of clothing separating us. I’d glimpsed his bulge earlier, straining against the crotch of his faded jeans, and I knew he was going to be big. I could hardly wait till I had that thick, delicious length in my hand, but something held me back from reaching to unzip him. That seemed far too brazen an act, even though we could no longer pretend we didn’t want each other. Our desire had been on a slow burn since the day we met, and we both knew all it would take was another touch, another kiss to set it blazing out of control.

What he did next took my breath away. He –

‘What?’ I almost pounded the keyboard in frustration. ‘What did he do?’

To find out how Lily resolves her problem and enjoys the hottest summer of her life, check out Summer of Lust at Xcite and Amazon.

This Blog is part of Snog by the Sea over at http://blissekiss.co.uk/snog-by-the-sea/. Leave a comment to go into the Prize Draw. For UK winners you can win 2 All-Day Smut by the Sea Tickets for you and a friend or for our international visitors we have a mystery eBook bundle you can win with books from some of the hottest names in erotica.

Going Beyond – Guest Post By Sierra Cartwright

The idea of taking a story farther than I ever have before intrigues me.

In Crave, my latest novel from Totally Bound Publishing, I take the plunge.

Many times in my books, my characters will consider collaring a next logical step, a way to express their love, devotion, and commitment to the relationship and to their way of life. I generally end my books before any sort of formality happens.

Honestly, I’ve often thought that a collaring ceremony would be the ultimate act of intimacy between my hero and heroine, and I know that decision would be fraught with ideals, expectations, agreements, promises. This commitment would be every bit as important to them as their wedding.

Sometimes, when we get married, we invite family and friends and have a grand celebration. It’s fun to be a princess for a day! In a BDSM relationship, a collaring is often more private, maybe between just the Dom and His/Her submissive or with a few individuals who grasp the significance.

But what happens when the Dom makes it clear that collaring will be part of the relationship? What if the sub isn’t ready or willing? What happens when a heroine finds a collar in her lover’s dresser drawer?

Those questions inspired Crave.

In the case of Sarah Lovett, she panics. She’s in love with Reece, the man she will likely marry. Though he’s a Dominant, she’d never really thought of him as her Dom. He’s introduced her to the seductive powers of D/s, but she doesn’t consider herself a lifestyler. She isn’t someone who yearns to submit. And when she finds the collar, she realizes he expects it.

Though she’s normally a clear-headed person, Sarah panics. There’s no way she could pass that massive, locking thing off as a necklace. She sees it for what it is, Reece’s desire to show the world that she’s his.

She knows that if she talks to him, confronts him, he’ll manage to reassure her. The man can persuade her to do anything. And if she gives in, he will consume her. Rather than risk giving him the opportunity to convince her to wear it, she runs away. She leaves no contact information. She rejects his calls and ignores his text messages and e-mails.

Sarah begins her life over again, lonely, but determined. She quickly discovers, though, that she does crave dominance, but not just anyone’s. The men she plays with leave her unfulfilled. More and more, her mind is consumed with thoughts of Reece. She dreams of him, wishes she could contact him.

Maybe, she thinks, one last night together would give her the closure she needs and desires. She seeks him out, only to be rebuffed in the same way she’d ignored him.

His rejection only fuels her determination. She enlists the help of one of his best friends, the wildly enigmatic Julien Bonds. Julien can resist almost anything except the compulsion to meddle in the lives of others. He and Reece have been friends since college, and no one knows Reece as well as Julien does. Julien knows Reece still has unresolved angst when it comes to Sarah. So after consuming a fair amount of red wine and making Sarah grovel a bit, he agrees to help out.

But Reece isn’t as happy to see her as she’d hoped.

She’d hurt him more than she’d believed possible, and this new Reece is harder, less trusting. In return for the one night together, he’ll demand more than she’s ever given.

She wonders if she’s strong enough to endure the harshness she helped create. Sarah realizes she’ll have to push herself, challenge her own expectations, express her needs, and be emotionally and physically vulnerable in order to have Reece and the relationship she craves.

Enter for your chance to win a Kindle Fire HD to celebrate the release of Crave: https://www.totallybound.com/competition/crave-kindle?utm_source=thereallynaughtycorner&utm_medium=blogtour&utm_campaign=crave. The competition runs from May 26th to June 4th, and the winner will be announced at the Facebook release party for Crave on June 4th.