Celebrating Release Day

Delilah : Hi everyone! I’m Delilah K. Stephans. I’m here with my buddy Antonia Tiranth, Jett Houston and Amara Carnesir. We’re hoping that you will join us as we celebrate the release of Jett and Amara’s book. I’m going to let Antonia say hi.

Antonia : Hey guys! I'm really excited about this release for a few reasons. First, its my third published work and that never gets dull. ^.^ Second, its the continuation of a tale that I am very much enjoying being the teller of. And finally, because its the first published work from both Del and I. Its not the first thing we've written together by any means and Del has been with me the whole time with the Rikashi series, helping me when I'm stuck and editing among other things. Okay, enough about me. I should introduce you to our stars, Jett and Amara!

Jett: Guess I’m up next. Well, Tir – that’s what Delilah calls Antonia – started chronicling the Rikashi stories. No one has quite figured out how she’s doing it, but that’s not the point. So when it came time for Black Velvet. I thought since those two were writing buddies that Del should get in on the fun…

Amara: Oh be honest, you just wanted to be difficult. And Antonia is too polite to type your foul mouth.

Jett: I am so paddling your ass when we get home Princess.

Amara: I might just enjoy it.

Delilah: Ok you two behave! Sheesh.

Jett: So, where was I? So, I wouldn’t talk to Tir. Drove her nuts!

Antonia : Nuts doesn't begin to cover it. More like hair pulling frustration.


Jett: Anyway, they go ways back writing and finished our story.

Amara: Wow! You didn’t cuss once, I’m impressed. I’m Amara. think Antonia was a little surprised when I ended up being in the middle of the third tale. I wasn't exactly very talkative in The Gathering ...I'll blame that one on Daddy...but I'm sure you'll find our story interesting. You'll learn more about the prophecy and some of the changes happening in our society. Things definitely heat up *looks at Jett* on several levels.


Antonia: You can say that again. So, I hope you guys take a look at Black Velvet. If you're new to the series, you should take a look at the first two. Now, what are we doing to celebrate? I'll let Del tell you about that.

Delilah: Ok so while we’re here we’ll be answering any and all questions. For one lucky commenter we have downloads of the two songs that fit the book – Tal Bachman’s “She’s so High” and Alannah Myles’ “Black Velvet”. For a few others we’ve got a stockpile of goodies we’ll be giving out – buttons, cover flats, bookmarks, and other goodies. So feel free to ask questions or just say hi!

Antonia : The songs will be provided via a gift download from iTunes (just figured out how to do that!) Del and I love hearing from readers and invite you to visit our websites, Delilah's and mine. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook. And now for a look at the cover, Amara...stop drooling.



And the blurb : I scanned the tables and counter, my eyes settling on him. There he was. Dark cowboy hat, dark coat, dark hair, and too handsome for his own good. He was sitting in one of the back booths, blending with the shadows.

I walked to his table, seating myself across from him. He looked over his menu at me and smirked.

“Just can’t stay away from me, can you, Princess?”

The nickname made me bristle, but I took a deep breath. I had to keep my focus on the mission. “So it seems.”

“Interesting,” he murmured, turning his eyes back to the menu, his face hidden beneath the brim of the hat.

Now what? What exactly should I say to him?

“We need you,” I blurted. Might as well get right to the point, rather than beat around the bush.

He laid the menu on the table. His dark eyes skimmed over my hair, my lips and down to my breasts, before returning to meet mine. My breath caught in my throat. There was such intensity in those eyes.

“We,” he echoed, then his voice dropped to a gravelly tone that made me want to squirm in my seat, “…or you?”

Now exactly what was that supposed to mean? I was one of the Aikanaro, if all of us needed him, didn’t that mean by extension each of us needed him? “I need you to come --”

“Ladies first.” He tapped the brim of his hat with a finger and winked.

I blinked at him, not understanding what he meant by that. Then slowly his meaning hit me and heat crept into my cheeks. “That’s not what I meant,” I snapped. “If you would just let me finish.”

You can get your copy of the book from Lyrical Press, Inc.

Vampires and Warriors...

So, here we are... All Hallow's Eve is nearing... what better time to settle in with a sexy vampire? I've been writing this stuff for years, and this year began with a reminder of just why it is I enjoy the genre so much... My last vampire novella, unbeknownst to me, was nominated as the Best Book of 2008 over at LASR - it came second by one percentage point of the vote, so a narrow margin indeed. Still... I have done this gig a time or two, and BLOOD WINE AND PALE ROSES is one of the better efforts. If you're curious at all, take a peek at the trailer here, or make a visit to the Wild Rose Press, where it is available and ON SALE at the moment!

One of my next releases isn't related to vampires, it's a more serious venture, one that looks at something we are all aware of on one level or another - war in this world, and the toll it takes on those we love. VIPER'S NEST is my gift to a man I admire, respect, and care for very much. It is being written to honour a man who is waiting for his orders to go back into battle in Afghanistan, after doing two tours in Iraq. His courage is undeniable, his dedication something we should all be grateful for. So, I hope you will enjoy meeting him in the days to come. Here's a look at the idea I'm working with:

Lastly for today - what a relief you're thinking - for anyone who enjoys FREE READS in all genres, erotic and non-erotic, I've started a new website to showcase all of the things that I get up to and would like to share with you... All I would like you to do is register with the site, so I can send you one email occasionally to let you know when there are new stories to share. The site is called ROMANTIC MOMENTS, and I really hope you will spend a few of them with me! Feel free to sign the Guestbook, or drop me a note via the contact form if there's anything you would like to see and don't!

Thanks so much! Talk to you all again soon... Happy Sunday!

Denysé

Denysé Bridger
Website: http://www.denysebridger.com/
Romantic Moments: http://www.romanticmoments.webs.com/
Sensual Treats Magazine: http://www.sensualtreats.webs.com/

Ghost Walk

The history of York, we were told- my friend and I- is the history of England. Preserved medieval walls and buildings, the whisper of civil war, kings and queens, plagues and torture, survival and romance, all of it oozed a saga we simply couldn’t get enough of. Narrow streets revealed cluttered shops, tea rooms, and wine bars. Cathedral crypts, dully lit, spoke of long gone civilizations- Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans- and museums, too many to count, peeled back the layers of time for all who cared to stop and wonder. A romantic’s dream come true and we reveled in exploration.
As the warm summer day grew dim we stopped by the River Ouse outside a favorite pub, The King’s Arms, rested our feet and dampened parched throats. A tall, pasty complexioned fellow caught our attention. Dressed as an undertaker, tall black hat, his cape swirling around his ankles, he waved his crooked walking stick and called forth all those who wished to hear the stories of lost souls within the city’s walls who could not find rest. “Join me,” he chanted with an air of suspenseful expectancy. “And I shall take you to places where infamy refuses to concede to reality.”
An eager crowd soon gathered. His flare for all things dark and ghostly was quite lucrative; they paid their dues and shuffled about in nervous anticipation. Despite our aching feet, we too, were seduced by his mystical mannerisms; curiosity got the better of us. The few shekels we handed over were well worth the price for nerve tingling entertainment.
We were not disappointed. We tagged along, stopping to listen intently to a sad story of a child locked inside a plague house, to die, not of the disease that wracked the population centuries ago, but of slow starvation. Her little face did not appear in the upstairs window for us, but we didn’t doubt on some foggy nights it did just that. Outside a pub called The Black Swan we held our breath as the tale of a ghostly woman was recounted, trying vainly to warm her cold hands near the fireplace and vanishing as patrons approached to peer into her eyes. Next was The Treasurer’s House, where ghostly dualists fight through eternity on the manicured lawn, swords clashing for the heart of a lady who had long since turned to dust.
Our host was mesmerizing- his deep voice rising and falling- subtle nuances as he embellished these fanciful tales for an engrossed audience. We were of no exception. “He’s good,” I whispered to my friend and she nodded slowly, her eyes wide.
“Fascinating,” said a fellow who had silently come up behind us. We turned in unison to glance at the stowaway, and being warm blooded and female, were taken aback by his sinister good looks. Locks of black hair curled over his white collar and framed swarthy Greek God features. He smiled at each of us in turn, long lashes curling above sultry brown eyes. “Do you believe?” His question was uttered in sincerity.
I found my voice first. “There’s likely a grain of truth to each story,” I said, hoping my palpitating heartbeat wasn’t betraying my attraction to masculine qualities draped in fine clothes- silky cotton shirt, dark trousers, soft leather boots- certainly a stark contrast to our tourist identifying garb of t-shirts, jeans and running shoes.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked. He bowed, slightly, and we were instantly charmed by his elegant mannerisms. “My name is Jonathan Wright.”
Mr. “Right”, I mused, speechlessness taking hold. My friend introduced herself but I was then beyond capability of forming words.
This was a blessing, in fact, for he quietly highlighted the next tale of a Grey Lady who had, our formal guide bellowed, been seen on a regular basis haunting The Theatre Royal. “She was boarded up in a wall,” Jonathan Wright said softly, leaning between our shoulders. “Left there to die, inch by inch, for the crime of passion.” I shuddered at this horror, keeping my own stirring passions muted, thankful that dreadful era no longer held power over liberated minds.
We three tagged along behind the troupe to the final stop, The King’s Manor, and I felt uneasy that perhaps our guest might be scorned for hanging on, but no one seemed to notice. We had become delightfully anonymous. And inside the echoing stone foyer we listened politely to the story of a lady in green, her costume denoting the Tudor style, who carried roses from a garden that existed hundreds of years ago.
The Ghost Walk was then concluded; the crowd dispersed, happily arguing over the authenticity of these tales of intrigue. But we three remained in the cold open foyer, as our guest peered longingly at the stairway that led up into a vast room shrouded in darkness. There was more to the story of the lady in green, we guessed, and waited with eager apprehension.
“She loved only one,” he said calmly, his eyes fixated on the gloom above us. “Yet duty saw her bound to another.” He sighed with such emotion that we clutched each other’s arms- my friend and I- wondering how it was he was privy to such depth.
“Murder,” he announced with such vigor we startled. “Both were murdered by the cruel heart of jealousy.”
He turned once more and smiled to us. “I must bid you both adieu,” he said with a nod. “May life and love fulfill all your dreams. Always believe.”
With that, he moved towards the wide staircase and before our eyes, slowly vanished. Ascending footsteps faded into nothingness.
We were left alone, to wonder how it was that lost love could stretch beyond the borders of time, and how we could never again concede to what we perceived as reality. And as we backed away from the cold stone foyer into the busy street outside, the delicate scent of roses filled the air.

http://www.ellenashe.net/

The joys of co-authorship with Antonia Tiranth

Hello everyone! In just two short weeks, on November 2, my next book Black Velvet. Black Velvet is the third installment in the Tales of the Rikashi series and follows two more of the Aikanaro through their journey to discover their purpose. While my first two books will always be special to me, this one is even more special. This book was written by both me and my very wonderful friend Delilah K. Stephans.

Delilah and I have been writing together for almost six years but we have never met face to face. We met early in 2003 on some Inu Yasha fan forums. Through a series of fortunate events the two of us started writing together and we've become great friends and writing buddies. If you don't have a writing buddy I encourage you to try to find one. Del knows just when I need a swift kick in the rump to get me back on track. Now, you may be wondering exactly how co-writing works. There are several ways you can do it and Del and I have done just about all of them. Our first joint venture was of the reactive writing type, kind of a role play through email where we each had a particular character we wrote. It went something like this:

I might write in an email : Jackie walked into the room, put her hands on her hips and glared at her husband.

Del's reply : Sam slowly lowered the newspaper he was reading to meet his wife's gaze. "What?"

And it would continue in this way. You have to go back and smooth this out because you have a lot of POV shifts this way but its a good place to start.

Another method and the way we wrote Black Velvet is to do all the plotting together and then have one of you write the entire thing. The other goes back through and adds, deletes, edits without tracking changes. Then you start bouncing it back and forth to do the normal edits.


I can't tell you how happy I am to have met Del and write with her. When my muse is having a mental block or won't talk to me, she knows just the questions to ask to get things moving again. We have several other joint projects in the works but this is our debut in publishing as a team and we're really excited about this one so I hope you check it out on November 2.

Here's a little peek :

I tossed the rental car keys on the table at the entrance to my small suite and watched as they skittered across it and fell to the carpeted floor with a soft thump. Only now that I was several miles away from him, did my anger at his high-handed actions hit me. I stomped across the room, picking up one of the pillows and burying my face in it before the angry cry escaped my lips. As soon as I stopped screaming, I tossed the pillow back onto the bed violently. “He did it again!”

How could he have that effect on me? The second he touched me, or looked at me with those dark, brooding eyes, my mind was reduced to mush. This didn’t happen in real life. It only happened in those stupid romance novels I loved so much.

I paced the small room, muttering darkly. “Stupid male, thinks he can take whatever he wants and just walk away after he gets it.” Of course, that’s exactly what he had done, and I hadn’t done a thing to stop him. I hadn’t even had the chance to ask him anything. He just kissed me, got on that motorcycle of his, and left me standing in the parking lot looking like a fool.

“Amara? You okay, lass?”

I had to smile. Arafin was always concerned about everyone’s happiness, that and getting on Tura’s nerves. “Yes, Fin. I'm fine.”

“You dunna seem fine ta’ me. Tell ole Fin what the trouble is.” I could almost see him lounging in a chair, his feet propped up on the nearest table.

“Really, Fin, I'm fine. Just a little frustrated. I'll figure it out.”

“Alrighty, if ya say so. Take it easy, luv.”

I sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, kicking at my suitcase. Why couldn’t dear, sweet, gentle, funny Arafin make me melt the way Jett did?

Not for the first time I wondered what was I doing here anyway. Why in the world did I agree to this?

“Because you needed to do something your father didn’t want you to do,” I said aloud.

I loved Daddy, but he always treated me like a brainless doll that he could mold into any shape he wanted. But I wasn’t. I wanted things out of the future. Love, respect, a purpose for my life. Things Daddy didn’t want me to have because they interfered with the plans he’d made for me. At one time, I may have been able to live with that but not anymore. Not since I met Fin, Shirak, Jo and the others.

Well, I’d just have to try again tomorrow to talk to Jett. I was here, and I had a mission to accomplish. If I could somehow manage to keep my mind focused on the purpose for my trip and not on those strong, firm lips, gentle, slightly calloused hands, dark, sultry eyes, body made for sin -- oh damn it, I might as well admit it was everything about the man that fascinated me!

Why wait until tomorrow? Why not show him, he couldn’t walk away from me like that?

I moved to the mirror, looking at my reflection. My curls were wild as always, and I finger combed them into some semblance of order that probably wouldn’t last long. Bending to retrieve the keys, I concentrated on his presence in my mind. He was doing his best to block me, but he couldn’t do it completely. I knew where he was, or at least in what direction I needed to go to find him. Thank Bahamut, he wasn’t back at that horrible bar.

Almost an hour later, I pulled into the parking lot of a small restaurant and the presence of his motorcycle confirmed what I already knew. He was here. Turning off the engine I sat in the car for a moment, gathering my courage. Taking a deep breath, I got out and marched toward the entrance.

It was a small diner, with booths and a bar-like seating area. I scanned the tables and counter, my eyes settling on him. There he was. Dark cowboy hat, dark coat, dark hair, and too handsome for his own good. He was sitting in one of the back booths, blending with the shadows.

I walked to his table, seating myself across from him. He looked over his menu at me and smirked.

“Just can’t stay away from me, can you, Princess?”

The nickname made me bristle, but I took a deep breath. I had to keep my focus on the mission. “So it seems.”

“Interesting,” he murmured, turning his eyes back to the menu, his face hidden beneath the brim of the hat.

Now what? What exactly should I say to him?

“We need you,” I blurted. Might as well get right to the point, rather than beat around the bush.

He laid the menu on the table. His dark eyes skimmed over my hair, my lips and down to my breasts, before returning to meet mine. My breath caught in my throat. There was such intensity in those eyes.

“We,” he echoed, then his voice dropped to a gravelly tone that made me want to squirm in my seat, “…or you?”

Now exactly what was that supposed to mean? I was one of the Aikanaro, if all of us needed him, didn’t that mean by extension each of us needed him? “I need you to come --”

“Ladies first.” He tapped the brim of his hat with a finger and winked.

I blinked at him, not understanding what he meant by that. Then slowly his meaning hit me and heat crept into my cheeks. “That’s not what I meant,” I snapped. “If you would just let me finish.”

And what peek wouldn't be complete without a look at the cover?

Fetishes: Freaky or Sensual

Hello everyone!
It has been a while since it was my turn and I swear every time it is my turn I never have a clue what to write about. LOL This time the topic popped into my head after a friend told me how this guy propositioned her.
My topic, Fetishes: Freaky or Sensual is relevant in the world of romance. I mean, honestly, how many fetishes are out there do we see in romances and how many turn us on or off? Well, I decided to explore that for a bit. Now, I’m not going to get into who likes what or what I like (never that!) I’m just going to play devil’s advocate and speak like a fly on the wall. :-)
I decided to look into fetishes that men have because, well, I like men and the more I can learn about them the better my characters get. (*shrugs* that’s my line of thing anyway) When I started to look into fetishes I asked around and found that people can have a fetish about anything! Shoes, stockings, nails, hair, body parts from the top of your head to the soles of your feet! So I wondered how does one ‘get’ a fetish? I asked around about that, too, and found the answers made me go ‘hmm, I can see that’ and some made me go, ‘oookaaay, I’ll give that a nine on my strange-o-meter’ and there was even a few that I had to add to my, ‘damn!‘ list.
Some of the reasons were sexually based. Young boys coming into their sexuality find themselves in compromising positions with different objects as they peek in on the women they are transfixed on at the time. When they reach the goal they were trying to achieve (work with me here, I’m trying to keep this clean and politically correct.) said object becomes synonymous to that good feeling. If the behavior continues so does the connection. Over time the object in question makes you horny (can I say that?) because it reminds you of the good feeling and you’ve got yourself a fetish. Ta da!
For example: one guy told me with such lust in his voice and eyes about how he absolutely loved high heels on his women. He was in the closet when his sisters friend spent the night and his, umm, appendage, (that’s a good word) was pressed against the shoes she had worn to a party as he, well, pleasured himself. He could feel the shoe, but didn’t want to draw attention to himself by moving around so he left it. As an adult he makes sure his women wore shoes in bed with him because it takes him back to those good feelings.
Another guy said the very first time he was with a woman as he, uhh, reached climax, he could feel her nails raking down his back so hard he could feel blood as he lay on her catching his breath. Yet, even though it was painful, it felt good to him and he is turned on by women with long nails.
You may find these to be a little weird or freaky or maybe sensual. I don’t know. This is not psych 101 by the hands of Dana Littlejohn, by no means. This info came first hand from talking to several, close to fifty men over the age of 30. ( I told them it was a survey for school, sexual psychology or something. LOL) So with this new nothing I came to the conclusion that…men are strange! Kidding! Seriously, fetishes can derive from anything and whether they are freaky or sensual depends on your taste.
I also decided that the passion that some men spoke of their fetishes led me to do a story on one. So this December coming from Phaze is my fetish story, Happy Feet. Be sure to check it out! Until next time…Dana has left the building!
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Brigit Aine - Where I'm at ;)

Have you ever read something and thought “that would make a great beginning, middle or end” to something else? Or maybe you thought “gee I could just tweak that there and this here and…” well that is what happened to me with “Red’s Wolf”. I was invited many moons ago to write a 2 page story that turned your everyday children’s fairytale into an erotic adult fairytale. While my first story had the woodsman and a very sexy werewolf it was the limited 2 pages. As I slowly crept into the writing world I decided I loved the beginning I had and that it would make a great novella, if I could just spit out the rest of the story. I slowly created “Red” and boom; just like that she was whispering to me all the time and trying to get me to write her friend’s stories.

I think because I read almost exclusively paranormal erotic/romance that taking the story and turning it into an adult version was not as difficult as it could have been. There was no ick factor for me, as a matter of fact I was just thinking “Sleeping Beauty” might need to be done (after all the dragon could be switched up to be the hero). Also, Red is a very strong female and she made it very clear that I would need to write about her friends and her town. So Torrent’s Talents is truly, for me a work of love. I have three books in the series and am awaiting news from a publisher to see if they will take all 3 as a package. “Red’s” original publisher has changed their focus so I am holding on to it right now.

As an author that is a tough thing to go through. I have 3 great stories, and the reviews to back up the first one, and due to restructuring I no longer have a publisher. However, I have great friends who believe in me, I believe in my stories, and I will continue to search until someone out there believes as much as my support group does.

In the meantime I am working on a great magazine with Denyse Bridger called Sensual Treats. We are getting all prepared for our 3^rd edition at the Holidays. We publish quarterly, the magazine is FREE and we have great guests. The holiday issue is going to be phenomenal with some top named authors in the world of romance and paranormal. Stop by http://sensualtreats.webs.com and take a look. While you are visiting and looking at archived issues, take a minute to sign up so that you can be notified when the next issue is ready for download.

Somewhere around the end of October a group of us will also have a free anthology available for download. Stop by http://brigitsworld.com or http://www.brigistworld.blogspot.com for news on when this will be available and to download some great short stories. We have had a lot of fun collaborating and it was a great project put together by Denyse Bridger.

Thank you for hanging out with me today. Leave a comment or drop me a line at brigitaine@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you and return all e-mails ;)

Brigit Aine

It’s (not) a Man’s Man’s World

First off, thanks to the blog tour for hosting me today. I do appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all. I want to begin with a quote :

Bottom line, this is a well written romance written by a man who gets it.

That’s what Acquanetta Ferguson said in her review of Kissed by a Rose for the San Diego Examiner.

A Man Who Gets it. I’m actually considering using that as the new strap line for my website. You see, here’s the thing – there are an awful lot of women who simply don’t believe that men can write romance novels. Common consensus is that romance is a genre written by women, for women, and men should stay the hell out of it.

It’s true that the genre is dominated by female writes and that the vast majority of romance novel readers are women. Here in the UK, the oldest and best know romance publisher, Mills & Boon, insist that all their authors use female pen names – even the very small number of men that write for them. And before their untimely demise, Black Lace even went as far as to refuse to publish books by men.

But you’re not really a man. You’re a woman with a gimmick.

Seriously, I’ve actually had e-mails to this effect. People who’d read one of my books and refused believe it could possibly have been written by a man. But I assure you, I am a man. I have a penis and everything. I even have a ‘Man Drawer’ in the garage where I keep all my ‘Man Things’ – you know, screwdrivers, pliers, the pump for blowing up my son’s football, that sort of thing.

You must be gay then. Or a closet gay.

That’s the other response I often get. Because, obviously, only gay men could come up with romantic plots and believable romantic interactions between characters. Well, sorry to disappoint, but I’m not gay either. Not even a little bit. I’m just your average, ordinary, heterosexual, married father of one who happens to be a bit of an old romantic at heart.

Truth is, I sort of fell into writing romance. It certainly wasn’t what I set out to do. When I first started as a hobby back in the late nineties, I set out writing what I suppose a lot of people would have expected from young, permanently horny chap – sex stories. Simple, let’s all get naked and f*** stories. The first few were pretty bad and had very little in the way of plot or characterisation. Those first few are so bad that I haven’t even put them on my website. And when you read some of the ones that I have put on my website, it makes you realise how bad those first ones must have been. Take a look at Heaven in Leather or Memorable Holiday to see what I mean. Both are ‘stroke’ stories – that is, stories that serve one purpose only, if you know what I mean. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more)

But here’s the thing – they never felt very… satisfying.

I’ve always been an avid reader – from a very early age – and as such I’ve been brought up on great stories, great plots and great characters. So writing stories where the characters were stereotypes and the plot was little more than a series of events designed to get the characters naked and screwing as quickly as possible, was never going to be enough for me. It took me some time, but eventually I graduated from simple stroke stories to stories where the characters were developed and more like real people and that had better, stronger plots that weren’t all about getting to the sex act. The stories still had sex in them, though. Quite a bit of sex if I’m honest. But they also became, over time, more romantic in tone. After all, that's what leads to great sex in the first place, right?

The other thing that happened as I continued to write is that I got better at the mechanics of writing. I joined a writer’s group and learned all that stuff I didn’t learn in those creative writing courses that I never took. I learnt what to avoid and what to strive for. I learned that the sex in a story should be secondary to telling the story. I learned that a good story depends on great characters that the reader cares about. And I learned that if you as the writer don’t give two hoots about your characters, then your readers won’t either.

The culmination of all this learning was Reunion, which is currently available to download for free on my website (just click the link to get the pdf). It’s the story of a boy and girl who never quite got together as teenagers, and then meet up again ten years later.

It’s a good story. Not perfect by any means – but it was certainly the best thing I’d produced up to that point. I even fell a little in love with the female lead, Kelly, as I was writing her and I hope it shows. Reunion also has many qualities that have become my hallmarks.

The lead male is not your stereotypical romantic hero – he’s just an ordinary bloke who’s following his heart and doing the best he can. The female lead is strong and independent. And the primary Point of View character is hero – not the heroine.

And that last point is, I think, the reason that Ms Ferguson described me as a “man who gets it”. I don’t try and copy what most female romance authors do. I don’t try and tell the story from the heroine’s point of view. I don’t try and get into her head and describe what she was feeling. Instead I give the reader an insight into what’s going on in the hero’s head. I’m not trying to write “women’s fiction” or “out do” the huge number of female romance writers. I’m trying to offer something different to the romance genre. And, I hope, I’ve achieved it.

To go back to Ms Ferguson’s review of Kissed by a Rose, she said...

If a woman had written this the male lead would have been an alpha male which most women love in fantasy. In this Marc knocks that fantasy on its ass. He writes his romance with a bit more realism, and quite frankly it is a refreshing change. As this is written from the male point of view, we as women reading this get to see how the other half of the human population thinks and reacts to love.

I am very, very proud of Kissed by a Rose. It’s a fantasy to some extent – I mean, how many guys ever meet their movie-star idol, let alone get to date them – but it’s also grounded with as much realism as I could cram into it.

I wanted to write a story where the reader was never entirely sure about the heroine and her motives and I think I pulled it off. I wanted to write a story where the reader would see the hero hurting and feel his pain, and given I had my beta-readers in tears at more than one point in the book, I think I pulled that off as well.

I recently re-read the book, shortly after finishing the first draft of my next release, and it still stirred in me the emotions I wanted in the places I wanted. And it still gave me a warm glow at the end. So yeah, I’m damn proud of it.

Romantic fiction, even Erotic Romance, isn’t a man’s world. Not by a long way. I’m one of very few men drowning in a sea of women (damn, now there’s an image to take to bed with me tonight) but I hope I’m proving to those who ‘take the risk’ and read my books that men, or at least this man, can write romantic fiction and can do a good job of it. But ultimately, that’s up to the romance reading public to decide.

You can learn more about me on my Website. I also blog regularly on topics ranging from my writing to what's going on in the world around me as well as hosting guest posts from time to time. And, if you tweet, you can catch me on Twitter where I'm @marcnobbs