So, Just Business is currently on sale at most retailers for the low low (and yeah, low) price of 99¢!
Sexy business men, hard at work!
I’ve checked these places, and the sale price is on:
So, if you haven’t had a chance to check it out… hey! It’s a buck!
So I’d mentioned a few posts ago about the What Happens in Vegas blog hop. I posted a ficlet, Enemy to Husband, which is here, if you want to check it out.
I’ll probably put it up on Amazon eventually, just so folks can have an ebook version.
Enjoy!
So, I had three pieces of news to share, and I can finally share the last! We sold French rights for Takeover!
And there’s a listing on Amazon already for the print edition. Yes, there will be a print edition of the French version!
In addition, preorders for the audio book versions of Takeover and Just Business are up on the Tantor Audio site. The books are being narrated by Iggy Toma! I’m over the moon, and can’t wait to hear these!
And I’m hard at work on Due Diligence. What’s Due Diligence about? Well, you know, I think I’ll just include the beginning of the book. ’cause that sets it alllllll up rather nicely.
[Caveat that this is a WIP, therefore not edited professionally and may change before the final version etc. etc. I suck at spelling. FYI.]
Continue reading “A little bit more news and a WIP excerpt!”
I’m a little late on posting about this, considering the Hop has started, but better late than never, right?
I’m taking part in the “What Happened in Vegas” blog hop! Each stop is an original short (less than 5000 words) story based on waking up married in Vegas. My story Enemy to Husband will be posted on August 21st.
Each stop also highlights an LGBTQ+ charity of the author’s choosing.
Here’s all the stops along the hop. I’ll try to remember to update this with the actual links when the stories are posted:
| SCHEDULE | AUTHOR NAME | BLOG |
| 8/3/2015 | Shae Connor | The Novel Approach |
| 8/5/2015 | Kelly Jensen | Charley Descoteaux |
| 8/10/2015 | Holley Trent | Kelly Jensen |
| 8/12/2015 | Grace R. Duncan | Prism Book Alliance |
| 8/14/2015 | Ann Anderson | Anne Barwell |
| 8/17/2015 | Jenn Burke | Dirk Greyson |
| 8/19/2015 | Jana Denardo | J.P. Barnaby |
| 8/21/2015 | Anna Zabo | Hearts on Fire |
| 8/24/2015 | C. J. Anthony | Love Bytes |
| 8/27/2015 | Nicole Dennis | Joyfully Jay |
| 8/29/2015 | J.P. Barnaby | Bike Book Reviews |
| 8/31/2015 | Hunter Frost | Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words |
I have some news! First up is that I’ve signed with Berkley Intermix for two more office romances:
They should come out in June and December of next year, I believe. I may include a few Due Diligence WIP teasers in a newsletter soon.
The second piece of news is that we sold the audio rights to all four novels:
And production is starting on those. I don’t know when those will be out, but I’ll keep you posted!
Oh! I also commissioned some artwork of Justin and Eli from Catherine Dair for swag at GRL. Here’s what the button will look like:
Nice, huh? Let me know what you think!
In an email thread, a couple of writer-friends and I were talking about writing issues. One of the difficulties was character conflict: making it real and rough and not easy to solve. I kind of spewed forth a bit of a mini lesson, gleaned from my time at Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA, ’cause this stuff gets packed into your head and pops out occasionally.
So here are my thoughts on character and conflict!
Note that there’s a wee spoiler for Just Business here, as well as a spoiler for Captain America: Winter Soldier.
Part of coming up with hard conflicts for characters is knowing the goals and the motivation behind a character…both internal and external. This is two parts of an acronym you’ll see sometimes in romance writing circles: GMC
Goal, Motivation, Conflict. Not General Motor Corporation.
There’s a classic book called, strangely enough, GMC: Goal, Motivation, Conflict by Debra Dixon.
Basically, for your main characters (including your antagonist and/or villain if you have one), you should have a good idea of what their goals are, both internally and externally. External goals are the one they show the world, while the internal ones are the goals of their heart. Note that you need to know these.
The character doesn’t always know what their own internal goals are…though those goals will move and inform their actions more so than the external ones.
You should also know the motivation behind those goals, both internally and externally. This is what drives the character towards their goal, the why of it.
Conflict comes in when you throw roadblocks in front of the characters during their quest to obtain these goals. What’s stopping them from getting their goal? What’s even better is if you can set it up so that there’s a conflict between the internal and external goal. And yes, there can and should be internal and external conflicts!
Justin, in Just Business has the external goal of finishing his MBA, getting a kickass job with Sam, and helping his family. His internal goal is the desire to trust and love someone again. These two goals end up in conflict when he falls for a co-worker…because he may lose the job he likes and wants and needs, and thus fail to help his family.
Internal conflicts are nearly always stronger than external ones. (I’d actually say always, but there’s an exception to every rule.) External conflicts are less messy and more easily solved in a way. Internal conflicts get caught up on emotions and desires and fears, which are messy messy messy.
Which brings us to how to dial up the conflict:
Know what it is that your character most fears, what won’t they do, what compromises won’t they ever make…
Then come up with situations that break them completely when they must to come face to face with their worst fears. Or where they may have to do exactly what they loath. Or compromise their integrity.
This is internal conflict.
I mean, yes, car chases are exciting, but we all know how they work.
What’s the fear behind the chase? What is the character going to lose if they get caught? What if they do get caught? How does that change things? How do they get out of that jam?
If you can think of an easy solution, keep brainstorming until you come up with a problem that hits the character right in their fears or their personal integrity or whatnot. Make them suffer, basically. Give them the choice between the worst of the worst options. Play with what’s inside them and use that against them.
Because overcoming the most adverse internal conflict is far more satisfying than solving the external one.
In some what odd happenstance, considering I’m an agency client now, Don Maass taught the Writing the Breakout Novel workshop my first term at the Seton Hill MFA program. One of the things I’ve kept from that day is this:
What’s the worst thing that can happen to you character right now? Make it even worse, then make it happen.
What’s the worst thing that can happen to Captain America now that all his friends are dead and he’s living in the future?
Discover that the Winter Soldier, his enemy, is actually Bucky Barnes, a man he loves, the man he didn’t save.
How do you make it even worse?
“Who the hell is Bucky?”
It’s not the external conflict that kicks us in the feels. It’s the internal one.
I’m going to do a little set of “behind the scenes” posts about Just Business, probably on a random basis. If you have anything you particularly want to know about the book or the characters or whatnot, you can contact me, and I’ll do my best to answer.
Earlier today, I posted on Tumblr a link to aftercare for dominants, and highlighted a bit about Top Guilt and mentioned that this was why there’s that scene of Eli sitting in the dark, holding his cat, and thinking the worst about himself.
I don’t have a lot of Tumblr followers. That post? It keeps gaining likes and reblogs. And it occurred to me that people don’t talk about that aspect of BDSM, and maybe I should blog about it.
Everyone whose read books with reasonably depicted BDSM in them probably knows about the concept of aftercare and subdrop as the sub moves out of subspace and back into normal headspace. It can be depressive or disjointed. Or a bit like a drunken stupor. Or the sub might not get any kind of drop at all, and be perfectly fine after a scene. Everyone’s different.
What people tend not to talk about is that this can also happen to a Dom. And again, it doesn’t happen to everyone… but it does to some. Everyone’s different.
I’ve seen very few depictions of top/dom drop in romances with BDSM. In fact, I can only think of one I’ve read recently, a small mention in Guarded by Cat Grant and LA Witt.
I think the lack of it in fiction is probably a two-fold issue. First, not to many people in BDSM talk (or know) about it, and second, there’s this perception that in BDSM romances that Doms are always in control and show no weakness or self-doubt…at least about BDSM. Ever. (Heck, half the time, they’re mind-readers who know what the sub wants before the sub does.)
But the thing is, Doms are human beings (and not actually mind readers). And all human beings have self-doubts.
Eli, in Just Business, has a whole truck-full of doubts that have been carefully sorted through, color-coded and cross-referenced for easy retrieval because he’s been in therapy for more than half his life. Yes, he’s got issues. And those issues creep into all aspects of his life, from “Should I really eat shrimp?” to “Do I really want to buy this expensive watch?” to “Should I actually tell this ignorant businessman the truth?” to “Should I really like flogging men?”
So yes, after a wickedly intense evening with Justin where Eli got everything he wanted and then some…he has a pretty rough crash that triggers some of the self-doubt demons that lurk inside him. Hence, he ends up sitting in his living room, in the dark, holding his cat and sorting through his feelings. Since he’s been through this before he recalls similar doubts he’s actualized in therapy and how they dealt with those. In the end, he knows it’s just exhaustion and top drop. He knows, intellectually, he’s not a monster. It’s just a matter of getting his emotions to catch up with reason.
Now, I do realize Eli is fiction…but I tried to base him in reality.
So here are some posts on top/dom drop that I referenced when I was writing:
Aftercare for Dominants: Taken from a different blog – Fetlife Related Information
Midori notes a further contributing factor to domdrop:
“In the act of sadism or dominance the top has exposed their desires and hungers that aren’t necessarily socially acceptable. We’ve been taught not to hit those we love. Now we do it for fun. It can take a bit of mental contortions to reconcile the cognitive dissonance with this. Many tops want to know that they are still loved and desired after exposing their darker desires to the other’
As usual, Midori is spot on. Chris M acknowledges something similar: “sometimes, when the heat of the scene has passed, a top can find him or herself exhausted, exposed and feeling guilty about doing bad, nasty things to someone they care about” while Sensual Sadist’s Alexandra observes “sometimes, exploring the assertively dark aspect of your psyche can ironically leave you feeling lonely and vulnerable”.
TD is similar to sub drop. It generally happens after a particularly intense scene or series of scenes. By all accounts we’re supposed to be loving, nurturing individuals. Occasionally, that conflicts with humiliating our submissives, scaring them intensely or making them cry, beg and scream.
Top Drop: A definition – Butch-Femme.com
A few weeks ago, I posted to the “What made you cry today?” thread that I had a major case of Top Drop. Since then, several people have pm’d me asking what that means, so I figured I would start a thread about it.
Here’s a definition that I found that closely resembles what I experienced:
TOP DROP: Colloquial A sudden, abrupt feeling of depression, unhappiness, or similar negative emotion in a dominant which may occasionally occur immediately after a period of BDSM activity. May include feelings of guilt, especially if the dominant believes he or she has made an error, or has traditional ideas about relationship or socially appropriate behavior.
There are more, of course. Googling top drop or dom drop will bring up these and others.
I’m not the only InterMix author with a new release today! My good friend ZA Maxfield’s latest is out, too!
A real man needs a real love…
To become the man he’s meant to be, one cowboy will have to be the man he never wanted anyone to know he was…
Ryder Dent is a true-blue cowboy. A devoted son, husband and father, but one who is living a costly lie. When they were both young, Ryder and his closest female friend Andi thought they’d found the perfect solution to both their problems—she was single and pregnant, and he was secretly gay—so they got married and raised Jonas together.
When Ryder gets hurt at a party, his son’s new pediatrician comes to the rescue. The connection between Ryder and Dr. Declan Winters is sudden, powerful, and undeniable. Ryder loves Andi and the family they’ve created together—but they both need more. Can they pursue their hearts’ desire without destroying the life they’ve built and losing the son they love?
Amazon * Kobo * Barnes & Noble
Visit her on her website, too: http://www.zamaxfield.com
Well, it’s release day for Just Business, my latest romance. This one is very close to my heart. 
I adore both characters, but Eli… Eli walked into my brain pretty fully formed and more or less set the stage for the book that was to come. Eli also terrified me in a way…because it wasn’t until I was about half way through writing the book that I realized I was, in fact, writing from the point of view of a gay Jewish disabled man with PTSD. Who is a Dom and a sadist.
And I had a bit of a panic, as you might imagine, because I wanted to get him right. And I do hope I did him justice.
So here he is, along with the snarky smartass (and smart) Justin who loves the guyliner and black nailpolish.
I do hope you like the book.
Blurb:
Justin White may not look like an up and coming corporate superstar, but his new boss knows he has the smarts, grit, and determination to succeed. Now he just has to convince his company’s CFO, Eli Ovadia. Unfortunately, Justin can’t seem to keep his cool around the domineering Eli—and soon he finds himself taking their heat from the boardroom into the bedroom….
Still haunted by a tragic accident that left him with a wounded leg and broken heart, Eli has a need to be in control. But his desire for Justin makes him want to lose that control—and push them both far beyond their limits. But will his need to dominate Justin drive him away—or will Eli find a way to be the man he needs for both of them?
Available from:
Just Business releases into the wild next Tuesday! It’s already gotten some pretty good reviews. I’m rather fond of this one from the Bookworm Bettie’s. OMG, the teaser graphics! I want the skill to do that, ’cause they are HOT.
Speaking of teasers, here’s one for Just Business:
“All settled in?” Sam gestured at the laptop.
“Tech’s done,” Sertab said. “Rest is up to you guys.” She stood and paused at the door. “Justin, Ping-Pong starts at four thirty, if these guys let you loose.”
“You know what they say about all work and no play,” Justin said.
She laughed and was gone.
“Somehow, I doubt you’re ever a dull boy.” Eli couldn’t resist.
Justin froze.
Sam choked, trying not to laugh. “E, behave.” He pointed at his office. “In. Both of you.”
Eli felt Justin’s stare burrowing in between his shoulder blades as he entered Sam’s office. Still, the line had been too good to pass up.
Sam rounded his desk and took his seat and swallowed a hiss on the way down.
Someone had fun last night. Sore ass. Back, too, given Michael’s tastes. He stole a glance at Justin—yes, he’d noticed Sam’s wince as well.
Very interesting.
“You’ll have to forgive Eli. He’s not one to pass up an opportunity for wit.”
“I’m not sure that qualified as wit,” Justin said.
He should have laid his cane across that ass. “Considering what I had to work with—”
“Considering,” Sam said, “that you’re going to be training Justin this afternoon, can we keep the blood loss down to a minimum?” Sam grinned.
Justin relaxed. “Truce?”
Eli stared down at Justin. “No bloodletting and a truce are two very different things. Unless, of course, you want to conce—”
“Challenge accepted.” The timber of Justin’s voice took Eli’s breath away.
Sam coughed. “If you two are finished?”
Justin didn’t speak. Eli nodded.
“Good.”
It’s going to be an exciting m/m release day for InterMix, since Z.A. Maxfield‘s latest, My Cowboy Promises, also comes out next Tuesday!
Soooo… while you’re waiting for hot business men and cowboys…two friends have releases today to tide you over!
First up is Lauren Gallagher (aka LA Witt) with Kneel, Mr. President. I was writing Just Business at the same time as Lauren/LA/Lori, and we were trading sections back and forth, and I have to say it’s one hell of a great story. Also, there’s a *little* nod to Just Business in there, if you know where to look.
Sworn to have their lover’s back, front, or any other side that needs covering.
Secret Service agent Kent Sinclair, head of POTUS security, thought himself prepared for every contingency. Until the First Lady—a woman who barely tolerates his presence—approaches him with a request that startles the hell out of him.
Carlene Broderick is frightened. With the weight of the country and impending war on his shoulders, her husband, James, is buckling under the strain. The key to helping him cope is the name he calls out in his sleep—and it’s not hers. It belongs to his fellow ex-SEAL team buddy. His ex-lover. Kent.
Without hesitation, Kent plunges into treacherous emotional territory, only to realize it’s not really him that James needs. The Commander in Chief needs to give up complete control in the bedroom.
To relieve that much pressure, Kent and Carlene must work together and declare a truce that rapidly heats up into something more. Something that leaves James caught deep in forbidden territory—torn between his beloved wife and the man he’s never stopped loving.
Warning: Contains three forty-somethings discovering whole new sides of themselves, a rejuvenated marriage, and plenty of kinky fun. All brought to you by an ex-SEAL in a wetsuit, a bisexual President, and a First Lady with a tattoo on her ass.
Amazon * Samhain * AllRomance * Barnes & Noble
Next up is Kindle Alexander, who is releasing Secret today! I love complicated office romances, and this one is very complicated! And man, that cover…
Tristan Wilder, self-made millionaire and devastatingly handsome CEO of Wilder-Nation is on the verge of a very lucrative buyout. With tough negotiations ahead, he’s armed with his acquisition pitch, ready to launch the deal of a lifetime. There’s just one glitch. The last thing he expects is to fall for the hot business owner he’s trying to sway.
Dylan Reeves, computer science engineer and founder of the very successful social media site, Secret, is faced with a life-altering decision. A devoted family man with three kids and a wife, Dylan has been living a secret for years. Fiercely loyal to his convictions, his boundaries blur after meeting the striking owner of the corporation interested in acquiring his company. For the first time in his life, reckless desire consumes him when the gorgeous computer mogul makes an offer he can’t refuse.
Amazon * Kobo * Barnes & Noble
Anna Zabo 