Chatting with Leanne Dyck and Her Sexy Alter-ego Grace Meadows!

Today we welcome author Leanne Dyck, who writes mainstream under that name and erotica under Grace Meadows. She's here to talk about some of her favorite things, and also her latest novel, The Sweater Curse.  I live with a whole family of obsessive knitters (and have occasionally been one myself), so this book caught my eye straight away. 

Aspiring knitwear designer Gwen Bjarnson is stuck in Purgatory. To escape, she must re-examine her life, journey through her past and right a wrong. But which wrong?Young and in love, she works to establish her career, except fate has different plans. One rash act and she loses everything. Never resting, always seeking, and yearning for what she can no longer have, Gwen faces the truth:  if she remains, others are destined to die.

How will she solve the mystery before it is too late? 

This isn't Heaven. It isn't Hell. And I'm not alive.

Picture this:  a bus stop, tons of people packed into the same small space all waiting to continue their journey. Many buses stop here. Some passengers get off, others get on. Young children with sickly white complexions huddle together in the shelter. Teenagers with rope burns around their necks get off the bus. Old men with bullet holes climb on.

Throughout this confusion, the only constant is me. I remain alone.

Why?

I don't know, but I must find the reason. I must examine my life to discover the momentary lapse. The wrong I've committed. The task I've neglected. It's my only means of escape.

-Prologue to THE SWEATER CURSE

And now my chat with Leanne, beneath the jump.

Movie Reviews for Pervs (of the Best Possible Persuasion)

I know I promised a recap of the Rainbow Book Fair today, but since I was once again a giant idiot and didn't take my camera, I am once again at the mercy of others to receive photos. Since I'd like to do the recap with pictures this time (no more slideless slide shows, I promise!), I'm going to hold off until I get them. Hopefully Friday.

In the meanwhile, I thought I'd try out a new recurring feature here at Fantasy Unbound: Movie Reviews for Pervs. Perviness is a welcome thing in my world, of course, and if you follow this blog, it's probably a welcome thing in your world too. I've been watching a lot of movies of, er, questionable artistic merit lately--not much else to do on three-hour train rides, I suppose--and have often found myself in search of recommendations for a very specific kind of flick. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me asking the other day for something mindless, explodey, and full of hot guys. Well, I found some. And I'll be giving them a Perv Score: a weighted average of four criteria on a scale of 1 to 10.

Lest you think this might be getting too technical or serious, here are the four criteria, with the first three counting for twice as much as the last one.

1. Hotness of the star(s)
2. How often and how thoroughly the star(s) get nekkid
3. Severity of ass-kickings to which the star(s) are subjected
4. And, as something of an afterthought, whether or not the movie was actually any good

Perfect for this crowd, yeah? So let's get started on our first review, complete with screencaps (warning: kind of bloody and screamy), beneath the jump.

Rainbow Book Fair and a Giveaway

I'm headed into New York City tonight for tomorrow's Rainbow Book Fair, and I am super excited about it. It's the first event I'll ever have attended as a writer or a reader of LGBT romance. I'll be at the All Male Romance table on and off throughout the day, passing out swag (my own and others') and signing books. I hope to see some of you there!

Since I've got all my swag out of storage to bring to the Fair, I figured why not give some away now. So if you'd like a Fantasy Unbound desk calendar featuring the cover art from all three of my current books, plus whatever else I can shove in the envelope (magnets and bookmarks, most likely), leave a comment with your email address. I'll draw a winner when I get back to Jersey on Sunday.

Blood Feud Poetry

Afternoon all! Sadly, my guest today couldn't make it. Fortunately, I've been sitting on a rather hilarious bit of deathmatch poetry that a dear friend of mine wrote in honor of Kari Gregg's stomping-to-be at my hands in The Romance Review's 2010 Non-traditional Romance of the Year contest.

Before I move on to the poem . . . Some of you may know I'm a bit of a news junkie. I used to work in news, and I still read quite a bit of it (though I don't watch it so much anymore). Today I came across what is easily the funniest bit of legitimate news copy I've read all month, from TVNewser:

TMZ reports that [Chris] Brown threw a chair through his “GMA” dressing room window, and confronted a segment producer as he was leaving the building. He also ripped off his shirt for some reason before storming out.

(Ten bucks says someone's gonna wonder why they're getting referrals from an erotic romance blog :D)

And now, on to the rhymes, lovingly written by Caz Galloway.

The Romance Review awards are here
And things are getting tough,
Lovely Wicked smirks on one side
And Anchored: Belonging’s looking rough
Kari’s got a trailer and music with a beat,
But Rachel’s got a website with more than a little heat.

Lovely Wicked looks quite lovely like a visit to your Gran,
There’s a girl and there’s a boy and oh look, another man.
And there’s lovey and there’s dovey and it really makes you queasy,
For there’s nothing we hate more than a romance (and girl) that’s easy…

Whereas Anchored: Belonging, well we can’t say it’s nice,
Out of your darling sheltered hearts, it’s sure to cut a slice,
But there’s nekkidness and hotness and plenty of man-on-man,
I mean, just check out the cover, take a seat and take a fan…

It’s a tour de force of hotness (you’ll need more than one cold shower),
Not so much titillation as orgasm by the hour,
Nothing comes without a price (ask Daniel if you’re not sure)
But a mental scar or two ain’t too bad (it’s the whipping that’s most sore…)

So vote Lovely Wicked if you want some lukewarm longing,
But for heat enough to boil the kettle vote Anchored: Belonging,
Rachel’s the only girl who’s book can scratch your twisted itch,
Plus if you don’t vote for her, she’ll go and Cut. A. Bitch.


Thank you, Caz :D Now go forth, folks, and do as she says: VOTE ANCHORED! :D

Torn Asunder with Kiki Howell, and a Moment of Squee

Greetings all! Kiki Howell has come to visit today as part of the All Things Romantic Suspense tour, and she's brought with her a yummy excerpt from her latest work, Torn Asunder.

Before we get to her interview and the steamy reading, kindly permit me a quick moment of squee. The indispensable QueryTracker.net website hosted a pitch contest this month for a one-line pitch and the first 100 words of a completed manuscript. Regular readers of this blog know I'm on an agent hunt for a non-romance (I know, *gasp!*) psych thriller titled White Lies, so I entered. I found out today that I'd won a 50-page read and a query evaluation. Even if the agent decides my work isn't for her, I'm super excited at the opportunity to have my query letter critiqued by a pro :D

Now then, on to what you're really here for. Welcome, Ms. Howell! Let us begin, as always, with some cover art--truly lovely despite its girl cooties :-p--and a blurb:

Aubrey Griffen is a witch whose true reasons for coming to London soon fall to the wayside when she catches the eye of Edmund Bryant, the Marquess of Dalysbury.  He seduces her into a whirlwind romance until the lies and threats of his mother force her to flee to Triaill Brimuir, a secret island of her ancestors off the coast of Ireland. Edmund goes after her only to be hit by Aubrey’s confusion and anger when she magically transforms him into an elemental beast of her own creation.   

However, it is when Edmund’s lust mysteriously turns him back into a man that the couple are forced to deal with a family secret and untold of powers.  Now, Edmund must learn to shift himself into the beast in order to save her in a battle of black verses white magic. 

Fraught with scenes of explicit intimacy, romantic spells and mystical shapeshifting, Torn Asunder is a unique blending of the age of manners with sexual magic.

Genres: Historical (Regency), Paranormal (Witches & Shifters), Erotic, Romantic Suspense

Warnings: Explicit Graphic Language, Violence

Want to know more? Kiki was kind enough to answer my odd questions and provide us with an excerpt, beneath the jump.

Blood Feuds and Freelancing, Not Necessarily In that Order

Morning, my dearies! I've been a bad (and stomach-fluey) blogger this week, but I'm feeling better and hopefully right back into the swing of the Mon/Wed/Fri thing.

Since I missed a couple posts and have lots to share, let's break out the bullet points.

• The Rachel/Kari Blood Feud now has not only a website, but also a trailer. However, said trailer is about as fair and balanced as Fox News, so I suggest you stay away. Do not watch it. At all. Forget that I even mentioned it. Or linked to it. Or that it exists. Kari is mean. Boo. (Vote Anchored!)
  
• I'm writing a bazillion-part series (okay, more like five, I think) on Reena Jacobs's blog about the creative work that goes into self-publishing a book and how to go about evaluating and hiring folks to help you do things like developmental edit, copyedit, proofread, cover art, and interior layout. If you've ever thought about self-publishing your own work (or about hiring an editor to help you get something up to snuff for traditional publication), you'll want to check this out. If you have any questions about anything I've covered or not covered, feel free to leave them in the comments. Part I and Part II are already up. Part III comes out on Friday.
  
• In an effort to keep my ass in the chair long enough to get Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen turned in under deadline, I've taken to writing bits of it live in a public Google document. For those of you who've never used gdocs, there's basically a chat box down one quarter of the screen and a document editor taking up the other three quarters. I've been inviting people in as viewers, not collaborators, so you can only type in the chat box, but while you're there you can watch me writing Crescendo in real time; the words show up on the page as if you were standing over my shoulder watching the screen while I type. Sometimes everything comes out nice and smooth and it's really fun to watch; other times, there are long pauses while I look things up or try to figure out where to go next. Often, there are hilarious conversations going on in the chat box. If you'd like to join in on this, email me at metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll invite you into the document. (Keep in mind that you'll be jumping in in the middle of whatever scene I'm working on at the time; the prior material is not posted.)
  
• Side note: I accidentally worked some light BDSM into Crescendo. I was as pleasantly surprised by it as Rik and Ayden were.
  
• If you've ever wondered why ebooks are sometimes priced higher than their paper counterparts, or why novel-length ebooks are generally between $6 and $10 from small e-pubs even though they're not physical, I got into a long conversation about it this evening over on the Kindle Smut group on Goodreads. You do need to be a member of KS to read that, but it's an open group (anyone can join with a single mouse-click), and also an awesome group. I've met some amazing friends, readers, and authors over there, and encourage everyone to check it out whether they're interested in the ebook price discussion or not. If you've an aversion to joining Goodreads or KS for whatever reason and still want to know about ebook pricing, let me know and maybe I'll make a blog post out of it in the near future.

Okay, I think that's enough for today. Thanks for waiting me out, folks, and I'll see you in gdocs!

Chat and Win with Author Jerri Drennen!

This week's All Things Romantic Suspense author is Jerri Drennen, and she's here to talk shop, show you a sneak peek of her latest work, Untouched, and give you all a chance to win your own free copy!

As always, we begin with some lovely cover art and a blurb for Untouched (which is a Joyfully Reviewed Recommended Read).

Botanist Madeline Wentworth is relieved to be heading into the Amazon, far from the university and the vicious rumors circulating about her failed love affair. But on arriving in Peru, her team finds their guide dead with a small puncture wound to his neck. Waiting to replace him is Travis Kane, Amazon guide, treasure hunter, and superhunk. Mattie is instantly attracted but uncomfortably suspicious. When a member of her team falls ill and a similar puncture wound is found on his body, her suspicions deepen.

Travis has stuck with being a jungle guide for over ten years despite a run of unsavory clients. The rain forest is full of hidden ruins and undiscovered treasure, and he’s determined to find his share. But when his grandfather dies, leaving a letter boasting of Templar gold, he’s sure it's nothing more than an old man’s delusion. Everything changes when he finds his grandfather’s map. With high hopes, he leads Mattie’s team into the rain forest and finds himself overwhelmed by the beautiful blonde. When the group is attacked and has to fight its way out of the jungle, Travis discovers something more precious than gold--the love of a woman who’s made him want to be a better man.

Sounds interesting, yeah? Leave a comment on this post to be entered to win a free copy! And if you don't win? You can buy it here.

And now the interview and a tasty excerpt, beneath the jump.

Happy Read an Ebook Week! Celebrate w/Discounts & a Blood Feud!

As many of you may know, the week of March 6 is Read an Ebook Week. If you click on that link, you can enter to win an ereader. Over here at Fantasy Unbound, I'm celebrating with discounts, a buy-one-get-one-free, and a blood feud.

First, the discounts. My gay erotic BDSM ebook, Sublime: Collected Shorts, is 25% off this week at Smashwords. Just use the coupon code RAE25 during checkout, and Sublime can be yours for only $2.24! The print version of Sublime is also on sale this week at Createspace. Enter coupon code F4U75SWA to purchase a lovely 6x9 trade paperback edition of Sublime for only $4.95!

And for this week only, if you purchase Counterpoint: Book I of Song of the Fallen in print or ebook directly from the publisher using THIS LINK, and then email the account name you used to purchase the book to metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com, I'll send you an ebook copy of Sublime for free. (You must use the link provided above, or I won't be able to see that you've purchased the book.) Already have a copy? No worries; I'm happy to gift it to the recipient of your choosing.


And Now the Blood Feud . . .


Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably already know that Kari Gregg's Lovely Wicked and my Anchored: Belonging Book One have both been nominated for the 2010 Non-traditional Erotic Romance Book of the Year over at The Romance Reviews. Rather than take this potential competition gracefully, as good friends might we wont to do, Kari and I have chosen to smash each other into tiny puddles of unidentifiable goo. (We do this with the utmost love, I assure you :-D) Our feud even has its own website.

So, in the ancient tradition of the Pandering Vote Whore (and the even more ancient tradition of the quasi-quasi-quasi-celebrity deathmatch), I implore you . . .

Click here to vote!

And if you'd like to show your support for me (or for that other chick who looks--and no doubt writes--like drunk-and-arrested Nick Nolte), you can download your own badge at KariSucksAndRachelIsAwesome.weebly.com.

That's all for today, my dears. I'll see you Wednesday for a lovely guest interview and free ebook giveaway with All Things Romantic Suspense author Jerri Drennen.

The Showdown Begins!

Yesterday, I made a post about the Grand Opening Celebration at the Romance Reviews. It's made of awesome, of course, and also of $2,000 in prizes for readers to win.

BUT, it's also made of opportunity for me to stomp my dear friend Kari Gregg into the bloodied ground, and really, who could pass up something like that?

To that end, dear readers, I need your help. If you click here, you'll see that part of the celebration is a Best Books of 2010 contest. Under the "Best Erotic Romance (Non-Traditional Lifestyle)" category, you'll see my amazing, wonderful, awe-inspiring, conversation-dominating Anchored: Belonging (click to vote or read the review). You'll also see Kari Gregg's too-oft paragraph-broken, oversexed, girl-cootie infested Lovely Wicked. You wouldn't want girl cooties to win, now would you? Of course you could vote for one of those other books in the category, but then you run the risk of Kari pulling out a victory. But if we all band together and vote, as a group, for Anchored, then we can rest assured that Ms. Contaminating Our Genre With Girly Bits won't be able to win.

Totally selfless, yeah? And if you're feeling like voting at all is just too much bother, well, let me share with you two things I told Kari a while back:

1. The Romance Reviews is an awesome place filled with tons of fun things, not just reviews. Starting an account there is easy and worth the trouble.

2. I. Will. Cut a bitch.

That is all :D

And on an entirely different note, I did a really fun interview today with Sarah Ballance, author of Run to You (of super-hot cover model fame, among other things). She asked some very interesting questions, and I think I talked her ear off. Also, I'm neck deep in Crescendo right now (along with a couple other projects that I'm hoping to kick out into the world soon), and I'm finding my free time for blogging is disappearing. So for now at least, I'm going to drop back to updating this blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with perhaps the occasional bit of news in between. Thanks so much to all of you for following so faithfully--I promise I'll try to make those three weekly posts well worth the visit.

Hugs to you all!

(Now go vote! [For Anchored, damn you!])

Party Time & Huge Prizes at the Romance Reviews!

Morning, folks! Many of you have probably heard about this already, but for those who haven't, I wanted to share. The Romance Reviews, a fabulous community for romance books/writers/readers of all stripes, is having its Grand Opening party this month. With over $2,000 in prizes (including free books from myself and a large number of my contemporaries in both the M/M and M/F space), you'll definitely want to attend.

Play the games. Explore new books. Chat with authors. Vote for Best Books of 2010. Rack up your points!

CAN YOU UNLOCK THE PUZZLE?

Tip: Visit everyday to increase your chances to win awesome prizes!

Over 200 prizes waiting for you!

http://www.theromancereviews.com/go.php

Major Prizes

(to be drawn at end of month)

Grand Prize: $100 Amazon Gift Card

2nd Prize: $70 Amazon Gift Card

3rd Prize: $50 Amazon Gift Card

Hundreds of weekly prizes beneath the jump.

Chatting with Elaina Lee - ATRS Guest Interview

Morning, folks! Today we have fellow Noble Romance and All Things Romantic Suspense author Elaina Lee stopping by to answer my desert island question (among others) and share a little bit about her first novel, Written In Blood. I've not read this one myself (girl cooties, dontcha know), but I know firsthand the quality work that goes on over at Noble, so if you like the cootch in your smut, I'd recommend checking this one out :-)

As always, some gorgeous cover art and a blurb:

Lyndi Crisdean is assigned one of the hardest cases in her career as a defense attorney. A serial murder case. Investigating is Alek Trevian, the lead investigator for the district attorney, and a handsome and supremely dangerous man. Lyndi finds herself in over her head when she chooses desire for Alek over common sense. If they're caught, Lyndi will lose everything she's worked for. Circumstances beyond her control pull her toward Alek, for he turns out to be the only one who can help when threats start to mount against her.

Lyndi may be the key Alek needs to bring down a murderous cult running loose in his city. When her beach house is broken into and a man begins to tail Lyndi, Alek can't help but reason Lyndi may be next on the cult's hitlist. The question is, will he discover the identity of the cult, keep her safe, and still win the case against the serial killer she's defending, all while losing a battle against the strong, untamable desire she alone ignites within him?

And for good measure, a shiny book trailer:

And now the interview, beneath the jump.