Deception in Plain Sight, a Crime Novel with a Twist

Synopsis: A young woman, of wealth and privilege, believes she has met the man of her dreams, only to discover she has been living in a fool’s paradise? The handsome, charming, and cunning stranger will not only awaken her sexual inhibitions but will draw her into his sinister plot, leaving her asking, “What type of monster did his parents create?”

Excerpt:

Christine finished her business in D.C. earlier than she had anticipated and returned home a week earlier. It was Friday evening when she walked into the house. She was ready to jump into Awesome’s arms and make love to him, but he was not home.

She went upstairs, unpacked, showered and got into her new sexy lingerie, which she purchased at an upscale boutique; she went straight to bed and waited for him.

Suddenly, the home phone rang. “You are in great danger,” the caller said.

“Who is this?” There was silence on the other end. Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. “Hello.”

“Awesome Petté is a deceitful person; he will break your heart.”

“Why do you keep calling?” There was a click. At first, Christine thought it was her mother but remembered she never gave her the home phone number.

Even if her mother knew where they lived and looked up the number in the telephone book or called directory assistance, it would be futile, because the number was unlisted.

It was probably a prankster, Christine thought.

The landline phone was old school; there was no way the caller’s number would show. There was no redial button, so Christine would never know who made that call.

It was after eight when Awesome arrived home. He went up to the bedroom and could not believe his eyes.

 “It’s good to see you. I thought you were coming home next week.”

Good thing I did not have a woman with me, he thought.

“My work with the client finished ahead of schedule. The company loved my presentation and did not see the need for me to stay any longer. Besides, I missed you; come to momma.”

This woman is going to be the death of me, he thought.

“I missed you too. Give me a couple of minutes to get myself together.” Knocking boots was the last thing on his mind. He took a shower and returned all dried.

“Oh, baby, you should have let the water run down on your searing body. It turns me on,” she purred.

“If you like, I can go back and shower my body with warm water and return dripping wet.”

“Stop it and do me as though we are participating in a lovemaking marathon.”

“Yes, your highness; now open wide.” He surged inside of her, releasing hot lava throughout her sensuous channel.

“Sweetie, you are outdoing yourself.”

“Thank you, ma’am, I am here to please you.” They stimulated each other for several hours until they both fell asleep.

# # # #

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5 star review

                                        

About the Author:

Born in 1946, Vivienne Diane Neal is a writer, blogger, and an author. She is a storyteller with a wicked sense of humor, has been writing articles for over thirty years and started penning fictional short stories in 2007. Vivienne gets her story ideas from observing people, places and things and watching true TV court cases and talk shows.

Her fifth book, Retribution Unleashed, ranked No. 66 on UBAWA's (Urban Books, Authors, and Writers of America) top 100 Books of 2013.

Now, semi-retired, she continues to write short stores and articles on love, romance, relationships, and other topics of interest on her Blog at http://www.oneworldsinglesblog.net and for other online publications.

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Tags: crime, hoaxes, deceit, scandal, revenge, erotica, lust, temptation, seduction, romance

Why I Write Sex Scenes

My passion for romance novels run deep.

I love to read romance stories with sex scenes that are woven nicely within the plot and played out perfectly by the characters. In the same way, I enjoy writing sex scenes that are real and deepen the relationship between the characters. Writing sex scenes lights a fire in me and gives me a satisfying buzz.

In practical terms, the aim is to write sex scenes that help real life couples learn a thing or two on how to please their partners. Over the years, I have benefited immensely from reading romance novels with various heat levels.

However, it is more important to build an irresistible emotional tension and toe-curling romance between the characters and to develop a gripping plot for the sex scenes to give the added oomph!

Out of my eight published romance books, Stolen Valentine Kiss (Holiday Series #1) is the only title that has no explicit sex scene, but it is rich in clean romantic scenes with captivating emotional tension.

WHERE DO I GET MY IDEAS TO WRITE SEX SCENES?

Do you really want me to answer honestly? Lol!

The sex scenes in my romance novels come from various sources. From reading tons of romance novels to getting first-hand experience from the most loving man I have ever known. The one to whom my heart belongs for a lifetime.

More seriously, writing sex scenes is the most challenging aspect for me. To get the scenes smoking hot, I have to get into the characters head, heart and understand their attitude, personality, disposition, sexual tendencies and the specific situation. Once the atmosphere is fully tense, piping the plot with the appropriate heat level comes easy.

There are some sex scenes I have written that were purely instinctive. In other words, there are no hard or fast rules. The characters, plot, setting, heat level and so on, all drive a great romance story.

Thank you for having me, Siggy. It has been a pleasure to share my thoughts on writing sex scenes with you.

 
Stella Eromonsere-Ajanaku

Flirty & Feisty Romance 

Our promise...is to deliver an intensely emotional experience you'll never forget.

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A Tuck of Me

Especially written for WGT (This is a first!)

By Christy Birmingham

You tuck me into a file you mark The Maker

And I wonder if you mean to call it The Marker

Because you put spots all over the visions that

I have of everyone else. They don’t compare to you.

You tuck me into your pocket square and you

Tell me to hold tight until you have enough

Money for the ring. You don’t realize how tightly

I hold you in my heart already.

I dance within the folds of the file,

While you choose the daily pocket square, and

We take some time for the circle that appears

As we wrap our arms around one another.

The ring is a far second to your lips on mine.

Christy Birmingham is an author, poet and freelance writer who resides in British Columbia, Canada. To read more of Christy Birmingham's poetry, check out her book "Pathways to Illumination," available exclusively at Redmund Productions. Also, connect with her at her blog Poetic Parfait and on Twitter. 

Detective Visibility and The Mystery of Amazon Categories....

By Terry Tyler

...... I've read a bit recently about getting my books more visible on Amazon, because we all know that "discoverability" is one of the best ways to get people reading your books, right? 

I know that genre charts are massively important, probably THE most

important thing in this. The trick is to find categories that will be searched for by book buyers, but are not too extensively populated already. Both my last two books, Dream On and Full Circle, got to about 2000 in the chart at their highest point, but were not in any genre charts because I'd chosen massively over-used things like contemporary fiction, so I knew I had to sort that out before I did the 77p promotion for them this weekend.

Dream On and Full Circle are both centred around two things: musicians wanting to hit the big time, and love relationship/parenthood tangles. In Dream On my character Janice is a single mother; the book features much about her day to day life. In Full Circle, three of my main characters have small children - the fatherhood thing is one of the central themes. In this book the subject of alcoholism is also prominent, but I couldn't find a fiction category that deals with this...

.... and, furthermore, there is, apparently, no such Amazon genre as 'rock fiction'. I researched the subject of categories quite extensively, and eventually found the perfect one for Dream On: lad lit. Dream On has as many reviews from men as from women, virtually all of whom loved the rock band bits, saying that the banter between the men is so realistic (pssst!! - the two other main characters are women!!). Marvellous, thought I - really relevant to my book, and not highly populated - a real "Eureka!" moment! I emailed Amazon. No, can't put it in lad lit. Why not? Because that category exists for Books but not for Kindle Books. Okay.....

Now, this is interesting, and something that might be useful for us all to know: Amazon explained to me that the categories you see books in, on the books' own pages, aren't necessarily their own standard categories from which you can choose to place your book. They are decided by customer search; what the customer put in the search facility, and how often your book is clicked on after such a search. Which explains a lot, I think. Like why my psychological drama You Wish sometimes enters the 'occult' chart.... at no point have I chosen 'occult' as a genre for that book.

You may have read in a certain best-selling book about visibility that all you need to do is identify the category and chain leading to it, and email Amazon to ask for your book to be put in it (eg, Kindle>Fiction>Mystery>Victorian); I don't know if this was ever correct, but it certainly isn't now. Amazon assures me that it doesn't work like this.

After further extensive research I identified two other perfect Kindle fiction categories that would apply to aspects of both books - please note: I made sure they were both for fiction, and specified that the books should be in the FICTION categories first and foremost. Thus: Single Parent for Dream On, and Fatherhood for Full Circle. I emailed Amazon with my requests.

I am happy to say that both books are, this morning, in genre charts.
Dream On is in Non Fiction>Parenting & Families>ParentingFull Circle is in Books>Health,Family & Lifestyle>Families & Parents>Fatherhood

I give up.....

(I just hope that people are intelligent enough to read the blurb before going to purchase a self-help book about parenting and ending up with a philandering wannabe rock star getting hauled onto the Jeremy Kyle show....)

Terry Tyler is author of Full Circle, Dream On, The Other Side, Nobody's Fault and You Wish, and a member of Independent Authors International. Visit Terry Tyler's blog at terrytyler59.blogspot.com.

The Novel Approach to Love

 
Romance in novels has been a driving force in stories since the dawn of time, from the legendary Egyptian myth of Seth being brought back to life by his love Isis to Bella and Edward in Twilight. Love is something every human wants, so choosing to write love into your story is usually a very sound plan. Certainly most stories out there can and do put romantic love in the center of them but for the writer looking for a more unique angle perhaps a different sort of love may work better.
 
If you’re stuck for ideas of different sorts of love than look to the movie, “Love Actually’, as it was the perfect showcase for all the sorts of love out there. There were the romantic loves of course, like the innocent romance between the movie stand-ins John and Judy and the Prime Minister David with his secret love for his catering assistant, Natalie, to name a few, but there are other stories of love that I… well…loved. 

The love between the rock singer, Billy Mack and his manager, Joe is a great example of love. A friendship is a type of love and not because its romantic but because its based on true shared values and goals in many cases. They build a relationship between them without even knowing it. When Billy gets everything he thinks he wants back into his life, he realizes it means nothing without the man who helped him do it. Is that not the definition of a true life-long love? 

I think the best story in that movie was between the new widower, Daniel and his stepson, Sam. After suffering a devastating lose, Daniel and Sam are facing a future together that could go either way. They are not blood related and the only bound between them is gone so now what? Daniel is scared Sam is withdrawing into his own private world and doesn’t know how to reach him until he finds out Sam has a crush on a girl at school. It’s the chance to help his stepson so Daniel helps him find his way to her side. They find love for each other as a true father and son. They create a new bound based that will last forever. 

I’ve explored different sorts of love in my novels and used them to build solid stories around them. In Rachel Wicks and the newly released sequel, Rachel Blackburn, I have my main character take on a marriage simply for the love she has for her friends. It takes nearly everything from her, especially when her husband turns out to be an abusive brute. She dares to fall in love with a man out of her reach only to lose it. In the second book, she dares to try her hand at romantic love again with the man she loved once before but there is another man in her way. She can’t just chuck it all in and forget about finding love and peace in her love because she has a daughter that she must continue to try to go on for her. There are many sorts of love in Rachel’s story and it drives it forward. In my third novel, The Starlings of Chatham Street, due out on March 15th, 2013, I leave romantic love far in the background and plunge deeper into the love between friends. Four women must work and bound together to escape the hell of life inside the workhouse. If there were no love to work with the story would never find a proper footing, so don’t simply put it aside, it can always work for your story.

Take these different kinds of relationships and use them to build the right sort of relationship your novel needs. A battle story may not have room for a romance but there is always room for bounds between friends. A story about siblings hating each other can use a mutual conflict to help them find peace and love between them. It’s a big world out there and there are countless ways to bring people together. Let your imagination soar!

Doreen McNicol

http://www.rachelwicks.com
http://www.doreenmcnicol.com 

Lock it in!

Valentine’s Day, synonymous with love and romance, is once again bombarding us with all things red and pink remotely associated with amore and desire. Sandwiched between Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day, it is one of the most commercialized days of the year. A frenzy that takes hold of the country every year leading up to the 14^th of February:  from cards to flowers, teddy bears to underwear, chocolates to jewelry, and not to mention red balloons labeled, “For the one I love this Valentine’s.” And now “Love locks” or Valentine padlocks started cropping up in the most romantic cities of Europe like in Paris or Rome. This is how it works: Lovers have their names engraved in a padlock, lock it to some bridge, monument or fence and throw away the key. Ah…tied together forever. Ain’t that sweet?
So far I haven't heard objections to this new trend from environmentalists. Surely tons of discarded metal keys thrown into rivers present some damage to the environment? How about the clean up? Are these love toys here to stay?

Inventive marketers sell this novelty gimmick as ‘a unique twist on a centuries old tradition that symbolizes the locking of your life and love’. A variation on tying the knot? Well, a ring never was a guarantee for eternal love and romance anyways. Divorce statistics are proof for that. An old fashioned locket with a locke of hair or picture  of the beloved ─ now that’s what I would call a romantic token of oneness.

"Does anybody waste a thought about those among us that don’t have a beloved? A love of their life? Not even a temporary one?  What about those who never even had a love of any kind? Or about those who have lost one?

When I grew up in Germany, I never even knew that this heavenly day existed. I can’t say when it reached the German shores; probably in those years when I was already married and had moved to Ireland. I received my first Valentine’s card at 35 from an elderly gentleman who picked up his grandchildren from the same school that my kids frequented. It read “To the one I am dreaming about.”

Mortified, yet tickled pink, I took it home to my husband who was working on the farmyard.  He was aghast.  I think that’s when he first learned about the existence of Valentine’s Day.

“If you ask me, it’s all one big commercial hype over nothing,” he called down from his tractor, scratching his head.  And ever the lyrical poet, he added, “Just another day for selling things, what with Christmas being over and Easter far away.  Just like the fad of Mother’s Day.”

With that clarified, he put his woolly cap back on and returned to his task at hand,  cleaning up the manure on the yard.  Needless to say, I never got a Valentine’s card from him after that." (Excerpt from: Next Time Lucky").

I hate to admit that now many years, many admirers and many Valentine cards later, I agree with my now ‘Ex’. The last straw proving the commercialism of V-Day are the ravioli on sale at this time of the year. Yes, you guessed it. Heart-shaped and red.               d.
The frenzy of Valentine’s Day may be a necessary boost to the economy but also a time in a single’s life that many would happily skip over unmarked.
Be warned - these padlocks may be coming to a bridge near you...
Siggy Buckley
www.SiggyBuckley.blogspot.com