New Release: The Price to be Paid

See, I did manage an April release.  It's been a busy month. I'm working on two (hopefully) novel-length pieces and putting the finishing edits on DL 5, Daybreak (out mid-May).

This is another fairy tale retelling, and an unusual one, I think. Rumplestiltskin.  I don't think very many people have tried to tackle this from a romantic POV before, but I've given it a shot.  It's a 6,800 word short. The price is 99 cents.

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Description:
Dairymaid Kay's life is trial after another, mostly caused by her father's drinking. When he drunkenly brags of her ability to spin straw into gold (she can't even spin wool) he attracts the attention of the cruel king. She has two options. Spin the straw into gold...or off with her head. Fortunately she has some help...but is the price to save her life too high?  This is an adult fairy tale and contains sexual situations.  Short. 6,800 words.

Excerpt:
He stopped spinning. Bits of straw fell to the floor. “That’s right. You don’t get something for nothing. Now, what can you offer me?”

Kay looked down helplessly. She wore a plain brown wool dress, darned stockings and dusty boots. She didn’t have so much as a coin or ring on her. “I have nothing. You can have some of the gold,” she said, “Or…the king couldn’t possibly have been serious about making me queen.”

“I don’t see why not. You would look quite regal in a tiara, and the man could do worse.”

Me? Regal? Kay was attractive, but pretty enough to be queen? She chased away the thought, as quickly as it came. Beheading was so permanent, so…dead. Yet marrying the king would be vile. Still, where there was life there was hope, and sooner or later someone would be brave enough to assassinate him. Dead she couldn’t help her family. Living and married to the king, she would never have to worry about them again. Sacrifice. It was all she knew. “When I am queen. I can get you anything you want.”

“I don’t take credit,” he told her. “There is a price to be paid for any service. But there are so many things of greater worth than shiny bits of metal and rock.”

“What do you want?” she cried out in frustration. “I’m just a milkmaid. If there’s anything I have, it’s yours, but I have nothing.”

He gave her a sly look from under his eyelashes. “There is something you can give me.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“A kiss.”

She hesitated. It was an odd request. “Just a kiss?”

“Are you afraid?”

“I’m more afraid of losing my head.”

“Come to me.” Something in his voice seemed to pull her towards him. She didn’t like it. What if he put a spell on her and turned her into a frog? Its just a kiss, she told herself. A kiss to save your life. 

Birthday Deals!

Today is my birthday and I'm celebrating it by giving you all gifts.  If you want to give me gifts too, I won't say no. I like expensive tea and chocolate, and I like it when people buy my books.

Barrendack  is .99 cents on Amazon today.

The Summoner and the Satyr is FREE on Amazon on 4/21 and 4/22.

Deadly Liaisons Volume 1 (Books 1-3) is 2.99 on Amazon today OR in print for 6.00

Deadly Liaisons: The Punishment is FREE on Smashwords today. (The first book, "Drain Me Dry", is always free.)

Goblin Market is FREE on Smashwords today.

Genre: A Ramble

After months of toil, I'm finally in the home stretch of Deadly Liaisons #5: Daybreak.  It's been a job of work, fighting this story into shape. It is a little different from the rest of the series because I've added a 3rd POV, a necessity for story clarity.  I think it works, but it annoys me that I've done it.

Another thing about this story, and the series as a whole, is the amount of sex. I've been marketing this story as erotica. I feel like I have to because the sex scenes are definitely not vanilla, and surprise!bloodplay isn't on the list of things your average reader wants to see.

So it's not erotica, but there are erotic bits.  And it's not a romance either.  Romances are about people finding each other and falling for them. Damian and Jamie-boy have gone and found each other. The stories are about the ups and downs of their relationship. I tried to keep crime-solving story lines as the driving force, but of course that doesn't happen in Bloodlines and it's all just relationship stuff there.  So I can't call it a crime series either.

And then there is the social bits, where I write about poverty, depression, and abuse.  Yeah. That fits in well with a romantic tale. And since Jamie-boy is only 19/20 in the series, it also falls into the category of New Adult.  Deadly Liaisons defies genre, and I know I'm not helping sales when it comes to this.

When I first started this crazy self-publishing scheme I didn't have much of a plan on what I was going to write.  I had a handful of mainstream, moderately kinky stuff already sitting on my computer, and then I wrote a few more. Drain Me Dry was just a Halloween thing that kinda took on a life of its own.

Paranormal and Fantasy have always been the genres I've been the most drawn to.  As you can see from the last year, my releases have reflected that.  They're also starting to focus more on story, less on sex. I started writing erotica because I'm good at it, and because it seemed like the easiest money maker (I know, I'm terrible) but the longer I'm at this the less I'm interested in sex as the focus of my work.  I still like writing sex, don't get me wrong, but I don't want it to be what the stories are about. "Roses White, Roses Red" didn't even have a sex scene to start with--I just slipped it in before publication to keep things consistent (not that the sex was out of place--it works just fine).

There are only two sex scenes in Daybreak, and neither of them are long and drawn out. (Don't worry, they're still hot.)  There's a lot of drama, and some violence, and lots of other fun stuff (including a flashback!), but it's not erotica.  I hope you guys are still cool with that.