The Gift - New Review!

As you might guess from the pic above - The Gift has just been reviewed by Whipped Cream!

I recieved a four out of five cherry rating and the reviewer gave me some lovely comments. Including

"In a twist on the classic Christmas Story tale, Charles is visited by a sexy ghost of Christmas Past to help show him the meaning of Christmas. Mix in chocolate, sex toys, a delicious and obedient pet with a whole mountain of tinsel and the recipe for a great Christmas has never been better."

Thanks Cactus!

The story is also up for the Book of the Week award. It's based on reader votes. You just read the reviews and decide which book you like the sound of best, based on those reviews.

If you get a free second over the weekend - I'd really appreciate your vote. The list of books you can vote for is here. The Gift is second from the bottom. If you scroll down a bit, you can read all the reviews - The Gift is second from the top :)

Have a good weekend everyone :)

Memo: Last day of Christmas

Memo: Christmas isn't over for another few hours!


Hi everyone,


Since it's the last day of Advent today, it is officially the last day to read holiday stories in the holiday season.


That means you still have time to read The Gift. Of course, I have no objection to anyone reading it in the middle of summer if that rocks your boat. Keeping the Spirit of Christmas all through the year is an admirable thing to do - even Dickins knew that, lol.


But if you like to read Christmas stories at Christmas time. You can do that here. (Click on the pic)



Just to warn you, my next release is out February 9th - Secret Service as part of the My Secret Valentines Collection, so I'll be babbling about that for the next month or so.


I also have news about Night of the Sense - the BDSM anthology that Whispers is going to be included in. It's live on the TEB coming soon page. If you go here you can read a bit about all the other stories that are included in the anthology. (Click on the pic)



What else am I supposed to tell you today?


I finished writing the first in an unofficial series of Lust bite length stories I'm working on. I'm hoping to edit that up to sub in the middle of the month.


Either today or tomorrow, I'll start writing the next in the series. I'm looking forward to that.


And I think that's it for today.


Have a good last day of Christmas everyone.

Hitting the Hotspot

Hi Everyone,

If you get a chance, please check out Total-e-bound's Hitting the Hotspot blog today.

I'm over there talking about New Years, The Gift, and that moment where Anything could happen!

Thanks guys :)

Hope you are all having a great Christmas.

P.S. Am I the only person on the planet who can't work out how to get an extra column of widgts to appear on the left as well as the right hand side of my blog? If anyone knows what I should be doing to get that to happen, please let me know!

Memo: Lots Happening.

Everything's been happening for me over the last few days. So I'm going to split this into a few different blog posts.

Yesterday I found a review that was actually written just after The Gift came out. It's by Elisa Rolle. She seems to like it. You can read the whole thing here.

If you click on the tag that says Total-e-bound, you can read her reviews of the other two m/m Christmas Spirit's Stories.

Today, I was reviewed on Rainbow Reviews by Carole.

RATING:

Here's a snippet:

It's a beautiful love story. It's funny and hot and ~ you DO want to read it. I can't wait for more stories from Kim Dare!

There's lots more, but I can't remember how much I'm allowed to copy and paste onto here, so you can read the whole thing here. Needless to say I'm very chuffed with everything Carole had to say.

I also attempted to do a TEB chat the Love Romances Cafe yahoo group. Technical problems - i.e. the late realisation that you go on moderation until they're sure you aren't sending them spam, and so your first couple of posts have to be checked before they are visible made it rather difficult to talk. In fact, it meant that none of my posts actually got through until after the chat had finished. However, Jamie Hill very kindly posted some exerpts for me, so I did manage to promote a bit.

Okay. Change which book I'm talking about, and on to the next post...

Five things that... Wordle

I've always loved words, I've always thought words were beautiful. I've just found a way to make them look even more fantastic than usual.

It's a sight called Wordle. You copy and paste text into a box and the programe makes a pretty picture out of the words in the text.

Here are five I made using various excerpts from The Gift. Clicking on the picture takes you to a larger version (I could only get little pics on here, the bigger ones are soooo much better - please do check them out if you have time).

The text above them links to where you can read the text I used to make it.

1. Blurb Wordle.



2. Exerpt of Charles and Nicky's first meeting.



3. Excerpt of decorating the Christmas tree.



4. Excerpt of packing a special present.



5. Excerpt of the start of the book.



Caution: making wordles is fun, but it's also very addictive!

Have fun if you try it :)

Other news:

In the Heat of the Moment has been printed out and should be ready to submit tomorrow.

The edits of Between Tooth and Paw came back to me, all done bar an extra little scene that needs to be added in the middle. That should go tomorrow as well.

Parry's War is my new first draft and it's at an early stage, but it's going okay so far.

Memo: Paranoia

Memo: When even the astrologists are picking on you, you have every right to be paranoid!

.

This is a copy of my stars that came through in the Newspaper Magazine this weekend.

.

On the one hand, it's great that someone who writes horoscopes seems to think I have talent (at least as much as the millions of other cancerians who read the same newspaper, lol).

.

On the other hand, yes, I do know that I didn't get through the entire list of things I wanted to do to promote The Gift last week. I didn't have a fantastic week health wise and I'd made a pretty huge list of things and places where I wanted to promote my story. I got quite a lot of it done, but I'm still working on finishing it.

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I don't believe in astrology, but I'll admit that this one guy is freakily accurate when it comes to my own life. It makes me feel like the guy must be following me around and watching me over my shoulder to get it right so often.

.

So, yes, most of last week when on promting The Gift. This week I'm hoping to do more of the same.

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On which note, the lovely Bronwyn Green has posted an interview with me on TEB author's blog. You can read that here.

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Also, very excitingly, someone bought The Gift. And if that's not exciting enough, she liked it too. I recieved a lovely e-mail from a Norwegian m/m writer, and she's also posted her opinion on The Gift on her blog here.

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I also had new cover art for the Night of the Sense BDSM Anthology which will include my m/f vampire story Whispers. I'll post the cover with the blurb in a seperate post.

What else do I have to update you on?

.

Between Tooth and Paw went to contract for inclusion in the Caught in the Middle MFM Anthology in May 2009. My editor is going to send me the edits on them this week.

.

I've done the big edit that In the Heat of the Moment needed. It will need at least another three go throughs before it's ready to submit. Hopefully that will happen before the end of the week. It's a short-ish story, so it's possible.

.

The story I'm writing at the moment - another short M/m one called Sealing the Deal - is at 9,000 words as of last night. That means I have 3,000 left to go on it, so that should be finished on Tuesday or Wednesday. It will hopefully go off to a publisher in January.

.

Did I forget anything? My head's still spinning in so many different directions, I probably did.

.

That's it from me anyway.

.

New cover art to follow in a seperate post.

Wondering about... Two years on

Hi everyone,

It's been a really exciting week so far for me, with my first book coming out on Monday. (Yay, me! - no there really isn't any chance I'm going to stop talking about it any time soon.)

But today I'm not going to talk about now, I'm going to talk about the past. Today is something of an anniversary for me. Two years ago today was the last day I didn't write at least 1000 words.

Now, I know that statement isn't going to make the least bit of sense to anyone who isn't me, so I'll have another go at explaining it.

The advice given out to anyone who says they want to be a writer, is that you should write every day.

Two years ago, I took that advice.

1000 words a day. Every day. No exceptions. Ever.

And, what's more, those 1000 words had to be on my main work-in-progress. No more flittering around between different projects and never finishing any of them. 1000 words on that project every day until it was done.

Tomorrow, I'll be starting my third year of keeping that commitment.

So today I thought I would do a re-cap of everything making that commitment to write every day has brought me so far.

1,841,000 words written in total.

3 stories that I didn't finish. (2 sweet, vanilla regency romances - wonder why they didn't work for me... and a story with a premise that wouldn't let the characters get kinky or having sex without turning into people I didn't like)

2 projects that have been set aside (meaning I know the ending, but other things have nearer deadlines and had to take priority for a little while)

72 finished first drafts.

22 re-written stories.

9 accepted and contracted novells and novels (plus 1 that I was offered the chance to extend or contract and which is going to be extended)

1 published novella. (The Gift - you might have heard me mentioning it a hell of a lot...)

And 1 wip - the story I'm working on at the moment. (It's going quite well.)

So, all in all it's been a really fantastic two years for me and my writing.

Considering I spent the first of those years not even being aware that there was publishers out there that accepted the type of stories I was writing, let alone that they would ever publish me, it really was a leap of faith that started me on the way.

I've never been more thankful that I lept.

Thanks go out to everyone who's helped me over the last two years, and all those who've put up with me too. You know who you are.

Have a great Wednesday everyone.

Kim Dare.

The Gift is out today!

The Gift is officially on sale. It's m/m (with a bit of m/m/m) BDSM. And it's part of TEB's Christmas Spirit's collection.

Here's the blurb:

If Charles prefers leather to tinsel, that’s okay. Nicky is still sure he can teach his master to love Christmas – with the aid of a perfect gift.

Just because Charles doesn’t see any point in making a fuss about Christmas, that doesn’t mean he can’t tolerate Nicky’s passion for tinsel and holly. He’s never forbidden his pet from enjoying any of his Christmas traditions and he thinks that’s enough.

Nicky has one ambition – to give his master a perfect Christmas. He’s willing to do anything to make that happen – even if it means taking risks and asking his master for special privileges - even if that means inviting a third man into their bed.

The Spirit of Christmas Past isn’t used to visiting Christmases that involve quite so much nudity, passion or kinky sex. Leading a dominant man like Charles through the Christmases isn’t easy – and keeping his eyes off the frequently naked Nicky is impossible. Still, all the spirit can do is enjoy the show – because his job is to bring lovers together and fade away inconspicuously. That’s the plan. However, if someone suddenly wants to thank him, who is he to say no?

And here's a quick extract:

Nicky looked around the room. “Stupid.” He shook his head at himself, knowing he should have broken Charles into the idea more slowly. Nicky wandered back across to the tree. He picked up a bauble from the box and hung it on the end of a branch. He frowned at the gleaming ball of glass.

“Beautiful,” Charles said.

Nicky turned to see his master once more standing in the doorway, now dressed in jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt and looking infinitely more pleased with the world. Nicky’s face lit up with a beaming smile. He offered Charles one of the fancy purple baubles.

Charles laughed. “Not the tree, pet, you.”

Nicky blushed, half at the compliment and half at the mistake.

Charles took the decoration anyway. He twirled the bauble around his finger, watching it catch the light from the dozens of fairy lights already on the tree. He hung it on a branch.

Nicky offered him another one from the box.

Charles took that one too.

He stepped closer to Nicky, pressing his clothed body against his bare back. Charles barely looked at the bauble before he hooked it onto an empty branch.

Nicky gave him another. Charles leaned against Nicky’s body to reach a higher branch. His free hand settled on Nicky’s waist. As he straightened, pulling Nicky back to lean against his chest, his hand slid around his pet’s body.

He was already half hard, responding as rapidly as he always did to the change in his master’s mood. Charles wrapped his hand around Nicky’s cock and took up a slow, stroking rhythm. Nicky gasped. A bauble dropped from his fingertips, bouncing on the thick carpet. Charles turned him around. Trapping his erection between them, he pulled Nicky in close for a deep kiss.

Their lips moulded together until Nicky whimpered and pressed against his master, desperate for more than a kiss. As Charles trailed his lips along his jaw line to his ear, Nicky trembled in his arms. Charles slid his hands over Nicky’s bottom, massaging the tight muscles in his grip. Nicky felt his master’s cock rapidly stiffening against him.

Charles might not be over enamoured with his decorating, but there were some things Charles always liked. Sliding his fingers along his cleft, Charles smiled against Nicky’s ear when he found he was all lubed up and ready for him.

“Expecting company, pet?”

“I always like to be ready for my master,” Nicky whispered.

*End of excerpt*

If you want to read a long excerpt you can reach the publishers page by clicking on the coverart. You can also buy the book by following the same link :)

I'm also on the amazing Bronwyn Green's blog today doing an author interview. You can see that here.

Five things... about five different projects

Okay, it's a bit of a mish mash of a post today. I've recieved different bits of news for a few different stories, so I thought I would share them all at the same time.

1. Between Tooth and Paw - it's been accepted for the Caught in the Middle anthology, to be released on May 11th 2009. Very excited about that.

2. Secret Service - part of the My Secret Valentine Collection - now has cover art! It's stunning - it's also on my other computer. I'll drop it into a seperate post later on.

3. In the Heat of the Momment - the one I told you all I wasn't writing any more. Well, I'm back with it again. Possibly for a call or maybe for a stand alone short or something else if the call doesn't pan out.

4. The Gift - part of the Christmas Spirits collection - four days until it comes out and counting down all the time. Very excited about that. Enough said there.

5. This one's not actually about a book I'm writing. But I forgot to post about it before, so I'll do it now before I forget again.

TEB has a competition running. The cover art is the m/f version of the Christmas Spirits cover art I've got for The Gift, so I'm adopting it on that rather vague basis. The picture below is the link. Click on it - really it couldn't be easier to enter!

Wondering about... excerpts

What makes a good excerpt?

Frankly, I have no idea.

I've been wondering about it, but I'm yet to reach any sort of conclusion.

Still, I'm quite please with the one TEB has put out for The Gift. It went live today (or maybe yesterday and I just didn't notice until today...)

You can see it here. It's the start of Chapter 1.

You can also see the one I picked for the Hitting the Hotspot blog here.

There's also going to be another one on my website as soon as I get a chance to post it up there. (Link on it's way as soon as the excerpt is actually there to be linked to.)

I've picked up another excerpt that I'll be promoing on different groups etc. (By the way, I'm always looking for new places to promote stories, so if you know of one, please let me know.)

And that's it.

If anyone has any advice about excerpts, feel free to share :)

...

Update on WIPs:

Between Tooth and Paw has been accepted by my editor (Yay!). I turns out it's probably not going to be suitable for the anthology (my two straight guys get a bit too friendly, lol) but it might yet find a place as a stand alone or as part of my Perfect Timing series. Wherever it ends up, it has been accepted. Very excited about that.

I'm admining like crazy this week, so I don't have an editing WIP to share progress on, but the short I'm writing at the moment is going quite well. I'm over 1/3 of the way through it and I'm hoping to finish it by the end of the week.

Hitting the Hotspot - The Gift

I'm over on Hitting the Hotspot today, sharing an extract from The Gift.

Please drop by and take a look if you get the chance.

You can find it here.

Thanks everyone. Have a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate it, and have a great day anyway, even if you don't :)

Wondering about: Thanksgiving

I know the holiday isn't until tomorrow, but I'm posting on hitting the hotspot then, so I probably won't be over here to talk about it too. So, for once in my life, I'm ahead of schedule.

If you don't know already, I'm based in the UK. We don't have Thanksgiving. I think the closest we might come is a harvest festival. I remember them from school, and I know some churches still run them, but it's nothing like the scale of celebrations that the US seemed to have at this time of year.

But, I've still got a lot to be thankful for, so I'm giving thanks despite my nationality.

I'm thankful for a lot of things.

I'm thankful for my family. For my health (which isn't perfect now, but which has been a lot worse in the past). For my friends, new and old. For new successes, and for past hard work.

I'm thankful that I'm not one of the people on the news at the moment, that I'm not living in a country racked with war and suffering, that I'm not on the verge of losing everything when a company fails through no fault of my own, that I'm not living in a part of the world that tells me who I have to be and what I have to do with my life.

I'm thankful for a thousand little things that never seem important enough to list inside my head, let alone on a blog anyone could read, but which my life wouldn't be the same without.

I'm thankful that no matter what goes on in the world at large I have the chance to escape into a world where I know everyone will live happily ever after when I sit down to work on a story. And more importantly, I'm thankful that when I sit down to write, I'm free to write whatever I want.

I'm thankful for far too many things to list here on every day, not just one.

And that's it for me.

In more minor news:

I have (thankfully!) finished editing Between Tooth and Paw. I've just printed it out ready to read through and sub on Saturday. I even managed to chop it down to 17 whole words under the maximum word count!

I'm also (once more, thankfully) not too far off finishing my Nanowrimo project - or at least on hitting the 50k mark on it. The actual story is going to go on for at least another 5k after that.

And, because I can't stop talking about it, even when I'm trying to do a sensible, slightly sentimental post, I'm thankful that The Gift is coming out on the eigth of December - seriously, the wait is driving me somewhat insane!

Thank you for reading ;)

Wondering about... cover art

Not so much wondering as announcing.

I've got cover art!

The cover for The Gift came through to me today - I can't tell you just how excited I am about it - I really love the design.

I forgot to find out who designed it, but I'll let you know when I find out.

Here it is...

Okay, back to writing now :)

Monday Memo: I'm hitting the hotspot today

Hi everyone :)

I'm not going to say much here today because it's my day on Hitting the hotspot - Total-e-bound's authors blog. You can read my post here. It's called The Kinky Code and it's all about acronyms and abbreviations relating to kink.

My first story has also popped up on TEB's coming soon page. It's called The Gift and you can see the blurb here. Really excited about that.

What else?

Between Tooth and Paw - the paranormal menage I'm drafting at the moment - is coming along well. (Even though I managed to someone lose a whole days worth of writing by pressing the wrong button!)

The editing on The Stroke of Twelve is also progressing. Hoping to send that off to my editor around the middle of the week.

And that's it.

Happy Monday everyone.

Memo: My coherant Plan

Monday Memo: There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

I shouldn't have told you I have the whole plan for this year worked out last week. It was an accurate statement at the time of print. That lasted about five minutes after I sent off the blog post.

My publication schedule changed a bit last week. Which means the titles I've had accepted for 2009 will come out more slowly. That means I actually have a bit more time before I need to send the next one in my own series off. That is why I've set The Morning After and All Grown Up aside for a little while.

I'm now throwing myself head first into anthology submissions for the next few weeks.

I started one last Thursday and finished the first draft yesterday. It's called Secret Service. It was a lot of fun to write. Even though the main characters insisted on switching their names around half way through the story. Sheridan wanted to be called Alistair and Alistair wanted to be called Sheridan. In the end I had to let them have their way, just to shut them up. It's a male/male BDSM novella.

I'm starting the next one today. It's called The Stroke of Twelve. It's another male/male BDSM. The characters don't have names yet.

What else do I have to tell you?

Okay, I'm sure this isn't going to be even vaguely exciting news for anyone else, but if you look here you will notice that the coming soon section now runs up to December 1st. My first release, The Gift, is due out on December 8th. That means either next week, or the week after if I'm the third title for that particular Monday, I'll have something listed in the coming soon section.

You have no idea how much that makes me grin :)

Off to get some work done now.

Happy monday everyone :)

Friday's Five things that... I've started books with

By the Hour is dead.

I usually start writing a story and write it straight through to the end no matter what. Even if I know I'm going to have to come back and re-write 90% of it at a later date, something that can be called a first draft gets written before I move onto another project. It takes a lot for me to say there is no way to make a story work. In fact it's only happened twice since I started writing seriously.

By the Hour is the third time. I've tried to start it 7 times, and I finally worked out what the problem is. The characters can't have sex. They are perfectly nice characters, but there is no way people in their situation can get it together (let alone get kinky) without being transformed into characters I don't like. I don't want to write about characters I dislike that much, so I'm not going to.

Now, that story is gone and I've been looking through my files for a story to take it's place at the end of the Perfect Timing line up. I've found one and I started it yesterday. I love it. It's called The Morning After. It's sooooo nice to start something from scratch after spending so long doing re-writes.

My other writing project this month is another completly new story (Yay!). It's going to be the third book in the Collared series, but I still haven't picked which story idea I'm going to write yet.
All this means, I've been looking through my file of first lines quite a bit while I was trying to pick the right story idea to fit into each series.

(Yes, I really do have a file dedicated to first lines...)

Many of the lines don't have a story to go with them yet. They're just hanging around, waiting for me to decide what happens next.

For some reason I also note down the first lines of stories I've already written. I thought I would share the first lines of the stories I've had accepted with TEB so far with you.

Five things that... I've started books with.

1. Flickering firelight lent an enchanting glow to Nicky's body.

- The Gift

2. The twirling spotlight hit the table dancer for one perfect moment.

- Turquoise and Leather

3. Luke Anderson was not going to come first.
- You First

4. "Don't waste your time."
- Silent Night

5. Brennan Talbot was not going to stare at his best friend's arse.
- Time To Do (I'll come back and put a link in when I've got something to link it to.

....

And that's it for today.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

The Gift

The closing date has passed. It's official. I'm in Total-e-bound's Christmas Spirits Anthology.

My novella is one of those for the Spirit of Christmas Past.

It's called The Gift and it's due to be released on 8th December as a e-book, and hopefully as a print book around the same date.

It's a male/male BDSM romance. Since it inludes a spirit, I guess it's also a paranormal story.

Here's the blurb for it:

Just because Charles doesn’t see any point in making a fuss about Christmas, that doesn’t mean he can’t tolerate Nicky’s passion for tinsel and holly. He’s never forbidden his pet from enjoying any of his Christmas traditions and he thinks that’s enough.

Nicky has one ambition – to give his master a perfect Christmas. He’s willing to do anything to make that happen – even if it means taking risks and asking his master for special privileges - even if that means inviting a third man into their bed.

The Spirit of Christmas Past isn’t used to visiting Christmases that involve quite so much nudity, passion or kinky sex. Leading a dominant man like Charles through the Christmases isn’t easy – and keeping his eyes off the frequently naked Nicky is impossible. Still, all the spirit can do is enjoy the show – because his job is to bring lovers together and fade away inconspicuously. That’s the plan. However, if someone suddenly wants to thank him, who is he to say no?

Excerpts etc to follow closer to the release date.