Showing posts with label Between Tooth and Paw. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Between Tooth and Paw. Show all posts

Monday, 11 May 2009

Caught in the Middle - Available Now!


Hello everyone :)

I have a new release out today!

Caught in the Middle is a MFM ménage anthology. (That’s the one where the both guys are straight, if you’re wondering, lol)

It includes: Swingtime by Desiree Holt, Charity's Auction by Ashley Ladd, Between Tooth and Paw by Kim Dare, Mating Season by Nadia Aidan, Magical Ménage by Crissy Smith, Trouble for Three by Sascha Illyvich.

Here’s a bit more about my contribution:

Between Tooth and Paw is a werewolf/human/vampire, BDSM, Older woman/Younger men novella.

Here’s the blurb:

Caught between two dominant men until they learn to settle their differences, all Jasmine can do is submit – and enjoy.

Thrown in between the future alpha of all the werewolf packs and the next head of all the vampire clans – the entirely human Jasmine Neal is charged with the task of helping the two younger men to forget their differences and set aside their hatred for each other.

Offering Stafford and Hayden her submission is easy. Offering them her body brings her nothing but pleasure. But she’s only been sent to submit to them for one night. When the council of elders return to discover if their scheme to settle the men’s differences is successful, she knows that the joy she finds with the two men will be over.

Jasmine didn’t expect to find one potential master that night, let alone be caught between two. But, that only makes it harder when she has no choice but to lose them both.

And here’s a quick extract:

“This is an incredibly stupid idea.”

“It is the only way.”

“If they kill each other off, that is one thing. But, I will not condone throwing the girl in the middle of it all.”

Jasmine Neal knelt naked in the middle of the hotel bedroom. Her training had long ago instilled in her that during a scene a submissive’s gaze should never rise from the floor. Unable to look up and see anyone’s face, she watched various pairs of expensive shoes walk around her as a dozen eyes trailed over her skin, examining her body from every angle.

Forcing herself to stay still under their casual inspection, she made yet another attempt to work out which voice belonged to which pair of circling shoes.

“Perhaps she will be a good influence on them.” A woman’s voice. High heeled stilettos—very expensive but discreetly so—they fitted the cultured tone of voice perfectly. Old money, a vampire perhaps.

“Huh!” That exclamation, no doubt, belonged to the scuffed loafers. The edge of the man’s trousers had frayed where they’d rubbed on the floor. Poor perhaps or, more likely given the situation, a man who was simply careless of clothes and appearances. Perhaps, a man who felt more at home in a fur coat than a tailored suit—a werewolf.

“Then perhaps she will distract them,” the woman suggested.

“The situation has been explained to her and humans are far more resilient than you give them credit for. I have every confidence she will survive the encounter.”

Jasmine didn’t need the help of footwear to identify that voice. She knew Mr. Washington’s voice very well. Harsh, commanding and undeniably dominant. Even if she hadn’t known already, she would have guessed he’d wear military boots—each one always polished to a gleam by another person’s hands. A submissive’s hands. In this particular case, by her hands.

“It is all the damn humans’ fault anyway. All those stupid stories about how much vampires and werewolves hate each other. It puts ideas into our children’s heads. We’ve lived in peace—each species happily minding its own business for hundreds of generations and now we are brought down to this!”

A new pair of shoes came into her view. Black lace ups. Polished, but not excessively so. Well made, but not by any designer of note. Nondescript, just like the voice she attached to it.

“She is their physical type,” Mr. Washington said. “She’s been well trained and she knows what’s required of her. She’ll follow her orders.”

“She is still only one woman,” that was Mr. Nondescript. Jasmine struggled to attach a species to him. Zombie? Ghoul? Maybe the man was even another human. It was possible a human besides Mr. Washington had made it onto the council of elders—highly unlikely, but possible.

“Do not underestimate women,” the high heeled possible-vampire said from somewhere behind Jasmine. “There are many times when more can be accomplished by a smile from a woman than by the threats of a hundred armed men.”

“I’d prefer to be in the middle of those armed men, if I was going to be the one stuck between those two brats.”

“Threats have had no success with Hayden,” the scuffed loafers said. Jasmine changed his species label from possible-werewolf, to definite-werewolf. An alpha werewolf who didn’t like members of his pack disobeying him one little bit. The growl in his voice came through loud and clear.

“Nor Stafford,” the lady sighed. “Oh well, bring them in. If nothing else, she might keep them out of trouble until tomorrow morning.”

Some signal passed above Jasmine’s head and footsteps hurried from the room. The men and women who made up the council of elders wouldn’t have rushed to follow anyone’s command. A servant must have left the room then—or perhaps another trained submissive like herself.

The position she’d been ordered to assume would have given her a perfect view of anyone entering or leaving the room, if she had been allowed to look up. A few seconds later she heard the door open again and saw two new pairs of shoes stride into her field of vision.

One vampire, one werewolf. She’d been told that when she agreed to take part in the scene and it wasn’t hard to guess which one was which.

The vampire stood on the right—designer shoes and tailored black trousers. On the left stood battered trainers that had obviously been pushed off and on the wearer’s feet without him bothering with the laces, topped by ripped jeans. He wasn’t wearing socks either, she noted.

Jasmine looked for other clues about the men. Long years spent never looking anyone in the eye during a scene had given her a lot of practise at reading people from the knees down. The men were both tall.

Risking glances up as far as the men’s waists, she could see the werewolf carried more muscle, and that he was also an inch or two taller than the vampire. But, from her place on the floor, Jasmine would bet her life that neither man would have a real advantage over the other if it came down to a fight between tooth and paw. And both of them were ready to brawl right then, each man had already adopted a stance which would allow them to attack at any moment.

Tension poured off each man. They stood just a few feet from each other, facing the council. Technically they faced her too—although they were so caught up in hating each other, she doubted they’d even noticed her small, naked presence in the middle of the room.

If you’d like to find out more about the other stories in the anthology. You can find it here.

Thanks for reading,

Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?

Tuesday, 3 March 2009

Caught in the Middle - Cover Art!

A new cover just came through. It's for Total-e-bound's Caught in the Middle MFM anthology.

Just realised it's my first cover showing a woman!



The MFM combination is the one where the two guys are straight, if anyone's wondering.

My story in the anthology is Between Tooth and Paw. It's the first MFM I've ever written. It's also BDSM, vampire/human/werewolf and it's older woman/younger men!

Here's the blurb :)

Caught between two dominant men until they learn to settle their differences, all Jasmine can do is submit – and enjoy.

Thrown in between the future alpha of all the werewolf packs and the next head of all the vampire clans – the entirely human Jasmine Neal is charged with the task of helping the two younger men to forget their differences and set aside their hatred for each other.

Offering Stafford and Hayden her submission is easy. Offering them her body brings her nothing but pleasure. But she’s only been sent to submit to them for one night. When the council of elders return to discover if their scheme to settle the men’s differences is successful, she knows that the joy she finds with the two men will be over.

Jasmine didn’t expect to find one potential master that night, let alone be caught between two. But, that only makes it harder when she has no choice but to lose them both.

Saturday, 6 December 2008

Between Tooth and Paw

This is the blurb for my latest acceptance.

Between Tooth and Paw is a MFM, BDSM, Werewolf, Vampire, Older woman / younger men novella. It's due to be released May 11th 2009 as part of the TEB's Caught in the Middle MFM menage anthology.

Here's the blurb:

Caught between two dominant men until they learn to settle their differences, all Jasmine can do is submit – and enjoy.

Thrown in between the future alpha of all the werewolf packs and the next head of all the vampire clans – the entirely human Jasmine Neal is charged with the task of helping the two younger men to forget their differences and set aside their hatred for each other.

Offering Stafford and Hayden her submission is easy. Offering them her body brings her nothing but pleasure. But she’s only been sent to submit to them for one night. When the council of elders return to discover if their scheme to settle the men’s differences is successful, she knows that the joy she finds with the two men will be over.

Jasmine didn’t expect to find one potential master that night, let alone be caught between two. But, that only makes it harder when she has no choice but to lose them both.

Friday, 5 December 2008

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!


Wednesday, 3 December 2008

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.

Friday, 28 November 2008

Five things that... made me go ohhhh, sweet!

A somewhat lazy post today.

My excuse is, I've actually been productive with my writing.

Between Tooth and Paw just went off to my editor.

A Model submissive hit 50,000 - I finished Nanowrimo late last night. (I still have about 5k to go to finish off the story line, and I'm going to do that over the next few days, but anyway...)

and so, I thought I would share five photos I recieved in a forward.

So sweet...






















That's it for me.
Nos Da.

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

Wondering about: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Leaves


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.


Thanksgiving Thoughts


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.



Pilgrim Turkey



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


Pilgrim Girl


I'm thankful for a lot of things.


Thanksgiving Dinner 2


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.


Thanksgiving Carving


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.


Thanksgiving Greetings


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.


Happy Thanksgiving 1


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.


Happy Thanksgiving


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


Pilgrim


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 ;)

Friday, 21 November 2008

Friday's Five things... I was going to be when I grew up

Okay, I’ve been entirely out of sync all week. I just realised it was Friday five minutes ago.

Kaenar Langford has been over on Hitting the hotspot today talking about the ten jobs people would love to have. You can see that post here.

Anyway, I thought I would post up my five things about the five things I almost spent my life doing before I threw myself head first into writing and really committed myself to it.

1. Does anyone out there realise that knees are really important if you want to join the army? Well, I can tell you that they are really important I was about this *holds thumb and forefinger really close together* close to joining the army – actually getting accepted and going through the officer boards and all that - sort of close. My knees got buggered up (highly technical medical term) about six months into training and that was the end of that.

2. Engineering was top of my list of things to do for the rest of my life for quite a while. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. I do have moments when I’m sensible and practical and make decisions that make sense – honest *Grin*.

3. Embroidery and textile design. Well, I still do this. But it’s more of a hobby when I get time in between writing now. Patchwork and blackwork are my favourites but I’ll enjoy pretty much anything that involves a needle and a thread. I might make a good go of this one day – I’ve got the designs, now I’m looking for time to stitch them up.

4. Librarian. I suppose this is one every writer has thought about from time to time. Spending the whole day surrounded by thousand and thousands of books. What’s not to like? On the days when I still manage to be at least a little bit sensible, I suppose this is my back up plan. This is what I’ll probably be looking for if I ever get a traditional 9-5 job.

5. Perpetual student. You know those books of course information from various universities that you get through the post now and again? Well, I tend to look through them, ticking the ones I’d like to do at some point or another. I tick almost every course in the prospectus. For quite a while I studied with the Open University. I’ve got the first year of a BSc along with the first year and part of a second year of a BA to my name so far.

I finished a course in Ancient and Medieval Cities at the start of 2008 and I decided to take a year out of studying to see if I could make a go of writing if I really concentrated on it. After all, what was the point in having a back up plan if you never actually had a good go at the first choice plan?

I’d been writing pretty solidly (1000+ a day, every day) for quite some time before this, but I guess focusing all my energy on writing paid off. I wanted to send something off to a publisher before I turned 25. After a few minor false starts, I sent my first story to TEB a month before I turned 25, and it was accepted a fortnight later.

That one’s not coming out until March next year, but I’m incredibly chuffed to have The Gift come out in 2008. (Yep, you can be pretty sure I’m going to mention that in every single post until December 8th, lol)



Other news:

I’m on 37,500 for A Modal Submissive. On track as far as Nano is concerned.

I’m about half way through my first edit for Between Tooth and Paw. I’m pretty sure there’s not enough time in the word count for them to have sex as often as they would like to. One of the sex scenes is going to have to go so I can make more room for a bit more plot to happen. Other than that, it’s shaping up not too badly.

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Wondering about... Threesomes

Apparently they're very popular - in erotic romances I mean. Well, rumour has it they are pretty popular in real life too, but I'm supposed to be talking about writing here, so I'll stick to the fictional stuff.

People like reading about them, people like writing them.

I'll admit that the particular type of threesome I'm writing at the moment, MFM (That's the ones where the two guys are straight) isn't the combination that comes most easily to me.

The only threesome I've written and had accepted by a publisher was a MMM in The Gift. (It's coming out 8th December - less than a month away - incredibly excited about that).

So, it took me a while to sort out the psychology of why two dominant men who aren't with each other would want to share. But I think, with a bit of help from the paranoral world, I've worked that out.

Now I have another completly different problem with this mini genre. Three main characters seems to be playing havoc with my word count. The story is supposed to be 15-20k.

So far I've edited about half the first chapter and that section has doubled in length. All the characters want to have their say - and their fun - they all want it to be their story, for the reader to see their experience.

I'm currently on 17,500 with another 12.5k left to edit, so it looks like there's going to be a lot of cutting out whole scenes in my future if I'm going to keep it under the word could.

But, you know what? I'm actually enjoying editing this story far more than I thought I would. The characters are really coming together. It just might turn out not half bad. Now, if I can convince it to turn into a not half bad story that's less than 20k - that might be a different story.

Either way, I'm hoping it will go off by the end of the month, so I should know sooner rather than later if it will fit the call.

....

Other news in brief:

A Modeal Submissive - my nanowrimo project - is on 33k at the moment. I'll add at least 1k more before the end of the night. That's ticking over on target.

I haven't hit half the plot points that I wanted to include yet and I'm pretty sure one sex scene somehow expanded to fill two whole chapters on it's own. But at least I'm having fun writing it :)

Friday, 14 November 2008

Friday's Five Things that... are harder to write than I expected

Okay, here's a question for you all - have you ever sat down to write a story and then ended up just sitting there staring off into space or scratching your head. These are five of the stories that I expected to find far easier to write then I do.

1. Sweet Romances. I've looked back over the writing I've done for the last few years, and I've realised that two of the ones I lost interested in and didn't finsh were the ones where the characters were too sweet. Don't get me wrong, I like the characters, I even liked the plots, I jus didn't have this desire to know what would happen next. There was no spark to them.

2. Vanilla. Other people seem to be able to write it no problem, I'm starting to realise I'm just not wired up to wirte about sex that doesn't have some sort of kink in it. It doesn't always have to be much, a bit of power play, a pair of hnadcuffs and I'm fine. It doesn't even have to look like kink - everything that's kinky about it can happen inside a character's head and that's fine with me. The kink just has to be there somewhere.

3. MFM. I write about men and women having sex all the time. Writing about one woman having sex with two straight men should be easy, right? Wrong. I have two main problems with this little subgenre. First of all - the two guys keep guying each other up - I write a lot of male/male. If there's three people in the bed, it does seem a waste not to let all of them play with both the other people in the bed. Secondly - my guys tend to be possessive - why are they inviting another man into their bed to have sex with a woman they feel possessive over? I've just finished writing a MFM and I'm about to start editing it. And I'll admit I have struggled with the psycholoy. In the end the only way I could make it work was to go down the paranormal route. I think it works now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed I still think that once I've started editing it.

4. Historical. Believe it or not, when I started writing, I was all about sweet Regency Romances. I even wrote a whole 80k first draft. The thing is - research. I never feel like I've done enough. 20 books on the Regency period later, and at least quadripple that number of websites, and I never felt like I even scratched the surface. I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off writing psydo-history/fantasy for those plots and characters who aren't happy living in the hear and now.

5. Short Stories. This one has been annoying me a little bit lately. I decided a while ago that I was going to post up a free little short story - maybe 1-2k every Friday. Should be easy right? I got a few ideas together and... suddenly I didn't have 4 short story plots, I have four novella plots. So, I told myself, okay. I'll write a free story to go up on TEB's free story section. That could be longer - maybe 3-5k. A little bit of thinking about it later, my list of novella plots has grown a bit more and I'm still without a short story to my name. Maybe I'm just not a short story writer and that's that. I always want a context around what happens, I want more to happen for the characters than I can fit into a short story.

Okay guys, so what do you find harder about writing or to write than you thought you would when you started writing? Any takers?

.....

Other news:

A model submissive - my nano project - is coming along nicely. I'm on 21,500 words so far, so it's about on target. I'll be passing the half way mark on the weekend.

My secondary writing project - In the heat of the moment - was going to head for an anthology call, but it's going off in an unexpected direction, so it's probably going to end up as a stand alone and not a anthology sub at all.

Editing - I'm taking the weekend off editing. On Monday I'm going to attack Between Tooth and Paw with the intention of subbing it at the end of the month.

And that's it. Take care all.

Friday, 31 October 2008

Friday's Five Things That... I've done for Nanowrimo

Happy Halloween Everyone!
Pumpkin


Tomorrow it will be November and it will be the fifth November I spend doing Nanowrimo.
For anyone who's not familiar with it, Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. It challenges you to write a 50,000 word novel during November. The idea is, it forces you to write quickly, switch off your internal editor and get a first draft down on paper.
Here's how it's gone for me so far.

Skeleton1. On The Eighth Day - 2004. This was a high fantasy novel. I wrote the 50,000 during November, but the story was nowhere near finished. In fact, looking back, I'm not even sure the story really got started! At the end of November I set it aside to work on at a later date. I intended to finish it one day (I still do) but it hasn't happened yet.

Werewolf2. The Red Flag - 2005. Another attempt at high fantasy. Only, in this one something interesting happened. Two of the main characters came to life. Degnal and Mafori - a former sergant in the kings army turned guide across the inhospitable regions of the country and Mafori a former potcher who was caught and branded a slave for her crimes. He buys her in a slave auction because he the only way to cross certain borders is to make an offering to the inhabitants of certain countries. This one went the same way as the last. I wrote the 50,000 in November and then set it aside. It will be finished one day, and you can garantee that Dengal and Mafori will live happily ever after in whatever ending I finally manage to write.

Costume3. Alpha - 2006. This was the first Nanowrimo story I finished. It took my until January 2007, but I did finish it. I did 80,000 in the November. The finally story was 212,500 words. It was the first male/male story I wrote, the first erotic romance story I wrote and the first real BDSM story I wrote.
All in all a huge turning point for me. I haven't really looked back since. I haven't started editing this story yet, but it (in a much shortened form) is going to be part of a series I'm hoping to write in the reasonably near future.

Vampire4. Falling Angel - 2007. After spending the previous twelve months writing male/male. This was my first real go at writing a novel length male/female erotic romance story. I wrote 100,000 words in November and finished the story with 112,500 in the December. This is another of the storys in my to be edited pile. Hopefully I will get to it at some point in the near future.

Trick O’Treater5. A Model Submissive - 2008. This year I'm going for another male/male story. It's BDSM (like pretty much everything I write). I'm aiming for a 50,000 word finished story during November - if I manage it, it will be the first time I've actaully finished by November novel in November.
My screen name for the Nanowrimo website is Pheonix Jones. You can see how I'm getting on here.

See you then.

One bit of other news before I go...

I finished Between Tooth and Paw tonight - just in time to start my Nano Novel tomorrow :D

Wednesday, 29 October 2008

Wondering about... deadlines

Very short post because it's almost midnight and I'm knackered.

I've always liked deadlines. If I just say I want to do something at some point it won't get done. If, on the other hand, I say I'm going to do it by the end of the month, I've got a much better chance.

The Stroke of Twelve went off today - my personal deadline for when I wanted to send one of the possible anthology stories off. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it.

That also means I've started editing Secret Service ready for my next deadline - November 5th.

I'm also hoping to finish Between Tooth and Paw by the end of the month.

Deadlines are wonderful things when they work.

When they don't work they're a bit of a bugger, but over all I'm strongly in favour of them.

What does everyone else think?

Deadlines: love them or hate them?

Monday, 27 October 2008

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.