Win a Free e-book!

(This is a cross post from the Hitting the Hotspot blog - you can enter here or there.)

Hi everyone!

Ever since I was first published (all of a year and a bit ago, lol!) I seem to have been starting lots of series, but not actually finishing any of them.

Well, that hasn't actually changed yet. I still haven't finished one - but in a few days time, I'll actually reach the half way mark on one!

There are 12 books in the G-A-Y Lust Bite series. Book 6 will be going on sale February 1st.

As it happens, I've actually just finished writing all of them. But the last one won't be coming out until October, which seems like a very long way away at the moment.

So, in the meantime I'm going to enjoy celebrating the half way mark :-)

Would you like to win one of the first 6 books?

All you have to do is read the blurbs below, and decide which one you'd like to win if your name is picked out of the hat. Just leave a comment telling me which title you've chosen and I'll pick one winner on Sunday Jan 31st.

Gaydar

Find a gay man in a gay bar. Matt’s sure that should be a lot easier than it actually is.

Matt’s having a run of bad luck – one that’s lasted ever since he stepped out of the closet. An uncanny ability to home in on the only straight guy in a bar room full of gay men really isn’t doing his sex life any favours. A knack for picking complete jerks whenever he does stumble upon a genuinely gay man isn’t helping either.

But, this time everything is going to be different. This time Matt’s absolutely sure his gaydar has guided him towards a completely sane, entirely gay man – which is why he’s arranged to meet him in the gents’ room in five minutes.

What could possibly go wrong?

Gay Like You

Cody’s more than happy to have sex, he may even be willing to offer his submission, but experience has taught him that’s as far as he can go as a gay man. Tristan disagrees…

Tristan has being gay all worked out rather nicely. His biggest problem with his sexuality is his mother’s persistent attempts to find a nice young man to marry him off to. And even that doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing when he arrives to have dinner with his parents and finds Cody sitting at the table.

Homosexuality isn’t working out quite so well for Cody. As far as he can see, Tristan’s appearance in his life is unlikely to make things any better. Nice guys rarely stay nice for long and dominants have a way of turning into complete psychos if he lets his guard down.

Cody needs to walk away before Tristan tempts him into wanting the sort of happiness he knows he can’t have. Tristan needs to stop him.


Gay Until Graduation

A gay man should know better than to get involved with a guy who is only gay until graduation, but Baxter’s never been very good at saying no to Spencer…

Stunning, dominant and cheerfully bi-sexual, Spenser’s been screwing his way through both the male and female student population since he arrived at the university. Baxter is entirely gay, completely submissive and, by his own estimation at least, thoroughly average. He knows that being more than friend’s with Spencer would be more trouble than it’s worth.

When a drunken Spencer decides that he’s going to be gay until graduation Baxter doesn’t pay much attention. But when his friend’s attention suddenly focuses in on him, the guy he’s had a crush on for months soon becomes far more dangerous to his peace of mind.

Baxter knows he should say no to a relationship that will break his heart when they graduate, but he’s never been very good at saying no to his friend—especially not when Spencer is offering him everything he’s ever wanted.

Gay for Pay

An experienced gay dominant, a gay for pay submissive and an auction. Let the bidding commence!

Nate Lockwood has a plan. It involves slipping away from his security officers, hitting a BDSM club, entering himself in a submissive auction and spending the next twenty four hours as a gay for pay rent boy. If he wishes he could be submitting to someone far closer to home, then at least he’s realistic enough to know it’s never going to happen.

Smith has a job to do. As chief of security for the Lockwood family, it’s his responsibility to track down his boss’s brat of a son and bring him home. The fact that his search leads to the kind of leather bar he considers beneath contempt is not important. The fact he’s been fantasising about being Nate’s master since he first set eyes on him isn’t relevant.

The plan has to work. The job has to be done. And the bidding starts now…

Gay Divorcee

Grayson gave up on the idea of gay marriage when he became a gay divorcee. Can Jones remind him that not all gay men are like his cheating ex?

Gay marriage, civil commitment and equal rights. Jones doesn’t care what it’s called. He wants that security to be part of his future, and he wants it to be available to everyone else too. He’s happy to tell his dominant friend Bernard, and anyone else who will listen, how wonderful it will be when every gay man can live happily ever after with the man he loves.

Gay divorce, cheating husbands and bad decisions. Grayson used to think that the right to marry another man would cure all gay ills too - until he married and divorced Claude. The adorably submissive Jones obviously needs someone to explain to him exactly why gay men should never get married before he makes all the same mistakes Grayson made.

Before the Christmas celebrations end, someone will have to accept that they are wrong and the other man is right. The only question is who?

Gay Since Today

Ford’s hidden everything about his sexuality his whole life. Tyler says he can accept everything about him. But can he?

Tyler knows he’s wasting his time fantasising about Ford. The guy he’s had a crush on for months might make a wonderful dominant, but a straight dominant never did a gay submissive any good. It’s time he stopped wasting his history lectures wondering what his life would be like if he belonged to James Ford.

Ford’s had enough. A man can only stay in the closet for so long. It’s time he came out and made his peace with who he really is. And if he can get a date with the cute guy from his history lecture, so much the better.

And that's it.

If you can't make up your mind, clicking on the covers will take you to a page where you can read an excerpt of that book. But don't forget to come back and leave a comment when you've made your decision!

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

Turquoise and Leather - OUT NOW!

Turquoise and Leather is OUT NOW!

So excited about this one.

Okay, I'm exicited about every one. But this one is a little bit even more special.

It was the first story I ever had accepted. It recieved the first piece of cover art that is all mine. (BTW - Lyn Taylor posted a bit about how she designed the cover on here blog. You can check that out here.) It's also the first story in a collection called Collared. And it features Eric - he's the guy on the cover, and he's one of my favourite characters - I never manage to think about him without smiling.

Here's the blurb for the series as a whole:

Leather. Latex. Silver. Gold. Ink. Velvet.

There are as many different shapes and styles of collar as there are people who wear them.

Protection. Possession. Dominance. Submission. Loyalty. Love.

Some collars mean it's time to play, others signify a life time commitment. A fun bit of bondage to one person can easily look like the kinky equivalent of a wedding ring to another. A gold necklace might look vanilla enough until you know what it means to the person wearing it.

But no matter what it's made of or what it represents. Collars are important. A collar can make or break the submissive wearing it - and the dominant who put it around their neck.

It doesn't matter if you are dominant or submissive. Everything changes once one person is Collared.

And here's the blurb for Turquoise and Leather:

An untrained submissive might not be what George wants, but Eric could be just what George needs.

George McAllister knows better than to hook up with an untrained submissive. He doesn’t have the patience to guide a novice through his first kinky experiences. His lovers have to know what they are doing and do what they are told. When he sees Eric dancing on top of a table in a kinky club, he assumes the beautiful young man is an experienced submissive. Then he sees the turquoise and leather on his neck and recognises it as a collar. Someone else already owns Eric. George has no choice but to walk away.

Eric Jordan doesn’t know much about kink and he has no idea why George is suddenly less than enthusiastic. But he knows what he wants and if he has to chase after George to get it, so be it. If George wants to believe the pretty bit of rock on his necklace means something kinky, that’s fine. But Eric doesn’t belong to anyone but himself and he won’t give up possession of himself for one night in George’s bed.

An untrained submissive might not be what George wants, but he could be just what George needs.

And here's an extract too :)

With his back to George, the dancer lifted his arms and pushed his hands through his hair. His white shirt lifted and exposed his back, revealing tantalising glimpses of golden-brown skin.

As well as George could judge from his position several feet below the platform, the dancer was close to his height. But he was of a far slighter build. His cut off shirt sleeves revealed muscular arms. For a brief moment he turned and showed a well developed torso with defined abs. It was the lean muscle of a runner rather than the bulk of a gym junkie. He was just George’s type.

George stopped again, hypnotised by the dancer’s movement. A little voice in the back of his mind piped up, telling him a thirty-year old dominant should have more self respect. He should be ashamed of acting like a submissive teenager at his first school dance. His cock didn’t give a damn. It reverted wholeheartedly to teenage enthusiasm.

For the first time in years, George could ignore the loud music and jostling crowd. In his mind’s eye, he saw the table dancer spread out on his bed in his apartment. Golden skin sprawled against crisp white sheets. Black leather wrapped around the dancer’s wrists and ankles. In the silence of the fantasy, he heard a hush broken only by his lover’s frustrated whimpers as he teased him to the edge of his orgasm. George felt the smooth bare skin under his hands. The dancer arched into his touch, begging for more.

George’s fingers twitched. He imagined burying his fists in the thick blond hair, holding him in place so he could take his pleasure as he wished. His cock jumped again. He pictured the dancer kneeling submissively in the middle of an empty room. The dancer’s breaths coming in gasps, he broke their silence to whisper just one word— Master…

He hadn’t felt such an instant pull towards another man in years. For all his sarcasm about the leather hook up spot, the club eliminated any need for subtle questions. Everyone was gay. Everyone was kinky.

The dancer was obviously submissive. No dominant would advertise his availability on top of a table. And a skilled observer could judge his preference for catching rather than pitching from the way his hips moved in the dance, pushing back against an absent partner on every beat.

Best of all, he appeared completely at home on the table. He wasn’t new to the scene – he’d know what he was doing.

George smiled. It had been too long since a well-trained submissive knelt at his feet. Stepping forward in each moment of darkness, looking up in each light opportunity, he made his way to the base of the dancer’s table and stood by the bottom step of the ladder as the song ended. The brief pause between songs brought black shoes and leather trousers down the ladder. The dancer turned and jumped the last step, landing snugly in George’s arms.

“What the-” The dancer fought to keep his balance, pressing himself tight against George’s body. Strong hands grabbed at his shirt. Big blue eyes looked up at George, full of surprise and confusion.

He was slightly shorter than George had guessed, barely scraping the six foot mark. They fitted together perfectly.

A shocked gasp, a quick inspection of his unexpected crash mat, and the dancer smiled. “Hi.”

He didn’t rush to pull away. George rested his hands possessively on his new friend’s waist. Pushing back the cotton shirt, he trailed his fingers over the skin and leather.

George scanned the bare skin from the low slung waist and up over the lightly defined muscles, admiring his unblemished prize. Then he saw the leather around the younger man’s throat and the blue-green stone suspended from it.

With a silent curse, George stepped back. “Sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

Turning away from the beautiful young man, he stalked to the bar. All the good ones might be gay, but damn if all the good ones weren’t taken too. The thin leather collar around the guy’s neck didn’t leave anything open to interpretation; neither did the turquoise hanging from it.

Just his bloody luck. The man was beautiful and kinky and he was already marked as someone else’s lover.

“So, who do I remind you of?”

George looked over his shoulder. What? Oh, yes. He said he’d mistaken Eric for someone else. That had to have been the singularly most inane line George had spouted since his balls dropped.

“An ex?” the blond wriggled his way between George and the bar so they stood face to face. The crowd pushed them together, letting George feel the heat and strength in the dancer’s body.

“No.” He didn’t remind George of anyone but the submissive he wanted to take home.

“Good.” The dancer smiled again. “It’s always off-putting when a guy screams someone else’s name during sex. Mine’s Eric, for future reference.”

*End of Excerpt*

If you want to know more, just click here :)

Five things... about series

In my infinite wisdom I've decided that once I've cleared a few short stories (and possibly two lust bites, have to work out when I need them by first) off my to do list, I'm going to start working on a new series.

So, before I finish those short stories, I'm trying to work out what I need to have done.

Here are the five things I've thought of so far.

1. Titles. I have six plots in my head. That means I need six individual titles and a series title. It would be nice to have them all to start with, or I'm going to drive myself crazy re-naming files every time I change my mind. I have a few ideas. The series one in particular is proving problematic. The best one I can come up with fits - it sums up the series perfectly, yet somehow... don't know.

2. Character names. I've named one so far. He appears in all the books, so it's nice that he's picked a name for himself, but now I have to convince the rest to do the same. My theory is, if I pick them all in advance I can make sure I don't fall into my usual trap of naming half a dozen people with nearly identical names.

3. Character discriptions. I don't want anyone changing their hair and eye colour half way through. And I don't want to find out there I've made all the submissives blonde and all the dominants dark or something daft like that. If I'm going to have that many main characters, I want a bit of variety! I think I need a new spread sheet.

4. Basic plot points. Each story might have a dominant and a submissive man in it, but I don't want them to have the same conflicts to content with or any of that. I don't like to write the same story twice in any circumstances. I'm particularly determined that it's not going to happen in this series. I'd like someone to be able to sit down and read from the begining through to the end without stopping to thing, hey that happened in the other book!

5. Location. I think I need a map. I'm creating a place for them to live. It's going to be a fictional city in Wales, but I still need to pin down all the specifics. What's it called, where abouts in it the characters live.

Yep, I know I'm totally over annalysing the whole thing. It's not reasonable to expect to know what happens at the end of book six while I haven't started book one - especially when I don't usually know how a short story is going to end when I start writing it, but there you go. I never claimed to be sane.

...

Other news:

It's still snowing, but people *touch wood* are able to get from A-B better. The thing is, we live in a valley. You can go along the base of the valley fine, but it's steep sides with narrow streets that haven't been cleared with snow - you have to get to the base of the valley first, and a lot of people can't at the moment. They've also closed the roads going over the top of the mountains between the valleys, which makes trying to go east - west interesting! They say we'll have more snow over the weekend.

Writing: Second short story will be finished tonight. I'm pretty sure once I've finished the four shorts, I'm going to read them over and find out that I've got the first chapter of four different novels.

Editing: Finally got some work done on my anthology sub. Still hoping to finish the second draft by the end of the weekend.

Publishing: Secret Service is out on Monday!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, but it's the last blog post before then. Got to squee about it a bit :)

Have a good weekend everyone.

Monday Memo: Decisions, Decisions

Note to self: Make up your damn mind.

I have a decision to make.

Apart from a few that need to be extended a little bit, all the stories in the Perfect Timing series are written. They have to be edited and stuff, but they are written.

I'm hoping to finish my Nano novel by the end of the month, so I've turned my attention what which series I'm going to work on next.

Now, the series can be roughly split into two different types.

There's the ones I like. I like the plots, I like the characters, I want to write them. I'm looking forward to writing them. I run them over in my head and I want to sit down and right them right now. I smile when I think about the characters. I want to write them their happy ever afters.

Then there are the ones that I know, before I even start them, that I'm going to get even more attached to. I'm even more invested in these series than I am in my other series (and I'm pretty damn obsessive about them!). The individual stories are going to be longer, the characters will appear in several stories. There are more complicated plotting and continuity and characterisation issues, they deal with more complicated and more delicate subbjects.

My heart wants to write one of the later series next just becasuse it does... My head says I should pick the safe option and do one of the simpler series. I find I'm learning more and more as I'm writing, each draft I write shows up some of the things I learnt writing other stories in the past.

What if I'm just not ready to write one of the majorly complicated series yet? A little bit more practice, a little bit more polish, before I tackle them couldn't hurt. They would be better if I waited a while before I tackled them.

The stupid thing is, I know I've made the decision. I've made it over and over again, and I always come up with the same answer. I know what I'm going to work on in December. I just can't stop wondering if I'm making the right decision.

...

Other news:

I hit 50k! Technically that's a Nano finished, except only 31700 of that 50k was on actually on my nano, so I still have a way to go on that, but I'm up to date and it's going okay - nothing like I planned it, but still good.

Started editing Tooth and Paw today. Will report more when I'm done more to it and I can see where it's going more clearly.

That's it.

Happy Monday everyone.

Wondering about... series

Series...

I seem to have rather a lot of them in my head, and the numbers keeps growing. The number of books I have planned for each series and the number of different series.

A few are more collections rather than true series - Collared and Perfect Timing both fit into this catagory. They are all stand alone stories that are linked by a theme. Other series on my list follow a cast of characters and their ever expanding circle of friends through several books.

Now, Perfect Timing is the nice organised series I have on the go. It's 12 stories. Three have been accepted, another eight have been written and are either being edited or waiting to be editing. And I'm writing the last one right now.

Collared is more free style. I'm hoping to write four stories a year for that series, but I'm purposely keeping myself flexible. The only rules I've given myself are that I want to alternate m/m and f/m stories and keep each one down to novella length if at all possible.

I'm going finish The Morning After, write two more Collared stories, two anthology submissions, and my Nanowrimo stand alone novel during the rest of this year. My time table is set. I have time to get everything I need to finish this year finished this year.

So, what all this planning and plotting boils down to is... I get to pick a new series to start in the new year. I realise that's still close to three months away, but speaking as someone who has been incredibly strict with themself and not given into the temptation to work on any of the shiney new projects in their head for months, and months, and months, this is still a very, very exciting fact.

I have 17 series on my list to choose from on Januray 1st.

But only if I finish everything I need to do over the next few months.

*Goes off to catch up on everythig that should be done by 15th October*

Wonderful the things that give you motivation at the oddest moments, isn't it?