Niiiice!!! In the top 10!

I tell you, it's the cheapest things that can make a girl happy

20 days and counting!

Accidentally Were? will be available in 20 days, WAHOO!! Do I sound a little excited? I'm really looking forward to this book because it's got a lot of me in it. Not that I've ever been bitten by a Were-Bear, or had packs of dogs lusting after me, or indeed had my Dad tell me about a mysterious prophecy... though I can say I did come close to hurling on someone's shoes while pregnant.

So make sure to book mark it, put the date on the calendar ... heck sharpie it on the back of your hand, because it's going to be a fun read!

At Loose Id Nov 20th

A little something from a wip ...

I decided I liked Robbie, who's a side character in Accidentally Were. I also got a giggle out of Shaun, Pearl's younger, goth princess friend. Then, of course, I had this very mean thought that Shaun would bug the shit out of Robbie ... and a new story was born.

So a little bit from the first chapter ...

Robbie Diedrickson cursed the day his friend and Beta had found his mate.
Not because he was unhappy that Rex had found love and had a cub on the way, but because much-to-curious-for-her-gothic-shitkickers Shaun Engelstead was now his problem.
Little gothic riding hood, sitting on a gravestone absently knocking the heels of her red Doc Martins together like she was Dorothy wishing to go home, was giving him grey hairs -- and being just this side of forty, he didn’t need her assistance in that department.
Robbie snuck a look around the other side of the tree he was hidden behind, and looked to see if Jak was in position.
Jakov Pieter was a vampire; a real one, not one of the playing at it types with fake teeth he’d seen hanging with Shaun and the rest of her Goth friends. It hadn’t taken much convincing to get his old friend to help him out with his plan to scare his little gothic princess. Jak was always up for a good practical joke, and getting to act all Bela Lugosi was right up his alley.
It wasn’t that he was angry with her. Much. After all, if she hadn’t sent Pearl to Rex to find out about Pearl’s strange canine shaped love bites, they wouldn’t have found each other and the whole chain of ‘wonderful’ events that led to Rex mated and about to be a daddy wouldn’t have happened. But, and there was always a but when Shaun Engelstead was involved, now that she’d been proved right about Weres existing, she was determined to prove Vampires were real, too.
Wasn't it enough that every time he turned around Shaun he tripped over her -- she was like a kid with candy, and the Pack was her Pop Rocks. Pack meetings, she was there; a Pack party, yup you guessed it, she was there. He had a feeling she probably knew more about the minutiae of his pack than he did, and he was the god damned Alpha!
And that was why, at two am on a Friday morning, he wasn’t tangled up in the sheets with a date, but crouched behind a fucking pine tree waiting to put his ‘scare Shaun shitless and get her to stop poking her nose in’ plan into action.

So many ideas, not enough time

Or at least not enough patience to sit and get them done with out letting my add tendencies get the better of me and start blog surfing.

I've had a couple of ideas on the back burner, yet I looked up a couple of outlines I'd done ages ago and wondered WhyTF I haven't done anything with them? They are good ... but I can't seem to work too well on multiple WIP. WIP and edits are not a problem, but I'm failing at having 2-3 WIP going at the same time.

So at the moment I have this great dark menage story that I really have to sit down and start editing - its going from short story length to novella/novel length. Great twisty stuff where it starts off as a mfm menage but ends up as a mmf menage, tortured type hero, whimsical heroine, hero with the wastrel family. As it stands its a mfm, so I've got lots of work to do.

Then I've always had a plan to follow up AW with another story, one where the pack alpha, gets together with the much younger goth chick. How bad is this: I emailed my editor, who snapped up AW quick, to see if she'd like to see a second story land on her eDesk. Can you tell I'm procrastinating on that editing? To RS,CF's detriment she didn't poo-poo the idea. Bugger. Turns out that its not just Rob and Shauns story, but lookie here theres a studly vampire by the name of Jakov Peter (I resisted I didn't call him Peter Jakov!), hmmm ... and 850 words into my first scene a ghost called Gertruda has just popped up - I think I could really have fun with this story.

Then I have this trio of stories about eBay, and a story of a pair of peeping toms (which might work for the Brava contest if I pull finger), and ... too damn many idea's I tell you!

Available NOW!

Title: Tea for Three

ISBN: 978-1-59632-476-3

Author: Anne Douglas
Cover Artist: Croco Designs
Price: $5.99

Genre: Nontraditional Erotic Contemporary, BBW Heroine
Length: Novel

Straight, gay or in between, turning thirty is never easy.

Craig wonders just where his life's heading. His relationship with Jack is satisfying, to say the least. But deep down, he sometimes still craves the soft touches of a woman.

Something's bugging Craig, and Jack knows it. Some sort of pre midlife crisis that he just can't understand. The sex is hot and demanding. Their home life is comfortable without being too familiar. But he just can't help feeling he might be about to lose the love of his life.

Then they meet lovely, loyal and slightly broken Wren Browne. It doesn't take long to realize, they might have just have found the solution to both of their problems.

Love isn't tidy or simple; it doesn't come packaged in neat little boxes. And sometimes you have to set the table with tea for three.

Publisher's Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: m/m sex practices, m/m/f menage.

Catch up

No not Ketchup, catch up. Besides it's called tomato sauce anyway :)

I've not been blogging a whole lot this week as I've been working hard on my WIP ... along with actually doing the housework I've been putting off for far too long.

Accidentally Were is a 24k and climbing, I haven't got to the mystical woo-woo part yet so I'm thinking that I'm going to end up around 40-50k before I start editing and cutting and adding. Of course since I'm notorious for not using contractions, there's 1000 words that disappear right there. Tell me, in this little scene that I'm penning this afternoon, have I gone overboard with the euphemisms? (assuming I have that right, euphemism that is, and I have a feeling I am wrong.) :

(this is VERY much unedited at the moment folks)

When he pushed her back up against the side of his truck her little angry growls stopped and a low sexy rumble started up instead. “I wasn’t sure there for a second, but I think you were right, this is a damn good idea.”
Rex barely had time to brace himself before Pearl climbed her way up his body and wrapped her legs around his waist. As he wasn’t quite balanced they fell back against the truck with a panel-popping thud that pressed Pearl up against him like she was a stripper and he was the pole. Quite apt really considering his dick felt like a bloody steel bar.
Pearl’s hands were wound through his hair again; holding him tight as she fairly ate at his lips. Pearl made a cacophony of sound as she mewled and groaned as she rode his cock like a cowboy on a prize bull determined to make it to eight seconds. She tore her mouth away and shouted to the sky, “Yes! More, just like that!” and Rex had to wonder what the hell alien had taken over the woman who was usually so uptight and proper she’d make a Mongrel Mob member quake in his boots for being to loud in a library.

Tea for Three's release is a little over a week away now. We should be getting everything finalized this weekend, so it will be nice to get that out of the way until the Monday before release day when I'll sit up late obsessively refreshing the screen until the new releases are posted -- and don't think I wont!

I've got a release out, a sub being read (do you know hard it is to sit on your fingers and not email "Have you read it yet, whaddya think" to your editor?), and I've been trying to make a decision about a national print ad -- I'm not usually one to stress and obsess, but trying to break my caffeine addiction (I'm failing I might add), has me a little twitchy :).

BUT ... I put that twitchiness to good use and I now have clean floors. Eh, which reminds me I need to go finish off the bathroom, bugger!

Oh YUM!

How's this for a yum, yum, bubble gum cover!

Dark haired Wren, the well cut outdoors man Jack, and the nicely built, but a little more fleshy Craig in the foreground...mmm mm m!

Frauke of Croco Designs is the party responsible for this eye candy - she even used a New Zealand pastoral scene! (The book is set in Auckland, NZ)

EDIT: I was asked about release date - last week in May is the current plan, so not that far off!

Just a taste...

Just got an email through with the first cover draft for T43 - I can't show y'all till its finalised, but mmm mmm m! It's all in sepia tones, with this pastoral scene blended with a lovely, lovely man (or two) wearing not a lot except some skin.

I can't wait till I get the finals in so I can post it - I really have been having a good run with the cover gods!

Making Out is available now

I'm running a wee bit behind today. With the bathrooms finished bar the paint, we needed to get on with the last of the flooring, so I've dragged my aches and pains to the computer a lot later than I had planned!

All the links for Making Out will now take you to a fully functioning book listing at Loose Id so make sure to nip over and nab a copy!

Now me, my sore neck, my gimpy hip and aching hamstring are off to bed!

13 Titles to choose from

I still haven't been able to make a decision.

Here' a rough blurb on McCabes 2:

Finding a woman beaten and broken in a dark parking lot wasn't the way David McCabe expected his night to end. It wasn't the way Kate had expected her night to go, either - beaten by an angry, vicious husband of one of the women she had helped at Liberty Haven one of the areas Women's Refuge. She also didn't expect to wake up in the hospital with a stranger holding her daughter, telling her she had no option but to go with him - not after everything she'd fought to be free of.

Can two bruised hearts let go of the past and make a new future?


Here are the new front runners, what do y'all think? My Front runners are marked with an *

1. To Spite the Past **
2. Despite the Past
3. Chrysalis **
4. Telling Truths **
5. Surviving the Past
6. New Day
7. Tough Love
8. Just Breathe **
   
9. Bruised Pasts **
10. Bruised Pasts Collide
11. Learning to Breath
    
12. Future Song
13. Broken Pasts **

Sex and Marriage

I've noted that there's not a lot of marriage in romance. (Sorry we are not going to be discussing the sad state of my sex life lately)

'What land is she living in' you all say '99% of romance is about marriage'. Sure I won't disagree, 99% of Romance is about obtaining the state of being married. But so little of it about what happens after the big/small over-the-top/poignant everything-I-ever-wanted/OMGWTFBBQ-I'm-getting-married?? scenes play out?

I don't know about you, but marriages are damn hard work. Hell, I'm already onto the second one (we won't go into the shortest marriage in existence, where I was left for a younger woman when I was only 22!). Bitter much, me?? Not much after 10 years.

So, when so many of us read romance - of any genre, and especially erotic - why are there not more stories about marriages on the rocks and the ways the characters solve them. And no, I'm not talking about an Oprah and Doctor Phil special here - I'm talking hot, sexy stories, just like all the ones where people are single.

Genuine, sexy, my husband/wife doesn't find me sexy anymore, what went wrong and how do I fix it story lines about people with a kid or two, a dog, and a mortgage, stories.

Are us married folks with kids just too unsexy? Are we over the hill erotically? Is the idea of bits that don't look the way they did at 25 a turn off, even if the story is a wonderful journey?

And most importantly, if I was to write it, would people buy it?

I've had a number of hits with the term 'couples erotica', it sounds like an interesting term. I wonder if they are searching for stories that would appeal to husbands and wives (stroke flicks in effect), or containing husbands and wives in the plot line.

Give me some opinions people.

I wish

This is old news, but new to me

Longoria To Pen Romance Novel.
13th June 2006 18:01:01

DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES beauty EVA LONGORIA is in negotiations to transfer some of her sizzling on-screen sexuality to the page - by penning a raunchy novel.
The actress has already planned an erotic plot for her first foray into literature, and can't wait for the work to be in bookshops.
She says, "They offered a huge deal and I like the idea of seeing my book on a shelf.
"The plot's top secret so far but let's just say I have a wild imagination."

Wouldn't it be nice to be some famous person that gets offered a multi million dollar deal to write a book *cough*OJ*cough*.

It sucks (very literate at times aren't I) to see someone offered this sort of money, when there are no doubt hundreds of excellent stories sitting in slush piles the world over.

I'm off to do some research to see if it ever got written - or ghost written, perhaps?

EDIT: haven't found a thing yet

The art work's in!

Check out the coming soon pages for other shorts from your favourite stories.

A new week

I was hoping that the renovations on the bathrooms would be finished last week, but it looks like (since they have been gone half the day) there will be no end in sight till at least Wednesday.

Sigh.

I had really been hoping to be getting my life back today. Instead kiddo is home sick, the contractor has been, but gone again, and I haven't written a word on McCabes 2 today. I did manage around 4k at the end of last week, and I'm working on getting to a point where the new content merges back into part of the old. Once I'm finished I think I'll be looking at approx 40k, not to shabby all things considered, it might be more depending on where the story takes me. I also managed about 1k of the start of McCabes 3.

I'm glad I got a chance to write a short story based on Matt, Brian and Jo from Persuading Jo, it whet my appetite for knuckling down and getting the McCabe stories done.

Now if only I had a nice, new, finished bathroom to write them in!

Chatting today at Joyfully Reviewed

AOER is chatting today over on the Joyfully Reviewed Loop.

Come over and have a chat! I'm going to post a new excerpt from Tea for Three.

Erotic Romance and Faith

There is something that I've noticed when it comes to erotic romance, and its slightly more smutty sister, erotica - faith, or a visible lack thereof.

Oh, I'm not talking those highly involved fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction types of faith that an author might build a world around. I'm talking good old, everyday religion in a contemporary setting.

Are Sex and Faith mutually exclusive?

I've mentioned before that I enjoy reading Catherine Anderson. Her stories, more and more (just personal observance, she might not think so at all, and neither may you) are verging into inspirational, but I wonder if they will ever quite make it as she is just too frank with her language and pretty open with sex, too.

What appeals to me is not the sense of Faith running through her work, but the reality of her characters. They swear and fight, they have premarital sex - though often suffer for it in some manner - they have jobs they have to to before they can run willy nilly through the crabgrass and clover of their love lives. They are human.

But when I was sitting down staring into the ether at the Golden Trough on Sunday while scarfing my over sized plate of chicken, green beans, and spuds this is what popped into my brain. Why you ask? - the group of people who before seating themselves prayed over their table.

Now, I do live in a city that, religiously thinking, would love to name itself the reigning Baptist center of the world, so you might think I would see more of this type of behaviour. We don't really. A few quiet murmers, some dipped heads or clasped hands, but not a very public display. So Sex and Faith just jumped in there as an interesting blog topic.

Personally, I'm an agnostic. Yes, I'm one of those people who wants proof. I believe what I see, so Faith has little meaning for me on an intrinsic level in a story. But it does have a great deal of meaning for me for understanding a character though - their personality, their core beliefs etc. Does this translate over into romances hot-to-trot cousin, erotic romance?

I mentioned that there is no lack of faith or religion when applied to an imaginary world. After all it's a chance to be your own mini god, isn't it? Getting to make up the ins and outs of your own religion. The same with historicals - it's just a given that religion plays a big part in the mores and strictures of life. But what about in a contemporary setting?

BDSM and religion - now there's the mother of all debate topics. Submission, degradation, action and consequence, forgiveness, control of power, release - trust.

I think I understand the concepts behind BDSM, although it's not a hot trigger for me; still, the correlations between the two ring bells, big bells. Why then do I not see more content involving faith? Not the type of story line that involves someone ritually purging themselves through pain, but the kind where they trot off to Church on Sundays and make obvious dialogue about their religious beliefs. And I'm not talking "Oh my GOD, it's so huge!" That's finding religion of an entirely different genre.

Are erotic romance readers people who embrace religion?

I know there are readers and authors alike who are Pagan, but what about the traditional churches - Catholic, Baptist, Methodist etc? What about Asian or Middle Eastern faiths? It's not too far a jump from some Pagan beliefs to paranormal, romance, and fantasy. After all, that's where it all started - Greek and Roman myths and legends coming to life; mother nature at her finest; Druids, Witches and Warlocks.

Can traditional religions make the leap and keep the sexy heat? Is religion in an erotic story a turn off - the guilt factor chiming in? Face it, most erotic romances do not involve a married couple (or triple, but then that's another big no-no for most religions). Is the reminder that premarital sex is supposed to be a big NO, the reason I don't seem to see religion as a part of the current erotic romance selections?

I know I don't write about it - don't practice, how can I preach it? Could this be the new big thing? Inspirational Erotic Romance? I think it could be done. I wonder if anyone has ever tried to tie BDSM up with a healthy religious aspect, rather than using it in a protaganistic manner?

Is this inane?

I'm trying to work on something new that's on a submission deadline, but damn the words are coming slowly. I really don't know what it is about this little ditty, but damn, it's like trying to pull krill from a whales teeth (not that they really have teeth they have these....oops getting off topic there).

How important is the happy ending? Not that this doesn't have one, but its destined more for a happy for now ending. And even then, that's not a good description either. Lets just say it has an ending, and everyone is happy in it.

Okay so the premise is : Two best mates; ones gay, ones straight. That's all hunky dory. The straight guy has met his one and only and she's a total firecracker in the bedroom, even going so far as to use her toys on him (nudge nudge, wink wink, if ya know what I mean) and the straight guy thinks the straight and narrow line might be getting a bit blurry.

Meanwhile the gay guy, who hasn't ever been with any form of the female persuasion, is wondering if his gay rainbow is starting to look a little straighter than normal, cause his best mate and his girl seem to have rather a lot of fun. So with a little encouragement they decide to experiment.

Straight guy teaches gay guy, gay guy teaches girl, straight guy gets to experience real man sexing (versus the pink strap on kind). Straight guy and girl are in lurve (the HFN/HEA part), gay guy is definitely not (but hey I have a plan for him aka bk2). No-one is worse off for wear at the end; infact they have realised a few things about themselves.

So, after all that, is the premise behind the story just too hokey?

It's not an epic tale, more of a stroke flick for girls, more erotica than erotic romance. And I seriously think I need to work up the synopsis a bit better before I submit it...though I did get the point across ROFL!

Position Vacant isn't the redheaded stepchild...

The reviewers tell me so!

Check them out at my main site www.annedouglas.com

A new review...see if it makes you giggle...

TCM reviews just got back to me with their review of Persuading Jo.
At first I thought WTF? Then I re-read it a couple of times and started giggling. Lets see if you can come up with the same conclusion I have.

Will & Grace has a lot to answer for - NOT, one hastens to add, that author Anne Douglas has anything to apologize for on that score, but the fact remains, any ménage a trios involving two gay men, a cute female roomie, and the not-so-nagging suspicion that one or both of them want to have their way with her, is bound to draw comparisons, no matter how much the reader tries to shut the mind to the ensuing images.

Jo, Matt and Brian met when all three were at college, and it swiftly became apparent, to the boys, anyway, that the trio was destined to be together forever. But fair’s fair; Jo had the right to determine her own life, so they let her be... and, for eight long, frustrating years, they watched as she made one bad choice after another, and was nowhere nearer to finding happiness than the day she first walked through their door, and almost caught them having sex. Brian stood up just in time, but she knew what he’d been doing down there, and they knew she knew, which sets the tale up perfectly for some delirious bouts of voyeurism, shot through with stolen fragments of the lovers’ conversation. So Jo knows the score as well. She just needs to be persuaded....

Persuading Jo is a quick and exhilarating read, its 91 pages a roller coaster ride on which every scene is either setting up for sex, coming down from it, or just going at it hammer and tongs. There is a subplot, involving Jo’s creepy cousin, but it doesn’t really go any place before fizzling out in a final chapter that winds things up a lot more abruptly than it ought to. The dialogue is a little cheap, too, with the boys, in particular, cursed with a vocabulary straight out of an early 80s porn flick. For all that, however, Douglas tells her tale with vivid verve, and the hiccups are certainly overwhelmed by the highs.

Actually he raises a valid point - does my fascination with multiple partners in a loving relationship (versus wham, bam, thank you sir & madam, sex) stem from a popular culture television show?

Will and Grace had so much pointedly unexplored sexual exploration opportunities. First there is Will and Grace - wasn't the running joke that Grace turned Will gay? Is she such a fag hag because she is hoping one day he will realise that unlike all his other lovers, shes the one who hung through thick and thin with a hope that she might turn him back?

Jack and Grace - the love to hate each other relationship - more than just the biting sarcasm between them and the blatant and constant fight for Will's attention, there was the constant wonder if Jack would take the final step of finding out why Grace fascinated Will so much, to find out why he, Jack, couldn't measure up. Of course everyone else but Jack knew Will would jump in front of a bus if he had to to save Jacks ass, even if he was treated like the annoying puppy that won't let go of your pants leg.

Jack and Will - the tortured unrequited love.

Karen - oh Karen we loved to hate you - the perfect foil for them all. Trying so hard to be a bitch, and succeeding of course; but when it came to the crunch she pulled out the goodies, even if she said it was for an ulterior motive. Karen, so sexually ambiguous, you didn't know who she might be going to come on to next. Such a refreshing hurricane to keep you guessing. Would she do Jack? Rosario? Grace? Her husband? The bellboy or the waitress? What better personality to upset the Will/Grace/Jack triangle so successfully?

Karen is the one who rang true for me.
Seriously, Grace was a whiny bitch, who was totally inept at keeping her life on track. Even with Will as her crutch she got it wrong. She wasn't just a chick-lit girl, she was the chick-lit girl - if a cow had invaded New York and plopped a nice big cowpat on the sidewalk Grace would have stepped in it, then tripped over her boyfriend and landed him in it face first while exposing her underwear to the general populace.
Karen? Karen, aside from her bisexual tendencies, was a woman who had a real life. A tough time growing up, then she had compromised to her need for security by marrying Stan only to end up loving him anyway. She didn't like her step kids most days and they didn't like her, and lets face it, how many trophy wives and step kids really do like each other? Though I always got the idea that she didn't like that so much - that she would have liked to have been move involved with their lives and to have them like her. After all, that's what it was all about, she hurt people before they hurt her - a facade to cover up how desperately she really did want everyones approval.

So, in the end, do I think in my instance I am playing out a hidden desire to rewrite Will and Grace the way I wanted it to play out? No, I don't think I am. While Will and Grace had an amazing cast dynamic with an intricately woven, twisty web to tie the characters up in I would never have saddled Will with both Grace and Jack - eh could you imagine the Sunday morning bickering, and the moaning and whining? Now Rosario, Will and Karen...that would be a different story altogether!

A new review for PJ

Yay! A new review for Persuading Jo, and its a good'un and all!

Joyfully reviewed

Anne always does a great job of portraying the emotional aspects of a story, but I was still surprised by the intensity of the emotions in this story on all sides. The sex was hot and extremely well-written, but above all, Persuading Jo is a reminder that love takes many forms and not always what you expect.