How bad is bad?

A recent post by a friend on Facebook got me wondering about back stories on heroes. The point of her post was why the heroes of BDSM stories have to have such terrible backgrounds. She wondered why sadists and masochists couldn't just be normal people with happy family lives below their preferred sexual leaning. Well, I don't personally know any sadists or masochists so I have no idea if they have wear slippers and stroke little puppies in their cosy homes. Maybe they do. But it raised the point in my mind as to how far we writers should go down the path of creating horrible back story for our heroes - and heroines.

I have to admit - I do like to give people tortured pasts. When I tried to think if any of my characters have loving normal parents - I drew a blank. If they did, I'd usually killed them off. Though the Trueblood clan have loving parents, don't they? Not sure if it counts if they are vampires. Plus they had to send their kids away to keep them safe, so maybe they don't count either.  I suspect Addie - out of Doing the Right Thing - has the worst mother - the woman didn't love her at all. Though Ash in An Ordinary Girl - her mother was - ah - better not give that story away. Even Charlie's mother in Strangers - had her moment.

So why do I like to write about cruel people? I think maybe it's to show how the hero or heroine can rise above that cruelty and be a good person, that just because you had a bad childhood, it doesn't mean you'll be unhappy as an adult. We're all responsible for our own happiness. Life's too short to give up on smiling. I just like to make my characters suffer to find their HEA.

And because this picture makes me smile - maybe it will make you smile too! of course moments later, Charlotte the Golden Retriever, threw up on the rug!

Naughty No-No's Blog Hop

I've joined the Naughty No-No's Blog Hop!

What's your guilty pleasure?

What's my guilty pleasure? The one thing I can't resist? Bread. Fresh bread. Warm fresh bread. No butter, no margarine, no jam, no Marmite, no cheese - just bread. I'm salivating thinking about it. No carb-free diet for me. Plus I'd take bread over chocolate any day of the week. 

What temptation are your characters always doomed to give into?

To love, of course! No matter whether they resist it or not, love will get them in the end. 

If you leave a comment admitting to your guilty pleasure, you have a chance of winning a copy of my MF paranormal ebook - Jumping in Puddles. 

For more confessions and chances to win books check out the other sites on the hop! 

http://justsotia.blogspot.gr/2013/09/naughty-no-nos-blog-hop-participation.html

And because Writery sensibly pointed out I'd said nothing about what my book was about - I've added this. 

Jago doesn’t just inherit a title after the death of his parents, he’s saddled with the crumbling money pit of a mansion that’s been in his family for centuries. With his medical career on hold, he struggles to secure the future of Sharwood Hall, trudging uphill with no finish line in sight.

The sins of a past generation fall on faerie Ellie and her family, and each year they must trek to the exact center of the UK to recharge their energy. Until they find the Kewen, treasure guarded and lost by their ancestors hundreds of years ago, they’re banished from Faeryland. Ellie’s father has spent fifty years searching, now it’s his eldest child’s burden.

As a stunning woman sweeps into Jago’s world in a thunderstorm, he can’t stop thinking she’s too good to be true. For little reason other than her sweet and generous heart, Ellie is helping to put Sharwood to rights and leaving him more and more suspicious she wants something other than him. When family and duty clashes with trust and love, it’s debatable whether a perilous leap of faith, directly off a bridge into treacherous waters, will keep lovers from being swept apart.

I do love this cover - it shows my rain dancing faerie off perfectly BUT this is an erotic romance and that doesn't really come across. It's one of my favourite stories and I'm just about to write another about one of Ellie's brothers.

Please welcome Kelly Moran to my blog! One commentator will win a free ecopy of the book!

The Dysfunctional Test - by Kelly Moran

Book Blurb:

You are cordially challenged to a test of true love...

Thanks to her large, crazy Serbian family, Camryn Covic is an expert at shutting down her emotions in order to maintain her sanity. But when she loses her apartment, her job and her boyfriend all in one day, she hits her breaking point. Worse, if her family finds out she's single again, her sister's upcoming wedding will be a disaster. The bride-to-be has a plan, though. A plan that involves an old friend, a pretend relationship... and the probability of ending up in a padded cell. Troy Lanske agrees to the crazy plan only because Camryn was once his lifeline as a foster child. But she isn't the idealistic girl he remembers. She's become so jaded that she doesn't even believe in love anymore. He sets out to restore her faith in happily-ever-afters, but his plan backfires when the fake relationship begins to feel all too real. Falling for the one woman he can't have could mean losing more than just his honorary family. He could lose everything.

Excerpt:

            “What’s wrong?” she asked, worried the heat or altitude was getting to him. When they first exited the car she noticed how much thinner the air was. Perhaps he hadn’t adjusted yet.

            “I have an idea, and you won’t like it.”

            “Then my answer is no.”

            “You haven’t heard the idea yet.”

            “I don’t need to. If you think it’s a bad idea…”

            “I didn’t say it was a bad idea. I said you wouldn’t like it.”

            She crossed her arms. “Same difference.”

            He looked un-amused. “Everyone is sitting across the yard over there. We can see them, which means they can see us. We need a public display.”

            She didn’t like the sound of that. But before she could process fully, he slid an arm around her waist and drew her to him. Hard chest. Wall of hard chest. Now there was no air.

            “Act like we’ve done this before,” he whispered.

            “Done what?”

            “Kiss, Cam . Act like you’ve kissed me before.”

            “How am I supposed to do…?”

            The words died in her throat as his mouth closed over hers.

Here's the trailer!

Where to find Kelly: www.authorkellymoran.com

facebook.com/authorkellymoran, @AuthorKMoran, pinterest.com/authorkmoran,
myspace.com/authorkellymoran, kellymoranauthor.blogspot.com, goodreads.com/authorkellymoran, youtube.com/authorkellymoran

Beautiful Northumberland

Just been for a few days to Northumberland. It has to have one of the best parts of the British coastline and so many castles!

This is Dunstanburgh Castle - in ruins now but quite amazing. 

Bamburgh Castle - which is spectacular! As is the beach. We walked for miles. So far that we walked our little legs off like these dogs.

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to Chillingham to see very rare cattle. The only truly wild cattle in the world and an endangered species. They have no contact with humans. We were only allowed 50 yards away with a guide. They interbreed but in a way that prevents fathers getting daughters pregnant etc.

And we went on a trip to the Farne Islands to see grey seals!

And I was brave enough to run down a sand dune. Though it nearly killed me climbing to the top. 

But best of all - were the beaches and the fabulous blue skies!

Can too much be a bad thing?

I now have officially more books to read than I have ever accumulated in my life. I usually have at least 5 new paperbacks by the side of the bed ready to devour but for the last couple of weeks I've been lured, tempted and seduced by the offer of free ebooks to download - legally I might add. I have to stop it. If I had an ereader I wouldn't mind but they're on Kindle for PC which means I have to lug my computer to bed if I want to read them. And plug it in because the battery life is very short. And that disturbs the sleeping monster at my side.
I'm also steadily re-reading my paperbacks and giving them to charity once I've read them, unless I love them too much to give away. I used to wonder about the point of reading a book twice, but some of mine, I'm on the third read because I adore them so much.
Kiss Chase - Fiona Walker
Unsticky - Sarra Manning
Almost all of Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Derik's Bane - Mary Janice Davidson
Most of Jenny Crusie's early stuff
Most of Jill Mansell's, Adele Parks, Lisa Jewell, Freya North
oh I could go on. I'm still going to have hundreds on my shelves.

The Holy Grail

It used to be that finding an agent was the way to get your book published. Some publishers were prepared to accept unsolicited manuscripts but many weren't. I can't remember how many letters and first chapters I sent out full of hope only to get a rejection by return of post, or months later or over a year later in two cases. Did I ever get close? No, not really. Most letters I had were form rejections no matter how 'sympathetically or supportively' they were worded.
Then came the advent of digital publishing and the world changed. I redefined the genre I was prepared to write and was able to submit direct to publishers. Getting an agent lost its importance.
I still toyed with the dream for a while but I've long since given up on that and in fact, it's been overtaken by a new Holy Grail - the problem of getting reviews.
My publishers have a list of sites they submit to, but no certainty of getting your book reviewed. I can send to some sites on my own and I have done - and I'm shocked how many don't even bother to answer - even to say - no thanks. It seems many review sites have become reincarnations of the agents I used to approach.
It's a hard world out there. Word of mouth is the best way to get your book into people's lives and reviews drive that process. I'm told reviews on Amazon count the most which is more than a pity for me. My best seller Strangers - has 88 reviews on Amazon - massively more than any other of my books, but thousands of reviews on Goodreads. Ah, if only I could fix that. But I can't. All I can do is keep contacting review sites to ask for reviews. But I'm one of so many now, I'm probably buried in a different sort of slush pile. Things really haven't changed.
If anyone has any advice, please share it!!!
And because I like the cover of my book coming out in November - here it is!!!

Is anyone watching?

I do worry about my internet browsing. While researching for my stories I end up accessing all sorts of strange sites and if the American listening station at Menwith Hill - which is really not that far from where I live- has a bank of machines looking out for key words - I might be in for a visit from the police at some point.
EG - I wanted to know what the insides of the MI5 and MI6 and New Scotland Yard buildings were like - what security there was etc
        I wanted to know what could be used to disguise the odour of cocaine to fool a sniffer dog
        I wanted to know how much of a dead baby would be left after being left in a dry cold environment for several years
      And a lot of other searches for sex related stuff. The latest yesterday involved me checking out a male escort site. To my astonishment I spotted a picture of my husband. Well, it wasn't, but it really looked like him. The guy was available for fifty pounds an hour and no sex. Hmm - wonder if he'd do the dishes, the garden, the windows, the shopping.....