Monday 25 September 2017

Hello and Goodbye

I love learning the origins of common English words and phrases.

Hello apparently comes from hallo which was used to incite hunting dogs and is relatively recent (mid 1800s). It became popular after the advent of the telephone, although Alexander Graham Bell originally suggested Ahoy as a greeting!

Hi doesn’t actually come from Hello. It was first record in the 1860s being used by a native American from Kansas and is thought to be a variant of the middle English word hy or hey which/is was used to attract someone’s attention.

Goodbye, on the other hand, is much older (16th century) and came from an abbreviation of ‘God be with ye’ – it would have been written Godbwye which, over time, became, Goodbye!

Bye-bye also doesn’t come from goodbye but was used in the nursery to lull babies to sleep.



Information from dictionary.com / Wikipedia /Cambridge Dictionary

Friday 22 September 2017

Wicked Weekends


WICKED WEEKENDS


Title: Symphony Amore: Erotic Stories of Love and Music

Author: Jordan Monroe is the editor. Authors include Rosalía Zizzo, Charlotte French, Rebecca Chase, Genevive Chamblee, Jordan Monroe, Laura Callender, Sionna Fox, Elizabeth Coldwell, and Nanisi Barrett D’Arnuk.

Genre: Erotica

Sexual orientation: F/M, F/F, and F/M/F 

Length of story: 124 pages

What's hot?: This collection stars musicians and the people who love them. There are sweet, romantic scenes that are beautiful to read, and wickedly sensual BDSM scenes that tantalize the senses. There's something for everyone to enjoy.

Blurb:

From deep DJ beats and dimly lit bars to sensual solos and classical crescendos, Symphony Amore introduces you to a dazzling range of musical performances.

In this collection of nine stories, there is a broad spectrum of musicians from all sections of the orchestra and beyond. Immerse yourself in tale of conductors and concert-goers, romantic encounters and hard-hitting BDSM play, and embrace the diverse cast that you'll meet.

Music truly is the universal language and these stories by Rosalía Zizzo, Charlotte French, Rebecca Chase, Genevive Chamblee, Jordan Monroe, Laura Callender, Sionna Fox, Elizabeth Coldwell, and Nanisi Barrett D’Arnuk will give you hours of reading pleasure.

Buy linksAmazonBarnes and NobleiTunes, and KOBO








Title: Torn Avenger

Author: Lea Bronsen

Genre: Dark Viking Romance

Sexual orientation: M/M

Length of story: 29K words / 140 paperback pages

What's hot: Mutual masturbation in a darkened barn full of sleeping people 

Blurb: 

Murder. Passion. Two worlds colliding.

As the second son of a Viking earl, Alv Gunnulfsen wasn't meant to inherit a throne or avenge a murder. But when his brother is slain during a raid and their father dies of grief, Alv is expected to take command and claim the killer's death. In a world of ruthless retaliation and strict social codes, he must also maneuver cleverly to protect a troublesome secret: his attraction for men.

Roeland van Dijk, a wealthy Dutch merchant settled in Norway, has done the unthinkable to protect his family — hacked off the head of a Viking rapist. The wrath of the blond savages will cost him his freedom, and possibly his own head… Unless he's willing to accept the love of another man.

Buy links:


Blurb for forthcoming book - The Audition:

Ruthless drug lord Ricardo “El Loco” Ferrer launders his black money by investing in movie productions. As a teen, he learned to enjoy blow jobs in jail. Now a man of power, his favorite pastime is checking out new acting talent…and convincing them to “please” the team of producers.

Young wannabe actor Jaden Moore comes to a shady side of town to audition for a movie part. He longs to shine, wants to walk the red carpet with cameras flashing and a crowd cheering. He assures the film director and the investors he’ll do anything to reach the top, but is he willing to comply with their dirty fantasies?

Monday 18 September 2017

Race for Life Pretty Muddy Challenge

On Saturday I did the Race for Life Pretty Muddy Challenge with my friend, Liz! 



In case you have no idea what I am talking about, each year Cancer Research in the UK organise Race for Life events over 5k and 10k around the country, but they also organise Pretty Muddy Challenges as well, and I took part in the latter.




This involved going over obstacles over a 5k course such as up scramble nets, sliding down the other side into pools of mud (see pic), crawling under ropes through mud pits, climbing over durdles (sort of blow up fences), etc etc. All the while the marshals are squirting water or pushing mud in your direction with great (and nearly malicious) enjoyment.




Amusingly, the hardest part was bouncing around a circuit on a space hopper! And they were so easy when I was younger! LOL

It was a very worthy cause and great fun and I raised over £500 – many thanks to everyone who sponsored me and those who came and supported us.




Friday 15 September 2017

Wicked Weekends

WICKED WEEKENDS

 
Title of book: Transcending Fire

Name of author: Casey Moss

Genre: Futuristic, dystopian, erotic, MC Romance, sci-fi elements

Sexual orientation: MF

Type of book: novel

What's hot?: Sex by the sea in an alternate universe

Blurb:

Hunter Macario wants one thing—a place to belong. When given an opportunity to solidify his position in the motorcycle club, Devil’s Thunder, he takes it.
Dragon’s Clan member, Safaia King, believes she’s found the man from her people’s legend and her dreams. She has one goal, even if he’s in a rival club—to make Hunter hers and keep him safe so he can fulfill their destiny.
After Hunter makes a huge mistake, he’s sent to where Safaia lives—an alternate universe called The Den. In this new world, sex, battles, and secrets abound. Hunter must survive The Den to right some wrongs or else he could lose everything he’s ever gained, including his home and Safaia’s love.


Buy links:





 
Title: Abel's Obsession

Author: Lynn Burke

Genre:  BDSM / Erotic Romance

Sexual Orientation: MF

Length of book: 136 Pages

What's hot?: Sexual awakening of a natural-born Dominant

Blurb:

A young man of religious fervor and self-control, Abel Beiler has every intention of honoring his parents and being baptized into the Amish church. The woman with red curls and flashing green eyes in the back of a convertible, however, makes Abel wonder what life with the English might be like.

He strives to withstand temptation, but the memory of the woman he yearns to dominate, coupled with the explicit images in his cousin’s filthy magazine, threatens his restraint.

Red, his sinful obsession, haunts his shameful dreams and becomes a secret part of his life. When faced with truth beyond faith, Abel must decide where he belongs—with the Amish community, or the woman who owns his heart.

Buy links:


Evernight: http://www.evernightpublishing.com/abels-obsession-by-lynn-burke/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0757FM2KL
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0757FM2KL
Smashwordshttps://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745254
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/abels-obsession-lynn-burke/1127046444
Bookstrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/abels-obsession-mf
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/abel-s-obsession






Title of book: Submission, Secrets and the Soldier (Heroes of Westhorpe Ridge 4)

Name of author: Kryssie Fortune

Genre: Military, Romance, Adventure

Type of book: Novel

Sexual orientation: MF

What’s hot?: Sharing an apartment with the Dom of her dreams makes Kathryn's libido roar.

Blurb:

Luke Roberts, a former army mechanic, has a new sub. She's shy and inexperienced, but willing. As he teachers her about sensation play, she fears he'll really hurt her and screams her safewords at him. Her reaction causes Luke to have a flashback. Although he's clawing his way back to normal, he suffers from PTSD. Determined to get well, he contacts a PTSD specialist in  Westhorpe Ridge.

Kathryn Johnson has visited a BDSM club three times. When she hooks up with Luke Roberts, he unintentionally terrifies her. She swears off spankings and goes home to Westhorpe Ridge. The last person she expects to see there is Luke Roberts.

Circumstances force them to share an apartment. Can Luke protect her when danger threatens? Or is she just a temporary sub in residence?


Buy links:


Monday 11 September 2017

6th anniversary



In some ways it feels more like 10 or more years since I first became an author! It has been a fabulous six years. This is what I’ve been up to since last anniversary:




An anthology entitled ‘Love and Lust in Space’ came out in November last year. This is a sci-fi/erotica anthology that I not only coordinated reading through all the submissions and picking the stories that fit best together, but it was my first attempt at editing.

I ended up splitting the anthology into two halves – Futuristic Earth and Alien Worlds as that was how the submissions feel. I also had a story in that anthology The Sonic Dilda’tor.











The other story I wrote this last year was To Claim a Mate – a gay wolf shifter BDSM story which came out in May. This is also the first in an open series set in a gay BDSM club called ‘Balls & Chains’ which I will be co-ordinating. So, look out for more stories in that series in the next year.










In between times I’ve been busy doing some more writing on a children’s fantasy story that I am writing with my great-niece (hope to announce that it is finished by this time next year, but it will be published under another pen name).
 


The story I am furiously writing at the moment is a follow up to Naughty Christmas Wishes – this one entitled Naughty Christmas Present and involves the bartender and the Siren from the first story. All I will say is, BDSM is involved!






I have also done a couple of my workshops at writing events – I repeated my ‘Collaborating with a Co-author’ workshop at a Yorkshire writers’ event at my home in May and did one called ‘What Author Shape are You’ based on personality traits (or in this case writing traits) for Smut which was in Leeds in August. At the latter I also read a scene from ‘To Claim a Mate’ which had been inspired by my visit to Smut’s autumn conference held at a BDSM club at which the Doms were inundated by questions from research-hungry BDSM authors.







Monday 4 September 2017

Visiting past lives

Went back to Kendal in the Lake District recently. I lived there for 10 years, left 17 years ago and haven’t been back for about 10-12 years (here's me in Kendal Amateur Dramatic Society in 'No Sex Please We're British! LOL).


This was me treking through the mountains coming down from torrential rain into sunshine in 1991.



I found myself having a nostalgia fest. “Ooo, there’s the leisure centre. I’d

forgotten there was a leisure centre. I saw the Chippendales there.”

“Oh, here’s the college. I did an English course there.”

And so on.

The reason for going was to visit friends, some of which I hadn’t seen for over a decade, and that was fabulous.

At the same time, it was a very surreal experience. The closest analogy is going back in a time machine to a place you knew in the past. Whilst it was exciting on the one hand, I knew instinctively that I was out of sync with my own time. Almost like I was intruding on my old life as I was a very different person then having grown so much in confident since then.

I don’t know if that makes sense, but to summarise, it was very nostalgic as well as being surreal.



Friday 1 September 2017

Now for something completely different...


Now for something completely different this Friday ….


The Time
By Peri Elizabeth Scott
An apocalyptic/dystopian story
182 pages

One POV (the heroine's, who is a mature women, very strong and independent).

Warning: there is violence including an intended rape and the heroine's bloody response.






Excerpt:

The quick retreat wasn’t totally silent. She could hear the sounds of the others, moving quickly along parallel lines to her own painful effort. Wondering how long she could keep the burst of energy up, she noted the noises diminished as people worked their way outward like the spokes of a wheel. Four hundred paces and the air burned in her lungs. Sh e fought the tough terrain and avoided the thickening flora, the damn sled hanging up at each and every turn. Her arms burned with the desperate efforts to free the runners and the hound whined with pain.
Six hundred paces had her bent doubled over with a stitch in her side. She went to her knees when the ground sloped away into a small ravine, nearly causing her and Gehlert to tumble into its depths, the momentum of the heavy sled a terrible burden. It was the dog who saved them, digging his forefeet in and throwing his body weight back to settle on his haunches. She hugged him fiercely, his pants and thundering heartbeat mirroring her own.
Skirting the ravine took them well away from what she reckoned was a straight path outward from the original starting point. She scanned the treetops in a near futile effort to reorient herself. The filtered light told her the sun was at four o’clock, so she deviated slightly to her right and pushed on, wondering where the strength to do so had come from.
Having lost count of her pacing, she chanced another three hundred, using images of what would happen if they got caught to spur her on. Certain they’d walked a half marathon, she chose a thick clump of gorse bushes, insanely wondering how they’d come to flourish this deep in the woods. The hound stepped away from the harness the instant she freed him and staggered sideways to collapse on a bed of leaves and other organic debris. Doggedly working to separate the lower branches of the bushes and wincing at the spiny press of the remaining leaves despite the cover of her thin gloves, she managed to secret the sled, or at least muddle the outline of it. She bent thinner twigs to camouflage it further and made herself take the time to stand back and take as critical a look as she could. Satisfied, she found another clump of the same vegetation and crawled in backward, stopping only when her feet couldn’t press any deeper. She then pressed a dog sized space open to her right.
“Gehlert.” Even a whisper hurt her parched throat, but she was rewarded with a faint thump of his tail. “Come.”
The hound visibly considered her command, ears lowering and eyes drifting before he levered upward, limping to her. He’d pulled more than his weight and was clearly on the brink of exhaustion. Even in the dappled light she could see where the harness had cut harshly into his hide, the thick guard hairs rubbed away. She wanted to cry. Blinking hard, she swallowed against the emotion.
“Here.” She patted the small space beside her and he obligingly wiggled in, somehow turning in place three times before he settled down. Draping an arm over him, she tugged a few branches into place over, poking herself in the cheek as she did so, then dropped her head onto the fertile earth.
After a time, her heart slowed and her breathing returned to normal, as did the hound’s, although he hitched from time to time with a little gasping noise. At last, she could focus on her surroundings and actually hear the forest sounds, the faint creak of living wood, the rustle of a small breeze among the remaining leaves, and the occasional call of a bird. The ground was reasonably warm, despite the approach of winter, and with Gehlert pressed close, she wasn’t terribly uncomfortable. She only wished she’d thought to bring one of the water bottles into her makeshift shelter, her body crying out for moisture after the forced march.
Time crept by and she became aware of how her pistol rested with solid intent against her belly, the barrel grinding into her hip. Seeing that her weapon was the only thing between her and whatever was out there hunting them, she cursed fluently under her breath and hitched up enough to worm a hand beneath her. With some judicious pulling and peeling back of the layers of clothing, she was able to free the butt and work the pistol out from under her, blessing her foresight to set the safety. She brought it up beside her head, one finger through the trigger, palm resting lightly against the pommel, before she flicked the safety off.
The hound stiffened beneath her lax arm and she strained her ears, suppressing a shudder. Perhaps it was one of the others, off course and passing by, still trudging those thousand paces, that had alerted him. Or an animal, picking its way through the trees. Alas, it was the base notes of a number of male voices she heard, far off, their words indistinct, distorted by the numerous trees and the uneven terrain—and the sudden escalation of her heartbeat. Stark terror froze her in place, chilling her blood, making her sex draw up in self-defense. Her belly clenched in on itself and goose flesh broke out all along her spine. Air rushed in and out of her nose as she tried hard not to pant, knowing how foreign the sound would be, how easily heard if someone cared to stop and listen. Her dog shivered in response to her angst and made a faint whine.
That whimper awakened her higher brain functions and she gained control. With a firm squeeze, she signaled Gehlert into silence. They huddled together and waited as she held her weapon at the ready.
Disjointed phrases drifted to her ears, accompanied by faint crashing sounds of something larger than a person.
“…signs of at least…”
“Over here!”
“…nothing…”
She was certain she felt a cold stare focused on their location, something malevolent and inhuman, and remained as still as possible, willing their hidden forms to blend into the surroundings. Nothing to see here. Just more trees and underbrush. She prayed there were no dogs, and cast her eyes down, refusing to risk even that chance of a flicker of awareness.
Minutes passed as she counted the seconds. Three hundred and sixty, then six hundred and sixty. Eleven minutes, give or take. The evil stare lingered in her imagination, or perhaps its owner was still out there, patient as a spider. The adrenalin leached out of her muscles, leaving her spent and far more fatigued than ever. She wouldn’t move, wouldn’t make it easier for whoever it was out there to find her, but felt as though she had nothing left to defend herself if he did. Her pistol seemed impossibly toy-like against the threat and her knife was still in her boot. 



Author Bio:
 
Peri Elizabeth Scott lives in Manitoba, Canada. After closing her private practice as a social worker and child play therapist, she joined her husband in running their seasonal business where they pretend to work well together.

Writing for years, The Time is a departure from her usual romance genre, but it was a story that had to be told!

Peribeth also pens erotic romance under a different pen name and reads everything she can lay her hands on.