Taste of Kiwi: Blog of Author Shelley Munro

This photo shows Milford Sound, Fiordland, New Zealand. I’d never visited this part of New Zealand before. The area is known for its high rainfall, but we had fine weather and spectacular views of the pristine water, mountains and bush. The scenery was stunning.

I’d like to wish everyone a happy, safe and prosperous New Year. All the best for 2011!

After my post about fostering and our lack of success, today we have a new foster dog. Go figure. Her name is Chrissy and she’s recovering from a fractured front leg. We’re meant to keep her quiet with no JUMPING and no RUNNING. Chrissy is like the Energizer Bunny. She’s not much to look at–she’s a Great Dane X–but is very sweet and has a lovely temperament. She’s one-year-old. I have a sneaky suspicion she might have to go back early because I have no idea how to keep her quiet. She’s currently locked in the garage. Any suggestions to help keep her quiet?

I’m guest blogging over at Access Romance today about Small Changes and the Bucket List.
Here’s the link to the Access Romance blog.

I’m busy working on a secret writing project at present. The clock is ticking, which is why I been so quiet recently. I need to turn the project in before 1 Jan and I’m cutting things very close!

Hubby and I have decided it’s time to get a dog again because the foster thing for the SPCA isn’t working out as we hoped. I visited the SPCA yesterday to see the available dogs. We’re looking for a small to medium size dog and they didn’t have any to suit our needs. They had lots of people going through while I was there and leaving with their new pets though. There’s a promising terrier at the Humane Society, which is where we found our last dog. I need to ring them today. I didn’t sleep well last night. It wasn’t my unfinished writing project that kept me awake but rather excitement at having a doggy friend again.

I’m off for a quick walk to wake up and then I’ll be hitting the laptop and writing.

What have you been up to this week?

It’s Christmas eve here in New Zealand and the weatherman has promised us a sunny day tomorrow for Christmas. We have the family coming for lunch so I hope the weatherman gets things right. I stayed home today instead of braving the crowds at the mall. That was a good choice, I think, because there was a last minute rush with shoppers spending up large. I can do without crowds!

I’d like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope your day is full of family, friends, good food and happiness. Stay safe.

Shelley

I mentioned pohutukawa trees over at Berengaria Brown’s blog the other day and promised I’d post a photo.

Pohutukawa trees are known as New Zealand’s native Christmas trees since they come into flower during late November/December. They have scarlet flowers and tend to like growing near the sea on clifftops. Our street sidewalk is lined with pohutukawa trees and it looks very pretty at this time of the year. This photo is the tree outside our house.

My husband pulled off a wonderful surprise for my recent birthday. I knew we were going away but I thought hubby had organized a quick trip to the South Island of New Zealand. On the day we were meant to leave, he woke me up at a very early hour with a cup of tea. When I went to check my email there was a note attached to the computer along with a flashdrive.

The note said, “Good morning, Shelley. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to insert this flashdrive. It will not self destruct in five seconds, but you may!!”

Curious, I inserted the flashdrive and a movie started. Hubby had booked us a cruise on the Volendam and the movie showed all the ports of call. Honestly, I had no idea. He really pulled a swifty on me
Luckily I had a few hours to pack and organize/reschedule the few things I needed to sort out before we traveled up to Auckland to board the cruise ship.

The cruise started in Auckland and stopped in Mt Maunganui, Napier, Wellington, Picton, Akaroa, Dunedin (Port Chalmers), cruised the Milford Sound before crossing the Tasman Sea to Hobart in Tasmainia, Eden on mainland Australia and ending in Sydney. The surprises kept coming with some fun tours booked and a new bracelet for my birthday. We went dolphin watching to see the rare Hector dolphins, wine tasting, hiking, swimming and sightseeing. We even visited the real Middlemarch where I took loads of photos. I half expected one of the Mitchells to round the corner and say hello. In fact, the Mitchells are so real to me, I was a bit disappointed when they didn’t!

We both had a fun time and arrived home rested and ready for Christmas. It was the best birthday ever.

I’m visiting Berengaria Brown today and talking about Christmas. Here’s the link to Berengaria’s Blog.

My husband sprang a surprise on me for my birthday and my holiday ended up a bit longer than I’d planned. Not that I’m complaining. I had a fantastic time. I’ll be back to tell you about it tomorrow. Meantime I have what seems like a million things to do before the family arrive for Christmas lunch.

My special guest today is Victoria Janssen. Victoria writes very sexy historicals for Spice and her new release, The Duke and the Pirate Queen sounds wonderful. I can’t wait to read it. Today she’s talking about Satisfying Endings. Over to Victoria…

Though I read a lot, I was never good at articulating what made a satisfying ending for a novel. Over years of writing, I got better at endings, mostly thanks to fellow-workshoppers Ann Tonsor Zeddies and Holly Black and the trenchant comments they made on my first novel.

The main thing I learned from them was that if certain things don’t happen at the end of a novel, the reader won’t be happy (both have a gift for identifying what those things are). It’s not that those expected things are the same from book to book. It’s that you, the author, arouse expectations, and the reader wants those expectations satisfied; in fact, they want to be better than satisfied. They want you to come up with a solution that is better than they imagined.

Remember, you can always go backwards and insert expectations as you revise!

I liken this method of creating endings to Lois McMaster Bujold’s method of plotting, which seems to involve putting her lead character into the worst situation possible for them, continuing to make it worse, yet somehow pulling out success for them at the end, even if the success is tinged with failures…and somehow making those failures even more intriguing than total success would have been.

I don’t think I’m even close to Bujold’s level of plotting yet, but I did experiment a bit with The Duke and the Pirate Queen by moving back and forth between two plotlines, one primary and one secondary. To do that, I made sure that neither plotline dropped out of sight for too long, and I would mention each one briefly within the other so the reader could keep them both in mind. I used questions and cliffhangers to move from one plotline to the other. And both plotlines had to come together at the end. Events of the secondary plotline made the primary plotline possible, so they came together with (I hope) great satisfaction for the reader.

If you read the book, let me know how I did!

General blub:
The Duke and the Pirate Queen is set in the same world as The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover and features characters who appeared in that novel, Duke Maxime and Captain Imena Leung. Captain Leung is forced to abduct Duke Maxime, who is her employer, to thwart an assassination plot against him. He wants her. She wants him. Unfortunately, issues of birth, rank, and their own pasts are in conflict with their desires. And then there are the pirates, the storm, the hostile islanders…not to mention the sharks.

Excerpt, not from the ending because that would be a spoiler:

“Sir. Pirates, sir. Closing fast. Roxanne recognized the rigging on their mainsail. They’re from the Inland Sea, she says. To the north of the Horizon Empire.”

“Bloody flux in a hurricane.” Imena yanked a tunic over her singlet and belted on her cutlass. “Your Grace, you’d better go below. No, go with Norris. Into the cubby, Norris.”

“Sir,” Norris said.

“No,” Maxime said.

“Yes,” Imena said.

“Pirates aren’t after me in particular,” he said.

“You’re a valuable hostage, and you’re wasting my time,” she said.

“They won’t have any idea who I am. I might be able to help.”

And if pirates overran the ship, she wouldn’t want him to be trapped and helpless. She had a moment’s vision of finding his corpse, mangled and leaking blood onto the deck. Imena threw up her hands. “Fine. Don’t cry to me when they slice your ballocks off and wear them for earrings. Norris, get him a cutlass. And some clothes.”

“No pistols?” he asked as they hurried on deck.

“One shot and you’re left with a short club. No, thank you,” she said. “Stay behind me.”

“What if it comes to a fight?”

“Stay behind me,” she reiterated, though she wasn’t sure what she would do if he refused. She wouldn’t order the crew to subdue him unless his life was in immediate danger.

On deck, the crew were being issued weapons. Chetri stood near the prow, feet braced wide, a cutlass on either hip. Imena followed the direction of his gaze and had no trouble seeing not one, but two ships approaching rapidly, hull-up. He said, his voice eerily calm, “They came out of the sun. We were lucky Kiesha and Ailf had decided to seek a little privacy in the upper nest.”

Imena calculated rapidly in her head, changed a few variables, and calculated again. “It’s too late to run,” she said, regretfully. “Chetri? Am I wrong?”

He shook his head. “The wind is their friend today.”

Roxanne slid down the rigging and trotted over. “Oars, captain,” she said. She took a stone from her pocket and began sharpening the tip of her hook. “They keep oarsmen down below, so there’s no chance of being becalmed. Most carry cannon.”

Despite her years of privateering, Imena had never encountered the pirates of the Inland Sea; only once had she heard of them encroaching on the empire’s sea lanes, and the single ship had been quickly routed by the navy. The tales she’d heard about the Inland Pirates had made her glad of her escape, but now she wished she’d had some direct experience of them.

“I’ve fought them,” Chetri said. “I was a boy, but I remember it well.”

“Weaknesses?” Imena asked.

Chetri shook his head, his earrings chiming. “That would depend on the captain. Some are no worse than we might be. Some drink all sorts of potions before they go into battle, so they feel nothing and fear no one. The maddest of them build an immunity to certain poisons, so they may hold poisoned mastic in their mouths and thus spit poison at their enemies.”

Imena said, “We’ll expect the worst. Chetri, you’ll take the offensive fighters, but hold them unless you see an advantage in attack. Roxanne, you’ll command defense.”

Victoria Janssen website
Victoria Janssen blog

My special guest today is Paige Tyler and she’s talking about her recent release, which features zombies. I was certainly curious about how she came up with the idea and how it would all work. Today Paige gives us the inside scoop.

Thanks so much for letting me guest blog today!

Readers often ask me how I come up with ideas for my books, so I thought I’d give you a little behind-the-scenes peek at how I came up with my new release, a paranormal erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave called DEAD SEXY.

Before I say anything else though, isn’t that cover too hot for words?! When the art department sent it to me, I probably gazed at it for a good ten minutes in mouth-drooling appreciation before I could email them back telling the artist it not only rocked, but totally fit the book. The hero is “Dead Sexy,” after all!

Okay, back to the story and how I came up with it. First, to set the stage, I need to share a little something with you about myself. Well, about my hubby and me, actually. We love zombie movies, from the George Romero gems to Shaun of the Dead and everything in between, including “Walking Dead,” the new series on AMC. You just can’t go wrong with a movie full of walking dead people, can you? Well, if you’ve ever seen a zombie movie (or even you haven’t), then you know the creatures aren’t the heroes of the film. I mean, how can they be, right? They’re all dead and decayed and downright unattractive, not to mention pretty damn scary. Which was why you can imagine my surprise when my hubby suggested I write an erotic romance about a zombie hero. I was like, you’re kidding, right? What woman in her right mind would fall in love with a dead guy? No way could that possibly work, or so I thought.

Turns out, my hubby wasn’t kidding. In fact, he started working up ideas for the story.

“The hero didn’t have to be a zombie all the time,” he told me. “Think outside the box – take a little literary license!”

Okay, I thought. I suppose I could be open minded.

My hubby told me that in his out-of-the-box world, the hunky hero got cursed by an evil Voodoo priestess and only turns into a zombie sometimes.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“And when he does go zombie, he doesn’t have to be like the kind in the movies,” my hubby added. “Well, he has to look like one, you know all dead and stuff, but he doesn’t have to be a mindless creature or attack humans or eat anything gross.”

So, brains are completely out, thanks goodness!

“Think Jensen Ackles or Jared Padelecki, with a really, really, really dark tan – (yes, my hubby knows I’ve got a thing for the Supernatural hunks!) – well, maybe more gray and black than tan, but you get the idea.”

I thought about that for a minute. “So, the hero’s dead, but he’s still sexy, is that what you’re saying?”

“Exactly,” he said, giving me a grin as my eyes lit up with understanding.

By that point, my hubby had pretty much sold me on the idea. Of course, I knew if I ran with it, I was going to have to sell it to a publisher, and I knew that could be tough since the hero is a zombie. But I ran with it anyway and ended up with a full-length novel. And it came out pretty damn good, if I do say so myself! I still had to find a publisher for it, though.

About this same time, It just so happens that several of my other books were in the process of being picked up by Ellora’s Cave and I thought what the heck? Why not pitch it to my editor there and see what she thinks? So I did, and she told me to send it to her. She was interested to see how I handled the whole zombie-thing. Well, long story, short, she liked it. A lot! My zombie romance with it’s dead-sexy hero had a home! I was thrilled and my hubby walked around for a week with a smug, “I-told-you-so” look on his face.

I’ve been getting the word out there about DEAD SEXY ever since I signed the contract for it and I’m thrilled with the interest from readers who can’t wait to get their hands on it! I can’t wait for them to read it, too!

Now that I’ve revealed the story behind the story, I thought I’d share the blurb and an excerpt just to whet your appetite for more!

Blurb:

Romance author Simone Kent thinks she might just have found the most perfect guy in all of New York City – in bed and out. But Drake Parrish is about as far from perfect as any man can get. Eight years ago, he was cursed by an evil Voodoo priestess to live part of his life as a zombie. Since then, he has lived like a recluse on New York’s Upper East Side, afraid to go out for fear he’ll suddenly turn into one of the walking dead.

The sex if the hottest either of them has ever experienced and Simone discovers just how naughty she can be with Drake, while he finds himself feeling things for her that he hasn’t felt in a very long time. When the Voodoo priestess learns of their relationship, however, she comes after him again. She is determined to make sure he won’t have a future with Simone, even if that means killing both him and the woman he loves.

Excerpt:

As she led him up the steps to the second floor, Drake found himself wondering if she would ask him in. And wondering what he’d say if she did. When they came to a stop outside the door to her apartment, Simone turned to give him a smile.

“I had a great time tonight.”

“Me, too.”

She caught her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth and chewed on it thoughtfully as if unsure what she wanted to say next. It was probably an unconscious gesture, something she did whenever she was thinking, but to him, it was sexy as hell and all he could think about was kissing her.

Surely, one kiss couldn’t hurt. He desperately wanted to. He hadn’t kissed a woman in so long. It would be nice to see if he still remembered how.

Before he could stop himself, Drake tilted Simone’s face up to his and pressed his mouth to hers.

She tasted just as sweet and delicious as he thought she would. Her lips were soft and pliant under his as she kissed him back, her tongue eagerly seeking his out.

Drake groaned and slid his hand into her hair, deepening the kiss. Simone sighed into his mouth, running her hands up the front of his shirt to grasp his shoulders. The feel of her touch was like a tonic to his deprived soul and he let out another groan, deeper this time.

He ran his free hand up her side and around to her breast, cupping it through the soft material of her dress. He couldn’t stop himself and apparently, Simone didn’t want him to. She moaned and arched against him. He could feel the heat of her pussy through their clothes as she pressed up against his hard cock. Damn, she felt good.

Drake drew her bottom lip into his mouth and gently suckled on it before slowly kissing his way along the delicate curve of her jaw. Simone clutched his shoulders and tilted her head back. He eagerly trailed a path of hot kisses down her neck, then back up, his mouth finding hers again. Simone looped her arms around his neck, pulling him in even closer as their tongues met.

Down the hall, a door slammed, reminding him where they were.

Drake dragged his mouth away from hers, his breathing ragged as he tried to regain control. He had to get it together because he was about five seconds away from doing something really stupid. Like taking her to bed. “I should go.”

Her lips curved into a sexy, flirtatious smile. “Or you could stay.”

God, how he wanted to. But as much as he’d love to spend the rest of the night exploring every inch of her body, he couldn’t take the chance he might go zombie on her right in the middle of sex. Talk about coitus interruptus, And it had already been almost four days since he last turned, which meant he was already pushing his luck.

“You don’t know how much I want to,” he groaned. “But I can’t.”

Simone looked up at him with those big, blue eyes. “Why not?”

“Because I…” He hesitated, trying to come up with something that would sound believable. “I have a column due in the morning and I haven’t even started on it yet.” She knew all about deadlines, so she would understand that. Besides, he did have a column to write, it just wasn’t due until next week. “Rain check?”

She looked disappointed, but she smiled anyway. “Absolutely. How does coming over for dinner tomorrow night sound?”

It would be crazy to agree when he could be so close to having an episode, but he couldn’t say no. Not when she asked in that soft, sultry voice. “Sounds great.”

“Good. Be here at seven.”

“Seven it is.”

She pulled him down for another long, slow kiss on the mouth. “Don’t be late.”

His mouth twitched. “I won’t.” He bent his head to kiss her again, then groaned. “If I don’t go now, I’ll be here all night.”

Simone laughed. “Would that be such a bad thing?”

“Not to me, but my editor at Money Issues might not be too understanding when he doesn’t find my column sitting in his inbox tomorrow.”

She sighed. “Deadlines can be a real pain in the butt sometimes. Okay, go home and write your column. I’ll cuddle up with a bowl of ice cream instead.”

He chuckled. “Sounds better than taking a cold shower, which is what I’m going to be doing when I get home.” He closed his mouth over hers once more. “See you tomorrow night, beautiful.”

Resisting the urge to pull her into his arms again, Drake turned and walked down the hallway toward the stairwell. At the top of the steps, he glanced over his shoulder to see Simone standing where he’d left her, a sexy curve to her lips.

It took every ounce of strength he possessed not to go back and pin her against the door for one more long, lingering kiss. God, what he wouldn’t give to spend the night with her. Man, it was going to take more than a cold shower to get her out of his head.

Hope you enjoyed the excerpt and that you can’t wait to read more! You can get DEAD SEXY from Ellora’s Cave at http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-8917-50-dead-sexy.aspx

You can also check out the trailer here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5D_YH6bYrE

If you decide to pick up DEAD SEXY, let me know how you like it!

*hugs*
Paige

http://www.paigetylertheauthor.com
http://paigetylertheauthor.blogspot.com