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Great Expectations

A few weeks ago I was in line at my favorite biscuit shop waiting for my order. If you like biscuits, imagine the most perfect, mouthwatering, golden biscuit loaded with butter. Hey… I exercised that day! I think.

These biscuits honestly do make my mouth water and like all truly yummy things, my anticipation–my expectations were high.

Someone messed up the recipe that morning.

Who knows what they did but my biscuit just wasn’t right. Too dry. Not enough butter. And it tasted like they’d mistaken baking soda for flour.

Yeah. It was bad. And I had a major sad going on for the rest of the day. I told you about the built up anticipation, right? The high expectations?

It sucks to be let down. There, I’ve said it. It’s true! I hate expecting one thing and getting something completely unexpected.

With books, we run the risk of Great Expectations, Great Letdowns every time we crack open the pages (er…turn on the ereader.) Even with authors we know and love there’s that potential for disappointment. An author could deviate from her standard genre or style. Perhaps the book just didn’t come together as well as everyone (the author, publisher, and reader included) had hoped it would.

I admit that after a few let downs it can be hard to want to shell out money on another book that I may not like. But there’s always the lure that the next book for my keeper shelf could be waiting for me to buy it.

I was talking my friend Pam about books and reviews and she mentioned a writer friend of hers who’d gotten a 2 star book review from a really popular review magazine. In Pam’s mind the reviewer didn’t get her friend’s writing. And the genre might have had something to do with it too.

I suggested that the reviewer didn’t get what she was expecting. So often these expectations are set well before we start reading. There’s that anticipation of a great read simply because we’re (okay, I’m) hopeful we’ll love it. We might love the title or the author or perhaps we’re a fan of the publisher or imprint. Or maybe it’s book number 5 in a series and the first four books were holy-cow-I’ve-got-to-tell-everyone-I-know awesome. Or maybe we were expecting a romantic suspense and got a suspense with romantic elements.

Often times if my expectations aren’t met, it’s hard for me to look past what could be a perfectly good book or movie and regard it based on what it is versus what I thought it was.

Do you have any examples of having Great Expectations only to have a Great Letdown?

Selena Blake writes erotic paranormal and contemporary romance. First published in 2008, her series Stormy Weather has been on the best seller lists and nominated for awards. She’s a fan of action movies, Diet Coke, Milky Way bars and thunderstorms, not necessarily in that order. Learn more about her online at http://www.selena-blake.com or catch her at facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorSelenaBlake

Thanks for stopping by Selena!

Come on over!

Happy Birthday Lissa!

Want to know more? Here’s the blurb:

One woman, one bond, one final battle … can even Nexi Jones defeat the deepest darkness of evil?

Meet Nexi Jones—Witch, Guardian and now, Lady of the Underworld. Embracing her new role, Nexi begins the task of changing a world led by darkness. But not everyone is happy to see her rise to power. Before long, a resistance within the Underworld is forming.

As the darkness begins to close in around her, Nexi’s magical abilities flourish in response—forcing Nexi to dig down deeper into her past to discover this source and why she was gifted with such incredible strength.

With her Guardian, Kyden by her side, Nexi will meet her greatest challenge yet as she begins to discover that fate might have been a bitch, but she was a bitch with a plan.

Wow. Where you can get it? Here.

I bet you want to know more about Stacey, huh?

Here goes:

“My novels are lighthearted fantasy, heart squeezing, thigh-clenching romance, and even give a good chuckle every now and again. My journey as a writer began as a way to keep my brain alive since being a stay at home mom can be a little let’s say―numbing. It was an escape from screaming kids, dirty diapers and plain old mom duty. It started as a hobby, but as the stories progressed it became a passion. Now, I indulge at nap time, especially the juicy bits! Every mom needs a good thrill!”

Website – www.staceykennedy.com
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/profile.php?id=100000956942180
Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3473046.Stacey_Kennedy
Twitter – http://twitter.com/Stacey_Kennedy

PRAISE FOR THE WILLOW

RT Book Reviews
“…Kennedy has created a world that readers will want to visit again and again!” Dawn Crowne

PRAISE FOR THE WICKED

Bitten by Paranormal Romance
“Do you love magic, dominant men, adventure, humor, evil villains and a talking cat? Well here is an excellent book for you to try.” Laurie

PRAISE FOR THE DEVIL’S KISS

The Romance Reviews
“The Devil’s Kiss is my favorite of the series so far. It packed such an emotional punch for me that it had me buzzing long after I’d finished reading it.” Belinda

——

Go on. Get.

Go buy First and Last now!

Y’all, I’ll confess that I’m a naughty hostess who totally meant to read the entire book before today. (Sorry Rachel) I’m on page 83 of 226 and will tell you this, as of right now, there are three stories in this book that made my toes curl and my hair sizzle. No lie!

Big-Bed Sex by Donna George Storey is the first story in this antho and wow! What a way to kick things off. When you read something this hot, you know it’s going to be good from there on out!

The Silver Belt by Lana Fox was full of whoa and awesome. I mean, dayum. This is the kind of push the envelope piece that totally got to me. (I’m so on the look out for more from this author.)

The Five Senses by Rachel Kramer Bussel. As someone who’d written her own piece about the five senses (my story totally flopped, btw), I couldn’t help but admire how someone could make those five simple senses so incredibly erotic. You try to make “smell” sexy–not likely to happen.

Want a peak of your own? Head on over to Amazon.com from the comfort of your own home (you can read a few pages of what’s inside!), or check it out at your local bookseller. I’m telling you, 83 pages in and I know it’s worth the price.

http://eileenandrews.com/?p=765

“I don’t deserve you,” he repeated. “My life has been nothing but blood and death. Even before I became a vampire, that’s all I ever knew. And you’re nothing like that. You’re…”
“Stubborn.”
“Beautiful.”

Now that you’ve read that, head over to the official Six Sentence Sunday blog and when you’re done there, come visit me at Liquid Silver’s blog where I’m doing some flash fiction about chivalry today.

So you should have just come from Jeanne Barrack’s site. Now, for the rest of the stories, you’ll want to head on over to Vivian Arend’s site . If for some reason, you need to start at the beginning, head back to the SEx blog.

Here’s a list of everyone participating in the tour:

Roscoe James
Juniper Bell
Jeanne Barrack
Emily Ryan-Davis
Vivian Arend
PG Forte
Jolie Cain
Christa Paige
Alanna Coca

Keep commenting and letting us know how we’re doing!

First thing’s first. Jamieson, tease us with a brief (rated R) excerpt to Hard:

More than anything, Owen remembered the taste of him.

You never forget the first one. Nineteen and horny, they did what guy friends did together. Daniel and him used look at porn in Owen’s bedroom. He could smell it even now: the scent of fresh paint, sweat and heat. He remembered the way Daniel smelled sitting beside him: spicy, as if his skin was burning.

Sometimes, after they were really turned on, they would lie next to each other, rub their crotches together. Sometimes, Daniel would even lie on top of him, pressing his crotch into Owen’s.

He remembered how good it felt to rub his body against Daniels.  How flushed he got in his cheeks, his crotch so hot it felt as if it would go ablaze. He knew that it wasn’t right to get hard when fooling around with another boy.

But Owen wanted to, needed to, anyways.

It had been an eye opener. He had not been able to get an erection while thinking of girls, but one thought of his friend’s body pressed against his and he felt hard all over.

Daniel always said he was straight. “I’d never fuck a guy,” he’d say. “I wouldn’t know what to do.” But there would be a look in Daniel’s eyes that had made Owen wonder. Sometimes, Owen caught Daniel looking at his crotch, at his hard dick straining against the front of his jeans.

At night, after Daniel had gone home, Owen would lie on his bed and think of Daniel. He pictured Daniel’s straight brown hair that framed his face in crude spikes, the greenness of his best friend’s eyes.

He would picture the tight mound of Daniel’s crotch as his own dick strained against the fabric of his pants.

These thoughts would take him into sleep. In his dreams, he was able to do what he knew could never happen; he was able to touch Daniel. He was able to run his hands all over Daniel’s hard body.

He would wake, his sheets soaked with cum, his dick still hard and dripping.

After the euphoria, a slight sadness would settle in. Owen knew that dreams could never be reality. Daniel would reject him if he knew how Owen felt. Owen knew Daniel would never talk to him again if he had any inkling of Owen’s feelings.

If Daniel found out, he would leave Owen and Owen would lose the man he loved. He had been friends with Daniel so long that the boy he had been was a thing of the past. Instead, all Owen could see was a gorgeous man.

But Daniel would never love him back.

All that Daniel worried about came into sharp focus on a hot summer afternoon. The windows were open and a light summer breeze filled the air. Owen’s parents were at the cottage and he had the house to himself.

Except for Daniel that is. Knowing that Owen had the house to himself, Daniel had rented some porn and was brining it over with a few stolen beers. Owen wondered if it was wise to drink something that would lower his inhibitions around Daniel.

He had enough of a hard time controlling himself around his friend as it was.

But Owen could never say no to Daniel. Not for anything.

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Woot! Thanks Jamieson! And now for even more of a tease for you:

ABOUT HARDENING – A Free Ebook by Jamieson Wolf

For those of you who’ve read the novel, you’ll know that it has a happy ending but some questions are left unanswered.

Though HARD felt complete, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what happened afterwards. I wanted to explore the storyline a bit further and see what would happen.

HARDENING is the result. I sincerely hope you enjoy it. It’s a heck of a lot more racy than HARD but I had a wonderful time writing it.

You can download your very own copy of HARDENING for FREE by clicking here:  http://www.box.net/shared/g81cq700gp

If you haven’t read HARD, you can still read HARDENING and enjoy it. But I think you’ll get the full emotional impact if you read both stories back to back. You can get your copy of HARD from the lovely people at Breathless Press by clicking here:  www.breathlesspress.com

Enjoy!

Jamieson Wolf

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Thanks for the privilege of posting this Jamieson. Best wishes!!

(p.s. y’all…you might consider heading over to Jamieson’s web site. I heard a rumor about some more great freebies and fun stuff related to Hard.)