An interview with little old me....

Hey folks, I'm featured today on Tricia Drammeh's Authors' To Watch. Nice, fun interview -- you can learn just a little about me and my writing there!

Slip on over there and check it out.

Alone in a hotel room....an excerpt from LETHAL OBSESSION

His instructions had been clear. Check in by 12:30, pick up a package at the front desk, then go to the cabin. Eat at 1 o’clock – he had already chosen her lunch, had room service deliver – and then wait. Do as she pleased, watch television, read, relax.

It will be a long night.

That’s what he had told her on the phone. Right after he told her to drive, giving her only partial instructions. Twice more on the trip he called, and her phone showed a different number. Angela supposed he was being cautious – after all, for all Tanner knew, he was walking into a police trap. Angela thought he had sounded amazingly calm if that was the case.

Certainly calmer than she felt. Angela reached for the soda she had on the nightstand and noticed her hand shaking. God. She hadn’t been this nervous any of the times she had been forced to draw her gun. Even the time she shot a man, Angela had maintained a steeliness in her manner, her emotions.

Now she was scared. This is crazy. That thought played over and over in her mind. She tried lying on the four-poster bed reading a visitor magazine, couldn’t concentrate. She flipped through the channels. Paced the room. Glanced at the clock over and over, each time sighing to see only a couple of minutes had passed.

Finally she went out to the deck, breathed in the mountain air. Though the calendar had turned to September the weather was still hot in Moose Creek, and it was nearly as warm here, but this high up the air felt cleaner, humidity lower, and she stayed on the balcony, leaning over the rail, watching birds fly, trees shiver in the occasional breeze.

Angela lost track of time. Eventually she walked back in – five o’clock. A half-hour.

Slowly she undressed, hands shaking even more now, a tremble of fear rolling up and down her body. Somewhere deep inside, Angela couldn’t help but believe this was the worst idea she had ever had, that something bad was going to happen. To her.

Yet she continued on, removing her jeans, her shirt, unsnapping her bra, slipping panties down to the floor. She opened the package. Inside was a black and red corset, matching lace panties, a black blindfold, red natural fiber rope, a pair of handcuffs, and a ball gag attached to leather straps.

Angela knew she should have felt her face growing warm at this point, or maybe a bolt of excitement shooting through her body. Instead she sat, scared, unable to move. Minutes passed. The ringing of her phone sent a startle through her. She grabbed the phone from the lampstand.

“Are you ready?” Tanner’s voice.

“I…” can’t do this. Those were the words in her head. I’ve changed my mind. Those weren’t the words that slipped from her mouth. “…not yet.” Heather’s right, I do have a self-destructive wish. Maybe I deserve it.

“I’m on my way, you have seven minutes.”

The line went dead.

She dropped the phone on the bed and quickly slipped into the corset. Lace crisscrossed up the front, and she struggled to cinch it tight and tie it off in a nice bow at the top. Finally she finished, slipped on the panties, blindfolded herself, then clicked one cuff around her wrist. She paused, last chance, then put her hands behind her back and shut the second cuff around her other wrist.

Only moments passed before she heard the door open. Angela began shivering, hard enough she knew Tanner could see, and anger flared inside her, anger at herself for losing control, for not even being able to face this without showing such fear.

She heard the door shut, the locks slip in place, then faster than she would have thought he could cover the distance between them his hands cupped her face, lips pressed against hers.

“Please, do not fear me,” he whispered, his breath forcing its way into her mouth. His tongue followed and, as irrational as it might have been, her fear left, replaced by a mad, burning desire. She returned his kiss, so hard his teeth hurt her lips. Angela pulled against the cuffs – she wanted her hands on him, undressing him. She felt heat rising through her body as his hands played down her neck, over her shoulders, across her chest.

Then he was gone.

She gasped.

“My, my, you seem like a wild thing today,” he said, a mocking tone in his voice. “Good thing you’re restrained.”

She moaned, and stepped toward his voice. A second step and then he was behind her, pushing his knees into the back of hers, sending her to the ground, kneeling. She felt his hand play through her hair before his fingers closed and yanked her head back, his other hand playing down her chest, across the exposed portions of her breasts.

Then he was gone.

She remained, on her knees, for what seemed like minutes, then she felt him standing in front, his cock touching her lips. She opened her mouth wide and he entered, hard, cutting off her breathing for a moment. Back and forth he moved – and Angela realized she was tasting skin this time, not latex – and suddenly her fear returned. No protection. He’s not worried about the consequences. Killers usually aren’t bothered by such concerns.

But the fear had little room inside her, held at bay by desire, by a strange and powerful drive to please him, to be abused by him, to know what it would feel like as he used her up, drove her where she had never been.

She kept sucking on his cock each time he drove in.

“Oh Barbie,” he whispered.

His hands on her head, fingers twisting her hair around them, he yanked her head forward as he thrust far into her mouth. Her air cut off momentarily, yet Angela still tried rising, taking him in, tongue playing, teeth grazing his shaft.

He pulled back just a bit and repeated his motions, Over and over.

“Oh good god, my Barbie,” he called out.

She pulled with all her might against the handcuffs – Angela wanted her hands on his legs, hips, buttocks – and she called out his name, as best she could, just as a salty, gooey explosion filled her mouth, slid down her throat. Angela sucked harder, feeling a tightness between her own legs. She tried clinching her muscles there, wanted badly to climax as she drank and licked from his cock, but she could not, and soon he was gone again.

For a time there was no sound, and then his hands were on her arms, behind her, roughly lifting Angela to her feet. She was pushed across the floor, then onto the bed, face-first, much rougher than he had treated her in the past.

“You are a bad woman,” he said, a hint of what she thought might be anger in his voice. “I had intended to tease you for quite some time before doing that, but you…your reaction caught me off guard.”

He tied rope around one wrist, then the other, binding her wrists together, tighter than before. She heard the click of the key turning inside one cuff, then the other and they were gone – he had shown an affinity for rope, rather than the cuffs, and Angela was glad. The feel of the rope was more sensual, more arousing, she thought. Then she felt the ball gag against her lips, shoved into her mouth, the leather straps pulled tight around her head, buckled in back, followed by a hard open-hand smack on her ass.

Angela gasped at the blow.

“You like that?” he asked, following with another smack to her ass. And a third.

Angela pushed her face into the bed and moaned, partly from pain, but partly from – she wasn’t sure what it was. But with each strike – and they continued coming – her body jerked, reflexively, and she felt some strange response from inside, some sort of feeling that this is what she was meant for, deserved, and that aroused her.

Then the spanking stopped.

“My, oh my, your cheeks are red.” That mocking tone again. 

*****

You've been reading an excerpt of my dark erotica-suspense novel, LETHAL OBSESSION. Download your own copy now, here at Amazon for your Kindle or here at Barnes and Noble for your Nook. 

Question 3 -- who are your literary influences?

So much for twenty questions in twenty days, right?

As often happens in my life, I ended up sidetracked a bit by ... well, life. But I do want to make sure I reply to all who responded, so today I'm answering a couple of questions from Thomas Fortenberry.

"I want to know who/what your literary influences are? Do you have a fav character, world, or author you want to tip the hat at and honor?"

That's a tough one, because I don't have a single such influence I can point to and say "That's why I write" or "That's who I want to write like."

When I first became addicted to reading -- I mean really caught up in having to have another book, devouring it and then needing another -- I was reading R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series. I know, that's not exactly what you think of when asking about "literary" influences, but I was a kid, they were easy reading and truly entertaining.

I had already been writing some then, but more as a way to deal with things going on in my life, sort of a method of self-therapy (though I didn't understand it in those terms at the time). But I loved Goosebumps, and that made me want to try writing simply to entertain, to have fun with a story of my own creation.

Later I grew into the more literary works someone with a traditional education might recognize. I enjoyed Hemingway. Yes, I actually read The Old Man and the Sea because I wanted to. And one of my favorite novels is For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I've always felt that Hemingway could be entertaining in a way that keeps you interested in the work, while also exploring deeper truths or themes that set his work apart from simpler popular fiction.

I kind of enjoyed Dickens' work, although the long-winded, over-descriptive method of writing from that time period makes the reading feel like what a sprinter must feel running through waist-deep water. I've read a bit of Dickens because I like this stories, but the writing just kills me.

Poe I love. Absolutely adore.

And of more modern vintage, a couple of years ago I discovered Robert B. Parker. Now, that's a writer. And storyteller. If there is one writer I would most want to emulate, it may be Parker.

I am guessing, at this point, Thomas (and maybe the rest of you) are wondering how in the world someone who lists Hemingway, Poe, and Robert Parker among her literary influences can be writing erotica. It's probably a fair question.

My answer? It's simply what I enjoy. I work hard at making the writing sharp, the sense of story strong and engaging, without relying on the cheap thrills so many have come to associate with erotica. Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to include a high level of heat, with smooth, clear writing, but in the end, for me, it's story. It's the plot, the characters, the evolution of those characters as the plot, and subplots, unfold, that does it for me as a writer.

Will I spend my whole life writing erotica? Who knows? I enjoy it now, and while it's all that I've published it is far from all that I write, but I am proud of the erotica I have written, and I hope to make it fiction that readers will enjoy.

Thanks for the great question Thomas.

If any more of you have a question about me or my writing, please feel free to put it in the comments section or e-mail to me and I'll respond.

Thanks for stopping by

xoxo