No Holds Barred

Sunday's are promo days at Shapeshifter Seductions and even though there isn't a shifter in sight I've been invited to promo my February release from Ellora's Cave. I hope you enjoy it!

NO HOLDS BARRED
by Paris Brandon
Copyright 2009

Here's the blurb:

What's a woman to do when the younger man she can't forget tracks her down after a night of passion, meant only to celebrate her fortieth birthday? If you're Raphella Dotti, you succumb to a year of Sunday morning, long-distanced phone calls with thirty year old Jake Truhorn and end up agreeing to celebrate your next birthday with a week of unbridled, no holds barred, anything goes sex. No problem, right?

Unless you have a few trust issues, gravity challenged breasts, the hips of a Sicilian peasant and are prone to gut wrenching, chest constricting panic attacks. Unless the man you’re spending that week with looks like he walked off the cover of a romance novel and has an agenda that includes Sex Toy Poker, the joys of uninhibited outdoor sex, painting you nude, cellulite and all, a fantasy three-some for two and entrusting him with a heart you’re afraid of losing.

And here's the excerpt!

Ella set her empty champagne flute on the passing waiter's tray. She didn't need champagne to appreciate the large tuxedo-clad Viking stalking across the room but another glass would be all it took to talk her into believing that she, Raphaella Dotti, the handsome Dotti daughter, had put the determined glint in Jake Truhorn's blue-gray eyes.

She'd caught a glimpse of the reclusive young artist's back earlier. His signature dark blond braid trailing between his very broad shoulder blades had fascinated her and then he'd turned around. Tall, muscular and Nordic didn't hurt. Oh yum. And it was her birthday.

He walked past beautiful women in designer dresses who touched him in passing, a group of Fortune 500 donors who'd flocked to the trendy Chicago gallery Snap! to support the local Inner City Youth Center by bidding on donated artwork including New York artist Truhorn's newest mural entitled The Forgotten. He passed a harried tray-laden waiter, deftly snagging a flute of champagne while he still pinned her with his gray-blue gaze.

Happy Birthday to me, Happy birthday to me, she hummed quiety as her panties dampened.

"You look...like you can't decide what to do next," he said, insinuating the flute into her hand.

The timbre of his voice vibrated through her and her nipples tightened. She couldn't keep the smile off her face. "And you look interesting." And young. Happy Fortieth, Ella!

An hour later she found out just how interesting and young he was while they were enjoying a glass of wine and oysters on the half-shell in one of Chicago's lesser known treasures, the Wine Cellar. Jake was thirty, impressed by her passion for her job as style editor for the local magazine Whimsy and everything from his infectious smile to his velvety voice lulled her into her favorite bit of foreplay--the chase. He was still looking into her eyes and smiling when he suggested a little exercise.

The line charmed her until they actually walked the six blocks to his hotel, his arm around her at her first shiver. The September breeze had nothing to do with her body temperature. A delicious ripple of anticipation and the Viking marauder with the hungry glint in his very determined gaze was what made her pull her black silk shawl tighter.

She thought he'd kiss her in the elevator but his hand barely brushed her fingertips and the little zing was like an electrical shock sizzling through her. When the doors opened he took her hand and drew her down the hall into his room, backing her against the door as he closed it.

Delicious heat radiated from somewhere behind his very starched shirt and the thought that she'd never be cold again slipped through her mind before she could stop it and then his hot insistent mouth was on hers and she stopped thinking.

Have a great day,
Paris

Hello from Paris!

I'm really thrilled to be part of Shapeshifter Seductions! I'm new to the paranormal world, shapeshifters included. Several years ago I had an idea for a shapeshifter novel and I've always loved the big cats so I knew that's where I was headed.

My first jaguar shifter novel, tentatively titled "Blood on the Moon" is a finalist in Passionate Ink's, Stroke of Midnight contest and I couldn't be more thrilled! Passionate Ink is an Erotica Chapter of Romance Writers of America. If RWA is the voice of romance then Passionate Ink is the voice of erotica. They give erotica authors a place to celebrate.

On a personal note, after years having family members shake their heads over my little "hobby" I finally got to tell my mom that I my erotic novella was being published by Ellora's Cave. Something must have gotten lost in the translation because my brother called the next day and his first words were, "What the hell are you writing that I can't read!"

I then explained, very patiently that Ellora's Cave was publishing me electronically. He thought it was cool and asked when he could buy it! My hubby and sons have always been very supportive. In fact, they tell everyone what I do!

Although I'm not new to writing; I've been with RWA for thirteen years, I am new to being published. My first contemporary novella, "No Holds Barred" was published this past February by EC and was the culmination of a life-long dream. This one doesn't have shifters but don't hold that against it!

Hopefully I'll have an update on my shifter novel, soon. very soon.

Happy writing,
Paris

A quick intro, a bit of a ramble and a short little tease...

It's Friday!! The work week has come to an end...Yay! The week-end is just beginning...double Yay!! And it's my turn to blog...Woot!

So I thought I'd do a quick intro, ramble a bit and leave you with a short little tease...

Hi, I'm Serena. I like warm summer days, hot summer nights and sexy men that turn into animals, literally! Huh, that sounds suspiciously like a 70's pick-up line, next thing you know I'll be off on a tangent about Pina Colada's and some deep-seated need to get caught in the rain.



Now if I could get caught doing this in the rain with the hero of my story, well I say deluge!

What else can I tell you about me...

I write paranormal, erotic and contemporary stories. I don't take myself too seriously. And I'm super excited to mention that my book The Challenge, coming soon from Liquid Silver Books, is also a finalist in the Passionate Ink, Stroke of Midnight contest!

Well, there you have it, a really small amount of info about me...Check
yeah, erhm, a lot of rambling ~oops~ ...Check
And, Oh the tease...

Blurb:
Marina Jamison is a mystery. As a half-breed shapeshifter, she lives on the fringe of were-jaguar society. Though her love for pride leader Bastian LaRue is forbidden, she finds herself tied to him by a bond stronger than their individual wills, a psychic link born from their one-night stand. When her secret is revealed, she is scorned and excluded. Neither Bastian nor the pride can accept a half-breed queen.

Excerpt:
She was in trouble.

Something changed her two years ago. Their first night together had been out of control. He’d dominated her, spanked her, and brought her release after erotic release. Somewhere amidst the orgasms, she’d formed a connection. She could sense his emotions. Her body tingled with sensations that were not her own, but his. Impressions of ownership flowed into her, marking her as his, and in the end what had she done? Rather than running, as any sane woman over her head would, she’d reveled in the attention and begged for more.

Only when he’d fallen into a much-needed sleep had she hobbled away, sick with the knowledge that her one-night stand had gone drastically wrong. Two things became clear as she’d left the warmth and safety of his arms: one, a single night of sex with Bastian ruined her for any other man, human or shifter, and two, she’d become strangely attached to him.

Thankfully, the bike’s rumbling pipes covered the sob slipping past the barrier of her lips. No doubt about it, she was in trouble.

Marina tightened her hold as the bike shot onto a familiar dirt drive leading to his cabin. Thighs wide, her bare flesh nestled the top of his ass and the vibration of the bike drove her arousal higher. How typical of her to be both afraid and aroused at the same time.

The tease...Check
Have a great week-end everyone!

Getting Vampy

Hi’yall, I’m the vampire writer of the group. Actually, the hero of my first book is a gargoyle, the sworn enemy of the vampires by blood and battle, but after I wrote “The End,” my vampire villains wouldn’t let me go.

When I started writing The Combat I was a Stokerist. Everything I knew about vampires I’d I learned on t.v. And that’s a pretty confusing smorgasbord of facts. I stuck to my Bram Stoker roots; the vampire is the villain. He tries to seduce the heroine away from her true hero.

So when I wrote The Combat, I gave my heroine Gabrielle her own hero; a Guardian protector. He’s a gargoyle who comes awake when called to protect an innocent. I wanted to write a scary story, and vampires provided a perfectly horrifying bad guy.

But that didn’t stop me from having problems. Other than the whole “I vant to suck your blood” and “sunlight will make me burst into flames” thing, I felt a little bit lost when it came to writing my vampires. Could they eat garlic? Touch silver? And what about their physical form?

I consulted two girlfriends who are die-hard Buffy fans. What do you call it when a vampire gets all evil looking? Is this his demon form? Is he technically considered a demon when he gets all “vampy” as my friends call it?





My husband and I are huge fans of Reaper. I absolutely love Sam, Andy, Ben, Sock, and whoever cast Ray Wise as the devil is absolutely brilliant. Ben’s girlfriend in season two is a demon--not a vampire, but a true demon. She’s a fallen angel, and a shapeshifter who takes the form of a really cute girl, but her demon form is quite monstrous. So if demons are technically fallen angels, what do you call a vampire when he gets all eviled-out?




These may sound like unimportant issues, but when you’re trying to write a book (that turns into three books) and keep your facts straight, you gotta know what you’re talking about.

Because vampires have always been bad guys in my world (and gave me nightmares as a kid) writing a book where a vampire wasn’t a bad guy took some effort. But The Combat broke me in, and The Collision was born. Vampires are still bad boys and it takes a special kind of woman to match them, but thanks to romance novels and HBO’s True Blood, I’m beginning to see the appeal.

Vampire novels are hugely popular, so I’m curious to hear what fans of romantic fiction think. Who are your favorite authors, and what do they call their vamps? What are your favorite vampire traits? What is plausible to you, and what isn’t? What do you want to see in your next vampire hero?

First, the Red Lioness

Meow-greetings, everyone. Since this is my very first bloggie with our brand spanking new... *and I’m certain some of our authors have sexy spanking scenes in their books*... purring-back on topic, my lovely kittens, I’ll begin with my very first e-published novella available from the wonderful Liquid Silver Books.
RED LIONESS TAMED is also my first shapeshifter story. True, I have tons o’ WIPs which features some form of shapeshifting, including a goddess who can transform into any animal she desires... but, tail-flicking I digress again... Sun Rocket Kahoqua, my heroine, has a human form, a cat-human form and she can shift into full lioness. Not to mention if she’s sexually aroused she shifts her into ‘gotta-mate’ catwoman form, as seen depicted on the cover art.
The cover art, by the exceptionally talented painter, David Burton, is a story unto itself, and was one of most fun parts in getting Red Lioness ready for publication. David spent a lot of time and energy painting my red lioness girl just right. She’s so perfect it’s as if she stepped out of my imagination and onto his paint brush. I get the happy shivers every time I look at my red lioness woman with her tassel tail.
This action, sci fi story of seduction in space was an absolute blast to write. Sun Rocket is a kickass, ball-busting, chase-down-the-bad-cats woman who suddenly finds herself trapped by the hero, Captain Draxen Z, a space-faring loner, who is all about protecting his homeworld.
Yowl-enough said... here’s the intro, blurb and an excerpt.

Intro ~

If yer partial to a futuristic adventurous romp of lust and love on the high celestial seas of space...if you have a yen for those cat shifter types, lament no longer...
And watch out if yer a bad kitty shifter roaming the galactic ports, there’s a kick-ass Lioness on your fleeing furry tail.
Year 3051, the Earth calendar used on Terra-Mars, a terra-formed moon orbiting Mars, the home world of ‘Sun Rocket’ Kahoqua of the Windgrass Clan.

Blurb ~

What does a lioness shifter do when she's suddenly trapped in an unknown space cruiser's cargo hold? Then, despite her ability to savagely defend herself, she's trapped beneath the handsome human Captain. And next, cat-scratching ridiculously, she finds herself carnal-trapped, and meow yowl! bound by leather straps in his bed?
Answer: She fights tooth and claw. Problem: The loner Captain is nova-hot at seducing her.
~~~

Chapter One excerpt:

"Frax! My brain feels like it’s been spun out of cobwebs," Sun Rocket muttered. She squeezed her eyelids open and shut several times, shifting slightly on the hard metallic surface. Expelling a breath, she attempted to open her eyes. "Frax it to the sun! More cobwebs," she angrily complained.

Pressing her hand over her eyes, she sniffed carefully. Sterile, her surroundings, except for harmless micro dust--except for her--about half a day away from a bath or a good tongue licking. Experimentally she shoved with her foot. Half her usual body weight. She was probably inside some cargo hold, orbiting or...

Sun Rocket shot up to a sitting position. Her head spun at some undefined warp speed. Blinking rapidly, she forced one eye to remain open, seeing ubiquitous gray cargo containers randomly stacked around her. "How the friggin’ frax...?"
She fought to stand upright, assisted by the lessened gravity, and crashed into a tall stack of empty containers. Stumbling into more containers, she kicked at them, managing to knock them out of her way while her head whirled like a new-forming galaxy.

"Not like there’s going to be a port window in here," she muttered derisively. Both eyes open now, she watched the wall circle before her impaired vision like a dimensional portal.

Steadier and steadier on her feet, her brain cobwebs clearing, she automatically reached for her left flank phase pistol. Gone! "Dang the villain! Of course!" she reminded herself. All her weapons would have been stripped during transport into the cargo hold by the beam.

What cargo hold?

Frustrated, wild, she lashed out at the nearest containers with her combat-trained feet--scattering them, semi-floating them away from her. Spying a dark, glass-looking monitor at the top of thehold, Sun Rocket shoved the nearest containers beneath it. Rapidly she threw containers together like a tower. Heedlessly she leapt up the huge makeshift steps, leaned her palms against the wall. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to examine the convex reddish monitor--not a type she knew.
"Get down from there!" a highly irritated male voice commanded in third galactic vernacular.

Wobbling precariously, Sun Rocket knelt on one knee. "Not like I can’t land on my feet like a cat," she murmured, amused for an instant. Gazing down toward the voice’s origin, she saw the fierce male’s flowing locks, well past his shoulders--dark red amber. The humanoid-appearing male glared up at her, hands planted on his hips like a holo-romance buccaneer. From her view, the rest of him could be compared favorably to a lean, yet beautifully muscled hero. Even his garments--a style unknown to her in her far-flung galactic travels tracking down, taking in or eliminating cat shifters who had gone bad--even his garments were reminiscent of swashbuckling ancient Earth.

"Who are you?" she called down to him, resting on her haunches. It was her good luck moon, she was still in human form. Not every galactic race "appreciated" feline shifters. To put it tuna-fish mildly.

"This is my vessel. Get down now!"

Sun Rocket was surprised smoke didn’t billow forth from his ears and his mouth. If he’d been a dragon shifter--well, she could be coughing out lungfuls of nasty smoke.

"You failed to answer my question," she flung down to him, tensed herself to do battle.
Ominously he pressed his belt, eliminating the gravity field. Her tower of containers floated, as she now floated, helpless. The next moment she fell downward, the gravity restored. Forcing herself not to shift, and land on her four cat paws, Sun Rocket twisted to land in a roll.
~~~

For the entire first chapter ~ RED LIONESS TAMED.
~~~

Have a Merry Month of May
And may your most romantic dreams come true...

Savanna

Savanna Kougar ~ Run on the Wild Side of Romance ~

Sun Rocket & Captain Draxen Z invite you to read their love story ~
RED LIONESS TAMED ~ Lioness shifter lost in space with a loner captain who will do anything to keep her, even seduction by leather ~ *5 Flowers* from Book Cravers ~ Available from Liquid Silver Books, Molten Silver ~ http://liquidsilverbooks.com/books/redlionesstamed.htm ~ a spicy sci fi ~ http://liquidsilverbooks.com/ ~
~~~~~~

Sun morning snip-it...

So I couldn't resist starting my Sunday with a snip-it of my upcoming book, The Challenge. See, I've been playing over at the LSB forum as well as reading some awesome free reads on our friend Savanna's blog. ~sigh~ Do stop by and check them out, you won't be sorry...

Anyway, I decided to post a little tease of my own and where better than the Shapeshifter blog.... Enjoy!

The smell of sunshine and sex rolled him. Sounds dimmed and lights flashed brighter. His stomach hit the floor with his body soon to follow if he didn’t do something quickly.

“Bast, you okay? You’re looking pale, dude.”

“Yeah.” No, he wasn’t all right. His freaking knees were weak. “Uh, Gun, I’ll need you to smooth things over with the casino manager, ‘kay?” At least one body part didn’t share the absurd weakness of his knees—he was half-hard from the delicious smell of a woman made only for him.

“Sure, no sweat, I’ll play nice to the casino manager. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes.” His response came with a bit more gravel than he’d hoped, but all he could focus on was the smell and getting the other male far away from what was his.

“Solid. I’m out.” Thankfully, the enforcer had paid enough attention to his leader to know when it was time to go. They couldn’t afford to have a go at it here in a public venue.

There was another cat in the pile and she belonged to him. Hell, he’d found his mate at the bottom of a mass of smelly humans, in a noisy casino and miles from pride land. Amazing.

In a flurry of action, he dug into the remaining humans piled before him, moving them and their scents away from the smell of his woman.

“Please. Get. Off. Me.” The husky voice finished the job started by her scent. His cock stretched to full length and swelled fiercely against the zipper of his jeans. If he weren’t careful, he’d be a eunuch before he was a mate. Not a happy thought.

Auburn hair, tangled from the recent struggle, came into view as the last human in the pile fell away. Olive green eyes sparkled as he offered her his hand. A shockwave of sexual heat raged from his balls to his head. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but her pinchable cheeks and real womanly curves spoke of her earthiness. This was the kind of woman able to take a man of his size and cushion him in her femininity; wrap him in her scent and take his breath away only to give it back with her kiss.

“Thank you.” The tips of her fingers barely touched his, but the spark shot clear to his toes and out the top of his head.

Mine.

Sunshine, sex and human scents flooded his system. The closer he pulled her to him, the greater the smell. The sunshine warmed him. The sex thrilled him, but the human chilled him. Where did the human smell come from? Could she be...?