Anne Calhoun's Blog, page 2

Afternoon Delight teaser: All Dialogue

“You are an absolutely rotten loser.”

“I am not. I just don’t concede defeat,” he said, and kissed her again.

“You’re touching me.”

“I’m kissing you. You didn’t say I couldn’t kiss you.”

“Your skin is touching my skin.”

He kissed her heated cheek, then her ear. “Darlin’, if we were skin to skin right now, you wouldn’t be arguing semantics with me.”

Happy Thursday, everyone…

Anne’s Bday Bash!

Today is my birthday, and in the spirit of celebrating good times with good friends, the fabulous and talented Jeffe Kennedy is hosting a social media birthday bash for me!

 

Jeffe and I have releases a week apart, and my birthday falls smack in the middle. Rogue’s Paradise, book 3 in her Covenant of Thorns trilogy – which completes the trilogy for the first book Jeffe published – yay! – came out on Monday, and Afternoon Delight, first in my new IRRESISTIBLE series comes out on September 16. All of these things are worth celebrating, a release that brings closure to a series, the kick-off book in a new series, me turning *mumble mumble* a year older, friends and fun and, of course, books! Lots and lots of books.

The details, from Jeffe’s blog:

Therefore, I propose a game. For the next 24 hours, from midnight Central US time on September 11 up until the hands of the clock switch over to September 12, I want you to give Anne gifts.

Virtual ones.

Send her pictures of what you think she’d love. Tweet them to us, at@jeffekennedy and/or @annecalhoun – be sure to use the hashtag #annebday. Or paste them to our Facebook pages! Stick that #annebday hashtag on there and put them onhttps://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeffe.Kennedy and/or https://www.facebook.com/anne.calhoun. We’ll be picking our favorites, too, and sharing them. Be creative! Have FUN!

Send me pictures of things you think I’d love, and send me pictures of things YOU love. And, because nothing would make me happier than to give away presents on my birthday, we’re giving away books! Jeffe’s offering two digital copies of Afternoon Delight and I’m thrilled to give two lucky winners Rogue’s Paradise. International is okay, since these are digital…

 

We’re also giving away each other’s backlists. Watch our Facebook and Twitter feeds – especially that #annebday hashtag – for flash giveaways from us and our friends. Jeffe also claims to have dancing boys, but I don’t know anything about that.

I’m so excited to celebrate my birthday with friends, readers, and readers who’ve become friends. Watch #annebday for giveaways, chatter, and lots of fun. I hope you’ll join the party!

Hump day Afternoon Delight teaser

Another excerpt from Afternoon Delight, out Tuesday, 9/16/2014 from Berkley Intermix!

She shooed him back to the table, waited until he sat down, then set the plate in front of him. “Individual chocolate lava cakes,” she announced.

The flavors in the first mouthful spread over his tongue, hot and cool and sweet and tart all at once, just hot enough to make him respect it. The dish rewarded his attention with a sensory explosion unlike any in his previous experience. It smelled like heaven, tasted like a dream, looked like something out of a magazine. He could hear it calling his name.

Without thinking it through, he reached out and scooped a bit of chocolate, cream, and raspberry juice onto his fingertip, then extended it to her. She smiled, leaned forward, and licked it off one cat stroke at a time. He stopped breathing.

“You were holding back with the beater,” he said when she’d finished.

“I don’t mix sex and cooking,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ll do neither well, when both should be done to the absolute best of my ability.” She took another mouthful of the dessert. “And savored,” she said when she’d swallowed.

“Never?”

“Never. Much of what I make doesn’t respond well to my being distracted. Also, it’s really unhygienic for the kitchen, and the list of foodstuffs that shouldn’t be introduced to a woman’s private parts is actually quite long.”

He burst out laughing.

“You can’t tell me you don’t see all kinds of weird stuff.”

“The ER sees more vegetables in awkward places than I do, but every so often we get dispatched to cut someone out of a pair of handcuffs.”

“Always try the key first,” she said, then scraped the last bit of torte off her plate and ate it.

“Always.”

She cocked her head and looked at him. “Still want to stick around?”

A little more Afternoon Delight

When a competitive foodie and an ultra-competitive paramedic get together, winning is everything….

He set his wine on the counter and crossed the kitchen. “I have the ultimate respect for you after what you did on Wednesday,” he said, purposefully pitching his voice low and rough, waiting for her response. He knew so little about what turned her on, but that did, his honest reaction to the memory of what she’d done to him. He was a little aroused and a little embarrassed and a whole lot desperate to do it again.

She’d done all the heavy lifting last time, so it was a relief to brace his forearms on the stove’s hood and explore the curve of her ear, using only his lips until she shuddered and her eyelids drooped. He gently traced the inner whorl with his tongue, then nipped less gently at her lobe, noting that her hand, automatically stirring something thick and yellow, halted entirely at the use of his teeth. She liked the edge, but then again, he already knew that.

“You’re playing dirty,” she said.

“This surprises you?” he murmured into her hair. “I thought you were sharper than that.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said. Her hand hovered dangerously close to the hot pot, so he slid his fingers along her forearm and guided it to the counter. “I’m letting you know I see what you’re doing.”

Wild  curls tickled his cheek as he smiled. “What am I doing?”

“You’re looking down my shirt, for one.”

He outright laughed. “I am. I didn’t see anything last time.”

“You certainly did,” she said.

“All right, I didn’t see enough.”

“And you’re trying to seduce me out of taking a forfeit.”

“Right again,” he said. He unfastened the knitted belt of her sweater and opened the fabric. It was warm to the touch, perhaps from the heat of the stove, but more likely from the heat of her body, radiating like the scent of the sauce and whatever grain was slowly bubbling at the back of the stove.

“Hmm,” she said as he rested his hands on her rib cage, just below her breasts. “What will you give me in exchange for releasing you from our agreement?”

Sneak Peek: AFTERNOON DELIGHT

Here’s a little something to spice up your afternoon….

That was easy.

Six feet and at least three inches of tall, brooding blond man leaned against the counter of the Citibank and invited her over. For sex.

Sarah remembered her last long, coherent conversation with Aunt Joan, near the end of her two-year battle with ovarian cancer. It’s not long now. Promise me, promise me when I’m gone, you’ll go back to the way you were. You’ve given up so much of your life to take care of me. It’s not the kind of challenge a twenty-five-year-old woman should take on. Do something just for you.

Moving from San Francisco to New York was the first step. Opening the food truck with Trish was the second. The next thing she’d like to do, just for herself, had just invited her over for an afternoon delight.

Enjoy the rest of your day, and stay tuned for more teasers from AFTERNOON DELIGHT, out Sept 16…

Announcing…(drum roll please…) Anne’s Newsletter

Facebook curates your feed. Twitter’s thinking about it. The best way to be confident you’ll get the latest — announcements and news about my upcoming releases, events, and behind-the-scenes information about my books — is to sign up for my newsletter: Get Curious. Go Deep. 

I’m still working out details about frequency and content, but I promise you this:

Newsletters will be emailed to you no more than monthly.
Each issue will include exclusive content about the book I’m working on, a Q&A section, sneak peeks into upcoming releases, recommended reads, and contests/prizes open to newsletter recipients only.

I’m taking questions now for the first issue! Post them in the comments or drop me a line at anne (at) annecalhoun (dot) com. The winning question will get a copy of AFTERNOON DELIGHT, the first book in the Irresistible stories (out Sept 16th!). If you’d like to sign up, the form is on the top right corner of my blog; your email will never be shared, and the list is completely private.

Thanks for stopping by!

A little AFTERNOON DELIGHT…

I love the middle of the afternoon. The morning rush is over, evening fun and family times are on the horizon, and there’s usually a little break time for a treat: a bit of chocolate, sneaking a few pages of reading, something quiet, something I’m not likely to announce on Twitter or Facebook. Something just for me.

The heroine in my latest erotic romance, AFTERNOON DELIGHT, feels the same way. Sarah is a chef for a food truck, so her work day winds down in the middle of the afternoon; the hero, Tim, works the day shift as a paramedic, so he’s off work earlier than most people, too. Which leaves them lots of time to do something that feels a little bit secret, a little bit special…fall in love.

The book comes out on September 16, 2014. Every afternoon between now and then I’m going to give you a bite-sized treat of AFTERNOON DELIGHT, to spice up your afternoon. Here, Tim meets Sarah for the first time…

Movement caught his attention. He looked over his left shoulder to see the food truck woman walking toward him, a steaming bowl in one hand. Probably it was her lunch break, too, now that the rush was over. He stood up in case she wanted the bench in the sunshine.

She flashed him that bright smile. “Don’t leave,” she said.

“I thought you wanted this bench,” he said.

“I did, because you were sitting on it.”

A fast talker. Just the way he liked it. He sat back down, stretched his arm across the back of the seat, and smiled back. “Still here, darlin’.”

She held out the bowl, a napkin and spork cupped between her palm and the bottom of the bowl. “Do me a favor and give this a try.”

More mid-afternoon treats coming every day until Sept 16, when AFTERNOON DELIGHT releases! Full excerpt available here, and preorder links are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon!

 

 

Celebrate Lauren Jameson’s new release, LINGER, with a cover fight night!

The amazing Lauren Jameson invited me to the Facebook party tomorrow (Sept 2nd) to celebrate her latest release, LINGER. The cover for my Sept 16 release, AFTERNOON DELIGHT, is up against the equally amazing J Kenner’s IGNITED.

How can you possibly choose?!

 

Our round takes place at 8:30pm Pacific Time (that’s 9:30 Mountain, 10:30 Central, and 11:30 Eastern) Stop by the party and vote. Let’s be honest here…with this schedule, you can’t lose at any time.

4:00pm - Cathryn Fox vs. Renee Vincent
4:30pm - Mari Carr vs. Nalini Singh
5:00pm - Monica Murphy vs. Megan Crane
5:30pm - Eden Bradley vs. Laura Kaye
6:00pm - Cooper Davis vs. Jayne Rylon
6:30pm - Ava Conway vs. RG Alexander
7:00pm - Delilah Devlin vs. Kaira Rouda
7:30pm - Cindy Miles vs. Nina Lane
8:00pm - Rachel Van Dyken vs. Elena Aitken
8:30pm - Anne Calhoun vs. Julie Kenner

Stop over and have some fun with the covers,the authors, and especially the fabulous Lauren Jameson! Congrats on the newest release, Lauren!

30 Day Challenge: A Week of Rain

We had a fairly dry spring and summer here in the flyover states, but the last week more than made up for it, keeping me off the bike. The farm that grows my CSA share vegetables said their neighbor got 17 inches of rain in 5 days. It’s rained heavily every day except Friday, and been gloomy enough that the sunrise I observed this morning while riding to the coffee shop confused me for a moment, the thick white clouds lit in such a way that the sun appeared to be rising in the north. A few moments on Persie reoriented me. I was glad to be back on Persie after a week of needed rest. While the lump on my leg is slowly subsiding, and the bruising is almost gone, my ankle is still surprisingly tender, given that I don’t remember hitting it at all when I fell. The break from yoga has been good, too. I was ready to go back yesterday, and plan to take class tomorrow with two dear friends.

It’s raining now, the second heavy downpour today. After a while, there’s nothing to do but enjoy it, the lush green grass, the gushing downspouts, the rumble of thunder. The boy has a friend over for the night, and we spent ten minutes outside in our bathing suits, getting thoroughly soaked while throwing the ball for the dog. She thought this was the best thing ever, the whole pack (plus one) outside in the rain, having a good play.

I’ve been reading Mary Stewart’s Arthurian saga, starting with The Crystal Cave, the perfect read for a rainy night. I hope you’re having a good long weekend…

30 Day Challenge – Day 13: A Bike Date

Anyone who’s married and has kids knows you take your dates where you can find them. Free is even better. The boy spent the night with a friend; this morning we biked up to a coffee shop with three newspapers (the local and the last two Sunday New York Times) and spent two hours reading. Nothing special or extravagant, just a bike ride and the escapism to be found in the Travel, Style, and Arts and Leisure sections. On the way home I got the giggles, as Mr. C is both lanky and coordinated; his idea of stopping for a light is to left his right foot on the pedal and brace himself against a light pole with his right. Kind of a feat, but also really amusing from behind. In fact, we’re rather like our bikes: streamlined and fast in his case, slow, heavier, and meant to cruise in mine.

 

Awwwww…

 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend…