Cerise DeLand's Blog, page 60

Search Engine Optimization: HOW TO by Ann Everett! You need this info!

         What the heck is SEO and what does it mean to me? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and this is Wikipedia’s definition: SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or web page in search engines’ natural or un-paid search results.     For instance, my website, www.anneverett.comhas a blog, pictures, events calendar, and info about me and my book. So, what if you’re looking for a book that is a humorous, romance mystery? How in the heck will I ever get you to my page?     If you know my name or the title of my book and you type either one into the search bar, BAM! I’ll come up all over that first page, but what about all those people looking for humor books, or southern books, or Texas books? That’s where the SEO comes in and it all has to do with KEYWORDS.     As an author, I want Texas, humor, southern, connected to my website and book in order to be listed on the first page in the random search. Does that make sense? It’s very important to have the right key words connected to your site/book or product/business, etc.     Okay, where do you find these key words? Do you just come up with some on your own?  You could, but how do you know they’re good key words?      For example, let’s take the word romance. My book is a romance mystery, so that should be a great key word for me, right? Nope. Romance is searched approximately 13,600,000 times each month, which gives my book a competition of 363,000,000 of coming up on the first page of the search.      WOW! Ann (SEO) Everett!    You want your key words to be low in random searches, allowing your book/website/business/product a better chance of appearing on the first page, or at least on one of the first three pages. I’ve heard people will only look at the first three pages of a search, so if you’re not there, you will never be seen.     According to www.searchengineland.com  search engines “crawl” web sites, going from one page to another incredibly quickly, acting like hyperactive text scanners. They make copies of your pages, which get stored in what’s called an “index,” which is like a big book of the web.
When someone searches, the search engine flips through this big book that it has created, finds all the relevant pages and then picks out what it thinks are the very best ones to show first.
     Check out the link below. Here you can type in a description of your book and it will choose some keywords for you. As an example, I typed in southern humorous romance mystery. The list I got included: humorous book, comedy, southern, humor, humor book, humorous books, laugh-out-loud, good humor books, southern humor and a few more. Once the word list appears, it will have the word low listed by the selections. That means your competition is low and those should be good words for you.  www.searchengineland.com/the-giant-list-of-keyword-tools-41678
     Now, once you have your words, how do you use them? Use a couple of them in everything you write. For instance on Twitter and Facebook, I post a Talkin’ Twang quote. When I do, I hash tag a couple of my keywords at the end of the quote.
     Talkin’ Twang for today: You can tell the minute a man touches you if it’s for his benefit or yours. #southern #humor
     When I thank someone for following me, I say. Thanks for following a #Texas girl…or #southern girl.
     If you blog or post other places and they have a place for tags, try to use some of your key words. Of course they need to be relevant to your post.
     You can also link other sites to your site and that will also help to get people there.
     Gee, and you thought writing the book and getting published was the hard part!!
     Man, so did I!
Follow Ann on Twitter @Talkin TwangFind more marketing info at Ann’s blog  www.anneverett.comFriend Ann on Facebook @ Ann Everett’s author pagePurchase Ann’s book/books on Amazon.com or her websiteCurrent title available: LAID OUT AND CANDLE LITComing in August: YOU’RE BUSTING MY NUPTIALS

Ann Everett’s bio: Creator of the White-Trash-Face-Lift, halter tops, and beer-bling bracelets, Ann Everett is a native Texan and award winning short story author.For many years, Ann enjoyed doing stand-up comedy for businesses, corporations, and non-profit organizations.Ann writes laugh-out-loud romance mysteries, with the perfect combination of Southern Sass and Texas Twang.Ann lives on a small lake in Northeast Texas with her “current” husband of 45 years, where she’s busy adding to her line of White-Trash beauty and fashion, as well as working on a cookbook and her third novel.

History, its uses and joys for the author

http://www.nationalcowboymuseum.org

     As a trained historian, I get a kick out of using history in my novels to point up truths. One of my main "causes" is to paint with words the truth of the past. Here, to the left, is an artist who "paints" as a sculptor. His truth about the fate of the American Indian is in every line of this huge sculpture in Oklahoma City's National Cowboy Museum. This picture really does it no justice. The magnificence of it can be breath-taking. Not only in the Indian's posture but his face, and of course, the horse is a perfect complement to his despair. I have never written an American historical western, but living in Texas where the very air vibrates with cowboy culture and a rich past, I now embark on writing one.This will be a history of the families that settled my fictitious town of Bravado, which I populate in present day for my KNIGHTS IN BLACK LEATHER series for EC. The first of those is ROPE ME IN and the second, in edits as we speak, is TIE ME DOWN. In this historical, I will focus on the Comanche, a tribe that lived in south Texas and is known even today as wild, ruthless toward the Anglos and Tejanos who took their land and their livelihood.When you hear about Indians who were merciless to their Anglo captives, usually it is the Comanche who set the standard for that.Texans were so determined to wipe out the Comanche that today, few Indians live in the Lone Star State. In fact, only the Kickapoo have a reservation near Eagle Pass along the Rio Grande. They do run a casino there and it is profitable. Not too far from the bridge to Mexico, this casino is one of the must see stops on any tour of the Rio Grande border with Texas.
The link to the casino is here:
http://www.kickapooluckyeaglecasino.com/

50 Shades/30 Years: Part III

MAN CANDY: My nominee for Mr. Grey!Reading 50 Shades of Grey, I know NOW why it has broken so many records. Aside from the marvelous (utterly spectacular word of mouth this series has obtained), the initial PR campaign must have been a hum-dinger. I saw the first press and was stunned by its claims of the books' originality, but that aside, the campaign really is/was a superior one to reach the depth and breadth of the romance and women's fiction market.

But on to my rationale for the success of 50 Shades and its sequels!
Dividing its qualities into 3 criteria, I will say, wow, for an author who claims to have written nothing else before this, she got it 50 Shades of RIGHT.


How?

Let's begin with Part One or Writing Romance, 101: The Conventions the Author Employed.
1. The couple meet accidentally. Or as some call this, the cute meet-up.
This adds to tension and points up each person's motivation clearly.

2. The balance of power between male and female is uneven. In this case, we have the Alpha male who is rich, accomplished, suave, detached and articulate. And SMUG. We have Our Heroine who is younger, unaccomplished, naive in many ways, not dumb or poor but less advantaged than he.

3. Our Heroine is a (gasp!) virgin. No, we do not know that for a long loooong time. In fact, we do not learn this until Our Hero, gasping himself at the revelation, learns the fact. Makes us like her for her guts, even if her brains are in her panties.

4. We have a heroine who is clearly attracted to Our Hero. Yes, I know. Who would not be, right? BUT she has misgivings. Hey, wouldn't we all when meeting a man like this! We learn her misgivings, approach-avoidance extraordinaire! We learn them in copious detail. This, as we authors know, is part of her Big Decision to move forward with the affair or not. If she refuses, we have no book. Ergo, sum.

5. As she deliberates her Big Decision, we see Our Hero as a dynamic character who changes, adapts to her and (OMG!) grows, and not just in the physical sense. Ahem! In other words, he becomes more human, less caricature, and more believable.
Trust me, you will get sucked in.
(No euphemism implied there.)
Bottom line: He becomes a man who might be worth Our Heroine's time and energy, as well as the loss of her virginity.

6. We see, hear, feel, smell Our Heroine falling in love with this guy. Okay, so we want to wave a flag at her, send up flares that say, Honey, Beware. But in a romance, the heroine never listens. Because in a romance, we are promised the Big Bang. No not that BB. The HEA.

7. Happily Ever After, or its less enduring version, Happy For Now, is what a romance gives you at the  end of all this angst and growth and sensuous scenes of men and women being happy in their sexuality and their relationships!
Here, you get a dose of HFN and you hope for HEA. I leave it to you to read and see which and what and why, because I don't want to provide a spoiler in what is a technical dissection of this book.


Onward!

Yes, wait, there is more that makes this book/premise work as a romance and as an erotic novel: This is Part Two: The Types of Presentation the Author Used.
1. The prose is written from the heroine's POV. This establishes the link between Our Heroine and the Reader, who is most often expected to be a female.


2. The prose is written in that most dramatic of POVs: first person.
Like the fabulous novel JANE EYRE, gothic predecessors of our romances wrote in this voice. Why? When expertly done with fast paced plotting and verbs (please god, let their be wonderful active verbs) first person is vibrant and immediate. It is a strong, knock you over the head kind of presentation. You cannot escape her thoughts, her actions, her needs.
Erotica is all about the "I" and this style delivers the drama of it.

3. As if that power were not enough, the author capitalizes on it by writing in the Present Tense.
Nothing is more immediate, more demanding of a reader's attention that the drama of strong verbs delivered in the present tense. Few can write this way. Few even try. Captured by a story that rolls out in front of you, as we speak, if you will, present tense is undeniably gripping use of verb tense.
The author of 50 chooses her verbs wit hthe precision of a scalpel. You are skewered and driven to read more and more and more.


PART THREE: A Few Extraneous Comments
1. Whoever named this "mommy porn" groped for a word that was quick, memorable and derogatory. They most likely have never read a romance. No, not JANE EYRE or PRIDE AND PREJUDICE or any of the hundreds of works coming out of any of the great houses of erotica and romance today. The term is derogatory, of course, but also shows a lack of understanding of the types of books in print and digital that now compose more than 50% of fiction sold each day.
Furthermore, this person/entity by the very use of the term has little respect for that 50% either as a group of readers or as an economic dynamic. Woe unto them!

2. Complaints about the lack of expertise on the part of the author, I would say, are unfounded. She wrote a fast moving, entertaining story in a Point of View and Verb Tense that is unusual for this day, but which rolls trippingly off her pen.

3. I have enormous complaints about the execution of the publishing. How so? The author's copyeditor, in my opinion, seems not to exist! Typos in any novel tear the reader out of the story and I am not alone when I say I gnash my teeth at them. My biggest compliant here was the the author LOVES LOVES LOVES ellipses, but has no clue how they are properly used. Sparingly placed, never as substitutes for M dashes, ellipses have a special punctuation all their own.
The copyeditor never learned how or why to use them. Her lack of expertise drove me crazy.
Please tell me she is about to get an education: 40 Days and Nights in Grammar and Punctuation Camp with a proper flogging for failure to perform! Thank you.

Bottom line: I enjoyed this book. It had a good plot, a commendable heroine, a hero who is true to his school (as a Dom) and it was written, as we say here in the States, at that 8th grade reader level that most novels are written in. (To reach the maximum audience, this level must also be good for the British market, too, where this was first pubbed.)

I think 50 Shades deserves its success.  I still want to know what PR firm did the campaign for this. (Anyone know? Hello? Hello?) They did a bang up job.
BRAVO.
Now. Make an author happy. Go read whatever your heart desires!

Nicole Austin and Brenna Zinn with 2 new book covers! Fanning self!

Don't you just love it when a book cover comes together?
And when 2 do?
OH, MY!
Feast your eyes on these by my buddies, Brenna Zinn and Nicole Austin. Release dates TBD.
Pant, pant.

Pesto, Presto! And how to use it recipes!

Garlic grass, Greek Oregano, Italian Oregano, Parsley, Basil (l to r.)GOT A GREEN THUMB?
I have one.
And because I love to cook (and hubbie loves to pair a good wine with what I create), we grow herbs year-round. (I'd grow more, but hey, we live in TEXAS where the weather has only two seasons, Hot and Hotter.)
When I'm not at my keyboard, I am doing a Chinese Fire Drill to cultivate, water and weed my garden. Pictured here is this year's crop of herbs!
And those special containers? Ah. The only way to grow anything, except mosquitos, in south Texas requires a pot, baby! Why? So you can move plants out of the torrid sun, if necessary!
ONWARD!
The last few weeks, I've been picking these plants back and making pesto for all kinds of dishes like marinaras and salad dressings. But it's been awhile since I posted a recipe here and thought I'd share this one!
So here we go:


CERISE'S PESTO
1/2 c. olive oil (the good stuff, first pressed. I use LUCINI from Italy. Lovely. Light. Sweet.)
1/2 t. salt
1 c. of herbs (I use basil, parsley and oregano, but I use 3/4 cup of basil, the rest a mix of whatever I've got. I dice them all before I pack into the cup to measure.)
4-6 large cloves of garlic, diced (more or less to taste!)
Blend in blender.
Store in glass jars. Refrigerate.


RECIPES for this Pesto:


SALAD DRESSING (salad for 2; can be multiplied for larger quantities)
2 T. pesto
1/2 t. red or white wine vinegar
1/8 t. water


ROASTED SHRIMP (for 1 pound of fresh shrimp, service for 2)
2 T. pesto
juice of 1/2 lemon
Toss peeled shrimp in this mix.
Pop in pre-heated oven at 425 for 8-10 minutes. (Time will vary depending on size of shrimp)


PIZZA
To make a killer Margarita pizza with tomatoes, mozzarella and freshly grated parmesan, I baste my crust first with this mixture. I also use it on my crust in the spring when fresh figs are in season. 


PASTA SAUCE (for 10 oz of uncooked pasta, 2 people)
Heat in small pan 3 T. pesto sauce
Add 1/3 c. chicken broth
         1/2 c. white wine
Heat until bubbles begin to show it is boiling. Turn off heat. (You don't want to burn the oil, but you do want to cook the garlic bits!)
Drain pasta, toss with liquid
Toss pasta with freshly grated parmesan.
Add a salad—and dinner is served!


BASE for Italian dishes:
I will often throw in a tablespoon or more into a marinara, or use it with white wine to steam mussels.
Or just have a general High and rub it on your skin!
Just kidding.

Happy Birthday to US!

Happy Birthday, United States of America!
May you be the home of the rational, the educated, the healthy, the prudent and the brave.
May you be wise enough to devote your riches to educating our young and impartially informing your citizens, old and young.
May you be slow to anger, quick to condemn bullies at home and abroad.
May you aid those among us who are less fortunate than many.
May you remain for many in other countries not merely a symbol of freedom, but continue to create the reality of it for your citizens here at home. 

50 Shades/30 Years, PART II

MAN CANDY! Anyone know where he comes from?
Send me the stock photo link, PLEASE!   50 Shades of Grey and its sequels as success stories seem like no surprise to me. Not only trend in the industry have changed from delivery method and point of sale, but proliferation of types.    50 Shades, et al, also reflect general trends in the way fiction has portrayed women over the past few centuries.    Trends in fiction reflect society's changes. Never is that more true of women's fiction.     We could begin with PAMELA, the first female-centered novel, which to many literates is the first romance. Far from it in terms of proper treatment of a woman as an equal, PAMELA nonetheless reflects much of the behavior toward women during that 18th century period.     So too are Jane Austen's works in which blue-stockings like her heroines might be imbued with an intellect, wit as well as charm. JANE EYRE shows us a women beset by social mores and economic conditions (as well as legal issues of inheritance). But Jane learns the error of accepting social strictures, especially and almost simultaneously with her financial windfall and freedom. She decides to opt for love and viola! She returns to Rochester to learn that he in many (horrible) ways has been relieved of his social and marital burden and is, himself, free to love her and marry her.     As we progress through the Victorian period, we find a few examples of women freed of their strictures, but not until the early sixties do we see the rise of Harlequin romances. (In fiction aimed at men, the hard boiled mystery starring dames show women as ruthless, cunning and not at all worthy of a man's respect or affection. My reference here are the works of Mickey Spillane.) In the Harlequins, the norm was woman gets man, marries man, lives happily ever after. But that formula soon was challenged by economic conditions that saw the rise of divorce, the incidence of women going to work in greater numbers and the inception of birth control.     While we see these elements portrayed clearly in the period piece tv show MAD MEN, what we see in fiction aimed at women is the proliferation of the Harlequin type category romances with various houses getting into the marketplace. Once Rosemary Rodgers and Kathleen Woodiwiss hit us with historical romances wherein the woman was the honorable lead character and the hero was a dashing fellow, the market exploded with Happily Ever After Romances. In the US, this was the late 70s and 80s, when women had to return to work, driven by 20% inflation and 75% tax rates. As we know by many studies of this female readership today, she wanted a viable romance with a hero who was dashing and honorable himself. Moreover, this reader needed this ending because she was (and still is) overworked and underpaid. Overworked at her 9-5 job. Underpaid yet today, earning in the US 74 cents on the dollar compared to her male counterpart. And still she went home and does now to do the laundry and cook dinner!     (Hey, I am tired simply remembering what I did back then!)     And what has happened since the 1990s? We have had more frequent and more open conversations about such previously no-no topics as abortion, partial abortion, homosexuality, marriage rights, and invitro fertilization. Ancillary to those "sexually" oriented topics, we now converse (or in some cases, on cable news, we argue and bully each other) about individual rights vs. the common good, typified by the famous (or infamous, depending on your view) law demanding inter-vaginal sonogram of women seeking abortions, most notably argued in the State of Virginia and passed in the State of Texas.     No surprise then, that we are now at the point in our public discussions of eroticism. While erotic literature has been around since the Ancient Greeks, and erotic art since the Chinese depictions during the reign of Chin Shih Huang-ti, the Victorian period saw numerous publications devoted to it. The Pearl, a fave of mine, is one example.     But the modern proliferation of it aimed at this female readership can be marked in publishing with the advent of Virgin Books' Black Lace line in the 1990s and the establishment of Ellora's Cave in 2000. While the Black Lace line focused on readers who were upscale, literate and adventurous, the EC outreach spanned that market segment as well as the reader who wanted science fiction, paranormal, contemporary and historical aspects to her escapist fiction. The success of the EC model, in  focus and method of digital delivery, is acclaimed by the proliferation of other houses which adopted the EC business model and cultivated that same readership.     Today, while 50 SHADES, et al, sits atop the Best seller lists every where in every format, we see that beneath her sales sit thousands of authors with thousands of erotic romances earning hundreds and thousands of dollars each month.  The sales persist because the readers exist. They want to know about their bodies and their possibilities for enjoyment of sex and for the happy ending to their relationships. Their enthusiasm for this knowledge cannot be dampened. The public discussions about sexuality are too numerous. From the debate over whether or not Planned Parenthood should receive federal funds for women's health care to the passage of bills requiring women to do one thing or another with their own bodies, women are engaged in discovering their abilities, their potentials and their happiness.     Indicative of this demand by women is the case of the Florida library system that tried to ban 50 SHADES from its shelves. The library had to reneg. Why? Because women demanded it. And another truth, which the library system forgot in its haste, but learned quite readily after its ban: in the US, women continue to be the ones who read more than men. They read fiction more then men. They have a higher literacy rate. They buy most books, in fact, 80 % of what is sold each day in the US in a book store is bought by a woman. Women also encourage their children to read. And they contribute to local library fundraisers.  Economic truth for this library and others: It's not a good idea to pi$$ off your patrons.    Yes, 50 SHADES as a best seller is a phenomenon. But as we already see, other erotica titles are on the best seller lists, too. A few before 50 SHADES hit. Many more to come.     Why? Because women will demand the reading material they need to relax and to become informed.More than that, they will use it to become more powerful in their own sexuality and more comfortable with it.     As many do know, you can't keep a good woman down. Or away from a book that stirs her imagination and educates her at the same time!

Men of Steel: Reeve, Reeves, Cavill and Clare Dargin!

If you’re like me your first memories of the “ Man of Steel ” were of George Reeves in grainy black and white reruns on early Saturday mornings.  Of course these were soon overshadow by the iconic Christopher Reeve who proved that he was Superman.  
Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent/Superman was and is in my opinion hard to beat.  Did you know he was nearly booted for the part because the producers and the director thought he was too scrawny for the role.  However after sometime at the gym, his royal buffness, sufficiently convinced them to keep him on.  Good for us because he did it so well he actually made us believe that a man could fly.
Unlike the 2006 “ Superman Returns ” starring Brandon Routh, this recent incarnation ‘ The Man of Steel ’ promises to be the long awaited reboot of the classic DC Comics series.  Starring Henry Cavill, this movie is like its 1978 predecessor where it tells the life of Col-el/Clark Kent/Superman starting with his father Jor-El, portrayed by Russell Crowe to his life in Kansas to his eventual metamorphosis into Superman in Metropolis.  
A recent shot on the set shows a heavily muscled and bearded Clark Kent looking very much like Wolverine.  Could this be evidence of an edgier persona of Clark Kent than we are use to seeing?
The director and producers are being very tight lipped regarding details surrounding the story.  And rightly so.  Sometimes it’s better to be surprised.  
One thing for sure this star-spangled cast (Laurence Fishburne, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Christopher Meloni, Diane Lane and Amy Adams) has me looking forward to seeing this newest portrayal of the Man of Steel.
" Man of Steel " soars into theaters on June 14, 2013.
Clare Dargin is the author of science fiction including “Kybernatia” available now from Decadent Publishing and Bono Books.  You can visit her on the web at www.claresblog2thehaven.blogspot.com

Welcome Mina Carter with HAREM MISTRESS!

What do a kid from the roughest part of the city and a prince have in common? In the second story in the Imperial Princes series, Harem Mistress, they’re both members of an elite commando group, Sector Seven. Sethan Kai Renza, the Imperial Prince and Jareth Nikolai have been friends since the first day of training, they’ve survived bloody battles, political intrigue and assassination attempts, as well as Seth’s five year search for the woman who stole his heart (Prince’s Courtesan). Now adults and well past their training, Sethan is the Imperial Prince and Jareth is Colonel of his armies. Known as the Stone-Cold Colonel, his reputation precedes him. Cold, calculating and hard as nails, as a character he was a delight to write. I love to write a tough, elite soldier type and then give him a weakness. In this case, Jareth’s weakness is his longing for a woman he can’t have. Keliana is a slave who belongs to Sethan, a courtesan in his harem. The law says he can’t have her, but he just can’t keep away, carefully wooing her and leaving roses in the harem gardens, even though he knows that the law would demand their lives if they’re caught. But that doesn’t stop him…and Keliana is more than enough woman to keep him on his toes!Illicit love, burning hot sex...

Keliana is an imperial harem mistress, but that doesn't stop Jareth Nikolai from wanting her. A colonel in the imperial fleet and the prince's right hand man, Jareth has earned his reputation as a loyal, stone-cold soldier, but thoughts of Keliana heat his blood to boiling--even though she's the property of his prince.

Keliana knows it's forbidden, but she can't get the handsome colonel of out of her mind, nor can she ignore her dreams of one day loving him openly as a free woman. When she's called before her prince and given to Nikolai as a gift, she thinks her dreams have finally come true. Until Nikolai is raised to prince and cannot marry his harem mistress.

And deep within the shadows, enemy machinations work to keep them apart forever... Available now from: Amazon | Amazon.co.uk | ARe | Barnes and Noble | OmniLit | Kobo
Excerpt:  © 2012 Mina Carter“Such a serious expression on such a beautiful face.”

The deep voice from behind made her jump. With a gasp, she turned on the bench in a rustle of silk. There, in the shadows of an archway, was a familiar, tall figure dressed in a black combat uniform, his dark hair caught at the nape of his neck. Just the sight of him was enough to weaken her knees.

Colonel Jareth Nikolai. Prince Sethan’s right-hand man and commander of his armies. The man who had been leaving her forbidden roses the color of the midnight sky and who occupied her lonely dreams.

Heat and excitement skittered through her like rabbits during spring as she rose from the bench. Instead of leaving her a rose, he’d come himself. Her initial pleasure at seeing him dissipated as she darted a look around the garden in case one of the women still here wandered out and saw him. Then it would be alarms and hell to pay. No man other than Sethan was allowed within the harem walls.

For a man like Jareth though, a member of the elite Sector Seven, breaking in and getting out without being caught would be child’s play. Leaving something was one thing…sticking around for a chat was suicide.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered urgently. “You have to get out of here before they catch you.”

She reached the archway and shivered as she stepped from the warmth of the midafternoon sun into the coolness of the shadows. For a moment she was blinded, blinking rapidly as she waited for her eyes to adjust.

His deep chuckle reached her ears a moment before his warm hands closed over her upper arms. Heat sparked between them and the merest brush of his hand sent a wave of longing through her so complete she had to bite her lip to stop the moan spilling forth. Hot on its tail was a gasp for his daring.

Not only had he broken into the harem, he’d touched her. Touched one of the prince’s women. Never mind that Sethan didn’t actually want her. Rules were rules. Rules bound everyone, even Jareth, commander of the Prince’s armies.

She wriggled. “Go, you have to get out. They’ll kill you if they catch you.”

“So fiery. You know you look like a kitten spitting when you’re mad?”

Her eyes adjusted and she could make out his face. See that damned little half smile and the heat in his eyes as he pulled her closer to his hard body. His hold was firm, his hands large enough and fingers long enough to wrap around her arms, shackling them above the elbow.

“What are you damn well smiling at? This is dangerous, you idiot!”

She squirmed some more, but he was stronger than her, his grip like iron. There was no way she was breaking loose, not without some form of physical violence she just wasn’t capable of.

Amusement ran through her for a second as she stilled and let him hold her. Over six feet and with the hard build of a professional soldier, there was no way she could stop him. Shivers of illicit excitement whispered over her skin as she looked up at him. He could do whatever he liked to her and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

His face was partly in shadow, revealing one blue-black eye playing peek-a-boo from under the long fall of his hair. It was a less than regulation cut, but she’d heard rumors his mother had been Hestarian, the warrior-nomad race whose very name sparked fear into many hearts. It would explain the nearly black color of his eyes, the iris expanded with just a small ring of arctic blue around the outside.

“You’re hurt…”

Available now from: Amazon | Amazon.co.uk | ARe | Barnes and Noble | OmniLit | Kobo I’d like to thank Cerise for having me today and Tina at Topaz Promotions for organising the Blog Tour.Mina Carter was born and raised in Middle Earth (otherwise known as the Midlands, England). After a slew of careers ranging from logistics to land-surveying she can now be found in the wilds of Leicestershire with her husband and young daughter…the true boss of the family. Suffering the curse of eternal curiosity Mina never tires of learning new skills which has led to Aromatherapy, Corsetry, Chain-maille making, Welding, Canoeing, Shooting, and pole-dancing to name but a few.A full time author and cover artist, Mina can usually be found hunched over a keyboard or graphics tablet, frantically trying to get the images and words in her head out and onto the screen before they drive her mad. She's addicted to coffee and Nutella on toast.Where to find Mina... Twitter    Facebook

50 Shades, 30 years to hit best seller lists! PART I

Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/88bunge
Why 50 SHADES has hit the best seller lists?
I have a few ideas why it is, ahem, A LONG TIME COMIN'! 30 years of struggling to get books out there that women want to read, not what others think they should read!Having been pubbed in the romance genre (in print and now digital) for more than 2 decades, I have witnessed trends. BIG ONES.The appearance of this erotica series of 50 SHADES… on the best seller lists at numbers one through three seems unbelievable until, I think, you look at the trends in romance and in society over the years. In the 1980s, the romance genre exploded into the marketplace. With boomer women getting college degrees and getting fabulous jobs, they wanted relaxing entertainment at night. (Yes, they needed it after all those household chores were done!)By the 1990s, these same women had grown older, wiser and began to read more serious fiction. While these novels were female-focused, they were also relationship books which more often than not included a romance. The boomers’ younger sisters came along—and so did the boomers’ daughters—wanting to read the romances Mom and Big Sis had liked. What had begun as women reading romances that were 15% of the paperback sales, climbed steadily to more than 50%!But in that decade of the 90s, other events occurred within the publishing industry and society as a whole. Within the industry, costs of producing a book rose. This included the cost of paper and ink, copyediting and design. But also the venues where books were sold declined in number. With fewer places to buy books, readers had to go to Big Box stores to find them. Did they? Yes, but in fewer numbers. This meant that back in New York Traditional Publishing Houses [NYTRPH] the accountants began to run the editorial decisions and the marketing ones, too. They told editors what they could buy and should buy. The Big Boxes added to the fray by telling publishers what sold quickest and best. Other types of books, said Big Box, will not be ordered in any great quantities. In the offices of NYTRPH, the scissors came out. Authors who didn’t write this popular sub-genre or that one, saw their order numbers drag, their covers reduced to flowers or objects that sold few if any books. The result? These authors either conformed and wrote what “was selling” (vampires or fairies, anyone?) or the “newest trend” or died on the vine. Amid all this, if an author wrote a steamy book, she might get published, but more often than not, she was asked to temper her prose. Use euphemisms. Allude to passion in metaphors.In society as a whole, tolerance for all types of lifestyles and parenting choices meant that readers were more open to bigger themes in novels. But were they finding those novels except in what we call literary fiction? I would answer, No.By the turn of the century, many readers frustrated with few choices in the genre, began to ask, Is that all there is? And publishers in the U.K. and in the U.S., began to respond. Using the internet as the distribution means, publishers like Ellora’s Cave saw the way to distribute erotica in a manner that was safe, secure from prying eyes and immediate. And between the covers, readers got what they had not seen in novels. What had been verboten to them because of Big Box tactics or publishers’ demurring from printing hot sexy stories was now available.The sales of erotica blossomed. The number of publishers did too. Most of them were on the internet using that platform to sell the books. Readers responded in the millions. While I generalize here, I will say that word-of-mouth and ease of access to the internet certainly provided the impetus for this proliferation.Suddenly readers had erotic romances at their fingertips and with a few clicks could have instant gratification of purchase and reading!To say that the internet and on-line publishers have changed the publishing industry is a given. To recognize that both have spawned the rise of self-publishing mechanisms is also a fact.The 50 SHADES success story is, I am certain, built on the 3 previous decades of growth of the romance genre from Harlequin category types to single titles that have broadened women’s perspectives and their aspirations. These millions of romance titles have also broadened women’s appetites to read about marvelous, intimate, mind-blowing sex.Women not only desire to be entertained by well-written stories that help her escape to another world. They demand it. And 50 Shades is the explosive proof that erotica is not an aberration on the book shelves. It is a manifestation of readers’ growth and sophistication.True, 50 Shades had a fabulous marketing and PR introduction. The well-oiled machine that created the series’ business plan is one we authors would love to learn more about! While we are not likely to hear those secrets, we do applaud the success. It means women are becoming more savvy about their bodies, their inter-personal communications and their intimate relationships. It also means we will see more and more erotica on the best seller lists. Already, we have seen three to four in the top 20 in the past few weeks. Move over 50 Shades. We’re coming through!
Here is a jpeg of my newest, and erotic romantic western suspense and comedy, IS THAT A GUN IN YOUR POCKET? 99 cents on Amazon  http://tinyurl.com/7o7guuk

And LADY STARLING’s STOCKINGS, Regency erotic romance and suspense, FREE everywhere!  Amazon link:  http://tinyurl.com/83hlkgp