Delilah Devlin's Blog, page 521

Road Trip — Quigley's Castle

I'm almost done with the pictures from my road trip. Promise! This one was too much fun not to share.

When we left Eureka Springs, Arkansas, heading for home the last day of our trip, we were barely out of town when we saw a sign for "Quigley's Castle"—not something we'd heard of before, so naturally we had to stop! We followed a gravel road, all the while humming the theme to Deliverance.

We pulled into a small gravel lot and saw this sign. After about five minutes a very grumpy woman showed up at the gate. Again, I watch too many horror movies. I immediately saw her as a gatekeeper to a Hell Mouth, and wondered if we should worry about the fact no one knew where we were. However, I was too curious at this point and followed her anyway while she led us inside a secret garden and to a shaded area in front of the "castle".

There we heard the story about the house, which she told in a monotone without a single expression. After she finished her little story, she told us to make our own way through the house and the gardens, and then she disappeared. I just knew she hurried off to sharpen her ax!

Her grandmother was Italian and moved with her American husband to the Ozarks. I forget when but assume it was early-ish in the last century. They lived in a crude wooden building with five children and the wife nagged the husband to build her a stone house. When he didn't act quickly enough for her taste, she and the five children pulled apart their wooden home one day when he went to work and moved into the chicken coop. Hubby got the message and broke ground on a new home for his wife.

It's built of concrete. The wife collected wagon loads of all sorts of rocks from a nearby creek, which included quartz. As he made the concrete bricks, she imbedded the side of the brick facing outward with pretty stones and crystals. Note all the greenery in the front windows? The entryway of the house is a two-story indoor garden.

This is a view of the indoor garden from the first floor.

And from the landing on the second floor.

This is a glance down the steps. The frames on both sides contain arrowheads she found in the river.

The rooms inside the house aren't large or lavish, but she decorated everything with stones. In her bedroom, one wall was covered in this picture that's a decoupage of what looks like art work from magazines and books, personal photos, and real moths she captured and set in resin.

Here's a closeup.

Outside the house is a garden that wraps around the house with outdoor furniture and garden art made from more concrete, shells and rocks. She was a little more than obsessive, I think.

Here's the outdoor patio.

There were seven bottle trees scattered throughout the garden.

Just to show you what she did, here's a closeup of a little decorative arch she made for one flower bed.

That's Quigley's Castle. An American oddity, and one we would have missed if we hadn't been willing to take a chance and follow a little sign down a rocky path.

Guest Blogger: JK Coi

Thank you to Delilah for having me as a guest on her blog today.

July 18 is the release date of my next book, Falling Hard, and I was thinking about all of the writing I've done this year. I realized that I really need a break!

But it's so hard to think about going on a vacation when I still have deadlines looming over my head and the laptop is just so darn portable. On the other hand, the weather is so beautiful and where I'm from we don't get long enough summers. My brain wants to turn off for a while, and my body wants to soak in the sunshine, lay out on the dock with the lake lapping and sparkling in front of me. I would watch kiddo splashing around and have hubby to bring me something refreshing to drink…all right, let's not get carried away.

But you get the idea. My writing is important to me and I enjoy it very much (sometimes more than other times, depending on how the words are flowing), but I think everyone needs time to recharge every once in a while, and I not only owe it to myself, but also to my family to spend some time with them without anything else to get in the way.

This is why, although I'm writing this blog post for Delilah BEFORE my holiday, by the time it's posted here, I'll have returned, and I'll be all refreshed and ready to get to work on the next book!

How is your summer coming along? What have you done to relax, or what do you plan to do? Give me some ideas for next year!

J.K. Coi is a multi-published, award winning author of contemporary and paranormal romance and urban fantasy. She makes her home in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and son and a feisty black cat who is the uncontested head of the household. While she spends her days immersed in the litigious world of insurance law, she is very happy to spend her nights writing dark and sexy characters that leap off the page and into readers' hearts.

FALLING HARD is available from Carina Press on July 18!

Check it out: Carina Press

JK Coi's website: http://www.jkcoi.com

Are you BEGGING FOR IT yet?

I've gotten a string of fantastic reviews for Begging For It. I want to share them in case you've been on the fence about the story or didn't know that it's out there. Here are some review snippets, and following them is an excerpt. A dirty one, so be sure to be alone when read it! Cross gives over control to TJ—but that doesn't last long!

"This was the most gripping, emotionally charged sexy foray into BDSM (heavy on the S&M) I've ever read. If you are a reader who thinks there could never be pain with pleasure, then this story will change your mind…in the end, you'll be so gripped by the brilliance of Ms. Devlin's storytelling abilities, that the final pages will twist your guts in knots. I breathed with both Cross and TJ. I ached with them. And when it was over, I couldn't stop thinking about them." A "10″ for Story, Seriously Reviewed

[image error]"…I absolutely loved this book… With these two dynamic characters, the emotional pull of this story was outstanding… Emotions ran the gamut and reached out to draw you in." 5 Stars and Top Pick!, Night Owl Reviews

"…This story is an emotional rollercoaster that will make you laugh, cry, and overheat… Devlin weaves an enthralling tale… It's a novella that's impossible to put down, a definite gem worth reading again and again." 5 Hearts, The Romance Studio

"…Delilah Devlin is at her finest with BEGGING FOR IT!… It is heartbreaking but real. Yes this is a very hot erotic novella but the story really spoke to me… BEGGING FOR IT is outrageous and perfectly delicious!" Joyfully Reviewed

What the story's about…

She needs punishment…before she deserves pleasure.

Tragedy scarred TJ Lipton. Now, the only way she can find pleasure is when its delivered with a heavy-handed dose of S&M. But finding a lover who can give her what she needs proves an elusive quest—until she finds the sex club Unfettered and a Dom named Cross McNally.

Cross understands all too well what drives TJ. He takes command of her body to give her everything she needs—restraint, the stinging kiss of a flogger, the thrill of a three-way—a sexual adventure that pulls her beyond her painful past and has her begging for more of his tender brand of domination.

She released him and sat back, wiping a hand across her mouth as she looked up.

His eyes were narrowed slits. Skin stretched taut around his square jaw.

TJ backed away and stood, quickly stripping off her clothes until she was nude as well and panting with excitement.

"What do you want, baby?" he asked with another slow up and down glide.

Lord, who the hell was in charge here? Not her. His strokes made her jealous of his hand. She wanted all that thick hardness crammed up inside her.

"We need a condom," she said, quietly, urgency straining her voice.

"The bedside stand," he said, aiming his chin toward it, giving up even a pretense that she was still in control.

Eagerly, she went to the stand and opened the top drawer. She found the box of unopened Trojans and fought with the plastic and the lid then drew out a packet. Her hands shook, so she held it out to him.

His lips crimped into a small smile, but he bit the foil and drew out the latex circle, rolling it skillfully down his massive shaft. When it was in place, he glanced her way and quirked an eyebrow.

"The bed," she bit out. "I need you on the bed."

He sat on the edge then slid his thickly muscled legs over the side. Was there anything about him—his toes, maybe?—that didn't make her melt? She'd never felt so feminine, so weak beside a man before. "Scoot," she said then climbed onto the mattress to kneel beside him.

She bent over his cock, slid her nose along his cloaked shaft, nuzzled the crisp, curling hairs at the base of his cock then trailed the length with her tongue to learn by feel every little ridge and vein.

When she came to the cap, she sucked it between her lips and teethed it, careful not to pierce the latex. "I wanted to do this without the condom," she murmured, "but I knew I wouldn't last. I want you inside me. I want you to come for me. I need to fuck you hard, Cross."

"Will you come?"

"You know how to make me come, so hold off until you're close."

He nodded, his gaze dipping to watch her pussy as she spread her thighs over him and funneled his cock inside.

He was broad at the tip but arrowed. He stretched her opening, filled her better than the cold, hard stick his friend had stroked inside her. "Have you and Tanner been friends a long time?"

"Long enough."

She swirled her hips to wet the tip of his cock. "He the guy you had fuck my mouth last night?"

"Yeah, does it bother you, putting a face to the dick?"

A shallow pulse forced him inside an inch. "Yes, I didn't want him last night. I wanted your cock."

"I was a little busy giving you what you really needed."

He said it in a gruff, masculine tone that clued her to the fact he was just as tightly wound as she was. She pressed down, taking the cap inside another two inches. Her thighs flexed, and she fought the urge to shove downward. She wanted to savor the stretch—this fuck had been a long time coming. And because she was a little annoyed that he'd made her wait, she asked, "Do you like fucking?"

His smile was a quick, tight flash. "One of my favorite things to do."

Her nipples were hard, aching, but she resisted the urge to cup them. She wanted his hands there but wasn't able to command him. Her voice would lack strength. She feared he'd laugh if she tried because she shook with need. "Why didn't you take me? You knew I wanted you to do it."

"I told you, baby. It was about you. What you needed. And I wanted to build your trust."

She came up but missed the solid heat of him filling her and pushed quickly down again, taking him deeper. Sweet Lord, she was wet. He slid inside with a succulent sound. "You don't need my trust. Not for this," she said breathlessly. "You can have me. Have me any way you want, so long as you do one little thing for me. You know what that is."

"Have you any time? More than just today?"

She shook her head but dug her fingers into his chest as she gave him another shallow stroke. "Don't go getting possessive. I don't need promises. You don't want mine."

"You don't want to see me again?"

Her mouth gaped as she slid down a little farther, almost dizzy with relief, feeling as though every inch she consumed deepened their emotional connection. She shook her head, waging an internal battle for control. "I don't want to make plans. Don't want promises," she lied. "But I wouldn't mind you knocking at my door some night."

His jaw flexed. "For a quick fuck but not a date."

"This isn't good for you?" She was wetter now, and the glides were faster, getting deeper, her breaths shortened and her face flushed with heat. His strong hands took some of the burden from her straining thighs.

"This isn't enough for me, TJ," he said, slamming her down his cock now. "I want the whole woman."

She slowed, shuddering hard. "That's the problem," she said, smiling with tears in her eyes. "I'm not whole."

His palms slid up to cup her breasts, gently kneading them. "Tell me, sweetheart. Tell me why."

She blinked away the moisture. "Just be quiet. Please."

His lips closed, forming a thin line.

Closing her eyes to his disapproval, she continued to rock, but even though her body melted all around him, even though arousal curled inside her, she knew her limits. Her thighs gave way and she sank against him. "Cross?"

"Open your eyes when you speak to me."

She gave him a glare but knew the corners of her mouth were pulling downward and that her bottom lip was trembling.

"What do you need?"

Her shoulders fell. Her head bent. "For you to take over. For you to punish me."

"Do things my way?"

She nodded.

"Will those legs hold you up if I tell you that you have to stand?"

She nodded again then gave a little, gasping hiccup. She hated being so needful, so out of control. He'd think she was a complete basket case, but maybe that was already too late.

His hands cupped her ass and he lifted her. His cock slid from inside her and bobbed against his belly. "Go stand under the hooks."

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The Book Dragon Contest continues! Click here for more details!

Road Trip — Haunting at The Crescent Inn Hotel

After spending a very pleasant time in Des Moines (I'll post tattoo pics another day!), we headed home again. Next destination: The Crescent Inn Hotel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It's one of the most haunted places in America. Ghosthunters episode #13 was filmed there.

Wierd things happened even before we arrived. The Crescent lies in the Ozark Mountains and sits on the crest of a hill. We had the address plugged into the Garmin. The GPS worked fine the whole trip, up until the point when it took us up a goat trail of a narrow, gravel road. Halfway up the rutted trail, we met a Hummer. There really was only room for the Hummer, so he had to climb a hill while we squeezed by with our wheels on the edge of the trail. It was a nail-biter staring down the long drop into the ravine.

This is the Crescent Inn Hotel. Built in the 1800′s, it's had many lives—as a resort hotel for the rich, as a school for girls, a cancer treatment-torture facility, and again as a hotel.

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This is our room and the very first picture where creepy things happened. I have a very good little Cannon camera that takes crisp, clear pictures. I took hundreds of pictures on this trip and this is the first one that's blurred this way. But here, you can make out a shadow. Do you see the outline of a head and shoulder? As it turns out, our room has a ghost that plays outside the door. A child died from a fall and is "seen" playing and "heard" to say "It's not fair!" when he sees people dressed comfortably because he hated his own fussy clothing.

The next snap, same lighting, and nothing.

Here's the front desk when you first enter the hotel. Slightly theatrical, but it does set the tone.

Still in our room and third snap. See the moon-like circle? It's an orb. To non-believers (snicker if you like!), it's dust or a reflection. The rest of us know it's a spirit. I've only gotten "dust" like this in my pictures of cemeteries.

I found shadows and orbs everywhere in this hotel and wished I had a thermal imaging camera. See the shadow AND the orb?

See the orb here? It's not the round sign at the end of the hallway, but the one on the right. I swear it's not a spot on the carpet!

See the orb just below the stairwell? This is the stairwell where that little boy died from a fall.

We took the haunted tour and this is our intrepid group.

I think ghosts and shadows like to lurk in pairs.

It's appropriate seeing an orb here. This door was used by the fellow who poisoned the cancer patients with his cures. He wheeled the bodies through this door at night while the rest of the patients slept.

The creepiest part of the tour was the trek to the bowels of the hotel, past the spa rooms to the morgue.

This the room where the doctor examined his victims.

This locker was featured in the Ghosthunters episode. A figure was seen in the thermal imaging camera and the number "2″ glowed.

We were invited to step into the cooler where the bodies were stored. Seven of us crammed inside. It was hot as Hell! I snapped pics overhead, but found no orbs. What ghost would want to hang out there anyway? This pic was the scariest of the lot.

After our tour, the three of us had the best sleep of the entire trip. If a ghost came scratching, wailing, knocking—he was doomed to disappointment.

I took pics before I got out of bed that morning. Besides my feet, see anything strange?

How about now?

The creepiest thing that happened, by far, occurred in the formal dining room when we ate dinner. The six-year-old scowled and turned to her mother who was seated closest. "Mom, stop kicking my flip-flops." She went under the table to retrieve them and her mother showed her that her feet couldn't reach that far. The little one sat down again then made another face. "Stop it! My flip-flops!" The hairs on the back of my neck lifted. The Red-Headed Hellion and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. Little twerp when under the table again, then started talking to herself. When she came back up, she had a really wide grin on her face. "You want to eat my heart!"

Well, that's not something she'd ever said before. And that was before we learned about the little boy. The tour guide said he was likely jealous of her flip-flops. AND it was before we learned that the doctor experimented on the bodies in the morgue and removed the hearts and livers from his victims.

That's not the end of the wierd things associated with the Crescent Inn. When I got home, I downloaded all my pics. Four times! Each time, only the pictures from the Crescent were missing from the batch. Say what you like, but I think a ghost hitched a ride in one of those pictures. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Sunday Report Card

Where to begin?! I've just come off the most unproductive three months I've had in forever! My ability to shut out "the noise" around me has been compromised. Until this week, I seriously considered renting a cabin somewhere away from family and the Internet to get some work done. But things do change.

This week, I received acceptance for a short story I wrote entitled Drive Me Crazy for Cleis Press's Best Erotic Romance of 2012.

I put together the After Midnight Authors Fantasies newsletter and published that.

I completed the draft of a new lesbian vampire story that will accompany a story by Paisley Smith for a two book anthology that Ellora's Cave will publish! (Long enough sentence for you?!) I'll be sending it to the editor today!

What else? My daughter was married in the swimming pool on a day where the weather crested 100 degrees. Most fun I've had in a while!

The Six-Year-Old turned seven, so she had her choice of favorite things to do that day. McDonald's was part of the list. Bleh.

I spent a day painting a room for my grandmother's newly converted garage suite.

And there you go—my week in a nut shell. I'm hoping things will continue to hum along this next week, writing-wise. I have a new book and a new short story to start. Do y'all have any ideas for a 1500-word lesbian short story? Yeah, I can't come up with anything other than a coffee break in that short a space.

Snippet Saturday: Unusual Setting

The Book Dragon Contest continues!

Be sure to check out my

A Question…

I'm soooooo wiped out. Too much happening on the homefront. Yesterday, it was the Red-Headed Hellion's wedding. Today, it was painting grandma's newly converted garage suite. I hurt all over and need a week's sleep. So, you're lucky I showed up to play at all.

Here's the question…

If you had to choose your own epitath of eight words

or fewer, what would it say?

Road Trip — The Journey and Jesse

I know I'm getting the photos of my trip up slowly, but my life's crazy busy. The 6-year-old had a birthday party yesterday, so she's no longer "the six-year-old", and she had a list of favorite things she wanted to do: get a manicure with the girls, eat at McDonalds, and swim in the moonlight. Today, there's the Red-Headed Hellion's wedding to get through.

I still have pics to share, as well as some spooky happenings to relate. Wait until you see what my camera caught! But let's not get ahead of ourselves, which I did when I posted about Powell Gardens and Joplin, Mo.

What makes a good journey?

Great travel companions who are as eager to explore as you are.

Coffee. Lots of it. We didn't even make it out of our own home town without stopping for breakfast and getting two to-go cups to take with us!

A willingness to take chances. Like we did when we got hungry, just across the Missouri border and found this little diner. It didn't look like much from the outside. In a past life it was a gas station. But inside? Pure 50′s-60′s fun!

We chose to sit under the Marilyn Monroe wall. The food wasn't bad either!

A willingness to stop along the way and smell the flowers. These are wildflowers growing alongside the road.

Curiosity in following a sign pointing toward an outlaw's home place. The house itself isn't very impressive. Neither are the exhibits. And in fact, most of the house is newer, having been upgraded by Jesse's mom after his death. We were disappointed that so much of it wasn't as it really was when Jesse James lived there.

Around back there's a section of the house that's authentic. We couldn't take pictures inside, so I can't share pics of the furnishings or family pictures.

They say that old section is haunted and that Jesse's younger brother was killed there by Pinkerton men when they tossed a bomb inside. So I took a picture of the window to see what I might catch.

Now, some of y'all will say it's the trees or a trick of the light. But I see a face. I'm a writer. I'm allowed to let my imagination go.

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Remember! The Book Dragon Contest continues! Find details listed here!

Guest Blogger: Marissa Day

TAM LIN AND THE ORIGINS OF

THE SURRENDER OF LADY JANE

or "Where I Didn't Get My Ideas From"

by Marissa Day

All things considered, traditional ballads and broadsheet songs are not a fertile source for good Romance. Seriously. If you are a hero or a heroine in, say, a Child ballad, your odds of successfully achieving the Happily Ever After are really, really small. You're far more likely to be betrayed by your lady love over a very small misunderstanding, which will cause you to die of a broken heart (Barbara Allen). Better yet, she could kill you herself over a badly timed joke and have her servants throw you in the backyard well (Proud Lady Margaret). On the heroine's side, you could be accidently shot because your lover turns out to have bad eyesight and you've got an unusually large apron (Polly Von), or the guy you thought was going to marry you could show up already married to another woman, after which she kills you, which causes him to kill her follows that up with his public suicide at the wedding feast (Fair Ellen). Alternately, you could elope with a guy who turns out to be a serial killer and have to chuck him in the ocean and then talk your parrot into not ratting you out (The Outlandish Knight).

Mothers are particularly hazardous to your Trad. Ballad couple. Your mother could leave your true love out in the cold (The Lass of Roch Royal), or you could get the double whammy where your mother curses you, and then the heroine's mother leaves you out in the cold (The Drowned Lovers). Fathers aren't any good either. They tend to do things like follow up the arrangement an advantageous marriage for you by trying to perform a public confirmation of your virginity, forcing you to either die of embarrassment or turn into a tree (The Arbutus). For an exciting variation, there's the possibility that your husband will murder both your shapeshifting lover and your son (The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry), or you could just get murdered by your jealous brunette of a sister on general principles (The Twa Sisters).

Of course, this is not a problem limited to the Scottish and British ballads. Do not even get me started on the dope slap needed by all the players in the traditional Appalachian ballad "The Long, Black Veil." I'm telling you, it is just not a grand ballroom of glamour and romance out there.

And yet, it was a traditional Ballad that furnished me with the basics for THE SURRENDER OF LADY JANE. The ballad was "Tam Lin."

"Tam Lin," is one of the Child ballads, and it has existed in various versions for hundreds of years on the Scottish borderlands (this according to its very own website: http://tam-lin.org/). But by the standards of traditional ballads, Tam Lin is different. For starters, we have a genuinely gutsy heroine, Janet. We also have a loyal hero, Tam Lin himself. Janet starts off the ballad by defying her father's injunction against going to a portion of her own lands, because there's supposedly a highwayman lurking there who has a bad habit of accosting passing maidens. In your normal ballad, this alone would be enough to cause Serious and Permanent Harm, but Janet follows it up by getting pregnant out of wedlock. This would usually be a death sentence for somebody. But in "Tam Lin," something happens that absolutely and without exception never happens in the traditional ballad.

The hero and the heroine talk to each other.

Janet explains she's with child. Tam, for his part, explains he's a prisoner of the fairy queen, and about to be made into a human sacrifice as part of a tithe to Hell. This, as you might imagine, constitutes something of a problem. However, Tam (because he is much smarter than your average Ballad Hero), also tells Janet how he can be set free. Janet, being smarter than your average Ballad Heroine, follows through on the instructions, and does free him. Not only do we have an HEA, but we have an early example of the importance of good communication in the maintenance of a healthy relationship.

I first read Tam Lin in a fat red book I found on my parent's shelves called A LITTLE TREASURY OF GREAT POETRY. Writers get asked a lot about their influences, and I have to say this beat up little book (which I still own), was one of mine. This is the book that also introduced me to "The Raven," "The Rubyiat (it's a smutty book! (bonus points if you can ID that quote)), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (which I obsessed over when I was about ten, for no comprehensible reason), "Tom O' Bedlam," and more clean limericks than you might believe existed.

Reading those works that could be famous or obscure, tragic or funny, was my introduction not only to the power of poetry, but to poetry as the shortest and most difficult form of storytelling. And it all sank in. It did result in a brief phase of my writing shockingly bad verse, but that's okay. I didn't know it at the time, but I was developing my language muscles. No one can beat a poet for heavy lifting with language. A novelist has paragraphs and pages to work with. The labor and balance required by each phrase are spread out. A poem can turn on a single word, if the poet is good enough.

In that book, I met Shakespeare's sonnets, Shelly's observations, Byron's laments, and Carroll's nonsense, but it was the ballads I kept going back to. Even at their longest (see "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"), a ballad is a complete and relatively brief story. It's got plot, pacing, and character in compact and entertaining form. When it came to "Tam Lin," it had a hero and heroine deciding to trust to each other's courage so they could be together.

And that is the heart and soul of good Romance.

Read an exerpt of THE SURRENDER OF LADY JANE

It's green and scaly, but too cute to ignore!

A new contest is here with a very cool prize!

What can you win?

This lovely book dragon that I purchased as a pair from my favorite curio shop. It's small, but beautifully detailed.

What do you have to do?

Post comments on my blog or my Facebook page. Every comment you make over the next two weeks will count as one entry. How easy is that?

The contest ends July 18th!

And since you need something to start your commenting with other than, "It's so cute!", here's a question…

If you had a great voice and had the opportunity to record a duet with any singer living today, whom would you choose as your partner for the recording?