Skye Warren's Blog, page 24

Winner of the New Year's Blog Hop

This site's winner of my martial arts erotic romance, Below the Belt, and a $15 Amazon Gift Certificate was… Kathryn H!

If you don't win, go ahead and pick up Beauty Touched the Beast, my short erotic story, or Sweetest Mistress, my free femdom novella.

Thanks all and happy new year!

New Years Blog Hop & Prizes!

Welcome to the New Year Blog Hop, Skye Warren Edition!

My favorite New Year's memory is of my dog, Munchy.

She was a scared old thing when my now-husband-then-boyfriend first saw her at a pound. She had a sign on her crate saying to please take her out for walks, since she was potty-trained and wouldn't go otherwise. So we took her out and fell in love with her, despite the fact that she was skittish and quirky and that's putting it nicely. She stayed with us many years, and was very well loved, as well as loved us back quite fiercely.

That New Year's was the first one we had with her. We'd gone out to the lake behind our apartments to watch some fireworks some of the other residents were setting off. At the very first boom, she bolted from our sides and ran straight back to our apartment door, whining and scratching to go back inside. Smart girl.

Munchy passed away a few years back. I miss her and love her still, but I'm grateful for the time that we had with her, that I was able to get her a big yard, and that she could meet my son before she passed.

So, that was a bittersweet memory, but to make it up to you, I have prizes! A copy of Below The Belt, my sexy martial arts romance, and a $15 Amazon Gift Certificate go to one lucky commenter. Go ahead and spill your fondest New Year's memory, or maybe just a mention of a beloved pet of your own. Plus, you'll be entered to win the Blog Hop grand prize, a Kindle Fire or an $80 gift certificate.

And if you don't win, go ahead and pick up Beauty Touched the Beast, my short erotic story, or Sweetest Mistress, my free femdom novella.

 

Cover Reveal: Sweetest Mistress

Hope your New Year's has been great so far! I have a new cover for Sweetest Mistress, my free femdom novella!

There's also a new excerpt:

My throat was incredibly dry – that was the only reason it took me a minute to squeeze any words out. Hearing her even say the words sex line over the phone was incredibly erotic. Thinking of what she offered – damn, I squeezed down hard on my cock. The pain was enough to distract me from coming.

"Yes," I said, my voice coming out raspy. "Please."

"Okay," she said, already sounding stronger, more self-assured. "Where are you? Describe it to me."

"I'm in my office. I'm alone, but my secretary is just outside. The door is closed. I can see her working through the window."

"Good," she said. "And have you ever jerked off in your office before?"

"Yes. A few times."

"With your secretary there?" She sounded amused, which only turned me on more.

"Usually when she'd gone home." My hand made its way back to the front of my pants. "Once when she was still there."

"You weren't worried you'd get caught?"

"Yeah." I rubbed harder on my crotch, my nostrils flaring with the effort it took to restrain myself, to not unzip myself and release. "I was worried."

"So you were bad," she said. "And you want to be punished."

"I do," I whispered, staring at the back of my secretary's head. Her hair was done up in a bun, mostly brown with strands of grey. She was attractive enough, though I'd never been tempted. That wasn't the point. It was the taboo. The badness of it.

"You're doing it even now, aren't you?" A soft laugh. "You can't help yourself."

"Let me take it out," I said.

"I don't know," she mused. "You don't really need it out to be punished."

"Please," I whispered, grasping my cock through the pants. Trying to stroke, failing.

"I could make you come in your pants. You'd be sticky all over. Then I'd tell you to go to the bathroom. You'd walk right by her with a wet stain on your pants. What do you think?"

Desperate, I bucked into my hand. Thrusting just for the pressure since I couldn't get a handle on myself. "Ah, God. Please, Melissa. I'll do anything."

"Will you?" she asked, delighted. "Then say you're my pet."

I panted, my eyes glazing over. I was close, so close, and if she didn't let me out soon, I would come in my pants. Just thinking about it, the humiliation of it, almost made me come. "I'm your pet," I gasped out.

"Okay," she sing-songed. "Go ahead and take it out, you dirty boy."

My hands flew to my crotch, unzipping the already damp fabric, and got out my cock. My fingers scrabbled at the phone as the other hand stroked my cock frantically. I fell off my chair and onto my knees. The chair rolled into the wall behind me, and my forehead thumped against the desk, but I didn't care. I couldn't think. I was coming hard as she spouted dirty words into my ear.

It's take awhile for the new cover and excerpt to propogate to all the publishers, but I'm loving it. Tomorrow is the New Year Blog Hop and Giveaway, where you can win some serious prize-y things just for commenting. Oh, and watch out for Trust In Me to release later this month. Busy, busy bees

Six Sunday #1

This is from my erotic romance Below The Belt, where our hero, Abe – the black belt, the national champion – is trying to play it cool. To keep his distance. Thankfully, she's not going to let him.

"Oh, Abe," she said. God, what was that look in her eyes? He wanted to look away from it, but he couldn't. "You're someone special. I see it."

The line wouldn't come – the one that would make this whole conversation a joke, instead of the truth.

Check out other Six Sentence posts, too!

Thanks,

Skye

New Year Blog Hop (with prizes)

Just a quick heads up about the New Year blog hop coming up.

Come visit us on Jan 4th! Over 60 authors and reviews are going to talk about their favorite New Year Memory! What does that mean for you? Well we are giving away gift cards, books, and other swag goodies throughout the day! Each author will chose their own winner – so that means over 50 winners! And you can win on multiple pages!

We have TWO Grand prizes:

One being a Kindle Fire to a lucky winner!

Our second grand prize is a $80 Amazon GC!

That's across the entire blog hop, but the local prizes for this blog include a copy of Below The Belt and a $25 Amazon gift certificate. And, let's be honest, I started this blog, oh, about a week ago, so if you're reading this, you're odds are freaking good

So, mark your calendars for January 4th. Or, better yet, just subscribe to the blog to get notified. See you then!

Dirty Little Secret: Book Boyfriend of 2011 Edition

The Dirty Little Secret for this week was to make a list of your favorite book boyfriends, but I'm only going to pick one. So, my favorite book boyfriend of 2011 was …. ba da da da da (that was a drum roll) …

Jeremy Gray from Annabel Joseph's Comfort Object!

This was a recent read for me, but he was delicious. I really don't have a thing for actors, it's kind of a turn-off, actually, but Joseph didn't really get into that aspect much, beyond the effects of the travel and the fame. And he didn't get off on the whole attention/press thing, either. Instead, he fell for a girl who was simple and real and loved to read (ahem).

He was pretty kinky, but I liked that he wasn't pain-focused like some other of Joseph's doms have seemed. It was hard for Nell to handle pain, especially caning, and so when he did it, he was very appreciative. Despite a sort of gruff exterior and asshole-ish behavior, he was such a sweetheart! That birthday party was sweet. The whole books thing was cute.

And I loved-loved-loved the last scene. It was ADORABLE. I won't give it away, but let's just say that glasses are involved and it makes me smile just to think about it. You know, I do love angst and drama, it makes for a great book, but at the end of the day, when we are thinking about their HEA, I want to know that they're going to have fun.

I think I might be making this book out to seem cuter than it was, or would seem to other people. This is serious BDSM erotica, not sugar kink or anything like that. He's definitely domineering and controlling. And she is, by conventional descriptions, a whore. But I found them both to be very relateable and delightful.

 

Cover Reveal: Trust In Me

I'm pleased to debut the cover and blurb of my upcoming release, Trust In Me.

Mia is a whore on a mission. She'll free the shipment of human cargo from her mobster boyfriend, a.k.a. her owner, and, if she's lucky, die in the process. But luck abandons her yet again when she finds out that the security expert in charge of the shipment is none other than her childhood crush, Tyler Martinez. Turns out he's an FBI undercover agent with the same goal as Mia. Though he doesn't trust her, Tyler and Mia must work together to free the slaves – and stay alive. Trust In Me is a story of erotic pain and incipient romance, spiraling ever faster toward betrayal or redemption.

Watch for Trust In Me to release right here in January 2012!

Welcome

Hi, there. I am dedicated to building a career for myself as an erotica author, but I'll admit the Skye Warren brand was a bit of an experiment. My other manuscripts are following a more traditional bent of erotica or erotic romance. Even there, it turns out I scribble outside the lines enough where it's an issue. But I had these other ideas, these fantasies about nonconsent and dirty, graphic sex that I knew would be way out of the bounds of traditional publishing. The hypothesis is that someone out there is interested in reading such things.

I put up my first novellas around the middle of November. Then I ended up taking them down and back up as I worked out some kinks in the formatting and other details. At the time, I did no promotion. No twitter, no posting on blogs, no ads. I didn't submit anything to sites for review. I didn't even have this website. Zilch. This means that anyone who found my books early on did it through searching or tags. To be totally honest, I was shocked anyone bought it at all.

But they did. I'm not doing a site-by-site break down of the sales numbers (aforementioned contract issues), but my total sales for the month of November, which was less than a half a month's time, ended up being $68 and some change. Rounded, it was $69, which I thought was cute, considering I write erotica. I considered it auspicious, a successful trial run. Nothing major, no charts were hit and no bills were paid, but there it was. Proof that people were looking for what I was putting out.

A few details about what I put out: there's Keep Me Safe which is my nonconsent offering. That has been my big seller by FAR. We're probably talking 80% of sales. At the same time I put up Below the Belt, which is a more traditional erotic romance. Standard genre wisdom suggests that erotic romance would fare better than a nonconsent erotica, but that hasn't been my experience. Now, these are pretty small data points, so I don't mean to suggest that it is true as a whole. As I said, these were sold based on discovery alone. That means that more people were probably searching for the terms about Keep Me Safe than about Below the Belt. Also, Below the Belt has more competition in the very broad, very populated erotic romance genre than Keep Me Safe does. Another factor is that Keep Me Safe is darker and has a suspense edge to it, whereas Below the Belt is more of a contemporary romance with a slightly humorous bent. All of this could factor in to the differences in sales.

I also put out Beauty Touched the Beast and, more recently, Sweetest Mistress, as free reads. This is the closest thing I've done to promotion, with the idea being that people will seek out free reads, like my work and then go on to purchase my paid products. I have no way of knowing how much they factored in to my sales so far, though they have a fair number of downloads on Smashwords, where I initially released them. I am only just now working out how to get them onto other sites, like Amazon.

I have several things I'm planning, including working with an editor and a sequel to Keep Me Safe, so I will keep you guys posted. Hope to see you around.

- Skye