Lisa Burstein's Blog, page 5

We Did It! First Chapter of Sneaking Candy!

 

We hit 500 adds on Goodreads last night & because I

I’ve also got some AMAZING blurbs to share:

“SNEAKING CANDY is fun, sexy and sweet, with a hero every reader will swoon over.” Monica Murphy, New York Times Bestselling Author of One Week Girlfriend


“Sneaking Candy lives up to it’s title, it’s a treat every time you pick it up!” Jennifer McLaughlin, New York Times Bestselling Author of Out of Line.


“With smart, strong leading characters, an original premise, and a plot that will keep you guessing until the end, SNEAKING CANDY is a breath of fresh air.” Lyla Payne, USA Today Bestselling Author of Broken at Love

To celebrate! I am giving away 10 E-Books from your choice of any of these authors’ books! See details here: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/27d80710/

First Chapter below- ENJOY!

He sleeps next to me. His breathing is even with the dreams

of someone who has just had the life drained out of him,

poured into him.

I can’t sleep.

I think about his bottomless brown eyes tied to mine as

his tongue grazed my belly button. I run my finger over my

lips and feel the shadow of his. My body aches and throbs—

echoes of everywhere he has touched, everywhere he has

been, everywhere he has claimed.

I can’t believe I told him my secret.

I watch his bare back rise and fall in the dim light of

dawn and wonder how I will ever come back from this.

Wonder if I even want to.

He is the kind of man I have always wished for and now

he is here.

I just hope that’s enough.

Chapter One

I couldn’t decide if I was burned out, pissed off, in love, or

none of the above. I chewed on my pen, what I’d done the

last time Professor Dylan reviewed one of my syllabi in his

wood-paneled office.

What I could decide was that he made me nervous.

Obviously he made me a lot of things, but nervous was

pretty much the only one I was allowed to feel when it came

to him. There weren’t any specific rules at the University of

Miami about “relations” between teaching assistants and

the professors they assisted, but it was “frowned upon.” It

was a sexual harassment minefield. Considering Professor

Dylan was tenure-track, it was enough to make him see me

as someone with typhoid—sexual typhoid.

At least when he was sober.

I understood. It would take a hell of a lot for me to

mess up my academic career just to mess around with some

student.

I watched his steel-blue eyes scan the document, grateful

they weren’t focused on me. That was when I felt more than

just nervous about what he would say—when instead I felt

a fever about what he might do—a heat in my thighs, which

blazed up to my neck, scorching everything in between like

a wildfire.

As a creative writing student, a creative writing teacher, I

got how cliché this situation was: falling for your boss, falling

for your professor, falling for an older man, falling for a man

who’d recently broken up with his long-time girlfriend.

It had more clichés than I could count.

The fact he liked my writing, thought I had real promise,

and chose me as his teaching assistant because he believed

I could actually be a successful author while my parents did

not, also added the ever-disgusting daddy-issue cliché to the

mix.

Weirder still, considering he was only twenty-six years

old.

“This is a little female-heavy, Candice,” he said,

tipping his head up. His mouth was a straight line, like the

punctuation on his criticism.

I bit my lip. Professor Dylan could be as irritating as a

thong made out of sandpaper.

As irritating as realizing I was wearing a thong made out

of sandpaper and I had forgotten to do laundry and had no

other thongs to wear.

“Compared to what?” I asked, sitting up straighter in

the impossible-to-be-comfortable-in slick wood chairs the

university chose to adorn the other side of his desk.

The class was Contemporary Fiction 201 and, fine, maybe

I did choose to teach more female writers, but I was a female

writer. And I was also pissed off at how underrepresented

we were everywhere else.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t say any of that as a lowly

teaching assistant, so while I waited for him to answer my

question, I thought back to the day everything between us

changed. It was the start-of-the-semester department mixer

a week ago. Seeing him play sand volleyball on the beach

with the male grad students, his shirt off and army-style

swim trunks hugging his hips, was all it took.

I was done.

Pile on that as the sun was setting, he and I were sitting

on an ocean-worn log drinking beer and laughing as we tried

to one up each other with terrible watercolor-sky-inspired

similes.

I was winning. “It’s as pink and perfect as a baby’s

bottom.”

“As pink and perfect as a baby’s bottom rife with diaper

rash,” he added.

I laughed and our eyes connected—a sharp, soft jolt—a

pause that clearly could either push his lips forward into a

kiss or rewind them back.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on which side

of the desk you’re on—one of the graduate students he’d

been playing volleyball with interrupted us. When the guy

had ambled over during his survey of whether we wanted

a hot dog or hamburger, he also put a pause on whatever

might have happened.

With our almost-kiss floating between us like a bubble

we were both afraid to pop, all those clichés lodged in my

taught-to-hate-cliché brain. They floated up like Professor

Dylan’s trunks would have if they’d come off him as we’d

bobbed in the ocean together…which I also sometimes

pictured.

It was all I could do to keep my chest from heaving when

I thought about him.

Yes, I know: another cliché.

“It should be balanced,” he said, waking me from my

fantasy. “Don’t you agree?” His wavy, hay-blond hair was

slicked back. On the beach it had been loose, flying as he

ran to spike the volleyball. I remember thinking the exact

color of his hair was something sonnets could be written

about. Of course, I’d had more than my share of Mike’s Hard

Lemonade, so I was feeling poetic—a scary proposition for

any fiction writer.

“If there were more men, would you tell me to add

more women?” I asked. I was sure some of the frustration

we felt toward each other would have been washed away if

we’d been able to finish what we’d started on the beach. Of

course, who the hell knew what we’d be doing right now if

that had happened?

“I don’t know—give me a new one with the changes I’ve

requested and we’ll see.” He passed the paper back to me.

I didn’t respond at first, allowed him to think I was

considering what he’d said. I wasn’t. I was considering his

lips. Wondering how they could seem so soft and yet be so

off-limits.

He cleared his throat. I liked to think I made him more

than just nervous, too, or maybe when it came to me, nervous

was enough. I mean, he’d seen me in my black bikini top

and jean shorts at the department mixer, too. Seen my dark

brown hair wet and wavy-wild from the ocean water—the

kind of hair you can’t get if you’re trying.

“Are you saying I should add one of your books?” I

asked, feeling brave enough to lean toward him—to call his

bluff.

You tried to kiss me. You tried to kiss me; admit it.

“I don’t think I said that.” He laid his hands on the

desk. They were so large I sometimes wondered how he

typed his manuscripts. “Though the sales would be nice.” He

laughed—a joke.

“Any other authors heavier on Y chromosomes you

might suggest?” I asked. I considered saying, Authors with

bigger balls than mine? but I needed this fellowship. It was

the only way I could afford to stay here.

Even with the desk between us, our bodies were close,

his fingers almost touching mine, my face just a neck’s length

away from his…

“You’re smart and talented, Candice. I’m sure you’ll

figure it out.”

…but then he ruined it by being a sandpaper thong

again.

He sat back in his chair. I guess he’d noticed how close

we’d been, too.

Smart and talented—the curse of death for a writer, what

someone said when he couldn’t think of anything interesting

to say about your work. Something had definitely changed

after our moment on the beach, and like the daddy-issue

cliché I was stuck in, I guess I was still searching for his

approval.

At least he’d taken over for my parents. When I’d

decided to become a writer, they hadn’t approved at all.

They were surgeons, and that was what they had wanted me

to be. Choosing to be a writer, a profession they referred to

as indulgent and flighty, had been enough to make them cut

me off financially.

And in every other way, too.

“Fine,” I said, stuffing the paper back in my messenger

bag. He rarely checked the syllabus again after this first

meeting. I knew it would stay as is.

“Are you really going to change it?” he asked, like he

could read my mind.

“You told me to,” I said. “I heard you.”

“It’s not the same thing as yes.” His teeth waited like he

wanted to smile but was waiting to see what I would do first.

I sighed. “Yes,” I replied, and the word was heavy in my

throat with thoughts of ocean rendezvous.

“In time for class this afternoon?” he pushed. He picked

up a silver pen from his desk and started clicking it, click,

click, click, like he needed to give his hands something to do.

I knew the feeling. Sitting in his office, I sometimes had to

sit on mine.

“Isn’t that why we’re having our meeting this morning?”

I asked. He didn’t believe me and I didn’t care. It was my

class, my rules—as long as he never found out, that is.

“You’re just more agreeable than I expected.”

“I do what I’m told.” Or at least, I let people think I did.

“Shame,” he said, “I do love a good argument.” He put

down his pen and took a sip from his mug.

“Is there anything else?” I asked, suddenly needing to

get the hell out of there. Fantasies could only take you so

far when you had no idea if you’d ever achieve them—if you

even had the chops to.

Anthony Dylan was a “literary force.” What the New

York Times said of his debut novel, published last year when

he was twenty-five. Only three years older than I was now.

It was unimaginable, all he’d done in four years: New York

Times bestselling author, National Book Award nominee,

tenure-track full professorship.

It made my stomach hurt, because it was everything I

wanted for my life and it was sitting right across from me at

the impossible age of twenty-six.

“Have you done all the reading needed to lead my

discussion section for Modern Lit 301?”

I wished when he’d given me that syllabus, I could have

told him to make it more balanced. It was dripping with

penises—a Christmas tree adorned with saggy members

instead of garlands: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and

Faulkner, to name a few. It was a semantic sausage fest.

“Almost,” I said.

He cocked his head, waiting for a better answer.

“I’ll be finished this week,” I said.

“Good,” he replied. “I have a star student signed up for

it, and I want to keep him a star.” His usually minty breath

was studded with a hint of cinnamon and coffee.

Coffee. I couldn’t help but think of James, the barista at

Buzzer’s Coffeehouse I’d been crushing on for the last six

weeks. Forget about the sonnets that could be written about

Professor Dylan’s hair—James’s deep brown eyes were what

the songs played in vans with steamed-up windows were

written about. They were the cause of what happened in

those vans.

I glanced at my phone, wondering if I had time for a

latte before class.

“Are you still with us, Candice?” Professor Dylan asked.

I blinked and put my hand to my chin, checking for

drool.

“Yes,” I replied, “star student. Can’t wait.” He meant a

guy he hoped to chisel into his literary image. Apparently,

I wasn’t eligible because I was a girl. It didn’t matter how

much promise he thought I had because I literally lacked the

necessary equipment.

Meeting over, I walked out of his office, and heard the

click of his keyboard keys behind his closed door. I hurried

out of the department quickly, hoping to avoid Julia. The exgirlfriend—

the ex-girlfriend in a freaking office next door—

and ten years his senior. How they could still work together

I had no idea. How he could have been with her in the first

place, I couldn’t even begin to fathom. She was the classic

hard-ass bitch—the kind of professor who, if you were a

minute late to class, marked you absent and then made you

write a freaking paper about it. People referred to her as the

POed Poet.

She was the last person I needed to deal with today.

I headed down the hall and into the stairwell toward the

basement copy center to make copies of my syllabus as is.

There was no way in hell I was changing it. But, I couldn’t

tell Professor Dylan that—or anything else I felt about him.

Why can I only be assertive and sexy in my writing?

Well, not the writing I shared here, but still.

It was so much easier to be strong and fearless and free

on the page than to say the words.

Why couldn’t I have told him to stuff his changes to the

syllabus? Why couldn’t I have fed it to him piece by piece

while he was tied to a bed with my fishnet thigh-highs? Only

when I was writing erotic romance as Candy Sloane could I

do that. When the two of us were in his wood-paneled office,

I wished I could be more like Candy.

But he could never find out about her. No one at

the university could. As much as I loved her, she had the

possibility to make everything I was working toward vanish.

Professor Dylan would be furious. Not because of Candy

specifically, but because Candy represented everything he

thought was wrong with the publishing industry now. He

and his literary brethren weren’t too happy with the success

of self-published romance writers like Candy.

On the beach, drunk enough to forget himself, he’d

complained about that being the reason his newest book

wasn’t making the bestseller lists. Of course, the critics had

their own term of endearment for what had happened to

him: “sophomore slump.”

I knew being an erotic romance author wasn’t an actual

offense, but writing popular fiction when I was studying to

be a serious literary writer absolutely would be, according

to him.

Candy had to stay my secret.

Add to Goodreads here!

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

KOBO

400 Goodreads Adds = First 4 pages of Sneaking Candy!

Sneaking Candy hit 400 Goodreads Ads, so rather than wait to hit 500 & post 5 pages- I’m posting the first 4 pages now! Enjoy!

He sleeps next to me. His breathing is even with the dreams

of someone who has just had the life drained out of him,

poured into him.

I can’t sleep.

I think about his bottomless brown eyes tied to mine as

his tongue grazed my belly button. I run my finger over my

lips and feel the shadow of his. My body aches and throbs—

echoes of everywhere he has touched, everywhere he has

been, everywhere he has claimed.

I can’t believe I told him my secret.

I watch his bare back rise and fall in the dim light of

dawn and wonder how I will ever come back from this.

Wonder if I even want to.

He is the kind of man I have always wished for and now

he is here.

I just hope that’s enough.

Chapter One

I couldn’t decide if I was burned out, pissed off, in love, or

none of the above. I chewed on my pen, what I’d done the

last time Professor Dylan reviewed one of my syllabi in his

wood-paneled office.

What I could decide was that he made me nervous.

Obviously he made me a lot of things, but nervous was

pretty much the only one I was allowed to feel when it came

to him. There weren’t any specific rules at the University of

Miami about “relations” between teaching assistants and

the professors they assisted, but it was “frowned upon.” It

was a sexual harassment minefield. Considering Professor

Dylan was tenure-track, it was enough to make him see me

as someone with typhoid—sexual typhoid.

At least when he was sober.

I understood. It would take a hell of a lot for me to

mess up my academic career just to mess around with some

student.

I watched his steel-blue eyes scan the document, grateful

they weren’t focused on me. That was when I felt more than

just nervous about what he would say—when instead I felt

a fever about what he might do—a heat in my thighs, which

blazed up to my neck, scorching everything in between like

a wildfire.

As a creative writing student, a creative writing teacher, I

got how cliché this situation was: falling for your boss, falling

for your professor, falling for an older man, falling for a man

who’d recently broken up with his long-time girlfriend.

It had more clichés than I could count.

The fact he liked my writing, thought I had real promise,

and chose me as his teaching assistant because he believed

I could actually be a successful author while my parents did

not, also added the ever-disgusting daddy-issue cliché to the

mix.

Weirder still, considering he was only twenty-six years

old.

“This is a little female-heavy, Candice,” he said,

tipping his head up. His mouth was a straight line, like the

punctuation on his criticism.

I bit my lip. Professor Dylan could be as irritating as a

thong made out of sandpaper.

As irritating as realizing I was wearing a thong made out

of sandpaper and I had forgotten to do laundry and had no

other thongs to wear.

“Compared to what?” I asked, sitting up straighter in

the impossible-to-be-comfortable-in slick wood chairs the

university chose to adorn the other side of his desk.

The class was Contemporary Fiction 201 and, fine, maybe

I did choose to teach more female writers, but I was a female

writer. And I was also pissed off at how underrepresented

we were everywhere else.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t say any of that as a lowly

teaching assistant, so while I waited for him to answer my

question, I thought back to the day everything between us

changed. It was the start-of-the-semester department mixer

a week ago. Seeing him play sand volleyball on the beach

with the male grad students, his shirt off and army-style

swim trunks hugging his hips, was all it took.

I was done.

Pile on that as the sun was setting, he and I were sitting

on an ocean-worn log drinking beer and laughing as we tried

to one up each other with terrible watercolor-sky-inspired

similes.

I was winning. “It’s as pink and perfect as a baby’s

bottom.”

“As pink and perfect as a baby’s bottom rife with diaper

rash,” he added.

I laughed and our eyes connected—a sharp, soft jolt—a

pause that clearly could either push his lips forward into a

kiss or rewind them back.

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on which side

of the desk you’re on—one of the graduate students he’d

been playing volleyball with interrupted us. When the guy

had ambled over during his survey of whether we wanted

a hot dog or hamburger, he also put a pause on whatever

might have happened.

With our almost-kiss floating between us like a bubble

we were both afraid to pop, all those clichés lodged in my

taught-to-hate-cliché brain. They floated up like Professor

Dylan’s trunks would have if they’d come off him as we’d

bobbed in the ocean together…which I also sometimes

pictured.

It was all I could do to keep my chest from heaving when

I thought about him.

Yes, I know: another cliché.

“It should be balanced,” he said, waking me from my

fantasy. “Don’t you agree?” His wavy, hay-blond hair was

slicked back. On the beach it had been loose, flying as he

ran to spike the volleyball. I remember thinking the exact

color of his hair was something sonnets could be written

about. Of course, I’d had more than my share of Mike’s Hard

Lemonade, so I was feeling poetic—a scary proposition for

any fiction writer.

“If there were more men, would you tell me to add

more women?” I asked. I was sure some of the frustration

we felt toward each other would have been washed away if

we’d been able to finish what we’d started on the beach. Of

course, who the hell knew what we’d be doing right now if

that had happened?

“I don’t know—give me a new one with the changes I’ve

requested and we’ll see.” He passed the paper back to me.

I didn’t respond at first, allowed him to think I was

considering what he’d said. I wasn’t. I was considering his

lips. Wondering how they could seem so soft and yet be so

off-limits.

Add to Goodreads here!

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

KOBO

CANDY is up for Pre-order!

Hey all my lovelies! Just a note to let you know that Sneaking Candy is available for pre-order on all book buying sites! I am so excited about this book and judging from just the few ratings and comments so far from folks who have read ARC’s you guys are too.

“5- stars If I could give this more stars I would- OMG”

“4-stars- LOVED IT!”

“5-stars Candice and her story made me laugh out loud, blush furiously and giggle”

EEEEEEE! Fun! Candy is waiting for you.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

KOBO

 

 

A COVER, A TRAILER & A CONTEST to win a $25 Gift Card!

Yesterday the cover and trailer of Sneaking Candy were revealed! Thanks to everyone who took part. To celebrate I’m running a contest for a $25 Gift Card to either Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

All I ever wanted was to make a name for myself as Candice Salinas, creative writing grad student at the University of Miami. Of course, secretly I already have made a name for myself: as Candy Sloane, self-published erotic romance writer. Though thrilled that my books are selling and I have actual fans, if anyone at UM found out, I could lose my scholarship…and the respect of my faculty advisor, grade-A-asshole Professor Dylan.

Enter James Walker, super-hot local barista and—surprise!—my student. Even though I know a relationship is totally off-limits, I can’t stop myself from sneaking around with James, taking a few cues from my own erotic writing…if you catch my drift. Candy’s showing her stripes for the first time in my real life, and I’ve never had so much fun. But when the sugar high fades, can my secrets stay under wraps.

 

Check out the contest details along with the trailer here!

Add to Goodreads here!

 

 

Embrace Launch!!!!

Entangled Embrace is Entangled’s New Adult line, launching today with three fantastic books! If you are looking for something new and mesmerizing, embrace the endless possibilities that this brand new Entangled Publishing new adult line offers!

Trouble Comes Knocking by Mary Duncanson

A girl who can’t forget…

Twenty-two-year-old Lucy Carver is like Sherlock Holmes in ballet flats, but her eidetic memory is more albatross than asset, and something she usually keeps hidden. When she notices that something’s amiss at her dead-end job, she jumps at the chance to finally use her ability for good. That is, until, a man is murdered, and she becomes the target of the killer.

A detective on his first case…

Detective Eli Reyes is overbearing, pompous, way too hot for Lucy’s own good, and seems as determined to ruin her relationship with her boyfriend, John, as finding the murderer. He brings Lucy in on the case, thinking she can help him get to the truth, only to cut her loose when he realizes he’s gotten far more than he ever bargained for.

A past that won’t go away…

When memories from her childhood invade her present, Lucy discovers a mystery bigger than she could have imagined. With the killer still after her, and Eli nowhere to be found, she takes things into her own hands, determined to expose the truth no matter what—before trouble comes knocking…again.

Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Goodreads

Hushed by Kelley York

Eighteen-year-old Archer couldn’t protect his best friend, Vivian, from what happened when they were kids, so he’s never stopped trying to protect her from everything else. It doesn’t matter that Vivian only uses him when hopping from one toxic relationship to another. Archer is always there, waiting to be noticed.

Then along comes Evan, the only person who’s ever cared about Archer without a single string attached. The harder he falls for Evan, the more Archer sees Vivian for the manipulative hot-mess she really is.

But Viv has her hooks in deep, and when she finds out about the murders Archer’s committed and his relationship with Evan, she threatens to turn him in if she doesn’t get what she wants…

And what she wants is Evan’s death, and for Archer to forfeit his last chance at redemption.

Amazon | B&N| Kobo | Goodreads

Definitely, Maybe in Love by Ophelia London

Her theory of attraction is about to get a new angle…

Spring Honeycutt wants two things: to ace her sustainable living thesis and to save the environment. Both seem hopelessly unobtainable until her college professor suggests that with a new angle, her paper could be published. Spring swears she’ll do whatever it takes to ensure that happens.

Whatever it takes, however, means forming a partnership with the very hot, very privileged, very conceited Henry Knightly.

Henry is Spring’s only hope at publication, but he’s also the über-rich son of a land developer and cash-strapped Spring’s polar opposite—though she can’t help being attracted to the way he pushes her buttons, both politically and physically. Spring finds there’s more to Henry than his old money and argyle sweaters…but can she drop the loud-and-proud act long enough to let him in? Suddenly, choosing between what she wants and what she needs puts Spring at odds with everything she believes in.

Definitely, Maybe in Love is a modern take on Pride and Prejudice that proves true love is worth risking a little pride.

Amazon | B&N | Kobo | Goodreads

TEASER TUESDAY Candy Stripped

My New Adult Contemporary novel Candy Stripped comes out in a MONTH! And the cover, blurb and trailer reveal will be next Thursday! I’m so excited that I thought I would share a sexy scene I just wrote, that even my editor hasn’t seen yet.

Enjoy!

I put the tequila down, lay back on the sand, and put my hands on both sides of my head. “I want to apologize again for last night. You’re not who I’m mad at.”

“Really?” James asked. “That’s new and different.”

“Mad is the wrong word,” I said, turning to him. “Disappointed, I guess.”

“Your parents?”

I nodded. “They’ll never accept this. What I want for my life. Being a writer will always be foolish in their eyes.”

“If you want it, how can it be?” The words came out so quickly, he didn’t even have time to think. It let me know he believed it. That it was his truth.

“I know.” I sighed. “But it’s a little hard to remember when my cheering section is a guy I’ve slept with.”

And Mandy, I thought.

“We’ve never technically slept,” he said, turning sideways and resting his head on his arm.

(Super-hot double entendre alert.)

He moved in close to my ear. “I’d cheer for you anyway,” he whispered.

“I’m starting to believe you would.”

“Now if you were doing something you didn’t want to do,” he said, tracing his finger lightly on my thigh, “that would be foolish. For example.” He tapped his finger for emphasis. “Pushing me away when it’s obvious you want me.”

“Ego much?” I asked.

“Hey, I mean, you did jump me in a parking lot…and in your apartment…and in a cab,” he said, his finger punctuating each entry on his list.

“I did not jump you,” I said, but I couldn’t help smirking.

“You did,” he said, “and I liked it.” He paused. “I kind of can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Me neither,” I admitted.

“So why don’t we stop thinking about it.” He kissed me, firmly, like he was compensating for what our fight had interrupted the night before. We made out like teenagers who were afraid to do anything else, a kind of determined groping. Each kiss felt like oxygen, the only thing keeping me alive. He moved on top of me, our lips inseparable. He fit perfectly into my curves, his chest and hips to mine, our skin salty and sandy.

He stopped and ran his thumb against my cheek. “How about not sleeping together some more?” he asked.

“I’m not tired,” I breathed out, the sky a reflection of the vast ocean darkening above us.

I waited for him to put on a condom, but before that, he reached over me for the picnic basket, removed the baguette and took a bite from it like it was a carrot. “I’m going to need all my strength for this.”

He was slow, tender, his eyes on mine, holding me as strongly and surely as his arms. I let myself sink into him, completely submerge. This was what I wanted, always. He was what I wanted, always and the way he was looking at me, his brown eyes as exposed as our bodies were, let me know he felt the same.

He kissed me and through his lips I could hear the roar of him—a growl from deep, calling for me, begging for me. He moaned my name and I echoed with his.

“Candice,” he said, “Candice,” he repeated more forcefully, my name becoming his mantra.

“James,” I sighed, his name becoming my song.

Our bodies drowned against each other, thrusting in sync like the waves, in and out, in and out, the rhythm of nature, of two people realizing they should never have an ocean, a highway, or a classroom between them again.

Sign up for the cover reveal here!!!

Add Sneaking Candy on Goodreads

Cover Reveal Sign up for Sneaking Candy

It seems like I’ve be waiting FOREVER for this, but I am happy to announce the cover and blurb reveal for my upcoming New Adult Contemporary Romance SNEAKING CANDY will be Nov. 14th.

Candice Salinas is a creative writing grad student. Candy Sloane is an erotic romance author. They’re the same person, but no one at the University of Miami can know that. In this sexy new adult read, hiding who you are is way easier than falling in love.

Here’s a small peek at the cover!

You guys- for real- THIS IS MY FAVORITE COVER YET! (and I’ve had some pretty kick ass covers)

I’d love if you guys would help with the reveal!

Sign up here!!!

Add Sneaking Candy on Goodreads

Entangled Halloween Hop!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Halloween is a great time to watch scary movies and read scary stories, so I thought on my stop I would offer a $10 gift card to Amazon so you can buy some!!!!

Entry is easy! Simply add my upcoming New Adult Contemporary book Sneaking Candy on Goodreads

If you don’t have Goodreads, leave a blog post comment below listing your favorite scary book or movie! You can do both for double entry.

Goooood Luck!

 

Check out all the stops here!

http://www.entangledinromance.com/2013/10/14/all-entangled-eve-a-halloween-hop/

NEW TITLE, Teaser & Release Day Launch!

Hi Everyone,

I am happy to announce the new title of my New Adult book coming on Dec. 9th from Entangled Publishing is….

SNEAKING CANDY

As you guys know it is about a creative writing student named Candice and an erotica author pen-named Candy, trying to keep her two lives separate.

The other FUN news is that you can sign up to help launch the book on release day Dec. 9th on the link below! There will be giveaways, sexy excerpts and lots of fun!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UU8IUp-SUbGGtX5TSo4IWXU1eUkoDIfcGmSLjH1yi_Q/viewform

 

To celebrate all of this, I thought I would also post a short teaser! Enjoy!

 

“And what?!” Amanda yelled, practically throwing the laptop back at me.

“I told you it wasn’t done,” I said, heavy with satisfaction, “‘and’ was when you interrupted me.”

“Damn, Candy, this is hot,” she said, her eyes hitting mine and widening. “Who’s this guy based on?”

“No one in particular,” I said, even though as she read aloud I saw James doing all those things to me. When I wrote, I felt James doing all those things to me. If only he knew that in addition to asking for just his body in real life, I was also screwing him six ways to Sunday on paper.

Amanda scrolled back to the beginning of the book. An opening scene where the characters meet and they realize they have been double booked in their mutual friends’ million-dollar ski lodge. The hero walks in to find the heroine drinking wine and reading in front of the fire, the flames making her dark auburn hair sing.

“Brown hair,” she listed, “brown eyes, body like a Photoshopped underwear model.” Mandy smirked. “No guy in particular, huh?”

“No,” I said, my mouth shut tight.

“Not a certain student?” she asked.

“No way,” I protested, but I could feel myself turning pink. As pink as if I had been sitting in front of that fire when James walked in, his body filling the frame of the doorway, snowflakes sparkling on his jacket and in his hair, his gaze warming me like a mug of hot chocolate.

“I know this isn’t a story I told you,” she said.

“I have an imagination of my own,” I said, pointing at the side of my head.

“Have you actually done all of this?” she asked.

“I write fiction,” I said.

She frowned. She didn’t like my answer, because it wasn’t an answer.

“Fine,” I said, practically mumbling. “Not yet.”

She smiled. “In that case, I know what should come after the ‘and.’” She paused for effect. “Yes I said come.”

“Funny, you’re hilarious,” I said, not laughing.

“Do you want my help or not, Candice?” she asked, giving a hiss to the second c in my name.

I hadn’t asked for her help, but Amanda was the kind of person who didn’t care about that.

“Sure,” I said, indulging her.

“I want to make sure you’re prepared for this,” she said, touching my thigh.

“Let me guess,” I said, “more sex?”

“No,” she said seriously, “I think this scene needs a BJ.”

“Mandy,” I said, feeling my cheeks glow, my stomach lurch. I could write about sex, but something that intimate? I wasn’t sure.

Yes, I had wanted James to do the female version of that to me, but it would have been my first time when we were together in the pool and it hadn’t happened so luckily I didn’t have to return the favor. I had no idea how to return the favor.

Add SNEAKING CANDY on Goodreads

Sexism in Writing Programs: David Gilmour is No Exception

By now most of you have probably seen the disgusting words of writing professor David Gilmour, “I’m not interested in teaching books by women. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.”

See the full story here.

His word are sexist, racist and unbelievable to anyone living in the 20th century, but they are not an exception when it comes to the world of writing programs.

I can only speak from my experience. I entered an MFA program 12 years ago, ready to become the next Margaret Atwood (who by the way is a prolific, bestselling, award winning Canadian author like Mr. Gilmour), but what I found when I arrived was not a place that read her books, or taught her.

The break out of male to female professors in my program was as follows: Fiction: 2 male full-time, 1 female adjunct; Non-Fiction: 1 female full-time; Poetry: 1 male full time, 1 female full time and 1 male adjunct.

Pretty even as things in writing go, but notice 2 male full-time for fiction. Those men were my main professors. They were the ones who were going to teach me how to write as a woman and certainly they were equipped to teach writing, but not that. As a result, my literature classes were absolutely male heavy. There were females sprinkled in: Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, Alice Munro but mostly we read men: Phillip Roth, Vladamir Nabokov, Chekhov, Michael Chabon, Chaucer, Homer, etc. ) (You’ll notice they were also all white, but this blog post isn’t really about that part.)

I never really thought about it at the time. I was so excited to be in a writing program (you have to be accepted based on talent) that I never questioned if I was getting an equal education. Additionally, the sexism in my program was never as overt and possibly my professors didn’t even realize it. They were men who both went to Iowa, which if you know about the history of writing programs was one of the first and a boy’s club from way back.

I know that has changed now and a lot of amazing women authors are coming out of Iowa, but I would guess that they still read far more men in their literature classes. It’s what the old guard want.

So what does what David Gilmour said have to do with me, aside from having in a small way experienced it?

Six months ago, I started writing a book titled Candy, Stripped about a twenty-something woman in a graduate writing program who writes erotic romance under a pseudonym because she is afraid she will not be taken seriously by her peers. I thought at first it would be a book about a woman trying to find her authorial voice, her sexual voice and finding love in the unlikeliest place, but as I wrote it turned into something much different.

Her writing professor and mentor in the book is an awful lot like David Gilmour, and was created before I even knew about the ass that was David Gilmour.

See this excerpt as an example:

Professor Martin’s glanced at the syllabus I had created for my class. “This is a little female heavy, Candice,” he said, tipping his head up. His mouth was a straight line, like the punctuation on his criticism.

I bit my lip. Professor Martin could be as irritating as a thong made out of sandpaper.

As irritating as realizing I was wearing a thong made of sandpaper and that I had forgotten to do laundry and had no other thongs to wear.

“Compared to what?” I asked, sitting up straighter in the impossible-to-be-comfortable-in slick wood chairs the university chose to adorn the other side of his desk.

The class was Contemporary Fiction 201 and fine maybe I did choose to teach more female writers, but I was a female writer and I was also pissed off at how underrepresented we were everywhere else.

“It should just be balanced,” he said. “Don’t you agree?” His wavy, hay-blonde hair was slicked back. On the beach it had been loose, flying as he ran to spike the volleyball . I remember thinking that day the exact color of his hair was something that sonnets could be written about. Of course, I’d had more than my share of Mike’s Hard Lemonade so I was feeling poetic—a scary proposition for any fiction writer.

“If there were more men, would you tell me to add more women?” I asked. I wished when he’d given me the syllabus for the class that I was a teaching assistant for I could have told him to make it more balanced.

It was dripping with penises, a Christmas tree adorned with saggy-members instead of garland: Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Faulkner just to name a few. It was a semantic sausage-fest.

Without even meaning to, I could feel my book turning into the battle cry I believe many women writers and would-be writers feel. I am not less important or valid than you for being a woman, or writing stories that women want to read.

The only reason I could be writing this was because even if it wasn’t as overt as what Mr. Gilmour said, it was something I experienced. Something it seems women in writing programs still are.

I hope when Candy, Stripped comes out in December professors like Mr. Gimour might see that there is a problem in what and who is taught in writing programs, that a change needs to come, but probably not because I am a woman.