J. Kenner's Blog, page 73
November 16, 2013
New #StarkOnSaturday excerpt: Take Me by J. Kenner
It’s another #StarkOnSaturday!
We’re counting down to Take Me, an epilogue novella that follows the bestselling Stark Trilogy which began with with Release Me, continued with Claim Me, and concluded with Complete Me!
I hope you enjoy this week’s installment! (Fair warning, though! It’s hard to do excerpts from a novella without risking spoilers! So be forewarned before you read ahead!)
And here we go!
My mother reaches over and snatches the fork out of my hand. For a moment, I’m fool enough to think that she’s going to get in the spirit and try the cake. But all she does it point the tines at me. “Honestly, Nichole,” she says, in a tone that leaves no doubt that I have committed some heinous sin. “Are you trying to ruin your wedding? Have you thought about your waist? Your hips? Not to mention your skin!”
She turns to to Sally, who is clearly struggling to wipe the expression of appalled shock off her face. “Bless her little heart,” my mother says, in a tone that practically drips sugar, “but my Nichole isn’t a girl who can eat cake and then get into something as form fitting as a wedding gown.”
“Nikki is a lovely young woman,” Sally says firmly. “And I’m sure she’s going to look stunning at her wedding.”
“Of course she will,” my mother says, her voice sounding farther and farther away from me. It’s as if I’m sliding back, moving down some tunnel away from her, away from Sally, away from everything.
“That’s why I’m here,” Mother adds, her tone entirely reasonable. “My daughter knows she has no self-control about things that are bad for her—cakes, candies, men,” she adds in a stage whisper. “I’ve always been there to help her keep her eye on the prize.”
“I see,” Sally says, and I have a feeling she sees more than my mother wants.
As for me, even from the depth of this well into which I’ve fallen, I am seething. I want to leap out of my chair and tell my mother that she’s never helped me, she’s only manipulated me. That she’s not interested in what I want, but only what I look like and how I act and if I’m presenting an image that stands up to the Fairchild name—a name that’s not worth what it used to be since she took over—and decimated—the oil business that she inherited when my grandfather passed away.
I want to say all of that, but I don’t. I just sit there, my plastic smile on my face, hating myself for not moving. For not telling her to get the hell back to Texas.
You can pre-order Take Me (coming Dec. 3) from Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Random House
BooksAMillion
iTunes
In the UK, you can grab Take Me here (more retailers coming soon):
And if you missed Release Me, you can snag your copy from your favorite retailers here:
Random House
Amazon (print)
Amazon (kindle)
Amazon United Kingdom
Barnes and Noble (print or Nook)
Books-A-Million
Kobo
iBooks
Indie BoundAnd, of course, you can get Book 2, Claim Me, from these great retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Random House
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
And here are the links to Book 3, Complete Me!
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Kobo
Random House
iTunes
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
More soon,
XXOO
November 15, 2013
Fabulous erotic offering (story and image) from Skyler White plus excerpt!
About a year ago, I had the pleasure of reading a section of an erotic novella, Offerings: Lands of Sex and Magic, Episode 1 (Mythic Erotica), that author Skyler White was working on. We were at a writing retreat, and I thought it was just fabulous (this came as no surprise, because Skyler is fabulous in general.
Her first book – and Falling, Fly — is incredible, and her most recent release, The Incrementalists (co-written with Steven Brust) is kicking serious book butt 
(It’s on my very top-heavy TBR pile).
So it should come as no surprise that the first in her series of erotic novellas impressed me big time.
Here’s the blurb:
Two nights, worlds apart, two women must learn what desire can offer.
In the Arcai, where all magic and power are rooted in sex, young widow Cessaire Oghan offers her body for initiation into the secrets and rituals of knowledge and desire. In America, a powerful but secretive business magnate offers design guru Maxine MacAllister a job whose international and emotional scope she does not know and may not want.
As night deepens, each woman, the mythic and the modern, will need all the erotic wisdom and sacred imagination her pleasure can offer, and more.
Now, this was over a year ago (I remember that I was doing copyedits for Claim Me at the time). Now, the novella is for sale … and it’s not just the story that piqued my interest this go-round, but the (I think) stunning erotic image that Skyler picked for the original cover.
In a lot of ways, it reminds me of the kind of art that Blaine from the Stark Trilogy would create if he did photography instead of painting. Evocative, raw, edgy and sensual. And, like Blaine’s art (his portrait of Nikki), Skyler’s cover caused a bit of a hullabaloo. Yup, when a friend posted it on her Facebook page to help spread the word, that Facebook page got temporarily shut down (when you consider some of the images that don’t shut-down Facebook pages, this is a major face-palm moment).
I believe Skyler’s planning on changing the cover, because right now the book isn’t as searchable as it should be. But until then, you can grab it with the original evocative art:
And check out this first chapter excerpt!
OFFERINGS
Lands of Sex & Magic, episode l
.:: In the Arcai
Cess
When I was seventeen, my husband died, and grief-sick and unwilling to live half the life we’d shared, I hitched a ride on a farmer’s cart to Peircia, our nation’s capital. Three days later, I stood before the towering doors of the central temple with my fingernails painted poison apple green, my hair magicked brown, and blood filling up my boots.
I had no change of clothes, no food left in my pack, and only two copper coins sewn into the hem of my traveling cloak because, when you offer your body to god, you go cup-handed. I had left what little I owned back in Vessia, in my mother’s care. She couldn’t understand why I would elect to begin my life anew in a strange and distant city. I argued she’d done the same at my age, and from stranger and further afar, kidnapped — or rescued — by my father during a raid. But she said that was different.
Still, it was my election, and after four days, turnip-bruised and hunger-weak, I parted from the carter in the kitchen yards of court, and stepped into thrilling strangeness of Peircia’s streets. They smelled of adventure and urine, and thundered with crowds different, even in their movement, from village throngs at fairs and weddings.
Packed more snugly together, Peirciat folk held themselves somehow apart, and did not scan the crowd for the faces of their friends. I had no friends in this strange, far place, and I understood my mother more. But I was too dazzled for dwelling long in dark maternal sympathy. I stood in Peircia at last.
Court spire and temple dome mark the sunrise and sunset edge of every city or town in Arcai, from my rural Vessia all the way to this, its fabled capital. I followed the court’s back wall to its corner, turned, and stopped like a donkey. At the balance end of a river-wide street, the vast and pregnant domes of Peircia’s central temple rose into the damp fall air.
They shone with the blazing blue of summer skies in that one moment when the sun drops and the heat leaves with a final shimmer. The main dome billowed over tiers of smaller half-rounds like the layered skirts of dancers, and even the smallest might have swallowed Vessia’s temple whole. I glanced back for the carter, but the city carried me forward on the waves of its own importance. My past was gone – love, grief and family – and I wanted it so.
Buoyed by a longing that had been years in the fattening, I pinned my eyes to the temple’s distant blue moongate and quickly learned from a toe-crushing barrow wheel to watch where I was more than where I wished to be. I walked three hours between spire and dome, only glancing occasionally at the arched oval doors that were my destination and, I hoped, my destiny.
Educational as the barrow-wheel, the street quickly taught me the city was no softer than the farm. My hard-soled work clogs would have better suited its cobbles than the nimble fighter’s boots I’d worn. Thus I reached the temple wiser and bloodied and stopped, balanced on the fang-edge of my courage, to stow my cloak in my pack.
I hesitated then, pondering which of the squat corner marketgates might cost my feet the fewest steps. My hunger thundered loud as knocking, and the temple gates groaned back and split open.
In my shock, I dropped my bag and had to scramble after it humiliated, even as I fled crushing across the bruising stone. What terrible thing had I done? Surely these sacred doors parted only for the nation’s king, as Vessia’s ritual gate opened only for our spire judge. Had my determined gaze worked some unholy magic, which, now recognized, would taint my offering before I might give myself to the temple?
The gate ground open. Eight bare-chested templars, four men per door, strained against the weight, heads bowed and muscles braided down their shimmering backs. I stumbled from their path. One man raised his face from the toiling ranks, turned my way, and stopped my breathing.
His perfect, straight brow arched, and the piercing eye below it winked. Desire plunged between my legs, quick and hopeful. I dropped my eyes from his and swatted road dust from my too-thin shift. I was no out-boundary blindling to gawp at the matched and naked backs of men. I was an adult woman with the full marks of Arcaix citizenship on my spire-side wrist. I had come to offer my body to god. I shouldered my pack and cupped my hands.
The beautiful templar watched me, turning his head over his bare and sculpted shoulder, as he and the other domic men drove the halves of the gate apart. He grinned at me, showing sharp hard teeth, and bowed again to his work, and despite my growling hunger and my barrow-crushed, and blistered, bleeding feet, moonwant swam within me. But I would not be staggered. I swallowed childish wonder, and marched priestess-bold for the nearest market gate, careful not to limp.
I took no more than five steps before doubt tripped me. Might the moongate have opened for me? It was impossible. Yet I would truly look the blindling if I used the market gate once the ceremonial one had been parted for me. I wavered, wobbled.
“Is that a temple ban?” My winking templar spoke from where he crouched fastening the gate with an iron ring.
“Fangs and horns!” I cried, horrified that this man, or any during my journey, might have thought the same. I wanted to snatch the dressing from my still-healing dome-side arm and glanced about to see if the other templars had noticed, but they had already melted back into the pleasureyard. I drew myself to my full height. “It is a widow’s mark,” I told him with withering dignity.
He frowned, unwithered. “I did not judge you of age to marry.”
“Then you misjudged.” I swatted more dust from my tattered pack. “I shall be eighteen on Halfwinter Night.”
“Oh?” He leaned his naked back against the temple door. His hairless chest tapered to a belly, smooth and flat and masculine only in its musculature. “What spire are you of?”
I had been the most skilled magic user in my cohort and was still the daughter of Vessia’s war chief, but “Why?” was the best I could do.
“Because your mark was not worked at this temple.”
“No,” I said, as if he’d posed a question.
“You’ve travelled here.” Without the temple’s silver mark on his brow, he could not be a priest, but he was too old to be still serving his dome-bound years, and too confident. I didn’t know who he was or why I needed to answer his questions. This was not the way I had thought my arrival here would go.
“I can see only one remaining travel band, but your journey took several days.” A smile touched his child-soft lips — their innocence an unsettling contrast to his shrewd eyes. “Yet you came alone, as a widow new-made.” Above his dome-side elbow, he bore a single, silver temple mark, and I had to stop myself from touching the same spot, unmarked on my own arm, in longing. He was an acolyte — an offering claimed by the temple, but not, as yet, by god. And I was his new guessing game. “So the question is: of what spire are you, and why are you here?”
Behind my eyes, my moon voice whispered: I am Cessaire Oghan, come from Vessia to offer my body to god, but I only said, “That’s two questions.”
His words slowed, and he appraised me with no desire in his narrow gaze. “Your skin is more freckled—”
“Yours is tanner.” I snapped back, before I could stop myself. I knew I was too sensitive about my skin.
“Yes, my features are more spiric than domic.” He shrugged. “Yet I have elected the temple dome and not the court spire none the less, and my face is not more tan on one side than the other, whereas your skin is more freckled —” He stopped, waiting, eyes crinkling, for me to interrupt again, but I found my pack needed my attention. I wished he’d go away and let me present myself as I had imagined doing, only without the dust and bleeding feet, to a priestess at a market gate.
“Your skin is more freckled dome-side,” he continued, “because, traveling south over several days, it faced the rising sun.”
His smile was so smug I would have trodden on his foot had mine not hurt so. “I am Cessaire Oghan, come from Vessia,” I said, beginning the ritual presentation of offering, but at the last moment, I changed the ending. “I bear a message for the Lady from Lady Mellone.”
“You are Cessaire Oghan, come from Vessia…” he repeated. His eyes touched my lips and breasts like a cook tests fruit. I ripened. He guessed, “…To offer your body to god.”
He had guessed my purpose! “I have come for the gazebos,” I lied, furious to have been so transparent.
“No.” Certainty deepened his voice. “You are an offering.”
“You can’t know that.” I sounded shrill, desperate to have a second chance at presenting myself to anyone but this smug, gorgeous man. “I might be seeking counsel,” I extemporized. “Or medicine.”
He met my defiant eyes with his too-clever ones, and laughed, pushing himself away from the door. “You would not have hesitated at the gate. Anyone not banned may enter for care.” He glanced again at my bandaged arm. He was taller than I first thought, and more heavily muscled. “And had you come to Peircia for pleasure, you would have left your traveling pack with your other belongings in rented rooms.” He ran his eyes over me, and I withered. “You’ve slept in the dress you stand in, and it’s too thin to be worn past Halfall Eve, so I’ll wager only a road-dusted cloak fattens your pack, and the shift you wear is all the silk you own.”
I had been married in it.
“I am Cessaire Oghan, come from Vessia,” I said, sheltering in words I’d rehearsed since my husband’s death. “To offer my body to god.”
“I knew it!” he laughed, suddenly relaxed. “I suppose you do carry a message for the Lady as well.” He grinned at me. “But if you hope to taste the blessing of the high priestess of Arcai — human incarnation of Apei, the female aspect of our blended, boundless god, mother of our nation, and god’s eyes — you need to drop your pride and pick up your pace.”
He gestured toward the court spire I knew to be a three-hour, foot-bruising walk away. “The spire enters the dome this night, oh my offering, so it’s about to get busy around here. In fact, horns and fangs, I’m already late!” He pivoted on a hard-booted heel, and strode back the way he’d come.
I stood motionless and uncertain on my bleeding feet. Even if the Lady’s chambers were located where Lady Mellone’s were relative to the central dome, I had no confidence that the architecture of my village temple would translate across so many tiers and layers.
I ran, flinched, then walked after the tapering back and trim waist of the beautiful acolyte. He must have expected me to follow him, or at least wasn’t surprised to find me at his elbow again, and I swallowed a comment about guides being so much more guiding if you know to follow.
Within the temple’s white walls, the grassy pleasure yard lay like verdant basket in the pale arms of a maiden. Lush and tranquil after the street’s hurry and stone, it soothed my feet and softened my anxiety. My guide smelled of new sweat and some nameless, ancient flower, and we walked wordlessly between a fishpond and an occupied gazebo, its black mating curtains gusting free. It made the moon within me fatten and shine with anticipation.
I was inside the temple walls! A gorgeous, marked acolyte was escorting me to the Lady of Peircia that I might give myself to god. The flat crack of smacked flesh and a woman’s cry of pain startled me. My poor feet faltered, and the acolyte cocked a wry eyebrow my direction. From the curtained gazebo, a woman’s laugh tapered into a moan.
“Are you stopping to watch?” my guide leaned close to whisper. His voice was cinnamon and sun-warmed stone and ran across my skin in silken shadows.
The smack, cry, laugh and moan repeated in the gazebo, and I stopped my palm sliding over the flesh of my hip. Desire thickened between my legs, but I shook my head. “You said it was going to get busy later and I must see the Lady today.” I said, and swallowed against the heaviness in my throat. He winked at me again, which didn’t help, and we passed the curtains by, me craning my hopeful neck for a glimpse of the couple gazeboed there.
Disappointed, I turned back to find my guide arrested. He stood transfixed by a blur hurtling diagonally across the pleasure yard. I remembered a time I’d seen troupe of traveling performers launch a tumbler from a springboard toward a pyramid of men. She’d missed her footing, and her fall had the same chaotic grace of the sprinting priestess.
Beside me, my tall acolyte, his arm half-raised, had almost called to her, but checked himself. I marveled that such a poised and appealing man might be uncertain too. The priestess saw him and wheeled our way. I felt him forcefully arrange his limbs into indifference.
“Niko!” the priestess panted, stopping before us. I brought the insides of my wrists to my eyebrows in the temple’s ritual greeting before I saw the shimmer on her brow was but painted, not tattooed, there. She was a priestess-in-training only, and had not noticed me. Still breathless, she touched my guide’s bare chest with sinuous fingers. “Oh Niko, I’m late for my boundlings, and I can’t find my teaching robes!”
Behind us, the woman in the gazebo cried out again, more loudly, but no longer surprised, and Niko put a steadying hand under the priestess’s tiny elbow. She turned to him, her chin tucked down and her eyes peeking up. It was very pretty, and made her seem more helpless than her breathlessness, which was real.
“At halfday, the Lady names those granted to the court for its pleasure this night,” she fretted, and leaned subtly into him, her body trembling in a shift not much thicker than mine.
“And I wanted my skin magicked too, but now there’s no time. Rao’s my co-guide, and you know she’ll report me if I skip class again.” She turned out the bud of her lower lip in a plump pout.
“Er,” I suggested, hoping to refocus Niko.
“Do you know where your robes are?” Niko’s voice was analytic, but his eyes, moving down her throat from her mouth, weren’t evaluating, only hungry.
“Maybe in Iovair’s chamber?” The priestess’s fingers trailed down Niko’s lean torso the way sprouting vines tendril a wall. “Or Kyri’s.”
Niko shivered like stones, and I understood his earlier skepticism about my offering. I could get to classes on time with my cosmetic magic worked and my right robes, but I would never have the kind of beauty that paralyzed.
Behind me, the spanked woman’s cries dropped in pitch, but not in volume. They reached beneath my too-thin silk and slid along my bruises, the sounds of her pleasure orchestrating the seduction of my guide.
“Niko?” I tried, uncertain what form of address to use with an acolyte. But Niko could neither see nor hear me, so I needn’t have worried.
“You were sent to open the moongate,” the priestess whispered. “No one’s expecting you to be anywhere immediately. But I…” She bit her lip with a stifled desire that would have been laughable if it weren’t deeply erotic, and the first honest thing she’d done. “Niko, I might be among those granted this night,” she pleaded. “Rumor says the Sairait king likes petite.”
Niko clearly did. “Shall I magick your skin for you?” His voice was rough with desire.
“Could you?”
Niko stepped closer to the priestess and put his large hands on her slender waist.
A cry from the gazebo guest was bitten off, shrill and urgent, and I clamped my eyes to the priestess before me to keep from looking back around at the mating pair. The priestess’s hair, a riot of unmagicked brown, clung to her face and throat, and she wound her arms around my guide, pressing herself on tiptoe to kiss him. Her ripe lips and delicate tongue feathered his mouth, and his jaw clenched.
I looked away from the thaw of his restraint just as a deep groan of penetration came from the gazebo behind me. I turned and saw the naked torso of a woman framed in the mating gazebo’s open window, black curtains billowing out on either side of her. Large, scarlet nipples topped the swollen mounds of her breasts, and a man’s broad hands gripped the soft flesh of her hips. He had just entered her, and I watched as they held themselves still for the prayer of penetration.
From this distance, I could see only she was guild-marked on her spire-side arm, but not which guild or her rank within it. She moaned as her lover withdrew, and braced her hands against the window frame, pressing her ass back to him. Her full breasts hung heavily forward, and when the man spanked her again, they quivered, the blow rippling through the swollen flesh, and through me.
“Seventeen,” Niko replied to a question I hadn’t heard.
The woman cried out as her lover drove into her again; her breasts, heavy as her moaning, hefting with the impact of her lover’s penetration. Her nipples brushed the window ledge and mine tightened, imagining the friction.
“I don’t know.” Niko touched my elbow and I stepped into his hand. “What’s your name again?”
“Cess.” I tore my eyes from the gazebo and corrected myself. “Cessaire.”
“What spire are you of, Cess Cessaire?” the priestess asked with mocking cordiality. A rank above acolyte, she was still an offering god might claim, or not. She was also exactly the rank likely to be charged with the tedious and unwelcome responsibility of escorting the sort of new offering I hungered to become.
I straightened. “I am Cessaire Oghan, come from Vessia to offer my body to god.” I met her eyes.
“Hello, Cess.” A half-grin cracked her newly magicked-white face. “I’m Mina.”
I did not wish to anger her, but I had come to Peircia, I realized, more cup-handed than perhaps was meant by the expression. If I did not make my offering this day, I had no place to go and no money to keep me. “You must forgive us, Mina,” I said, summoning courage. “Niko was escorting me to the Lady Khara, mother of our country, that I might make my offering.” I curled my fingers around Niko’s arm, just over his acolyte mark, striving not to relish the taper of muscle there. “We must now take our leave.”
I knew it was bold, and that Niko did not wish it, but none of my planning and imagination, or even my worrying and doubt, had provided any outcomes beyond either that the temple would claim me, house, feed, and train me, or that I’d throw myself from the city bridge.
Truthfully, I would probably have sold the silver braided in my hair for coin enough to board me for one night of staring into the river from the bridge, but my despair bred courage.
“You mean to offer yourself?” Mina crossed her delicate arms and examined me, moon-pale skin shimmering in the morning light. The magic Niko had worked exaggerated her already extraordinary beauty, making her lips fuller, he eyes darker and her breasts fatter and erect beneath her thin gown. Uncomfortable under her scrutiny and Niko’s again, now he had rediscovered me, I stepped back, glancing from priestess to acolyte.
“Don’t fidget,” she commanded, sounding like my lady from home. “Turn round.”
I faced the gazebo, but the rhythmically shuddering breasts only added arousal to my embarrassment. The woman panted in time with her lover’s thrusts, and my ass, easily my best feature, warmed unaccountably. I kept it motionless with all the strength of my will.
“I’ll take her,” Mina announced. “Escorting an offering to the Lady is an excusable reason to show up late for teaching silly dome-bound boys.”
“No, go to your boundlings.” Niko sounded almost bored. “Rao’s gifts in pleasure rival yours, but young men need both inspiration and instruction to bind them. I’ll take Cess to the Lady now and bring your robes to you before the quarter day gong. Slip away then, and I’ll magick you whiter.” Desire hung in his voice heavy as the gazeboed woman’s breasts.
“Really?” Mina asked. “Could you?”
In the gazebo window, the man shifted his hands from his lover’s hips to her breasts, pinning them against her chest. He pulled her more nearly upright, and I stopped my back from arching with hers. One red nipple squeezed between his fingers and she released the window ledge to slide her hand into her dark triangle of pubic hair.
Her lover’s movements behind her were smaller, and she rippled with them in shivers and waves rather than single blows. The lips of my moongate thickened as hers opened. Her lover worked her nipple’s scarlet tip and her own fingers fanned over the tender eye of her sex, and I wanted to feel any part of what she was feeling.
“Don’t you work in the healing hall at quarter-morning?”
“I was asked to open the moongate.” Niko’s voice was low, but strong as the hands crushing the breasts, releasing and recapturing them. Two thick fingers recaptured the escaped nipple roughly and the woman nearly screamed. I forced out the air trapped in my throat and replaced it.
“You wouldn’t have time to escort our new offering to the Lady Khara and bring me my robes. You’d miss the call, and you can’t want that,” the priestess said. I breathed, and felt the red, twisted nipple driving short, frantic yelps from the skewered woman.
“I could always—” Niko said.
“No, that settles it. I’ll take her. Come along, Cessaire.”
Panting heavily, the woman gripped the gazebo window again, clawing the railing as though grasping for her incipient eclipse.
“Cess?” Niko’s voice sounded far away.
But the nimble little priestess was close, breathing in my ear. “Just think,” she whispered, “what pleasure she might know if I replaced her lover’s clumsy hand with my skilled mouth.” Her breath stroked my neck. “Oh look, Niko! She’s blushing!”
“Is she?”
I turned my back to the gazebo and faced the acolyte and priestess. “I am just flushed,” I said, and schooled my face and hips to stillness.
Mina took my chin in one of her small hands. “What do you think, Niko?”
Niko said nothing, watching only her. She tipped my face to hers, and stroked deliberate, shivering fingers down my throat and over the thin silk of my shift. I swallowed hard. I must not let Mina know she had guessed true. Yes, I had felt shame – legacy of my out-boundary mother — over my interest in the gazebo, but I would not show it.
Mina fanned my nipple with the calculating pad of her thumb. Heat flooded my cheeks again, my breasts and between my legs. Mina puckered heart-shaped lips in her heart-shaped face, while behind me, the woman being paddled and mated in the gazebo reached eclipse at last in a ragged, panting wail. My eyes and moongate brimmed, but I would not blink or fidget. I would not weep or wane for Mina.
“Well, Niko?” The priestess’s insistent, flicking thumb, at odds with her indifferent tone, twisted a moan from me. She laughed again, a silver sound without malice. “She’s no beauty, but she clearly has some gift for primary pleasure. She might make a worthy offering yet.”
Niko was pale. Did he read shame or only arousal in my scarlet face? The sated woman sighed behind me. Mina freed my breast and caught my wrist. “Come along, blindling.”
I could neither argue nor swallow, all my senses firmly rooted in my tightened breast tips and plumped moongate. I let Mina tow me into the temple on my long-bruised and newly doubting feet.
So what do you think of the cover? Evocative? Facebook-worthy? Are you intrigued?
November 14, 2013
If you can read this, you don’t need an e-reader
Because I have a digital-only novella being released in a couple of weeks, I’ve been fielding a lot of questions from readers asking if the book is coming out in paper, many of whom mention with the question that if it’s not, they won’t be able to read the story. (That story, by the way, is Take Me, an epilogue novella in the Stark Trilogy. It’s coming December 3! End commercial …)
Here’s the thing: if you own an iPhone or Android phone, a tablet, or a computer (or have access to a computer) you can read a digital novella. You don’t have to buy anything except whatever digital story you want to read. Really. It’s easy!
I’m a Mac girl, so I’m going to give you examples here in Apple-speak, but you can find the equivalent apps for Android devices and Windows computers.
So check it out:
Let’s say you want to read Take Me (because, hey, why wouldn’t you, right?).
If you have an iPhone or iPad (or other smartphone/tablet), you can download the free app for Kindle, Nook, Kobo or iBooks. Once you own that app, you just go to Amazon, B&N, Kobo or iTunes respectively and buy the book you want. You have to have an account at those retailers to buy a book, so once you’ve purchased the digital book it is there in your online library.
So how do you read it?
Sign into the App on your device. Once you’re in your account, the app will populate your digital library. Pull up that book and read, enjoying the fact that you now have a book in your fingertips even while you’re standing in line at the grocery store!
But what if you don’t have a smartphone or tablet? Never fear! Since you’re reading this, I’m 99.9% sure that you have a computer. If you have a computer, you can download the Kindle app to read Kindle books on your computer (and if you have a Mac, I **think** that the new Mavericks OS gives you access to iBooks on your computer). I’m not certain about Nook or Kobo, but no matter what, if there is a digital book that you want to read and it is available for the Kindle, you can get it on your computer.
“But I only have a computer at work,” you say, “and I can’t download a personal app.” Or, “But I don’t own a computer, but I check in at the library sometimes.” Again, no problem. You don’t need the app. You can read both Kindle and Nook books “in the cloud.”
For Kindle, go to read.amazon.com — sign in with your username and password, and you see all your books right there in the web. When you open the book, it looks like this:
Easy, huh?
And even if you don’t want to dive headfirst into digital reading … at least you have access to digital only books! And that’s always a cool thing!
Happy reading!
November 13, 2013
Hump Day books from Mary Gillgannon, Jill Hughey, Michele Renae, Lena Hart, Julie Kenner, Dawn Atkins, Kristine Mason, and Connie Flynn!
Please enjoy these incredible Hump Day books!
A sexy medieval romance!
See more at Mary Gillgannon’s website!
Unbidden (The Evolution Series)
Free and first in a series of medieval historical romances!
Don’t forget to visit Jill Hughey’s website!
An erotic romance behind glass.
Connect with Michele Renae at her website!
New Release! A secret baby and a compromise leads to a chance at rediscovery and becoming a family.
And don’t forget to visit Lena Hart’s website!
Tainted (The Blood Lily Chronicles)
First book in the Blood Lily Chronicles!
Find more fantastic books at Julie’s website!
Two Can Play (Entangled Ignite)
New urban fantasy romantic suspense!
Find out more at Dawn Atkin’s website!
Shadow of Vengeance (Book 3 CORE Shadow Trilogy)
Welcome to Hell Week…you have seven days to find him.
Don’t forget to visit Kristine Mason’s website!
Shadow on the Moon (The Werewolf Series #1)
Finally Back in Print!
See more at Connie Flynn’s website!
If you would like to submit a book to the Hump Day feature, click here!
J.K. here: Want to chat with me about the Stark Trilogy, demons, or anything at all? Leave on message or hang around for conversations at our brand new forum/message board! You'll find it all right here: KennerForum.com
P.S. - Did you hear the news? Complete Me debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list and #3 on the USA Today list! More important, it's not the end! I'm writing an epilogue novella due out December 3. I'll post a pre-order link for Take Me as soon as I have one!
P.P.S - Don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss a thing -- and so that you're in on the monthly contests we're starting! (And if you leave a snail mail address, you'll receive goodies, too! What a deal, right?)
P.P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
November 12, 2013
Awesome book trailer for Foreplay by Sophie Jordan
I had the pleasure of not only getting an early read of Foreplay by Sophie Jordan, her newly released new adult romance, but also of hanging out with Sophie in Houston recently at the Houston Book Rave.
And while there, she told me I should check out the book trailer. I confess, I’m not usually clued in to what book trailers are out there (if I’m poking around on YouTube, I’m probably finding cute cat videos to show my kids), but I was curious and so I popped over … and I’m so glad I did! The trailer is awesome and so beautifully fits the book!
Check it out! And I hope you check out Foreplay, too! I was so excited to have browbeat, um, begged, um, managed to score an early release copy, and I totally gobbled it up on a plane ride!
You can grab Foreplay by Sophie Jordan here, and the You Tube is embedded below. Enjoy!
Do you read new adult romance? What are your thoughts on book trailers?
November 11, 2013
If you WANTED, you could TAKE ME … an excerpt from Take Me by J. Kenner on #MostWantedMonday
Welcome to another #MostWantedMonday excerpt as we countdown to the January 7 release of Wanted by J. Kenner, book one in the Most Wanted series of erotic romances that wilI be followed by Heated in May and Ignited in September!
As I’ve mentioned, Evan Black, the hero in Wanted, gets a little cameo in Take Me, and I thought it would be fun to mix up #MostWantedMonday with an excerpt from Take Me, the novella that follows the bestselling Stark Trilogy that began with with Release Me, continued with Claim Me, and concluded with Complete Me!
Here’s this week’s snippet!
“What?” Damien is looking at me intently.
“I just think that despite all the Elizabeth Fairchild nonsense, that part of her really does want to be here for me on my wedding day.”
For a moment, Damien only looks at me, his hands on my shoulders. Then he leans forward and captures my mouth with the sweetest of kisses. When he pulls away, I expect an argument. I expect him to recite an itemized list of every horrible thing my mother has done to me, to us. I expect him to point to his own father, who neither one of us want at this wedding. Hell, I expect him to talk some sense into me.
Instead, he says simply, “Be careful.”
I swallow and nod, because I know that he’s right.
Once again, the door chimes and this time I do not know the man who enters. He is drop-dead gorgeous with dark hair highlighted by gold and red. He carries himself with a Damien Stark kind of confidence, and when his gaze sweeps the room, I see both calculation and intelligence in his sharp, gray eyes.
“We should finish up with Sally and get going,” I say to Damien. “She’s got other customers to deal with.”
“I’m sure she does,” he replies, “but Evan isn’t one of them. He’s with me.”
“Holy crap,” Jamie says, “do you travel in packs?”
Damien frowns, and I almost laugh. There aren’t many people who can knock Damien Stark off kilter. “What are you talking about?” Damien asks.
“Never mind,” Jamie says, waving her hand as if wiping the words away. But she turns her attention to me, and I nod slightly. I have understood her perfectly, because this guy is hot. Maybe not Damien Stark hot, I think loyally, but he’s got some serious sizzle going on.
“Evan Black, let me introduce you to my fiancee, Nikki Fairchild, and her best friend, Jamie Archer.”
Want more Evan?
You can meet him in Take Me, the epilogue novella to the Stark Trilogy, coming December 3!
And yes, you can PRE-ORDER Take Me right here:
Amazon or Barnes & Noble (other retailers coming soon) – US
Pre-order Wanted!
Amazon print
Amazon Kindle
Random House
Amazon UK print
Amazon UK Kindle
Barnes & Noble/Nook
iTunes
more retailers coming soon!
And pre-order buttons for Heated: A Most Wanted Novel are starting to pop up!
Amazon print
Barnes and Noble
More retailers coming soon!
Happy reading, y’all!
That’s all for now!
XXOO
J.K.
November 9, 2013
Three weeks & 3 days to Take Me by J. Kenner! It’s #StarkOnSaturday!
Welcome to #StarkOnSaturday!
We’re counting down to Take Me, an epilogue novella that follows the bestselling Stark Trilogy which began with with Release Me, continued with Claim Me, and concluded with Complete Me!
I hope you enjoy spending more time with Nikki & Damien … and meeting the super hot Evan Black, who is the hero of the upcoming Wanted, book one in my Most Wanted series!
And here we go!
Now, I lean against the half-wall that marks the break from hallway to kitchen. Damien is standing at the stove cooking an omelette as if he were nothing more than an ordinary guy. Except that there is nothing ordinary about Damien Stark. He is grace and power, beauty and heat. He is exceptional, and he has captured me completely.
Right now, he is shirtless, and I cannot help the way my breath stutters as my eyes skim over the defined muscles of his back and his taut, strong arms. Damien’s first fortune came not from business, but from his original career as a champion tennis player. Even now, years later, he has both the look and the power of an elite athlete.
I let my gaze drift down appreciatively. He is wearing simple gray sweatpants that sit low on his narrow hips and cling to the curves of his perfectly toned ass. Like me, he is barefoot. He looks young and sexy and completely delicious. Yet despite his casual appearance, I can still see the executive. The powerful businessman who harnessed the world, who shifted it to his own liking and made a fortune in the process. He is strength and control. And I am humbled by the knowledge that I am the thing he values most of all.
You can pre-order Take Me (coming Dec. 3) from Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Random House
BooksAMillion
iTunes
In the UK, you can grab Take Me here (more retailers coming soon):
And if you missed Release Me, you can snag your copy from your favorite retailers here:
Random House
Amazon (print)
Amazon (kindle)
Amazon United Kingdom
Barnes and Noble (print or Nook)
Books-A-Million
Kobo
iBooks
Indie BoundAnd, of course, you can get Book 2, Claim Me, from these great retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Random House
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
And here are the links to Book 3, Complete Me!
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Kobo
Random House
iTunes
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
More soon,
XXOO
November 6, 2013
TAKE ME cover reveal! (UK edition!)
I love this cover for the UK edition of Take Me, a Stark Trilogy novella coming December 3!! (Yes, Evan Black from Wanted, coming January 7, is introduced in the novella!)
And if you’re looking for the US edition of Take Me, you can pre-order at these fabulous retailers!
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Random House
BooksAMillion
iTunes
XXOO
JK
Hump Day books from Jennifer Stevenson, Elaine Calloway, Barbara Raffin, Lindsey R. Loucks, MJ Flournoy, Brenda Hiatt, and Jennifer Ashley in a Dark & Dangerous Paranormal Romance boxed set!
Please enjoy these amazing Hump Day books!
The Hinky Brass Bed (Hinky Chicago)
Book one of a sexy, funny fantasy series for 99 cents!
See more at Jennifer Stevenson’s website!
Water’s Blood (The Elemental Clans)
Now reduced to 99 cents!
See more at Elaine Calloway’s website!
Taming Tess (The St. John Sibling Series)
When fate drops a soul mate into the lap of a woman who vows never to marry sparks fly.
Don’t forget to visit Barbara Raffin’s website!
Haunted Chemistry (Entangled Ever After)
New Paranormal Romance Novella Only $0.99!
See more at Lindsey R. Loucks website!
A Matter of Trust, a romantic suspense novel in which, Jolie Wyngate, a teacher with psychic abilities, struggles with the personal cost of using her abilities to rescue a kidnapped child and the man she loves.
Don’t forget to visit MJ Flournoy’s website!
Christmas Bride (A Regency Romance)
Newly available as an ebook!
Connect with Brenda Hiatt at her website!
A new sexy Regency romance!
More at Mary Gillgannon’s websites!
Dark and Dangerous: Six-in-One Hot Paranormal Romances
New Contemporary Romance!
Visit Jennifer Ashley’s website!
J.K. here: Want to chat with me about the Stark Trilogy, demons, or anything at all? Leave on message or hang around for conversations at our brand new forum/message board! You'll find it all right here: KennerForum.com
P.S. - Did you hear the news? Complete Me debuted at #2 on the New York Times bestseller list and #3 on the USA Today list! More important, it's not the end! I'm writing an epilogue novella due out December 3. I'll post a pre-order link for Take Me as soon as I have one!
P.P.S - Don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss a thing -- and so that you're in on the monthly contests we're starting! (And if you leave a snail mail address, you'll receive goodies, too! What a deal, right?)
P.P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
November 5, 2013
J. Kenner readers rock! Thanks for the #1 erotica slot!
A big shout out to all of the J. Kenner readers who’ve filled up their shelves and electronic readers with the Stark Trilogy (Release Me, Claim Me, and Complete Me … and the upcoming novella, Take Me) and have pre-ordered Wanted, book 1 in my upcoming Most Wanted series!
Check it out! I’ve been hovering in the #1 erotica author at Amazon spot for a couple of days. (Hey, even above E.L. James! Neato!)
Y’all are awesome!
