HelenKay Dimon's Blog, page 31

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At Genreality Today

I have the flu. Or malaria. Or some other hideous thing. Whatever it is came on fast Tuesday night and I can barely move off the couch. Lifting my head is nearly impossible. I have been online for exactly 5 minutes all day. I spent three of them putting up a blog at Genreality (and the rest posting this). Stop by and say hello.

Saturday Snippet

Today's topic is bad boys at night. Since I don't write paranormals, I'm taking this to mean bad boys in general. Yeah, I have those. One very bad boy is Justin from A Proper Seduction. He's trying so hard to be good but the underlying pulse of naughty is hard for him to shake off.

"I was surprised to see your name on my schedule this morning." Justin Scott eased into his oversized desk chair, careful not to tip over backwards. Having his ass hit the floor in front of Lauren MacDonald…well, that was just not going to happen.

"Surprised good or surprised bad?" She shut his office door with a click and walked across the carpet to stand in front of his desk. Each step pushed her pencil-thin skirt higher above her knees, flashing inches of toned leg.

He fought the urge to loosen his tie and his belt. "Let's say intrigued."

Now there was an understatement. Between the swish of her hips and the way her snug sweater hugged her high breasts, his lower half started twitching. Some things never changed. It had been a year since they'd been together and her light floral scent and the way she tucked her hair behind her ear still made him smile. The way her dark blue eyes could look so sexy and sad at the same time still fascinated him. And his determination to get her back between the sheets, this time without her idiot of a husband hovering on the mattress nearby, still thumped as hard as ever.

Lauren dragged her index finger across the edge of the desk. "I need to talk with you."



"Obviously."

She swallowed hard enough for him to see her throat move. Her discomfort struck Justin as odd. Hell, he'd seen her naked, trailed his tongue over her, pushed into her long and hard and…

Yeah, five more seconds of the x-rated movie playing in his head and they'd never make it through this conversation without getting horizontal. He had a lunch meeting in an hour and a stack of government contracts to review. He needed his mind in the game, his zipper up and Lauren out of his office.

Only one way to do that. "Just tell me why you're here." He fought hard to keep the edge of frustration out of his voice. Two minutes ago he was thinking about work. Now, every thought in his brain revolved around the color of her panties. He guessed they were some shade of blue.

She folded her hands in front of her and glanced up, her gaze bouncing around the office before settling back on him. "I have a proposition for you."

A job. She needed a damn job. It was no secret Gavin had made the end of their marriage as nasty as its duration. Justin had watched it all play out in the news headlines from the safety of his corner office. She asked for money to start over and Gavin responded by producing a draconian pre-nup that reeked of lawyer misconduct. She filed for divorce based on adultery and Gavin turned around and accused her of sleeping with half of his business associates. He played the wounded victim and cast Lauren in the role of whore.

The very public pounding on her integrity only stopped when Justin stepped in and threatened behind-the-scenes to testify on her behalf. Lauren didn't know the details. Didn't need to, but Justin made sure his former friend backed off and walked away, after writing Lauren a check.

But protecting her didn't mean Justin could stand the thought of seeing her around his office every day. He'd have to keep his dick on ice to survive that. He'd tried to save her twice. He was done. This time he'd preserve his sanity and leave her alone.

"Look, Lauren, I'm not hiring. It wouldn't work out anyway, but I can give you a few dollars to get you through."

Her hand shot up and waved him off. "This isn't about money."

In Justin's experience, almost everything was about money. Sex, marriage, work— it all boiled down to cash, knowing when to spend it and how much to put on the table. He had taken a fledgling company and turned it into a thriving multi-million dollar business by manufacturing the desalination plant used on aircraft carriers. He found the military's need and filled it by turning saltwater into drinking water. And now he was pushing to take that product into the domestic market, a plan that put him at odds with Gavin, his former corporate attorney. Different business interests and different views on Lauren ended the men's friendship, and Justin didn't grieve for the loss at all.

"Tell me what you want," Justin said.

She stopped drawing doodles with her finger and stared him down. "You."

Did she… "Excuse me?"

"For three nights."

____________

Remember to check out the other authors' snippets:

Megan Hart:Read in bed!

Rhian Cahill

Jody Wallace

Eliza Gayle

Mandy M Roth

Mari Carr

McKenna Jeffries

Myla Jackson

Taige Crenshaw

Delilah Devlin

Lauren Dane

Leah Braemel

Shiloh Walker

TJ Michaels

Zoë Archer

Genreality Blog

Over at Genreality today talking about my bad day on Tuesday. Stop by and day hello.

What She Said

Sometimes you read a review and think, "yes, this!" I had that experience this morning. I've been confused by all the love for the AMC show The Killing. Not completely confused, but mostly. I thought the pilot was briliant and showed huge promise. The acting by the parents of the dead girl was breathtaking at times. I also thought the second half of the season was a convoluted mess and, well, boring. It takes a lot of work to make a murder mystery boring, but the writers did it.

My biggest pet peeve was how stupid the lead investigator, this woman who is supposed to be amazing at her job, came off. Playing on the gossip blogs today, I read one post that summed up most of my thoughts on this series perfectly. Specifically,

Here's another huge peeve: instead of building the puzzle pieces around the police investigation, the story and the characters went off on so many tangents that the two lead cops – Linden and Holder – look like incompetent idiots. If they were investigating the murder of someone close to me, I would want them off the case. It took them two weeks to search a car and trace the murdered girl's footsteps on the night she went missing. That kind of ambivalence to how a real investigation is conducted does a disservice to the characters, truly.

Yeah, what she said.

May Intrigue

I received some good news about my May intrigue, WHEN SHE WASN'T LOOKING. It's been named a Top Pick! by RT Book Reviews (formerly Romantic Times). The review looks like this (exactly like this):

WHEN SHE WASN'T LOOKING (4.5) by HelenKay Dimon: Sexy deputy sheriff Jonas Porter is a lot more than an eyeful, but when a woman's on the run, it's hard to trust anyone — especially a guy with a badge. A long time ago, Courtney Allen's father was accused of murdering his family, and she said she'd never trust a cop again, but when Jonas seems to believe in her father's innocence, she starts rethinking her stance. Jonas puts himself between Courtney and the forces out to stop her from finding the truth. Between the explosive action, snappy dialogue, sizzling attraction and intricate plot, Dimon's got a tour de force tale of greed and revenge (emphasis added).

Yay! Very happy about this because it's always nice to get great reviews and because I really love this book. I was worried I'd be the only one, so it's nice to see someone else love it too.

Book Alert

Entertainment Weekly reviewed this book called THREATS by Amelia Gray. It caught my attention because there is a romance author with that name or something close. But the review said this was a debut, so I'm thinking it's a different Amelia.

It's about a the violent death of a guy's wife, but apparently is not a suspense. EW explains it this way:

But this is no thriller. Instead, it's a surreal, darkly comic portrait of a man's mental unraveling, all seen through Dave's unstable gaze.

Here's the overview so you can decide:

David's wife is dead. At least, he thinks she's dead. But he can't figure out what killed her or why she had to die, and his efforts to sort out what's happened have been interrupted by his discovery of a series of elaborate and escalating threats hidden in strange places around his home—one buried in the sugar bag, another carved into the side of his television. These disturbing threats may be the best clues to his wife's death:

CURL UP ON MY LAP. LET ME BRUSH YOUR HAIR WITH MY FINGERS. I AM SINGING YOU A LULLABY. I AM TESTING FOR STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS IN YOUR SKULL.

Detective Chico is also on the case, and is intent on asking David questions he doesn't know the answers to and introducing him to people who don't appear to have David's or his wife's best interests in mind. With no one to trust, David is forced to rely on his own memories and faculties—but they too are proving unreliable.

In THREATS, Amelia Gray builds a world that is bizarre yet familiar, violent yet tender. It is an electrifying story of love and loss that grabs you on the first page and never loosens its grip.

Interesting.

At Genreality

I'm over at Genreality talking about my reading tastes. Mine are all over the place and change as I read books I like in new-to-me genres. Stop by and say hello.

It's The Conflict, Stupid

I was reading a review of the movie (based on a book) Salmon Fishing In The Yemen in Entertainment Weekly. Something about it struck me, probably because it hit on a complaint I sometimes have with books. It went like this:

[The movie] takes us back to the sort of achingly civilized love story in which the only thing that really stands in the way of two people falling for each other is their own decorum.

Which I take to mean: you can't shortcut the conflict. Make it meaningful, real and compelling. Yes, yes and yes.

Okay…

For the record, I would rather be here:

That's one of my favorite parts of Oahu (Hawaii). I am not there. That makes me grumbly.