Shiloh Walker's Blog, page 34

One of the Guys… Available now!

Reissuing an old backlist title!

Out today.

Complete and utter humiliation—that was what Jaynie felt as she stood in the doorway watching her fiancé playing out his ménage fantasies with his best friend and the cute neighbor from across the street. Bad enough that the cute and sexy neighbor is the woman her fiancé clearly wants her to be, but now she finds the man she loves in bed with the woman. To add fuel to the flame, he later tells her that she couldn’t be a real woman if she tried.

Humiliated and hurt, she’s hiding out at her best friend’s house and ends up coming across her friend’s older brother Brian. Brian…hot, sexy…also her partner from work. The last thing she needs is another complication, but she can’t think about that right now.

The heat in his eyes, the desire she can see on his face—that is something she does need and she offers him one night, no strings.

But one night of no strings turned into something neither of them could have counted on. Brian’s take-charge attitude in the bedroom and his oh, sexy, smile are getting to her.

Friends all their lives, they’ve played together, now they work together. Faced with the most important question of all, Jaynie has to figure out…can they  work together?

~*~

She closed her eyes and when she did, she saw Brian’s intense turquoise stare, hot and focused. If she started to panic or think, all she needed was that memory and she knew she’d feel steady enough to go through with this.

He wasn’t in his room. She turned and stared back down the staircase, uncertain of where he might be. He hadn’t gone out. She would have heard his truck if he’d left the house.

She headed back downstairs, made her way into the kitchen and from there she heard the muffled sounds of his breathing, strained and harsh. She heard metal clank as she opened the basement door. It was dim down there. Her feet were soundless on the carpeted steps as she descended.

Jaynie’s breath hitched a little as she stared at Brian. He was lying on the weight bench, his gaze on the ceiling, his features blank as he lifted the heavy bar up and slowly lowered it back down.

He didn’t make any of the annoying grunts and groans that Dean liked to make when he worked out. The only sounds she heard were his heavy breathing. He did ten reps as she watched.

She waited until he put the bar down and sat up before she moved. She didn’t make a sound, she knew she hadn’t, but his head turned and for a brief moment there was a fiery heat burning in the depths of his gaze. Then he blinked and when he looked at her, his expression was shuttered.

That blank look cracked as she lowered her hands to the robe’s belt. She didn’t say anything at first, just opened the robe and stood there as he looked at her. He stared at her breasts and she shuddered a little when he licked his lips. His big hands clenched into fists and under the thin cotton shorts, she could see the swelling of his cock. His gaze moved down her body. Jaynie had to fight not to jerk the robe closed when his gaze fastened on her sex. A muscle jerked in his jaw and Jaynie felt an answering throb deep inside.

He wanted her. The relief that flooded her was unreal. It didn’t matter that he was probably just reacting to the physical stimulus of a woman standing naked in front of him. It was a basic, honest human reaction—a man wanting a woman. That was all she needed, to know that she hadn’t totally failed and that she could react. Men could want her and she could feel heat—she hadn’t frozen up.

“I need you to touch me.”

Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks

Coming soon…

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Deadline Hell and Writer Life

A few years ago, when I’d first gotten on twitter, I recall reading a tweet from a big name author.  We’ll just call her BNA.

She’d posted something along the lines of…

FINALLY! Finished my book.  Beat the deadline and now…I can take a fricking bath and relax…

I didn’t think much of it, although, admittedly, I kind of rolled my eyes.  I typically beat deadlines by several months (or at that point, I had) and I take a long hot soak whenever I want.  Ahhh…the arrogance of youth. (Or somebody who hadn’t quite gotten used to heavy deadlines…)

While I rolled my eyes at what I perceived was overly dramatic, some of her followers took some potshots. She had a lot–still does.  She got harassed like crazy for that simple tweet.  A bunch of people were like…

What…you don’t take baths when you’re working?

For some reason, that rubbed me wrong although I didn’t say anything about it.

But I get what she was saying now.

For the past few months, I’ve been working under deadlines that have all but obliterated my ‘relax’ time.  I force myself to squeeze it in and I still take time off on the weekends.  My family is more important than any book and I’m not going to work and never see them, but the health problems I’ve been having have just eaten away at my life, making me run late, ask for extra time, taking away time that I would usually put in on side projects or…yanno…read.  Take long baths. Relax.

Even when I try to relax, it doesn’t happen.

There’s this weird thing with being a writer–and I think it’s something that a lot of creatives deal with the same thing–but you don’t leave your job. Ever.  When I was in nursing, once I punched out, I was done.  I didn’t have to work again until I got back to work the next day. But when you’re a writer, you don’t get to ‘punch out’ of the story. It’s always there.  Your brain is constantly working at some angle or a character and it doesn’t ever shut down. There is always another story looking to be discovered or created, more characters waiting. The writing is always spinning something around around and your brain just doesn’t stop.

You’ve got a brain that’s constantly humming along at 70 mph, even when you sleep. It’s…interesting.

When you’re on deadline, it ramps up to 100mph, 120…140…200…O.O. And sometimes, you feel like this might actually happen if you have even one more thing to do…

Sitting in that bath tub sounds like a simple thing, but while we’re doing it, the story is already inside our head, eating us up and for all I know, if I sit down long enough to relax, some crucial piece will slip away.

Then my head might really explode. It’s easy to get tunnel vision when you’re stuck in deadline hell.  Most things outside the basic necessities fade away-everybody’s basic necessities differ.  Mine are family, food, church, sleep…and sleep honestly is low on the totem pole. So is food half the time.

But beyond those four? Eesh. I might forget to take a shower if I wasn’t afraid my husband might kick me out of the bed.

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Troped Out

Do you have a romance trope you can’t stand?

I do. Pregnancy amnesia. Now, let me preface this by explaining a lot of the problem is my nursing background and I just see too many flaws in the amnesia thing and combine it with the pregnancy thing…eh.  Nope. Doesn’t work for me.

So when my editor with St. Martins and I were discussing things for my new series (The McKays), she was offering up ideas and we were going back and forth…woman on the run, woman in danger, bodyguard…pregnancy amnesia…

I sort of snorted at that and said:

That ain’t happening…I don’t do pregnancy amnesia.

She assured me it was just one of the popular tropes and to go with what was right for the story.

So as I was writing book one, things were coming to a head with two secondary characters, Brannon and Hannah–who would be the hero and heroine of book two.

And damn it.

I emailed my outline/notes to my editor and told her she sucked.

Book 2 will open with Hannah in hospital after wreck. Tests will soon show that she is also pregnant.

Naturally, she loves amnesic pregnancies.

Her response was along the lines of…

Amnesia!

This is why I should never say I’ll never write a_________ (fill in the blank) book.

I end up doing it.

Do you have tropes that you hate?

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Gearing up for conference season…

I’m not doing as much this year, because the guy and I are looking down the barrel at our 20th wedding anniversary.  That’s right… we’ve held it together for twenty years.

And we’re going to the Riviera Maya this summer. Hot damn. Never been, can’t wait. Okay.

Anyway, not traveling as much, but I’m doing a couple of new ones…starting off with the Barbara Vey Reader Luncheon.

See my pretty swag and the flowers?

It also came with a burn from a hot glue fun-for me, not you.  If you’re able to get to Wisconsin in April, you should check it out. The luncheon is sold out, but breakfast is open and I think the pizza party is…Info here!

There’s also a new event in the fall down in Orlando.  I’m going down Thursday. Because I have a date with Harry Potter. Um…well, the theme park, but that’s beside the point. O.O  Wanna come join us at Shameless Book Con? Please do!

 

 

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‘he was MASSIVE…6’5…230lbs AT LEAST… #protip

Okay, so the nurse has had enough.

I know body types. Screw me. Sue me. Whatever.

Some of the best writing advice I ever got didn’t come from a writer. It came from a reader who had a husband in the military. She told me…

People don’t want to know how the clock works.  They just want to know that it works.

So…what does this mean? It’s simple. Really. Don’t get too technical.

I’m reading/listening to a book and it’s good, but I keep having to quit because the main character is a doctor and I kid you not…every time the character takes a Tylenol, she calls it an ‘analgesic’.  Nobody in medicine calls it an analgesic when we take it.  To avoid copyright issues with Tylenol in writing, we might call it acetamenophen, or with Motrin, ibuprofen. With documentation, yes, we’ll use the generic name…again, acetamenophen or ibuprofen.

But an analgesic? No. I kid you not, I haven’t used that term used outside of educational learning since I was in nursing twenty years ago.

If you get to technical or too indepth, you run the risk of throwing people out of the book.

So…back to that…he was massive 6’5, 230 lbs, at least.

I’ve read this description–or variations of–so many times and it always throws me out of the story.

Why?

Well…because massive.

It makes me think of the Hulk.  As in Hulk Hogan who stands 6’7 and weighs 300lbs.

It doesn’t really even make me think of Dwayne Johnson, unless we’re looking at his role as Hercules. He’s 6’5 and while he’s solid, he’s proportionate.  Actors drop and gain weight for their roles although from what I can tell, when he was at his largest/heaviest, it was for Hercules, when he weighed 260. See bodybuilding.com

Dwayne Johnson | Hercules

Then we have Chris Hemsworth. Again solid, but proportionate. He packed on muscle for the role several times over.

Thor | Image Bodybuilding.com

Chris Hemsworth as Thor at 6’3, weighs in at 215. (see Bodybuilding.com)

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Hemsworth are solid guys, muscular through and through, absolutely. The stats given are pretty representative of that body type. But do I seem them as massive?

DJ on a regular basis might fit the 6’5 250 cut off for what some call massive, but even at his largest (from what I can tell) in Hercules, he just topped at 260 and still managed to look more solid than massive. This is the thing with stating outright numers and then a subjective statement–massive.

Then again, I’ve seen people on the scale who weight in 215…or 260…and are much shorter and larger. But it’s not muscle that’s carrying the weight. See, muscle weighs a lot.  So, it’s going to be heavy. So when a big guy –as in a muscled–weighs in at 250, 260 and stands some inches on over 6 foot, it’s believable. That’s why a guy like Michael Phelps can be well over six feet and weigh over 200 but still be skinny.

And here is where writers mess up.

If you try to get too specific?

Those in the medical field (like me and oh, so…a few million others) you get us to figuring.  I start seeing things like in my head.  You call a six foot five guy muscled and you give him a weight without really understanding body types–and a lot of writers don’t get body types.

This is what happens.

He was six foot five and weighed well over two hundred pounds, built like a brick shithouse.

Ummm….

Are we talking THIS | Alain Bernard. 6’5, weighing in at 200?

Or

OR ARE WE TALKING THIS? Gabe Carimi, 6’7, weighing in at over 300?

What’s the difference, you might ask? Well, somebody who knows body type is going to get it.  It’s a few inches…and over a hundred pounds. The difference? Well, to start, one is a football player, the other is a swimmer. Swimmers are long, lean muscle.  The other guy plays football. Take a guess at which one.

Alain Bernard is 6’5 and weighs 200 lbs.  Gabe Carimi is 6’7 and weighs 330.

I’d personally call Carimi massive, but Bernard is closer in weight to what I’ve seen described in books on a regular basis.

It’s easy enough to see which one is which when you are looking.

But when you spend half your life weighing people, of all sizes, you get a decent feel for what is well…massive, whether it’s athletically massive or not.

So…to all the writers all there, I’d like to offer the same advice I received. Readers don’t want to know how the clock works.  They just want to know that it works.  Call him big. Give his height. Call him lean and muscled, or big and muscled or whatever.

But if you’re going to peg his height and his weight? Then I’d recommend you learn more about body types. Start by visiting this link…Writerups.org, height and weight values for superheroes.

Whether or not you are writing a superhero.  If you are writing a solid guy, make sure he fits the definition of solid…not lean.

Things like this make the reader pause, if she’s in the know.  And you’d be surprised how many of your readers are in the know.

Be it the medical field. The athletic field. Or even the ‘we pay attention to the WWE field or any other kind of field’. And when we see

He was six foot five and weighed over two hundred pounds…AT LEAST…we’re going to scratch our heads and wonder.

Are you talking…

THIS | Alain Bernard
OR THIS?

Know your body types. It’s part of the writing.

An epic sort of weekend

I almost sold out of books. But if you’d like a signed copy, Turn The Page has these…

I signed with this lady. Do you recognize her?

If not, look at the books in front of her or click on this picture.  This is like… a romance writer’s dream.

And if that wasn’t enough…this lady bought my book and had me sign it to her. Cuz she likes me. Like…seriously.

That’s Eloisa Frickin James…and she likes my books.  She had me sign it to her. Seriously…

I just wanna swoon from all the happy.

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Those #notchilled titles…Releasing One of The Guys soon

Releasing the first at the end of the month. It’s a friends to lovers, one night stand…if you like that kind of thing.

If you review and are interested, leave a comment and where you’d like to post a review below.

2016 Reissue

Complete and utter humiliation—that was what Jaynie felt as she stood in the doorway watching her fiancé playing out his ménage fantasies with his best friend and the cute neighbor from across the street. Bad enough that the cute and sexy neighbor is the woman her fiancé clearly wants her to be, but now she finds the man she loves in bed with the woman. To add fuel to the flame, he later tells her that she couldn’t be a real woman if she tried.

Humiliated and hurt, she’s hiding out at her best friend’s house and ends up coming across her friend’s older brother Brian. Brian…hot, sexy…also her partner from work. The last thing she needs is another complication, but she can’t think about that right now.

The heat in his eyes, the desire she can see on his face—that is something she does need and she offers him one night, no strings.

But one night of no strings turned into something neither of them could have counted on. Brian’s take-charge attitude in the bedroom and his oh, sexy, smile are getting to her.

Friends all their lives, they’ve played together, now they work together. Faced with the most important question of all, Jaynie has to figure out…can they work together?

Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks

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Thirty Nights With A Dirty Boy – Releases Today

Have you had a chance to read Thirty Nights?

Money Can’t Buy Love…

Ella Cruise doesn’t like to be touched. A survivor of childhood abuse, she craves security in all aspects of her life: fulfilling work at the nonprofit she runs, more than enough money to live comfortably, and a good friend and confidant. But none of it can ease her longing for intimacy, even if just for a night. When she meets a gorgeous bartender who moonlights as a male prostitute, a bold idea begins to take shape…

But It Can Buy a Night of Passion–or Thirty…

Sean Lachlan is stunned by the cool beauty’s offer: 30 nights of no-strings sex in exchange for all the money he’d need to start over. The deal seems too good to be true, especially since his desire for her is no act, but Sean finds he can’t turn her down. Before they know it, Sean and Ella realize they’re in deep, their defenses crumbling. Will thirty nights with a dirty boy be enough after all, or will love lead Ella and Sean back to the negotiating table?

Now in ebook

 

“Ella. You’ve been walking around Chicago all day with boots that go almost up to your ass and a pair of stockings?” His grin went wolfish.

“They’re thigh-high boot socks,” I snapped defensively. “And they are warm.” A lot warmer than pantyhose or stockings. Maybe when the wind snaked up the hem of my skirt I felt a chill on the few scant inches left bare between the tip of the wool socks and the bottom of my cheeky boyshorts, but my legs were far warmer in these socks than they’d be in anything else.

“Boot socks. Stockings. They cover your legs and leave your ass bare. It was just you and your sexy little knickers and these fantastic boot socks. I think socks are now my new favorite garment in the whole bloody world.” He crowded up against me until I was off-balance and leaning against the bed. Then he reached down and started to toy with the pattern top of the left sock. “You know, I think I’m going to fuck you right like this, with your boots and socks on.”

His hand moved to splay out over the left cheek of my butt. “Might have to take off the knickers, though. Not quite ready for that, although I really think I need to get inside you now.”

The words caused a riptide of want, but when he went to tug at the panties, I caught his wrist.

His pale, beautiful eyes met mine, and I shoved lightly at his chest.

He moved back, but I caught him by slipping my fingers into the loops of his belt and guiding him around. At my urging, he sank back against the bed, his hips resting on the mattress. “I want to touch you,” I said haltingly, blood rushing up my neck to burn my cheeks. I felt like I was on fire, but I was also stupidly proud of myself. It was something I’d been thinking from the first time I’d seen him, and I’d finally found the courage to say it.

Sean’s hands fell to his sides. His lashes lay low, hooding his eyes, while that familiar half smile twisted his lips. “Touch me then. I’m yours to do with as you will.”

If only . . . A knot settled in my throat. So he wouldn’t see any of the gut-deep longing that had been growing inside me, I looked down, watching as I dragged my hands down his chest.

His heart gave a demanding thump against my palm. My nipples tightened, and my sex began to ache and pulse. I imagined it was pulsing in rhythm with the beat still pounding under my hand. The thought pleased me, and I realized I was smiling only when Sean brushed his thumb across my lower lip.

“Hands off,” I said, tugging his wrist down. If he touched me, I was going to get distracted.

And I wanted to do this.

Part 1

iBooks | Amazon | BN | Kobo

Part 2

iBooks | Amazon | BN | Kobo

Part 3

iBooks | Amazon | BN | Kobo

 

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That’s a wrap…#notchilled. In more pleasant news…

So some more #notchilled news, and probably the last you’ll hear from me on it.

The rights for the titles below will revert to me on 2/8. Once that is done, I’m done with EC. There are a couple of titles tied into anthologies and that sort of thing that they will still have but as far as I’m concerned, that’s it.

Her Best Friend’s Lover
Never As It Seems

It was an amicable enough solution, although not what I’d hoped for.  But at least it’s done.

In more pleasant news…Thirty Nights with A Dirty Boy will be out in in ebook next week for those looking to buy.  

I had fun with these.  You should enjoy my fun and…ya know…go buy them. We’ve got a reclusive billionaire…a prostitute. And I should mention she is the billionaire. He is the prostitute.

Part I

iBooks | Amazon | BN

Part II

iBooks | Amazon | BN

Part III

iBooks | Amazon | BN

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News…on the #notchilled front AND more stuff

Let’s talk the more stuff first, because hey… fun stuff is cool. I’m giving away some signed copies of HEADED FOR TROUBLE over at Dear Author.  Want to win one? Go here…

Now. In #notchilled news, several EC titles have been reverted to me, effective 1/31.  Please do not go out and buy these titles before then. EC and I have reached an agreement. Rights are being reverted to me in exchange for unpaid royalties.

I assure you, I’ll do my best to get titles out as timely as I can. They do still need to be re-edited, some needing more than others.

The titles reverting to me on 1/31 are:

Belonging

Guilty Needs

Lacey’s Game

One of the Guys

Silk Scarves and Seduction

I appreciate the support people have given me over the EC titles.  It means a lot.

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