Alison Kent's Blah Blog

I’m a visual writer. I have to see my people. I have to see my places. I often dress characters from the Nordstrom site or the Fossil catalog. I use modeling agency shots for character images. But I never EVER use actors. Until now. I know lots of authors do, but I need to have faces that I see only as my people and not as the other characters they’ve played. Or as the actors themselves. For some reason, however, the minute I started writing Brenna and Dillon’s story, this is how I saw them! So when you read my novella from Carina Press (12/5/2011) this is what you should imagine!

Portia Da Costa presents a medley of five of her short, sexy works previously published separately – offering over 40,500 steamy words at a value price that’s half what you would pay to buy the items separately!

Here’s a daring erotic potpourri of BDSM, exhibitionism, m/m, m/f/m, an office lust/hate relationship… and zombies! Although not all in one story, obviously – that’s a project for another day, perhaps.

Check it out on Walk on the Wild Side Books!

May 17, 2011
Graveminder by Melissa Marr
William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0061826870
reviewed by Katherine Hazen

I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to just anyone. Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoyed it, and would love to see more in this world. It was perfectly eerie, and a must for anyone the slightest bit interested in Southern Gothic.

However, one of the main protagonists, Rebekkah, is a little hard to connect with. I imagine she might rub some people the wrong way. So this may only be one for those who don’t mind a protagonist who’s a little rough around the edges. She has real flaws and real issues, and if you want your main character to be a bit more Mary-Sue’ish, this book isn’t for you.

Unfortunately, it is hard to tell you much about the premise of this book without giving away spoilers. So I won’t say much more about the premise, I think the summary that was originally posted tells you everything you need to know before reading the book:

Three sips to mind the dead . . .

Rebekkah Barrow never forgot the attention her grandmother Maylene bestowed upon the dead of Claysville, the small town where Bek spent her adolescence. There wasn’t a funeral that Maylene didn’t attend, and at each one Rebekkah watched as Maylene performed the same unusual ritual: She took three sips from a silver flask and spoke the words “Sleep well, and stay where I put you.”

Now Maylene is dead, and Bek must go back to the place she left a decade earlier. She soon discovers that Claysville is not just the sleepy town she remembers, and that Maylene had good reason for her odd traditions. It turns out that in Claysville the worlds of the living and the dead are dangerously connected; beneath the town lies a shadowy, lawless land ruled by the enigmatic Charles, aka Mr. D. If the dead are not properly cared for, they will come back to satiate themselves with food, drink, and stories from the land of the living. Only the Graveminder, by tradition a Barrow woman, and her Undertaker—in this case Byron Montgomery, with whom Bek shares a complicated past—can set things right once the dead begin to walk.

Although she is still grieving for Maylene, Rebekkah will soon find that she has more than a funeral to attend to in Claysville, and that what awaits her may be far worse: dark secrets, a centuries-old bargain, a romance that still haunts her, and a frightening new responsibility—to stop a monster and put the dead to rest where they belong.

I gave myself a few days to let this simmer in the back of my head before writing my review, and I think the big conclusion I came to is this story is more about Byron than Rebekkah. Rebekkah may change the most, but I felt it was less about change and more about letting go of her baggage and accepting herself for who she is. Byron, on the other hand, is the one you find yourself silently routing for from the very beginning.

The things the delighted me most about this book were the world-building and the supporting cast. Marr excels in the creating and twisting mythologies department, and this book is no different. I think Alicia, Charles, and Amity were by far my favorite characters in this book. I would flock to the nearest bookstore to buy a sequel, if it were available, in order to get more of their stories. Overall, definitely a good read if you don’t mind Rebekkah’s issues.

Both AT HIS MERCY and LOVE ME TENDER are now available for download at All Romance Ebooks. I still hope to get my next WotWS short story finished this month, but right now that writing has to come after the cowboy writing. And between dentist visits and dealing with kid car issues and buying our own new car (the first in twelve years, yay), it’s been crazy busy here, and I’ve only had time for my Dalton Gang.

But speaking of Walk on the Wild Side Books, Saskia Walker has a yummy new short story available! Pop over to the side for an excerpt and ordering info!

Emmanuelle Forsythe is the daughter of a lord, but she’s embarking on a secret, forbidden affair with her father’s estate manager, Jacob Finch. Jacob is as much a slave to their mutual desire as she is, even though he has been warned off.

On the night of her twenty-first birthday party, while the banker who her parents want her to marry is ensconced with her father, Emmanuelle defies her family’s expectations by escaping to make love with Jacob in the gardens. Her behavior is decadent and passionate, a brief taste of something magical that she believes she can never truly own. But Jacob wants more than one night and asks her to keep seeing him, whatever the consequences.

Ever since the idea took hold, I’ve been pondering what I want to write for my story in the SEAL OF MY DREAMS anthology. I’m very excited to be in the lineup with super action adventure novelists like Cindy Gerard, along with amazing contemporary romance novelists like Christie Ridgway. The list of authors means a great variety will be had in the compilation, and since I’ve written both action adventure with Brava and contemporary romance with Temptation and Blaze, etc., I’m torn about which direction to take. So I thought I’d come to you guys who actually read me and see what you’d like. I’ve got a couple of ideas for both sub-genres but am having trouble settling on what I want to do (which is hardly anything new with me). What do you think?

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Moira Reid! Send your address to ak@alisonkent.com and I’ll get that out to you!

While going through my writing books last week for my Left Behind and NOT Loving It Giveaway, I ran across this one as well as a few others that will stay on my shelves. Most any writer who’s been at this game for awhile will know of Lawrence Block.

Somewhere around here I have one of his most popular writing how-tos, Telling Lies for Fun & Profit, but you’ll just have to trust me on that since NO clue. Mr. Block is also an acclaimed crime writer, and in September, Hard Case Crime will release GETTING OFF which Publisher’s Weekly has “complained” is extremely violent and erotic.

Now Lawrence Block interviews Jill Emerson, his occasional alter ego. Enjoy.

***

Lawrence Block: Well, where to begin? Let me say I understand you have a book coming out in September, and—

Jill Emerson: We.

LB: I beg your pardon?

JE: We have a book coming out in September. Getting Off, published by Hard Case Crime. By Lawrence Block writing as Jill Emerson. That’s what it says, right there on the cover.

LB: Yes, of course.

JE: Your name’s bigger.

LB: Uh. . .

JE: Lot’s bigger. My name’s in small type, the same size as the subtitle. You remember the subtitle?

LB: I believe it’s “A Novel of Sex & Violence.”

JE: There you go. Lawrence Block, big as a house, and then Jill Emerson and Sex and Violence, all in teensy weensy letters.

LB: You seem the slightest bit resentful.

JE: Oh, does it show?

LB: It was the publisher’s idea. In fact I had to fight to get your name on the cover at all.

JE: What’s the problem? Your publisher doesn’t like girls?

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This from Dear Author’s post-RWA wrap-up:

Family oriented sweet contemporaries, mostly set in some small town (make up your own if you don’t want to use a real one), are hugely popular. Every editor I talked to seemed interested in those. I have no idea why urbanites aren’t interesting. Also, the love of the cowboy hero was palpable.

This from Carolyn Jewel’s tweetstream while attending Grand Central Publishing’s spotlight:

Grand central is seeing increased interest in contemporary cowboy stories

This from Monica Kaye’s tweetstream while attending a workshop where editors mentioned what they were looking for:

Alicia Condon- Hot contemporary western romance

This from a friend’s email during conference:

Bookseller panel: Cowboys are uber hot right now. :)

This from agent Kristin Nelson’s newsletter:

Contemporary cowboys seems to be on a lot of lists.

And why would these be my favorite tidbits? Well, because of this, of course.

Alison Kent’s UNDENIABLE, in which three hellraising cowboys return home to Texas to revisit the past, stir pots long settled, and cause the sexiest kind of trouble for the women in town, to Wendy McCurdy at Berkley Heat, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency.

Using Random.org, I have pulled the winners for the fifteen books I’m giving away.

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