Bound by Steel releases in print! Yay!
To celebrate, I decree a contest! I'm giving away a copy or two, signed by moi and shipped (knowing my tendencies to procrastinate and forget stuff) within a month of announcing winners.
For this contest, I want you all to compose a haiku, limerick or free form poem based on the following blurb:
A night of brutality destroyed her innocence…can the love of two people heal her wounded spirit?
“I’ve been thinking about Kaela…”
There they are—the words that lead Gil to suspect his wife Lianon is falling in love with Kaela, the beautiful, traumatized young woman they rescued from certain death six months ago. Gil has no idea how to compete with a woman for his wife’s affections, and part of him ceases to care as Kaela begins to work her way under his skin.
Kaela’s sweet innocence fills a chasm in Lianon’s soul she hadn’t even realized was there. As she gently helps Kaela rebuild her shattered confidence, Lianon begins to believe healing the young woman’s wounded spirit could be the key to wholeness for all three of them. If Gil agrees to follow her lead and help Kaela discover her own feminine power.
But even as they all succumb to their growing desire, Gil and Lianon are drawn against their will back into the intrigues and vendettas of Belthalas’ elite. With Lianon’s life at stake, Gil must weave a dangerous path between one adversary’s ambition and another’s lust for vengeance.
Success will save Lianon…but could cost them Kaela.
Product Warnings
This title includes explicit sex, including f/f, m/m, m/f/f, anal sex; bad language; questionable politics; violence; stringy, overcooked lamb; a dog with a major drool problem; and one seriously well-deserved comeuppance.
Haiku example:
Help! What do I do?
Wife's hot for the housekeeper.
What the heck--I'm in.
Limerick example:
A couple named Gil and Lianon
Adored one another, until anon
Kaela watched their lovemaking
And after partaking
Required a bigger bed to slumber on.
All right, pretty lame, but I'm sure you all can do better. Do your best, do your worst, gimme lolcatspeak if you like. It's all good. Winner gets a signed copy.
I'm not going to post a deadline just yet, but I expect to announce a winner within a week or two, depending on how many entries I get.
:)
To celebrate, I decree a contest! I'm giving away a copy or two, signed by moi and shipped (knowing my tendencies to procrastinate and forget stuff) within a month of announcing winners.
For this contest, I want you all to compose a haiku, limerick or free form poem based on the following blurb:
A night of brutality destroyed her innocence…can the love of two people heal her wounded spirit?
“I’ve been thinking about Kaela…”
There they are—the words that lead Gil to suspect his wife Lianon is falling in love with Kaela, the beautiful, traumatized young woman they rescued from certain death six months ago. Gil has no idea how to compete with a woman for his wife’s affections, and part of him ceases to care as Kaela begins to work her way under his skin.
Kaela’s sweet innocence fills a chasm in Lianon’s soul she hadn’t even realized was there. As she gently helps Kaela rebuild her shattered confidence, Lianon begins to believe healing the young woman’s wounded spirit could be the key to wholeness for all three of them. If Gil agrees to follow her lead and help Kaela discover her own feminine power.
But even as they all succumb to their growing desire, Gil and Lianon are drawn against their will back into the intrigues and vendettas of Belthalas’ elite. With Lianon’s life at stake, Gil must weave a dangerous path between one adversary’s ambition and another’s lust for vengeance.
Success will save Lianon…but could cost them Kaela.
Product Warnings
This title includes explicit sex, including f/f, m/m, m/f/f, anal sex; bad language; questionable politics; violence; stringy, overcooked lamb; a dog with a major drool problem; and one seriously well-deserved comeuppance.
Haiku example:
Help! What do I do?
Wife's hot for the housekeeper.
What the heck--I'm in.
Limerick example:
A couple named Gil and Lianon
Adored one another, until anon
Kaela watched their lovemaking
And after partaking
Required a bigger bed to slumber on.
All right, pretty lame, but I'm sure you all can do better. Do your best, do your worst, gimme lolcatspeak if you like. It's all good. Winner gets a signed copy.
I'm not going to post a deadline just yet, but I expect to announce a winner within a week or two, depending on how many entries I get.
:)
ETA: CONTEST CLOSED, WINNER ANNOUNCED
11 comments:
Such love that knows no bounds
Is a love that defies and claims
Unrelenting passion and dominance
In its submission.
Such love that knows no pain
Is a love that hurts everyday
And embraces more and more
Until all is gained.
Such love is the love of three;
A love that is pure and heals
The lives of Kaela, Lianon, and Gil.
Thanks for the opportunity! One question, why is Bound by Steel not out in Amazon kindle format yet?
Athena (athena13sampaio@gmail.com)
I wish I knew, Athena. Unfortunately, ebooks get send to Amazon on or before release day (October '08 in this case), but it's up to Amazon to format them for the kindle, wrap them in DRM and post them. Sometimes that can take a while.
The cover images can take even longer to go up, too--Chancellor's Bride still has no cover at the Kindle store. I wasn't even aware BbS wasn't available yet! I'll email my editor and see what the deal is, but I don't know if there's anything they can do.
I'm not 100% sure if Samhain sells a Kindle-compatible format through MBaM. If they legally can, I'm pretty sure they would.
And thanks for the entry. Very nice! I got a couple of entries over at LVLM, so I'm only going to hold out for a couple more before I announce a winner. :)
Hum... Gotcha! Well, I did go to Amazon's Bound by Steel page and requested that book to be available in kindle. It worked when I did the same thing for a nora roberts novel, even though it took a long time, so maybe it will for this one as well.
Awesome, can't wait for the announcement.
Oh, and I just wanted to say that I found about about your books at a FF romance versus Lesbian romance on a blog about Bold Strokes, and that I totally agree with your view!
Love your books, and can't wait for Lianon's and Rihanna's story! Are going back in time, or is it somehow happening in present time? Oooops, guess you can't say huh? Lol, can't blame a girl for trying!
Athena
It will show up on Kindle eventually--Amazon just does it on their schedule. I did a bit of poking around on Samhain's site, and found this:
HTML is the most versatile of all the formats. It can be read from your computer using your favorite browser. It can be used to convert to your favorite ebook reader’s required format (such as the Hiebook, the Rocketbook and the REB series readers) or can be sent via email directly to your Kindle.
As far as f/f vs. lesbian goes, the differences can sometimes be subtle, and I think the best way to differentiate between the two is by considering the intended readership. I was really pleased that Treva Harte showed up on that thread and seemed open to considering what we were saying, because I think labeling every f/f romance as lesbian can really limit its success.
Lianon's and Rhianna's story (I'm thinking it will be called The Emissary's Woman) will indeed be a prequel. It will end on an HFN, and won't touch on the tragedies alluded to in Crossing Swords.
I'm so pleased you've enjoyed my books. I'm constantly amazed by how many readers have told me I'm the only f/f they've ever read! Makes me wonder...
Indeed that is very true! That is very interesting that for some people you are the only FF romance author they have read... While you are not my only one, its pretty close, for besides you I only know of two other authors who have delved into FF romance without labeling it a lesbian romance, and they are Dee Dawning and Selena Kitt. Do you by any chance know of anybody else? I would love to give them a try!
About Lianon and Rhianna, what do you mean by HFN? Forgive my limited abreviation knowledge, but I do have the excuse of being reletively knew to this country lol. Cant wait their story, truly, even though I am dreading the point where Rhianna...
Oh, sorry to be a bother, but a final question. Where will you announce the winner so that I can keep an eye out for it? Again, thank you very much for the opportunity!
Athena
HFN=happily for now. Considering Lianon's backstory in Crossing Swords, there is no happily ever after in hers and Rhianna's future, but the story won't go into any of that badness. It will end before or at the point of their marriage.
One book I never hesitate to recommend to f/f/m aficionados is Michele deLully's La Bonne. The first part of the book centers around the love story between the two women, and it's beautifully written.
There's a nice Bonnie Dee f/f/m in the anthology Three, out from LSB. The other two stories were...not so good, but hers made it worth the money.
Unfortunately, unlike with m/m, there are very few authors who focus solely or mostly on f/f. You usually find authors with a long list of m/f, m/m and m/m/f books, with one or two f/f or f/f/m in the mix. If you want to know more, check out Loving Venus Loving Mars (link in the sidebar of my blog). We review f/f and f/f/m books (and lesbian romance, too, because if we didn't, we'd be reviewing like one book a month or less.) You might find some good books there. We always put whether it's "lesbian" or "bisexual" or whatever in the rating.
The f/f vs. lesbian thing is annoying. I don't tend to read lesbian romance, but I love f/f like a fat kid loves cake. Wish the labeling was better. I found a Loose Id f/f/m by searching "lesbian" even though neither heroine is a lesbian--and the book didn't come up when I searched f/f, f/f/m, m/f/f, bisexual or anything. Frustrating in the extreme--especially since women looking for lesbian romance might be annoyed by seeing an f/f/m menage labeled such.
Grr.
I'll be posting the winner soon--both at LVLM and here--just click on the Kirsten Saell header and it will take you to the freshest blog post.
Yes I checked out LVLM!!! Awesome blog, man I got many good f/f books out of there. You are right, La Bonne is amazing, I'm rereading it right now! And there were some very good lesbian stories I found, though I have to say I still prefer f/f/m... I did love to see the Jenna Byrnes additions to the Cattle Valley series, I love that series!! Thanks a lot for the tip, I even became a follower!!
Glad to be of service. :)
And I'm thinking it's almost time to reread La Bonne again. It was really just such a gorgeous book. I just wish the few writers out there who nail f/f/m so well would stick with it a bit--so many of them move on to other things. :(
OK I just fnished rereading La Bonne, and I just noticed that the maid is not named in the book! I was so vixed... Why is that? Was it just an overpass by the author, or did she intentionally leave the maid unnamed? I wonder why, if it was on purpose...
It was intentional, I'm sure. She also did an intriguing and very engaging m/f romance called La Ceinture (The Belt--and the belt is almost a third character in the romance, lol) where neither the hero nor the heroine is named--and I got all the way to the end before I noticed. And it was only then that I realized the maid in La Bonne is nameless as well, lol.
I don't know whether I was annoyed. More impressed than anything, really, that she could pull me through two whole books and have me so engrossed that I'd miss such a detail. Makes writing a review hard, though. :D
I don't know why she would choose to not name a character, but I'd speculate it was to increase the sense of intimacy between the reader and the MC (especially in the case of La Bonne, which was in first person). It's as if there's nothing--not even a name--to separate the reader from the narrator. But that's just a guess...
That's a good explanation, thanks. Yeah, I was vixed because, when I love a book so much, I imagine a sequel in my head, and well, I loved this book so much I was in the process of doing that, and then... the protagonist has no name, LOL. For me to do that, using your protagonist/reader connection explanation you gave me, I would have to imagine myself...I don't know if I could do that, not yet... :)
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