Wednesday, September 28, 2005
September/October Newsletter!Hello, all!
Summer has finally come to an end, and brings with it...ahhhh....time. Theoretically speaking, of course. My youngest child has gone off to kindergarten, which allows me the luxury of five mornings a week writing time. I've been very disciplined with it, too. We'll see how long I can keep up with that before the allure of going back to bed in a quiet house takes over. :)
What's been going on with me? I've been busy with writing and family. I finished a Gotham Writer's Screenwriting course, and have sent off my synopsis to American Zoetrope studios. I'll be working on the screenplay, a romantic comedy called Tangled, as soon as I finish my work in progress. Tangled is the story of one woman who learns having everyone bow at her feet isn't exactly the whip it's cracked up to be. It's suburban house-wife turned dominatrix, and it's been fun plotting.
My current work, tentatively titled Dirty, is really close to being finished. I've got another couple hundred pages of editing to complete and a few more sections to write before I print out the whole thing again and take my red pen to it once more. Then it's back to the computer to enter the changes and a final read, and it should be ready to send off to my agent. I have interesting hopes for this book, which is an erotic novel with a love story in it, but it's not an erotic romance. I'm having a great time writing it, and I hope my readers enjoy it as much.
I'm also anticipating embarking on a new venture within the erotic romance genre. I'll be taking up the pseudonym Willow Switch to write some erotic stories with a bit of a harder edge than the work I publish under Megan Hart. Willow is a naughty girl who's into kink. I'll be exploring some of the more popular themes of erotic literature using that name, and it should be interesting to stretch my writing wings, so to speak. More on that to come!
My short fantasy story Everything Counts will be part of the up and coming AmberPax Bewitched, Bothered and Bequiled releasing October, 2005 and featuring stories by Grace Draven, Natalie J. Damschroder, Shannon Leigh and Lani Aames as well as mine! Learn more about Everything Counts, the story, at my publisher's site.
I've also joined forces with two awesome authors, Lauren Dane and Anya Bast to form Maverick Authors! We have a blog, where you can learn all about our news, upcoming releases, trials, tribulations and woes, and our opinions, too. Check it out! We can also be found at our yahoo group. We've got contests and chat, so check it out.
Speaking of blogs, I've got mine at Tastes Like Chaos I try to keep it updated as often as possible. :)
Finally the second episode of Amber Circle is out, and the price has been reduced, so if you haven't checked it out, head on over to to take a peek at this exciting new soap opera for the electronic age!
And now, without further ado....
Arithmancy was a far more precise practice than Divination. Divination used signs and portents to predict the future, Arithmancy used numbers and calculations to determine how choices would affect outcomes. The difference of something as simple as one number could result in an end completely different than if one used another number or calculation to figure it...
Elspeth Valerin couldn’t put a numerical value on love, couldn’t use addition and subtraction on the human heart. It doesn’t work. She could fact and figure her way into an assumption of the future; use the numbers to lead her choices toward positive or negative, but in the end it all came down to something she could not control.
Either Connell loved her, or he did not. And no matter how many times she looked at the numbers, she wasn’t able to decide which of the two most likely results were going to happen...
Excerpt:
She came to him in dreams, as she always did. The girl he’d loved so much it had been like dying when she left him. Tonight she was the woman she’d become, the one he did not know.
The taste of her had changed, as had the curve of her hips, the fullness of her breasts, the timbre of her voice. He took her in his arms and she yielded, offering her mouth to his kiss and her body to his hands.
He took her without a word, as once they’d not needed to speak. She opened beneath him. His tongue stroked hers. His hands roamed her body. She linked her arms behind his neck, and he lifted her, laying her down upon a bed of flowers that filled the air with their scent as the weight of their bodies crushed the petals.
His mouth traced the line of her chin and the slope of her throat. Her pulse beat under his lips and he licked the spot. Ella arched beneath him, murmuring the name only she had ever called him. To everyone else he was Conn. To her, he’d always been Connell, and she always made it sound noble.
“The name of a prince.”
Her smile made his heart thump inside his chest and he kissed her again, covering her with his body, the body of the man he was now and not the lad he’d been.
“I’m no prince.”
“You have ever been my prince.” Her eyes shone. “Ever and always.”
And the thing of it was, with her he had always felt a prince, rather than the beggar he really was. A nobleman, not the son of a butler and a cook. Ella made him feel as though he could be and do anything, that he needn’t contort himself into the place his parents had expected him to take.
“Everything I’ve become is because of you,” he told her.
Her hands linked around the back of his neck, pulling him down to her mouth again, and he kissed her like ’twas the last thing he’d ever do on this earth.
His hand slid up to cup her breast through the thin flaxene of her gown, and he passed a thumb over her nipple. In another moment, he slid down to take it in his mouth through the cloth, and in the next, the dream shifted and they were both naked on the bed of flowers which he knew from real life to be somewhat scratchy but here, in the dream realm, were as soft as feather bed.
She tasted of sunshine, his Ella did. His mouth moved along her body, along the soft curve of her belly, the slope of her hip, the warm skin of her thighs. He found her center. The sound of her low cry when he kissed her there made his cock twitch in response. He licked her, and she arched upward. Her fingers tightened in his hair. He found the small button of her pleasure and stroked it with his tongue until she gasped his name over and over again.
He had always loved making her shudder beneath him. He loved the taste of her desire, and the way her smooth folds swelled as she grew hot with passion. He loved the way her clit grew stiff between his lips, and the way it throbbed when she came.
“I love you,” he said into her ear as once again he stretched his body along hers. “I’ll never love any woman the way I love you.”
And because this was a dream, thank the Astria, she did not turn him away but looked into his eyes and put her arms around him, and she took him inside her body.
“I love you, too, Connell,” his dream-Ella told him as urged him to move with an upward shift of her hips. She said the words she’d said to him once before, long ago and far away, before it had all disintegrated around them. “Make love to me.”
Long ago and far away, he had not been able to do as she’d asked. He’d made love to dozens of women since that night. Fair-haired and dark, with eyes of blue and green and brown and gray, with bodies of every shape and voices in every tone. Every one of them became Ella at the moment of his climax.
But now, in this moment, as he moved within her, it really was Ella and he didn’t have to pretend. He kissed her, the taste of her spurring him on. Her nails raked down his back and he moaned, though the pain only enhanced his pleasure. He moved faster.
“I love you,” she said, her blue-gray eyes never leaving his. “I always have. And I always will.”
Ecstasy boiled inside him, making him shake, and he wanted to bury his face in her hair, but couldn’t pull himself from the sight of her eyes. He moved inside her heat, watching desire make her tilt her head on its pillow of lilies. Her gaze never left his, and he drowned in those eyes, the color of the sea on a cloudy day, her eyes that never wept, and he saw himself reflected there as he climaxed.
And woke, sweating, the sheets a tangled mess around his ankles and his cock throbbing with a need for release so great it made his stomach hurt. Connell sat up and scrubbed his face with his palms, breathing hard. A dream was all it had been, but he mourned the loss of it anyway, because dreams were all he had of her.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and went into his washroom, seeking the solace of a cold shower, the only relief he’d have that night. As he closed his eyes against the needling spray, he saw her face, and he whispered her name, letting his mouth fill with water that couldn’t wash away the memory of her flavor.
Want to win your very own copy of Everything Counts in html, lit or pdf formats? Join my yahoo group! I include contests with every newsletter. :)
Want your own autographed copy of one of my books? Send a check or money order to:
Megan Hart
P.O. Box 4
Cornwall, PA 17042
and email at authorm AT meganhart DOT com for details on how to pay by paypal, what I have in stock, etc. All prices include taxes and shipping/handling. Autographed books make great gifts!
Riverboat Bride: $14.50
Lonesome Bride: $13.50
Love Match: $11.50
Convicted: $12.50
An Exaltation of Larks $13.50
A Siege of Herons $13.50
Always You: $12.50
Driven: $13.50
From Distant Shores: $14.50
Nothing in Common: $12.50
Passion Model: $12.50
Thanks, all, for your support! Without you, I would have no success.
Megan
