Backlist Bogie--Installment 3: The Taming of Jaelle'n

The Taming of Jaelle’n by Deirdre O’Dare  Buy link: http://www.amberquill.com/store/p/707-The-Taming-Of-Jaelle-n.aspx

The third erotic romance release for Deirdre came out in the last part of 2004. It was a novella length fantasy titled The Taming of Jaelle’n.  I had started it a year or more earlier but it originally did not quite jell up as I intended. After Karola’s Hunt was published, I went back to it while also working on The Rodeo Girls. For the first time ever I was going to go into a little bit of light bondage and discipline! I found it much more comfortable to set this in a strictly fantasy world rather than the real one.

Confession time: I‘m really totally not into any sort of BDSM in my personal life, not even the most light and semi-playful kind. It really creeps me out! This goes back to some childhood

matters perhaps but anyway, that’s reality. So writing about it was a challenge. About then was when Deirdre began to develop as a personality apart and separate from both Gwynn Morgan and the ‘real’ person behind the pseudonyms. I had already decided that my heroine in this tale was a princess from a semi-Celtic type people far to the north who is captured by slavers and sold in a desert empire far away. So what else will happen?

She rebels by a stoic calm against the unpleasant and demeaning things that happen to her. As long as her captors are rough and a bit brutal, her temper and pride can carry her through. Then she is purchased by an exotic and mysterious man who is said to be a trainer and purveyor of gorgeous women for sex slaves. His techniques of that ‘training’ are far more subtle and our princess finds them harder and harder to resist despite her vow to hold aloof. Then to her horror and dismay she begins to realize she is falling for her master! That’s the premise of The Taming of Jaelle’n.

Here is the blurb for this story. An excerpt will follow separately. 

Taken captive and sold into slavery, Princess Jaelle'n has to make some swift adjustments in her attitude to survive. She is bought by a gorgeous but arrogant man who vows he can make her and a score of other female captives into prime pleasure slaves in one phase of the moon! Although she is determined to fight his efforts at taming and training her with all her hatred and will, his virile mastery proves irresistible. She eventually must succumb to the overwhelming attraction and lets herself start to love Aguilar only to learn she'll be sold again…

In spite of this new heartbreak, can she use her newly developed skills to tame a new master?

Set in an exotic world just a bit like ours may once have been, The Taming of Jaelle'n explores the fascinating physical and emotional byplay between two strong characters and the question of who will ultimately tame whom...

Pickup Man--blurb and excerpt--PG-13+

Pickup Man by Deirdre O'Dare, Amber Quill in Amber Heat line, Buy link:http://www.amberquill.com/store/p/699-Pickup-Man.aspx

Blurb: High school librarian Jana's best friends Kim and Tracy accuse her of being a professional spinster, still single at twenty-seven. On a bet with them, the weekend of the big rodeo, Jana goes to the favorite nightspot of the rodeo crowd to try to pick up a cowboy. Before the night is over, she knows the steak dinner she'll win from her friends is by far the least of her prizes. Once she gets acquainted with Ty, the phrase "ride 'em cowboy" takes on a whole new meaning. She just might run her brand on this one!

Excerpt: : This details Jana and Ty's initial meeting. She's dressed much sexier than usual and not quite comfortable in the tight jeans and t-shirt she's wearing to fit in. 

***
Damn, I feel like everyone is looking at me and they all think I'm a hooker.
Dodging departing dancers and hurrying waitresses, she made a bee-line for Tyler. Fierce determination fueled her desire to win her bet and prove she wasn't the bashful and backward twenty-seven-year-old professional spinster Kim and Tracey accused her of being. Of the three old school friends, Kim and Tracey had both been married, but she hadn't. Privately she thought she might be the lucky one, especially after hearing the sad tales of their divorces, but that wasn't the point.
He's hung like a Brahma bull, too, from what those tight jeans showed today.
At that brazen memory, Jana felt the heat wash over her face. Thank goodness no one could see her blush in the dim light. But she'd noticed. She couldn't help it, just as half the female population of Riverbend had also. At today's rodeo, she could hardly take her gaze off him. Whether he won or not, he was one hot hunk of cowboy.
But today hadn't been one of his good days. Coming out of the chute his bareback bronc had stumbled. When the horse fell in a leggy awkward heap, Ty had barely scrambled clear. He'd get a re-ride tomorrow morning, but that wasn't much consolation. Then with one of the bull's infamous tricky moves, Big Trouble had unloaded him in the seventh second, hardly a heartbeat short of the whistle. Up until then, he'd had a good ride. Not that it mattered. No money, no points, in either event. He was clearly taking the run of rotten luck hard.
Finally reaching him, she slid onto the stool at his side. He ignored her.
"Lousy luck today." Her voice came out gritty and low, like she needed a drink.
"G'wan," he slurred. "Buckle bunnies don't hang around losers."
Somehow, she sensed he wasn't really all that drunk. "I'm not a buckle bunny and you're damn well no loser."
He turned then, raked her with a pair of pale gray eyes, every inch of her from the fire-hued Stetson with the rhinestone band to the toes of her scarlet boots. His gaze held a heated tactile intensity. God, what eyes. She went hot and cold under their steady gaze. People said he was part Apache. With that shoulder length black hair clubbed back by a rawhide thong, he looked the part.
"And just how would you know, little girl? I've never seen you in here before. How come you're here tonight, and why are you hitting on me?"
"I'm here 'cause I like to dance, to soak up the atmosphere. Anyway, one day doesn't make a loser," she retorted. "There's always tomorrow and the next rodeo."
He snorted. "Tell that to Tawny."
Who's Tawny? Then Jana recalled the petite blonde. The girl had been plastered to Ty's side at the last several rodeos she'd attended. Tonight, the blonde was conspicuous by her absence. Jana wanted to make a snippy comment about blondes not being known for their powers of reasoning, but she suspected that wouldn't go over well, especially seeing as how her hair was dark auburn.
Just then someone crammed some coins in the jukebox and Trace Adkins' latest began to play. She took a sip of her beer, fighting a grimace at the unfamiliar bitter flavor. The harried bartender had simply shoved a mug her way, not even asking. Was beer all they served in here? Given a chance, she would have opted for just about anything else cold and wet. She seldom drank alcohol, but when she did, her beverage of choice was a nice dry wine.
When Ty turned away as if to dismiss her, she felt a surge of panic. Oh no, I can't fail! I wouldn't have guts to try this again. Reaching out, she put a hand on his shoulder. Under her fingers, his flesh felt hot and hard as the tight muscle of a good Quarter horse.
"Come on, cowboy," she said in her lowest husky voice, the voice that was totally inappropriate for a high school librarian. "Let's dance. I didn't come in here to sit around and be someone's crying towel."
"You don't know one goddamn thing," he muttered, but he stood and followed her onto the dance floor, walking as steadily as if he were stone-sober. "One bad day--or a dozen..."
As she turned to face him, he looked at her again, really looked. As that fierce gaze slid over her body, she felt it as keenly as a touch. Her nipples hardened, thrusting against the clinging tee and her knees wobbled. She could see he didn't miss any of her reaction, which proved he wasn't nearly as drunk as he'd pretended to be at first. Bet he's nursed that one beer for quite awhile.
His angular lips quirked into a parody of a smile. "Okay, little girl, if you came to dance, I'll give it a try. In that outfit, you're looking sexier than Dolly Parton at her best with a little Shania Twain on the side. I hope you're not just for show 'cause I could sure use a dose of warm woman tonight."
In answer she snuggled close to Ty's big hard body as they stepped off to the music. Take his mind off the blonde, off anything except me. She'd bet he was just lonely and angry enough to let his guard down. In fact, she was counting on it.
As they moved around the floor, Jana thanked her lucky stars that all the tunes someone had chosen were slow ones. That kept her close to Ty, body to body, in a contact that felt more intimate with each passing second. Still, in the heat of the crowded bar, she began to perspire.
The moisture heightened the scent of her musk perfume which rose up in an invisible cloud around them. With every breath, they both inhaled the sensual odor. Before the set was over, she sensed him growing hard, felt the unconscious tightening of his embrace. His hand slid from the middle of her back to the swell of her bottom. She relaxed and let her body meld to his.
"I don't know who you are, gal, but you're coming across as one hot mama. How about we go outside?"
Jana nodded, too pleased and too anxious to reply. When he turned her to walk directly in front of him, she smiled inwardly. Bet the zipper and denim of his jeans are stressed to the max. The notion that she, plain timid little Jana, could arouse a hard-bitten cowboy to that extent was headier than a whole pitcher of beer. They made their way through the shifting crowd to the door through which Jana had entered a half hour or so ago. Outside it must have been close to a hundred degrees at ten o'clock. Dry heat or not, she felt it and sensed he did, too.
He turned to the side once they were clear of the door and propped himself against the wall, drawing her close. She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing, but before the words were out, his lips closed over hers. He gave her a hard, urgent kiss, tasting of beer and cowboy, a kiss that hit her like striking a match over a dish of gasoline. A flare of desire surged through her so fiercely she went weak all over. She clutched at his shoulders for balance, for something to hang onto in a world that whirled crazily around her.
"I've got a room in the motel across the highway," Ty said, finally lifting his mouth clear of hers. "It's there or my truck. Truck's closer but not as comfortable." 

Backlist Boogie--Installment 2--Pickup Man

Last week I told you all about my first Amber Heat release and my gradual slide into writing erotic romance as I adjusted to losing my life and writing partner. We only really did one book together but my husband had been my first reader and critique partner and my tech adviser on military, law enforcement, outdoor action and many other aspects that appeared in the bulk of my works. I had to break some new ground to continue to write.

Still, for my second erotic romance release which came out later in 2004, I went back to a familiar and comfortable contemporary environment, an imaginary mid-sized town in Arizona. This story was Pickup Man, the first of my Rodeo Girls trilogy. It began as a stand alone story but I soon recognized that its heroine's friends had to have their own tales told. They came out a few months later as Portrait of a Cowboy and Cowboy First Aid.

Since I grew up training horses and mules and dealing on a daily basis with all kinds of "cowboys", rodeo had been part of my life for years. I knew about the buckle bunnies and other levels of fans who make rock stars of the top rodeo competitors. Great place to set a sexy story! And, as I have often done, I reflected the U.S. southwest's ethnic and racial diversity in these stories. That's me below as a teen with some of the cowboys we worked with,(not too glamorous!) and I think we were about to head to a rodeo!

Jana, the heroine is white but the hero, Tyler, is at least half Native American. There are quite a few Indian cowboys as well as Latinos and African Americans. Bulls, broncs and the other stock don't see color or race at all. They just respect the toughest and most determined riders. I agree with that myself!

The premise of Pickup Man is that Jana's friends worry about her shy and single life and challenge her to pick up a cowboy during the midnight rodeo parts of the town's annual celebration. So she goes to the main bar where the rodeo crowd parties and sets her sights on a cowboy who has had a bad day...

Pickup Man by Deirdre O'Dare, http://www.amberquill.com/store/p/699-Pickup-Man.aspx  See the next post for the blurb and an excerpt.

Karola's Hunt--Blurb and Excerpt

Karola's Hunt by Deirdre O'Dare ISBN: 1-59279-237-5

http://www.amberquill.com/store/p/706-Karola-s-Hunt.aspx

Blurb: 
Karola, daughter of Diana, is totally innocent and wild, having never left the forest where she has grown up. Then one day she encounters an intruder, someone who looks a bit like her but also very different. In Damien she finds her first human friend and much, much more. Before the day is over, she has discovered what it means to be female as she is awakened to the delights of her sexuality and the first stirring of love.

But how can Karola ensure Damien will return again to play more of these magical games with her?

Excerpt: 

"Come. Let us rest in the shade for a while. It is too hot today for more running."

They flopped down on the soft bed of springy green grass. Karola lay on her back, her arms folded beneath her head, gazing up through the leaves at the sky. Damien settled on his side, facing her. Either the mead or the exertion had left her feeling deliciously languid, as if she floated on one of the small clouds overhead.
They looked as white and fluffy as the sheep she had once seen grazing in a meadow beyond her woods. For a moment she dreamed of flying up to land on one of them, drifting along and looking down at the world spread beneath her. But dreaming could be saved for a time she was alone. Today she had a companion. She turned to gaze at him, absorbed in his beauty, in the differences between the two of them.
It seemed totally right when Damien reached out and stroked her arm. His hand was rougher-skinned than hers, in spite of her forest life, yet his touch was not harsh. It sent sparkly tingles running along her skin. She felt as if fireflies were dancing over her body, just out of sight.
"Your skin is soft as the pelt of a baby rabbit," he said. "I could touch you forever."
He lifted a tress of her hair, which had come unbound in their frolics, and sifted the raven strands through his fingers. "And your hair is as dark as night. There are pretty girls in my village, but none of them have hair like yours. I have never seen hair this color--yellow and brown and russet, yes, but not black as moonless midnight."
"My hair is not so very strange. Darlisa and Melody have green hair, while Brylana's is almost the color of yours--just a bit lighter. My mother's is very dark brown like the bark of the oak trees. Everyone has their own color, I think."
"Green hair? Now that is strange! I never saw green hair."
Karola laughed. "They are Kelpies and Bry is a Dryad. All the Kelpies have green hair...at least all the ones I know."
He shrugged. "I like yours anyway. It is much better than green."
She smiled, enjoying the brightness of his eyes as he looked at her, the feel of his hand, stroking her arm, sifting through her hair. Like her mother, she wore a tunic that was cut away on the right side, leaving no fabric to foul an arrow or slow the snap of a bowstring. The garment left her right breast bare, and she saw how his glance kept slipping to focus upon it. Her nipple hardened to a rosy pebble under his attentive gaze.
He gave her a knowing smile before he reached out and brushed his fingers across the tip. At that caress, it hardened even more and a shivery sensation coursed through her body. Then he cupped the whole of her breast in his hand and kneaded it gently with his fingers. Her lassitude deepened as a tingling itch spread from his touch, sinking into her chest, into her belly, into some inner recess she could not name which suddenly felt achingly empty.

Backlist Boogie--1st Entry

I am a day late and hopefully not a dollar short. Circumstances beyond my control, computer problems, delayed my kick off for Backlist Boogie. Oh well, stuff happens!

Okay, now to the business at hand. My very first release in the Amber Heat line, before Amber Allure came to be, was a long time ago. I had been playing with something 'erotic' from the time I attended the RT conference in the fall of 2003 and learned that hotties were the up and coming thing in romance. It was going to be a switch for me since I had been writing pg-13 romance and took awhile to be able to leave the bedroom door partly ajar!

Maybe it just felt easier or more natural but I set this tale in the prehistoric past--in ancient Greece to be exact, in the time when the gods, goddesses and all kinds of fantastic entities were felt to be real and present. My heroine was a semi-wild girl, raised by dryads in the woods although she was the daughter of Diana, the huntress. Diana was alleged to be virginal but who knows...in this world, she could have a daughter, anyway! Of course this girl was very naive and innocent having really not seen other humans at all--until she meets a youth who comes to hunt in "her" forest.

That was the premise of Karola's Hunt. I worked on it for some time, setting it

aside for a bit after the sudden death of my husband, but took it up in a sew weeks to try to break out of the writer's block that hit me hard on some regular novels I was working on when he passed away. We were even working on one together. It was not easy to get back into the projects.

Early in 2004, I heard the then-new publisher Amber Quill was going to be offering erotic romance and was sponsoring a contest to find some new authors for that line. I talked to a couple of friends, one who unbeknownst to me entered the contest also, and they encouraged me to try it. I polished it up as well as I could and sent it off. When the "call" in the form of an email came on April 1, 2004, I at first thought it a joke. But it was real and Karola's Hunt released in June 2004, the very first work to come out over the Deirdre O'Dare pseudonym Since then there have been many more!

At the time I had no idea how much would come about as a result of that rather timid start!

Here is a link to the page where it is sold--yes, it is still available although I have been considering pulling it after over then years. We'll see. http://www.amberquill.com/store/p/706-Karola-s-Hunt.aspx

An excerpt and blurb follows in a second post.

Backlist Boogie

Just a heads up to readers here. Starting in February I plan to feature one title from my back list each week, both here and on the Amber Heat Reader's List and maybe the Amber Quill Authors' blog as well. The covers will be shown, of course, a short excerpt or two provided  and a bit of background about the story: how or why I came to write it, maybe a peek at the inspiration or some other special tidbit about it.

BTW, I seldom post pictures of me here but this shot was from an RT booksigning event a few years back. I was signing under both my pseudonyms there, Gwynn Morgan of the PG-13 romances and Deirdre O'Dare of the sizzlers.

I'm working on my eleventh year as an AQ author in their Heat and Allure lines and I know some of the more recent readers probably are not too familiar with some of my early work. There are a lot of titles to check if anyone does go to my page on teh AQ site and look at the back list! Yep, I am a fairly prolific writer. I know there are more than fifty titles to over my pseudonym up there. It kind of startles me to count up and realize. I will probably be giving away one of my collections--a print book, autographed of course, as part of this promotion.

I'm planning on doing it Wednesday so watch this page on Wednesday, February 4 for the very first bars of the Backlist Boogie!! It may be a long song. LOL.

Winter is not my fave...

...season and days like today are the reason why. Even in "sunny" New Mexico it is gray and bleak with no sunshine and a temperature in the lower 40s plus a sharp NW wind that puts the wind chill around freezing. Well, compared to Alaska and the Yukon, pretty tame stuff. But if you are not used to it...and if you have this nasty Alamo-land bug that seems to be a cold/virus/flu all smushed into one. Well, don't go there if you can help it. I wasn't looking and it sneaked up on me. I'm recovering but very slowly!!

I hope by now some of you have read and enjoyed The Mule Man. I won't have my sales figures for a few weeks yet but I can hope!

I did get a bit of a pick-me-up two days ago when one of the great AQP staffers forwarded me a really great review of last summer's Red Tails in the Sunset. It is just such a lift to a writer when a reviewer really "gets" one of your tales and you can tell you touched them. That's what this review told me.

To read the whole thing, go here:  https://mmgoodbookreviews.wordpress.com/2014/12/25/red-tails-in-the-sunset-by-deidre-odare/

But here is a snippet: Lisa of  MM Good Books Reviews gave it four hearts and said:
"This was a fascinating story with a bit more added in that I had not expected. It was a blast to read and I look forward to reading more by this amazing author....I would recommend reading this especially if you love daredevils, excitement, danger, adventure, and gorgeous men. It gave me almost everything I could ask for in a story and my attention was caught with it."  

Thank you Lisa and smoochies for loving a very special story that had a lot of my heart in it!