Double Take - COVER REVEAL

I'm just loving the cover for Double Take! It captures the vibe of the book perfectly.  It's all about contrasts.  You get a hint to the gritty, raw side of the story here.  In post-apocalyptic New York, all the glitz and prestige is saved for the privileged employees of the one and only corporation still around. Shannon Morris, a high powered executive, couldn't be more removed from the suffering at the bottom of her glass tower in the sky.  We'll follow her as she finds out where she really belongs.


Those gorgeous torsos in the background?  They belong to our heroes; twin brothers Pryor and Tristan Davies.  I totally love their brooding expressions.  It's so right for their characters.  They are serious guys, who like to have serious fun on occasion, when they aren't plotting a take over of Eaglecorp Global, Inc.


Thanks to my cover artist Mina Carter for her vision.  You're the best Mina!


Double Take releases 8/3/12 from Etopia Press. Get it on Amazon, B&N, All Romance Ebooks and other online retailers.

Trailer treats! Double Take is coming soon!

You've got to watch this with sound.  Rockin' track!
Release date is around the corner, so here's a sneak peek.

Fit To Be Tied (power plays and all that good stuff)

As a kid I used to love to play tug-of-war ... Especially with boys.  For me the power struggle between women and men is simply inborn; something about proving myself, I bet.  But as the boys grew bigger than me and were suddenly men, the jockeying for power took a whole ‘nother twist.  Now it’s the idea of a strong alpha type guy respecting me enough to let me in on the fight, but strong enough to whip that tug of war rope right out of my hand and tie me to a chair with it ... figuratively speaking, of course.  Well, mostly figuratively. 

But the struggle doesn’t end with physical strength. Women wield power in a very different way, though it may take a bit of growing into that power before it’s fully effective.  A lot of what I write about works around the power dynamic of my characters and the ways they manage to indulge and reign in their influence on the one they pursue.  Sex, love and power are a potent threesome, ever-present since the birth of humanity.  Somethings just never get old.

My M/M/F Fascination

What is it about two beautiful men wrapped around each other that ignite the imaginations of so many women?  Expanding our horizons past the familiarity of our own sexual experiences is a powerful aphrodisiac.  Forever we’ve expected straight men to drool over cutie-pie lesbians rolling around on a picnic blanket.  But the fascination flows in both directions.     In my early years of sexual exploration I snagged my first copy of Playgirl while “naively” looking for some hetero stimulation and found a much more interesting bonus publication shrink wrapped inside.  That was my first peek at manlove and I’ve been a fan of the genre ever since.

It’s commonly agreed that no person is all gay or all straight.  That Kinsey’s scale of homosexual and heterosexual ratings gives us a way to quantify our same-sex tendencies is old news at this point.  Still the attachment to labels is almost as conspicuous as it was when Kinsey made his ground breaking studies.  Nicholas, one of the main characters in my new release, By Surprise, struggles with the idea of being attracted to a woman.  Having self-identified as gay, it’s frightening and confusing to feel his body react in her presence. I truly enjoyed exploring this idea and walking the journey with him towards the realization that his body wasn’t at odds with his mind.  In the end, his heart would speak for both. 

For fun I took this ultra-simplified version of the Kinsey study.  Can’t say I was surprised by the results.  Would you be?  As times have changed and the discussion about sexuality has broadened, many feel that Kinsey’s scale is way too broad to correctly designate a person’s degree of sexual preference. Too broad or too narrow, labels only serve to limit.  I don’t need a study to know that.

PayPal – book retailer’s new warden of decency

If there is one thing I like, it's convenience.  For that reason I’ve been a big fan of PayPal.  I love not having to get off my ass and fish my credit card out of my purse when I’ve scored some new something I didn’t know I needed until it ended up seducing me from my LCD screen.  I totally dig the idea of not having to go through all that trouble to write a check, and god forbid, mail the damn thing to someone when we’re going halves on a weekend excursion.  I’ve been more than grateful to have a record of my incoming and outgoing transactions at my fingertips.  BUT, none of that is better than the convenience of reaching over and reading what ever the hell I feel like without someone else’s opinion getting in my way. 

When someone asks me why I write erotica, the first answer that comes to mind is why not?  But to put a finer point on it, writers mostly write with the intent to connect with their reader, to draw a reaction from them, to open their mind and leave a lasting impression. There isn’t a genre that does all of that in a more visceral way.  And in pursuit of these goals, should an author of erotica choose to indulge the topics that PayPal deems obscene, are we to simply dismiss their censorship as a loss of convenience?  This is a loss of our rights. 

As a teenager a certain author captured my attention like none before.  V.C. Andrews introduced me to the idea that sometimes things happen in our human existence that are alarming and alluring for that very reason.  I didn’t suddenly want to do my brother.  I wanted to discover the secrets to writing such gripping plotlines that dared to stretch my imagination away from safe suburbia.  Ms. Andrews had a hankering for incest in her plots.  I had fascination for the idea of crafting such a taboo into something palatable.  In Flowers in the Attic she managed somehow to make it even seem beautiful.  Incredible.

V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic remains a classic among teenage girls.  It isn’t erotica—not by a long shot.  But it’s best selling status clearly illustrates that plenty of people are interested in reading about incest.  Fiction is the place to explore, to peek behind the curtains you would probably never want to draw open in reality.  I won’t apologize for liking V.C. Andrews.  I can only hope to weave a tail as craftily around such a challenging subject.  According to PayPal, her books aren’t worth the money they can skim from the Ebay auction you might score an old copy from. Are they really that uptight? As of now the number or book retailers suffering their sudden need to dictate what the world should read is growing, fast.  Shame on you PayPal.  Where do you get off?

 And don’t even get me started with the 100 year old classic, The Blue Lagoon ...

-Alyssa