Thursday, April 29, 2010

Ellora's Cave Painted the Town Red

By all accounts, Ellora's Cave's Paint the Town Red party at RT BookLovers Convention was a huge success. For a few incriminating photos, check out Editor in Chief Kelli Collins' twitpics here, EC author Samantha Kane's here and Shelli Stevens here. Let me know if you find more, and I'll post links. In the meantime, enjoy some pics below from Samantha Kane, aka @skaneauthor.

 Cavemen are always the main attraction.

(Above) Our fearless leader, CEO Patty Marks, EiC Kelli Collins and  Publisher Raelene Gorlinsky.
(Below) Francesca Hawley waves amid a sea of red partiers, Kristin Daniels looking fab in red satin, Samantha Cayton & Dalton Diaz hanging out, staffer Valeri Plucinski paints M.A. Ellis red.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Good Luck to Passionate Plume Finalists!

Wow, Ellora's Cave authors made an impressive showing as finalists in RWA Passionate Ink Passionate Plume contest!
Congratulations and good luck to them all! If you haven't read these books, you might want to beat the rush and pick them up now.


Contemporary:

Kelly Jamieson - Rigger
Alek likes to tie up women. As a rigger, he’s into the aesthetics of bondage—the pattern of rope against skin, the marks left in tender flesh—but he also likes the high of being in control and, yeah, it turns him on. When Alek needs a model to complete the photographs for his book on rope bondage, he asks his friend Shaela.

Shaela has known Alek since high school, and while she disapproves of his kinky sexual habits, he’s a friend and she agrees to help. She’s not prepared for the experience of being tied up. Being bound and helpless releases her from her everyday problems—her slave-driver boss, her unsatisfying career and her derogatory father. She’s also helplessly aroused.
So is Alek. He sees how Shaela loves being bound, even though she doesn’t want to admit it, and proposes they explore it together. Intrigued but nervous, Shaela agrees. Neither of them expects to learn the things they do about each other—and about themselves. And neither of them expects to fall in love.

Historical:

Debra Glass - Bad Kitty

Bram Barclay is the scandal of London society, sought out by ladies of the ton who enjoy his brand of pleasurable punishments. That’s why he cannot comprehend why innocent Miss Katrina Hartford has disguised herself as Kitty Hartley, taking a position as a maid at his estate. When he attempts to ferret out her secret, he finds her a willing servant, indeed.

No one knows scathing social columnist Alistair Allenby is Kitty’s nom de plume—or that she’s writing an article to expose Bram. But as she submits to his torturous toys, it’s Kitty who is exposed, indulging her unspoken desires to find true freedom, power…and love.
Reader Advisory: While not a true depiction of a BDSM lifestyle, Bad Kitty contains its share of tantalizing taboos. And spankings. Lots and lots of spankings.

Debra Glass - Bought and Paid For


Unable to support herself and her beloved servants, Widow Carrie Hatcher contemplates the unthinkable—offering her services for money. Forced to board wounded Colonel Wesley McEwen in her home, Carrie vows to make the striking Confederate soldier her first “client”.

But Carrie gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to comply with Wesley’s every illicit request for one week. Throughout long, sultry nights, Wesley tutors Carrie in every position, every skill, of her illicit new trade. From dark taboos to pleasurable punishments, Carrie becomes his willing pupil.
Passions inflamed, the couple becomes more scandalously intimate but Carrie realizes she wants to give him far more than just her body. The colonel, however, may be too haunted by his past to risk accepting more than he’s bought and paid for.

Francesca Hawley - Seeking Truth


Baron Eaduin Kempe, a man of intense passions, seeks a healer at a nearby abbey. When the abbess introduces convent-raised Lady Vérité de Sauigni, he knows he’s hellbound for desiring her. He wants to tie her to his bed until she sobs with the pleasure of his touch.

Eaduin offers Vérité marriage in exchange for easing the pain of his dying foster mother. Years ago, Vérité secretly watched Baron Eaduin arouse a lover and has dreamed of his touch ever since. She desires him enough to risk exchanging the imprisonment of convent life for that of marriage. On their wedding night, Eaduin craves dominance and Vérité submits with enthusiasm. Each heated encounter thereafter binds them closer together.
When Vérité’s father accuses her of witchcraft because she won’t use her psychic gift of seeing truth to aid him, she begs Eaduin to kill her so she doesn’t suffer. Instead, Eaduin challenges her father to trial by combat, determined to save the woman who owns both his passion and his heart.

Futuristic/SciFi/Fantasy:

Allyson James - Calder

Book Five, Tales of the Shareem

Calder is Shareem. Genetically created to be the ultimate in sexual pleasure. A level three, he’s mysterious, rough, dangerous. That was before an experiment gone wrong at the DNAmo lab…
Now Calder is something else. He is The Beast. A being women fear even as they beg to be “hunted” in his pleasure palace. And he gives his clients everything they want and more, his sexual skills legendary, his waiting list long…until Katarina.
As a highborn woman, Katarina should shun all Shareem. Yet the compassionate young doctor works in Pas City, one of Bor Narga’s worst slums, voluntarily treating all lower classes. And Shareem are considering the lowest of the low. One taste of Calder, however, and she wants more than sex with The Beast—she wants the love of Calder the man.
Suddenly Calder is feeling emotions he’s never known. But even if he can overcome the pain of his past at DNAmo, an obsessed client could steal away Katarina’s love before he has a chance to return it.

Jory Strong - Fallon Mates: Zoe's Gift

A book in the Fallon Mates series.

One look at the human female who is his match and the mating fever of the Vesti ignites in Miciah, making it impossible for him to deny what he wants. To go to Earth and claim her, he must choose an Amato co-mate. For him there is only one choice, the bisexual Iden. It’ll mean breaking the cultural taboos of the Vesti, but for Zoë, he and Iden will become lovers.
Miciah intends to keep his sexual relationship with Iden a secret as they take Zoë together. Iden has other ideas. What neither of them can know is they’ve starred in Zoë’s dreams for a week, so when they show up in her reality, she welcomes the chance to explore their fantasies—and her own.
Miciah and Iden may have come to Earth to claim a mate, but taking her home with them will change Belizair forever.

Michelle Polaris - Bound Odyssey
The year is 2067 and Earth is self-destructing from environmental cataclysms. A portal to a new world is ripped open and refuge there is Earth’s only hope. Enter Jace, cowboy diplomat, who is preparing for the negotiation of a lifetime. A sexually conflicted alpha male, he hates everything with a cock, especially himself. The last thing Jace expects is to fall in love with both a woman and a man.

His dark history presents the ultimate challenge to Mira and Roman, the sexual Dominant team hired to prepare Jace for the female-dominant culture of the new world. Tragedy has made Mira distrust her Mistress abilities. Survival is her priority, and she resists her deep attraction to Jace’s haunted eyes and sculpted body.
Roman, however, falls hard and fast for Mira and Jace, ready to honor Mira as his Mistress and force Jace to recognize him as Master. Bound in one another’s chains and pushed to the limits of arousal and pain, they must outrun sabotage and conspiracy to find salvation for their bodies, souls and hearts.

Paranormal/Time Travel:

Francesca Hawley - Protect and Defend

Mikaela Laughlin discovers a whole new world, and an entirely new species, when she tours the crime lab to meet Lieutenant Diarmid Redwolf while researching her next book. She’s lusted after “Delicious Diarmid” from afar for a long time, but meeting him sets her body on fire. It doesn’t take long for Mikaela to discover there’s more to Diarmid than meets the eye. He is far more delicious up close than she ever dreamed.

Diarmid has bad guys to catch, but one look at the voluptuous writer has him wanting to catch her instead. His shapeshifter blood recognizes his True Mate and he wants her naked body arching beneath his. Now. But with a cold-blooded serial killer on the loose, Diarmid has one shot at his future and he will not fail. Because this time, the killer wants Mikaela.

Novella:

Jayne Rylon - Phoenix Incantation

Amystia didn’t think anything could be hotter than five-thousand wild years of passion with the most powerful vampire on Earth. Then she and her mate, King Dagan, began a steamy affair with his closest advisor. Threesomes with her two lovers were never supposed to be more than fun but, somehow, both her and Dagan’s feelings have blossomed into something deeper than respect and friendship for Warren.

As they are on the cusp of proposing a more permanent relationship, a terrible accident destroys all plans for the future. Dagan’s life hangs in the balance. In a desperate bid to save him, Amystia and Warren invoke ancient magic through a steamy ritual. If they fail, they’ll all be doomed to eternal darkness. If they succeed, can their eternal love rise from the ashes?