Cold (Cold #1) by Brandon Shire

Title ~ Cold (Cold #1)

Author ~ Brandon Shire

Genre ~ m/m romance

Published ~ 14th May 2013

Rating ~ 4.5 stars

Book 1: Prison is a brutal, heartless, and demeaning environment. No one knows this better than a man sentenced to life in prison for murder. Lem Porter is a high-profile prisoner who had a solid career ahead of him in a field he loved until he killed his brother. He has spent almost eighteen years behind bars and doesn’t have much hope left.
Anderson Passero had it all. He built a career, a name, and a relationship with a man he thought he loved. Only after he very publicly landed in prison did he realize how ignorant he’d been. He has eight months left on his sentence and he is eager to go home and put prison life behind him. He doesn’t know it yet, but he will always carry these eight months with him, and they may just help him to understand what love really means.

Cold by Brandon Shire is not only the first book of a new series, but it is also the first book I have had the pleasure to read from this author. This book is an excellent example of great storytelling, and I was totally enthralled from the start… there is no flowery prose, nor is this a raw and gritty tale. It is not a roller coaster ride and you will not find any angst or gratuitous sex thrown in for the sake of it, and for the most part we don’t even get to see the romance. So, by now you are probably wondering why I would even read this book. Simple… the WOW factor for me was the writing, just amazing and at times beautiful, especially the developing relationship between these two, their character development had me captivated and swept along on this journey with two men I just fell in love with. 

In Cold, Brandon Shire paces the book perfectly and drip feeds the information allowing us to absorb and digest, running the ramifications through our minds before the next piece is slipped into place helping us build a detailed and vivid picture of… Lem the gentle giant with a secretive past… and Anderson the fallen media darling and night club owner, neither of which had the perfect upbringing and both of them have been damaged by the cruelties life has dealt them. Not all the secrets are revealed in this first book and I still have many questions unanswered, the impatient side of me wants it all NOW but alas we will have to wait!

 

PRISON IS A HEARTLESS PLACE ~ Even more so if you are a renowned gay man, and  five feet, seven inches of scrawny! Anderson has spent eight years in prison for a crime that although he was culpable, he was not the instigator, he was betrayed by his lover and lost everything, but most of all he lost his freedom. Now prison is a ticking clock, counting down the months to his release… He has one objective, stay out of trouble and get out of prison!  Anderson is an open book and his thoughts fly freely enabling us as readers to understand him more and we learn some of his secrets and the events that led up to  his conviction.

Lem, is not quite so forthcoming, he has spent eighteen years incarcerated and has created a necessary persona to survive, to others his size was immediately intimidating and follow that up with his steely gaze and stoical manner and Lem was to be avoided at all costs. At this point in the series, Lem is still an enigma, his mind like the man is stoically guarded, internalizing and even hiding from himself. We see the dangerous side to Lem and have yet to find out why, but in my opinion, this belies his true disposition, he is an intelligent, gentle and caring man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone in his self inflicted isolation, maintaining his sanity with his passion for nature, working with plants and happy to while away his spare time reading magazines with his thoughts drifting to his one love and passion… the forest, but to him it is an empty dream as Lem has nothing and no one and that’s the way he likes it… until Anderson. Now Lem is confused by his own behaviour, for the first time since the death of his brother he wants someone to see past all the bravado and see the real him.

He stared at the bonsai on the table, lost in his thoughts. He missed that kind of space, the thousands of acres he had to roam because he was charged to watch over it. There were weeks when he wouldn’t see a single soul. It was just him and the forest. There was one spot he particularly liked when he was out west. He’d camp out by Stillwater River and watch the wildlife come in for a drink while he held himself steady in a tree a hundred feet above their head, in awe of their beauty and grace.

Anderson fears Lem the murderer yet lusts for Lem the man who uttered the words “I would never hurt you” and battling with his conscience is only exasperating his longing for Lem and ramping up the fear factor. But when he looks into Lem’s eyes, he knows he is safe with his gentle giant and after eight years of living in fear and anxiety – in that moment he feels free and the connection, although silent was palpable and he felt safe to just let go.

He took another step back and looked at Lem fully, studying him; something which he had been terrified to do since he saw Lem the first time. He had a rugged, angled face, weathered by pain and something he guessed was an internal misery. He saw emotion and a deep hurt etched around Lem’s eyes.

What I loved about the emotional and physical connection between these two men was the hope I felt, it was profound and my heart was full reading it, and to be honest, personally I can’t say I felt it was hot sex, I almost felt like a voyeur, it was intimate and beautiful, the passion was intense, they were just grabbing a moment in time and it had to be perfect and Brandon Shire truly made me feel that emotion with his words, with an ending that made me both smile and cry.. yep, that would be me again with the ugly tears!!

 "I think I love you" Anderson whispered as he heard his footsteps fade away

I can only guess as to why Brandon chose the title for this series, my own impression would be the Cold that had for so long rendered Lem numb to anything but existing and Anderson was the warmth that was slowly melting the ice within the man and fanning the flames of desire that had long ago been forgotten… that would be the romantic in me, but I am sure Mr Shire will enlighten me at some point! I also wish that Anderson could have a nickname or something shortened… as Anderson seems so formal, unfortunately our two MC’s barely had time to get to know one another let alone for them to develop endearments,  something that I am hoping will change with the coming books in the series. I know I mentioned before that Brandon Shire blew me away with his writing and believe me he did, I am all kinds of wowed by his literary skills, however my only gripe would be some repetition which in this case became noticeable, a couple of times I had to look back thinking I was reading the same page again, plus the use of the word short referring to his stature and time to serve, I think Anderson was obsessing about the two and understandably because his main focus was to get out and repeating it was becoming a mantra and his size he was more than aware of because he lived in fear.

This is an excellent book and I am suitably impressed with this start to the Cold series, we are also introduced to a few well developed secondary characters that I would like to see more of, I was pulling a high five for Anderson’s Mum at one point and his sister although she seems innocent and naive, I can see the fierce protector in her, and Officer Jefferson… he has already won a place in my heart!

This book was provided by the Author in exchange for a fair and honest review

Contact the Author ~ Twitter | Website | Goodreads

Irresistible Desire by Danielle Jamie

Title: Irresistible Desire  (The Savannah Trilogy, #1)

Author: Danielle Jamie

Genre: Contemporary/Erotic Romance

Release date: March 12th 2013

Savannah has been dating her boyfriend Logan for four years. She thought he was the man she was going to marry, spend the rest of her life with and one day build a family with. The life she imagined for Logan and her all changes in a matter of seconds. Her entire life came crashing down all around her after she catches Logan in bed with another woman.

Savannah decides to leave Los Angeles and stay at her family's beach house in Galveston, Texas. She never imagined a man she only met once before, would come back into her life and be the one to mend her broken heart.Kayden blows into her life faster than a tornado in Spring. After a wild weekend together, both of their lives will be changed forever.

I really enjoyed this,  I have to say that I thought it was a romp – it gallops along at a breath-taking pace but it’s a very sexy and satisfying ride.

Thank you for giving me the most amazing two nights of my life.

I hope to have many more…memorable evenings with you Savannah, because baby, I have an irresistible desire to have you every chance I can get.

~ Kayden

Savannah is our heroine – she’s young and beautiful and the daughter of America’s country music’s number one singing duo.  She’s rich and is used to life in the limelight.  She’s been dating Logan for four years and, at first, he seems all kind of wonderful but, soon after they become engaged, she catches him in a compromising position with another woman.  Another very beautiful woman.  She’s heartbroken and decides that enough is enough – she’s never going to allow herself to fall for another man the way she fell for Logan.  She’s never going to give another man a chance to break her heart like that again.

And along comes Kayden – seriously rich, playboy oil tycoon.  She can hardly contain herself the first time she meets him when he comes to her magazine for an interview and it turns out she truly won’t resist him for long.  He also ‘doesn’t do relationships’ and they get together in Texas for a weekend of sizzling, steamy and very passionate sex.  Neither of them expects it to progress beyond one wild weekend but neither of them can leave it just there.  They have to have more of each other.

I did really enjoy this – even though it’s a full- length novel, I read it very quickly.  It romps along at an incredible pace with never a dull moment.  The main duo of Savannah and Kayden actually don’t get together until the halfway point and, having read the blurb, I was impatient to get to this part but it did help ramp up the anticipation.

I loved Kayden – despite his playboy reputation, he’s actually quite compassionate and kind.  He’s incredibly handsome, fairly laid-back, has got a real twinkle in his eyes and is sexy as hell!!  Yep, I pretty much loved him right from the first moment we saw him.  He’s got his own reasons to shy away from commitment and we only just scrape the surface of his past in this one – I suspect there’s a whole lot more to come in the second book of the trilogy.

I knew that I needed to have you. I needed to know what it felt like to have you laying beneath me, screaming out my name with raw passion.

Rawr!!

Savannah was great – she’s got a hilarious inner monologue and, as the story is told from her POV, we really manage to get inside her mind as she goes from real happiness with Logan, to the depths of despair and right back to the heights of ecstasy with Kayden.  I loved the fact that she’s also wealthy and is used to being in the limelight just as much as Kayden – they’re on an even playing field here.

Logan, despite his incredible fall from grace, actually was quite sweet at the beginning and I think Danielle Jamie did well not to make him a cardboard cut-out baddie right from the get go.  He’s an incredible philanderer but Savannah is in the dark about this, at least at first and he’s given a decent enough character for us the readers to truly believe he and Savannah have been happy together for four years.

This is very hot and very sexy and Kayden and Savannah are pretty explosive together and I look forward to more of their affair in Inescapable Desire.

3.5 stars

1. Irresistible Desire
2. Inescapable Desire - due for release May 24th 2013
3. TBC

Connect with the Author ~ Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Cover Reveal: Giving You Forever by Ashley Wilcox

Title: Giving You Forever

Author: Ashley Wilcox

Expected release date: July 8, 2013

Genre: Erotica

Age Group: Mature Adult

Cover Designed by: B Designs

  From the moment Nolan Pratt walked into Alexa Arnold’s life everything was forever changed. After a year of dating, the ring was on her finger, the house was purchased, and life was heading down Pleasantville Lane. Everything was perfect.
Or so they thought.
With help from his parent’s inheritance, Nolan takes on a new business adventure, utilizing all his free time. What was once their life- carefree with minimal responsibilities, is no more. When Alexa starts to feel the pressure from school, wedding planning, and lack of help from Nolan, exhaustion kicks in and feelings get hurt, testing the strength of their relationship. But, if there is one thing that Nolan will never compromise, it’s Alexa’s happiness. There’s nothing Nolan Pratt won’t do to make sure Alexa is well taken care of, loved, and happy.
When Nolan’s past resurfaces- a past that Alexa didn’t know existed- will it all be too much? Will Nolan’s devotion to Alexa’s happiness cost him their relationship and lose him the only thing that has ever mattered in his life? Or will Nolan discover that his past doesn’t determine his future and he is worth the happiness he doesn’t think he deserves?  

Arouse by Nina Lane

Title: Arouse (Spiral of Bliss, #1)

Author: Nina Lane

Genre: Contemporary/Erotic Romance

Release date: December 24th 2012

 

"One day I'm going to touch you in a thousand different ways and show you how to touch me," he said.

And he did.

Struggling with a tormented past, undergraduate Olivia Winter once led a practical but isolated life. Then she met Professor Dean West, a brilliant scholar of medieval history who melted Liv's inhibitions and taught her the meaning of both love and erotic pleasure. But after three years of a blissful, lusty marriage, Liv and Dean now face a crisis that threatens everything they believe about each other...and sex might not be enough to save them.

Blog Tour: Off Limits by Sawyer Bennett

Title: Off Limits

Author: Sawyer Bennett

Release date: April 16, 2013

Publisher: Big Dog Books, LLC

Age Group: New Adult

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Tour organized by: AToMR Tours

Goodreads | Amazon

“There is a vulnerability there, hovering just below the surface. And I want to pick at it until I expose it. Then I want to kiss it."
Two years ago, Emily Burnham, had an epiphany about the shallowness of her life.  And she made it her mission to become a different person…a better woman.  Out from under the controlling thumb of her mother, Emily is tasting the real world for the first time.  And she likes it.
Nixon Caldwell has served his time in the Marine Corps, surviving two brutal tours in Afghanistan. He is back home, surrounded by what he likes best…isolation.  It's certainly the easiest way to avoid confrontation of the consuming guilt that is weighing him down.
When an accident brings Emily and Nix together, he soon learns he is not the master of his own fate. Struggling with his own pain, Nix tries to guard himself against Emily’s charms.  He wants her in his bed, but he doesn’t want her in his heart. 
Having grabbed life by the horns, Emily wants it all.  But is she willing to accept just the small part of himself that Nix is offering?  Can she reach the part of his soul that he has deemed to be Off Limits?
This book is the follow up novel to Off Sides by Sawyer Bennett. It can be read as a stand-alone.

Release Week Event: Until I Break by M. Leighton

Title: Until I Break

Author: M. Leighton

Release date: May 14, 2013

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Age Group: Adult

Event organized by: AToMR Tours

 

Laura Drake is an author. She writes bestselling paranormal romances that continue to top the charts. She is sharp. She is confident. She is in control.
And she doesn’t exist.
Samantha Jansen is the woman behind the wig, the woman most of the world doesn’t know exists. She is shy. She is insecure. She is nothing like her main character or her alter ego. She is scarred—deeply scarred—by a past she can’t let go of and a present she can’t make peace with.
Samantha’s dreams are consumed by one man, the broken hero from her books. Mason Strait is both her wildest fantasy and her most terrifying nightmare.
When Samantha meets Alec Brand, a corporate consultant, it is as though Mason has come to life. Alec is handsome to a fault, as elegant as he is arrogant, and more intense than any man has a right to be.
Samantha is soon sucked into a world that mirrors the fiction she writes. Just like her main character, Daire Kirby, Samantha finds herself unable to resist the forbidden lure of Alec. And just like Daire, she also finds that she is faced with taking a chance on a man who could either set her free or destroy her.
The scale tilts toward destruction when Samantha finds out that Alec is as much a work of fiction as Mason. And he has scars of his own, scars that could ruin them both.

Blog Tour + Giveaway: Restore Me by J.L. Mac

Title: Restore Me (Wrecked, #2)

Author: J.L. Mac

Genre: Contemporary/New Adult Romance

Release date: April 30th 2013

 

Navigating the world alone is all Josephine Geroux has ever known. Life altering tragedy struck early on for her. She endured an admirable struggle through her youth and learned the hard way how to adapt and survive. She managed to arrive at adulthood in one piece in spite of it all.

After such chaos, maintaining a life free of complications is a priority for her.

Everything changed when a man with amber eyes came through her door and claimed her heart. She fell hard in more ways than one. The pull between Jo and Damon seemed like fate bringing things full circle.

With another devastating loss looming, Jo fights to hold on to the very thing that brought her to her knees. She finds herself torn between a promising future and clinging to a devastating past.
But that’s not the most worrisome problem on her hands.

She must convince more than just herself to let the past stay in the past, where it belongs, but on her journey to find closure and resolution, she does the exact opposite. An old wound caused by a heinous act becomes exposed for what it is. The truth is catastrophic and Jo is helpless, watching as the ruins of her fragile world endure more turmoil.

Can something conceived from tragedy and malice end well? Can something so completely poisoned conquer adversity? Jo is left to make a decision; accept the circumstances she finds herself in or fight with unwavering ferocity to restore what has been damaged.

*Restore Me is the second book in the Wrecked series*

Read our review of he first book in the Wrecked series, Wreck Me here.

Connect With The Author ~ Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Luck of Love by Ashley Poch & Tiffany Aleman

Title: Luck of Love (Luck of Love, #1)

Author: Ashley Poch & Tiffany Aleman

Genre: New Adult Romance

Release date: 24th May 2013

Blake Riley thought she could leave her traumatic past behind when she left for college. Starting a new life and moving forward never sounded so good. Living carefree with her best friend in Ocean City New Jersey gave her the freedom she had always hoped for.

But sometimes life isn’t so carefree.

When Blake finds herself torn between the affections of two men, emotions that have been buried for years will be exposed. Derrick, a powerful CEO of a popular casino resort, instantly captivates her. Being drawn into his domineering passion, she bares herself to him in a way she least expected. With Landon, a successful attorney, she can be someone new; someone free from her haunting past. Each man evokes a different side of Blake. As both relationships grow stronger, walls will slowly begin to crack.

What will happen when the past slowly creeps its way into the present?

With two worlds filled with secrets and lies, it’s only a matter of time before they crash and truths are revealed.

This Week At Sinfully Sexy

We’ve got another really full week coming up!  We’re on tour with J.L. Mac and Restore Me, the follw up to Wreck Me, M. Leighton with her new book Until I Break,  Sawyer Bennett and her new book Off Limits, Danielle Jamie and a Cover Reveal for Giving You Forever by Ashley Wilcox

With all that planned, you wouldn’t think we’d find time for reading but we will be throwing out the odd review too!!  As usual we will try and keep to the plan but as you know we do get our hot little hands on something we just have to read and all else goes out the window.  We keep up to date with all our activities over on Facebook, so don’t forget to check in with us there.

 

Monday

On Monday we’ll be on tour with J.L. Mac and her new book Restore Me, the follow up to Wreck Me.  We’ll have some awesome prizes to give away and an excerpt to share with you. With another devastating loss looming, Jo fights to hold on to the very thing that brought her to her knees. She finds herself torn between a promising future and clinging to a devastating past. But that’s not the most worrisome problem on her hands. She must convince more than just herself to let the past stay in the past, where it belongs, but on her journey to find closure and resolution, she does the exact opposite. An old wound caused by a heinous act becomes exposed for what it is. The truth is catastrophic and Jo is helpless, watching as the ruins of her fragile world endure more turmoil.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we’ll be hosting M. Leighton with her new book Until I Break – again with a great prize to give away and another excerpt. Laura Drake is an author. She writes bestselling paranormal romances that continue to top the charts. She is sharp. She is confident. She is in control. And she doesn’t exist. Samantha Jansen is the woman behind the wig, the woman most of the world doesn’t know exists. She is shy. She is insecure. She is nothing like her main character or her alter ego. She is scarred—deeply scarred—by a past she can’t let go of and a present she can’t make peace with.

Wednesday

On Wednesday, we’ll have a guest post from Sawyer Bennett about creating chemistry from characters. When an accident brings Emily and Nix together, he soon learns he is not the master of his own fate. Struggling with his own pain, Nix tries to guard himself against Emily’s charms.  He wants her in his bed, but he doesn’t want her in his heart.  Having grabbed life by the horns, Emily wants it all.  But is she willing to accept just the small part of himself that Nix is offering?  Can she reach the part of his soul that he has deemed to be Off Limits?

Thursday

On Thursday, we’ll be sharing a cover reveal with you all from Ashley Wilcox’s upcoming novel Giving You Forever. When an accident brings Emily and Nix together, he soon learns he is not the master of his own fate. Struggling with his own pain, Nix tries to guard himself against Emily’s charms.  He wants her in his bed, but he doesn’t want her in his heart.  Having grabbed life by the horns, Emily wants it all.  But is she willing to accept just the small part of himself that Nix is offering?  Can she reach the part of his soul that he has deemed to be Off Limits?

Friday

On Friday we’ll be reviewing Irresistible Desire by Danielle Jamie – the first in her Savanah Series. Savannah has been dating her boyfriend Logan for four years. She thought he was the man she was going to marry, spend the rest of her life with and one day build a family with. The life she imagined for Logan and her all changes in a matter of seconds. Her entire life came crashing down all around her after she catches Logan in bed with another woman. Savannah decides to leave Los Angeles and stay at her family's beach house in Galveston, Texas. She never imagined a man she only met once before, would come back into her life and be the one to mend her broken heart.Kayden blows into her life faster than a tornado in Spring. After a wild weekend together, both of their lives will be changed forever.

Saturday

Reviews, reviews and more reviews!

Sunday

Reviews, reviews and more reviews!

 

As always, we reserve the right to change our mind at a moment’s notice – it’s what we do best!!

 

Guest Post + Giveaway: As You Wish by A. Violet End

Title: As You Wish

Author: A. Violet End

Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy Romance

Release date: February 2013

Annora is willing to do anything to save her father from the dark eros of an evil witch-mother and two demonic step-sisters. It's a perilous task, battling such awful magic, but she doesn't have to face danger alone; a fairy man waits to make all Annora's wishes come true--for a price. While the fairy man prepares to use her as a pawn to gain access to the throne, Annora and her strange bedfellow fall deeply & recklessly in love. Ultimately, she must win the prince in order to keep her end of the bargain with her powerful lover--how else will her father be released from captivity? Almost nothing goes as planned in the twisting climax of As You Wish, although there is a Happily Ever After for all good characters, and just desserts for all the bad.

Note: There are some perversities forced onto the main character and onto her beloved father by the witch and the demons, but the main story is the love & conflict that grows between Annora and the fairy man. This story has appeal to readers of BDSM romance, but there is no actual BDSM in the story. The sex part is relatively mild between the M/F.

28k words, 24 chapters

A fun read with lots of turns and twists in the plot and the bed. Overall rating -- delicious. CD Reiss, author of Beg (Songs of Submission)

 

Blog (Tumblr):  http://avioletend.tumblr.com/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6556662.A_Violet_End

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AVioletEnd

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We’re delighted to be able to give away an ebook of As You Wish in the format of the winner’s choice.  For your chance to win, just enter the Rafflecopter belw.

 

Good Luck!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

We asked Violet to tell us about her influences, motivations, favourite authors and why she chose her genre and this is what she had to say.

 

I was thrilled to get an email from Sinfully Sexy offering to spotlight my first romance and host a giveaway! Thanks so much for having me.

Sinfully Sexy asked me four questions: what are my motivations and influences, why did I choose my genre, and who my favorite authors are.

I've been a professional writer for twenty years, but only started publishing fiction as A. Violet End last fall. To be honest, no one has really asked me about my motivation for publishing erotic fiction, maybe because everyone who enjoys erotic fiction knows it's kind of it's own reward. ;)

Seriously, though, it's something I've talked over only with a select few, including my husband and a few friends. Writing erotic fiction is such a divisive topic! "Murder fiction" and other depictions of human-on-human violence are much more socially acceptable reading topics than sex. Until last year, I think I was too big of a writer prude to even give it a shot, but once I asked myself just what I was afraid of, it became a no-brainer. This is the fun-to-write stuff!

As a creator, I enjoy pushing the envelope and testing my own limits. Finding readers who enjoy my writing style and the choices I make as an artist means a lot to me. It means they're daring in their own reading choices and they're willing to trust me to entertain them, to provide the emotional experience they're looking for. That's an exciting audience for any writer to play to, because it allows us total freedom to explore. I love pleasing them and meeting their challenges.

As far as why I chose my genre, in my particular case, I wanted to read through all the Grimm Tales and see how different they were from the sanitized versions we're fed through present-day movies and books. That was just what appealed to me as a reader at that point in time. Imagine my surprise when the stories started to screaming to me from my Kindle: "Read BETWEEN the lines!"

Story after story seemed to be about one immoral sex act or the other and they just unfurled before my eyes in this book of alleged "children's" stories. It was indisguisable to my eyes, and at that point I realized I should just rewrite the stories and put the sex that had been so obviously stripped from the back in. Now, in now way do I claim to be an expert in the Grimm Tales, but I enjoyed inventing things to pervert them and make them dirty.

Then something really crazy happened! Readers started asking me to rewrite a Grimm Tale as a romance. Well, I'd never written a romance before! I didn't know where to start. My 19th Grimm Tale rewrite was Cinderella. Is there any better story to use as a basis for a romance? I just let myself be open to the possibility that the characters I'd been writing might fall in love. They did. They fell hard, and of course by then I was so well-versed in fairy tale lore, I just wrote the novella As You Wish in fairy tale style. It's sort of an academic voice...I think of it as the "naughty librarian" voice, but certain readers enjoy it.

As You Wish, a Cinderella story and erotic romance, ended up being 24 chapters long, as opposed to one little short story like my other tales, so I hesitate to even include it in the Grimm & Dirty body of work. I stamped a big "ROMANCE" down the side of the cover to set it apart, because it's quite different from the other works that inspired it. The truth is I'd never have tried my hand at romance if I hadn't built a readership for dirty fairy tales, but this story hits on an emotional level, and I'm quite proud of it!

My biggest influences are always changing. I've had readers call some of my other work a "bonkers version of 50 Shades," or compare it to the Sleeping Beauty series, but As You Wish probably has more in common with Gone With the Wind than anything by E. L. James or Anne Rice. To be thoroughly honest, although I am exceptionally happily married to Mr. End, I read more fantasy and non-fiction than I do romance. A lot of romance just lays heavily on the adverbs and the weird body language and it makes me laugh. I want to read very well-written books and let those inform my use of imagery, you know? I guess my true influences for writing As You Wish were my readers and the Grimm Brothers, the old stiffs.

Why I chose fairy tales...I just love them! I find them fascinating. Maybe it's the straight-A student in me. I minored in history, so I love to read older texts. I think they really shed a lot of light on a different time in human nature. That's sort of central to every artists' vision, I think. It's all just explorations of that theme. What is life all about? Well, in earlier time periods it was about survival, and make no mistake about it, love was considered a weakness. I imagine the Grimm Brothers would be horrified at what is called romance today. Their stories are really just so dark and brooding and full of sad commentaries on the darker side of humanity. It is my great hope that my rewrite of Cinderella shines more than one brilliant white spotlight into what is universally good and lovable about human nature, despite what dark settings we might have to claw our way through.

My favorite authors! Well, that's always changing, as I'm reading all over the map. I will have to give a shout-out to Pablo Neruda, CD Reiss, Mimi Strong, Jasinda Wilder, and I know this will surprise some people, but Stephenie Meyer is a tremendous influence. If anyone can write about yearning, it is that lady. Say what you will about how awful her book was...but it kept me turning pages and I really identified with it during a time in my life when my inner turmoil was cranked up to 11! Now that I'm settled down and happy I'm harder to please, but her Twilight series will always hold a special place in this romantic's heart.

 

~o0o~

 

Thanks Violet – that was a truly fascinating insight!