Wednesday, October 28, 2020
#Thursday13 - Odd Facts About Halloween
Thursday Thirteen - 13 Odd Facts About Halloween
2. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with Orange.
4. Halloween is the second most commercially successful Holiday with Christmas being the first.
5. According to superstition if you stand in front of a mirror at midnight, you’ll see the reflection of your future spouse just over your left shoulder.
6. You can sprinkle salt and oatmeal on your child’s head to keep him or her from being possessed.
7. In England, white cats instead of black ones are thought to be bad luck.
8. Harry Houdini died on Halloween, in 1926 from peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix.
9. Burning a candle inside a Jack O’ Lantern on Halloween is believed to keep demons and evil spirits at bay.
10. Put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards on Halloween night to meet a witch.
11. Gazing into the flame of a candle on Halloween night will allow you to see into the future.
12. If you hear footsteps behind you on Halloween night don’t turn around, for it may be Death himself! And to look him in the eye is a sure way to hasten your own demise.
13. If a bat flies around a house three times, it is considered to be a death omen.
* This is just a fun look at thirteen Halloween facts whether they are truth or superstition, you decide.
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
A Dystopian Version of Sleeping Beauty
Halloween Drinks (For Adults)
Sunday, October 25, 2020
Give Me Primal Elements
Nothing beats a relaxing bath, especially when you have a bar of luxurious soap to lather up with. Soft skin is nice, especially if someone else enjoys it too.
During his last trip, Flyboy wandered through the shops in Bethlehem, PA. Over the phone, he told me of the quaint shops and eateries. He picked up a few gifts along the way. One gift was a unique bar of soap for me.
This Primal Element bar of soap is wonderful! It's mostly made of glycerin and no animal products. The colors are delightful and I was tempted to use it only for display. The fragrance was an autumn blend of herbal greens and rich woods. LOVE! It produced a luxurious lather and rinsed easily. OMG...the fragrance was amazing. Sexy! Flyboy noticed how soft my skin was. "Silky, smooth," are the words he used.
Check out Primal Elements for all the products they carry. I think I might order a soap for every holiday and look at other products for gifts. After all, if Flyboy can't keep his hands off me...why wouldn't I?
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Michigan Fun for Couples in Autumn
Summer has been awesome and we manage to have some vacation time. I have two football players so we have to plan short little trips when we can. Hubby and I always try to make time for just us...you know...for a bit of adventure with a dash of romance.
I love living in Michigan. The changing seasons create many opportunities for adventures. During every weekend, a festival is going on someplace. Couples traveling to Michigan can find scores of activities and destinations perfect for falling in love,
sharing a special moment or rediscovering what you love about each other.
The weather also creates a perfect growing environment for wine making grapes. Michigan wineries are fun to visit. Nothing spells "romance" like visiting a vineyard and opening a bottle straight from the source. Enjoy wine tasting and "wine trails" through Michigan's wine country, which stretches along the coast of Lake Michigan along the lower peninsula's northern and central shores.
As temperatures drop, activities don't stop. Frankenmuth is our favorite spot as it is only a short drive for us. Getting away for a weekend is easy. This quaint town explores German heritage with Oktoberfest, and the Holiday Balloon Fest takes place in December. We enjoy walking along the streets to visit our "regular shops" anytime of the year.
In today's busy world, it is very healthy for couples to spend some quality time together. Hubby and I think Michigan certainly provides many romantic opportunities.
Visit Pure Michigan for more information or to plan your weekend getaway.
Friday, October 23, 2020
Brighton Bad Boys - Ba-Ba-Bad to the Bone
Yesterday we had a bit of fun having coffee with Tilly Delane, author of the Brighton Bad Boys series.
Some of Tilly's favorites:
Favorite
drink: coffee, strong, white, no sugar.
Favorite
candy: jelly bellies.
Favorite
food: my mum’s tomato soup with all the extras.
Favorite
article of clothing or jewelry: because of what I do in my day job, I don’t
wear jewelry or accessorize, so I’d have to say: anything that has enough
pockets. Pockets are the most important aspect of any item of clothing.
Favorite
place to read: in bed.
Place you
want to visit some day: Outer Mongolia.
Now, as promised...
Brighton Bad Boys Book Blurbs
SILAS A Fighter Romance Brighton Bad Boys, Book 1 |
Silas
When I look into my future it’s like looking
down the barrel of a gun.
Trying to pay back a debt that was never yours,
a hopelessly fractured family, and betrayal by those you trusted the most will
do that to a man.
Most days I just survive. Alone.
The guys at TripleX, the club that hosts the
biggest illegal fight league in England, where I fight and bounce, all know
that I keep myself to myself.
I don’t do hanging around after lock up to pick
up drunk girls from the bar upstairs.
I don’t do staff drinks.
I don’t do socials.
I don’t do going to the gym together.
I don’t do friendship.
I work, I get paid.
I fight, I get paid.
End of involvement.
The irony is, there is nothing in Brighton, the
seaside city that I call my home, or in my life, actually worth fighting for.
Until Mum brings home a stray American.
A soft, curvy woman with bottle-red hair and
green eyes and a mouth made for sucking.
And no matter how hard I try to ignore her,
she’s there.
In my bed.
Grace
I’m here on a memorial tour for my mum - never
mom, she was born British, and no matter how long she lived in Washington DC,
she refused to be called mom.
I lost her a year ago, and it still hurts like
crazy.
I saved up every penny I made since her funeral
for this trip. Being here, in England, in Brighton, was supposed to help me
keep her memory alive, to remember her and the stories she used to tell me.
But in true Grace style, I fall at the first
hurdle.
The company I booked the hotel through has gone
bust, the hotel never got my reservation and there isn’t a room to be had
elsewhere in a ten-mile radius because of a small thing called the Brighton
Festival.
I’m ready to sleep in the lobby when the head of
housekeeping offers me a room in her house, at a rate I cannot refuse.
A room, it turns out, that smells of man in the
best possible way.
And with the scent comes a fighter, brooding and
beautiful, and about as lost as I am.
I want him.
Badly.
I just need to convince him that he’s worth the
fight, and that maybe together we can find our way out of the woods.
________________________
ROWAN Brighton Bad Boys Book 2 |
Rowan
When you’ve been to hell and back ─ and I don’t
just mean the outer rings of hell, I mean the ring right at the centre of
Hades, where gladiators like me fight for the entertainment of today’s Caesars
and Caesarias ─ you come back a monster or a broken man. If you come back at
all.
I’m neither.
I don’t know what I am.
I know I’m an addict.
I know I’m killer.
I know I’ve been running from myself since I was
twelve years old and that at every turn since I’ve made lousy decisions.
Time to face myself in the mirror.
So I’m taking a trip to the peninsula of Purbeck,
a beautiful nature reserve on the south coast of England, to enter rehab.
Can you rehabilitate a killer? Can you
rehabilitate a broken beast?
I doubt it, but at least I’m willing to try.
The last thing I expected was to meet a soul as
tortured as me, a woman whose eyes tell me she’s seen it, the
ugliness of life.
And she can deal.
She won’t look away.
She is competence in a fifties retro package
with fishnets and combat boots.
She’s my nurse.
And totally off limits.
Raven
I came out to meet the guy because he took
longer than is normal. I thought he might have gotten lost. Though that’s
pretty hard when going in a straight line down what was once the only road in a
village. But it’s a rehab clinic. Folk are kinda lost by definition when they
get here.
So I came to see what was taking him so long and
found him going down on the water fountain.
I mean, seriously, the way he hulked over it,
half his face under the stream, his tongue lapping at the water, was
obscene, feral. So my smart mouth decided to make a comment. A
wholly unprofessional comment, and now I’m standing here,
mesmerised. Like Mowgli meeting Kaa.
‘Cause he’s staring me down like a pro.
I can’t look away from his eyes. They are huge,
a deep, warm brown and they tell me stories too close for comfort. This is a
guy who gets it. Life. The ugliness. The bits where other people play three
monkeys. He sees them.
He sees me.
And I see him.
But he’s a client and that’s where the story
ends.
It’s my last intake of guests.
In a month from now my year in the British Isles
is over, I’ll hand over my job to a local, and I’ll be going home to America.
And I’m not getting fired in the meantime
because of a ‘connection’ to some sexy giant with muscle for miles.
‘Connections’ are a myth.
And a myth is not worth getting fired over.
But what if there is more than a connection?
What if there is actual healing?
_______________________
DIEGO BRIGHTON BAD BOYS BOOK 3 |
Kalina
I've been lusting after this guy for months.
George 'Diego' Benson is the forbidden fruit I
cannot have.
Not without putting my mission in peril.
Not without putting my heart in peril.
But then we look into each other’s eyes across
the distance between us.
And look.
And look.
My heart is racing.
My clit is pulsing.
My insides are clenching.
And suddenly I’m tired of the charade.
I like this guy.
I like him a lot.
Once my job here is done, I will never see him
again.
So just this once I want to be with him,
completely.
And I lunge.
Diego
Kissing her is like coming home.
Or how I always imagined coming home would feel
like.
It’s relief and feeling safe.
It’s hot and sweaty and raw.
It’s warm and sloppy and comfy.
It’s leaving behind all pretence.
And a whole lot of tongue.
So much tongue.
So much hunger.
This girl is on fire.
For me.
Not for the danger, not for the perceived
status, not for the money, but for me.
She’s not here to demurely please the boss and
then cream off the top.
She’s here, in my lap, because that’s where she
wants to be.
Where she belongs.
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Author Spotlight - Tilly Delane and the Brighton Bad Boys
It’s a rainy day here in the woods so my special guest and I are enjoying coffee on the porch. I’m drinking a highly polluted wimpy java while she’s enjoying a strong Middle Eastern hipster favorite.
Speaking of
favorites… who doesn’t love a dark, broody man with rock hard abs? How about
three of them? The fact these hotties love their mum (Silas still lives at home) is a
turn on! Our guest has a writing style that pulls you in fast and you won’t
come up for air until the end. You’ll lose yourself in the compelling characters
and intense romance. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to read and maybe
keep a snack handy because you won’t be able to stop.
Please
welcome Tilly Delany and let’s pick her brain about her sexy new stories, the Brighton Bad Boys.
Now,
Tilly, I hear you have another identity. Is it secret, like are you in the witness
protection program, are you on the lamb or can you tell us about it? (Author laughs as she puts her coffee
on the table).
Prior to the
Brighton Bad Boys I’d already written and published four clean, contemporary,
critically acclaimed YA novels under my
real name - the debut of which came out
seven years ago - but I fancied a stint away from the constrictions of writing
for a younger audience, to show my erotic romance/thriller side. I cut my teeth
in erotic writing under yet another nom de plume, Ava-Ann Holland, when I
contributed some short stories to anthologies while working on my second and
third YA novels - and I got a taste of the creative freedom erotic romance
affords you. Although, like in every genre, there are certain conventions that
readers expect (like the HEA or HFN ending) it’s actually one of the most
flexible genres to play with, and I love that.
Wow… I
totally understand why you’d want to have different names especially since you
have such different fan bases.
My latest
romance-thriller ‘Diego’ is the third book under my pen name Tilly Delane and
completes the Brighton Bad Boys trilogy, which started with ‘Silas’ in June,
followed by ‘Rowan’ in August. I wrote the entire series before rapid releasing
them this summer.
That was
smart. Readers these days can be very impatient; when they finish a story in a
series they are starving for the next one. I know authors often draw from their
own lives and experiences when they write. Some say reality feeds the
imagination. What inspired you to write the Brighton Bad Boys series?
There are
elements of my life and my experience in all my novels. Where the Brighton Bad
Boys were concerned, I really wanted to set something in my chosen hometown for
a change and bring some of my younger self’s predilection for hanging out with unsavory
folks to the page. Before I moved to Brighton thirty years ago, I grew up in a
German city that shall remain unnamed and hung around with a beautiful plethora
of nightclub owners, drug dealers and wannabe career criminals for the
formative years of my life. For the first half a decade after my move to the UK
I stuck to that MO, so I feel pretty confident when I describe the underbelly
of Brighton. I also gave a lot of myself to the character of Kalina, Diego’s
lady, although it must be said that Kalina is - naturally - infinitely prettier
and infinitely more badass than I will ever be.
Awww… don’t
sell yourself short. You are pretty badass to create such amazing characters. I
see you named the books after each bad boy. What’s the story behind the titles?
Silas, Rowan
and Diego aren’t exactly the most imaginative titles, are they? (Laughs,
then shrugs.) Naming books after the hero is a huge trend in the ‘bad boy
romance’ genre and while I was happy to flaunt the rules between the covers and
make the genre my own, I wasn’t going to upset the apple cart with radical new
titles and covers.
Speaking
of names, your heroes have some pretty strong and sexy names. How did you come
up with them?
The main characters
come fully fledged, name included, into my head. I sometimes have to consult my
daughters on naming side characters but very rarely. Occasionally I might
rename a character because I realize halfway through writing that their name is
too similar to another character’s and that it may get confusing for the
reader.
I accidentally
created a hero’s brother with the name Jason. Their last name was Mason. Jason
Mason… bad idea. (We
pause while the cat joins us momentarily for a few pats.) How naughty would you say you get
with your writing?
I love sex
and my sex scenes are explicit and generally described as very hot, but at the
same time I’m personally not a fan of BDSM. I’ve tried almost everything at one
point in my life, but BDSM just does absolutely nothing for me, which is extra
funny because once upon a time I even did a stint as the door tart in a BDSM
club and the owner was forever trying to convince me to do a regular gig as
dominatrix. So, upshot, to me ‘hot’ doesn’t equal spanking and bondage, hot in
writing to me means that it’s believable between those two characters and that
it fits with the rest of who they are.
The chemistry
between your characters is amazing and the sexy scenes are off the chart
steamy. I love how you managed to keep each couple’s dynamics fresh.
My three
Brighton Bad Boys couples - Silas & Grace, Rowan &Raven and Diego &
Kalina - have very different types of sexual relationships, formed by who they
are, individually and to each other. And that’s what makes it hot for me.
Without wanting to be crude, I know I’m doing alright when I barely make it
through writing a paragraph before having to take a shower break.
All right
then, let’s cool things down a bit. (Fans self) Some authors say writing
the sexy bits is difficult. What would you say, were the hardest scenes for you
to write?
There is
some really harrowing stuff in both Rowan and Diego, not between the couples
but as part of the wider story and some of that was immensely hard to write,
but I can’t give away any details without spoilers.
My lips
are sealed, I won’t give away spoilers. But I must say, those scenes really
keep the reader turning the pages. I took my kindle into the bathroom with me.
I couldn’t bear to stop reading!!! Authors are known for doing their research
and I can tell you certainly explored in depth to create your storylines. What
was the strangest thing you’ve Goggled while working on a story.
Collar
bombs.
LOL. I’m
going to let readers Google that one! Other than quality research, authors have a tendency to
have writing habits, routines or rituals. Some writers will go for a walk or do
sit ups before sitting down. Others will have a glass of wine & chocolate handy. I know one writer
who has a silly stuffed animal on her desk and can’t write without it. Do you
have any rituals or “must-haves” while writing?
Some form of
writing utensil helps: pen & paper, phone, computer, type writer - I’m not
picky . I can write anywhere, under any circumstance, if the muse kisses me.
While writing my first three books I didn’t even have a desk to have a stuffed animal on.
Thank you so much for joining
Romantic Interludes today, Tilly. It’s been a lot of fun.
Thank you.
Do you have anything you would like
to say to your readers?
Thank you
for picking my guys over the gazillion others, thank you for giving some of
your lifetime to my guys. It means EVERYTHING!
Join us tomorrow when I’ll be featuring teasers from
the Brighton Bad Boys series.
All are available on KU
Visit Tilly Delane Amazon Author Page
Find Tilly Delane on
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Thursday 13 - Autumn Romance
The Dalliance of the Eagles
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate diverse flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.
Dyami Schafer, a Native American from the Chippewa tribe, leads a lonely life due to his large size and unusual appearance. When his nesting instinct sets in, he turns to Madame Eve and 1Night Stand to help him find his spirit mate. Or at least a woman who accepts him as an eagle shifter.
Amanda Collins never stopped loving the Chippewa boy she knew from her childhood. Maybe a night with a Native American man will help her forget the past and let her move on with her life.
Sometimes, it’s necessary to take a step into the past before dancing into the future. With the help of Madame Eve, will the Spirit of the Eagle carry Dyami and Amanda?