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Month: January 2012

Help me pick a title for my next masterpiece!

Greetings, loyal fanbase of fans! Today I sent the drafts of the short stories that are going in my newest collection to the people they were about. If you’re unfamiliar, I’m working on a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos. The stories are chained, meaning you meet characters in a previous story and learn more about them in the next.

I’ve been struggling to come up with a title, but I have a few ideas I’ve been throwing arond, so I want to crowdsource this one… tell me in the comments: which one do you like best?

  1. Vodka Chicken Soup for the Tattooed Soul
  2. Written in Ink
  3. The Girls with the Draggin’ Tattoos

Or, choose your own!

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/22/2012

Sorry for the delay, folks. The last 2 Windows updates have rendered my computer completely useless. But no matter; better late than never.

Today’s six comes from my new project, a collection of short stories about women and their tattoos, whose working title is now “Vodka Chicken Soup for the Tattoed Soul.”

From the chapter: MEGAN’S BLACK ROSE

She hated the green bean casserole the most.  As she opened a can of three-for-a-dollar grocery store brand cream of mushroom soup, Megan tried to ignore the smell of the French’s onion straws that invaded her nostrils, polluting the delicious mix of smells from the rest of Thanksgiving dinner – the rising dinner rolls, the brining turkey, the sage-y stuffing.  She thought green bean casserole was disgusting, and couldn’t think of why anyone would want to eat it, but for some reason it didn’t smell as bad this year as it had in past years, ever since she and her mother had made a tradition of overtaking the Thanksgiving meal and keeping it just within their immediate family.  She figured it was because green bean casserole was her baby brother Nathan’s favorite, and this was the first year that Nathan would be home for Thanksgiving in eight years.

Megan and her mother were the solitary females in a household that was otherwise overrun with testosterone.  She’d grown up with three brothers who’d made her childhood a girl’s hell, cracking the chickens’ eggs over her skull behind their parents’ back, melting her Barbie collection into a plastic mass they later called a sculpture, using her loose face powder to create fart clouds.

Stay tuned for more, and be sure to check out all the talented Six Sentence Sunday peeps at www.sixsunday.com!

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New flash fiction piece up

When I started my Wednesday Wrants, I said that part of the reason I wanted to do them was to have some avenue for my ranting frustrations, but also a record of something I could write about later. My newest flash fiction piece, Johnson County Mr. Coffee, is just that.

I ranted a few weeks ago about our fancypants coffeemaker a few weeks ago in this post, and it inspired the following story.

https://kellyhitchcock.com/flash-fiction/#joco

Go check it out, and tell me what you think 🙂

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Guest Post: Deborah Court

Today on the blog, I welcome fellow author Deborah Court, spinner of paranormal romance tales. She’s here to tell us about her awesome new novel, Bound to the Prince.



“Bound to the Prince” by Deborah Court (Elven Warrior Trilogy #1)
Paranormal/Fantasy Romance

An elven prince without a throne.
A mortal woman without hope, stolen from her own world to fulfill his every desire.
A choice of love and death that could bind them together forever.

Some people believe that beneath our own world, separated only by a thin veil of human disbelief, there is another one – an ancient land of myths and legends, a place where magical creatures dwell. What would happen if one of them walked the streets of London at night?

Once a proud warrior, elven prince Elathan was living in exile, fallen from grace and separated from his own people. He wanted the mortal woman the moment he saw her standing on Blackfriars Bridge, staring down into the darkness with unbearable pain in her eyes. This strangely compelling female also happened to have luscious curves that made his body ache with desire. Naturally, he decided to hunt the woman down, drag her to his lair and command her to become his slave of pleasure. But would her frail human body survive a night of untamed passion in the arms of a Fae?

After a devastating breakup with her fiancé, Igraine Chandler was spending her honeymoon in England all by herself, her life utterly bereft of meaning. For who could ever love a plain, slightly overweight nurse from New Jersey with nothing left but a broken heart and her lost dreams of a home and a family? But she never imagined that she would soon set out into a world beyond her wildest dreams, and help a prince reclaim his throne …

~ Amazon ~~ Smashwords ~~ iTunes ~~ Barnes & Noble

EXCERPT from Bound to the Prince

Elathan stood at the edge of the lake, waiting for Igraine to serve him. “What do you want me to do, my Lord?” she asked, still avoiding looking at his private parts.

“Don’t you filthy humans even know how to wash?” he hissed impatiently. He gestured to the ornate table. “These vials contain soaps and oils. Use them to bathe my body, slave.” The prince stepped under the waterfall, rinsing off part of the mud, but it stuck to his skin and hair. Igraine sniffed at some of the bottles, inhaling their wonderful, unknown scents. Some of them were fresh, others musky, but clearly intended for use on the gorgeous body of the male who was showering right in front of her, naked. Water droplets glistened on his skin, running down from his chest to his flat, rippling stomach and still further down, gathering at … “Why do I feel like I’m in midst of a Cool Water commercial now?” she nervously murmured, wincing when the elf threw her a glance that clearly declared her a lunatic.

Sighing, Igraine took a small green bottle containing a soapy liquid and followed the prince. Elathan stepped out of his natural shower without even looking at her. Closing his eyes, he turned his broad back to Igraine, with the unspoken order to wash him. She poured some of the aromatic soap into the palm of her hand. The mud was diluted by the water, but it still ran in dark streams over the elf’s body, down over his hips and his muscular backside, dripping over his thighs. It collected in a puddle at his feet.

Igraine’s hands trembled when she reached out to touch him. “May I …?” she said softly. “What are you waiting for?” Elathan replied. Despite the harsh words, his voice was low and hoarse. She couldn’t see the expression of his face from behind, but she noticed his rigid posture. His contempt for her was obvious.

Taking a deep breath, she fought back her tears and started with his dirty hair, lathering it with the luxurious soap. Black, muddy water ran through her fingers and down her arms. When she had worked the soap into the whole silken length, she reached up to massage his scalp. Elathan stiffened before tilting his head back so she could reach him more easily. After she had washed all the mud out of his hair, she reached out to touch his shoulders, covering his pale skin with the soap.

Elathan stiffened even more, looking like a statue of stone now. Her hands wandered to the sides of his neck to wash the dirt away, then moved down over his shoulders, rubbing him in circles. His skin was smooth and soft as velvet over his rock-hard muscles. She longed to touch him, ferociously. No man had ever affected her so much. Just being close to him made her a weak creature, driven by the most primitive desire to mate.

Now that he couldn’t see her shamelessly staring at him, she was safe to admire his muscular back. It was built like an artist’s masterpiece. The scars marring his alabaster skin only enhanced his beauty. Without them, the sight would be too perfect for human eyes to endure. They were old, faint scars, diagonally crisscrossing all over his back. Igraine suddenly realized that the prince had been whipped, even if it had obviously happened long ago. Tears stinging in her eyes, she lightly traced the scars with her fingers while she washed his back. Although she didn’t dare, she longed to touch those reminders of his torment with her lips, kissing the ancient pain away.

Continuing with his waist, she found some very nasty grime there, sticking to the prince’s skin. As she rubbed his sides to get them clean, Elathan seemed to wince. She paused, but when he said nothing, she rubbed some more. He winced again, apparently trying to escape her touch. At first she stared at his back, baffled for a moment. Maybe he didn’t like her to touch him anymore. But then she understood.

The merciless, battle-hardened elven prince was ticklish.

Amazed by her discovery, she pondered about tickling him some more, but decided against it. She should not tempt her fate too much. Instead she reached around his waist and began to wash his wide chest, feeling his strong heartbeat and the heat of his skin. He was so tall that she had to press her body against his back to reach him with her arms. Moving down, she soaped his flat stomach, feeling the tense muscles under her fingertips. Elathan seemed to breathe more heavily now. For a moment, she asked herself what would happen if she dared to go even deeper, washing him … there. When she had finished and withdrew her arms, she glanced down at his butt. Heavens, this was too good to be true – so smooth, perfectly rounded and tight. She wondered if he would allow her to wash him there, too.

Suddenly a mischievous grin spread across her face. Well, even if he would kill her afterwards, this princely backside would be worth it. Now your ass is mine, Your Royal Highness, she thought. She just couldn’t help it. Then her hands touched his muscular buttocks, lathering the soap in small circles over the skin. Maybe being an elven prince’s slave wasn’t going to be so bad, after all. When Elathan moaned ever so softly, she couldn’t hold herself back anymore. A small giggle escaped her lips.

Strong hands grabbed her upper arms. Igraine was whirled around until she stared directly into Elathan’s furious face, his golden eyes burning with anger. Before she could move or utter a sound, he picked her up like a weightless doll and threw her into the lake.

All of this happened so quickly that she didn’t even have time to hold her breath. She sank into the dark water and struggled for a moment in panic. Then she managed to reach the surface and came up, coughing and gasping for air. Bewildered, she was still wondering what had happened when Elathan was suddenly in there with her, wading through the lake and quickly rinsing off the soap from his hair and body. His pitiless grin let her know that he found her distress entertaining.

“You!” she shouted angrily, shoving against his chest with both hands. The fact that his eyes widened with surprise gave her a certain amount of satisfaction, but not enough. “Prince or not, who the hell do you think you are? First you abduct and enslave me, threatening to kill me if I don’t obey your every wish and whim. You hate humans, and still you don’t bother to kill me. Instead, you seem to enjoy your little game of humiliating me. Why don’t you finally get it over with, elf? You incredibly arrogant, insufferable…”

He grabbed her wrists and bent her arms behind her back with a swift movement. Simultaneously, he silenced her with a hard, passionate kiss.

***

Many thanks to Deborah, who featured me on her blog a few days ago. Be sure to drop by her site and say hi!

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Six Sentence Sunday 1/15/2012

Here’s another six-sentence excerpt from my debut novel The Redheaded Stepchild. This is from the last chapter, where Cady finally comes to terms with the fact that her ex-step-mother is exactly that. In this scene, she runs into her ex-step-mother at one of her best friends’ wedding. Or rather, the ex runs into her…

Adrian reached the bottom and adjusted himself as he rushed to the bathroom with a cocky swagger.  Katrina’s big black chunky shoe caught on the edge of one of the gray-carpeted steps.  I watched her expression change to fear as she began to tumble down the stairs one by one.  The staircase was narrow, yet she managed to fall down the entire lower half of the staircase, moaning in pain with every descending step.  My heart sank as I knew she would be forced to sit at my table since it was the closest to the bottom of the stairs.  She tried to stand.

Be sure to check out all the other talented Six Sentence Sunday authors at www.sixsunday.com!

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KDP Select Promotion Day 1 Report

As part of the KDP Select program, which I detailed in a previous post, I get five days within each 3-month period where The Redheaded Stepchild is available for free download on Kindle. You can choose to have 5 adjacent days, 5 spread out days, or any combination thereof.

I chose to spread out my days for some maximum effect. The days I chose were mostly arbitrary, the first one being January, Friday the 13th. In case you can’t count, that was yesterday, and here’s how it shaped up…

I tweeted the freeness of the book 3 or 4 times throughout the day, and I posted it on this blog. I also let my Facebook friends know, but more because I knew some of them got Kindle Fires for Christmas, and I feel like a bastard asking my friends to pay money for a book where they know all the characters. That was it. As far as I know, the free-ness wasn’t mentioned in any other tweets (I have a watch on the phrase “Redheaded Stepchild” on Twitter).

Yesterday, I had over 300 people download The Redheaded Stepchild on Kindle. The actual number is somewhere between 307 and 342. (It was 308 when I went to bed and 343 when I woke up, and I know I actually sold one for money a couple days before). I don’t care who you are, that is fucking huge. I mean, I’ve had some sales here and there, but I’ve never had more than 300 even look at my book’s page in one day before, and I usually knew who was buying on any given day. I probably know 300 people, but I don’t know the 300 people who downloaded my book yesterday.

I know, I know, I don’t make a dime on any of those 300 sales. Do I care? No. I know people like free shit. Hell, I like free shit. A lot. The point is, if all of those 300+ people like it, that’s 300+ people who positively review my book, tell their friends about it, or lend it to a Kindle friend. If all those 300+ hate it, I don’t lose any money when they ask for a refund (suckers) and I get 300+ negative reviews, and my book still has the Gigli effect (people will check it out just to see how bad it REALLY is).

But the bottom line is this – I have over 300 new readers, and books in hands is more important to me than money and sales. Not to mention, I still have 4 more promotion days from now until the end of March, so keep your eyes peeled if you missed this first promotional day. Or spend the $3 instead of getting that large coffee.

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