Tag Archives: erotic suspense

About Choosing Your Novel’s Title by Akinyi Prinzessin von K’Orinda-Yimbo (A P von K’Ory)

I read an article by Chuck Sambuchino about how to choose a novel/book’s title, and it reminded me of my own inadequacies in this task.

I remembered when Bruce Cook edited my first novel back in 2010, then titled Jungle Habits, Bruce said (to put it loosely): Nope, this title doesn’t do the book justice. This book is more than Jungle and Habits; it’s all about tradition and the desire to adhere to them in a modern changing world, for a young African girl torn between modernity and her traditional African/Kenyan/Luo upbringing.

Bang!

I changed the title to Bound to Tradition, now a trilogy and the book that won me the Netherlands PADDI prize:  Achievers’Award for Writer of the Year 2013.

Another title I had to change was Helena’s Secret, which does involve the heroine’s deep-seated secret about her biological heritage that she hides not only from the world but even from her own self. It is a secret that has become a huge roadblock in the fulfilment of young

Helena’s romantic yearnings and makes her give romance a wide berth. Until true love steps between her and her roadblock and demands full attention. My mentor and editor extraordinaire, Kenneth Mulholland, called the title “pedestrian, like The Day Kate Went to the Market”. And I changed the title, first to Secret Shades of Fading Blood, then to simply Secret Shades (now a two-book novel – Secret Shades Aroused, and Secret Shades

Revealed). Secret Shades as a title is short and memorable, and a lot more intriguing because it leaves that potent word “Secret” in place while adding in “Shades” which conjures up anything from sunglasses to ghosts. In truth, the “secret” is about Helena’s biological

heritage and concerns the colour of her skin.

Apparently, even F. Scott Fitzgerald was asked by his publisher to change the title of his novel, which we all know as The Great Gatsby. The famous writer’s original title for the book was Trimalchio in West Egg. Would you have been drawn into buying a book with that title?

Readers, as a rule of thumb, are drawn to a book not only by its cover but also by what the title conjures up in their minds, coupled by the book cover. Not an easy task for a new writer. After all, we are writers, creators of the world’s mushrooming in the space between our ears, not experts in luring other people’s tastes and preferences to our lair so that they come and consort with us. At least I’m not the think-of-the-readers-first kind of a writer. I have my world in my heart and soul and it screams at me to create it. I want to share it with everybody, even the unwilling, but won’t take offence if some people don’t love my baby and don’t see its beauty and merits.  All else is shut out when I create. I’m in labour, alone at home. I’m not thinking about how many copies will be bought and by whom. I’m thinking, “I have this baby in me and it’s time to give birth to it and nurture it to maturity”. It’s a desire and a temptation

I can’t resist. It’s addictive and has a pull beyond my “common sense” arena.

My writing is heavily tinged with my own Euro-Afrocentric upbringing and cultural heritage that is includes Kenya, Egypt, India, German and French. All tinged with the innermost me.

That’s why it is ever so crucial for us writers to have an editor and a publisher to take care of “business”, leaving us the time and peace to create and nurture our creations to maturity.

 

Blurb: Golden Shana: The Chase (Book 1)

An evening at the opera house La Scala in Milan twirled the lives of five people into a web of intrigues, heartaches, human hunts, loss and revenge.

Roman: I never chased after a woman. It was always the other way around. Then I caught a glimpse of the woman I would kneel for, at the opera, and I didn’t even know her name. But I determined to find her if it took me the rest of my life.

Shana: He stood in the room with her. The frisson in the currents freaking between them was as solid as a steel portal. The mutual force of predator and prey blasted its way into her core … her soul … Danger. Keep far away from him.

Marie: Some men were born to rule the world; others were born to ruin it. Roman Alastair Northcott Broughton Castell was born to do both. But she loved him and awaited his baby.

Alyssa: He was the lover she wouldn’t tire of. Roman had something so damned perilous about him he was addictive. Who gets addicted to safe and riskless? Not her.

Grieg/Phoenix: Had His Girl interpreted that Friday night as abuse? He’d only done what she wanted – protection of her cherished innocence.

 

Excerpt from Golden Shana: The Chase (Book 1)

What a difference a day makes… And it hadn’t been a day. It had been an evening in Milan. Brief moments of an evening. I didn’t care about the consequences to whomever. Through my obsession with Svadishana I became aware of the fact that I was a person. A human being, not an almighty god, with all the baggage that comes with being that. I too – eureka! – had a heart pumping white and red corpuscles through my veins. Blood, not icicles.

Was it love I felt for Svadishana? A woman I’d spoken three whiny words – Please call me! – to? Was it more than simple lust and desire? Did I want to possess more than just her body?

Pondering these questions alone was so unlike me. That woman had turned me into an alien even unto my own self. What I felt, my inner voice said, was more than the thrill of the hunt. More than lust, desire, need, passion, the excitement of possession, and subjugation.

Of course all that was part of it. But the basis or the source, the seedbed on which all that sprouted and was growing to full blossom in me, could well be something else.

When I thought of her, saw her image from Milan in my mind, watched how she moved in long smooth strides in YouTube, my brow beaded with sweat. I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the few photos I’d fished out of the Internet. Group photos at a family birthday or the authorized biography of her father. Her movements in a YouTube conference clip were springy and powerful even in their smoothness. She exuded strength all over the place, laughing, talking, gesticulating.

A breath-taking beauty. Such beauty that I dared not believe it at times.

And brains to go with it.

In love or not, I knew what I wanted and Svadishana was the answer. I wanted her and would do anything short of suicide to get her. Who knows – perhaps when it came to that as the only means available, I’d really murder too. I didn’t in the least care about the consequences, as long as they got me to where I wanted to get to.

Svadishana’s arms and knickers and… heart?

What obsession, Roman. Get back to real.

No chance. Real was Svadishana.

 

Blurb: Golden Shana: The Capture (Book 2)

Roman finally gets together with Shana. But he finds himself wedged between three women and the man intent on killing him because of Shana. And there’s the secret of Marie’s unborn baby.

Roman: I wanted to eat all of her. Even within that fortress I longed to erect around her to hold her captive in, to keep her away from men not worthy of the sight of her, I’d devour her.

Shana: Roman was deadly sex. She had no antigenic for immunity against him. Instead she lay there on his bed, in an impossible state of sluttish disarray, holding her breath.

Marie: “So you didn’t bring your rich old cow with you.” The bitch was ten years older than her, years older than Roman himself. Weren’t men supposed to prefer younger women?

Alyssa: She was not going to let Roman treat her like a hole in the air. He started this triangle and she was going to make it equilateral.

Grieg/Phoenix: His philosophy stated that peace was bondage, and war was freedom. His Girl was his territory, and no other man’s.

 

Excerpt from Golden Shana: The Capture (Book 2)

I picked her up and carried her like a bride. Or a sleeping child. She nuzzled between my neck and shoulder. I kicked the door shut behind us.

We were both ablaze, and I needed to check that, wind it down a notch.

“Like to lie down on the sofa and cuddle till we both slow down a bit?”

“Bed.” Her voice vibrated against my neck.

We left the entrance hall behind us. The flames kept on leaping.

“Overriding my sensible decision?”

“Yes. Bed.” Tremulous once, tremulous twice.

“Just got me, and you want to run away with it.” I bore her past the living room.

“Bed.”

“I’m getting a restraining order on you.” I took the first stair, chest tight again.

She lifted her head off my shoulder and her Huskies sent megawatts to my blues. Unveiled desire. My balls clenched. At this degree I risked coming where I stood with her in my arms. I was tempted to close my eyes and summon my control. For the first time I felt life surge through my veins for a woman, the whole woman, not just sex with her. Again, I experienced that powerful instinct in me to guard and protect her, the fragile and most precious thing in my life. She had a pull on every cell in me. Her masses of loose curls gave warm slaps through my chinos to my hip, sending the sergeant into planning guerrilla warfare for its freedom.

The witch. I was hypnotized. I had to stop climbing the stairs and get my head cleared. She was as necessary to me as the air I breathed, yet she knocked that air straight out of my lungs. Her naked desire was intoxicating. Insanity mingled with reality. I really had her back in my arms. She came to me, came to my home for the first time. And ordered Bed, not a mutual shower. She was the first and only woman to take me to this Newland. She was my perfect balance. I’d fallen hard and didn’t even want to get back up. It happens to the worst of us ingrained rogue playboys.

The Huskies still pinned me in Newland. “Skirting around the deed, are we?”

“Protecting my golden goddess.”

For sheer survival, I broke the lock of our eyes and started up the stairs again.

Blurb: Golden Shana: The Untouchable (Book 3)

Roman doesn’t even want a harem. But the harem relentlessly seeks him. No sooner has Shana left Roman than Grieg/Phoenix is marking time on Roman’s door, out for a war, not a fight, over Shana. And so is Marie, whose pregnancy Roman still keeps a secret.

Roman: I loved owning women. Then I found my woman. But she would never be owned, not even by the gods. She left me. Still, her dangerous admirer and I began wars over her, not merely street fisticuffs.

Shana:  Roman scares me in every way and the fear excites me. I’m brainless in his arms, brainless just from thinking about him. He makes me navigate so many labyrinthine passages and secret doors that I’d never even been aware of before. My body knelt and wept for him. My common sense made me flee from him while I could.

Marie: I sold Roman my heart and soul. Only to realise my body had not been consulted, and was therefore out for war.

Alyssa: I really got all that about Roman. The super-ink indelibility of him, the substance of him that stamped his four-figure-euro Ferragamo Oxfords, the supernatural charisma that rocketed him all the way up there with Lucifer. His square would never fit my round. But hope springs eternal, right?

Grieg: “If I have whoever your girl is, why don’t you simply come over and take me off her or her off me?” Roman had not reacted like a man who had received that damning message. Over the phone, he’d sounded as if he didn’t have a single feather ruffled. Time to start the war.

 

Excerpt from Golden Shana: The Untouchable (Book 3)

I heard him change the phone to the other ear. “Castell, you’re a kid running a billion-euro crib, you pervert.”

My system actually waged wars for me to jump out of my skin. Control, Castell.

“Oh, yes. I’m about as straight as the U-bend under a sink, fuckwit. So is this the problem? A pissing contest based on having some beef about your wallet being a little anorexic in comparison? Have I got that bracketed?” I heard him swallow again. I decided on a blind knock on that, although for all I knew he was drinking water. “By the way, I’d ease up on the drink. Otherwise you won’t manage to solve the square root of bugger all, let alone remember if you have any other name but Sggirb.”

“I know you right up to your fucking perve room, Castell. I delivered the CD—had the CD delivered – right into your fucking office, practically into your hands. You know nothing about me. So you better watch your smart mouth.”

“Ah, you thought you’d simply storm the Bastille that’s my home and be discreet about it, then slink into my office building and show me the dot over the i that amounts to your balls? You’re right, I know nothing about you. You’re not even in my periphery, private or public.”

“I’m not a ball of yarn to your kitten, so watch your fucking mouth, Castell!”

Just to keep him put off his stroke, “Who would you say has all the tools for annihilation, fuckwit, the kitten or the yarn?”

“You’re lucky I’m—”

“Luck is basically mythical. Reality is called chance. How about we meet?”

He said nothing.

Not good, because now that I was screwing him hard, I needed to keep up the pace. So I said, “You could make it your mud hole or you could haul your arse back here to my city. Then we roll up our sleeves, or whisk off our T-shirts. Then we start doing a little tribute to Muhammad Ali out in the Congo with Joe Frazier.”

He said nothing. I heard him swallow at intervals during the silence. “I’m rapt with attention, fuckwit Sggirb, so let’s have a date and then – to quote your countryman –you are an American – float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

“You think you’re so fucking cool…” He rumbled the word out long: Coooooollll…

“Oh, I don’t just think it.”

“Just keep your hands off her, Castell. Keep your hands off My Girl!”

“If I have whoever your girl is, why don’t you simply come over and take me off her or her off me?” I paused for a reply, none came. “Or is this the sheep being docile until they get utterly famished?” Another pause. Silence, so I continued, “You sound like you wouldn’t find a clitoris if you were armed with a compass, street map and a fucking NASA telescope.”

“You can’t intimidate me, Castell.”

Which only exposed to me the wound I’d ripped open in him. Time to add chilli.

 

BUY LINKS IN KINDLE – Please note that the books are also available in paperbacks:

UK Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Shana-Chase-von-KOry-ebook/dp/B00WA7M3OC/

UK Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Shana-Capture-von-KOry-ebook/dp/B06X1DGGMZ/

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Shana-Untouchable-von-KOry-ebook/dp/B07H1YY28C#reader_1725967073

US Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Shana-Capture-von-KOry-ebook/dp/B06X1DGGMZ/

US Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Shana-Untouchable-von-KOry-ebook/dp/B07H1YY28C/

UK Untouchable PB: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Golden-Shana-Untouchable-von-KOry/dp/1725967073

 

Website http://www.Akinyi-princess.de

Twitter  https://www.twitter.com/Apky11162

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Amazon Author Page

https://www.amazon.co.uk/A-P-Von-KOry/e/B00MDHD7ZS

*****

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Insurmountable by Allyson Young

InsurmountableBlurb:

Kidnapped because of her father’s wrongdoings, Bianca Fontaine is interrogated for any hint of his whereabouts by a man she has no reason to be drawn to. Who falls for their kidnapper? Especially an arrogant, hard man who is bound by duty—with those intriguing soft and caring qualities he hates to show. She’s learned the truth about her mother’s disappearance and her reality is suspect, except for the one constant—Ellis Valiant.

Ellis Valiant is indeed a hard man, but he’s already destroyed Bianca’s world and could make it worse if he doesn’t send her away. But when he finds her exploring her submissive side in the sex club fronting for his organization, his noble efforts fall by the wayside and he steps up as her Dom. Except Ellis harbors a secret, an insurmountable one, and Bianca will surely hate him when it comes to light.

Buy links/author links: 

http://www.amazon.com/Allyson-Young/e/B00A9WPAYK

http://www.evernightpublishing.com/allyson-young/

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/storeSearch.html?searchBy=author&qString=Allyson+Young

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22Allyson%20Young%22?Ntk=P_key_Contributor_List&Ns=P_Sales_Rank&Ntx=mode+matchall

http://www.bookstrand.com/allyson-young

https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=Allyson+Young

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/search?query=Allyson%20Young&fcsearchfield=Author

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/allysonyoung1

 

Excerpt:

Pushing her into the back seat of the closest SUV, his big hand on the crown of her head, between it and the door frame, invader number one climbed in beside her. The man who said she was worthless as a hostage got in behind the wheel. Scrambling across the leather surface, Bianca huddled against the door, wondering if she might throw herself out and make a run for it. But where? There was no ally in the traitor Mrs. Doucette and they’d probably shoot Max in retaliation. She prayed the housekeeper would care for her dog as she promised. The older woman had never been anything but kind to him, but then she’d been kind to Bianca too. Bianca chewed the inside of her cheek. Maybe her father would get Max back when he ransomed or came for her. She had to hold onto some kind of hope of rescue, maybe before things happened to her. Anybody with money at her schools was versed in possible kidnappings, and the lurid tales left a vile taste in the back of her throat.

The man beside her pulled off his hood, running his fingers through flattened hair. Bianca stared. She knew she was staring, but was incapable of doing anything about it. It was like looking at a carefully sculpted face of a Roman god. High cheekbones, deeply set golden eyes framed by a thicket of black lashes under dark brows, incongruous with the thick blond hair curling to his collar, and a chiseled set of lips. The door shut, plunging the vehicle into relative darkness as its light extinguished and deprived her of that rock star visage. Of a killer.

“Fuck, man. You let her see your face!”

His deep voice retorted, “It’s not like Fontaine doesn’t know who crashed his party, Dave.”

Over the grind of the ignition she heard the driver mutter, “And it’s not like she’s ever going home.” A shadow of fabric passed in front of the muted lights from the dash instruments for a moment as he too pulled off his mask, tossing it aside. Her chances of surviving this just narrowed from fifty to zero percent, and she desperately needed to pee.

They drove in silence, the other vehicles falling in behind to form a convoy as they bumped through the ruined gates and gained the main road. Aside from their initial comments, neither man spoke, and she too remained silent. Her thoughts clamored to be heard but she couldn’t put them in any real semblance of order. Kidnapped. Check. They were going to make her talk about her father. Check. They planned to try to ransom her. Check. Except they didn’t think that would prove fruitful. Wouldn’t her father move heaven and earth to get her back? Except he wasn’t a family-first kind of guy … she didn’t want to understand the inference but accepted it was huge. Nightmare. Check. She concentrated on her breathing and drew on her reserves when she really wanted to scream the roof down.

“What’s with her, Ellis?” The driver finally spoke up. “She hasn’t said boo since she gave up the old man. Must be her father’s daughter, eh?”

Feeling his eyes boring into her, she turned inward. Ellis. An unusual name. Had she heard it before?

“Plenty of time to talk later, Dave. You hear of shock?” Ellis spoke quietly.

“Maybe,” answered Dave. “Most women would be crying and carrying on though. Can’t say I don’t like her reaction. Easier to put up with. Although there’s a ball gag in the dash.”

Ball gag? She bit her lip and swallowed convulsively, an action so awkward it hurt her throat.

“You plotting, Bianca?”

Despite herself, she jerked when Ellis used her name. Had she really thought they wouldn’t know it? Especially when they seemed well apprised of other things involving her father. A thought right out of the blue struck her with the same impact as a blow to the face might. Did they know where her mother was?

“I expect an answer, little one.” The velvety threat wove through his voice.

She shook her head, not trusting her voice. His hand grasped her upper arm and dragged her closer. His scent overwhelmed her, leather, gun oil and male. “Answer me. Are you plotting?”

“No,” she whispered. She stared into his face, the flood of lighting from the other cars’ headlights giving him a faintly demonic look. Had Mike seen that look in his eyes before this Ellis struck him down?

He released her with a slight smile. “Good. Then I’ll leave you to it. If you try to escape you’ll be punished.”

Easing back, building distance between them, Bianca tried to get her shakes under control. So far he hadn’t hurt her, despite his obvious ability to do so. She decided not to think about what this Ellis meant by punishment, and instead considered what might lay ahead if she cooperated. They seemed professional, like her father’s bodyguards, although surely Mike had taken a stupid risk—and paid for it. She didn’t particularly care for the man, but now tears pricked. His sacrifice had been for naught. She could hope they would treat her like a valuable commodity—until she wasn’t.

Insurmountable-evernightpublishing-JayAheer2015-banner1

Author Bio:

Allyson Young lives in cottage country in Manitoba, Canada with her husband and numerous pets. She worked in the human services all across Canada and has seen the best and worst of what people bring to the table. Allyson has written for years, mostly short stories and poetry, published in small newspapers and the like, although her work appeared in her high school yearbooks too! After reading an erotic romance, quite by accident, she decided to try her hand at penning erotica.

Allyson will write until whatever she has inside her is satisfied- when all the heroes man up and all the heroines get what they deserve. Love isn’t always sweet, and Allyson favours the darker side of romance.

http://www.allysonyoung.com

allysonyoung45@gmail.com