So I’ve done it. After some internal debate, I decided to go ahead and dip my toe in the waters of romance.

Actually, I decided to do it several years ago, when I started writing The Dreaming Land. (Link to sample). 

The current cover for TDLII

My original inspiration for the whole story was a vision of what it would be like to run into someone with whom you’d had a vicious breakup, and introduce them to their unacknowledged child.  What can I say, authors’ minds have to go to strange places sometimes.

Anyway, somehow this morphed into a story about–it’s funny how prescient art can be sometimes, isn’t it?–slave trading, unwanted foreigners, greed masquerading as benevolence, for-profit prisons, environmental degradation, the exploitation of animals, and all kinds of things that are so, so relevant to today.  They were relevant to today when today was three years ago, and they’re even more relevant to today, today.  Which is the awesome thing about fantasy, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, along with all that, The Dreaming Land  (link once again to sample) turned into a pretty steamy love story between an older, more experienced woman and an innocent young man, with a bit of a BDSM edge.  Yes, I went there.  Someone had to.  While the appetite for tales of innocent female ingenues being deflowered by experienced male billionaires seems to be inexhaustible, and I am one of the millions who did in fact find the Fifty Shades books to be weirdly compelling, enough is enough.  Someone needs to subvert the paradigm, and since no one else was stepping up to the plate, I decided that someone had to be me.  Plus, Valya insisted on it, and she’s awfully hard to say no to.

Which means that ARCs of The Dreaming Land I & II are currently participating in some pretty dang steamy and hot giveaways.  I’m not sure they’re going to be able to hold their own in such scorching company, but Valya never can resist throwing her hat in the ring.  So you can pick up free ARCs (Advance Review Copies, meaning you get them for free before the book is released, but we authors really hope you’ll like the book and leave a review for it once it comes out) of The Dreaming Land I and/or II, along with some very romantic, or in some cases extremely naughty, reads in the following giveaways:

The Summer of Love and Magic Giveaway features fantasy books with a romantic angle.

Both the Summer July Hot Books! and the 9 1/2 Weeks Erotic Fiction Book Giveaway are full of covers like this:

Go ahead, browse around. It doesn’t hurt to look, right?  You’ll be doing your feminist duty by subjecting male images to the penetrating female gaze.  Right?  Right?

So whether you like sweet & clean romances–okay, the pickings there might be kind of slim–paranormal romance, or straight-up erotica, these giveaways will probably have something for you.  And in the case of my books, they’ll have something that’s about more than just sex, too.