Alexis Fleming

Heart & Craft
ISBN: 9781741757217
Format: Paperback
Publisher:  ALLEN & UNWIN

Release Date: 1st July 2009
Link to Book:

July 1st marks the release of a book called Heart & Craft, published by Allen & Unwin in Australia. The publisher has tagged it as the  ultimate ‘how-to’ book on romance writing, written by ten Australian and New Zealand romance writers and edited by the undisputed Queen of Romance Fiction in Australia, Valerie Parv.
I was thrilled to pieces to be asked to write the chapter on Erotic Romance. This was a little different for me. It’s my first non-fiction book and the first I’ve contracted to go straight to print.
To celebrate the release of Heart & Craft, the authors involved in the book are running a Scavenger Hunt. And have we got some fantastic prizes. Check it out!
9 Carat Gold Genuine Natural Diamond & Sapphire Heart Pendant
Pearl, crystal and silver hearts charm bracelet
Two silver heart charm bracelets
Gold heart drop necklace
3 pairs of heart-shaped cubic zirconia stud earrings

Here’s a photo of the first prize—a diamond and sapphire pendant—to whet your appetite.

That’s eight prizes to give away. Check out my Contest page on my website to see how you can be in the running for one of these fab prizes.
The Heart & Craft Scavenger Hunt begins 1st July and will close 30th July. The winners will be announced early August.

I need a do-over button or at the very least, a rewind button on my life. This last week has been the pits. I lost my website. Not only that, I lost my daughter’s website. Ack!

I’ve had a company doing my updates and sending out my newsletters for the last year or so. Unfortunately, the company wasn’t performing. I don’t mind paying to get the job done but I do expect to be able to get updates done when I need them. Wasn’t happening, so I decided it was time to do something about it. My emails weren’t being answered so I did the only thing I could do. I went in and pointed mine and my daughter’s(writer Kelly Ethan) domain names back to GoDaddy. *groan* That was my first mistake. I should have spoken to #1 Son first because the files didn’t go with them. Suddenly, no websites. Nada. Nothing. In a panic I got in touch with my son (which I should have done in the first place). He had to point the domains back to the marketing company, then go in and download all the files from our websites, then point them back to GoDaddy and go in and upload our files again. A lot of work but he did manage to get us up and running again. I still have a few issues with my site but they can be worked out. Plus, I’m getting a new site in another month or so, so I can hold fire until then.

On the tail end of all this, my son has now taught me to do and send out my own newsletters so I remain in control of my subscriber list. They won’t be as pretty or contain massive graphics as my old newsletter because I don’t do HTML, but maybe that’s a good thing. It will certainly be easier for those on dial-up. My new website will be in Wordpress format so maybe at some point I can learn to do my own updates. Something to think about anyway.

I’ve just been over at Literary agent Jessica Faust’s blog and she used the same title for today’s blog. She was talking about writing blogs but this “write what you know” is something I often think about when it comes to my novels. I remember being told this when I first started writing seriously. Write what you know. Huh? I’ve been a clerk in an office. Should I write a romance about that? I’ve driven buses, waited tables, been the purchasing officer for an international boarding school, worked for the army, and that’s only a few of the jobs I’ve held in my …mumble, mumble…years. So should I write stories with those as the background? Hell, it was boring most of the time, and if I found it boring, why should a reader be any different?

It took me a while to work it out.  “Write what you know.” It’s not necessarily the jobs you’ve held that go towards making a good story. It’s what you felt, what you went through, emotions etc, that combine to give your story reality. So I know what it feels like to have someone break into my flat in the early hours of the morning. I know how scared I was. How I grabbed the nearest thing(an iron) to defend myself. That, for me, translates into the rush of adrenaline, the fear, the sheer terror, that I need to give a heroine who’s up against it.

I know what it feels like to lose a loved one. Those same emotions can give my hero or heroine that decidedly real quality I’m looking for when I craft my characters. So many situations in my earlier life, and even now, can give me the edge I need to make my characters breathe, to make them real for the reader. So when someone tells me to write what I know, this is what I focus on. Not the actual nuts and bolts of what I’ve done in my life, but the emotions and feeling generated from those experiences.

“Write what you know.” It’s good advice.

So I’m writing this story called Honey Trap that I intend for Ellora’s Cave. Now it can be anywhere from 15 to 45 thousand words. I figured maybe 20 thousand and it would be done and I’d have it off to the editor. *snort* I’m already at 15K and I’m not even through chapter three. Wordy, much? lol

It seems there was a lot more plot that I originally thought. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing it so far. Then I hit the first love scene. Round about the time I had to go into hospital for surgery.I figured I’d get back into it as soon as I got home. Well, the first thing wrong with that idea was that I forgot to give myself time to recover. So a lot more sleeping has gone on than writing. However, I did make a start on the love scene. Got them into bed. Got their clothes off. She’s gone down on him and now he’s about to return the favor. So get on with it!

I seem to have been on the same bit for the last couple of days. He’s lavishing well-deserved attention on her breasts. Licking, sucking, caressing…and any other …ing word you can think of. If it goes on like this, he’s going to end up sucking her nipple clean off her chest. Ack!! I need to get this scene finished so I can get on with the story, but damn it, my hero is having too good a time worshiping at her breasts. Get over it already! I like a little teasing as much as the next woman, but how about forgetting the appertizer and going for the main course? People are getting hungry here!

I’m home from hospital and let me tell you, they sure do move you in and out quick these days, even in a private hospital. I had to be at the hospital at 12.45pm. I was operated on at 3pm. I was out of there at 7.30am the next morning. lol

So I’m back…minus my gallbladder. And I’m learning there are repercussions to not having a gallbladder. Don’t eat anything fatty. Your system doesn’t like it and gets rid of it quick smart. Stay on liquids for a week and then graduate to baby slush for the next month. Hey, I’ve lost 6 pounds in 3 days! Now that’s a bonus, but I’m not certain it’s the best diet around. I’m finding it a bit harder to bounce back after this surgery. Maybe I’m just getting old. All I seem to want to do is sleep, which can’t do me any harm. But I had visions of writing up a storm while I was recovering.

Hmm, maybe that’s not going to happen. I’ll just have to take it a day at a time, I guess.

I’m off to hospital tomorrow to have my gallbladder and a humungous gallstone removed. Fingers crossed that it’s only overnight, because it’s freakin’ expensive to go into a private hospital. I would have chosen going the public hospital route but the wait time is way too long. Unfortunately I didn’t get my story for Ellora’s cave finished before the hospital visit but I’ll have plenty of recovery time after I get home. See you all when I get back!

We’ve got a tour group in at the motel at the moment. That means starting work at 5.30am. *groan* I have to light the stoves and hotplates and get everything ready for the cook. Thank God I have a fantastic cook. Vicki has been with me for about four years and I couldn’t do without her. Well, I could if I had to but I prefer not. She is amazing. Nothing seems to throw her for a loop when it comes to the kitchen. Sixty-eight breakfasts tomorrow, Vicki? No sweat, she says. lol Luckily, this time, it’s only 25 breakfasts, but it does mean early starts for us both and lots of work after breakfast to clean up, set up for the next day, and do the next day’s food preparation. This group leave tomorrow after breakfast. They’re not a bad group. All elderly people from retirement homes. But I afraid we do have our requisite number of complainers. Some people it doesn’t matter what you do, you just can’t please them. However it does fill the coffers and allow me to give my girls extra work during our slow season.

Even with the extra work with the tour group, I managed to get chapter two finished tonight of the book I’m writing for Ellora’s cave. It’s called Honey Trap and I had plans to finish by the end of May. *gulp* I don’t think that’s going to happen but I plan on giving it a good shot. I’m going into hospital on 3rd June to have my gallbladder removed and I really would like to have the bulk of it done before then. It seems I have a 2.9 cm gallstone residing in my gallbladder and it’s not doing me any favors by taking up residence. Time for it to go, methinks. Maybe the enforced rest after the surgery will allow me to get Honey Trap finished, because I really need to get onto finishing Dark Destiny, a demon story I’m doing for Red Sage.

Running a motel has its moments. Mostly, it’s covered by the old saying ‘never a dull moment.’ I can definitely say that over the last five years it has given me many a laugh. And there’s no doubt it has been a fine education into human nature for this writer.

However…..then there are the moments that make me want to tear my hair out. Like when guests have no respect for the belongings of others and decide to trash my rooms. When they figure ‘up yours’ and break the rules and smoke in my rooms because they are too lazy or cocky to walk outside and use the many ashtrays and smoking areas I’ve created OUTSIDE! Or have a party and keep everyone else in the motel awake for all hours. These are the people who steal away some of the joy of running a motel.

And for the asswipes who left the local pub at 1am on Sunday morning, drunk, off their heads, totally without any respect for anyone or anything? You who decided it was fun to walk along the main street and rock all the buildings along the way? Hey, you want to come back and clean up all the glass from the windows you smashed? Want to pay my repair bills? Explain to the guests in those rooms why they were woken at this time of morning by rocks sailing through their windows? Compensate me for lost revenue because I have to close down those rooms until I can get a glazier in to replace the glass?

Yeah, I figured not. I’d like to get hold of those drunken hoods and knock them upside the head. Grrr!!!

I am seriously pissed off! For those who aren’t up on Aussie lingo, pissed off means I am very angry, as in the pulling out hair, spitting type of angry. I was up at 5.30 this morning so I could get some writing done. Didn’t happen!

My normal routine is to turn the computer on and then head downstairs to the kitchen to make my morning coffee. This writer can’t function until at least a couple of cups of java have been downed. So I followed my normal path and, coffee in hand, hit the computer. A quick check of the email and then I’d get into the writing. I figured  had at least and hour and a half before I had to get ready for work in the motel.

*Groan* It didn’t happen. The first thing I found when I checked my email was a notice from the security department of my bank, asking me to ring a certain number. Now, I’m pretty savvy about a lot of the scams going on on the internet, so the first thing I did was check the number in the phone book. Yep, it was for real. So I rang them to find out that someone at 12.53am in Saudi Arabia had accessed my credit card and added over five thousand dollars to the total. WTF!!!!

I was so angry. How could this happen. Yes, I’ve just been to America for a conference but I was so careful with the use of my card. I only pulled that darn thing out of my wallet three times and each time I was standing there while they ran it off. Nevertheless, someone still managed to acquire the number of my card and use it. Thankfully, the bank security department was on the ball and quickly emailed me. The card has now been cancelled and I have to now do a dispute form to get the amount reversed on my card. I mean, it was easy to tell it wasn’t me. I ring them from my home in Australia 4 hours after someone in Saudi Arabia uses the card number. No way could I have managed to fly home from there in time to ring them at 5.30 in the morning.  It could have been worse. This person could have maxed the card out, but the bank caught it in time. Even so it just makes me so angry. I’d like to catch one of these people and smack them upside the head…or worse. Grrr!!!

Ellora’s Cave has given Outback Sizzle a new home. Re-edited and with a new cover, it released yesterday. Check out the sexy cover!

Book Length: Novella
Book Type: eBook
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave Publishing
ISBN: 9781419922015

BLURB

Wild Australian nights, a sexy woman and a cowboy too hot to handle…

After drooling over sizzling Aussie cowboy Chase O’Connor’s photo for the last four years, American Cassie Mitchell jumps at the chance to head to his outback property, even if it means plotting with his mother and masquerading as his paid companion. If that’s the only way she can satisfy the lust that eats at her soul, so be it. She will happily sacrifice herself to the cause.

When Chase finds out about the plot, he decides to play Cassie and his mother at their own game. That means following Cassie’s every move, even if they are hot, erotic encounters and steam-inducing massages. A guy just has to grin and bare it!

Publisher’s Note: Previously published elsewhere, Outback Sizzle has been edited and revised for Ellora’s Cave.

Link to book

Read an excerpt here