Passionate Reads

The book the media can’t seem to say enough about, Fifty Shades of Gray by E L James, made the nightly news again last night. The many teasers reminding viewers it would be discussed later in the broadcast all contained the words “dirty little secret”.  This all on the same network that ran a spot on America’s Got Talent the evening before that featured a guy getting his nuts smashed fifty different ways. But that was “funny” and acceptable for prime time, family television. While as the news cast finally pointed out, Fifty Shades was being banned from many libraries. Too “dirty” I guess.

I’m not here to argue what Fifty Shades is or isn’t. What really frustrates me is that erotic romance is still the object of so much mud-slinging. Why is a genre that has proven its selling power still treated like a dirty secret? Why is it okay to call it dirt?

I guess they’ll have to call me dirty, because I’m not going to stop telling love stories and I’m not going to pretend that love doesn’t involve sex.  Blind Heat releases next week and it goes places that will definitely keep it off the library shelves. As I watched Brian Williams, lift his eyebrows and look down his nose each time he uttered the word dirty, I wondered what he’d think of the candle scene, or how what happens on that altar in the moon garden might alter his definition of dirty. What adjective would he apply to Pantherian fire oil?

If Fifty Shades is dirty, Blind Heat is dirty untamed. Unleashed.

But.

I don’t call it dirty. It’s a love story. It’s a journey of the heart taken by two people who haven’t had a gentle upbringing. They make love the same way they’ve lived life–hard.    I don’t know what’s dirty about that.

Allie and Marcus come into this story with secrets. With shame about those secrets. I think when you can share what you are most ashamed or afraid of with a lover,  and they still find you loveable, that’s beautiful. That’s magic.

The release date for Blind Heat is May 30, Wednesday. I hope you’ll grab a copy and tell me what you think.

Meantime here’s the blurb and a tiny excerpt that takes up where the excerpt on the EC website leaves off:

Blurb:

Allie is determined to build an ordinary life. To survive she needs to be the sort of woman no one notices. She has a generic job, lives in a generic apartment, and thinks maybe one day she’ll find an ordinary Joe who wants an average Jane sort of woman.

 Marcus is anything but an ordinary Joe. Even if humans don’t know he is a shifter and millennial being, he’s the sort of man women notice. A night of passion spent with Marcus is a night any female, human or Pantherian, won’t forget.

 But Allie does forget. She repeatedly fails to recognize him even after an intense sexual encounter. Marcus isn’t satisfied until he discovers the source of her problem—face blindness, a genetic disorder with no cure. Marcus decides to use erotic rituals to teach Allie to see with more than her eyes. What he doesn’t count on is that she will see past the man and recognize the beast within.

Excerpt:

Marcus ran his thumbs over rain-studded skin at the edge of her bra. He needed to reel himself in. He’d been trying for the last few hours to keep the inner beast leashed. He’d only meant to come close enough to touch her dreams, thinking then her guard might be down. Few humans had the skill to shield their thoughts from him as completely as Allie. But it hadn’t been hard to track her down a few days after she’d taken Hella. She had routines he could set his watch by. It hadn’t been long before she was back in the park for another run and he’d followed her home. But Hella wasn’t in Allie’s apartment, nor had he managed to get any information regarding Hella in repeated visits to Allie’s office. Numerous suggestions and influences hadn’t penetrated Allie’s mental blockade.

The erotic suggestions he’d sent winging into her dreams had penetrated, stirred her needs, but it had opened no more than her body to him. A body soft, yielding. Her excitement evident to his Pantherian senses. The quick beat of her heart, the welcoming scent of female ready for a male.

A firm tug at the zipper on her running bra accomplished nothing, so he did away with that impediment in the same way he’d dispensed with the shirt. Her escalating arousal had her back arching, intensified the scent of desire. Her eyes went wide and pupils narrowed. He had her full attention now.

Ripe breasts springing free to fill his palms, had his attention.

Prim, shell-pink nipples begged to be licked. She held her breath when he dipped his head to do just that. Flesh tightening under his tongue had his teeth automatically closing around the hard little nub. The soft sound she made in her throat was so mew-like he was tempted to toss her over his shoulder, head back to his truck and keep her. Unfortunately, he was fairly certain that practice had been outlawed in this country a couple of centuries ago.

Sex at dawn in a public park probably wasn’t legal either.

There were only so many laws he was willing to follow.

Available May 30th from Ellora’s Cave.

Tags: America's Got Talent, Banned Books, blind heat, Cat Shifters, dirty secrets, Erotic Romance, love, mommy-porn, mud-slinging, Nara Malone, news media, respect, romance