It is a sad thing when a writer creates an estimable character like Doug in Roping His Filly and has him step aside for another hero. What is a writer to do? Leave a good guy in the trash bin with the rest of the edits? Or take advantage of the fact that you've got a fully rounded character, plus a boatload of readers who are mailing you in protest, demanding to know what happens next with him?

You'd think that as a female, I'd know all about females, but being kind of low-key myself, it's not true. I never learned about divas until I had my daughter. Not that she's a diva; but she is very high drama. She's the female equivalent of the little kid who disobeys his coach and deliberately runs through the dirt because it will look like a better play. What I learned is this: some girls just do things the hard way--they just have to have the drama, sometimes in spite of themselves.

Strong men and women embarking on a fledgling D/s relationship either find (or don't) matching kinks, strengths, weaknesses and secrets. In the psychology of domination and submission, it is frequently the strong woman who runs things in the real world whose fantasy life is contingent on losing control. It does make sense in a way; certainly if you have to be in charge most of the time, it is perfectly understandable that in order to let down your hair, you have to relax that control. That means letting down your guard too; and that's not easily done. In fact, the element of trust is the most crucial thing that the actual D/s relationship is based on--in real life anyway. Of course, fantasy means we don't have to rely on safety because what is happening is already as safe as can be, tucked between the covers of a novel (in the case of readers) or in the mind (in the case of fantasies that are spun "on the hoof" so to speak.)

I've been reading Jaci Burton for a long time. Her stories have erotica circulating through them as their life-blood. Her characters find their way on the cusp of a carnal tide, sensually exploring their way through a sybaritic world to find their ultimate partner(s). So it is a bit of a surprise to find Jaci writing what looks at first to be a simple adventure story. (By the way, Jaci, belated congratulations on stepping up to Berkley Heat.) My only question is, what took them so long to find you?

There are more than two types of erotic/romantic BDSM books, but right now I classify them into two categories. In one, D/s is a historical or situational (as in speculative fiction) situation. Generally, the situation is non-consensual, but since this type of book is written in the romance genre, there is a strong element of love that is at the core of the story. In the other, the contemporary culture of playing D/s in a club is fundamental. Sometimes there's a mystery involving a club, or someone is pretending to work at a club; or gets a job there and finds out they're actually a sub or dom; and sometimes, as in

I want to make it clear that I have no desire to step back thru time to when women had no rights--certainly the fact that women have rights is what makes it possible to want to be submissive. How else could a sub (female or male, for that matter) ever have that requisite element of trust if equal rights were not part of the picture? I'm just thinking that it has to be difficult for a sensitive guy who has tendencies toward domination, especially with society being the way it is. After all, he's been trained all his life to respect other people. In most books, the sub is central, and the Dom controls even the progress of the book, because in most literature, Doms are born, not made. But what about that initial point--where an outwardly ordinary guy has spent his life hiding his inner Dom?

So many things happen in real life where we get just one chance to get things right. We only have one childhood. We only have one first anything. Ultimately, we only have one clean slate, and then, forever after what we write on the slate of our lives is colored by what lies beneath and what came before. Then there's that rare case when we get a do-over. I'm not talking about a second marriage to another partner where that marriage erases or tempers the damage of the first one. I'm talking about an actual do-over with the original partner.

It was one of those days when I couldn’t find a book on my shelves interesting enough to spend a few hours with. I checked with a friend who knows me well enough to know I like stories that are a little unusual and she recommended I try Annmarie McKenna's Blackmailed. I knew in the first few pages that I had found the book I was looking for.

Blackmailed introduces us to Brianna Wyatt, a young woman put in a very unusual position by her power-hungry father. Brianna's father is interested in having an heir for the family fortune and he has decided he's waited long enough for his daughter to take a mate. Since she hasn't found one so far, he takes matters into his own hands and finds one for her.

This must be military week for me--Roped is the second book in a row I've read that has a military hero. I don't know if it is a sign of the times or a sign of Ellora's Cave's buying strategy, but in either case, Jared McTavish, our protagonist, begins our tale in desperate circumstances by nearly dying of thirst in an Iraqi desert. By the end of the first scene, however, we find he is having reoccurring dreams in a small VA hospital in Cheyenne recovering from a roadside bomb that "ended up taking part of his right leg" and "ended what he'd planned as a lifelong career in the Marines."

I remember back when I was in high school, I had an assignment to turn in a sample of political music. I think the only thing I could think of was Country Joe and the Fish's Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die Rag. It is a common thing for current events to find its way into the arts–back then it was Vietnam–so it's no surprise for war to find its way into fiction, even when the genre is Domination and submission. Perhaps it is more likely in D/s fiction since the military is certainly focused on strict obedience.

After reading the first installment of Katrina Strauss' Eldridge Legacy, Secrets Revealed, I've been curious to know what happens next. I was overjoyed to have the opportunity to read the second book in the trilogy, Lessons Learned.

Lessons Learned is penned in a similar fashion to Secrets Revealed and I must again warn the readers that this is not a vanilla romance. Though not as adventurous as the first book, you will still find elements of BDSM, partner-sharing and lesbian frolics within its covers so if this is not your type of thing you will want to avoid this book.

All good things must come to an end and sadly I have finally finished reading Fates Fulfilled, the last book in Katrina Strauss' Eldritch Legacy trilogy. I've been lucky enough to have been able to review this entire series and on the whole it is one of the most enjoyable I've read in a long time.

We first meet the Eldritch family in long ago Europe in the first book of the series, Secrets Revealed. Travel forward a few hundred years and we run across some old friends and new in Lessons Learned, the second book in the trilogy. In this final episode, the Eldritch family has turned up in the new world in near present-day West Coast America.

Embarrassment stories. Ya gotta love them. A friend of mine told me about putting on yesterday's pants, and walking around a store wearing them until yesterday's shorts rolled out the pants leg. That might have been quite a memorable introduction to someone. I've seen people wearing shirts inside out. And my own situation: walking down the corridor of a calling center with a long trail of toilet paper dragging behind me. I can only HOPE it was attached to my shoe.

Drew Bennet is a personal trainer out to take a professional relationship to the personal level. There's something about the profession itself akin to D/s. I suppose it is the fact of the name itself "trainer" and the way conditioning parallels D/s since so many D/s relationships go through a "honeymoon" period of training; or perhaps it is simply the dynamic of the trainer issuing commands, and the trainee doing their best to perform the action commanded. What could be more D/s than that? Isn't it weird that a command--as well as a bit of praise--can work so powerfully on a psyche? This is something which our heroine begins to realize early on--almost as much as she appreciates the chemistry of having a healthy, well-built personal trainer aiming his hormones in her direction.

I have to admit that one of my pet genres is historical romance. It’s my literary potato chip. My popcorn. My brain candy. There's a time in my life when my nearest and dearest family members would not have been remiss to have an intervention to get me away from my historical romance library and remove me to some kind of reader's anonymous facility to break the habit. I sucked down more than a book a day for years (and that's a modest estimate.) It's up in the air whether or not all that reading may have helped (or hurt) my writing, editing and reviewing skills, but any way you look at it, it is certain that it has affected my taste and expectations. I know the romance hero intimately. The hero is strong beyond strength, and has a sense of innate nobility and justice, no matter how the world turns, no matter how obvious he is, or how he hides his true nature from himself. The heroine may be naive, flawed, perfect or have low self-esteem, but no matter what she is, she holds the possibility of becoming a true and honorable partner in all things.