I'm extending a warm welcome to author Eden Connor. Gee, maybe I should try again - I don't know about your neck of the woods but over here in Missouri (you know, the fly over zone, LOL) it's hotter than the devil's kitchen and not likely to change anytime soon. Maybe I'll just welcome Eden into my air conditioned office and we'll sip some cold lemondade or tea as we chat.
Eden has several works out and more on the way. She's a member of Romance Writers of America and also Georgia Romance Writers. So far, we share a couple of publishers in common. Today, we're focusing on getting to know Eden and talking about Soft Sounds of Pleasure.
Let's get started!
Tell us
in brief about your personal road to publication.
I’d never seriously considered writing a novel, but I was always the go-to person if anyone had an English assignment they needed edited. Then, I had a tough run of luck in the new millennium. My husband died unexpectedly in 2001. In 2006, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and in between, I was a family member at five other funerals. After my mom died, I spent a lot of time withdrawn from the world, just grieving. I picked up one erotic romance novel to keep the world at bay, then another, then a few hundred and eventually a few thousand. Somewhere along the way, I had the thought, “I can do this.” Rather than screw up the courage to submit that novel, instead, I wrote a short story based on one character’s brother and subbed that. When it was accepted, I found out that by doing it ass backwards, I had a three-story contract, more or less, since the publisher’s contract stated they got first refusal rights to any subsequent story using those same characters. I’m not recommending that method to aspiring authors, but…it worked for me. On the other hand, that short story has been held back from publication for over a year, waiting for me to write the two that precede it.
What’s
your favorite destination when you want to unwind or have fun?
To unwind, I love a good flea market. Just roaming the booths, looking at the assortment of wares puts me in a relaxed frame of mind. I try to leave the junk there these days, since I have so many projects, I’ll never get to the last one.
Write the story. Write it however it occurs to you at first; just get it down. The editing process doesn’t tap the same part of your brain as the creative process, so tie a gag around your internal editor’s mouth and listen to your muse until you get that first draft done. The editor in your head and your muse should never be invited to the same party, much like two women who have both slept with your brother. Or two men who have both slept with you!
And now let's get to the details of Eden's novel:
(excerpt)
Lila wasn't beautiful, exactly, but she had a smile that could light up the world. Over the years, he'd seen her wear her blond hair both long and short, and he had no preference, wishing he could bury his hands in her silky strands at any length. Her personality was another asset. Her dry sense of humor made him laugh. She always drove some version of the same small stick-shift Chevy truck. The color didn't matter, he figured, because she never seemed to wash them. She made her own money by restoring damaged furniture she freely admitted to rescuing from the local dump or picking up off the side of the road, selling her secondhand wares out of her garage. She'd even wanted a cast-off metal cabinet he'd loaded into his truck to haul off from the garage, claiming the rusted shelves inside were perfect for holding her supplies.
"It beats explaining to Pete why I need that hundredth pair of shoes," she'd told him with a shrug when he delivered the thing and asked why she bothered to do such a dirty job when she clearly had no need to work. "Now all he can complain about is the lack of space in the closet, so I'm saving up to have my own closet built and he can find something new to complain about." But she hadn't sounded too worried.
And she shouldn't have worried. All he had to do was take one look at Pete while he was looking at Lila, or talking about her, and Colton knew those two had been in love forever. The last time he'd seen them, maybe a year ago, they'd pulled into the garage driving a shiny new van, specially equipped to handle the electric wheelchair Pete rode in after a car accident had paralyzed him about three years back. The van needed a fuse, and Colton had installed a new one, then he carefully checked the electrical system just in case, unwilling to put Lila in the possible position of having a disabled vehicle with Pete, because of the wheelchair, unable to accept a ride from just anybody. The Walkers had agreed, and he'd watched Lila out of the corner of his eye the entire time, wondering if she still looked at her husband the same way now that he was paralyzed.
She had. Even though she had to sit down to look Pete in the eyes, the love between them had still been visible.
Making Pete Walker about the luckiest damn man on the planet as far as Colton was concerned, in spite of his accident. When he found the woman he wanted to settle down with, he was sure she'd have a lot in common with Lila. A decade had passed, yet he didn't want her any less than he had that first day.
He had to get things under control, so he shifted his stiff cock to a slightly more comfortable position and tried to focus on what he needed to ask Pete. He wrote his request on the back of a business card in case no one was home before slipping out of the truck.
The serenity of the setting caused him to leave the truck door slightly ajar rather than slamming it. The scent of fresh-mown grass hung in the warm April air, and the bright afternoon sun sparkled off the surface of the large fishing pond in the Walker's spacious backyard. A screen of cypress trees completely hid the house next door, and over two acres of neatly clipped grass separated the house from the quiet two-lane road running down the side of the property. Pete Walker's taste in land was every bit as good as his taste in women, Colton judged as he stepped off the driveway onto the steps leading around back.
The first thing he noticed was the wheelchair ramp built over the steps. That was new since the last time he'd towed a vehicle away from the Walker's. He realized he hadn't been to their back door since Pete's accident about three years back. The last car he'd towed from here had been their son Charlie's Jeep, and Lila had met him in the driveway that day. That had been almost two years back: the day after Charlie had pitched for the high school baseball team, winning the state championship, and then shocked the whole town by turning down his scholarship to the state university in favor of joining the Marines.
If possible, the sight of the ramp, the solid, sloping reminder of Pete's misfortune, made him feel worse about his stubbornly lingering chubby. But thoughts of his sad, silent nephew made him trudge to the top anyway, the guilt he felt over the lust he nurtured for Lila unable to trump his need to put a smile on that kid's face.
He was almost to the back door when he stopped dead in his tracks. His conscience began screaming for him to turn around. Shrieking at him, in fact, to get the hell off this deck and go back to his truck.
But his legs were suddenly as rigid as his dick.
He could hear the thousand tiny devils begin sharpening their blades.
Because his abruptly short-circuited brain was sending the message to his already primed cock that Lila Walker was lying in the sun on her very private deck, wearing nothing but an oversized pair of sunglasses and a coat of coconut-scented oil.
He might go straight to hell in a big ball of fire, but Colton couldn't help staring at her. If Pete himself had rolled out on the deck at this very moment, Colton still might not have been able to move. Not before taking in her full breasts, tipped in dark rose, their color something he'd wondered about for so long. Not before noting with approval the half-dollar size of her rosy areolas, his fingers clenching at the sight of the big, surprisingly lengthy tips. He let his gaze linger in the deep cleft between her breasts, a spot that would cuddle his cock even better than he'd always imagined. She probably thought her full breasts were too heavy, but Colton thought them perfect. He doubted even his large palm could completely capture one.
He took another look at her sexy belly button, noting with some dim part of his brain that it was still a repository for her sweat. A tiny white scar beneath the sexy indent hadn't been there the last time he'd laid eyes on her midriff.
Her hips might be slightly wider than they had been that day by the side of the road, and her belly was a bit rounder, but she looked even better now, he thought with approval. There was nothing to stop a man from really pounding out his lust on this particular body.
And, saving the best for last, since the devil was likely choosing Colton's permanent pain palace at this exact moment, he raked his gaze over her pussy. Her heels were at either edge of the wide chaise, giving him a glorious view of her feminine lips, which were edged in a deeper rose than even her nipples, like an orchid he'd seen in some flower shop window recently. And he was still going to have to wonder whether or not she was a natural blond, since her gorgeous, gleaming pussy was waxed as bare as the day she'd been born.
His fantasies hadn't done her justice. Not even close.
https://spsilverpublishing.com/product_book_info/coming-soon-c-2/products_id/839/
Facebook Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eden-Connor/296019400430949
Twitter: @EdenConnor
Blog: http://edenconnorwrites.blogspot.com/
My thanks to Eden for coming over to share a little about herself and her novel - it's going on my TBR list!
Eden has several works out and more on the way. She's a member of Romance Writers of America and also Georgia Romance Writers. So far, we share a couple of publishers in common. Today, we're focusing on getting to know Eden and talking about Soft Sounds of Pleasure.
Let's get started!
What’s
your least favorite thing?
Hands down, laundry. I’ve been
known to drive to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night to buy underwear and
socks for the entire family so I could put off doing laundry for a few more
days. I throw away the unmatched socks straight from the dryer. Screw looking
for the mate. I think two-story homes like mine should have the laundry room
upstairs by default. I mean, come on, the downstairs generates three dirty dish
towels a week. Architects, take note!
Oh, my least favorite thing about being an author? I’m not sure I have one. I work as an editor for two publishers, so editing is not a problem for me, and I love the initial creative process. I suppose it would be writer’s block, but I have recently figured out that when that hits me, it’s my subconscious telling me I’ve taken my story in a bad direction.
Oh, my least favorite thing about being an author? I’m not sure I have one. I work as an editor for two publishers, so editing is not a problem for me, and I love the initial creative process. I suppose it would be writer’s block, but I have recently figured out that when that hits me, it’s my subconscious telling me I’ve taken my story in a bad direction.
I’d never seriously considered writing a novel, but I was always the go-to person if anyone had an English assignment they needed edited. Then, I had a tough run of luck in the new millennium. My husband died unexpectedly in 2001. In 2006, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and in between, I was a family member at five other funerals. After my mom died, I spent a lot of time withdrawn from the world, just grieving. I picked up one erotic romance novel to keep the world at bay, then another, then a few hundred and eventually a few thousand. Somewhere along the way, I had the thought, “I can do this.” Rather than screw up the courage to submit that novel, instead, I wrote a short story based on one character’s brother and subbed that. When it was accepted, I found out that by doing it ass backwards, I had a three-story contract, more or less, since the publisher’s contract stated they got first refusal rights to any subsequent story using those same characters. I’m not recommending that method to aspiring authors, but…it worked for me. On the other hand, that short story has been held back from publication for over a year, waiting for me to write the two that precede it.
To unwind, I love a good flea market. Just roaming the booths, looking at the assortment of wares puts me in a relaxed frame of mind. I try to leave the junk there these days, since I have so many projects, I’ll never get to the last one.
What’s
the inspiration behind your current release?
I took the standard advice,
“Write what you know.” Soft Sounds of Pleasure is about a young widow who has
worked through most of her grief and is ready to try dating again, but Lila
Walker is unsure whether the first man to show interest—her younger mechanic
Colton De Marco— is ‘relationship material’. He’s been attracted to her from
afar for a decade and knows her well enough to guess she’s going to need
persuading, so he tempts her with the two things she admits to him she’s missed
most, sex and baseball. The sex part is easy, since he surprises her while
sunbathing in the nude. The baseball part is where he’s clueless, but his
nephew has just come to live with him and the kid wants to get on a team. Colton
asks for her help and Lila allows herself to be drawn back to the game she
loves, telling herself those youth baseball games aren’t ‘dates’.
In any small town, everyone knows
your business. In a small southern town, they feel obligated to point out when
your actions might affect your chances to walk through the Pearly Gates, and
for many of her friends and neighbors, Lila’s seeing a younger man a mere nine
months after burying her husband is a scandal. Throw in a bit of conflict from
her mother-in-law, Lila’s certainty this is just a hook-up, and you can begin
to see that Colton has his work cut out for him if he wants to be more than
Lila’s boy toy.
What
have you learned so far and what do you hope to learn?
Write the story. Write it however it occurs to you at first; just get it down. The editing process doesn’t tap the same part of your brain as the creative process, so tie a gag around your internal editor’s mouth and listen to your muse until you get that first draft done. The editor in your head and your muse should never be invited to the same party, much like two women who have both slept with your brother. Or two men who have both slept with you!
What’s
your current project and what’s coming next for you as an author?
My current project is a
contemporary M/F/M ménage romance set in Charleston, S.C. Since Charleston has
to be the single most conservative city in the U.S.,
trust me, a ménage there is going to provoke some conflict. Especially after my
muse decides whether this is really a M/M/F ménage. <grin>
Next for me as an author is my release with Rebel Ink Press, When a Soldier Cries, although I don’t yet have a release date. I buried my husband three days before the planes went through the Twin Towers. It was months, perhaps years, before I tuned in to the war in Iraq. Wanting to catch up, I did a lot of reading about the war and in the process, this story began to unfold in my head. It’s the story of two soldiers, a female Navy psychiatrist and a Special Ops Marine, and the sacrifices they’ve made, personally and professionally, to serve their country.
Next for me as an author is my release with Rebel Ink Press, When a Soldier Cries, although I don’t yet have a release date. I buried my husband three days before the planes went through the Twin Towers. It was months, perhaps years, before I tuned in to the war in Iraq. Wanting to catch up, I did a lot of reading about the war and in the process, this story began to unfold in my head. It’s the story of two soldiers, a female Navy psychiatrist and a Special Ops Marine, and the sacrifices they’ve made, personally and professionally, to serve their country.
Did you know the estimates on
veterans suffering from PTSD from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan run as high
as 300,000 returning soldiers? My heroine’s current assignment is to help those
soldiers. My hero’s MOS (military occupational specialty) is Special Ops, so
he’s called on to do the impossible on a routine basis—go behind enemy lines
and take out high priority government targets, protect people being targeted by
the enemy, and to wrest large areas of heavily-contested ground from the enemy
with only his small, highly-trained team. These two unsung heroes find each
other only to realize the coping mechanisms which allow them to do their jobs
without taking their souls are the very thing keeping them apart. Which of them
will make a move to tear down those walls?
Are your
family and friends supportive?
Hmm, supportive? Raising two kids alone
was never something I expected to do, and it seemed to me that my two looked at
each other across their father’s casket and whispered “I think we can take her
now.” So when I began to think of writing erotic romance, I can admit that in
part, I enjoyed the thought they’d find my new occupation horrifying, because I
owed them and you know what they say about payback. <grin>
Actually, my daughter is very supportive, but she won’t read any sex scene I write, because that would undermine her certainty that she was dropped off via stork.
Actually, my daughter is very supportive, but she won’t read any sex scene I write, because that would undermine her certainty that she was dropped off via stork.
What
other occupation do you have (or did have) in addition to writing? Or, in short, what’s your day job?
I’m your typical Gemini, meaning I’m easily bored and ready to take on new challenges. I’ve been a graphic artist, a wedding photographer, a retail sales manager, a door-to-door insurance sales person, a veterinary assistant, a paralegal and have owned my own antiques and refinishing business. Before you gasp, allow me to point out I’m over a half-century old, so I’m not exactly the flighty type. I started working at sixteen after school.
I’m your typical Gemini, meaning I’m easily bored and ready to take on new challenges. I’ve been a graphic artist, a wedding photographer, a retail sales manager, a door-to-door insurance sales person, a veterinary assistant, a paralegal and have owned my own antiques and refinishing business. Before you gasp, allow me to point out I’m over a half-century old, so I’m not exactly the flighty type. I started working at sixteen after school.
Tell us
one thing about yourself your readers and online friends probably don’t know.
In high school, I threw a fit to
get out of taking Home Ec (yes, I’m that old) and take Auto Mechanics instead.
I was the first female student in N.C. to enroll in auto shop, and it’s still
one of the most useful things I’ve ever done, alongside taking Logic in
college.
Share
one pet peeve.
When I read in my genre, I get
annoyed by character names so creative I cannot even begin to know how to
pronounce them. I’m so old I had regular phonics lessons in school, so I can
pronounce damn near everything. Jeez, Louise, can we get a few plain old Marys
or Janes?
Share
one guilty secret.
Do you mean like admitting I gave my husband a threesome for our tenth wedding anniversary and we enjoyed that so much, we kept them up for a long time afterwards?
Do you mean like admitting I gave my husband a threesome for our tenth wedding anniversary and we enjoyed that so much, we kept them up for a long time afterwards?
Soft
Sounds of Pleasure (blurb)
Colton wants a home run with Lila. The bases are loaded against him: one foul nephew, one ogre-in-law, and Lila's loyal heart won't let Colton pinch-hit for her late husband. With the whole town keeping score, it's Game On.
Colton wants a home run with Lila. The bases are loaded against him: one foul nephew, one ogre-in-law, and Lila's loyal heart won't let Colton pinch-hit for her late husband. With the whole town keeping score, it's Game On.
(excerpt)
Lila wasn't beautiful, exactly, but she had a smile that could light up the world. Over the years, he'd seen her wear her blond hair both long and short, and he had no preference, wishing he could bury his hands in her silky strands at any length. Her personality was another asset. Her dry sense of humor made him laugh. She always drove some version of the same small stick-shift Chevy truck. The color didn't matter, he figured, because she never seemed to wash them. She made her own money by restoring damaged furniture she freely admitted to rescuing from the local dump or picking up off the side of the road, selling her secondhand wares out of her garage. She'd even wanted a cast-off metal cabinet he'd loaded into his truck to haul off from the garage, claiming the rusted shelves inside were perfect for holding her supplies.
"It beats explaining to Pete why I need that hundredth pair of shoes," she'd told him with a shrug when he delivered the thing and asked why she bothered to do such a dirty job when she clearly had no need to work. "Now all he can complain about is the lack of space in the closet, so I'm saving up to have my own closet built and he can find something new to complain about." But she hadn't sounded too worried.
And she shouldn't have worried. All he had to do was take one look at Pete while he was looking at Lila, or talking about her, and Colton knew those two had been in love forever. The last time he'd seen them, maybe a year ago, they'd pulled into the garage driving a shiny new van, specially equipped to handle the electric wheelchair Pete rode in after a car accident had paralyzed him about three years back. The van needed a fuse, and Colton had installed a new one, then he carefully checked the electrical system just in case, unwilling to put Lila in the possible position of having a disabled vehicle with Pete, because of the wheelchair, unable to accept a ride from just anybody. The Walkers had agreed, and he'd watched Lila out of the corner of his eye the entire time, wondering if she still looked at her husband the same way now that he was paralyzed.
She had. Even though she had to sit down to look Pete in the eyes, the love between them had still been visible.
Making Pete Walker about the luckiest damn man on the planet as far as Colton was concerned, in spite of his accident. When he found the woman he wanted to settle down with, he was sure she'd have a lot in common with Lila. A decade had passed, yet he didn't want her any less than he had that first day.
He had to get things under control, so he shifted his stiff cock to a slightly more comfortable position and tried to focus on what he needed to ask Pete. He wrote his request on the back of a business card in case no one was home before slipping out of the truck.
The serenity of the setting caused him to leave the truck door slightly ajar rather than slamming it. The scent of fresh-mown grass hung in the warm April air, and the bright afternoon sun sparkled off the surface of the large fishing pond in the Walker's spacious backyard. A screen of cypress trees completely hid the house next door, and over two acres of neatly clipped grass separated the house from the quiet two-lane road running down the side of the property. Pete Walker's taste in land was every bit as good as his taste in women, Colton judged as he stepped off the driveway onto the steps leading around back.
The first thing he noticed was the wheelchair ramp built over the steps. That was new since the last time he'd towed a vehicle away from the Walker's. He realized he hadn't been to their back door since Pete's accident about three years back. The last car he'd towed from here had been their son Charlie's Jeep, and Lila had met him in the driveway that day. That had been almost two years back: the day after Charlie had pitched for the high school baseball team, winning the state championship, and then shocked the whole town by turning down his scholarship to the state university in favor of joining the Marines.
If possible, the sight of the ramp, the solid, sloping reminder of Pete's misfortune, made him feel worse about his stubbornly lingering chubby. But thoughts of his sad, silent nephew made him trudge to the top anyway, the guilt he felt over the lust he nurtured for Lila unable to trump his need to put a smile on that kid's face.
He was almost to the back door when he stopped dead in his tracks. His conscience began screaming for him to turn around. Shrieking at him, in fact, to get the hell off this deck and go back to his truck.
But his legs were suddenly as rigid as his dick.
He could hear the thousand tiny devils begin sharpening their blades.
Because his abruptly short-circuited brain was sending the message to his already primed cock that Lila Walker was lying in the sun on her very private deck, wearing nothing but an oversized pair of sunglasses and a coat of coconut-scented oil.
He might go straight to hell in a big ball of fire, but Colton couldn't help staring at her. If Pete himself had rolled out on the deck at this very moment, Colton still might not have been able to move. Not before taking in her full breasts, tipped in dark rose, their color something he'd wondered about for so long. Not before noting with approval the half-dollar size of her rosy areolas, his fingers clenching at the sight of the big, surprisingly lengthy tips. He let his gaze linger in the deep cleft between her breasts, a spot that would cuddle his cock even better than he'd always imagined. She probably thought her full breasts were too heavy, but Colton thought them perfect. He doubted even his large palm could completely capture one.
He took another look at her sexy belly button, noting with some dim part of his brain that it was still a repository for her sweat. A tiny white scar beneath the sexy indent hadn't been there the last time he'd laid eyes on her midriff.
Her hips might be slightly wider than they had been that day by the side of the road, and her belly was a bit rounder, but she looked even better now, he thought with approval. There was nothing to stop a man from really pounding out his lust on this particular body.
And, saving the best for last, since the devil was likely choosing Colton's permanent pain palace at this exact moment, he raked his gaze over her pussy. Her heels were at either edge of the wide chaise, giving him a glorious view of her feminine lips, which were edged in a deeper rose than even her nipples, like an orchid he'd seen in some flower shop window recently. And he was still going to have to wonder whether or not she was a natural blond, since her gorgeous, gleaming pussy was waxed as bare as the day she'd been born.
His fantasies hadn't done her justice. Not even close.
https://spsilverpublishing.com/product_book_info/coming-soon-c-2/products_id/839/
Facebook Fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eden-Connor/296019400430949
Twitter: @EdenConnor
Blog: http://edenconnorwrites.blogspot.com/
My thanks to Eden for coming over to share a little about herself and her novel - it's going on my TBR list!
Thank you for having me, Lee Ann ;-)
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