Seductive Studs – 31 August 2013

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Greetings, all!

It’s time for some Seductive Studs! This weekend, in honor of Labor Day here in the States, I’ve chosen a clip from my mini-collection, Working Trade. This is from The Eye of the Beholder:

Carlo took up a pencil and began to make a hurried outline of Fabrizio on the paper. I was amazed at how quickly the lines came together and the shape of the man emerged. After only a few moments, a rough image of Fabrizio had begun to form beneath Carlo’s skilled fingers.

“His body is exquisite,” Carlo whispered to me. “Look at how smoothly the lines flow together in his arms, at how the muscles at his waist stand out. It’s as if he is at his forge right now, a piece of iron before him waiting to be struck.”

Blacksmith-at-His-Forge

Blacksmith at His Forge | Le Nain Brothers

I looked at Fabrizio standing silently in the warm amber of the studio lights and pictured him in his shop surrounded by the smoke from the fires, translucent swirls of heat rising around his sunburned face. I imagined a thin bead of sweat running down his cheek and slipping along the muscles of his neck until it reached the hollow of his throat. I saw the muscles of his legs tensing and releasing as his hammer struck the glowing iron, sending showers of sparks into the air.

“Go to him,” Carlo said quietly. “Discover what it is that draws you to him.”

Thanks for stopping!

Be sure to check out the other Seductive Studs & Sirens here.

‘Til next time!

Colors of the Rainbow Blog Hop

 

Greetings, all, and welcome to the Colors of the Rainbow Blog Hop!

After considering what to write for today’s post, I decided that I wanted to do something different than just post an excerpt and buy link for my latest release Side Effects. I’m going to talk a little about a recurring setting in my stories—and its background, so I’m calling this:

Location, location, location

Side Effects is set in the small Iowa college town of Grandville. A number of my stories take place at Grandville College, and I attribute that to the fact that I attended a small, midwestern college myself—and enjoyed every year of it! Much more so than the time I spent at a large, urban university for my graduate work.

If you’ve read at least two of my Grandville stories, you may notice that the characters often have sex in at least one less-than-typical locale! For those who haven’t read any yet, here’s the evidence:

Summer Stock NEW 6x9

 

In Summer Stock, Jeff and Robert hook up in a storage room backstage of their Oklahoma! production;

 

C.C. Williams' The Pickup Game

 

Noah and Jerry (who have a cameo in Side Effects) get to know each other really well in the middle of the Life Drawing Lab in their story, The Pick Up Game;

 

steambath cover

Gus from All I Am For (appearing in Shane Allison’s Steambath anthology) explores a bathhouse;

Side Effects Cover

 

 

and, of course, in Side Effects, Max and Damien do more than study in the library!

 

So why do I like to use these types of locations? They’re often dirty, not necessarily that comfortable, and sometimes not all that private either! Well…

‘Cause they’re fun to write!

Not only can there be unusual props—a purple fainting couch for Robert and Jeff, or a wrought iron king-sized bed for Jerry and Noah—but also some other element to spice things up—the danger of discovery, for example. These are the things that make for a better than run-of-the-mill love scene.

Hopefully, they are fun to read, as well.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “That’s all well and good, but nobody really does that sort of thing.” Au contraire, mes amis! I’ve done the research! Okay, that’s what I’m calling it. 😉

While attending the above-mentioned college, I had two roommates and a narrow, single bed—the same situation my boyfriend was in. This lack of privacy forced some creativity in terms of where to have some fun—and we weren’t picky! The auditorium stage, a chemistry lecture hall, the roof of the library—just to name a few! All of them added a little something extra to our times together.

So, just as with real estate, an important element of romance is location, location, location!

C.C. Williams Giveaway

Leave a comment below with your most memorable location—personal or fictional—to be entered into a drawing for an ebook from my backlist. Be sure to include your valid email address as the winner will be notified by email following the end of the blog hop.

MFRW Giveaway

Free to everyone — No entry needed.

Download your favorite format of the exclusive Marketing for Romance Writers Rainbow Excerpts Book, with 60 pages of gay romance excerpts and samples from some of our authors. Right click on the links and select “Save Target As…”

Kindle  |  Nook / ePub  |  Adobe PDF

Enjoy the hop!

‘Til next time!

Lucky in Love Blog Hop

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Greetings, all! Welcome to my stop on the Lucky in Love Blog Hop, where we’re talking about being “lucky in love” and what that means.

There is a Persian proverb that says,

“Go and wake up your luck.”

and Sophocles wrote,

“Chance never helps those who do not help themselves.”

In other words, one’s “luck” is manufactured by oneself!

So being “lucky in love” must be about putting yourself out there and taking chances. “Faint hear ne’er won fair lad.” No romance ever comes from sitting alone at home hoping for love or being fearful and not pursuing romance when it does show up.

This concept—being open and taking risk—plays a big part in my cowboy/BDSM novelette, Busting the Greenhorn.

C.C. Williams Busting the GreenhornJake is on vacation, looking just to relax, when he meets Chet, who is a little more focused on romance. Chet pursues Jake, who initially resists.

Jake relents and, eventually, opens himself to some new experiences and finds something that he hadn’t expected—love.

Read a review here and an excerpt here.

Busting the Greenhorn is available at

My BookstoreAll Romance | Amazon | BN

Dozens of self-help guides advise “pursuing activities you enjoy in order to meet people with similar interests.” So here’s my question:

How would you like to (or did you) meet Mr. Right?

Leave your answer below to be entered into the drawings.

I’m giving away two prizes: 1) a $5 Amazon Gift Card and 2) a Lucky in Love shamrock magnet. The shamrock magnet from lefthandasylum.commagnet—which I think is just perfect for this event—is handmade by a local artist I met when I stopped at the Spring Wicca/pagan Festival last weekend. You can visit his website by clicking on the picture. (Unfortunately the magnet is only available to entries from the continental US.)

As well, all comments are entered for the Lucky in Love Blog Hop Grand Prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. You can enter over 200 times!

1st Grand Prize: A $100 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

2nd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

So be sure to answer the question and visit all the blogs listed here.

Good Luck and Happy Hopping!

‘Til next time!

Heartbreaker Blog Hop

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“Heartbreaker, dream maker, a love taker!”

(I know, I know, I know! I just couldn’t resist a Pat Benatar reference! Horribly cliche, no?)

But isn’t that what really attracts us to our heroes—both alpha and beta—is that they are all those things at once? They fulfill our fantasies, give us someone to love, while at the same time driving us to drink! (My guy JT does it all—in spades!)

Do our hero guys do it on purpose? Sometimes, yes! But sometimes they are just as confused and mixed up about life and love as all the regular guys—maybe even more so when it comes to loving another guy!

My favorite heartbreaker is Jeff from my story Summer Stock. Hot, sexy and confused as hell, he makes life a nightmare for Robert every time they have to work together.

Summer Stock NEW 6x9

Action-film star Jeff Woltors and Pulitzer-nominated director Robert Jamieson hooked up when they were in college. That fling ended badly and has colored their lives and love affairs for years.

Brought together during their alma mater’s annual summer theater festival, the two men reconnect, resurrecting those old feelings and straining a tenuous truce to its breaking point.

Can two men overcome past deceptions and mistakes to achieve what they’ve always wanted? Summer Stock brings drama and tension to center stage as Jeff and Robert try to resolve a conflict fifteen years in the making.

Summer Stock is available in the Bookstore, as well as Amazon, All Romance eBooks, Rainbow eBooks and Smashwords.

So, here’s my question:

What attracts you to a hero, and what just drives you crazy about him as well?

Leave your answer, along with your email address, below to win an eformat copy of Summer Stock. You’ll also be entered to win one of the Grand Prizes:

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $100 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

Be sure to visit all the bloggers here! That’s over 300 chances to win something!

Good Luck and get Hopping!

[UPDATE: A winner has been chosen and will be revealed once their prize is awarded.]

Unofficial Six Sentence Sunday

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Greetings, all!

For our initial foray post-6SS, I’ve decided to go with a snippet from a published piece, One Fond Kiss. Yesterday marked its one-year anniversary, so it seemed a good selection for today.

C.C. Williams One Fond Kiss

Ad rep Andrew MacMurray has come to Scotland in pursuit of a million-dollar publicity contract. Riding the train from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, Andrew encounters a local businessman with an unusual way of passing the time.

Scotsman Brian Stuart is an old hand at daily commuting. On his way home from a business trip Brian meets an attractive American tourist whom he persuades to join him in a game to idle away the hours of travel.

Little do the men realize they have more in common than just One Fond Kiss.

Brian rolled the coat into a ball and pressed it against the side of his seat near the door, commenting “I’m going to have a bit of a lie-down, if you dinnae mind.”

“Not at all, go ahead,” Andrew mumbled noncommittally, keeping his eyes glued to his reader which was obscuring the hard-on in his slacks.

Turning his back to Andrew, Brian swung his legs up onto the seat to lay with his knees drawn up and his ankles crossed; he faced away from Andrew with his head resting on the folded coat. When the Scotsman inhaled, his white dress shirt pulled taut across his broad shoulders, re­vealing the sweeping muscles of his back, the slow even breaths confirming his relaxation. The bent position of Brian’s legs caused the kilt’s hem to ride up past his knees, and the garment now lay halfway up his solid thighs.

Careful to make no noise, Andrew slid to the window and pressed himself into the corner of the compartment—from this angle he saw even more of what the Scotsman had to offer—he held his reader as if he was reading by the light from the window, but his eyes were glued to Brian’s butt.

Thanks for stopping and reading! Be sure to check out more of the new Unofficial Sixers here.

‘Til next time!

C.C. Williams Bookseller is live!

After much fiddling and fussing, my little book shop—C.C. Williams Bookseller—is live!

Now this shop is about making it easy to buy my stories without having to traipse off to Amazon or Smashwords or any of my other great retailers (where they are still and will continue to be available) and is very much the training wheels, version 1.0 setup… Which, of course, means that I’m not totally happy (can’t get the color scheme to work properly, don’t really like the layout options, yada, yada, yada). BUT I’m not going to let the perfect get in the way of the good—so I’m putting it out there and hoping that everyone doesn’t laugh too hard.

Payment is through PayPal. All the files download as ZIP files to keep them from opening as they download—just unzip to your preferred directory and you are good to go!

Version 2.0 (different software, etc.) is already in the works, as is planning expanded offerings—additional print and e-format items from other authors, audio books, etc.

Anyone who is interested in expanding their discoverability (which after all is the core of the sales game), please contact me here.

Otherwise… go shopping!

Hump Day Hook – 16 January 2013

Hump Day Hook

 

Greetings, all!

With the impending conclusion of Six Sentence Sunday, I’ve joined a couple of other blog hops and Hump Day Hook is the first to come along!

It’s a pretty simple idea: post a paragraph from a published work or work in progress, get and give comments from visitors and visit other authors.

I’ve decided to start by celebrating an anniversary of sorts. My gay erotic quickie, After  Hours, was pitched and contracted within a week in January, so that seems like a good place to start! Here we go!

“Coffee, tobacco or tea, BriteWite leaves your smile bright and white!” I delivered the tagline without retching and flashed my cover model smile.

“Thank you!” yelled the director. “We’ll call.”

Hopefully not looking skeptical, I thanked the panel and left the agency’s studio. Waiting for the elevator to wheeze up ten floors, I examined my reflection in the doors. Who could possibly outdo this—especially for a toothpaste ad? Blond curls framed a tan, all-American boy-next-door face with great teeth. What more could they want? Chiming its arrival, the elevator opened and I watched my face ripple as the doors receded. Sighing, I punched the lobby button and leaned back as the elevator shuddered downward.

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check out more hooks here.

After Hours appears in Shane Allison’s Brief Encounters and is available as a stand-alone e-story at All Romance eBooksAmazon, Rainbow eBooks and other fine etailers.

‘Til next time!