Cover Reveal!

Four of the Naughties are excited to share more about their group project... including the gorgeous covers!!!

You're all invited to the wedding of the season in Promise Harbor, Massachusetts.  But don't worry-- it won't require a plane ticket.  You can join the party from your own couch! 

The festivities start on March 19th and go through April 30th!  That's right-- four books, four authors, one wedding... well, kind of!


Jilted, book one, by Kelly Jamieson  (March 19th)

Bolted, book two, by Meg Benjamin (April 2nd)

Busted, book three, by Sydney Somers (April 16th)

Hitched, book four, by Erin Nicholas (April 30th)  
 

Be sure to Save the Date!  

This is one wedding you won't want to miss!

Foodie Friday: Holiday Parties

From Nine Naughty Novelists Erin Nicholas

It’s all about the KISSING!

There are many wonderful things about this time of year but, for me, one of the best is the tradition of mistletoe… because where there is mistletoe there is kissing!

In honor of this sweet tradition, I thought I’d share a couple of kissing recipes! :)

1. One hot guy
2. One shot (each) of peppermint breath spray
3. One sprig of mistletoe
4. Mix and enjoy!

Or there’s this kind of kissing recipe as well!

THE CHOCOLATE KISS

1 oz crème de cacao, white
1 oz. Frangelico
1 oz. vodka
1 Hershey’s kiss chocolate

Directions

Pour liquid ingredients into shaker filled with ice, shake, strain into Martini glass. Drop in Hershy's kiss and serve. (For added flair, ahead of time dip rims of chilled martini glasses into melted bittersweet chocolate and chill until set.)
And maybe even more festive this time of year:

PEPPERMINT KISSES

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/3 cup granulated  ugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 to 8 drops red food coloring
• 36 chocolate kisses

Directions

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and extracts. Combine flour and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Divide dough in half; tint one portion red. Divide each into four portions. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Shape each portion into a 9-in. log. Place one red log next to one white log; twist gently to create one swirled roll. Roll gently until roll becomes one log. Repeat with remaining dough.
Cut each log into nine slices; roll each into a ball. Place 1 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Flatten slightly with a glass.
Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes until edges are lightly browned. Press chocolate kisses into the center of warm cookies. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 3 dozen.

JUST A KISS

She’s unforgettable… and that’s exactly what got him into trouble the first time.

As a paramedic in the busiest ER in the city, Kevin Campbell knows there’s no such thing as a typical night—but this one definitely has them all beat.

His dad’s been stabbed with a fork, his mom’s been in a fight, and it’s all because of a younger half-brother he never knew existed. And if that’s not enough, everyone seems to agree that Kevin should take the boy in for the six months during his mom’s rehab. Oh, and the annulment he thought he got fourteen years ago? Never went through.

It’s really too bad he gave up drinking and swearing.

Eve Donnelly is shocked to see Kevin again, but not surprised they’re still married. After all, she was the one who refused to sign the annulment papers. Now that she’s got Kevin back in her life, nothing else matters. Not even her past fourteen less-than-virtuous years. In fact, the truth about her life without Kevin isn’t even worth bringing up. She hopes.

When Eve offers to help Kevin with his younger brother, a sweet, devout preacher’s daughter seems like an answered prayer. Besides, things can’t get more complicated. Can they?

Warning: Contains a bad boy gone good, a good girl who knows all about being bad, and lots of hot, sweet, so-this-is-how-married-couples-do-it sex.

 READ MORE HERE!


From Guest Author Mari Carr

Happy Holidays!

It’s hard to find anything wrong with a season that includes presents, days off from work and basically offers an “eat with wild abandon” get-out-of-jail-free card. My recipe for Party Rolls has become a “special event” staple. Let me put it this way…when I’m going to a party, having friends over for New Years, or there’s a big hockey game on, this is the one thing EVERYONE demands I make. Lucky for me (the world’s worst cook), they’re easy to prepare. I’ll warn you now—there is nothing LOW FAT about these suckers. But it’s the holidays! So go for it.

Oh…and I’d like to give a shout-out to my friend, Ann, who shared the recipe with me many, many moons ago.

PARTY ROLLS

1 pkg. small rolls
1 pkg. sliced boiled ham
1 pkg. Swiss cheese

Cut ham and cheese into squares to fit the size of the rolls. Split the rolls and add the ham and cheese. Place filled rolls in a small baking dish.

Combine:

1 stick melted butter
½ tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
1 tbsp. chopped onion
1 tbsp. poppy seeds
1 ½ tbsp. yellow mustard

Pour over rolls. Set aside until moisture is absorbed. Cover and bake for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. And then eat, eat, eat.

December is especially nice for me this year because in addition to spending it with my family and friends, I have a very special story release as well.

Fix you came out this week.

FIX YOU
Second Chances, Book 1

After too many years of secretly loving her best friend, Zoey realizes she’s been shortchanging herself. It’s time to take action. This New Year’s Eve heralds the year she’s going to tell Rob the truth. Even if he is on the road, reaching for musical stardom with his band.

Her plan is derailed when she discovers a lump in her breast—and it’s not “nothing to worry about”. How can she ask Rob to take a chance on love when her future is so uncertain?

READ MORE HERE!

Thursday 13: Essential Writing Tools

All of us have our own writing styles, but when it comes down to putting pen to paper (or words to screen) we rely on a pretty reliable set of writing tools:

1. Erin Nicholas: I have to have my Scentsy pot and a different scent for every book. 
2. Kate Davies: The Write or Die app helps me get out of edit mode and into "get it all on the page" mode. 
3. Kelly Jamieson: Synonym Finder
4. Meg Benjamin: My MacBook Air
5. PG Forte: Laptop, pen and paper (cause they're always there)
6. Skylar Kade: yWriter, an open-source writing software that has never steered me wrong! 
7. Juniper Bell: My laptop is about it. Microsoft Word.
8. Sydney Somers: Scrivener! Plot, organize and write all in one program.
9. Erin Nicholas: At some point in every book, a spiral notebook with the spiral on top not the side :) and a pink (of course) gel pen. Yes, I'm serious. Okay, purple pens work too :)
10. PG Forte and Juniper Bell: Google!
11. Skylar Kade: Pilot G2 Pro pens (they write sooo smoothly) and a spiral notebook.
12. Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest for commiserating, brainstorming, and author promotion.
13. The Nine Naughty Novelists Yahoo group--this is where all the fun behind-the-scenes work for the Nine happens. Yes, it is essential to writing!

What do you have to have when you write?

Tree Travails

Ever since our kids were little, getting a Christmas tree has been a big deal. We would meet my in-laws at a tree farm halfway between our towns, spend the morning tromping through the rows of evergreens looking for the perfect tree, and head back to their house for lunch and setting up their tree. Then we’d take ours home. It was a full day adventure, and something we’d look forward to every year.

This year, however, we moved to a new town an hour or so further away, and the joint tree hunt just wasn’t practical. But we still needed a tree. So last Sunday, the DH and I piled the two younger kids in the truck and set off on a tree buying adventure.

The first challenge? Finding a tree farm. Though we lived in this area years ago, we weren’t familiar with the current state of the local Christmas tree industry. A quick perusal of the internet found one not too far away, so we took the long, winding, backroads trek to the address on the website.

On first glance, it looked promising. There was a huge barn with tables of hot beverages and treats for after the tree hunt, a big carriage with bales of hay to sit on pulled by two draft horses in jingle bell tack, friendly proprietors offering suggestions for types of trees and saws to cut them down.

We jumped on the horse-drawn carriage and headed out into the tree farm, the driver singing Christmas carols and letting the kids ride on the front bench with him. About five minutes into the drive, he pulled the horses to a stop and announced we were in the Noble fir section, “on both sides of the trail here”. We could find a tree, cut it down, and he’d be back in fifteen minutes to pick us up again.

Off he went, bells jingling, and we looked around. It was a bare, empty field, ringed by old-growth evergreens, in both directions. There were no actual Christmas trees to be found.

“We’ve been marooned,” GPS announced, as we tromped over the hill. Ahead, there were clumps of trees here and there, no rhyme or reason to the set up, and none of them looked anything like the kind of tree we’d want to take home and decorate.

Where were the rows of trees, all about the same height? Where was the selection, the options? Where were the actual Christmas trees?

Frustrated, we decided not to wait for our ride to come back, and instead trudged back through the empty, blackberry-vine-choked fields to the barn. The proprietor had mentioned earlier that there was a field of Grand Pines on the other side of the farm, so we gave it one last shot.

All the trees were about waist-high.

I returned the saw, we piled back in the truck, and drove into town for lunch at the local grocery store/deli.

There were pre-cut trees outside the entrance. After lunch, we checked them out, found the perfect tree, bought it, and tossed it in the back of the truck. It took all of ten minutes.

It may not have been the fun, family-time activity we’d grown used to, but sometimes you just have to roll with it.

Guest Blogger Elisabeth Roseland - Tis the Season

’Tis the season. 

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice, Yule, Festivus—whatever you celebrate, now’s the time to party it up. There are many great things about this time of year. There are the decorations that add a little special something to our homes. There’s the food (oh, the FOOD) that overflows our plates and fills our stomachs to the point where all we’re good for is grunting in front of the tv while wearing elastic waistband pants. There’s the coming together of family and friends, whether to laugh and enjoy everyone’s company or to complain how Aunt Edna brought her hard-as-a-brick rum cake *again* and how the family still hates the guy Cousin Andrea married five years ago even though he seems to make her happy. 

But one of the best things about this time of the year? The gifts.
I enjoy giving people gifts. To watch their faces light up is the best feeling in the world. I’m one of those people who will remember in September that you said that you wanted to read the new best seller that everyone’s talking about, and then I’ll get that for you for Christmas. But to be honest, since I love to shop (hey, I said I was being honest here), I love this season because I can use it as an excuse to buy a nice gift…for myself. Because you know what? I don’t really need an iPad, but hey IT’S CHRISTMAS, AND I TOTALLY DESERVE IT. 

’Tis the season. 

In ADVERTISING FOR LOVE, book one of my Ebony Nights series, Greg uses the money he makes as an escort to buy a nice gift for himself—a culinary school education. Ever since he was a boy, he wanted to be a chef, but life got in the way. After graduating from college, losing his job as an investment banker, and becoming an escort for Ebony Nights, an all-male escort company, he decided that for his 30th birthday he was finally going to do something he always wanted to do. So in between seeing clients, he sautéed, pureed, and fricasseed his way to a culinary degree. 

But with the economy on shaky ground, is now the time to quit his lucrative job of heating up women’s nights? And is the passion that burns between Greg and his client Aisha real enough to convince her to take a chance on a man who has stoked the fires of half of the women in Chicago? 

ADVERTISING FOR LOVE releases today--December 11. 

Blurb
In the kitchen, in a tux—and out of it—he’s got the skills to crank up the heat.

Ebony Nights, Book 1

When Aisha Anderson hires a professional escort for her company’s gala, it’s not because she can’t get a date. Her fast-track career at Hansen Advertising doesn’t give her the time—and it’s the only way to avoid dancing with her creepy, inappropriate co-worker.

To her delight, Greg Williams plays the role of charming, attentive gentleman so well, she could almost believe the sparks between them are real. When he takes her home and demonstrates—with considerable sexual skill—that the heat is not her imagination, she can’t say no to his request for her number in lieu of payment.

Their hot night continues into a warm breakfast at Greg’s favorite back-street diner, where Aisha feels something she hasn’t felt for a long time. Part of a couple. 

Later, though, when she runs into a former client of his who seems eager to compare notes on his erotic bag of tricks, the sizzle begins to cool in shadows of doubt. Long-term could be a stretch for a man who’s dated half the women in Chicago.

Especially when there’s the possibility that demand for his services could take him away right when she needs him most… 

Product Warnings
This book contains a sexy black man with mad culinary skills, an ad exec with a hunger for something well-cut and lean, and an escort service that knows how to satisfy every woman’s appetites. 

ADVERTISING FOR LOVE is available at Samhain, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. 

Elisabeth Roseland spends her days dreaming up ways to throw sexy heroes and strong heroines together. Her characters explore the wonderful, agonizing, joyful, heartbreaking and complicated human experiences that are sex and love. She also hopes to inspire readers to grab the nearest consenting adult and do something fun. She lives in Chicago with her very own Happily Ever After. 

Check out her website: www.elisabethroseland.com
Connect on Twitter: @E_Roseland
Find her on Facebook: www.facebook.com/EbonyNights

Menage for the Holidays

 Detective Aldo Nash could almost hear his brain humming as it worked to categorize the myriad scents tingeing the cool night air: cedar and sea spray, dry asphalt, cooling car engine, and most potent of all, the warm, aroused flesh of the man Aldo had pinned beneath him.

Aldo slid practiced hands over the slim, partially clad form, and the man moaned softly in response, his whole body writhing instinctively closer as he arched into Aldo’s touch. Aldo pulled in another heady lungful and smiled in contentment. On nights like these, he purely loved his job.

Those are the opening lines of  Finders Keepers, my alternative world, sci-fi menage releasing this week from Loose Id. I know sci-fi and menage are probably not the first words that spring to mind when most people think Holiday Story, but that's how I like to describe the book that came to me in a dream.

I mean that literally, by the way. I woke up one morning with the entire premise clear in my head--including the characters' names, the first three chapters and the title. I didn't know how it would end, exactly, other than in the very vaguest of ways. It was a romance. I was pretty sure that meant it would have to have an HEA. With three characters, however, getting everybody there took a little more work than I's expected. To get to their happy-ever-after all three of them will have to admit to and overcome their feelings of guilt and grief, jealousy and despair, love and anger and loss.

While I tend to find each new release just as exciting as the first, I'm especially excited about this one. I hope you'll enjoy it too.

Sometimes finding what you want is the easy part.  

Caleb is a bionic soldier with little-to-no memory of his past. He's seeking the truth about himself and those missing memories.

Aldo's an undercover cop who just might have the answers to Caleb's questions. But if Caleb's the man Aldo thinks he is, how can he let him get away a second time?

Then there's Sally; she's an ER physician who used to be married to Aldo's late partner, Davis. Sally's not dealing with widowhood very well. In fact, it's getting harder, every day, just to find a reason to keep getting out of bed. If the truth about the men's shared past comes to light, she could lose them both. Along with her last, best reason to go on living.

This holiday season, chance will bring them together and give them an opportunity to help one another find what they each want most. But every gift comes with a price. And keeping what they've found once they've found it? Yeah, that's gonna be the hard part. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Christmas memories

 I like to start my shopping early but hiding presents for that long is a challenge. When my kids were smaller, there were a few years where I left all the presents in the trunk of my car. I'd go out at lunch time and buy things, but then I had to pick the kids up after work, and it was so hard to sneak things into the house because they were always with me! By December 24, I was driving around with a trunk full of loot. Even though I used to worry about my car getting stolen with all the gifts in it, or getting rear-ended and all the gifts damaged, I did it anyway. Then as the kids got older, there was the chance they'd open the trunk and see everything, especially when they started driving and borrowing my car. They weren't suspicious at all when I'd give them the keys and say, "Okay, but don't look in the trunk!" As if that would stop them.

I remember the year when I was a kid that I found all the Christmas presents hidden on a high shelf in the hall closet. Somehow I managed to find a time when my parents weren't around. I climbed on a chair and got those presents down and I peeked at every one of them. I was so excited and happy to know I was getting everything I wanted for Christmas! But on Christmas morning when I unwrapped all those presents already knowing what they were…it wasn't so much fun. I had to fake happiness so my parents wouldn't know I'd peeked, and it was horrible. I never did that again.

Now I hide presents in the house (I'm not saying where, in case any curious people are reading this). But my memory isn't as good as it used to be and since I start shopping early, I often forget where I hid things. There has been more than one Christmas morning when the presents are all opened and I'm looking around and saying "Oh dear. We seem to be missing something. Where the hell did I put it?" And there have been times I've found those hidden presents in July.

One year when my husband and I were first married, we were opening gifts first with his family and then with my family. My husband had bought me two gifts - one to open at each place. When I started unwrapping the present in front of his parents and his older brothers and their wives, I heard my husband mutter, "Oh shit." I looked up at him just as I pulled out a slinky little ivory lace teddie and held it up for everyone to see. "Wrong gift," he said, face red, as the rest of his family roared with laughter. His family is pretty straight-laced, and mine is…not J so he thought it would be better to open the sexy lingerie in front of my family…oops!

There have been some really difficult Christmases too. My father passed away when I was 18, on December 15. That was not a merry Christmas for us. To be honest, I don't remember very much about it - I think my memory has deliberately blocked out those awful memories.

Then there was the year my son was born - December 10. You'd think that would be a joyous occasion, but he was born 12 weeks premature. He weighed 3 pounds and couldn't breathe on his own and had every health problem a preemie can have. He spent Christmas in the NICU hooked up to machines and tubes. Christmas day was the first time I got to hold him, sitting in a rocking chair with a tiny oxygen mask held to his face.

The next Christmas was the year my husband lost his job. He'd been planning to start his own business for a long time, and that was really just the push he needed to do it, but being unemployed just before Christmas isn't great. But after the last year when my son was born and we were all worried about whether he'd even survive, being without a job really didn't seem like the end of the world when we were all together and healthy - and that's what really matters at Christmas.

Share some of your fav Christmas memories!