Wikipedia’s short definition of an Incubus is:

An incubus (nominal form constructed from the Latin verb, incubo, incubare, or “to lie upon”) is a demon in male form who, according to a number of mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleepers, especially women, in order to have intercourse with them. Its female counterpart is the succubus. An incubus may pursue sexual relations with a woman in order to father a child, as in the legend of Merlin. Religious tradition holds that repeated intercourse with an incubus or succubus may result in the deterioration of health, or even death.

That makes Incubus very interesting.  Of course, it also makes them even more attractive to fiction writers than your every-day demons.  Demons, that I profiled in the last post of this series, had over 500 search results at Amazon.

Incubus and Succubus have over 450 each.

It’s hard to resist a demon that has to have sex in order to survive.  Most fictional versions that I have read or seen in contemporary popular fiction, though, have dispensed with the idea of the victim being asleep at the time.  Most victims are awake, aware and often fully cooperative.

One of the more interesting versions of the incubus/succubus retellings I’ve seen lately is the Canadian-made series, Lost Girl, featuring Anna Silk and Kristen Holden-Ried (The Tudors).  Silk is a succubus, and fighting to maintain her independence in the middle of a fae war.  My jaw sagged in the middle of a recent episode when she found solace after being dumped by a guy by indulging in an MFF menage that was filmed all the way up to everyone taking off their clothes, kissing and caressing each other before the scene ended…  I guess Showcase can give HBO a run for its money.

Lost Girl just received funding and started filming its third season.

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Demons once haunted the pages of religious texts and the odd horror movie, and that was it.  They were welded to religion and faith as much as angels were.  It didn’t matter what religion – demons appear in some shape or form in every major religion in the world.

But even though their roots can’t be denied, the religious connotations are loosening as demons — and angels — are fast becoming the new sexy in romances.

Curiously, demons aren’t all black and nasty.

Wikipedia says of the ancient Greeks treatment of Demons: “The Greek term does not have any connotations of evil or malevolence…it should be duly noted that the term referred only to a spiritual force, not a malevolent supernatural being,” and of demons in general that “Many of the demons in literature were once fallen angels”, which implies that redemption is possible?

Given Romanceland’s fascination with bad boy heroes, its easy to see why they’re drawn towards demons in paranormal romances.  They’re bad personified…and they could be good, because they used to be.

When I searched for romances that feature demons, I found over 500 of them on Amazon.  So I’m not going to list them individually here. :)  Instead, click here to jump to the Amazon search page to browse through the search results for yourself.  Demons are popular!

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I’ve tweaked the layout and added more titles to the still growing list of recommended MMF romances.

This will be an on-going project, of course.  There’s new titles hitting the shelves every day — probably more than ever now, thanks to Fifty Shades of Grey.  And no, I’m not being facetious.  If you’d like to see me witheringly ironic, point me toward the growing number of “literary” blogs that are critiquing Fifty and making remarks about the sex in the story along the lines of how new a concept it is to put BDSM inside a romance for mainstream readers.  That makes my teeth gnash…

I’m starting to wonder now if this list of MMF romance titles is a project I really should have started at all.  I underestimated the size and effort involved.  But now I have started, I won’t ditch it –  there’s enough traffic blips on the list to make me think it’s of use to readers.

But…I don’t mind help!  If you know of any 4 or 5 star rated MMF romance (and they really do have to be MMF – MFM doesn’t cut it), do let me know!  I’m still working my way through Amazon and Goodreads, so it’ll be a good long while before I catch up on the backlists yet.  However, if there’s a book you would like to see on the list now rather than later, speak up!

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It’s been a while, so I’m very pleased to have a guest for you to chat with.  Naomi Bellina write paranormal — good hot stuff, too.

She’ll be here on April 20th, and she’s been kind enough to offer up one e-copy of any one of her backlist as a prize for visitors who leave a comment.

So don’t forget to stop off on the twentieth and say g’day.

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The winner of the copy of Bannockburn Binding – drawn by random number generator — was Ashley.  Congratulations!  She received a PDF copy of the book.

Thank you to everyone who entered.  It was fun chatting with some of you.

There’s still a chance to win more goodies and prizes as the birthday party celebrations are still happening over at Reading Romances.

Cheers,

Tracy

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I do love a bad boy, and Roman Xerus is currently stirring up all sorts of mischief in Blood Stone.  I’m nearly 150 pages in, and the story is just settling into the guts and heart of it…I think it’s going to be another long one.

I would possibly be a mite further along if it hadn’t been for my bloody son…and my big mouth.

Once upon I used to be a committee member of the Sherlock Holmes society.  I took the stuff that seriously, yes.  And yes, it was also a good excuse to get together a couple of times a year, dress up in late Victorian gear, and drink champagne, while we bashed croquet balls around a cricket oval.

This photo is from quite a few years ago, and my son (the second shortest in the photo) now towers over everyone standing in it.

Around the time this photo was taken, I started writing a Sherlock Holmes book that was eventually published…The Chronicles of the Lost Years was successful enough that the publishers wanted a sequel, and the next year, The Case of the Reluctant Agent was published.  By this time I was living in Canada, and both these books were published by a small press in Winnipeg, Manitoba.  Unfortunately, the second book was released the same week as a six week Canada Post strike began…and the book died on the vine.  This is a fate that simply couldn’t happen to ebooks these days, but this was a trade paperback, and none of my promotion efforts were worth spit, if the books weren’t on the bookstore shelves.

But this isn’t a tale of woe.  I’m simply pointing out that Sherlock Holmes and I go back a long way.  We’ve been intimate, he and I, on more than one occassion.

I’ve waxed eloquent on the two Sherlock Holmes movies staring Robert Downey Jnr. (or have I?  Did I ever get around to raving about the sequel, yet?).

About the same time that the first Downey Jnr. movie came out, I also heard the BBC were bringing out a series called, simply, Sherlock.  They were updating Sherlock Holmes, planting him and Watson firmly in twenty-first century Baker Street, and giving his character some appropriate spring cleaning.

Well…  You can imagine that that sort of tweaking and fiddling went over like a lead balloon with me.

Then I saw images of the actor playing Holmes and that did it.  Benedict Cumberbatch looked impossibly young and clean cut.  Almost twinkling in the eyes.  There was no character in his face, no hint of the dark monsters Holmes carried in his psyche, or the brilliant mind at work.  I was frankly offended.

Besides, I was having my mad passionate affair with the movie franchise and didn’t want to be distracted.

So I managed to shovel the knowledge about the series to the back of my mind and forget it.

Then I made the mistake of mentioning the series to my son (the tall one).  He’s always been curious about Holmes because of my raving obsession interest.  My big mouth…

He acquired both the first and second season of Sherlock (they’re oddly constructed seasons – only three episodes per season, each 90 minutes long).  And he told me his mistake was that he started watching Season 1 Episode 1 at nine at night.  At around 3 a.m. he came up for air, staggered off to bed, moved through the day like an automaton, until he could get back to his computer and watch the rest…which he finished that night, before falling into bed and almost sleeping around the clock — the next day was his day off.  Lucky timing.  He got up on the evening of his day off and started watching them all over again.

Wow.

He started telling me little bits and peices about the show, but I had just seen Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and was immersed in the joy of the sequel movie and didn’t want to be interested in the TV show with the unlikely lead.

But little by little my son’s tidbits started to register.  About how psychotic Moriarty was.  About how anti-social Holmes really was…something a lot of directors seem to pull their punches on — perhaps they’re afraid they’ll offend audiences?  And the one that finally got me:  About how truly wicked and on-edge Irene Adler was.

They didn’t turn Adler into a simple “love interest”?  At last!

The coat. Sigh.

So with some huge reservations, I sat down to watch the first episode, “A Study In Pink.”  (The original Conan Doyle story was “A Study in Scarlet“).

Mark bailed on the show mentally about forty minutes in even though he impatiently hung in there for the entire episode.  He won’t watch another one, I know.  He couldn’t stand how rude Holmes was.  It made him squirm.  But Mark is the sort of guy that can talk to anyone and have them chatting away like he’s their best friend inside five minutes.  So Holmes is a character that he finds hard to understand or even watch.

I tried hard to dislike the sweet young thing playing Holmes.  I really did.

But while he’s certainly young, that’s about his only fault.  Cumberbatch actually is six foot two inches tall – Sherlock Holmes’ height — unlike other actors who have played him.  And he’s slender…with wide shoulders.  Holmes’ dimensions.  And, the one that got me:  He’s a baritone.  So he gets to say the most outrageous things in a deep, precisely modulated voice, with a clipped, deliberate pronounciation that makes it sound so much more cutting.    For instance:  “I dislike being outnumbered. It makes for too much stupid in the room.”

For most of the series, he wears an overcoat and scarf, the coat with the collar turned up, that makes him look…well, edible.  It’s a look that harkens back to the original Holmes from illustrations in The Strand magazine, and later in the series, there’s an homage to those illustrations when Sherlock ends up wearing a deerstalker cap to go with the look.

But I was completely and utterly sold on the series when, toward the end of the first episode, Holmes is put under intense pressure by the police, who are searching 221B for his drug stash.  He’s trying to logically argue his way out of it, and as he hasn’t made a lot of friends on the policeforce because he keeps showing them up (one of the detectives calls him “the Freak”), they’re not giving him much airtime, and are screaming back at him.

Finally, he turns to the detective he likes the least, who has just called him a psychopath for the third or fourth time, and says disdainfully in his deep voice:  “I’m not a psychopath, I’m a highly functioning sociopath. Do your research.”

If you’d like a small taste of this Sherlock, there’s a clip on YouTube from the first episode, when Holmes and Watson first meet.  It encapsulates everything about Holmes in one neat scene.

I didn’t get to watch the entire two seasons in one sitting — I had to go to work, and other stuff got in the way.  But I kept thinking about that episode, on and off, for the next week or so, and I was twitching to watch more.

Finally, I found time to myself (rare), and sat down to watch the next episode…and didn’t get up again until the entire two seasons were done.   It was very late…or very early, depending on your perspective, by the time I got to bed.  I didn’t sleep much, anyway.

Wow…oh wow.

Episode 1 from Season 2 is the infamous Irene Adler one.  I say infamous, because there was an uproar when it was first aired in England.  Holmes first meets Irene Adler when she strolls into her living room wearing nothing but high heels and a smile.  But I will be talking about “A Scandal in Belgravia” for my next Pulse Pause post, as that’s the reason I haven’t written nearly as much as I should have on Blood Stone for the last three days…

Tracy, the smitten.

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Reading Romances is celebrating their birthday with a blog hop/giveaway, and one of those stops is right here.  A copy of my MMF paranormal time travel romance Bannockburn Binding is up for grabs.  All you have to do is email me and tell me the full names of the heroes and heroines.

Contest closes at Midnight EST on March 28th, and the winner will be announced on March 29th, the birthday of Reading Romances.

Don’t forget to also check out all the other blog hop giveaway sites, and their contests, too.

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As I’m quietly and steadily working my way through Blood Stone, and the weekend started out with an empty email in-tray, and nothing moving on Facebook or anywhere else, I thought this was going to be one of those bulletins where I would have nothing to report, except for progress.

But Sunday, which is usually the day when everything on the Internet falls quieter than the grave, suddenly got busy.

And, I’ve had a small flurry of reader emails with questions about future books that I thought I would answer here, as well as the private answers I gave, in case others were wondering the same thing.

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Bannockburn Binding was nominated for Book Of The Year 2011 by The Romance Reader.  It just manages to scrape in for this honour because it was released on December 13 last year, so it was a great surprise — especially as the book is indie-published.  A nice hats-off.

Now, though, the winner is selected by reader votes.  I’m always reluctant to trawl for reader votes.  There’s so many polls and reader-vote elections out there, and in my category alone there are about twenty books, each with their individual author possibly hounding readers for votes!  So…I’m not begging you to vote.  However, if you have read Bannockburn Binding and really feel you would like to vote for it, you can click here, then scroll down to the erotic paranormal category (about half-way down the page).  Bannockburn Binding is the second book is the category.

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The Royal Talisman received a very nice 4 Star review from Love Romance Passion.

The review itself was short on detail about why the reviewer liked the book so much, but she did like the special features a lot, which was nice.  She also gave Dar Albert, the cover artist, a lovely thumbs up, too.

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From the mailbox:

A reader was anxiously asking if there will be any more books after Byzantine Heartbreak, and another reader/reviewer wants to see Brenden’s story…and what are the release dates.

Yes, there will most definitely be more books in the series.  At this point in time I can’t say how many more, but this is not a simple trilogy, by any means.  I consider the series to be open-ended with ambitious, complex story-lines and character arcs.

Look at the cover montage for the series.  There’s two way to do that:  Place each book cover for the series side by side to build up the montage that way.  Or “cheat” and jump to the series information page to see the full montage spread in one view.  Apart from being awed by Dar Albert’s artistic talents, you’ll also notice there’s a lot of room for a lot more covers on that montage.  I planned it that way. :)

Release Dates

As for release dates…well, that’s one of the joys — and pitfalls — of indie publishing.  The advantages, especially to you the reader, is that I can release these books as fast as I can write and edit them, plus or minus a week or two for formatting and for Dar Albert to build covers (and she’s very fast).   The down side is that it does take time to edit, format and upload to all the various retail sites, and those sites won’t hold or delay a release, nor will they guarantee exactly how long it takes to build a sales page for a book.  So there is no way to predict, for example, the exact date and time a book will appear on the Amazon site, even though I know exactly when I upload it to Amazon.  That part of it is out of my control.  The same applies for all the retail sites — Barnes & Noble, etc.

Therefore, all I can say in regard to a release date for future books in the series is that they will be as soon as I’ve written the books — and I’m a pretty fast writer — and that your best best is to either sign up for my newsletter or sign up for the email version of my RSS feed, so it is delivered to your email in-box.  That way, you’ll get an alert about the release of any books, and won’t miss out.

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I’ve updated the Recommended MMF Romances list.

I’ve added some more titles, and I rearranged the list into sub-genre groups.

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A reader asked what happened to the Kiss Across Time series, and Kiss Across Chains, the third book in that series, which up and disappeared.

The Time-Crossed Love series was first released under the Teal Ceagh pen name with Ellora’s Cave.  It’s one of my favourite series of all time, and I love and adore Brody and Veris and their extreme alpha-male outlook on life and time.  I was never so happy as I was when I was prompted into writing Kiss Across Swords by readers and reviewers who belly-ached politely asked for more about their histories and…well, just more of them.

I have the third book of the series, Kiss Across Chains, half-written, and ideas for six more in the series.  Like Beloved Bloody Time, this is not going to be a simple trilogy.

But, the first two books of the series remain with Ellora’s Cave for now.  I am working to have the rights returned to me, but until I do, I won’t release the third book in the series.  To do so would only further cement the first two books where they currently sit, and there are things I want to do with the first two books before I release the third (including issue them with uniform covers, expand the first book to make it a longer book, and more.)

So for now, this series must wait in the wings.

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“I wish I could join a board or something and review your books, they are that great.”

There’s two parts to this:  Reviews and discussion boards.

Reviews. 

There are any number of places you can leave a reader review about my books, if you feel moved to do so.  I encourage you like crazy to do this.

As more and more indie authors start publishing more and more books, one of the few ways readers will be able to figure out which are the good books and which are the duds are through other readers’ reviews — and there will be more and more duds:  It’s part of the price we pay for the flood of cheap, great and really interesting reads on the market.

Your review doesn’t have to be perfect prose.  Just a paragraph or two of simple, clear English saying what you thought about the book, and why you did (or didn’t) enjoy it — what made it work for you?  Keep it impersonal (no attacks on the author themselves), and rate the book, and you’re done.

The absolute best place to leave your review is Amazon.  Even if you didn’t buy your book there.  That’s because huge numbers of people research about what book they want to buy next on Amazon, and then they sometimes buy the book elsewhere because they want a different format, or can buy it cheaper elsewhere, or for other reasons.  But they’ll research on Amazon first, because the information about individual books is so thorough and complete.

So you’ll be doing me all sorts of favours by leaving your review about my book on Amazon.

Discussion Boards

Amazon to the rescue again.  Did you know that every single book on Amazon has its own unique discussion board?

If you scroll down to where the general discussion boards start, way down the bottom of the book’s page, just above those board subject lines, there is a live link to the book’s discussion page.  Most of the time (well, all of the time, for my books!  LOL!) the discussion is empty.  But if you want to start a discussion group for a book (anyone’s book), or join it, you’ll find the link to the book’s discussion group right there.  Click on it, and dive in.

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The biggest news of the weekend, and the last to arrive in my in-box, was the brand new cover for Delly’s Last Night.  The cover, another Dar Albert spectacular, is mind-blowing.  I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to double-click on the covers here on the site, and look at them when they’re at full size or better.  It’s worth it.  Then you really get to appreciate the full stunning detail.  They’re mind-bogglingly beautiful.  And the amazing thing is, Dar builds these covers from scratch.  She creates them out of nothing.  She doesn’t use stock photos except in the background sometimes, when I insist on historical accuracy, or well-known buildings.

Check out the cover for Delly’s Last Night, and click on it to see it at full size.

I stayed up late on Sunday night and formatted the book for release, so now you can buy it, too.  :)

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I’ve got a pain behind my eyes and my shoulders are hunched as I type this.  I’ve spent all weekend — all of it — doing my taxes and filing.  Because last year was such a horrid year, I didn’t keep up with my bookkeeping at all.  So I paid for it now it’s tax season.  I had to give up one of my precious long weekends (I work a compressed work week and get every third Friday off), and instead of working on the current manuscript, Blood Stone, I got to write the latest installment of Tracy’s ongoing saga with the Canadian Revenue Agency.  Oh.  Joy.

But it is done.  Fini.  

And tomorrow when I step on the #63 bus to go to work, I can settled back into Blood Stone with a clear conscience for one more year.

The book is finally moving along.  I picked up the traces I spoke about last week, brushed off the outline and tweaked it here and there to put more spin and emotional juice into it, and started writing.  Unlike last year when I dithered and procrastinated my way through the first three chapters, unable to really commit myself to the book, I’ve dashed off another two chapters without trying too hard.  So whatever was stopping me from writing the book late last year has gone.  I think getting another four books published successfully has helped enormously with that.  So did getting the day job and putting my life into some semblance of order. :)  Then again, maybe it was just 2011, which as a year in general was a vintage for general suckiness and bad events.

Here’s some snippets to whet your appetite.

“Why all the anger, Roman?” he asked softly.  “I did what we agreed.  I stayed away.  You’re as big a surprise to me as I am to you, today.”

Roman’s eyes narrowed.  Thoughtful, or suspicious.  Garrett knew that look of old, and it gave him a strange little jerk, low down in his abdomen.

“I’m not here for you,” Garrett stressed.

Roman’s jaw rippled.  “Then what the fuck are you doing with Kate?  You’re jerking her around.”

Garrett sighed.  “I can’t say.”

Roman half laughed, half snorted in disbelief.  “Since when could you not tell me anything?

Garrett grimaced.  “I can’t tell you this.”

The humour in Roman’s eyes faded.  “What are you into?” he breathed.

Anger touched him.  Garrett clenched his jaw.  “You know, you can’t just rock back into town after a hundred and seventy-nine years and expect to pick up where you left off.  Things change, Roman.  Times change.”

“You haven’t,” Roman said flatly.  “You might be wearing Armani, but you’re still fiery Calum Micheil Garrett of the mighty Bruce clan, and even now your hand is resting next to the hilt of your broadsword, because you’re on the defensive.”

Garrett dropped his right hand down so it was hanging fully extended, annoyed that Roman had noticed the old instinct.  Of course Roman would.  He’d lived through those times, too.

Roman gave a small, almost silent laugh in reaction.

“I don’t suppose you’re about to tell me why you’re hanging about the lovely Ms. Lindenstream, then?” Garrett challenged Roman.  He winced.  His brogue had emerged thicker than he normally allowed.  Roman was pushing his buttons, unravelling his discipline.

Roman’s eyes narrowed.  “Hey, I didn’t just rock up here at all.  I was already here.  This is my town, Calum.  You’re the invader.”

“I take that as a ‘no,’ then.”

“I’d do that,” Roman replied evenly.  He put the heavy sunglasses back on and picked up his jacket.  “You’re not going to back away from Kate, are you?”  His tone made it not a question.

“I can’t, Roman,” Garrett replied truthfully.

“I can’t give you free rein.  It wouldn’t look right, even if I wanted to.”

Garrett sighed, as potential meanings and implications occurred to him.  “Is she…important to you, Roman?”

The protective sunglasses were hiding Roman’s eyes from Garrett, and his eyes were one way Garrett most often could spot the real truth behind Roman’s layers of protective shielding.  So Garrett knew he was about to be handed either a flat-out lie or a prevarication.

Roman glanced away, toward the roof access door.

Escape, Garrett realized.

“I guess you’ll just have to figure that out along with my name for this century,” Roman said, hoisting the jacket over his forearm.

And for fans of Blood Knot, some old friends:

Garrett shook his head as Sebastian took another enormous mouthful, and looked at the man sitting to Sebastian’s left.  Nathanial’s appearance had changed since Garrett had met up with him in Poland, just over a year ago.  The long hair was now short and business-like.  There were streak of very pale blond through it that might be mistaken for grey in the right light.  He wore glasses that seemed to go along with the short hair and the very sincere-looking business suit he had on.  But the glasses did nothing to hide Nathanial’s eyes, which had always drawn one’s gaze.  Now, with his hair cut short and the glasses drawing attention to them, Nial’s eyes seemed to blaze with light and brightness.  They were the blue of the Pacific ocean, and as deep.

“You should have done something about your eyes while you were changing identities,” Garrett murmured.

Nial’s mouth lifted at the corner.  “I wasn’t allowed to.”

Sebastian snorted, and took another spoonful of icecream.  “Neither was I,” he said around his mouthful.

Garrett suppressed his first reaction.  That either of them would let a human dictate how they arrange something as basic, as important, as their current identities, seemed outrageous.

Nial shrugged.  “I intend to make it unnecessary for any of us to have to worry about this sort of trivia in the future, Garrett.  If my wife wants me to keep my eyes the same, it is a small matter, now.  It is not the life or death thing it once was.”

BLOOD STONE  Copyright © TRACY COOPER-POSEY, 2012  All Rights Reserved.

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The book tour for Bannockburn Binding has finished, and all the posts have been loaded up on the site as articles, for your reading pleasure.  I’ve also linked them to the Beloved Bloody Time series page, and each of the books, if appropriate.

Would You Wait Six Years For A Kiss?

Why Time Travel Romances Wouldn’t Work Outside Romance Novels

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Vampires In The Future – Natural Space Travellers?

Don’t Like Apple? Switch to DOS and Become a Vampire

What Would You Do To Gain Your Own Psi Talent?

An Innocent Burn With A Bloody History

Time travel as tourism…where would you go?

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