07

This Friday Freebies and Discounts round-up is a holy trinity of dark erotica, incredibly sexy lingerie, and high voltage. Definitely a few things to get you through the weekend if you’re not one of the lucky people attending the fabulous Eroticon 2014 in Bristol. (Yes, I’m jealous!)

 

Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

Dark Erotica

Image: courtesy of Cari Silverwood and Skye Warren.

It’s no secret that I am a huge (huge) fan of dark erotica, so I cannot shout loudly enough about Make Me, a brilliant collection of popular stories that’s been put together by some of the genre’s stand-out authors. C.J. Roberts, Annabel Joseph, Skye Warren, Cari Silverwood, Claire Thompson … the contributor list for this thing reads like a who’s who of the smut writing world.

You get twelve full-length novels for what you’d roughly pay for a single eBook (£1.85 if you’re in the U.K. or $3.58 if you’re in the U.S.) and the collection is comprised of titles that have already proven to be extremely popular with readers in their own right. Don’t believe me? Check out the ratings for the individual books on Amazon and Goodreads. Basically, you’re getting the good stuff. Non-con, dark smutty heaven.

The catch? This is a March-only deal so you need to download the Make Me collection (purchase links below) before the 31st. Go forth and find your mind’s dark alleyway! Continue reading

05

At Any Price (Gaming the System)Title: At Any Price (Gaming the System)
Author: Brenna Aubrey
Publisher: Silver Griffon Associates (13 January 2014)
ISBN: 9781940951010
Reviewer: Jane

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to work in the videogame industry. I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say, when At Any Price (Gaming the System) came to my attention earlier in the week via a link in this post by Skye Warren, I was immediately intrigued. My mind began to whir. Was the heroine going to get ‘serviced’ next to the servers? Would the hero decide to ‘review her build’ during the daily Scrum meeting? In my experience, game dev. is a whole load of (stressful) fun, but calling it sexy would be … a stretch, to say the least. Unless you count listening to hundreds of emote .wav files to make sure they don’t sound unintentionally orgasmic, getting shot (repeatedly) with Nerf guns when you tell the dev. team they need to fix a bug the night before manufacturer submission, asking the rigger to make a character’s boobs smaller, and informing the lead artist that the creature he’s spent the last few days concepting needs to look ‘less penis-like’.

However, it turns out that the videogame backdrop for At Any Price (the first in a series of three books by author Brenna Aubrey) is more peripheral than integral, despite the references to patches, servers and avatars. It’s true that Adam, the hero, can code like a god (apparently, he’s the Zeus of C++) but it’s his addiction to his mobile and laptop, rather than his association with MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing) game development, that ultimately define him in Ms Aubrey’s story. Continue reading

03

Hello? Anyone there?

Like Lazarus rising from the dead (although granted, in this case, the resurrection has taken a lot longer than four days), I’m finally (finally!) back on the laptop and twitching the florals. Woot! It’s been pretty damn frustrating not being able to blog and ramble as normal but I suspect it’s been far more so for those of you who’ve continued to visit Chintz over the past two-and-a-half months in the hope of finding a new post. So inappropriate hugs and kisses to everyone who’s stuck with me and offered their support as I’ve moved from one side of the world to the other; it’s been a long slog but at long last I have a reliable Internet connection and an actual house to live in. Largess.

I’ve decided to kick off my new (albeit slightly delayed) blogging year with an Alert Me. Given that I’ve been offline so much recently, it feels like there are about a billion news stories and articles that have passed me by, so in a lot of ways this round-up is as much for me as it is for you. Enjoy.

 

In Which I Explain Why I Turned Down a Three-book New York Print Deal to Self-publish
Source: Brenna Aubrey (via One Handed Writers)

At Any Price (Gaming the System)This piece by Brenna Aubrey makes for fascinating reading. If you’re a self-published or aspiring author, then I strongly encourage you to swing by her Website and cast a beady eye over it. Not least because it gives an excellent breakdown of some key contractual clauses that writers will come across when presented with book deals drawn up by traditional publishers. Pay careful attention, people, to the Non Compete clause. This is a bloody important bit of legal jargon. And can I add that any new author who has the guts and strength of character to turn down a six-figure deal in order to stay true to her own personal writing goals and aspirations has my undying admiration. On the strength of this post of Brenna’s, I’ve now downloaded the book in question, At Any Price (Gaming The System). I’ll let you know how I get on with it; stick figures may be on the horizon. Continue reading