Anyway, to the matter at hand!
Here is my new book:
Is that not the best cover you've seen me have? It has to be, because many of my other covers range from nightmarish to an advert for bad photoshop. Thank God my publisher, Mischief, is now producing these marvellous wonders...have you seen the ones for Power Play, Make Me and Deep Desires? I could cry with happiness. Apparently, covers are very important to me.
But I digress, again. Here is the blurb:
Kit Connor has always led a safe, cautious life. But when her friend points out that her erotic writing lacks something, she decides to attend a Sexual Healing group to improve her knowledge. She expects to find the gritty underbelly of sex, and instead finds louche, laidback, sex-loving Dillon Holt.
He makes a suggestion to her: that he will tell tales of his sexual excess, and help her book get the realism it needs. She agrees, but hasn't the least idea of what she's getting into. Dillon doesn't have simple advice in mind … he has lessons to teach her. Lessons on everything she's never dared to experience, from kink to real passion.
Now Kit is never sure: is Dillon the addict, or is she just addicted to him?
Sounds good, right? And if it doesn't, maybe letting you know that the massive, sexy, lusty hero, Dillon, is based on this fine slab of man-meat:
You may have guessed as much, considering the feelings I expressed about Chris Evans not so long ago on this very blog. But if you didn't, now you know!
And if you're still not convinced, here is an excerpt, that lies encased within the delicious slice of man-shoulder on my lovely cover:
I know he’s behind me. It’s like his presence is pressing against the fabric of the universe, and I’m forced to notice it whether I want to or not. Plus . . . you know. I can also actually see him in the flat-black gaze of the shop windows across the street. He’s about ten paces back, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of the hoodie he’s put on.
I’ll admit: I kind of expected him to brave the elements in just that ridiculous T-shirt. But it makes him more human to see him with some layers on. He’s not some sexual superhero, swinging through the November-washed streets in just his undercrackers.
Even he has a line of normalcy drawn in the sand of his insides.
It’s just that this line includes following me – because come on, now. He totally is. I stop when I get to the window of a newsagent’s and pretend to be examining a sign for someone’s missing cat, just to see if he’ll stop too. And when he does, it couldn’t be more obvious that he’s only doing so because I did. He has to feign interest in the contents of a store that sells orthopaedic trusses, for God’s sake.
I almost want to shout back at him that he’d look great in a girdle.
But I refrain. Jokey comments about his gut-restraining needs will only encourage him – and after I did so well to evade him back at the hall. Out here, I’m never going to get away with declaring loudly that I need a wee. There’s no one here to frown at him for stopping me visiting the toilet.
He had to let me go, then. He doesn’t have to let me go now.
Unless this isn’t actually a thing – which could be the case. Maybe I’m just imagining him all hot on my trail, ready to take me down for the terrible crime of sex-addiction fakery.
‘Hey, Kit – wait up!’
Or maybe not.
I try walking faster, but to no avail. You can’t block out sound by moving your feet more rapidly – and even you could, he’ll soon be close enough for me to read his lips. Two of his strides make up seventeen of mine, and he makes short work of the distance between us. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if his speed and persistence mean something else.
Maybe he kills people for faking sex addiction. He’s the fabled Fake Sex Addiction Killer, and I’m about to be horribly offed in the doorway of a Burger King.
‘This is a really long way around to the bathroom,’ he says, which at least reassures me on the murdering front. If not the anything else front. He’s going to want to have a discussion, now, about that one word he whispered, and I am not at all prepared for it.
I didn’t bring my conversational shotgun.
‘Are the facilities not seven streets down? Oh, that’s pretty foolish of me. Well – I’m here now. Might as well keep going. Goodnight, Dillon!’
I say ‘Goodnight, Dillon’ far too hysterically. Even I know that, and I’m the person who never realises when I’m being hysterical. I just discover that Masterchef didn’t record and then hurl the remote control through the television.
‘Hey – you remembered my name.’
I don’t look at him when he speaks. Sensing the weight of those beautiful eyes on the side of my face is enough. I feel like I’m basking in the light and heat of some sun from a distant galaxy, where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.
‘I think anyone would remember your name.’
‘Huh. Really? Why’s that, then?’
Because you delivered a ten-page essay to the class: Why I Like Oral Sex, by Dillon Holt. Because you look like the picture they put under the word ‘memorable’ in the dictionary. Because of a million things, a billion things, all of which cannot be said by someone like me.
‘Because you went to a sexual healing group to brag,’ I say, finally – though I immediately regret it. It’s the only answer I had in my head that doesn’t feel true, and now I’ve slathered it all over him.
He’s going to nail me for it, I know.
And he does. He just does it with more gentleness than I expect. He actually sounds as light as air and like he’s half-laughing when he says:
‘Is that better or worse than going to a sexual healing group with a fake sex addiction?’
‘I didn’t fake anything.’
‘Oh, honey. Come on. Nuns could have told you that you were faking. I’ve heard more convincing tales of sexual excess from my elderly grandfather.’
Christ, I knew I shouldn’t have said that thing about the leather miniskirt. I bet true sexual adventurers haven’t worn leather miniskirts since 1982. And besides . . . he’s got to know what that would look like on me. I couldn’t land a fish in something that showed my thighs – never mind a man.
It’s no wonder he’s sceptical.
Though, lucky for me, he doesn’t continue this line of questioning. I’m already cracking under the pressure, and he’s barely begun his cross-examination. Thank God he changes the subject, to something even worse.
‘Did it really seem like I was bragging?’
I have to look at him then. That note of sincerity in his voice kind of makes me do it – but his expression doesn’t contradict what he’s saying. He’s almost wincing, with one thumbnail caught between his teeth. As though he truly didn’t realise how he was coming across. He just said what he was feeling – in the exact way he does now, while I’m all naked and unprepared.
‘Guess it did, huh?’ He shakes his head. ‘Really didn’t mean it that way. Just never revealed stuff like that before . . . kind of felt like I was talking about someone else’s life. But nope – that’s me. The guy who ran to a hospital wearing a cardboard box.’
He sounds rueful, now, and it makes me wonder: was he really aiming his amusement at the whole idea of sexual healing? Or was he laughing at himself, for being such a fool?
‘But enough about me. What about you? What made you fake being a sex addict?’
Shame, I think, but I can’t say that.
So it shocks me when he does it instead.
‘You embarrassed about how you really are?’
‘No.’
Yes.
‘You don’t have to be – there’s no crime in being a little shy. Is that why you went there in the first place? To maybe get you out of your own shell for a while?’
For a second I’m too stunned to speak. How does he get something like that? It isn’t even the actual reason, and yet somehow it feels more real than anything I tell him next. I make my voice strong and firm, and I go with the party line. But inside I’m still that fumbling fool who couldn’t even hug a man properly.
‘I’m doing research for the book,’ I say, and he buys it. Why wouldn’t he? I bought it, and I’m the one living this life. I believed it right up until the moment he called me out, and if possible I’m going to keep doing so.
I’m not timid and tentative and unable to look him in the eye.
I’m Kit Connor, sultry sex bomb. Who flushes red when he says:
‘A dirty book?’
‘Yes.’
‘About insane braggarts like me?’
‘No,’ I say, but there’s another version of that answer in my head.
Yes. Yes. I could devote an entire book to you. I could tell tales of your eyes for ever, and never stop writing lines about the laundry-sweet scent of your amazing skin. You, Dillon Holt, are all the things I’ve always wanted as inspiration, and never quite found in anything but fantasy land.
Thank God I don’t go with it. My head sounds like a drooling moron.
And finally, here are some buy links:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Addicted-Mischief-Books-ebook/dp/B009ULEJ3Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1359427774&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Addicted-Mischief-Books-ebook/dp/B009ULEJ3Y/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1359057199&sr=1-1&keywords=charlotte+stein+addicted
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/addicted-charlotte-stein/1113580280?ean=9780007491605
Hooray!
But wait, there's more. Because my other publisher decided that RIGHT NOW was the best time to release another title from me, and therefore, behold:
And okay, before you say anything...I actually love this cover too. Yes, I know it's cheesy. Yes, I know it looks like a yachting advert from 1985. But it does sum up the book very well. It's lighthearted and fun and it's set on a boat. Hooray!
I don't know why being set on a boat gets a hooray, however. It just does, so there.
Here is the blurb:
When Judy Myers is offered a relaxing vacation to get away from her latest heartbreak, she can’t say no. A cruise on her brother’s yacht sounds like heaven...until she realises her brother’s best friend has been invited along for the ride. Steven Stark is big, he’s loud, and he’s obviously not interested in the plump, plain little sister he used to tease unmercifully.
In fact, he’s still quite happy to tease her – until she turns the tables on him. Now Steven can’t seem to keep his thoughts, or his hands, to himself. And worse, Judy’s not sure she can resist the attraction she’s kept buried for so many years. Being trapped on a boat isn’t the best place to be, when you’re suddenly thrown a hunky curveball.
And an excerpt:
And naturally, it’s only after the words are out that I realise the mistake I’ve made. In fact, I realise several of the mistakes I’ve made. For a start, I just yelled while on a yacht, in the middle of the ocean. The silence out here is so total and dream-like that anything above a whisper sounds loud.
So this … This sounds really loud.
And then of course there’s the fact that I said all of this to Steven. Steven, who was my brother’s best man. Steven, who once fixed my scooter for me when I rode it right off the kerb and into my Dad’s car, at the age of 13. Steven, who’s now looking at me with a face like a deflated balloon.
Oh God, why is he looking at me with a face like a deflated balloon? Isn’t he meant to be massive and impervious to all attacks? I was certain he was. At the very least, I was certain that nothing I could ever say would make the slightest bit of difference to him. He’s like a glorious golden god, and I’m like …
Well.
I’m a flesh avalanche. I’m a nothing. I’ve long since accepted that the kid he used to pay attention to grew up into the kind of person he looks right through, now, and that he grew up into the kind of person that no one can look right through, ever. A mole would mysteriously find its eyeballs drawn to his presence.
He’s magnetic.
So why does he seem so horrified, now? Was the thing I said really so bad? I mean, true. I implied that he has gonorrhoea, and that no sane person would want to chase after him. But everyone in the world knows that this cannot be true. Just look at that mouth of his – I’ve seen Angelina Jolie look less pouty than that. And of course it’s even more pronounced, now, because he’s so deeply saddened by my terrible words.
Plus, he keeps slicking the thing with some kind of sunblock stuff. I could slip and slide across the surface of his lower lip no problems at all, and worse … I think I’d like it. Anyone would like it. His mouth suggests so many sinful, sensuous possibilities – as do those sleepy blue eyes of his.
The ones that rival the ocean, on any normal day.
But now best it, in this slightly wounded state. It’s like someone has pulled a skein of smoke over them, and for a second I’m actually hypnotised. I’m completely drawn in, to the point where I almost apologise. In fact, the words are on the tip of my tongue, when he finally breaks the silence.
With a laugh.
A big, booming, careless laugh, as though none of this matters at all. It was just me imagining that he had things like feelings, when really he wouldn’t know one if it punched him in the face. I don’t why I let myself feel guilty, if this is all he’s got to say about it.
‘Well, you’re probably right,’ he tells me, and that’s the end of that.
But fair warning...this book is VERY me. It's like me squared. If you're only sort of okay about my voice and my style, you will hate this book with the passion of a thousand burning suns, most likely. So run away! Run away fast!
If, however, you do tend to think I'm okay...you might like this one a bit. It's just a frothy, fun little thing that I did after the extreme angst of Deep Desires.
Oh, and here's the buy links, if you're still with me:
http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Ball-Xcite-Romance-ebook/dp/B00B4GUNA6/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1359427918&sr=1-1&keywords=curve+ball+charlotte+stein
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Curve-Ball-Xcite-Romance-ebook/dp/B00B4GUNA6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359428253&sr=8-1
There. All the telling of things is done!
