L.V. Lewis's Blog, page 33

As I promised readers, here is another excerpt from “Exit Strategy” Book Two of The Ghetto Girl Romance Quadrilogy, but first I want to give you some book release news:

I’ve shared with some of you that I suffered a fall on my job at the end of January and injured my right (dominant) hand and left shoulder. Together with some knee scrapes and elbow contusions, I was a hot mess for a minute. I visited my Workers Comp doctor today and she tells me that I’ll be undergoing physical therapy so I can get my full range of motion back beginning in about a week.

What this means for book two is that it might be late. I was in the middle of doing some major rewrites to get it completed (the original told from only Keisha’s POV, was being re-written to include Tristan’s POV), but I have fallen behind. I am currently, and will be, working hard to get it to you as closely to the promised publish date as possible. However, once I’m done, I’ll have to get it to my editor, and then my formatter, so please, bear with me

In the meantime, Book One is, as I write this, being prepped to go onto Nook, Kobo, iBooks, Smashwords, All Romance eBooks and the whole gamut of formatting venues. Please tell your friends with other platforms they can now read from the comfort of their own devices in the next couple of days!

Exit Strategy, Chapter 1

(This is a scene that occurs almost immediately after Keisha safeworded at the end of book one. And please remember, this is unedited.)

Tristan is right on my ass invading my personal space. “You’re not leveling with me, Keisha.”

I walk out of the closet, and he follows as I get my purse and make a beeline for the stairs. I’m taking two steps to his one trying to get down the stairs and out of there before I lose my composure. His next question hobbles me.

“Why were there so many domestic calls to your parents’ home the six years before you went to college?”

I stop in my tracks in the middle of the stairway and round on him.

“Did you do a fucking background check on me without my permission, or something?”

“It’s standard procedure when I take on a new sub. It was in the NDA which–if you recall–you didn’t read very well.”

I don’t know what comes over me, but I have a Scarlet O’Hara moment and raise my hand to slap him, but he grabs my wrists like a vise and won’t let go. He pushes me against the wall and traps me with his body and holds my hands immobile above my head. I’m pissed that he’s apparently been snooping into my background, and perhaps already knows much more about my family history than I would care for him to. I use sarcasm to downplay the severity of what went down in the Beale home all those years.

“My parents fought. Houses are close together in the hood, and the goddamn neighbors were nosy. Satisfied?”

I struggle to get away. He releases me but dogs my steps down the rest of the stairs.

“Domestic abuse has been known to be the cause of PTSD for children in that situation. Aren’t you going to tell me what your triggers are, Keisha?”

I turn and push him so hard he falls back against the stairs. He grabs me and brings me with him as he falls taking the brunt of the impact, and we lay splayed on the stairs, a jumble of arms and legs together. I scramble to get up and off him, but Tristan holds me firm. I struggle, but he won’t let me go. He holds me with the strong band of one arm across my back and one large palm across my ass, and I feel that he’s aroused, and I’ll be damned if that doesn’t make me get wet on cue. I sag against him, betrayed again by my wanton body.

As I’m about to look into his eyes and acknowledge my defeat, I see the arrogant smirk on his face. He waggles his eyebrows. “Even now, you want me, don’t you, Baby?”

He laughs, and that ticks me off to the point that I seriously begin to fight him. Somehow, he maneuvers until he’s on top of me, prying my legs open with his knees and holding my arms down with his own. He kisses me in that way he has of exploring my mouth as if it’s some mysterious uncharted territory. I am not going to give up easily, so I fight him with everything in me, even as I kiss him back. Talk about conflicted in the extreme.

I fight him like Maria Bello fought Viggo Mortensen on the stairwell in the movie A History of Violence. Tristan anchors me with his mouth, and holds me down with his body while he takes a leisurely stroll over my flesh with his hands. He tweaks both my breasts until my nipples are hard enough to cut through the fabric of my clothes, then his hand moves over my torso to caress my stomach down to the apex of my legs where he finds my underwear drenched. He pulls his lips away for a moment, and his blue eyes bore into mine.

“Your body hasn’t decided it’s ready to leave me, yet,” he says and slips two fingers under the seat of my underwear and buries them in me to his knuckles.

“You—Ugh! Let me go.” I struggle in earnest again.

Tristan silences me with another kiss until I give in, stop struggling, and kiss him back with an urgency that is ridiculous given how hard I was fighting him just moments before. He rips my underwear down my legs, tearing them in the process, undoes his pants, and he’s inside me. All I can do is pull him down, and take all of him because that is what I want more than anything else. I am going to leave him later today, and I won’t be back. This will be our last good fuck—right here on his stairs, half-dressed, rutting like we didn’t just do this the night before.

Our breathing is ragged, almost savage as we strain into one another on the stairway. I can feel the carpet burning into my exposed flesh, but I don’t want him to stop. There is a dull ache inside me from the previous night’s activities. I don’t mention it, so Tristan shows no mercy. He gives it to me like he never has before, and I take it likewise. I will probably feel this for a couple of days, but that’s okay because afterwards, all I’ll have will be memories. I am going to miss the way he takes command of my body and makes me feel like my bones are going to liquefy. I give myself over to him, and it isn’t until after he’s orgasmed that I gasp in panic.

“Mrs. Naven . . .”

“Is visiting . . . family in Evanston . . .” He pants, and continues to thrust into me, stubbornly, his blue eyes boring into mine. “How . . . can you leave this . . . Keisha?”

“Watch me,” I say. I hold his gaze as long as I can until he exacts an orgasm from me as powerful as his own, his kiss stealing the scream that rips from my throat.

Tristan rolls us so his body isn’t pinning me to the stairs, but he doesn’t let me go. He holds me so fast and so close, the tears that have threatened begin to fall. I wrench away from him before he sees me, and stumble Mario Bello-style up the stairs to clean myself up.

“Please wait until morning to leave,” he says. “I’ll have Mrs. Naven pack your things, and Moses will deliver you home safely.”

When I get to the landing, I look back to see him still sprawled on the stairs, his eyes closed, practicing what looks like the breathing exercise my psychologist taught me. It takes everything in me to leave him there.

Director, Allen Hughes, may have been vilified by the mainstream movie critics for Broken City, but my take on it is the absolute opposite of theirs. I consider it a half star short of brilliant. In a brief prologue in the beginning of the movie, we witness Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg), a former cop, beating the rap for a vigilante murder despite demonstrations for justice in the Hispanic community that rivals what we witnessed recently all over America in the Trayvon Martin case. Taggart’s innocence is suspect by a beleaguered Police Chief Fairbanks, played by the inimitable Jeffrey Wright, but hailed as heroic by smarmy New York City Mayor Hostetler, played by Russell Crowe. The Mayor promises not to forget Taggart in the future even as he is relieved of his badge by the police chief in the wake of his acquittal.

 

Fast forward seven years (with no apparent term limits), Mayor Hostetler is up for re-election and his opponent is a beloved City Councilman, aptly named Jack Valliant, played by one of my favorite character actors bar-none, Barry Pepper. Billy Taggart (Wahlberg) is now working as a private dick and specializes in uncovering spousal indiscretions. However, he’s such a good-hearted fellow, his clientele often takes his kindness for weakness and doesn’t pay him for his hard work. One of the best scenes in the movie involves Taggart and his hilarious office assistant, Katy Bradshaw, played by Alona Tal (one to watch in my opinion), doing collection calls when he learns that his uncollected fees amount to about $40,000.

 

A ring of corruption in New York’s City Hall that involves the Mayor and his closest supporters and friends is the backdrop for this ambitious political thriller. A week before Election Day, Nick Hostetler (Russell Crowe), the gruff, conservative mayor, who was seemingly the only public servant on Billy Taggart’s side when he was facing murder charges, enlists the private eye to follow his wife Cathleen (Catherine Zeta-Jones) whom he suspects of infidelity. In the process, Taggart becomes a pawn in deadly cat-and-mouse electoral machinations, and also in Hostetler’s love/hate relationship with his now Commissioner of Police (Jeffrey Wright).

 

The intense, intelligent acting by the whole cast is matched by tight cinematography that captures the authenticity of the city’s locations. Coupled with airtight storytelling, with more twists than a labyrinth, and witty dialogue that keeps the plot moving from beginning to end, Broken City is, in my humble opinion, one of the best and most entertaining films I’ve seen in a while. It only slowed down once, and that was when Allen inserted the film-within-a-film plot device, involving Billy attending the première of his girlfriend Natalie’s (Natalie Martinez) big break in a stereotypical independent movie. Billy’s struggle with alcoholism is stretched to the breaking point when he witnesses the woman he loves in a hot, naked sex scene with the film’s leading man, which throws him into a tailspin that almost compromises his investigation. Billy realizes when City Councilman Valliant’s Campaign Manager, Paul Andrews (Kyle Chandler), ends up dead, that he wasn’t just investigating a simple case of infidelity.

 

At its core Broken City is a movie about how corruption at the top affects the lives of everyday people, and how those everyday people will expose corruption for what it is, even if it means sacrificing oneself for the greater good.

Sometimes, I think critics forget, we don’t go to movies to analyze them to pieces. We go to movies to be entertained!

 

I give Broken City 4.5 out of 5 stars!

My Review of Worth The Wait by Synithia Williams

Tasha Smith is the quintessential “good girl.” A Preacher’s Kid who has been taught abstinence all her life, and the golden rule of saving her virginity for the marriage bed since she was old enough to know what sex was all about. Her hope had been to find a man who wanted her for more than just a romp in the hay, to be married and start a family, but all of the above somehow manages to elude her. Angie, her sister and most of Tasha’s other friends have managed to find love and settle down, but Tasha is on the cusp of turning thirty and no Mr. Right is in sight. Well, she thought he might be when she goes on a date with Charles “Mr. Wrong” Worthington, who tells her that if she wasn’t giving it up, it wasn’t going to work out for him.

This date from hell is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Tasha emerges from that experience determined to get the monkey of virginity off her back. She convinces herself that if she sleeps with a man and rids herself of her pesky cherry, she’ll be able to cross that hurdle and move on to find love and commitment. And Tasha knows just the guy to help her out of her little situation. Her friend, Jared “sex-on-legs” Peterson, is a man whose picture is next to the definition of “man whore” in the dictionary. He’s an Atomic Dog to the tenth power, and because he has such a wealth of experience, Tasha is certain his technique is just the ticket to provide her with a memorable (and exceedingly pleasurable) first time.

After some cajoling, she manages to enlist Jared to do the job, and they agree that no strings will be attached and this one-time occurrence will be the extent of their involvement. Now we all know what they say the road to hell is paved with, right? And good intentions abound, but once the forbidden fruit is tasted, all bets are off for both Tasha and Jared. A protracted period of indulging in a “friends with benefits” relationship stirs feelings in them both, and then things become complicated.

Never fear though, reader, because although we know kind of how this is going to go, Synithia Williams managed to throw a few curves in this cautionary tale. This story is about a good woman whose fatal flaw happens to be her naïveté, and a successful man who has trust issues that go back to his broken relationship with his own mother. Will their sexy, uber-hot journey of sexual discovery lead them to love, or will it ruin their deepening friendship forever? You must read to see how they get to the end of the journey, because I’m not spilling the beans.

You won’t be sorry you bought and read this wonderful book, because just when you think you’re going to be able to predict what’s about to happen next, the author throws a wrench in those thoughts and the story goes into a whole ‘nother trajectory.

I absolutely loved Tasha from the start, and despite his doggish ways, in the end I found myself caring for Jared just as much, even though I wanted to give him a swift kick in the rear on more than one occasion, he definitely grew on me, as I’m sure he will on you. The author’s writing is stellar and her style so straight-forward, I experienced almost none of the hiccups you get from a lot of the e-book offerings out there nowadays. Some of the dialogue may have been a tad clunky, but it was clean grammatically as far as I could tell, and superbly edited for punctuation and development.

I give Worth The Wait 4.5 Stars!

I was tagged for this by Andrea Goodson and Nikki Walker. As a sincere believer in the ripple effect of paying it forward, I decided to give this a shot. So here goes:

1. What is the working title of your current/next book?

Exit Strategy is the working title for my next book, but in all likelihood it might not be the published title.

It is book 2 of my Ghetto Girl Romance Quadrilogy (the biggest misnomer this side of creation, but hey like one author told me recently, it’s my Brand now).

2. Where did the idea for the book come from?

After writing the first book of the Quadrilogy, I appealed to my readers to write me and let me know if they were interested in seeing the series continued. Since publication of the first book in October 30, 2012, I’ve had to date 120+ reviews on Amazon, 80+ ratings and 40+ reviews on GoodReads, and overwhelmingly readers have implored me to continue the series with a caveat. Most have requested that I give Keisha and Tristan their own story that isn’t parody, and doesn’t resemble Fifty Shades of Grey at all. So, at the end of November I wrote an outline, and in December, I began penning the second book. So, the short answer is, the idea for the second book came from a week-long brainstorming session I had right after Thanksgiving after getting a month of positive response to the first book from my readers.

In book two, Keisha and Tristan will finally share things about their pasts with each other that isn’t pretty, and then will have to decide if they can take a chance on love given what they’ve learned about each other. All this is juxtaposed against the backdrop of a homicidal maniac who believes Tristan is the devil incarnate for having used women as submissives and threatens his life as well as the lives of the people he cares most about. The idea was borne out of the cliffhanger that ended the first book. At the end of Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever Keisha safeworded and left Tristan because the more she embraced his lifestyle, her mental health was threatened by demons from her past.

3. What’s the genre of this book?

The genre is contemporary romance/romantic suspense. The first book had a humorous bent because it was parody, but the second book will be more dramatic than humorous because it will deal more with the messiness of their lives.

4. Which actors would you choose to play the characters of the movie rendition?

If Gabriel Aubrey were an actor, I’d want him to play (twin Doms) Tristan and Nathan. He has the height and he’s gorgeous:

I don’t know this model’s name, but she’s what I see Keisha looking like in my head:

5. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Tristan White, an experienced Dominant pulls out all the stops to win the heart of his erstwhile submissive, Keisha Beale, despite their histories fraught with emotional baggage that brings danger to their doorstep.

6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Two months.

7. If you’re an Indie Author, will you be publishing through your own Indie Publishing Company or in a collective with other Indie Authors?

Yes, I’m an indie author and will be publishing via my own publishing company.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I think this story can be compared to any standard Nora Roberts romance without the language and BDSM elements.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’d have to say the readers of my first book inspired me to write this one. If it weren’t for their unwavering support, writing me at my personal email address to let me know how much they enjoyed the book, and then writing reviews on Amazon and GoodReads, I probably would not have continued with the series.

10. What about your book will pique the readers’ interest?

I believe readers will be drawn to the second book because they will want to know what the demons are from Keisha and Tristan’s past, how they handle them, and what they will go through in the present to ultimately solidify their love for one another.

Thanks for reading my Next Big Thing Blog Hop questions and answers, and please pay this forward so we can all see a ripple effect!

With this post, I’m going to tag Author SK, who just released her new book, Shadows of Deceit.

My Review of Hearts on Fire (Tested Love Series) by Nikki Walker

Some authors have a knack of writing characters that you really wouldn’t mind having as your friends. I’ve met two such authors recently, but this review is dedicated to Hearts on Fire a book in Nikki Walker’s Tested Love Series.

First off, I have to say that I love how she’s written this series in such a way that you don’t necessarily have to have read the other books in the series in order to enjoy one of the books.

 

However, I will warn you that you might fall so completely in love with the characters, you’ll want to go back to the other books so you can read your fill and get a the fix you will definitely need for these characters. Not to mention how she skillfully hides little nuggets in the story that will have you wondering what happened in the lives of the characters before and after this particular book.

 

Regarding Hearts on Fire, as it begins you think it’s Trey’s story, but it reads more like Sherri’s story once she gets going, then in the end you realize, it’s both their stories. Trey is an attorney and friend of Sherri’s Uncle Marcus. Burn out at work sends him to his cabin in Vermont for a little R&R. He has a history with Sherri that has been purely platonic up until this point, but he finds himself ready to take that leap of faith and explore something deeper with her.

 

Sherri’s refusal comes by rote, believing Trey’s motives to be less than honorable. However, events on her job that occur upon Trey’s departure have her scrambling to get to him. The irony is, he’s the first person she thinks of when she’s in crisis, and this speaks volumes.

 

Follow Sherri and Trey on this pulse-pounding, suspenseful love story that will have you either on the edge of your seat, worried for Sherri and Trey’s safety, or have you all hot and bothered by the sizzling chemistry they create on the page. What I really love about Nikki’s story is, while it is chaste in comparison to many I’ve read (and hell, even the ones I’ve written), it doesn’t leave you wanting the bump and grind. The suspense keeps you engaged, but it’s the romance itself that keeps you rooting for these two until the end.

 

The editor might have missed a few things in cleaning this up, but the story is one you’ll want to read regardless of those tiny faux pas.

 

Ms. Walker weaves powerful tales of inspirational romantic suspense that you can read with veritably no guilt.

My Review of Beautiful Bastard

by Christina Lauren

The authors of Beautiful Bastard and the publishing company openly reveal that this story was once a fanfiction. The publishing industry has validated fanfiction, intentionally or unintentionally, as fair game to publish given their overwhelming reception for Fifty Shades of Grey. That being said, I’m not at all sure why reviewers are making such a big deal out of it. The fact that Fifty Shades was a fanfiction didn’t stop Ms. James from selling millions upon millions of books . . . but I digress. This review is about Beautiful Bastard.

Beautiful Bastard opens with one of the most improbable scenarios I’ve ever had to suspend belief and go with in a story, but it made for really high drama. It also kept me on my toes waiting through the rest of the book for the other shoe of discovery to drop. In reminding myself that this was fiction and erotica, I got over my earlier misgivings and dove into the rest of the book with alacrity.

There was a love/hate relationship between the male and female protagonist that was epic given that they worked closely together every day. Denial must be the new aphrodisiac because these two threw themselves into getting it on all over the place! And then I reminded myself again, that this was erotica. The sex was undeniably hot, but that didn’t turn me on as much as their verbal sparring did. Several times throughout, I found myself laughing out loud at their antics. Admittedly, there were a few places where the dialogue just didn’t seem natural, but when Bennett and Chloe were on, they were like a veritable comic duo.

Is this a literary masterpiece? No. Is it an entertaining contemporary erotic romance? Yes. If you read for entertainment and not a riveting plot, or literary turn of phrase, this is your book! This certainly is a welcome respite from the over-done plot of billionaire alpha-male dominants (and I say this with tongue thoroughly in cheek because I jumped on the bandwagon and wrote a parody of one).

I was given an advance copy of this book by NetGalley in return for an objective review.

I give Beautiful Bastard Four out of Five Stars.

Readers, Writers, Friends, Followers come one, come all and tell all your friends: “Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever” will be FREE the final day as a KDP selection on January 24, 2013.

That’s right, it’s going to be Free! Gratis! Livre! Gratuit! Libero!

So, grab your copy, invite your friends, co-workers, and colleagues to grab a copy so you can read volume one before volume two comes out on or about February 28, 2013.

~*~

Beginning February 1, 2013, Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever will also be available on Nook, Sony, iBooks, ARe, Smashwords (did I miss any platforms?. All e-Readers should be able to purchase and read it when that happens, so join me in celebrating! If I could hire a skywriter, I would, but since that promo is quite expensive, this little graphic will have to do:

My Review of Commitment By Nia Forrester

Riley and Shawn aka “K Smooth” Gardner had me from their first encounter, when their easy, erudite banter leapt off the page at me. Wait, Nia Forrester’s writing style had me from the first sentence. Yeah, that’s a more appropriate beginning for this review. It’s not often that you read a story about the black romantic experience that is this intelligent and well-informed. When you are an African American young woman who has lived a life comparable to the Huxtables (which oddly I allude to in my current offering I’m in the process of writing), and you’re well-educated and a writer for a political magazine, it is safe to say you really don’t have a whole heck of a lot in common with a rapper. And more often than not, we believe our own stereotypes.

Riley Terry has every reason to believe the hype about Shawn that is ingrained in all of our psyches courtesy of the images we see portrayed in music videos of the young men who populate the hip-hop music genre. Most are products of the inner city, or they perpetrate being so, simply because you’re not credible if you haven’t done your due diligence in the trenches of the hood. It is probably very unfair to lump them all into a category, but this is what we do when we hear their rhymes, which extol their drug use, drug dealing, womanizing, and thuggish ways. Or they may be the other types who talk more about club life, the balling, and big-pimping lifestyle they’ve come into since making it big in the rap game. Unless they happen to be Talib Kweli or someone of his ilk.

These stereotypes almost make Riley eschew the interview of K-Smooth, whom Newsweek has extolled as “hip-hop’s prophet or pariah?” But once Riley meets him, she is surprised to find he isn’t a walking cliché. Their chemistry is instantaneous and after they have engaged in the best verbal foreplay since, well, ever she makes a spontaneous decision that sounds the death-knell for some of her closest interpersonal relationships. And in order not to spoil what I’m sure will be a wonderful adventure for you as a reader to take with Riley into figuring out how to navigate her own life as she falls in love with a man who is everything she isn’t. His resume certainly doesn’t impress her radical feminist mother, her beautiful, out-spoken best friend, or another important person in her life that she forgets until she realizes just how invested she’s become in Shawn. Then of course, she has all the other friends in her life who are more impressed by his bank account and celebrity than what he has come to mean to Riley.

Commitment is a huge tome at five hundred plus pages, but I found it a very easy read because I “got” the characters. I was willing to be immersed in their world for the time that I was because they resonated with me. Now with the next reader, maybe not so much. Writing craft decries that we should cut anything that is too wordy and doesn’t advance the plot. There were probably such places in Commitment, but I wasn’t at all upset that the author left them in, because it gave me such a complete picture of these characters that had me captivated at “hello.” Even the stereotypical hip-hop groupies were so well-drawn I could see and hear them in my imagination so well, it was like I was watching, “Commitment” the movie.

This is a book that has a lot to say to readers of all ethnicities and walks of life about loving someone who doesn’t fit the mold your loved ones have crafted for you–and loving despite how flawed we and the people we love are, through all the drama, and the mistakes we as human beings, ultimately make.

I happily give Commitment four out of five stars!

Reblogged from e g o i n f l u x:

"What would you do," I asked my daughter, "if you walked into a restaurant full of little boys and little girls with green and brown and hazel eyes, and you sat down and asked for something to eat, but the restaurant owner told you that you couldn't eat in his restaurant because your eyes were blue? How would that make you feel?"

Read more… 1,114 more words

The Moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally come!

Five lucky individuals have won copies of my e-book, Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever in celebration of the great response the book has gotten from readers.

So without further prolonging the suspense

Toni Cyt Thomas

Sharon Blount

Denise Bush

Lillian Wells

Amanda Wilkins

I will be contacting each winner later today and e-mailing them their e-books in the format of their choosing. Please join me in congratulating the winners of my first ever Rafflecopter E-Book

Giveaway!

Congratulations to the Winners and Thanks to All who entered!!