Welcome to Teaser Tuesday! This week I’m hosting the fabulous Voirey Linger. She’s one of my very good friends, and a fellow Ellora’s Cave author.
With a hard tug, he fit her snugly against him, head lowering
closer to hers, desperate to taste what she offered. For a moment her warmth wiped the reminder that she belonged to someone else from his mind.
“Cade, you going to kiss my wife?”
This is probably one of the sexiest scene I ever read. A woman dancing with a friend. The dance turns seductive while her husband watches. It was a flaming lead-in to a menage relationship that had my fires well-stoked.
The book is Coming Clean by my friend Inez Kelley. I think I re-read it a couple of times a year so I can soak up the slow burn of tension building between the three characters. It’s the kind of scene that makes me a bit jealous of other writers, because I want to do that.
Not long ago, I was dealing with… let’s call it a writing setback. Nothing I wrote seemed to work and I’d had several manuscripts in a row rejected. I remember trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, but every time I tried to assess my stories, I got in a deeper funk.
I re-read Coming Clean and got to this scene and it hit me. I wasn’t writing well because I wasn’t writing what I love…that slow, seductive buildup.
I immediately set my e-reader down and started to write. I didn’t have characters, I didn’t have a story. For me, this was epic because I never write until I know the whole story. But this time, I just had an idea of two people dancing.
I loved it. I had fun with it. It all seemed to flow the way my writing used to flow.
The result of this exercise is And She Liked It. Like Coming Clean, there is a husband, a wife, a friend and a dance, but all similarities end there.
I tend to blame Inez for a lot of things (and she’s usually at fault for them all) but I don’t think she’ll mind this particular case of finger pointing.
This book is completely Inez’s fault.
I could feel the heat from Inez’s scene. I can see why you reread the book for inspiration.
I think we all go through the “I can’t write worth a crap” period. Buck up. You’re talented, and that will shine through ever time.
I’ve read Coming Clean and it’s interesting to see how a story can spawn another idea. I’m glad you are over your slump — as my mama would say it happens to the best of us — and I can’t wait to read And She Liked It.