New beginnings are exciting, but we can rarely outrun our pasts. Steve Michaels and Zack Greene pack up their newly extended family and move to New York City with their nanny, Drew, and his two kids. Having recently been hired to write for a  BDSM show, Steve and Zack use their loving Dom/sub relationship for some experience with the lifestyle, but they need a consultant to fill in the blanks. Alex a local Dom/club owner, can do just that. Everything is going smoothly until Rich, a ex-producer from Ben’s Life and the man who tried to ruin Zack, tries to get a job on the same show. And that’s only the beginning of it.

Zack and Steve offered Drew an opportunity of a lifetime working for them. When Alex shows up for the first meeting with Zack and Steve, Drew realizes he didn’t leave his past behind after all. This becomes more true when his ex comes back wanting to see the kids.

Can Drew trust Alex to help him get over his past? Can Steve manage to keep Zack safe from the man who has haunted him for so long? Find out what happens Behind the Scenes!

“Wait!” I hear the protests coming, “Zack and Steve are from the Mine series! Why are you starting a new series with the same characters?”

Liz: We’re so glad you asked. The Mine series was written by Liz, but Michelle has always had a love of the characters, and has helped beta read every single one. Sometimes multiple times. We both have nightmares remembering Chapter 7 in That’s a Wrap, but that’s a different story. Anyway, she had two characters, Drew and Alex, who I had gotten to know through reading her unpublished stories. It was then that we decided to see if we could find a way to work her characters in with mine. Turns out her boys play very nicely with mine. But it had to be a different series because her boys, Drew and Alex, do play harder than Zack and Steve. So, the BDSM is more intense in these books. For example, Zack and Steve play with rope, whereas Alex and Drew play with canes and needles. However, and this is important, everything done in the Director’s Cut series, like Mine, is done with love and consent.

“What made Michelle decide to go to the harder end of the BDSM spectrum with your characters?”

Michelle: My mind is a kinky place and the more I learn the more, I want to include in my writing. That’s the short of it. My boys work well for that because Alex is very experienced in the lifestyle and loves what he’s doing. Drew, on the other hand is new to the lifestyle, but willing to try almost anything. I like pushing my own limits and writing things that I’ve never experienced myself to see how realistic I can make them. That’s what all this is. My boys do things that I am too chicken to try because the end result is always what I want it to be or what I think it should be. No one gets hurt this way.

“What’s it like working with a coauthor?”

Michelle: Most of the time it’s great. Our brains actually work in the same manner so it’s like we share one. Even when we don’t agree on something, we can talk it through and make it work in a way that’s comfortable for both of us. Sure, we annoy each other, but we get through that, too. I love working with her. Liz is awesome. As long as she’s not editing what I’m writing, as I’m writing it!

Liz: I’ve been writing for fifteen years and never thought I would be able to work with someone else. You have to go in with a plan, and I don’t plan, or when I do, it tends to fall apart by chapter three, But then I met Michelle. She doesn’t require her plans be set in stone. Actually, the fact that I want a list of plotlines sort of annoys her. But we’ve found it’s important to know where the story’s going so we aren’t writing two different books, come together and have to spend as much time rewriting as we did writing, though, if we’re honest, we’ve done that, too. Editing has became an even more time consuming process than when either of us wrote alone.

By Anastasia Vitsky

A little smile creeps into the corners of Natalie’s mouth, and she gazes at me directly as she says, “A spanking.”

The words hang in the air for a moment as I struggle for a response. I wait for her to laugh, or crack a smile, or to tell me that she is joking. Instead, I feebly repeat her words yet again.

“A… a… spanking?”

Beaches with spanking. That’s how I describe my newest book, The Way Home (Kat and Natalie, Volume One) when I receive puzzled, polite questions.

“Is it BDSM?”

Not exactly. Sue Lyndon recently wrote a wonderful post describing the difference between BDSM and spanking fiction.  I also gave an interview explaining F/F spanking fiction. A friend told me yesterday, “I doubt that anything about your stories are typical”. What I love best about Lazy Day is the commitment to telling good stories rather than forcing authors to follow a formula.

“Is it erotic?”

Not exactly. No sex scenes, no passionate courtship, no juicy descriptions of lady bits…but plenty of love. Is it sensual? Absolutely. Picture the famous glove-removal scene from Age of Innocence, and you’ll get an idea of the tender, understated intimacy and longing of this story.

“Is it a romance?”

Depends on your definition of “romance”. There is no bodice-ripping here. No lusty sighs and mournful, heart-stirring gazes of a hero and heroine who are destined for each other but kept apart by cruel circumstances.

If you define “romance” as “a story of love for each other”, then yes. Kat, a shy farmgirl with only a backpack and suitcase to her name, arrives at her freshman dorm to meet her new roommate.

A dark-haired girl is sitting on one of the beds, surrounded by matching floral suitcases and a rainbow of crates set up on one side of the room. Around the window, she has put up a fake curtain made from contact paper. On her desk sits a vase filled with poppies and encircled with a red ribbon around the neck.

I clear my throat and croak, “Are you Natalie?”

The girl drops the books she is sorting, and she springs to a standing position. Her eyes take in my suitcases before she asks, “Oh… oh! Yes. So, are you Katherine?”

“It’s Kat,” I say, trying not to blush. It is time that I lost my baby name. Katie sounds cute and perky, two things I am not.

Kat quickly gets to know her new roommate. Unlike Kat’s staid, dutiful family who dropped her off with little more than a hug and best wishes, Natalie’s parents instantly welcome her as one of their own.

“This is Kat,” she says, turning to me. “This is my mom and dad.”

“We have names, you know,” her dad says solemnly. “I’m Curtis, and this is my wife, Jane. We’re so pleased to meet you. Please excuse our daughter’s enthusiasm. Don’t let her run all over you.” He offers his hand toward me.

It’s the first time a grown-up has done that, and I blush as I shake his hand. I stammer out a “Nice to meet you” before the woman – Natalie’s mom – dispenses with ceremony and squashes me into a hug. I squeak a little, and I blush even more as she lets me go.

“Mo-om!” Natalie protests. “Dad! Stop embarrassing me!”

“You let us know if there’s anything you need, all right, Kat?”

Dazed, I say something that sounds like “yes” to…what do I call her?  Mrs. Natalie’s mom?  Why is she being so nice to me? 

And so begins a ten-year relationship that, like Beaches, follows the ups and downs of two girls who couldn’t be more different and who grow into adulthood finding out that they are the world to each other.

What is The Way Home, you ask? A story of love.

Spanking Fiction vs. BDSM

            With the wonderful invention of e-readers, there has been an explosion of erotic e-books during the last few years.  Erotic books of all types consistently rank high in sales on Amazon, B&N, and other venues.  I hope this trend keeps growing, especially in the erotic subgenre of spanking fiction.  No, I’m not talking about BDSM.  I’m talking about spanking.  There’s a difference between BDSM books and spanking books, though sometimes the line is blurry, and both types of books can contain bits of the other.  A lot of people don’t realize there’s a difference between BDSM and spanking books, and I know this because when I tell my friends what I write, they’ll say something like, “oh so you mean you write BDSM?”

A spanking book, often referred to as “spanking romance” or “domestic discipline fiction” is a story where erotic spanking and/or disciplinary spanking plays an integral role in the plot, though of course the plot should be able to stand alone – but that’s a whole other discussion.  A BDSM book, whether it’s a romance or pure erotica, focuses on sexual dominance and submission, bondage, and the giving and receiving of pleasure and pain between the characters.  Could there be an erotic or disciplinary spanking in a BDSM book?  Sure.  But that doesn’t turn the BDSM book into a spanking book.

Likewise, there can be elements of BDSM in a spanking romance.  Maybe the hero ties the heroine to the bed now and then during foreplay.  Or maybe he enjoys her grimace of pain as he applies nipple clamps.  But if she breaks the rules or disobeys in some manner, the punishment is almost always a spanking, and it’s an important part of the main characters’ relationship.  Sometimes the spanking is agreed upon by the characters, and other times it can be nonconsensual.  It depends on the setting, time period, and a number of other factors.  This is another difference between BDSM and spanking fiction, because BDSM uses the rule safe, sane, and consensual.  Spanking fiction is more along the lines safe, sane, and sometimes consensual.

I’ve followed the evolution of the spanking genre from magazines to internet forums and newsgroups to e-publishing.  And right now is an exciting time for the spanking genre because it keeps growing and growing.  Maybe one day I won’t have to explain the difference between BDSM and spanking fiction to my friends because it’ll be so popular they’ll already know.  It’s a nice thought!

Be sure to check out Rules of War by Sue Lyndon!

Write What You Understand

Guys, I screwed up. I know, we’re all shocked it happened, but it did. However, I fixed it. I’m going to share what went wrong, and how to make sure it doesn’t happen to any of you.

There’s an old writing adage, ‘write what you know.’ My answer to this has always been, ‘If I had a life, I wouldn’t need to create imaginary people’s lives’. So, I’ve always relied on a lot of research, which is how I handled Zack and Steve’s Dom/sub relationship, and any children I’ve ever had in my books. As a matter of fact, my last post on the Lazy Day blog, on Cutaway’s release was on the importance of research, but for That’s a Wrap, research failed me.

The premise of That’s a Wrap was supposed to be a D/s couple taking on a consensual service (non-sexual) slave. I planned to look at how it impacted their relationship (Steve started training Zack to Dom Josh, thus paving the way for the couple to switch roles). The unconventional family would grow stronger and be able to move to the next phase of their life together.

Nice story. Didn’t work. First of all, Zack and Steve didn’t need a slave. He didn’t add anything to their life together, at least not in the way I originally envisioned it. I pictured them doing TPE (total power exchange) with Josh. They don’t have time. Secondly, I didn’t understand the dynamic of a Master/slave relationship well enough to write about it respectfully. I realized this when I was a little more than halfway done with the book.

So, I went back and changed the dynamics. Josh became a real character with desires, limits, and ultimately a will to determine what he wants out of life. That’s a Wrap is a book about choices: evolve, let go, love, and lose. It sounds cliché, but Steve and Zack take the stability of their structure and use it to adapt to life’s changes.

Did I mention there’re hot men who want, and need their bottoms warmed every so often? Please join my boys as they close one chapter of their lives and begin again—together.