Cottage in the Woods

Media blitz for Cottage in the Woods

I'm currently reading this and I'll post links to my reviews as soon as I finish... in the meanwhile, here's a little blurb to whet your appetite. 

The Cottage in the Woods by Lucy Felthouse

Genre: Lesbian paranormal erotic romance

Blurb:

Living in her remote cottage in the woods, Heidi doesn’t get many visitors. So when she spots a fox in her garden, she’s delighted. However, her joy quickly turns to dismay when she thinks the beautiful creature may be injured. Heading out to see how she can help, Heidi is astounded when something happens that makes her question her eyesight – not to mention her sanity. Once she gets over her shock and discovers the reason behind the peculiar encounter, Heidi is mighty glad that the fox chose her garden to visit.

A movement in the garden caught Heidi’s attention immediately. She peered out into the dark, her hands still immersed in the washing up bowl as she tried to catch another glimpse of whatever was lurking in the darkness outside her kitchen window. She wasn’t frightened, merely curious. She lived so far out in the wilderness that it could only be an animal, and the last time she’d checked, they couldn’t open locked doors. So she was perfectly safe

What made her nocturnal visitor so unusual was its proximity to the house. Animals were braver in the city, where they’d become used to humans. But out here, they were still timid and very wary of man. Heidi’s little cottage was practically screaming that it was occupied, with its smoking chimney and blazing lights and yet the creature – whatever it was – was almost outside the window. Heidi frowned. Something definitely wasn’t right.

Another flash of movement, and Heidi finally identified her visitor. The beautiful russet fur, big bushy tail with flecks of white – there was a fox in her garden.

Grinning, Heidi rushed to dry her hands on a tea towel and then moved across the room to flick off the light switch. She waited until her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, then made her way back to the window. She spied the fox immediately, crouched down beside the hedge surrounding her garden, as though it was hunting something. A life-long nature lover, Heidi smiled, truly appreciating the stunning beauty of the creature. But the longer Heidi watched the animal, the more confused she became.

The fox hadn’t moved for some time. If it was hunting, surely it would have pounced by now? A sinking feeling rolled through Heidi’s stomach. Perhaps it wasn’t stalking after all, but lying down because it was injured? She knew that out here, if the fox was hurt, it had been attacked by another predator, rather than had a run-in with a moving vehicle. After all, the only vehicle around these parts was hers, so unless her truck had gone all Christine, it certainly wasn’t that.

No, it had to be another animal. It was survival of the fittest, the food chain and all that. She knew how these things worked, but there was no way she could leave the poor creature suffering in her garden. Not if she could do something about it.

Heidi began to plan exactly what to do. She knew that if the fox was injured and couldn’t move, it could snap at her in self-defence, it having no idea that her intentions were good. She desperately wanted to help the vulnerable creature, but preferably without ending up needing stitches and a tetanus shot.

As Heidi gazed into the darkness, trying to work out a solution, she lost her mind. At least, that’s the conclusion she came to as her eyes relayed an image to her brain which couldn’t possibly be accurate.

Book trailer link: http://youtu.be/utJRVepZ6Mw

More info & buy links: http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk/published-works/the-cottage-in-the-woods/

*****

Lucy is a graduate of the University of Derby, where she studied Creative Writing. During her first year, she was dared to write an erotic story - so she did. It went down a storm and she's never looked back. Lucy has had stories published by Cleis Press, Constable and Robinson, House of Erotica, Noble Romance, Ravenous Romance, Resplendence Publishing, Summerhouse Publishing, Sweetmeats Press and Xcite Books. She is also the editor of Uniform Behaviour and Seducing the Myth. Find out more at http://www.lucyfelthouse.co.uk. Join her on Facebook and Twitter, and subscribe to her newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9

On the Shelf

I play Warcraft.

I won't make any apologies for that; if I've not written some days because I was busy playing Warcraft, I have also blown off a raid and said, "Good luck, I have this chapter to write!"

Anyway, for those of you in the know - I was in a PUG yesterday. (Pick up Group... and much like calling something an ATM Machine, or saying a sandwich is served with au jus, saying PUG Group is just redundant. It's an Automatic Teller Machine. Not an Automatic Teller Machine Machine. You don't serve a roast beef sandwich with with juice. And you don't go on a pick up group group. This is not 5th grade. You don't like him like him, either.) and we had some people drop group. Me and 2 dps are standing around waiting for some healer to grace us with their presence.

"I'mma go finish these dailies while we wait," and the warlock vanishes from the instance.

"I was looking for something in the Auction House," says the shadowpriest, and likewise poofs.

I said, "Book, book... I know I had a book around here somewhere..." and I started digging around for my Kindle Fire. (As a side note, I love my Fire. Love it love it love it.)

"Oh," says the warlock, "What are you reading?"

"I'm re-reading Dragon Bound, since Book 4 is coming out in like 6 days, reading a short story to review for my friend Lucy Felthouse (look for it in a few days!), reading my own vampire novel in prep for revision, previewing some publicity materials and watching Vampire Diaries, Season One." (One of the reasons I love my Kindle is the ability to so thoroughly keep me distracted... until it runs out of batteries, I can get 4 or 5 different tasks done without even putting the device down!)

Instead of yawning over this complete glurge I just threw out onto the screen, the warlock says to me, "You're a writer? What do you write?"

I told him, "romance," expecting to get mocked. People do that. I don't mind. People are welcome to their opinions.

"Name?"

"Lynn Townsend."

Without missing a beat, "Steampunk romantic erotica, right? Yeah, that sounds cool."

Me. "Yeah, that's me." That was fast.

"I'm in indie bookstore owner. It's on our shelves. My wife's read it. She says it's pretty good."

Holy shit.

Blister Effect

So, Blister Effect's been officially picked up by Torquere, who released the first part, Shadow of Kenfig, as part of their Shifting Steam collection.

I'm very exciting. And now it's time to get to work on Synchronous Rotations, part three, which is shaping up to be a menage a trois story, since the woman involved won't seem to butt out.

This will be my first royalties-based story, so we'll see how that goes. The question is, do I make more, or less, money than I would for a one-payment collection.

Name that Team!

I'm currently working on a short story; Alive and Kicking. The main plot is that my two heroines develop a relationship after being on the team together and dealing with some issues. One of my real life friends was on an adult kickball team - something I'd never heard of before. Of course, with my ankle and running problems, kickball is not anything I could ever do, but it sounds like fun.

Her team was the Schweddy Balls. And I have a few other team names in mind, but I could use some help.

So I'm having a contest!

If you have a name - the dirtier the better - for an adult kickball team, please submit it in the comments. I'll pick the top three, which will be included in the story, and those entrants will receive a free copy of Readerotica Vol 3, which features 10 erotica stories, including my story, On the Fly.

On The Fly

I got my final confirmation, including making payment arrangements for On the Fly. It's been accepted and will be published Very Soon Now. I'll have money in hand in a few days, and should have a link for you all in a week.

So that's awesome! And this will be a good way for you all to get a cheap look at my work; the collection will be available on Kindle only (you don't need an ereader to look at a kindle file. Your smartphone or computer will be able to view it as well) for 99cents for several stories.

On the Fly is a pretty basic, modern erotic romance, m/f.

In other news, we've given up on the house we bid for back in October. I have nothing good to say about Bank of America. We're putting in a new bid tomorrow for a different house, and I hope to have this whole buying a house thing wrapped up soon so I can stop stressing, drinking too much, and waking up in cold sweats behind me.

Convention

I went to Marscon this weekend; it used to be a small, relax-a-con. No big guests, good con food, a few no-pressure panels, lots of gaming and socializing. (yes, astonishingly enough, geeks do socialize.)

There were over 900 people there this weekend. Which was cool. Lots of great costumes. I did not costume. I wore snarky or geeky t-shirts and had my face painted. I am the slack. It's traditional.

I brought in a bunch of promo materials for Shifting Steam (about 150 postcards with the cover art) and left them on the tables - along with dozens of other people who had books, cons, games, music, etc to advertise. And because I am cheap, at the end of the Con, I went 'round to gather up anything that was left so I could use them later.

There were less than a dozen.

So... if you happened to find your way here because of a postcard, hi! Nice to meet you. Please feel free to check out my Facebook fan page. I post interesting links, Very Dirty Words of the day, and snippets of my work in progress.

I went to 2 writing workshops, one that was great and the other that I had to leave early because my husband's sugars dropped alarmingly. I'm not sure I learned anything precisely new, but it was interesting to see the basics from a different perspective. I already know I write shoddy first drafts. As a matter of fact, I've been working hard to learn how to allow myself permission to write shoddy first drafts! I met a couple other writers and ended up talking editing with a friend's brother. (He's currently an artist, of the pen and paper variety and is trying his hand at writing... In the midst of that discussion, I pointed out that Hunger Games is, indeed, written entirely in the present tense. Which my friend had not even noticed, which indicates that present tense story telling can be done well.)

I also attended a really interesting panel on LGBT in sci-fi/fantasy/horror and got to talk a bit about my favorite stories, the Liaden novels, by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. If you haven't read them, I highly recommend them!

Anyway, it was a fun con (mostly) and I got to talk to a lot of people, including the very talented Jonah Knight. Keep an eye on this space, he and I have done some talking about doing a collaborative contest, and I'll be giving away some copies of his music.

And... now back to the writing projects.... of which I have entirely too many!

Word Count for the first 15 days of the month: 4,123 / 4,175 so I'm just about on track

New Review

Another review for Steamlust.


Simply put, Steamlust is one of the most gorgeous anthologies I've encountered. From the first page, I was dazzled, mesmerized, and relegated to a state of breathless arousal by story after story in this extraordinary, exquisite collection. Since I'm not very familiar with steampunk, I'm not sure what expectations I had of this anthology, but any notion of them seemed exceeded such as to render them obsolete by the end of the first story--a story, incidentally, that was one of my very favorites and which set the bar for the remainder of the collection exceptionally high.

Astonishingly--and delightfully--it met it. Each story greeted me with evocative and brilliantly clever renderings of inventive ideas and mechanisms, solidly imbued with the spirit and imagination around which I have the impression steampunk is centered. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the additions of the steampunk elements of time, inventiveness, machinery, etc., amidst the blazing hot and beautifully rendered romantic encounters this book offers. It's made me think that perhaps this is a genre of which I should seek out more, and I offer sincere thanks to the editor and authors for providing such a luscious, scorching, spellbinding introduction to it.

For anyone with any appreciation for erotic romance and/or any inkling of interest in or curiosity about steampunk, mechanical engineering, fantasy, or even historical settings, I recommend this collection without reservation and with utmost enthusiasm--and I hope with all sincerity that every reader enjoys it as much as I did.