BelindaPalooza - Day 1! Today's Giveaway is...

...a print copy of Doms of Dark Haven: Western Night...signed by all three authors...!!!

Do you have any clue how difficult it was to get all three of us to sign a copy of the book? Cherise and I live fairly close together, but Sierra...dang, that woman is hard to track down!

So here's the deal, you come here to the blog and leave me a comment, and around midnight (Pacific Time) I'll draw a random winner. Not much time to participate, so be sure to get in there with your comment!

So. I know you're wondering, how did the Doms of Dark Haven series come about? Well, it was nearly an accident. I live way north in California, and one day Loose Id authors were guesting at Coffee Time Romance. I got a message from this Cherise woman asking where in Nor Cal did I live. Well, it turned out we lived quite close (in California terms) so we did lunch at Chevy's Mexican Restaurant.

Cool, eh?

Well, Cherise and I hit it off and as we chatted, she mentioned that she's love to take a trip to San Francisco to visit the Citadel. Well...I had no clue what the Citadel was, but I blurted out, "I'll go with you."

Yeah.

So you need to know a couple things about me. I'm not into crowds. I'm not into clubs. I really don't like dark, crowded clubs with loud music. Throw in some screaming and I'm ready to bolt. (remember that fact...)

We go and I have to confess, it was fascinating. We went to the Master's Den which is a male Dom/female submissive night, and I was told I needed to at least pay lip service to the male dominants by not going in too butch (if you know how I dress, you're now laughing) so I wore a black dress and boots. Something else, I'm sure. Some sort of shawl or something cause I'm a woman of a certain age and weight...*ahem* So I tried.

And you know, it was really cool. People were really friendly, no one jumped my case over the occasional faux pas and when we left, we were both totally buzzed. So of course, someone says, "we should write about this" and the other says, "yeah, we should" and in my bipolar haze, I babbled all the way home. We took some notes, made some plans and Doms of Dark Haven began to take shape. Loose Id was interested and then Sierra came onboard to make it a cozy threesome. So the theme emerged: Three women, one night. A Victorian costume night. There was only one problem. We agreed to write in our own genres.

I write paranormal. You try integrating werewolves in with two contemporary/suspense stories. No matter how I whined, they insisted. Do you have any idea how subs can bully you around? Sheesh.

So I recalled my first reaction to the club, walking in, parting the curtain and being assailed by sounds, smells and the vibrations of music. Then the colors, the milling bodies and just the sense of being somewhere where the tension was so incredibly thick. I thought about having a werewolf walk unprepared into that setting, and Evangeline Jones took shape in my imagination. And she was so fun to play with!

So that's my version of the backstory about how DODH came to be. Of course, Cherise might tell you something different, maybe about how I jumped naked into the swinging chain bed or how I chased some poor dom around the room, crying out, "Master...please..."

But she'd be lying. Really.

Happy Tails!

Belinda