K D Grace on Tour ~ Elemental Fire
We’re thrilled to welcome K D Grace back with us, on tour for the final book in her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy. She’s got the scoop on how this all got started – very exciting – plus, there’s a great giveaway at the end!
Thank you so much for having me back on your fabulous site, Adriana. It’s always a pleasure to be here. And I’m especially happy to be here on the first day of my blog tour of the final instalment of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy – Elemental Fire.
Since this is day one of the Elemental Fire blog tour, I thought I’d talk about endings at the beginning and things hidden in plain sight. It’s very difficult to come to the end of the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy without thinking about how it all began with me and my husband caught in a sudden heavy mist on the Newlands Horseshoe Ridge Walk in the English Lake District. When, a few months later, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time, it was this experience that inspired the first incarnation of the trilogy, which didn’t start out as a trilogy, BTW, but only one novel called Love Spells, and even that was an experiment, my first attempt at an erotic romance novel.
When the first of November rolled around, my friend, Helen, and I made a ‘writing pilgrimage’ to kick off NaNoWriMo properly in Avebury. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Avebury, it’s the largest stone circle in Europe, much larger than Stonehenge, so big, in fact, that it has a whole village built in the middle of it. As it happened, that first day of NaNoWriMo, the weather would have had to work hard to be worse. It was pouring down rain with a cold wind blowing. It wasn’t just the first day of NaNoWriMo, but it was also the pagan holiday of Samhain. As we settled into the Red Lion Inn – a pub and inn built in the early 1600s with the reputation of being one of the most haunted places in England, we both began our writing projects with a steady flow of very wet pagans in their gorgeous, slightly soggy regalia coming in to warm up, eat, have a pint, and head back out into the stone circle for their rituals and celebrations.
As the afternoon wore on, I wrote the opening scenes of what I didn’t know at the time would become the Lakeland Heatwave trilogy. By then we were alone in one of the dining areas, when a very cold wind blew through the closed room slamming doors, rattling windows, and we overheard a white-faced, rather shaken server inform the kitchen staff that it had to have been ‘the ghost.’ Well, you can see where the inspiration for ghosts and witches and demons came from.
All through the month of November, I wrote hard, drawing on my memories of long walks in the Lake District and of my several years as a member of a Wiccan coven to pull the story together. When at last it was finished, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, so it languished hidden among my files for another year. In the meantime, I wrote the Initiation of Ms Holly and The Pet Shop, both of which Xcite Books published. It was then that my wild NaNoWriMo experiment drew my attention again.
I could begin to see how I might rewrite the novel to make it stronger, so I proposed it to Xcite, and they accepted my proposal. It was only as I began the rewrite that I realised something wasn’t right. I couldn’t quite make Love Spells come together as I’d hoped. I was missing something. I just couldn’t figure what. After several long walks in the British countryside angsting and stressing, fearing I wouldn’t be able to fulfil my commitment, it came to me. The reason I couldn’t write Love Spells was that it was too big a story for one novel, and the Lakeland Heatwave Trilogy was born. I proposed it to Xcite, who loved the idea. Over the past eighteen months the lives and times and sexy, scary adventures of the Elemental Coven have unfolded in first, Body Temperature and Rising, then Riding the Ether, and now, the final instalment, Elemental Fire, is finished and out in the world. It’s been a wild, exciting journey, and as happy as I am to have the whole trilogy done, I’m also feeling a bit sad to say good-bye to Tara Stone, Anderson, and the whole Elemental Coven. Who knows, maybe they’ll let me come back to visit. I’d like that.
Excerpt
‘Will you dream with him?’ Cassandra asked, as she handed Tara the last pot.
‘I don’t see that I have much choice, do I?’
‘Is it really that much of a hardship?’
They both turned to find Kennet standing in the door of the greenhouse.
Tara laid aside her dibber and gently touched Cassandra’s hand feeling the welcome buzz of her power. ‘Go and tell the others to prepare the Dream Cave.’
Once she was gone, she turned her attention back to her seedlings.
Kennet moved inside and pulled the door to. ‘I understand you not trusting me,’ he said. ‘I’d feel the same way, I’m sure. But Tara, I’m not the enemy. I need you to believe that.’ He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened.
Carefully he removed it and turned his attention to stroking the leaves of the thyme plants. ‘You’re afraid,’ he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
‘Aren’t you?’ She continued to fuss over the seedlings, mostly just to stave off the panic of his nearness.
‘Terrified.’ His answer surprised her.
She turned to face him and as she looked up into his eyes, it suddenly felt like she had looked into the sun.
‘But not for the same reasons you are,’ he said. He crooked a finger under her chin so she couldn’t look away. ‘Why do you make love only with ghosts?’
Everything in her wanted to turn and flee before it was too late, but she stood her ground and held his gaze. ‘It hasn’t ended well for the living when I’ve had sex with them.’
‘Are you afraid it won’t end well for me?’
She didn’t answer. She was afraid of what might happen if she tried to speak. There were too many memories too close to the surface, memories she had taken lifetimes to bury deep, and this man had dug them all up in only a few hours.
He took both of her hands, ignoring the compost on her fingers, then brushed a kiss gently across her lips, making her want like she hadn’t allowed herself to want in a very long time. Then he pulled away and brushed the pad of his thumb along her lower lip. ‘I’m already dead, Tara. Physically I may not be a ghost, but I’m already dead. Everything that I lived for was taken from me seven years ago.’
She pushed him away. ‘Seven years? Only seven years? You’re not dead yet, Kennet. You haven’t even begun to die. You haven’t had nearly enough years to really beg for death, long for death, pray that it’ll come in the night and set you free.’ She reached for the staging table for support. Her knees were weak, her insides felt like snow on the wind. ‘But then you realize that you’ll be no freer of him dead than you are alive. So no, you’re not dead, Kennet. Don’t even wish for it, and if you think your pet demon will protect you, then you don’t know demons.’
This time he grabbed her by the front of her shirt and pulled her to him with such force that she gasped out loud. He took her mouth with stunning anger, like nothing she’d ever felt before, and she returned his assault with her own rage, meeting his tongue thrust for angry thrust, bruising his lips with the force of mouth and teeth, biting and aching, as he bit back. Then he pulled away breathless. ‘She’s not my pet demon, Tara and, trust me, I fucking know demons.’
Then they were kissing again as though they would tear each other apart, as though they would rip the very breath from each other in angry, scorched shreds. His hands moved to her hips, and he hoisted her onto the staging table, shoving aside the gypsy skirt until she could feel the rough wood against the silk of her panties. He fingered aside the crotch and she tried to squirm away from him. ‘I don’t fuck the living,’ she gasped against his mouth, then she bore down as his thick middle finger found its way between her labia and thrust upward. She pulled him to her even as she tried to push him away with her words.
‘Yes you do, as of this morning you do. You need it, I need it, and it’s time you stopped letting Deacon call the shots.’
She felt his last words like a slap and like an aphrodisiac at the same time, and everything in her felt wet with need. ‘Do it, goddamnit,’ she growled. ‘If you’re gonna do it, do it and don’t make me wait!’ She grabbed for his fly with an awkward grip from a bad angle that caused him to flinch and push her hand aside. ‘Damn it, get them off,’ she gasped, ‘I can’t wait!’
With trembling hands he practically ripped the zipper out of his fly, then shoved his jeans and boxers down around his hip and his erection bounced free from its exquisite nest of copper brown curls. The view was brief, and she told herself in a sliver of a thought that was left to her, that sometime she’d like to linger and explore, though in her heart she didn’t really believe she’d ever be afforded that luxury, so she’d take what he’d give her.
Once again he tore at her panties until they were stretched over one buttock and she could feel the cool air of the greenhouse against her gape, then while she held herself open, he cupped his hands under her arse and lifted her from the table, down onto his heft. With a grunt and a slight thrust, he pressed up into her, and she yielded like soft butter, then gripped like a fist. Then she grabbed him by the hair and pulled his face back to hers, and their tongue dance matched the rhythm of the thrust and glide. Grunts became feral cries, throats became raw, and vision blurred in searing heat that had nothing to do with Lucia.
‘Great Goddess,’ he gasped. ‘If I’m not dead, I’m dying now, and it’s your fault.’
She bit his neck hard and he flinched and surged inside her tight grip. ‘You asked for it, and I don’t believe in making people beg.’
‘I can’t think of a better way to go,’ he grunted.
In truth, she wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t dying right along with him, but it didn’t really matter, dead or alive, it was pretty much the same to her.
‘Fuck,’ he breathed between barely parted lips. ‘I can’t hold back any longer, woman. I have to come now.’ And as his cock convulsed inside her, and his groin raked upward against her clit, she came in great sobs that made her throat ache, that made her body feel like some animal, curled deep at her centre, had awakened ravenous and needy with an emptiness to fill that was bigger than the void. And strangely enough, Kennet Lucian felt like he might begin to touch the emptiness.
For a long time, he held her there, both of them gasping for breath, her arms and legs wrapped around him, his large hands cupping her bottom. ‘Tara,’ he whispered against her ear. ‘Please trust me.’
She ran a hand through his hair and nipped his ear with her teeth. ‘Then prove to me that I can.’
BLURB
Obsessed with revenge, KENNET LUCIAN makes a deal with a demon, a deal he comes to regret when he meets TARA STONE, head of the Elemental Coven, and a powerful witch with a desire for revenge at least as great as his. Even though the attraction between the two is magnetic and the lust combustive, Kennet must betray her to accomplish his goal, which is ultimately her goal as well; to put a final end to the demon, Deacon’s, reign of terror. But can Tara trust the man who has wormed his way into her heart and the heart of the Elemental Coven? Can she trust LUCIA, the demon with whom Kennet is allied, a demon with her own agenda. The path to Deacon’s destruction is far from clear, and the price that must be paid to be free of him forever may be too high, even for Tara Stone.
BUY LINKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she, cuz otherwise, what would she write about?
When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening or walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband recently walked the Coast to Coast rout across England. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots.
K D has erotica published with Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.
K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel,Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available.
K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, books one and two of her Executive Decisions Trilogy are now available.
Links:
http://www.twitter.com/kd_grace
http://www.facebook.com/kdgraceauthor
Giveaway
Two PDF copies of the first book in the Lakeland Heatwave trilogy – Body Temperature and Rising.
Click on the graphic below
for the rest of K D’s tour stops
