Adriana Kraft

When it's time to heat things up...

Erotic Romance

A Little Cosplay #MFRWHooks #EroticRomance #TimeTravel #LoveGoddess #Cosplay

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This week I’m featuring my very first published romance novel, Colors of the Night. You can read the story behind it HERE

Welcome to MFRW Hooks, where the authors of Marketing for Romance Writers share snippets from their stories to entice you into wanting more. Be sure to click on the links at the end to travel!

EXCERPT

Set-Up: When Jamie confesses one of her fantasies is making love on a grand piano, Aria transports her and Ryan to another dimension and sets the scene…

Swaying to the lilting score of the Abduction from the Seraglio, Jamie marveled again at how Mozart’s music filled her soul. Her fingers flew across the keyboard of the baby grand piano and the tempo increased. It was a splendid instrument, very responsive to the slightest touch.

The tempo slowed; she wiggled her bottom and resettled herself on the bench. She glanced at the door. There in the entryway stood a strange man dressed almost entirely in black.

Jamie played on, not frightened by the man, yet curious. His white ruffled shirt was open at the throat.  Black pants and boots were almost obscured by a black cape with a red lining, which the man drew across his chest once he realized she’d seen him standing there.  On his head sat a wide-brimmed black hat with one side turned up like a rough rider’s. Even more distinctive was the long red plume tucked into the hat band.

She continued playing while assessing the stranger. An extraordinary man, really.  To top things off, he wore a small dark mask. Was he Zorro come to protect her?  Was he a brigand come to plunder her? Was he the phantom drawn from the rafters, attracted by her opera music?

She played on, watching carefully as the stranger removed his hat and bowed deeply before her. He neither smiled nor frowned.  He said nothing.  She asked nothing.

He walked toward her, then came around the bench to stand behind her.  She couldn’t see what he was doing. She didn’t turn around. She played on.

Something light and fluffy grazed her neck. Jamie smiled.  She recognized the touch as coming from the stranger’s long red plume. It was soft against her skin.  She lowered her chin, offering more of her neck.

The man played with the plume, guiding it the length of her neck. He eased it toward her throat, and then let the tip of the feather play across her breasts, partially clothed in a sleek yellow dress.

She played on; not ignoring the stranger, but waiting. What will you do next, my masked man? When would she stop him?

BOOK INFORMATION

Colors of the Night
Series : Colors of the Night #1
Author : Adriana Kraft
Published by: eXtasy Books
Publication Date: July, 2009
ASIN : ‎ B003XREZ1W
ISBN: 978-1-55487-319-7
Word Count: 65000; Print length:‎ 180 pages
Heat Level :    four flames (explicit sex, FM, FFM, FF; sex toys)

BLURB

The dazzling and timeless love goddess Aria pays a visit to struggling thirty-something Jamie and Ryan Hazleton, who are on the brink of divorce.  When the hot sex that results from her first lesson cools to icy glares, Aria decides to move in with them and provide more experiential learning.  Can Ryan overcome his jealousy of Jamie’s uninhibited response to the delectable goddess? What if he succumbs to his own desires?  Only time will tell whether this love triangle with an immortal will ignite or extinguish the dying embers of Jamie and Ryan’s love.

 

BUY LINKS

PUBLISHER: Extasy Books

https://www.extasybooks.com/colors-of-the-night

Currently on sale for $2.50 from the publisher.
It’s easy to download Extasy books to your Kindle.
“Send to Kindle” instructions are at the top of the Extasy home page.

All Major Retail Outlets

UNIVERSAL LINK

https://books2read.com/u/3nDDJK

Click on the links travel to the rest of today’s excerpts:

Happy New Year! A look back at my first published romance novel #EroticRomance #FFM #LoveGoddess @ExtasyBooks

by

Picture this: It’s early summer, and you’ve spent the day hiking and canoeing in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, barely south of Canada. After a comfy evening by the campfire, you and your main squeeze are snugly zipped into your sleeping bags inside your tent. You wake – and the sky above the lake is pulsing with light.

That’s the scene my husband and I wrote into the opening of our first published romance novel.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Do you have New Year resolutions? For me, the turning of the year is always a moment to evaluate where I’ve come and where I want to go. This year, Mr. Kraft and I took a moment to look back – we now have a total of fifty-eight published romance books available for sale, including novels, novellas, and a few short stories.

My 2024 resolution? To get these books back out in front of you, our readers, one a week, every Monday, through all of 2024 and then some!. I’ll share them in pretty much the order in which they were published.

THE STORY BEHIND COLORS OF THE NIGHT

Sometime in late December 2004, having completed three romance manuscripts and sent them off to countless editors and agents with nibbles but no contract offers, Mr. Kraft and I sat down and wrote out some goals. At the top of that list was become a published author in 2005.

Did we succeed? That depends on how you count it. We did sign our first contract late in 2005 – for a romantic suspense, to be published in 2007, with an e-publisher that released books on a schedule of one a week. We counted that a success.

Meanwhile we kept writing and broadened our submission targets to include a wider range of e-publishers. If you’re a relative newcomer to reading romance, you won’t remember those early days before Kindle and Nook. E-publishing first began to coalesce in the early 2000s, and the first e-books were released as PDFs. There was no such thing as an “e-reader.” An e-book was something to be read on a computer, and e-publishers faced an uncertain future.

The publisher who’d offered that first contract didn’t handle erotic romance, but they recommended another e-publisher to us for that genre. We submitted a synopsis and first chapter for Colors of the Night and were thrilled to have almost immediate acceptance – perhaps the two-week turnaround should have told us something, but we were still newbies. So was the publisher.

I still have a vivid memory of that first book release date, in September, 2006. The book released on a Friday, and we’d been traveling out west in our motorhome but were part way back, camped in Minden, Nebraska. The publisher hosted a reader chat with every release date – in order to participate, I had to hunker on a chair in the campground office to get internet reception.

One reader question from that chat is lodged in my memory: why a “love goddess” and not a “love god?” Because a love goddess is who turned up most often in our own fantasies, aided perhaps by some excellent adult videos written and directed by women. Colors of the Night staked our claim on what we love most and write most often: Happy endings for bisexual women.

Unfortunately for us, that first e-publisher (like so many early ones) went belly up in only a matter of months, and we were never paid any royalties. It took a while for our rights to be returned to us, but as soon as they were, we submitted Colors of the Night to the publisher we have stayed with ever since: Extasy Books, one of the earliest and longest-lived among e-publishers. It has been available through Extasy Books since July, 2009.

BLURB

The dazzling and timeless love goddess Aria pays a visit to struggling thirty-something Jamie and Ryan Hazleton, who are on the brink of divorce.  When the hot sex that results from her first lesson cools to icy glares, Aria decides to move in with them and provide more experiential learning.  Can Ryan overcome his jealousy of Jamie’s uninhibited response to the delectable goddess? What if he succumbs to his own desires?  Only time will tell whether this love triangle with an immortal will ignite or extinguish the dying embers of Jamie and Ryan’s love.

BOOK INFORMATION

Title: Colors of the Night
Series: Colors of the Night #1
Author: Adriana Kraft
Published by: eXtasy Books
Publication Date: July, 2009
ASIN:‎ B003XREZ1W
ISBN: 978-1-55487-319-7
Word Count: 65000; Print length:‎ 180 pages
Heat Level: four flames (explicit sex, FM, FFM, FF; sex toys)

EXCERPT

Jamie heard the tent zipper open and felt the rush of cool night air all in the same instant. Where was Ryan going in the middle of the night? Startled, she lifted her head and opened her eyes. A tiny sliver of night sky was visible through the open tent flap—and it was pulsating with light.

“Jamie. Wake up. You’ve got to see this.” Ryan’s voice was a whisper.

Did he really want her to join him? She hugged herself against the chill, grabbed her sweatshirt, and crawled out of the tent.

Ryan’s hands were reaching for her, so she took them and let him pull her to a stand. Tall columns of color—multiple hues of greens, blues, reds, yellows, and occasional whites—fell in a shimmering waterfall connecting sky and lake. The colors danced across the entire dome of the sky. She’d never seen anything like it.

They stood hand in hand for a long minute, then wordlessly walked down to the lakeshore and sat side by side on a low rock. Shrouded in rising mist, the lake seemed to be hovering between earth and sky with no boundary. Jamie lost herself in the throbbing rhythms of the dancing light.

“This is what I’ve been missing,” she heard herself say. “It feels like magic, like time is suspended. I wish we could catch and hold this moment forever.”

“I know,” Ryan replied. “It’s been difficult to remember such moments. I sometimes wonder what else we’ve forgotten.”

“You have each forgotten how to love.”

Jamie gasped and squeezed Ryan’s hand. “Who said that?”

Ryan shook his head.

“I said that.”

Jamie watched in awe as the mist swirled and collected itself into the shape of a stunning female. The image pirouetted as if to prove she was much more than a vision. Jamie tried not to stare. The woman’s copper skin was barely concealed in a gauzy white gown; Jamie could make out her darkened nipples as the image floated closer to them.

“You two need help.” The phantom shook her head, sending her long dark hair flying.  “Your marriage is crumbling. You care for each other, but you’ve forgotten how to love—if you ever truly knew how.”

BUY LINKS

PUBLISHER: Extasy Books

https://www.extasybooks.com/colors-of-the-night

Currently on sale for $2.50 from the publisher. It’s easy to download Extasy e-books to your Kindle. “Send to Kindle” instructions are at the top of the Extasy home page.

UNIVERSAL LINK for All Major Retail Outlets

https://books2read.com/u/3nDDJK

Alone New Year’s Eve… #SnippetSunday #SnipSun #WeekendWritingWarriors #LGBTQ #EroticRomance

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The millennium arrived with such promise—
will it deliver for recently widowed Merry Delaney?

Welcome to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday,
the weekly hop for everyone who loves to write – and read!
Click on the graphics to travel to the other snippets.

                                        

Since today is the last day of the year, I’m sharing a snippet from The Merry Widow, which opens on New Year’s Eve:

EXCERPT

Prologue

New Year’s Eve 1999
Four AM
Glencoe, Illinois

It was starting. Merry had awakened to her alarm, brewed the coffee, warmed up her favorite pastry, and now sat curled up on her living room couch wrapped in her plush bathrobe and focused on the TV screen, where the Samoans had just begun to welcome in the new year. Her favorite channel would be live for the next twenty-four hours, tracking the celebrations—or lack of—as the world turned toward the new millennium.

The Millennium. Y2K. She was so tired of all the doomsday hype—as an accountant, she’d had ample advance notice to bring all her software up to date to accommodate the changeover. People were treating it as if it might be the end of the world—hardly, even if her world had ended.

Maybe she could glean at least a small shred of inspiration from the rest of the world. How did you pick up and move on when everything you knew had changed? Tomorrow would be one year—to the day—since Dan had died. She shuddered. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to spend this day alone.

Book Information

Publisher: Extasy Books, February 7, 2020
Price: $4.99
Word length: 68,500     313 pages
Genres: Erotic Romance, Romantic Suspense
Heat Rating: R (explicit sex, m/f, f/f; ménage, f/f/f, f/f/m; toys)

BLURB

So much for all the anticipation about the new millennium. Merry Delaney’s life is still in a rut and shows no signs of changing. Sex? A fading memory, gone long before her husband actually died. Excitement? Hardly the hallmark of an accountant’s life. At forty-two, what can she look forward to?

Until her best friend takes Merry’s predicament into her practiced hands. One passionate kiss unleashes possibilities Merry never dreamed of—and she wants to sample them all. Men? Women? Young? Old? Ménage? Toys? Yes, to all, to pleasure, to making up for lost time.

Enter Chicago Detective Jim Barnes, who solicits Merry’s help with a mob funds-skimming case. Can the scorching passion that soon smolders between Merry and Jim survive the escalating mob threats of exposure? Having discovered a zest for sex, will Merry ever again be satisfied with one man?

REVIEW

Five Stars from N. N. Light:

Wow, what an incredible book! Not only is this a gripping romantic suspense, but the heat level is hotter than Death Valley.

BUY LINKS

Universal link to all major retail vendors:

https://books2read.com/u/mK61gP

On sale for half price at Extasy Books:

https://www.extasybooks.com/the-merry-widow

Golden Years and Silver Linings ~ My Review #LesbianRomance #LaterInLife #Review #FiveStars @IHeartLesFic

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For starters – a golf course in Palm Springs? Count me in! Mr. Kraft and I get to Palm Springs at least once a year, and our son and his partner join us from L.A. (where we absolutely refuse to drive any longer). We’ve taken in the marvelous Judy Show at the Purple Room, gone Tiki Bar hopping (the Reef is a favorite), hiked the stunning Andreas Canyon trail with its native palm trees and clear creek waters, explored the Art museum, taken the aerial tram and hiked at the top, toured modernism houses, and sampled more restaurants than are probably good for us.

Palm Springs may have been a reason I picked up this book and kept reading upon first opening it, but there is so much more.

BOOK INFORMATION

Golden Years and Silver Linings: A Lesbian Romance
by Linda M. Ford (Author), Patricia Grayhall (Author)
ASIN: ‎B0CFSG8X9V
Publisher: Rain City Press
Publication date: ‎August 14, 2023
Print length: 283 pages
Genres: Lesbian Fiction, Lesbian Romance, Women’s Divorce Fiction

MY REVIEW:

This book is a breath of fresh air for all of us over sixty. I could not put it down. Having lived through the Women’s Lib of the 60s and Consciousness Raising of the 70s, I was impressed with the realistic portrayal of that era – and chagrined yet again over how long it took for our culture to move from there to inclusiveness and acceptance for the LGBTQ community (a battle we are obviously still fighting).

If I had to identify two main themes that stood out to me, they would be fidelity and authenticity. Now in their late sixties, the two main characters first fell in love with each other in their early twenties, in 1972. By then Christina already identified as lesbian, but Robyn Elizabeth had never considered that there might be any other option than to fall in love with a man. I appreciated the authors’ authentic description of her inner struggle to accept her feelings and finally act on them in that era. In 2023, readers who are younger may write off Robyn Elizabeth as an undeserving wimp when she ultimately turns tail and runs, abandoning Christina. I fully understood her.

The dual timeline novel gives us a window into their 1972 experience, then drops us into a chance meeting 46 years later, in 2018, on a golf course in Palm Springs. As a sidebar, I love Palm Springs and thoroughly enjoyed it vicariously through the characters’ eyes.

Christina’s wife has died of cancer, in 2016, and Robyn Elizabeth is in a stable 40+ year marriage that is relatively comfortable but lacking passion. We are allowed to experience the inner world of both characters as they journey toward what many might think an impossibility – a late-in-life happy ending.

Christina is deeply afraid of being hurt again, as she was by the abrupt break-up in 1972. Robyn Elizabeth must once more examine her feelings and become faithful – not to a marriage that is already broken, but to her authentic self. Even knowing that all romance novels have a happy outcome, I was pulled into their experience and found myself struggling to envision how it all could ever work out. And that is what kept the pages turning.

BUY LINK:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CFSG8X9V/

Available On Kindle Unlimited

A solid male specimen… #MFRWHooks #EroticRomance #Detective #NewYear

by

The millennium arrived with such promise—
will it deliver for recently widowed Merry Delaney?

Welcome to MFRW Hooks, where the authors of Marketing for Romance Writers share snippets from their stories to entice you into wanting more. Be sure to click on the links at the end to travel!

Since The Merry Widow opens on a New Year’s Eve, I’ll post its opening for the Sunday Snippet hop this coming Sunday, but meanwhile, here’s the moment Merry meets Detective Jim Delaney:

EXCERPT

Merry parked the car in her Glencoe driveway. She got out and breathed deeply. She loved the richly fragrant springtime air. One of the best decisions she and Dan had ever made was purchasing this acre of land with its large old two-story house. Mature oaks and maples added to the sense of purpose and security of the place. This was home. Her home. And if she did kick up her heels and fall on her face in the process, she’d always have this place to return to.

She stopped by a lilac bush and sniffed, then closed her eyes and let the scent waft into her nostrils. This would do. Life would be just fine…

The crushed rock driveway crunched under the tires of a car entering. Merry cranked her head around as if she’d been caught doing something naughty.

She compressed her lips. She didn’t recognize the modest gray sedan or the brawny dark-haired man prying himself out of the driver’s seat. He gave her a crooked smile and a nod and walked toward her. Sauntered, she corrected herself.

“Mrs. Delaney? Mrs. Merry Delaney?” the man asked, reaching into his inner coat pocket and pulling out a badge.

“Yes, I’m Merry Delaney.” Her breath caught. “What’s wrong? Is it Tiffany? Has something happened to my daughter?”

The man shook his large head. He could pass for a Chicago Bears linebacker. His dark eyes penetrated.

Was he staring into her soul? Was he stripping her naked? Where did that thought come from? So maybe he was just the first man to show up since she’d decided it was time move on.

“I’m Detective Jim Barnes of the Chicago Police Department, Mrs. Delaney. I’m investigating a case that you may be able to shed some light on.” He looked around the front yard. “If it’s not too much trouble, could we step inside? This conversation might draw less curiosity if we conduct it indoors.”

“Of course, Detective Barnes. Forgive me.” She reached for her keys and unlocked the front door. “Come on in. I’ll make some coffee.”

“Don’t bother on my account.”

“No problem. It’s already made—I just have to push a button. I almost always have some ready to go.”

Now why was she rattling on so? Was it because she was unsure what questions he was going to ask? Or was it his physical presence? He was a solid male specimen—no question about that. And she couldn’t quite get away from him long enough to collect her thoughts. He’d followed her into the kitchen. That was okay. She was more comfortable in her kitchen than most anywhere else in the house.

BLURB

So much for all the anticipation about the new millennium. Merry Delaney’s life is still in a rut and shows no signs of changing. Sex? A fading memory, gone long before her husband actually died. Excitement? Hardly the hallmark of an accountant’s life. At forty-two, what can she look forward to?

Until her best friend takes Merry’s predicament into her practiced hands. One passionate kiss unleashes possibilities Merry never dreamed of—and she wants to sample them all. Men? Women? Young? Old? Ménage? Toys? Yes, to all, to pleasure, to making up for lost time.

Enter Chicago Detective Jim Barnes, who solicits Merry’s help with a mob funds-skimming case. Can the scorching passion that soon smolders between Merry and Jim survive the escalating mob threats of exposure? Having discovered a zest for sex, will Merry ever again be satisfied with one man?

BUY LINK

UNIVERSAL BUY LINK

https://books2read.com/u/mK61gP

Click on the links travel to the rest of today’s excerpts:

Yuletide Eve Scene and a wish from us for you #Love #Peace #Hope

by

Both of us who write under this pen name honor all who celebrate turning towards the light, in whatever tradition has come to be meaningful for you. At the center of this turning is warmth, love, peace, light, and hope. This is what we wish for all of you, not just in this season, but year-round.

Sometimes our characters experience this as well. Here is Christmas Eve from A Reluctant Santa

Set Up: Cliff spent the middle of the day playing Santa to needy kids, hosted by a local golf course lodge, with Carol assisting him as his elf. Now it’s late evening.

Carol snuggled into Cliff with his arm around her waist as they leaned against the lodge balcony railing, both of them in awe of the star-studded sky forming a canopy overhead. “This is so spectacular. The stars seem so close. And so many more are visible up here than in the city.”

“For sure. Sometimes I feel like time stands still while the night sky does its nightly dance. You should be here sometime when the Northern Lights put on a show. Dazzling. It can be like sheets of color fading in and out, daring you to ignore them. The night sky up here is so vast, almost overwhelming.”

“The stars are so brilliant. Santa won’t have any trouble navigating his way tonight.”

Cliff squeezed her tighter. “Especially if his favorite elf serves as his navigator.”

“Thanks again for taking me to the Christmas Eve service. It was so special.”

“Sarah thought you would like it.”

“It was just right. I gave up long time ago trying to deal with Christmas intellectually. I’m not into debating whether this happened or that didn’t. It’s the feeling of Christmas that moves me. And those kids certainly did that tonight. I nearly lost it when they marched down the aisle to The Little Drummer Boy with coffee cans hanging around their necks, pounding those cans like they were the most sophisticated drums ever made.”

“They were happy and proud, from the oldest to the youngest.”

“That says a lot about the adults, including children in the service like that. Wonderful. The Christmas spirit was palpable.” Carol suddenly pointed toward the sky. “Did you see that?”

“A shooting star. I hoped if we stood out here long enough we’d see some. That was a long, bright one. Don’t see many of those.”

“So fitting for the night. For Santa.” Carol hesitated. “For Santa and his elf.”