Adriana Kraft

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

Erotic Romance

Midweek Tease ~ Download if you Dare #MWTease #MFRWAuthor

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Welcome to Midweek Tease, hosted by Angelica Dawson, where authors tease you with a little something to help you stay warm till the weekend…

Five Stars? One Star? Smoking hot? Sleazy?

All of the above? Kitty Paige and Jared Jacobs would embrace the entire spectrum of reader reviews and laugh all the way to their next hot scene, and they’d hold nothing back when they got there.

The Best ManPersonally, we love Kitty’s bold approach to life and sexuality. But don’t download this book unless you’re ready for some edgy characters who enjoy things like man-sandwiches, ménage, sex buddies, scarf play, spanking, and polyamory, to mention a few.

Romance with two people who only ever have sex with each other? We like that too, and we’ve got some coming out later this year, but this isn’t one of them. Here’s a taste of Kitty and Jared’s repartee—they’re at Arlington Park Race Track. How far will they go in public?

EXCERPT

“What have you two been up to,” Jared asked, “besides food gathering?”

“Conspiring.”

“Conspiring how to make me rock hard?” he whispered in her ear as she slid in front of him to take the seat on the other side.

“Of course.” Kitty batted her eyelashes. “Isn’t that the point?”

“Do you know you have the sexiest damn feet?”

“Uh huh.” She slapped his hand off her thigh. “You’ve told me before. And we have a much larger crowd today, so be a good boy—for a change—if you can.”

He leaned away from her and chortled, then glanced over at the tote board. “It’d be a lot easier to be a good boy if you weren’t so intent on being a naughty girl.” He gave her a crooked smile and laid half the Daily Racing Form across her lap.

She scowled at him when she felt his fingers toying with the hem of her skirt, which had ridden half way up her thigh. “If you persist on being bad, I’ll have to spank you when we get back home.”

He withdrew his hand from under the newspaper and leaned over to whisper in her ear. “Is that a promise?”

BLURB

Bad boy meets bad girl. Is there anything more?

Passionate, hard working and every inch a business woman, Chicago realtor Kitty Paige likes her sex raw and edgy, and sees no reason to limit herself to just one man. Never married and not quite forty, the striking blonde has successfully raised her daughter, Susan, and is already pushing her new-found freedom to the limits.

Wealthy commodities middle-man and race horse owner Jared Jacobs is father of the best man at Susan’s wedding. He is smitten by the vision in yellow who exudes sex as she escorts her daughter down the aisle. Also single, the handsome mustached California ranch owner with mischievous eyes views his sex life as a series of splendid love affairs, and sets out to make Kitty next on the list.

Together and apart, their chemistry is explosive, and their sparkling repartee and steamy sex catch both partners by surprise. Jared is first to recognize he’s fallen in love. When Kitty panics, can Jared finesse his every move and reel her in?

BUY LINKS

   

Sea to Sky Books is a new retail e-book vendor dedicated to indie-pubbed books and authors. We’ve just started placing our books there – check them out. You’ll find some of your favorite authors!

Don’t forget to travel to all the other tempting mid-week teases!

Writing #GLBTQ Literature

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Welcome to the Rainbow Book Reviews Blog Hop! Be sure to click on the graphic to link to the rest of the participants. Lots of fabulous prizes – leave a comment to enter, for ours as well as all the grand prizes. We’re offering one free download, reader’s choice, from our published books.

What does writing GLBTQ literature mean to us? We’re a married couple writing erotic romance together under our pen name, Adriana Kraft. We’re also proud parents of a gay son, members of our local PFLAG chapter, and social activists who’ve supported causes we believe in across more decades than we necessarily want to count.

Nearly three and a half years ago, we stood with other supporters on the steps of our local county Courthouse on an April afternoon awaiting word on the Iowa Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision. We were prepared to stand for our values whichever way the decision went – and we were thrilled with the outcome (and blogged about it, HERE). I don’t think we can say it better than one of us told a reporter that afternoon: “Love is love, and every couple deserves a happy ending.”

So that’s one major reason we write what we write: to celebrate love wherever it can be found, and to share with the world our belief that all persons, whatever their sexual orientation, deserve equality under the law when they form a love relationship.

There’s more of course – we do write erotic romance, after all, and our tag line is Erotic Romance for Two, Three, or More. There are so many varieties and combinations under the rainbow banner. We’re especially partial to scenes and stories that feature two women together, whether lesbian or bisexual. Our short stories and novels explore what’s possible for women (well, and the occasional man) who can’t fit themselves neatly into the box labeled “straight.” Sometimes their foray into same sex relationships turns out to be a small part of coming into their own sexually, as in Mistress of Purgatory Point. More often, same sex erotic encounters become more central for them, and they find a range of solutions for ongoing expression of their entire spectrum of sexuality. We write a world where three- and even four-way committed relationships are not only possible but welcomed.

We hope you’ll leave us a comment on why GLBTQ literature matters to you, and what your favorite pairings are. We’ll pull a winner by random number Monday morning, August 27. Good luck!

Bisexual Invisibility

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Okay, now THIS is scary. I follow blogger Mike Szymanski at the Bisexuality Examiner. I can’t remember quite how I found him in the first place – probably through the BiWriters group I belong to on Yahoo. But if I’d gone looking for him on a Google search, without that personal connection, I might never have found him. Did you know that when you start to search the term “bisexual” or “bisexuality,” the Google auto-complete function is blocked? This vastly reduces the number of hits you’re likely to get – making it appear there’s almost nothing out there on your topic.

He’s referencing a Huffington Post article by Faith Cheltenham, who’s done some research on this issue. As she points out, how many bisexual persons just looking for validation and affirmation will never find what they’re seeking because Google has blocked the auto-complete for searching the term bisexual? She offers data, and has some links to give Google some feedback. If you care about this issue, hop on over there and help fight bi invisibility.

Sex Positivity

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Consent, Pleasure, Well Being. The term Sex Positivity has been around for a while and can mean many different things to different people.

Lately I’ve been following blogger and Sex Educator Charlie Glickman, and I like his definition best of all. The only criteria for evaluating any sex act, he says, are consent, pleasure, and well being.

Being sex positive doesn’t mean that we love sex, or have lots of it, or think everyone should practice free love. In fact, it means we don’t judge what anyone else wants to practice – gay, straight, kinky, vanilla, monogamous, polyamorous or celibate – beyond those three cardinal parameters:

Is it consensual? Are all the parties adult, are they aware and informed about what they’re doing, and have they agreed? Is it pleasurable for the parties involved? Does it contribute to the well being of all who are involved? I am reminded of the Wiccan rede, An it harm none.

What does this have to do with the erotic romance my husband and I write? Right now, we’re polishing off another entry in our Swinging Games series at Extasy Books. In that series a married baby boomer couple have expanded their sexual practice to become part of the swing lifestyle. Being sex positive means we don’t judge them or their practice, so long as they agree it’s consensual, pleasurable and contributes to their well being. And, of course, we hope that reading about what they’re up to is consensual, pleasurable, and contributes to readers’ well being!

Swinging Games: Too Close for Comfort is due out from Extasy Books early this summer. Books One through Eight are available now at Extasy Books.

Equality for our stories ~ and all LGBTQ persons

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I write erotic romance with my husband under the pen name Adriana Kraft. Most of the heroines we love to write and read are bisexual. In addition we’ve written some lesbian heroines and an occasional bisexual hero. So our pairings include M/F, F/F, and M/M, plus ménage, in a range of combinations.

Authors who write stories like ours have just been excluded from entering the “More than Magic” fiction contest based on those pairings – giving us a taste of the discrimination our characters so often struggle with.  The contest is an annual one sponsored by the Romance Writers Ink chapter of RWA (Romance Writers of America). In previous years, all romantic pairings have been eligible to enter, but this year, the entry guidelines state that the contest will “no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.”

We’ve been members of RWA for over a decade, and we’ve celebrated two victories with that organization across the years. The first was an attempt by some members to define romance as between “one man and one woman.” Thankfully that went down to defeat, and the organization’s official definition of romance focuses on the following two elements, period:

A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

The second was the creation a few years ago of an on-line RWA chapter formed by authors of LGBTQ romances. We joined immediately.

Rainbow Romance Writers has been visible and active over the last two days spreading the word about this problem – and, once the first wave of anger settled out, chapter members and chapter leadership have been strong advocates of finding solutions to the problem.

It’s gone viral – several of our members blogged on Friday, Smart Bitches blogged about it yesterday, Suzanne Brockman has been posting on FaceBook, and it’s all over Twitter.

What can you do? Our chapter president, Heidi Cullinen, posted a blog today filled with things authors and readers can do to be part of the solution to the problem. If you care about LGBTQ romance and LGBTQ people, please take a look and get involved.

Sex – and Everything Else

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Did I get your attention?

I’m an author of erotic romance, so naturally I like sex: reading about it, writing about it, watching it (there was some great discussion this past week on adult films for women at The Examiner) and of course having some for myself.

But November was a strange month and it’s made me sit back and re-focus on what I stand for.

Sexual Freedom, for starters: the freedom to read, write, watch and engage in hot sexy activity – with the partner of my choice, without any government intrusion into my bedroom or wherever else I choose to be sexy.

Equal Rights and equal protection under the law for all of us. That means I support marriage equality, the repeal of DADT, strong anti-bullying legislation for all our schools, and the Trevor Project and It Gets Better. And NOH8. Most of our books focus on LGBT characters, especially bisexual heroines. I want both the real world and the fictional world to be safe for them.

Great Sex – goes without saying. Tips, toys, information, resources, anything out there that increases sexual enjoyment, especially in romantic relationships, of whatever genders and combinations.

Health. The man I’m married to – half of the pen name Adriana Kraft – is a cardiac patient. Probably that’s a major reason we write erotic romance together. We live our lives by the “if not now, when” mantra because there’s no telling what’s promised. We also devote countless hours each week to staying healthy – by how we eat, how much we exercise, how we practice stress reduction and how we enjoy our time off. 

Some of these things are political and some are more individual, but for me they’re all intensely personal and hard to separate. I went off line for the last ten days leading up to November’s elections to work for local candidates who share my values. On November 2nd, my causes took a huge hit both here in Iowa and across the nation, even though both my candidates won.

So the last item on today’s “what I stand for” list is Happy Endings. Our characters deserve them and so do we. We’ll keep writing them in our fiction and working for them in our real life – to #MakeItBetter for all of us.