Raine Miller Romance

Where history comes unlaced..

All In, The Blackstone Affair Part 2

9 Sep 2012

I promised to reveal the cover this weekend for All In.  Well here it is.  I can thank Kim Killion at Hot Damn Designs for working her magic yet again.  I love how it turned out and love the expressiveness in the hand.  Hands fascinate me in general so based on the fact that Ethan Blackstone is known for touching his girl all the time, I thought this cover worked perfectly for their story.  I also promised an excerpt so here goes.  You will see that Mr. Blackstone is still explaining things to Brynne in that very direct way of his.  *snickers*  He can do blunt and scorchingly sexy better than any man I know and it only makes me love him more.

Excerpt~

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“First?  We’re going to get some food.”  It came out a little harsher than I wanted it to.

She nodded at me and then looked away, out the window.

“After you eat we’ll get a new phone and mobile number for you.”

She looked down at her lap and nodded again.  I wanted to pull her into my arms but I held off.

“Then I’m taking you home.  My place—home.”

“No, Ethan, that’s not a good idea,” she whispered.

“Fuck good ideas,” I exploded.  “Would you at least look at me?”  She turned her eyes up to mine and smoldered in the seat, a hint of red fire flickering and making them look very brown.  I wanted to drag her to me and shake her, making her understand that this bullshit break-up was a thing of the past.  She was coming home with me, period.  I turned the key in the ignition.

“What do you want from me, Ethan?”

“That’s easy.”  I made a rude noise.  “I want to go back to one week ago.  I want to be back in my office fucking on my desk with you wrapped around me!  I want your body underneath mine looking up at me with some expression other than the one I saw when you left me at the lifts!”  I rested my forehead on the steering wheel.

“Okay…Ethan.”  Her voice sounded shaky and more than a little defeated.

“Okay…Ethan?” I mocked, pulling my head up to look her over.  “What does that mean?  Okay I’m coming home with you?  Okay to you and me?  What?  I need more from you, Brynne.”

~*~

Contracts, Covers, and Blurbs…

26 Feb 2011

How I see Marianne

My contract for, His Perfect Passion came and with it, some Homework assignments.  First, I had to describe my characters in specific detail, height, weight, physical characteristics, etc. along with other elements key to the storyfor a cover questionnaire.  I was invited to provide a link to a photograph of a person I could “see” as my character.  This part was fun.  I have found inspiration in paintings several times for my writing and it  was a John William Waterhouse painting of Boreas that inspired my vision of the heroine, Marianne.  The hero of my book, Darius Rourke, was just as fun to imagine.  Darius is half English, half Italian, and a cultured but domineering gentleman.  I found the perfect man one day in a cologne ad from a magazine.  From the moment I spotted the photo I could not picture anyone else as my Darius.  He is him, in my vision at least.  Actually, ‘he’ is a Spanish model named, Oriol Elacho.   I love his hands in the picture.  You can feel the ‘cultured elegance’ just by looking at his hands.  Delicioso…

Oriol Elacho as Darius Rourke

The less fun part was writing three separate book blurbs.  The first: 25 words or less for use on ads.  The second: 50 word blurb for use on the website.  The third: 150 words or less for the back of the book.  Now, this was rather hard to do in my opinion, and the hardest blurb, by far, was the 25-word one.  I did it, but it took me several hours to get it right.  Condensing a novel down to just two sentences and conveying the essence of your story is a challenge.  As a writer you have to make your book sound interesting enough that people will want to read it.  That’s the tricky part…but also the beauty of writing–the part that keeps me typing away.

Raine