Samhain Publishing Ltd. Weblog

A New Year - Time to Get Writing!

It’s that time of year – time to start a new book. Time to write something exciting and fresh. Time to take on the dreaded Tween book (read “pre-teen” here – as in 12) that I’ve promised my step-son we’d write together for oh… years.

Halloween and Possibilities

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Not because of the candy (although I love candy of any sort) or the costumes or the decorations (although I love those too). It’s because of the spooky crispness of the air and the strange stir of possibility that makes me shiver every time I step out the door. I can almost imagine Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show from Something Wicked This Way Comes unloading in the distance. Evil and good shimmer around me as if I’ve ventured near some sort of portal to an alternate reality. It’s a very good time to be an author, if I can just slow down enough to listen.

Working for the Man While Writing at Night

Three months ago, I went back to work fulltime. It was a good opportunity, one I felt I couldn’t pass up (read here – I sold out for the money!). When I started the job, I had visions of working my eight hour days, then coming home and getting my page count done. I had no doubt I could balance both, even though I thought my writing would slow down a bit.

Ice Cream and Me

I’ve always had an ice cream addiction. In fact, as I started writing this blog, I switched my iPod to Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” because it’s the kind of dreamy song which goes along with eating the creamy wonder food which punctuated every personal success I’ve ever had. Ice cream for me has always meant good times and if the good times are gone, then it was what I turned to when I needed to banish away the bad.

Van Morrison is singing:
Take away my trouble, take away my grief
Take away my heartache, in the night like a thief
She gives me love, love, love, love, crazy love

If the “she” in the song was ice cream, it would be our song.

But a little over three months ago, I was diagnosed with a strange illness which left my body unable to break down certain proteins. Not only did gluten (the protein in wheat) become forbidden, but casein (the protein in most dairy products) went on the list as well.

IN HEAT releases

Leigh’s best selling book is coming back, longer and filled with sexy adventure!!

Enter a contest to celebrate the release – Details HERE

ISBN: 1-59998-907-7
Length: Category
Price: 4.50
Publication Date: April 4, 2008
Cover art by Anne Cain
A mating ritual as old as time could be the death of them both…

Jax’s yearly mating cycle couldn’t come at a more inconvenient time. He’s on the verge of ending seven years of exile and claiming his birthright, but for 24 hours he’ll be vulnerable to his enemies, alone and in agony—unless he can find a willing partner. He thinks he’s found the perfect solution in the beautiful slave Waverly. He’ll buy her at any price, and after it’s over, he’ll give her the one thing all slaves crave. Freedom.

But Waverly isn’t really a slave. She’s a transport pilot double crossed by Junkeaters and sold to a notorious gunrunner. Escape is the only thing on her mind—and she better disappear fast, before her own heat reaches a crescendo.

Before she can slip away, the overpowering need to mate crashes over them, the intensity taking them both by surprise. But the Inter-World Council is out to hang Jax for a crime he didn’t commit, Junkeaters are hot on their trail, and ruthless arms traders are gunning for them.

Their passion may burn hot enough to last a lifetime, but first they must survive.

This book has been previously published and has been revised and expanded from its original release.

READ AN EXCERPT HERE

Secret Obsession Has Released!!!

Clemant Taylor thought for the millionth time how nice it would be to engage in a hot, blazing affair. She longed to run her fingers down a man’s skin, smell the masculine scent of his body, have him fill her up and relieve the growing tension in her belly.
Instead, she was on her way to her boss’s office, summoned from a meeting where she’d been trying to solve a snag in a multimillion dollar computer rollout.
Her cell phone, which had been ringing all day, buzzed at her hip, but she hit the key to send the call to voicemail. This project would tank if she didn’t keep her hands firmly at the controls. She needed to deal with her boss and get back to her meeting, instead of letting her mind wander to sex yet again. Lately that seemed to be all she thought about.
Maybe she should break down and have an affair with her lead developer, Steve Hurt. Just a brief fling. They were compatible, she knew. Opposites, but not so far in the extremes that they had nothing in common. Unfortunately, it would be unfair for her to use him for one or two nights of relief from the dull ache riding inside her. He wasn’t Wade Tawes and never would be. She’d given up on finding a replacement.
At the thought of Wade, a memory of him hit her so strongly, she sagged against the wall outside of Randy’s office. Flashes of Wade’s scent, sea salt and the spicy mix of pure male that rode on his skin at the hollow between his neck and shoulder, invaded her nostrils as if he stood before her. She could feel the shadow of his calloused palm pass down her stomach, feel the sharp stab of the grass on her bare back as he lowered her onto the ground up on Tompkin’s Bluff. It had been years since she’d last been there with him, but the intense sensory-rich memory hit her like a freight train, leaving her gasping.
Her mind whirled with memories that cut into her like intimate shards of glass.
Running a trembling hand through her bob-length hair, she realized it had been a long time since she’d had a physical remembrance of him like this. She hadn’t notice the absence of them as she concentrated on moving forward with her life.
Pushing off the wall, she straightened her shoulders and banished the memory.
She’d become convinced her dealings with Wade had ruined her for all time. Her ex-husband’s parting shot a year ago outside the divorce attorney’s office skittered through her mind. John had told her she cared more about her career than she had him, but that hadn’t been true. Her career wasn’t the issue.
The secret pact she’d made with Wade had sat in her stomach like a weight between them, turning her into a liar by its very presence. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t seen Wade since the day she’d met John. Wade had been living inside her, constantly draining her energy as she fought to forget him. Maybe telling John about her affair with Wade before they’d married would have solved it all. Her gut had warned her it would eventually destroy them, but they’d crashed and burned before their first wedding anniversary anyway.
She pushed away her failures and desires, rounding the corner into Randy’s office. “What’s up?”
Randy wasn’t the best boss she’d ever had, but he wasn’t a total asshole either.
Looking up from the one document on his desk, Randy put on what she called his sympathetic face. “We had a call from your cousin.”
“My cousin?” she asked. She had at least seventeen cousins, probably more since she last talked to her clan. From the time she’d met John three years ago, she hadn’t been back to Blue Island and had lost touch with their daily lives.
“Your cousin Tabitha?” Randy glanced down at a pink phone message slip. “She said your great-aunt had a heart attack and you need to call her immediately.”
Clem ripped the slip from his hand, forgetting her project with the news that the most influential person in her life could be dying. “Oh God. No.”
Aunt Liv, the guiding light, the matriarch of her family, had had a heart attack. Without even thinking about Randy or the rollout again, she pivoted and left his office at a run.

*

“I’m sorry to have called you at work, but you didn’t answer at home or on your cell,” Tabitha said.
“I’ve been in the middle of a system rollout. How is she?” Clem could hear the strain threading through the words. Aunt Liv was her grandmother’s sister. Of the five Taylor women born to Xavier Taylor, only Aunt Liv remained alive. She’d been a spinster, too busy running the clan to have children of her own, although she always had Taylor family members living in her home. It never occurred to Clem that she wouldn’t live forever, but she was eighty-six years old and people had to die sometime. The thought shook her.
“As fine as anyone who had a heart attack can be. You know not much keeps her down. She’s still in the hospital.” Her cousin’s voice held a hesitancy, as if she had more bad news she was reluctant to share.
Clem paused, trying to read Tabitha’s strange vibes over the phone. “Does she want me to come there?”
“No.” Tabby took a deep breath. “She wants you here, on Blue Island, by seven o’clock tonight.”
“What? Tabby, I’m running a huge project. I can’t just leave.” But she would have, actually, if Aunt Liv had needed her at the hospital.
“Aunt Liv said you have to come tonight.” Tabby sounded exasperated and a bit panicked. She had a good head on her shoulders, though, like the rest of the females in the Taylor clan. “She wants you to represent her in the Heads meeting.” The Heads were the four leaders of the main clans that inhabited Blue Island—Taylor, Marshal, Tawes and Evans.
“Tabby, that makes absolutely no sense. I haven’t been back on the island in three years. I wasn’t even born there.”
For a reason Clem had never fully understood, her grandmother had left the island before the outbreak of World War II and had never returned. Clem had been born in Raleigh, North Carolina, although she’d spent every summer of her childhood in Aunt Liv’s home. Even now, she would spend all her vacation on Blue if she could return without starting the whole thing over with Wade.
But she knew even stepping foot upon the sandy soil of the island would bring about her downfall. If she was within a square mile of Wade Tawes, she’d break every promise she’d made to herself, give up every bit of pride she had, beg, borrow or steal if it meant she would be in his arms again. The only thing that made her feel remotely better about it was that he suffered from the same insanity she did.
One summer day when they were both seventeen years old, they’d given each other their virginity and sworn an oath to keep secret what had rapidly turned into a sexual obsession. Since that day, she hadn’t been on the island without having him, which is why she’d stopped going. She’d met John and had seen a way to escape.
The whole thing disgusted her, because she and Wade were completely incompatible. Not only was he a Tawes, the sworn enemy of the Taylor clan, but he was chosen to replace his father as Head. Besides adding to the impossible situation, it meant he would never be able to leave Blue Island. She didn’t plan to give up her career aspirations and live on an island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay.
Maybe, just maybe they could have gotten around all of that, if it hadn’t been for the fact that Wade Tawes was the biggest overbearing, egotistical asshole she’d ever met. He didn’t even try to end this madness between them. Oh no. He knew her weaknesses and exploited them. But the thing that pissed her off most, shooting her blood pressure through the roof, was his attitude. He never asked, he demanded, embroiling them in battles for control like two captains at the helm of a ship. She couldn’t stop her body’s need when she was near him, so she’d finally insisted that he just shut up. It was silence or murder. Or escape. She’d tried the first, but ended up taking the last.
Tabby interrupted her trip down memory lane. “I’m telling you, Clemant, she wants you here tonight. Mike will pick you up at the dock in Crisfield. You’d better leave now or you won’t make it.”
“Tabby, think. Please. I can’t represent Aunt Liv if I don’t even know the basics of what’s been happening on the island for the last few years.”
“She’s sending Jenny with you to help you make the right decisions.”
Jenny was Aunt Liv’s chosen successor. They were the only matriarch on an island populated with testosterone-filled males.
“Jenny is just sixteen,” Clem said, but knew she’d lost. What Aunt Liv wanted, Aunt Liv got.
“She’s smart, though. She’ll keep you from making a mistake.” Tabitha paused. “Clemant, come home. We need you.”
And with that, her fate was sealed.

Leigh Wyndfield - The Search for the Perfect Male

I’ve got a confession to make. The heroes in my romances are usually a prototype of my husband in some way, shape or form. After all, he’s the man I know best and I married him because I obviously find him hero-material. Combining him with a little Han Solo, I had in my opinion a wonderful male. But after many books, I began to think I needed a new prototype. Someone was bound to start noticing that my hot, yummy heroes were all a little alike.

So, I started the search for another hero archetype. He had to be handsome, smart, witty and the number one requirement was that even if he wasn’t perfect (in fact, I was looking for slightly flawed), he needed to be okay with not being perfect. I like heroes who feel great in their own skins.

I looked and looked and couldn’t find anyone. Months rolled by. I began to despair. Even the issue of People magazine’s yearly Best Looking People provided no new fodder. The men all looked too handsome, too delicate, so perfect as to be uninteresting.

Then I saw him. I was meeting my old work buddies (think a table full of computer geeks) when this guy walked into Panera’s. Tall, lean but covered in muscle, sandy hair, a real tan that had lasted into October, and a walk that screamed confidence. But that wasn’t the clincher. The thing that sealed the deal was that he wore an Australian outback riding jacket as if he’d just come in off the range. My mouth dropped open. What guy could actually pull that off and not look like a complete idiot?? My fingers itched to take out the small writing pad I haul everywhere with me for just these occasions. He was the perfect combination of Brad Pitt before he got all weird and a 30 year old Robert Redford. Brad Redford I named him in my mind, suppressing a female giggle that really isn’t my style, I swear.

It might have been better if he’d walked on by, forever to live in my mind as a fictional character. Instead, he sat down next to me. It turns out he was friends with the guys I was eating lunch with. Usually I’m okay with my voyeuristic tendencies – I’m an author after all. How am I supposed to build stories if I’m not constantly watching my fellow man? But now I felt a little weird and uncomfortable, similar to the feeling I had when my mother-in-law told me about her sex life.

This odd feeling went on until I looked down and saw him fiddling with his sock. Only it didn’t look like a sock exactly. It looked like…

“What the hell is that on your leg?” I asked, horror creeping into my tone.

He yanked on the thin, stretchy fabric. “That’s the problem with wearing tights. They always get all messed up around the ankles.” He spoke as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about men wearing tights.

I couldn’t stop myself. I had to know why Brad Redford was wearing women’s legging, even if I had a feeling the answer wouldn’t bring me any satisfaction. “But why are you wearing tights?”

He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “It’s cold out,” he said, as if that explained everything.

I left that day heartbroken and, without knowing it, had made a new (tights wearing) friend. Dave plays soccer every chance he gets, is a complete jokester and is, yes, hot. Weird (too weird), but hot. It took me two years before I finally used him in a story and when I did, it was unexpected, mainly because it isn’t the type of tale I ever thought I’d write. He’s one of the two men in my latest release, a ménage with the title TWO FOR THE MONEY. If Dave ever knew I put him in a M/M/F ménage, he’d be furious. He may wear tights, but he’s also much too Alpha to ever share a woman. But lucky for me, he’ll never know. It will just be our little secret!

Check out an excerpt of my stories at www.leighwyndfield.com!