Sunday, June 26, 2016

House Arrest Is My Favorite Book -- A Naughty Tale Told In Pretty Pictures!

The first book I ever sold to Blushing Books was called HOUSE ARREST.

It's about an Australian girl named Janelle who is teaching in Japan and gets thrown in jail on false drug charges, framed by her best friend!

Janelle is looking at a life behind bars. Then Kenji turns up.

Kenji Kitamura is one of her best students. He's rich and he's gorgeous, but very old fashioned. He has the connections to get Janelle out of jail, but only if she agrees to obey his discipline at home!

For an Australian girl who loves a good laugh and a drink with her mates, all this is a bit of a shock. And at first Janelle is none too happy about being Kenji's prisoner!

Kenji takes Janelle to his grandmother's place, a traditional Japanese inn called a ryokan.

Janelle is expected to do her share of cooking and cleaning, under the direction of Kenji's oba-san, or grandmother.

Janelle is not exactly a morning person. Kenji is stern and strict, but Janelle can't help how she feels. The funny thing is, over time her feelings for Kenji start to change!

HOUSE ARREST is a naughty book, with a ton of naughty spankings. But a very romantic ending!

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Demarco's Captive

Lucy Harrison is an agent who believes in going under cover . . . way under cover!

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Author At Work!

There are days when I think this is where I do my best work!

Thursday, June 2, 2016

MARY GORDON IS A BIG FAT PHONY

This is a literary essay I wrote about a distinguished Barnard scholar. Please comment nicely!

“What, what? Is not the truth, the truth?” Sir John Falstaff

Nothing is more depressing than reading the New York Times Book Review. It’s just so smug, so orthodox. And at the same time so phony. Take Mary Gordon, for example. Just the other day Mary Gordon wrote a front page review praising the new novel by Louise Erdrich, the famous Native American author. Now I’ve got nothing against Louise Erdrich, but I’ve been reading the novels and essays of Mary Gordon for over thirty years. And by the time I finished reading the review, I just wanted to throw up.

Right off the bat, Mary Gordon takes a tough-guy stance, bragging about how back in the day feminists stuck together, how they shook up the world, writing classic novels that totally changed the rules about who could and couldn’t write American literature. Never before the Eighties and Nineties were there books by and about women of color. Never before were there stories written in American celebrating the courage and resilience of blacks, Native Americans, Latinos, Koreans, Croatians, Martians, whatever. And these days it’s all over, thanks to the ubiquitous (but nameless) male pigs that put down “feminism” and “identity politics.” But Louise Erdrich is still around, and she’s the greatest.

It’s all about the sisterhood, see. It’s all about sticking together. Mary Gordon talks it up beautifully, just like William Holden in The Wild Bunch. “When you side with a man, you stay with him. And if you can’t do that, you’re like . . . some animal! You’re finished! We’re finished!”

It’s all very noble and inspiring. Who can resist (and who would dare question) Mary Gordon’s reverence for minority women, her touching loyalty to the ideals of sisterhood? Except that if you actually know who this woman is, if you’ve ever read her novels and essays and absorbed the real ugliness of her world view, the whole thing is just one big crock, a con job of monumental proportions. Watch Mary Gordon on YouTube, holding forth at some tedious Barnard function in Manhattan. In old age she’s decided to promote herself as a “Sixties Chick.” Clearly that goes over well with the aging white female alums who cough up donations to keep the ultra-exclusive private school afloat.

But in reality, Mary Gordon never really was a Sixties chick, any more than George Wallace was ever a Freedom Rider or Donald Trump was ever a Marine rifleman in Vietnam. Read her first two novels, Final Payments

and The Company of Women

and you see where Mary Gordon is really coming from.

Funnily enough, the most evil woman in Final Payments is a romance reader. Yes, I took it personally.

This is a woman who grew up Irish Catholic in Queens, at a time when Jewish kids passing through were routinely beaten and roughed up, and when any blacks of any age who tried to enter the Forbidden Zone would probably have been shot on sight by the police. The innocent, secluded, Irish Catholic world that Mary Gordon celebrates in her early novels is a world that was only made possible by systematic racial violence on a massive scale going back nearly a hundred years to the Draft Riots of 1863. But who cares! What counts is sisterhood!

Only those early novels of Mary Gordon’s don’t really celebrate sisterhood. Or brotherhood. Or the Sixties. The prim, Irish Catholic heroine pays lip service to Civil Rights -- but she never has any black friends. She opposes the Vietnam War -- but only to hammer home how superior she is to the neighborhood boys who do the real fighting and dying.

Worst of all, in a Mary Gordon novel the Prim Irish Heroine is always recoiling in disgust from noisy black kids dribbling basketballs, or loudmouthed black women arguing about sex, or coarse campus radicals bragging about wanting to be born Third World. The great symbol of shabbiness in The Company of Women is the poster of Jimi Hendrix in the squalid hippy crash pad that keeps falling down, over and over, no matter how often the long suffering heroine tapes it up again.

Evidently to a prim Irish Catholic girl who reveres Jane Austen, Jimi Hendrix is not a visionary musician, nor an artist, nor even a human being, but merely an ape making monkey sounds in the jungle.

But this is the woman believes in sisterhood. This is the tough, old-school feminist who loves Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich. So it’s okay!

Think I’m reading too much into this? Think I’m working myself into a snit for nothing? Check out Mary Gordon’s truly astonishing biography of Joan of Arc.

Did you know that Joan of Arc never menstruated?

I don't know how Mary Gordon does her research, but she seems to think that's terribly important. She also volunteers the opinion (rendered in a delightfully dismissive way) that Joan was a truly worldwide figure of transcendent importance while Abraham Lincoln (a real lowlife who could not stop menstruating) was merely a “local god.”

Stop and think about that for a minute.

Joan of Arc matters to the whole world because she saved something truly eternal and important, like French civilization. Abraham Lincoln doesn’t really matter at all, because . . . well, presumably because the people he saved weren’t truly civilized. Maybe they weren’t truly human either. Maybe they would have been better off as slaves!

Oh, but Mary Gordon loves her colored sisters!

Mary Gordon reveres women who tell the stories of the forgotten, like Toni Morrison and Louise Erdrich. But check out her new review and you see how much that’s worth. Evidently in her newest novel Louise Erdrich tells the story of a Native American priest who falls for a female parishioner, but realizes their love can never be. Mary Gordon quotes the priest as saying something like, “you want her, but you can never have her. Suck it up and deal.” Seems authentic to me, but Gordon insists this moment is “beneath the author’s talent.” Why? Presumably because if you’re an Irish Catholic who grew up around real priests in a real Catholic neighborhood, you know (or must try to believe) that the priests never overcome desire . . . because they can’t feel desire in the first place!

I won’t even ask what the cost is when loyal Catholics cover for priests who aren’t really above desire.

Instead I’ll just wrap up with the point that Mary Gordon respects Louise Erdrich a whole lot . . . until Erdrich tells a truth she doesn’t want to hear. Then big, bad Mary Gordon covers her ears with her hands and starts going “la la la la la!” Just like on the playground.

Because that’s what sisters do.

Friday, May 20, 2016

My New Novel Is A Real Tropical Getaway!

SEBASTIAN DEMARCO: A hunk in mourning for his lost wife . . . and his lost honor.

LUCY HARRISON: An undercover agent whose only passion is for justice . . . until she’s ambushed by discipline and desire!

DEMARCO’S CAPTIVE is my latest romance for Blushing Books, and just like my previous releases it’s got plenty of spanking action and spanking fun.

But this time I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to recapture the mood of the great romance novels I grew up with in the Seventies and Eighties. Remember how strong those Seventies heroes were? Sebastian’s like that, so powerful he runs an entire Caribbean island like it’s his private estate. He’s moody and sexy and very, very used to getting his own way. (Just wait till you see him carry Lucy up the stairs and spank her behind on the first afternoon they meet!) Yet he’s also in pain, haunted by his family’s bloody history and the death of his first wife.

Lucy “Lucky” Harrison is just as feisty and fiery as those great Seventies heroines . . . but she’s got a whole host of real-world problems she needs to solve. The island of San Cristobal is the site of a major drug ring, and the whole government is on the take. The only way Lucy can crack the ring is to go undercover, and become “Lucky,” the spoiled party girl who’s just looking for more good times. Unfortunately that puts her right under DeMarco’s thumb . . . and under his red hot discipline!

Now I would never accuse myself of writing great literature, let alone paying tribute to the classics. But after I finished DEMARCO’S CAPTIVE (for some reason it flowed really fast, almost like I was living out Lucky’s adventures in my dreams) I realized that what I’d really written was a sort of modern day TWELFTH NIGHT. Sebastian is the melancholy noble in mourning, sort of a cross between Duke Orsino and the fair Olivia in Shakespeare’s play. Lucy is the outspoken outsider, the fresh-faced stranger from the sea. And just the way spunky, shipwrecked Viola becomes Cesario to win Orsino’s heart, prim and sensible Lucy captivates Sebastian by taking on the daring role of “Lucky” the carefree party girl. Writing DEMARCO’S CAPTIVE gave me a chance to enjoy the lush sights, sounds, and smells of the Caribbean, and to pay tribute to my favorite Shakespeare play as well.

If music be the food of love, play on!

Sunday, December 13, 2015

"Free story? What free story?"

Sorry, Uncle Ebenezer! Daphne's Christmas Flame has come and gone. It was part of this year's "12 Days of Christmas" promotion at Blushing Books. They've always got great free giveaways, not to mention tons of the sexiest spanking stories anywhere. But if you missed it, don't despair! Just drop me a note on Goodreads or visit Carol Storm's Facebook page and I'll get you a free author copy for review! Isn't it great when authors and fans share in the Christmas spirit?

"Bah! Humbug!"

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Charity Hill Is Back -- And She's About To Get Naughty!

Scandal and heartbreak.

Spanking and Sex.

Innocence tested in a whirlpool of decadence and desire!

Cheeky American runaway Charity Hill fell madly in love with British billionaire Harry Edgewell in my first Charity Hill novel, Burning Innocence. But now in a single moment her world is shattered, as Charity catches Harry in a shockingly scandalous position with sexy superstar Lola Montez!

Heartbroken and hungry for revenge, the innocent, freckle-faced beauty runs blindly from the scene of the crime – and straight into the arms of Harry’s worst enemy, the cruel and cunning Lady Margaret Carlton!

Proud, icy Margaret is furious at Harry for jilting her. With Charity in her power, she plans a subtle and satisfying revenge, employing all her vast wealth and her seductive skills to transform Harry’s feisty little redhead into a willing sex-slave!

Living in luxury within the posh confines of Lady Margaret’s stately country home, Charity’s emerald-green eyes are soon opened to all forms of pleasure. The crafty older woman pushes all manner of eligible males her way, from lusty country lads to kindly old squires, while at the same time disciplining Charity and pleasuring her to the edge of total submission.

But no amount of pleasure can make Charity forget her true feelings for Harry. And as the cruel Lady Margaret attempts to lure Harry into a trap she discovers that flame-haired, freckle-faced Charity has a fiery desire for freedom – and a few sexy tricks up her sleeve!

Burning Captivity is my first sequel ever, and it's the second book in my spanking series The Charity Chronicles. If you enjoy tons of spanking, an innocent heroine, and all manner of sexual adventures, please check it out at Blushing Books or on Amazon!