In the Spotlight with Joey W. Hill!

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About

Winner of the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement award, Joey W. Hill has published over thirty contemporary and paranormal BDSM erotic romances, including four series. Her emotionally-intense love stories offer everything from vampires, mermaids, witches and angels, to boardroom executives, cops and simple housemaids. Free excerpts from all her works are available at her website, www.storywitch.com. Additional vignettes, character interviews and graphics inspired by the work are at the fan forum site, accessible through www.storywitch.com/community.

Unrestrained

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE

Athena is an accomplished businesswoman in control of every aspect of her life. But since the death of her husband, she’s had the desire to explore submissive cravings she’s had for some time. Unfortunately, Athena is known as a Mistress, because that’s the role she’s always played.

Her type A personality was strong enough to serve her husband as a Domme because that’s what he needed. It’s not until she meets Dale, a retired Navy SEAL, that she attempts to discover what her own submissive desires are. But letting go of her control is not so easy.

Fortunately, Dale is an accomplished Master who can help Athena live out her fantasies. And as she slowly surrenders to his touch, both of them will learn more about the nature of love between Dominant and submissive, and how it defies all expectations.

Excerpt

“Yes, I do want to ask you for something,” she said. “But I need to think about it.”

“Fair enough.” Dale put down the coffee, settled back against the bench, crossing his arms over his chest, a relaxed pose that highlighted the easy power of his body. “Have you been looking for a new sub since your husband’s passing?” he asked. “Is that why you were at the club?”

“Are you offering?” She tossed the smile his way, the tightness of it matching the feeling in her chest.

He chuckled. “Not hardly. But when you were watching last night, your focus seemed different . . . for a Domme. Technique interests me. Maybe you just need to talk it through with a fellow Dom, someone you know you’re not intending to top. Removes the pressure. Like an actor going over his lines with a neighbor, rather than having to do it with his costar right off.”

“Perhaps.” She needed to move the conversation away from this direction. She hadn’t denied she was looking for a new submissive, but in truth, such a thought hadn’t crossed her mind since Roy’s death. Not once in those two years, not once since she’d returned to the club, no matter how many unattached male subs had met her gaze briefly, extending the invitation. She’d been an amazing Domme, yes. With Roy.

Never again. She’d had that thought last night, hadn’t she?

He set aside the coffee. Before she could anticipate what he was doing, he removed his shirt in one fluid movement, set it aside. When he put his hand to the belt of his jeans, she wondered if he was going to strip it all off, but he was merely resting it there, shifting his weight to one hip. “Okay, no pressure. Take a look, evaluate me. Pretend I’m a sub. Let me feel it, the way you take control.”

If her tongue was currently functioning, she’d say the same thing she would if he’d offered her a shot of Jack at nine in the morning. It was too early in the day for this. Of course, maybe the Jack would help her. She was in a different environment, with an unpredictable and overwhelming man. There was no way she could summon the focus, the control, for what he was suggesting.

However, she routinely handled herself in demanding board meetings, at the podium of fundraisers attended by well over a thousand people. She knew how to genuinely smile for hours, remember a hundred different names and the key details about the people attached to them. She could coordinate or defuse complex situations, put people at ease, draw them to her with warmth and direct them toward her goals. She knew how to connect to them in ways that brought out their better sides. She took personal pride in figuring that out for each individual, so that they felt so good about signing a contract with her company, or writing a check to make the world a better place, they’d do it again.

But this wasn’t like that. It wasn’t even comparable to how she’d been a Mistress to Roy. Then she’d had his pleasure uppermost in her mind. Dale was asking her to treat this as an exercise, no one to please or understand but herself. She had no precedent for that.

From his demeanor, she was sure that any attempt to politely distance herself from the situation would be met with a frank response that left her as vulnerable as if she were sitting naked at the Garden Club. She heard the clank of the collar and tags of one of the dogs scratching outside.

She’d faced unexpected situations where she needed to adapt, evaluate and organize her response quickly. She could think on her feet. That, and the earlier feeling, the one that made her think she could tell Dale anything she was thinking, gave her the courage to test these waters, to see if she was right about what she was truly wanting.

She slid off the stool. The shed wasn’t large, but she could circle him at close quarters. He was beautiful. Sculpted with hard muscle, as she anticipated. He had some scars. When she was behind him, she lifted her hand over one, but she didn’t touch him. Her fingers hovered several inches from a mark that was likely caused by a bullet. She’d noted there was a similar one on his front side, somewhat lower. It had punched through him from a vantage point above, perhaps from a window. Or maybe from the ground, an enemy trying to deflect his charge. The thought of him facing that made her anxiety about this seem absurd.

Did he have scars below the denim as well? If he did, they hadn’t hampered him last night when he threw her attacker onto her car hood.

With his shirt off, the jeans belted so they sat at his waist, his ass was molded nicely by the fit. She imagined catching her fingers in his belt loop, closing the area between them to dare one kiss between his shoulder blades. She’d press her body against his so the curve of the firm buttocks pressed against the tight coil happening in her abdomen.

“You can touch me, Athena.”

His permission perversely made her draw her hand back to herself. She returned to his front. When she looked up into his face, he was regarding her with that unsmiling look. Her legs quivered, and she realized she was feeling a little lightheaded. She should move back to the stool. Instead, she sank down to her knees in front of him, wanting to study and absorb him from this angle. Feel.

As a girl, she’d gone to see Saturday Night Fever with her mother. She recalled the opening scene, where John Travolta was clad in nothing but a pair of snug dark briefs while styling his hair. The camera angle had been shot from the floor, practically from between his feet. The girls in the audience had squealed at the provocative angle. Her mother had laughed at their reaction.

To capture that view, the camera person had to be kneeling, looking up at him. What if, when the scene was over, the person on their knees stayed there, until he reached down and bade her to rise? Even at that tender age, the idea had captivated Athena. As it did now.

She put a light-as-a-feather hand on his right leg, above his knee. Her gaze coursed up the terrain of his powerful thighs, to the curve of cock and testicles beneath the denim. He didn’t wear his jeans tight, but they held to his shape and moved with his body as needed. Just right. She slid her attention to his belt and the layers of muscle above, then lifted her eyes to his chest. He had a mat of fine dark hair, not too thick, but not thin or nonexistent, either.

His thigh muscle flexed beneath her hand as he shifted his weight to his right hip. His buttock muscles would tighten from that change in position. She wouldn’t mind having her hand there, feeling that transition.

He reached down, brushing a finger underneath the wisps of hair across her forehead. “It’s interesting where you ended up, isn’t it? On your knees?”

She tensed, but his tone made it a neutral observation. He wasn’t mocking her. “Does that have anything to do with what you want to ask me?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

Behind the Scenes

Q. Thinking back on your first book, is there anything you would have done differently?

A. Oh, I’m sure there are a million things I would have done differently. There’s so much craft I’ve learned since then, I’d likely go through and rewrite the whole thing. I also wrote it in the 80s, when cassettes and floppy disks were commonplace and the Internet and email were still in their infancy, so the book would need to be updated. But therein lies the problem. In the intro the lovely TJ Michaels did for her reprint of Egyptian Voyage, she noted that to update the book would change it into a whole different story, so she’d decided it was best to leave it as is and keep the spirit of the story intact.

That’s the way I felt about the wonderful original three Star Wars movies, versus the horrible more recent three. The sense of swashbuckling adventure and innocent zeal can’t be recreated, because that time period has passed. However, by remembering that time period, watching them is still pleasurable (while watching the recent ones try to recapture that is simply painful - lol).

So all said and done, except for some craft work, I might not change much about my first story. It might just remain “in the drawer”, an out-of-print epic fantasy-romance that sold about 100 copies (smile).

Q. Has your perspective on the writing process changed since you became published?

A. As I’ve grown in my writing, I’ve become fascinated by the way so many authors do it the same—and differently. I love learning new things, because this is truly a craft – no one is the best writer they can be until they’re dead. (Maybe not even then, if there’s a pen waiting in the afterlife, or if you’re reincarnated to write again!)

Q. Do you work best on a deadline, or do you need freedom from time constraints?

A. I think most writers would love to have the kind of author’s life so often portrayed in movies and television – revered celebrities who sit in the widow’s peak of their ocean front beach house, crafting stories when the mood suits them while their editor patiently waits, no matter how long it takes. If there’s any talk of deadlines by the editor or agent, it’s usually in a tone of amused exasperation, not “get it to me within the next six weeks, or send back the advance that’s currently paying your light bill.” LOL – that might be the life of those who’ve already made millions on their writing, but that’s basically a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of those who are published.

So the answer to the question is I’ve never even thought of it as an either/or option. Once I started getting published, whether the deadline was set by the publisher or by my own estimation of what I needed to earn to pull my weight in paying the bills, I didn’t let myself think about it. The most important thing to me was that I write my best book every time, no matter the time constraints.

Case in point – before anybody had agreed to publish me, my first book (the one in the drawer), took about 4 years to write, in between day job and family requirements, a move to the coast, etc. Now there have been times I’ve written, edited and submitted a 150k word book in three months (though five months is WAY more in my comfort zone).

Q. Is there a word or phrase you catch yourself overusing?

A. Oh, heavens, yes. It can vary from book to book, as if an overused word or phrase is like different strain of the flu virus, mutating and morphing from host to host. In one book it was the word “more”. In another, my characters seemed to smiling constantly, like a bunch of Cheshire cats. Action tags are something I closely watch – chuckling, smiling, shifting, etc. But words are easy to catch – just word search certain combinations and you can trim. Redundant concepts are the real hazard. I might have a heroine reach a certain emotional revelation—the same revelation, just worded differently—in three different books, and those books are scattered over a four-year period, when my head is already crammed full of the my current work-in-process, promotion, and life in general. The brain is typically lazy and will be happy to grab redundant concepts out of your head to fill an empty space. Then the readers will politely inquire if your heroines are clones or sharing the same brain (laughter).

Q. How do you know you’ve written a good book?

A. I have a few ways of verifying that. First and most important test starts in my gut. I’m a muse-driven writer, which means I’m not always going to write the most popular book, so sales numbers and national media requests aren’t what I’m using as a barometer. I do about three or four edit rounds on a book, so by the 2^nd or 3^rd edit I should have a good sense if the book went where I intended it to go. My personal promise to myself has always been if I can’t get a book to that point, I won’t submit it. So far, fingers crossed, I’ve been able to submit it each time.

Next layer of verification comes from my long-term readers, the ones who’ve read my earlier books as well. The types of things I want to hear are “this book is even better than the last, and I loved that one”. I’m listening for any type of feedback that suggests I’m recycling storylines, becoming formulaic, or simply did a sloppy job. Sometimes with deadline pressure, and writing book after book, you don’t always have the perspective you think you have, so it’s good to have the safety net. There are SO many authors (ones whose older books are on my favorites shelf) I wish would ask their readers this question or pay attention to that kind of feedback. If I can’t write a better book or one at least as good every time, then I need to take a breather and/or look for another line of work.

Q. How do you keep your characters and stories organized?

A. I don’t, at least in terms of details (lol). I am SO in desperate need of bibles on all my series. The only one I’ve had time to craft in detail is one for the Knights of the Board Room series, and that was only after I’d made some serious gaffes in story consistency, details, etc. But the feeling I’ve gotten is that readers would rather laugh at an author’s dumb mistake where she said her hero’s mother died in the last book and yet that same mom showed up with a pie in the current one, than for the author to delay the next book by six months to craft a series bible from scratch for a 10-book series. Ah well – maybe I’ll get time to do it when the series is over (laughter).

Now in terms of keeping characters and their storylines straight from book to book, that’s not so much of a problem, because each set of characters is very unique in my mind, apples and oranges. I don’t usually confuse that. But I am getting older, so that may be untrue in another year or two (grin).

Q. Are you a Swooper (write first, edit later,) a Basher (edit each sentence as you go,) or both?

A. Swooper – I do some quick timesaver type editing as I go, which is just the result of accumulated experience from writing 30 or more of the darn things, but I prefer to get it all down, then go back and do three thorough edit rounds, with a final read on my ereader so I read it like a book for the final polish.

Q. What is the one thing you must have to be able to write?

A. A form of writing implement (grin). I wrote my first few books while working a demanding day job, so every moment I could grab had to count. As a result, I didn’t let myself fall into the trap of needing anything special to write – environment, space, tool, etc – and I’ve made myself keep that discipline as a full time writer. Now, when all the conditions are ideal – a quiet block of time, no family demands hammering on the door, no huge to-do list waiting behind the writing, such that I can just enjoy getting lost in the story – that’s a delight. A pure indulgence.

Q. Did you have any bad habits when you began writing? How did you correct those habits?

A. Countless, I’m sure. There is so much to learn about this craft. I’ll never stop learning, and the day I do is the day I should stop writing. The one that jumps to mind is monotonous noun-verb, noun-verb sentence structure. He wrote the letter. She read the letter. He sent the letter. You get the drift (grin). My wonderful long term critique partner Ann Jacobs helped me fix that one. The other thing I did was something we all saw in romances written in the 70s and 80s, so I came by it honestly. A lot of detailed physical description of the characters and setting right up front, rather than integrating it as the story unfolded. Time and good editor input helped resolve that.

Q. When and where can readers look forward to seeing you this year?

A. I’ll be at two conferences for sure - the Novel Experience, Mar 28-30 in Atlanta, GA and the BDSM Writers' Conference - August 21-24 in New York City. The BDSM WC is a BDSM event featuring demos, workshops, field trips and more, for authors and readers. You can click on both conference links to find out more.

Q. How do you feel about the term “Mommy Porn”?

A. I believe sex is a sacred act, and has the power, when integrated with the appropriate emotional input, to take people to an intensely deep connection with one another. It can also console during difficult moments, allow couples to laugh, learn and grow together, and be a great equalizer, because we are rarely as vulnerable as we are during sex. And yet, despite all that, whenever sex is presented as a more significant experience than ten-year-old boys sniggering over a stolen Playboy, our society resorts to name-calling to trivialize and make dirty something that is truly special. So I just shake my head and feel sorry for people who are so insecure and uncomfortable with sex they’d rather do that than honor the sacred potential of sexual interaction. The ones who capitalize on that attitude to win ratings have nothing but my contempt. Not that I have any strong feelings about it… ;>

Q. Do you prefer to write 1^st or 3^rd Person POV? Why?

A. Third, for certain. I don’t want to feel like it’s me talking. Good heavens, my characters are interesting, not me. I’m getting to know them the same way my readers are. I don’t want to be standing in the character’s shoes. It’s like being in a movie versus watching it. What’s the entertainment value in that?

Contest: Enter to win Book of the reader’s choice, print or ebook, international or domestic, and a $50 Amazon gift certificate. Please leave a valid email address. Contest ends December 21^st, 2013 at Midnight.