Tasty Treats Volume 1

Are you in the mood for a Tasty Treat, some stories to nibble on? Tasty Treats Volume 1 is now available from Siren-Bookstrand and we'd like to invite you to indulge your senses in some menage stories guaranteed to tickle your tastebuds.

Tasty Treats Volume 1 contains stories from Jenny Penn, Eve Adams, Dee S. Knight and Amber Carlton. Each story displays that author's distinctive touch on a common theme that weaves through the volume. The titles range from cowboy to contemporary to futuristic, but all of them have the hot helpings of sex and romance you've come to expect from Siren, as well as the lusty, and oh so fabulous, men catering to one woman's desires and fantasies.

So settle back and pick up a copy of Tasty Treats to indulge your cravings for love, lust and a little laughter.

Information on Tasty Treats can be found here:

http://www.bookstrand.com/product-tastytreatsvolume1-14838-200.html

Tasty Treats Volume 2 (including cowboy stories from Leah Brooke, Wendi Darlin and Sofia Hunt) and Tasty Treats Volume 3 (including paranormal stories from Stormy Glenn, Tymber Dalton, Blaze Ballantine, and Jenny Penn) are available for pre-order and will be released on June 8 and June 15. Order a copy of each today so you'll be able to continue your cravings for Tasty Treats.

Discovering Michele Hart's Looks are Deceiving

Looks are Deceiving is a fast paced, engaging novel that captures the reader at the start. Michele Hart employs a technique I appreciate in books by starting the reader off by thrusting directly into a situation where the heroine, Elissa, is challenged by a strange and unusual offer.

By the end of the first chapter, Michele Hart has already captured the reader in the intense chemistry between Elissa and the hero, Greg. The passion builds through the book as the author expertly develops a deeper relationship between Elissa and Greg.

Elissa is a charming mixture of shy and daring, adventurous and pragmatic, sexy and, yes, frumpy at times. Driven by an undeniable attraction for Greg at first, it soon becomes obvious that Elissa’s desires are complicating a much deeper goal.

Greg’s motives are more pure and straightforward, but no less complicated. As the single minded, determined hero, he suffers from a flaw that real men are often accused of. Greg sometimes fails to be direct about the smaller details.

Between Elissa’s intentional deceptions and Greg’s lack of explanations, the plot twist and turns in unpredictable ways. Looks are Deceiving has many layers of depth and a reader would be well advised to keep the title in mind when starting in on this novel. Even once you think you’ve figured it all out, there is still a mystery to be revealed in the last chapter.

Michele Hart thrusts the reader directly into the action from the beginning and keeps them there. With sizzling sex, engaging heroine and hero, a full range of colorful side characters and a well-developed plot, I highly recommend Michele Hart’s novel for anybody who loves their romances filled with suspense.

Jenny Penn
Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Cattleman’s Club: Patton’s Way – coming in late fall from Siren Publishing
www.jennypenn.com
www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks

Dreaming in Words

Have you ever heard somebody say that they have such great daydreams, but when it comes time to put it to paper, they freeze? Ever felt that way?

This is one of the most common things I hear as a writer. People are always expressing how amazing they think it is that I can write. While they have ideas, they don’t know how to get them from their dreams onto paper.

Over the years, I have responded that they should try, maybe take some writing classes. I was always looking for a response that would encourage them, but, truthfully, I had none. I honestly didn’t understand what they were saying. I’ve never lacked the ability to just sit down and pour out words onto a page.

Then one night I was lying in bed. Not tired, not interested in watching TV or reading or writing, I was doing what I love to do most. I was daydreaming. Something was wrong with the scene and I stopped it, backed it up, and tried to correct it.

That’s when I heard it. Something I had never heard before. I realized it had been there so long, I had tuned it out. It was a voice, reading a story to me, an invisible book, if you will.

I wasn’t really daydreaming, I was writing. Without pen or keyboard, my mind was crafting sentences and feeding them to me to create an image that played out like a movie behind my closed eyelids.

Before you pick up the phone to reserve my padded room, just think about it. Daydreams aren’t some ethereal creation that just floats into a person's head. They’re created by your own mind.

I may not be a neurologist, but there is a connection in the brain that links words with images. When we read, we almost see the story. Is it so hard to believe that the reverse could happen? That as we watch an image being played out, our mind is ordering words into sentences?

Since that moment, I have spent hours honing my craft silently. While I do the dishes, drive to work, in the shower, anywhere and everywhere I let my mind wonder, writing and rewriting dreams in words. It’s little to wonder why, when I finally sit down to type, that the words pour out of me. I’ve been working on that scene for weeks.

While not all, not even most, of the scenes I entertain myself with daily will blossom into a story and make it into a book, they’re still invaluable to me as a writer. Writing, like any skill, requires practice. I, like most people, don’t have all the time to sit around working with paper and pen.

So now when people tell me that they can’t write, I ask if they daydream. When they say they do, I tell them they are already writing. It’s just a matter of listening for that voice.

Okay, now you can pick up the phone and call the men in white. I really wouldn’t mind being locked away for a while. It will give me more time to work on my writing.

Jenny Penn
Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Cattleman’s Club: Patton’s Way – coming in late fall from Siren Publishing
http://www.jennypenn.com/
www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks

What Makes a Romantic Hero Sexy?

My fellow Siren authors joined me in a recent chat where we all agreed that the hero in a romance must be sexy. That’s like telling a chef that your food should taste good, it doesn’t tell the chef what you think tastes good.

So, what does make a male character sexy? Is it all rippling muscles and piercing bedroom eyes? Is there something more to it? Will a reader desire the hero no matter what he does, as long as he is buff with chiseled features?

For me the answer is appearance actually counts for very little. A hero must be something more than arm candy to be sexy. To sell me on him, he has to have the right attitude. I fall in love with a character’s personality, not his body.

That said there are as wide a range of personality characteristics as there are flavors for a chef to present to a diner. A hero can be determined, protective, hard, sweet, considerate, caveman mentality versus modern man mentality, scarred and hostile versus outgoing and relaxed, the list is endless.

As a reader, I enjoy a variety of characteristics in heroes. That said there are some core attributes that make a hero the perfect man for me. I like heroes that are protective, self-assured, considerate and respectful even if they’re rough around the edges. I like them to be determined and with a strong will power. Above all a hero most be faithful, violate this rule and I will put the book down.

What I want to know is what you think makes a character sexy? Are looks more important to you than personality? Are there personality traits you must have in a hero or ones that you wouldn’t tolerate?

Jenny Penn
Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Cattleman’s Club: Patton’s Way – coming soon in late fall from Siren Publishing
http://www.jennypenn.com/
www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks

Gifts from the Heart

What type of gift makes your heart melt? Flowers, candy, lingerie, tickets to the ballet? At no other time does the saying ‘it’s the thought behind the gift’ matter more than when it is romantic gift.

The actual gift itself means very little to me as woman. I judge gifts that my boyfriend gives me on whether it shows his understanding of my nature. My current boyfriend knows that I’m in love with diet coke and that the sweetest thing he can do is keep his refrigerator stocked for me when I come over.

Not very romantic to most, no doubt, but to me it shows a level of consideration that melts my heart. It tells me that he wants me to be relaxed and comfortable in his home. Considering that he hates diet coke, it also tells me that he is thinking of me even when he is doing something as mundane as grocery shopping.

This is what I look for in romance novels. A hero doesn’t have to make an overly romantic gesture to be romantic. The thing that will win me over to his side is the thoughtfulness of his gestures.

So what wins your heart over?

Jenny Penn

Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Cattleman’s Club: Patton’s Way – coming in late fall from Siren Publishing
http://www.jennypenn.com

www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks

My Beat

Hi, it’s Jenny Penn again! I must admit that I love music. I can’t hold a tone for more than a second. I’m one of those people who is doomed to blowing out their eardrums because I have to turn the music up so loud I can’t hear myself singing along. It’s amazing that when the radio is loud enough I can sound like any singer, male or female, singing in English or languages I never knew I could speak!

Music and writing have one big thing in common, a beat. A rhythm that if an author goes off beat from it throws the reader right out of the story. Just like many types of music, there are different rhythms to books. Think of the difference in the slow, sensual flow of writers like Anne Rice or Elizabeth Lowell compared to the fast, frivolous tone of a Johanna Lindsey or Janet Evanovich.

I like to listen to all sorts of music and read a wide range of books. That said, in looking at my bookshelf, at all the authors who I bought every book they ever wrote, I realize that I love hip-hop books, fast paced, fun filled, lacking great drama, but not depth of character books.

Strangely enough, that’s what I write too. If you read Deception, keep in mind that it was written while I was listening to songs like “Give it to me” of the “The Way I are” by shock Value. Not that the lyrics or even the theme of the lyrics are in the book, but I think you’ll see the same kind of rhythm.

It’s a little different in tone than Mating Claire, where I listened to songs off of Pharaoh’s Daughter “Haran” album for those mystical scenes or some rock like “Paralyzer” from Finger Eleven and even techno for fight scenes.

Even if there are differences, both books and all the music have a quick beat in common. Listening to music affects the way I write. Incidentally it also effects the way I drive, but that’s better left for a different blog.

Jenny Penn
Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Cattleman’s Club: Patton’s Way – coming soon in late fall from Siren Publishing
http://www.jennypenn.com/
www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks

Shifting into the Paranormal

Hi, it’s Jenny Penn here! I thought I’d drop a few lines about writing paranormal and why I love to do it. The answer is simple, because anything can happen. As a writer it is nice to let go of reality and not be confined by the rules.

There are pitfalls. Even if paranormals go in the face of strict reality we live in, the book has to make sense. As writer, you want to create a reality that follows its own logic. The worse thing you can do to a reader is brake the reality of your story with a completely illogical story flow.

The trick as a romance writer is to marry romance with the paranormal. I can think of no better way to do that when with shifters. Yes, I’m a fan of the werewolves (so alpha), vampires (so mysterious), dragons (so arrogant), elves/ferries (so charming and playful), I could go on, but I think you get the gist.

That’s why my first book, Mating Claire, is the birthplace of my Sea Island Wolves series and the Master Cerberus series. I’m unable to be content just with werewolves.

So while one side of the series is about those sexy, macho men, I had to create a second series that encompasses my other favorite shifters. I’ve linked the series together not only with characters, but with an underlying story line.

If you love paranormal, erotic romances, I hope you’ll give my book a browse when it comes out.


Jenny Penn
Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
http://www.jennypenn.com/
www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks

Jenny Penn’s Intro

Hey Everybody!

Sorry to show up late, but my computer was feeling under the weather. I’ve nursed it back to health and am here to tell you about myself. I am new author, but a long time avid reader of romances.

I started reading romances as a teenager and have been working on writing one for just about as long. I’m pleased to say that Siren is going to change my title from writer to author in the fall when they publish my first two books, Deception and Mating Claire.

While Deception is a contemporary/ménage trios and Mating Claire is a werewolf/paranormal series, you’ll find that they have my love of strong female heroes in common. As much as I love alpha male characters, I’ve never been a big fan of weaker, shy female characters.

My preference probably has a lot to do with being raised by my mom, who is a very “take charge” kind of woman. My father is very much that way too, so you can imagine what it like when they try to work on things together.

Beyond the strong personalities of my characters, you’ll see my family influence in the dialog I write. My family has always been very close and we spend a lot of time just sitting around talking to each other. I’ve spent many years, working on writing believable dialog and (hopefully) have achieved my goal.

The last thing you’ll notice about my books is that they’re all set in the southeast. I grew up in Atlanta. After graduating from college, I moved around a lot. I’ve lived in Alabama (an area regionally known as LA), Florida and now reside along the southern coast of South Carolina (an area regionally known as the Lowcountry).

Other than those three things, you probably wouldn’t find much consistency in my writing. Outside of series, I enjoy reading and creating stories in all the themes erotic romance include. I love contemporary books as much as I love science fiction based stories. I enjoy long dramas and devour quick, light books with ease.

To learn more about my books and me please visit my website at: http://www.jennypenn.com/ or check me out my myspace page at www.myspace.com/jennypennbooks.

Jenny Penn
Deception – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing
Mating Claire – coming soon in fall from Siren Publishing