WOS e-book 1

Thank you for reading the special preview of Wheels of Steel the e-book. It will be on sale shortly. Thank you!

New Years Eve Special-1 Day Only

2011 is coming to a close. Some don't go out (like me), and if you plan on a nice quiet time indoors then you might want to check out a little surprise that I will post December 31st for 1 day only. 

My next e-book is Wheels of Steel. I've listened to all of your feedback and decided to keep it an adult book with all the sexual content. I did some editing to the content--mostly to remove lyrics (which wasn't easy considering how music oriented the story is). 


Wheels of Steel is so long that I've had to split it into 3 parts. In the spirit of the season I'm going to gift book 1 to you...well at least for 1 day. After this there will be no more free versions of WOS until I post their continuing story--yes, I still want to do that on this blog only! Again, thanks for your support and have a Happy New Year!

In Memoriam; Musicians we Lost in 2011

I didn't even realize that some of these musicians had died--specifically Phoebe Snow.

NPR MUSIC

A question for you...

If Wheels of Steel is e-published what do you think of it being a young adult story? Think Twilight, The Hunger Games and not Harry Potter.

If WOS was to be geared towards young adults it would have to lose all graphic sexual descriptions. So...I guess the real question is, would removing the sexual descriptions compromise the story?

Urban Vampire II; Creature of the Night-Now Available!

Now Available
Urban Vampire II; Creature of the Night

In Part 1 of the popular Urban Vampire series, Kim Russell, an African American woman was illegally turned into the lowest form of the undead and then sentenced to death because of it. Using nothing more than street smarts and survival skills, Kim finds herself as a powerful Council Member with three sexy suitors.  

Now in Urban Vampire part 2, Kim is the girlfriend of Tony and mated to the dangerous Elder Council Member, Alexis--who turned his back on her when she needed him most. No one is currently trying to kill her and though her very first blood donor, Paul, has left town, she’s rich, and has one of the most successful territories in the entire Vampire Nation…so shouldn’t she be happy? 

But Alexis’ betrayal haunts her and then she learns the truth; Alexis had never left her. He had been imprisoned and everyone knew except her--including her lover Tony. Enraged she learns that she has a special new ability; the ability to turn into a monstrous creature that is unknown to even the oldest Vampire. 

Kim’s journey takes her through Europe and in touch with dangerous new supernaturals—could one of them be Paul?!

Available: Amazon/Kindle and Barnes and Noble

What is Pep listening to December 12, 2011

POGO

This isn't the first time that I talked about Nick Bertke aka POGO. Fans of his wait for him like people wait for the next Twilight movie. And when he does return you play his songs over and over all night long until your puppy falls asleep (clears throat). Anyways...

I heard this one about 6 months ago on his website where he was showing his unfinished work. He did a preview of AI and it was so beautiful that within hours of the preview it was uploaded by fans who had used that brief few seconds to create POGO tribute remixes in an attempt to complete the piece for him! I heard some really good ones, but not nearly as good as the real thing.

One important fact about this song is it's the first time POGO uses 'adult language'. This song puts together sound bytes from the Steven Spielberg movie AI; Artificial Intelligence. It's about this robot child that goes on a quest to find a mother to love him. Along the way he meets many different friends--among them an outdated gigolo robot. Mmmm, sexbot (interesting story idea). Anyways the sex-bot is telling Davyd (the robot kid) about pleasuring humans and says, "Oh yes I'm cumming," which then becomes the backdrop for the latter portion of the song. There is worse things in the world then listening to sexy-ass Jude Law repeating those words over and over! 

Beyond that the music the vibe and the video is pure perfection. 

DAVYD by POGO

Enjoy!

I've turned into one of THOSE people...

Those people are the ones that come to work with pictures of their dogs and stories about their cute exploits--well cute to them and no one else. Those people dress their pets in cutesy clothes and gives them insulin shots and prozac...

I've had pets for years but I've never felt the need to humanize the animals. You take care of them and they take care of you--end of story. But last year my dog Bear died an untimely death and the void he left in my heart was very deep. I really missed him. Several months ago--not quite a year after my dog's death a stray showed up on my porch. 

My son had come home in the middle of the night and came running into my room, waking me up. "Mom, did you see that big black dog on the porch?" I got up and looked out and there was a formidable dog pacing on my porch--black as night...well it was night and I'm blind at night so he seemed black as night. Anyways I asked him how he got into the house with the dog on the front porch and he said that he dashed through the gate and into the back yard and the dog barked at him all the while. I told him I'd deal with the dog in the morning.

The next morning, incidentally we were in the midst of a heatwave, I looked out onto the porch and saw a big puppy sleeping soundly on the porch. His rib bones were showing through his chocolate fur and I went and got a bowl of water and put it out for him. He woke up and tried to run away and I called him back. Then I dug into the freezer for a pound of ground chuck that had gotten freezer burn and I was going to throw out. I nuked it and then put it on a bowl and set it out on the porch for him. He tried to come into the house but I told him no no and he went to the food, looked at me, sniffed it and carried it down to the yard where he left it and came back up on the porch and cleaned up all the crumb.

I think I fell in love with that dog at that moment. He was obviously starved but instead of scarfing the food down he savored every morsel. Once he'd eaten and drank he went to sleep on the porch again. My daughter was at her Dad's at the time and I wanted to make sure that I gave her fair warning about the dog unless it scared her, but instead I dozed and when I woke up my daughter was ambling around the house. 

"Did you see that dog out there?" 

"Yep."

"He didn't scare you? Did he bark at you?"

"Nope, I played with him for a while. Later I'll take him for a walk around the neighborhood and see if he belongs to anyone." Well that went on for about two days. Everyone knew the dog because they had chased him away from their house. My daughter began calling him Doug within an hour and despite searching for his owners we knew that he was ours. 

You see Doug looks like he might have been my dog Bear's son. He's just a pup, you can tell by his paws even though he's big; shepherd, lab, chow mix. But he's been trained. He knew how to sit and to give paw. So in actuality, from day 1 I knew that Doug was here to stay--despite the fact that he ate my cellphone, clawed up my gazebo, and destroyed the back yard. He also did this:

Doug's sweater. He wore it for approx 3 hours.

Doug's halloween costume (incidentally he broke out of his fence and ran up and down the street terrorizing the neighborhood, until he got tired and came home)

I must really be crazy or crazy about that dog. And the answer is that I'm crazy about this dog that is so smart he can play tag with me, shake hands, lay with his head in my lap and get some loving and bark like a maniac at 4 am...

Well then suddenly my mom's dog had puppies and she wanted each of her daughters to take one--I told her hell no because I don't believe in PETS...it's just that having Doug is like having a piece of Bear back. But then this happened...

Peeta with his tongue peeking out

Peeta and my daughter

the tongue that won't stay in the mouth...

Peeta rocking a mohawk

And now I have a dog named Doug, a puppy with a mohawk named Peeta, a black cat with hideous flatulence named Icarus and I don't care if people look at me weird when I carry my pup into Petsmart or ooh and ahh at the cute sweaters and spend a shitload of money on animal presents...I am one of those people.

My new love; let me introduce you!

I love you salted caramel mocha. Lets just stop playing games and get married because I literally can't go a day without you...

Espresso and steamed milk, blended with mocha sauce and toffee nut flavored syrup. Topped with sweetened whipped cream, caramel sauce and a mixture of turbinado sugar and sea salt.

Starbucks says:

Fall is full of drizzles. Drizzles of rain as the air cools, students reluctantly drizzling back to school, emails drizzling into your inbox … but not all drizzles dampen our spirits.

Take for instance the drizzle of buttery caramel layered over sweetened whipped cream on our Salted Caramel Mocha. No rainy day could dampen sitting down with a good book and one of those. So why add the salt? Well, there’s no better way to excite your taste buds than with a little sprinkle of salt just before something sweet.

A tiny bit of our premium sea salt and sugar topping deepens the rich flavors in this luxurious combination specially made to warm up the rainy days of fall.

Did you know

Salty and sweet flavors are called "appetitive" where bitter and sour flavors are called "aversive.”

Well I love the bit of sea salt because it makes the sweet even more dimensional. If you haven't had this yet, I'd highly recommend it!

What is Pep listening to December 2012

Where have I been that I'd never heard of this singer until a few days ago? A friend sent me a link to this song and I immediately perked up. He sounded like Maxwell, Jon B and Prince all rolled up into one. I'm tingling even writing this! LOL. 


Remy Shand released one album back in March 2002 that became a huge success in Canada where he was born. He sold about 500,000 copies in the states and developed a very loyal following. Back in 2002, this 24 year old was a 'blue-eyed' soul singer signed to Motown. 


Unfortunately his story doesn't end well. Remy Shand recorded that one album and then was never officially heard from again. He fell in love with a girl that appeared in one of his videos, they married and then went through a bad divorce and Remy just disappeared. That is incredibly sad because I'm loving his sound the same way that I love me some Maxwell!



Remy wasn't promoted in the right way. Shame on you Motown for letting this young man slip through your fingers!

Pepper Pace on Tumblr

Okay, I just might be the blog queen of the Universe! Here's another blog; this one discusses the books that I have for sale and how they came to be. It gives a bit of insight into why and how I came up with the stories. The blog is also interactive and allows you to ask me questions and it gives book details and links.

 Pepper Pace Books on Tumblr

(I may be the Queen of the blogs but I have absolutely no knack for naming them! Haha)

Question for Pep; How I got started on Literotica

Have you ever told the story of how you actually started posting on Lit? I'd like to hear that, what prompted you to make that move. I assume that you had been writing long before your first story on Lit, as your voice was already in full force.
Peace,
ebonywahine

Ebony, my mother would say that I was a creative force right out of the womb. She showed me the first drawing that I'd ever done at the age of three and I was shocked; the eyes, nose and mouth were all in the right spot within a circular head haloed by hair. 

Before I was a writer I was an artist. I used to draw people and create stories behind them and then it seemed that the stories were more important than the drawings so I started making short comics. I really liked that. After a while, writing began satisfying me much more than drawing and I began to do it seriously. 

As an artist I was a perfectionist, but I couldn't always control my abilities the way I wanted. It became very frustrating. I couldn't draw well unless all the elements lined up correctly, it seemed (or at least I thought I couldn't). I had a difficult time completing projects although others saw very good work--I saw mistakes. My two loves; writing and art was soon transferred to ONE love; writing. 


I was so painfully shy that I could get ill just meeting new people. I didn't WANT to have more than one or two friends or to open up to strangers. I was satisfied with writing. I could spend hours in one spot lost in creativity, lost in my characters. But this is the case with a lot of us, isn't it? We find ourselves lost in the characters that we read about or write about.

While I was a teenager I began writing short erotic stories.The problem is that I had very little life experience (being painfully shy) and I didn't want to really share those stories. Also, I was being a very good girl in those stories.


While I can say that I wrote a lot, it was just basically perfecting the same work for years and years and never being satisfied. My stories were good--but they didn't read like REAL books. I began to analyze what I liked about my favorite author's writing styles and adopting it. What I mean is that there is a cadence...a rhythm to a story. There is also a formula. No I don't keep to a formula, but YES I respect the formula. LOL. It is very simple and a lot of people miss it;


Create characters that people care about. 

Don't just write a story saying Jane Doe was going to miss the bus again. Jane Doe didn't want to run for the bus because she was fat and didn't want people to see her running. Jane Doe saw a handsome guy on the bus and began to fantasize about him. Who in the hell cares about Jane Doe???


As time went on I became interested in MMORPG where it requires you to create a fictional history for your Avatar. And that is when I broke out of my shell; both in my writing as well as my shyness. It's hard to be shy when you're not really you, right?


I became fairly popular at a site called IMVU and was asked to join many different role playing groups due to my detailed writing. I began meeting (through my avatars) many people like myself; people who loved to write--many of them so talented that it put my writing to shame! This is where I discovered a love for writing in a group. Hence; Vampiric Charms and several others role-plays.


I stopped 'holding back' in my writing due to my shyness. I became very open in my stories. But it began with an experiment. Four notebooks that pretty much changed my life.


I liked interracial stories because I had found myself in interracial relationships and wanted to explore it in the stories that I read, maybe even compare myself with others. But many of the IR stories of that time sucked. They had weak characters that were afraid to commit due to some outlandish self preservation bullshit. Or they cared what the outside world thought. Why does the conflict always have to do with racism? What about exploring cultural differences? Or admitting to an interest in dating outside of your race just for the sheer fact that the difference is interesting? 


I decided to write a new kind of IR story--ones that didn't irritate me because their conflict was something I couldn't/wouldn't identify with. I can't identify with people who care what others think because they are walking around with someone of a different race. Or who reject the one they love for something as inconsequential as their color. Religion, understandable. Cultural differences, understandable. The world won't accept our love, not understandable.


I bought a notebook and decided that I would write a new type of IR story that showed differences more profound than just color. It was easy because these topics intrigued me and I wanted to explore it through writing. It wasn't that I sat around thinking of unlikely characters. No. My imagination would kick in with; what would happen if...


If a crazy black lady that hates white people finds herself depending on a white man that she looks down her nose at.


If a girl is scarred on the outside and meets a guy that is scarred on the inside.


If a woman's car breaks down in the center of a redneck town and she spies people walking around in Klan attire.


If a pretty divorced woman realizes that her husband left her for a ghetto-fabulous woman because she was boring.


If an insecure black woman meets a very self-assured man that happens to be blind.

Or if a drug addicted ex-prostitute falls in love with her pusher.


All of these topics intrigued me--and many many more. Before long my experimental notebook was 4 notebooks, crammed with stories. My idea was to shop it around as a collection but at the time the criteria was more confining and not all of my stories fit what publishers were willing to take a chance with. Genesis Press was the closest fit. But could they be interested in what I just described?


Before that could happen I lost interest in writing (for various reasons that I can go into at another time). For two years I didn't write outside of my role play groups. In my own group I started a thread where people could submit their short stories for feedback from the other members. A woman invited me to read a story that she had written and posted on a site called Literotica. I had told her how difficult it was for me to find IR stories and she said that there are hundreds upon hundred of IR stories there and they are all free if I didn't mind the lack of editing for many of them. 


Free??? That's all I heard.


So I checked out her story as well as other stories in the IR category, but only with the intentions of reading them--not with the intent of posting any of my stories. I found that I really liked it. She told me to read a story called Damn Dress but I was like a kid in a candy store and I forgot about Damn Dress for many weeks. I began telling other people interested in IR stories about Literotica but many already knew about it and several of them asked me if I had read Damn Dress. Intrigued about why people kept talking about that story I read it. I really liked it and began reading other stories by SOULAR.


And then one day I found a writer by the name Nerd4Music. Her stories felt very personal to me and her use of music opened my mind to even greater possibilities about exploring the emotional depth of my characters instead of just their conflict. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear here but it is the subtle difference between reading a good story that keeps you enthralled and a good story that makes you weep. Then I found that she had a blog and I enjoyed reading it as much as her stories. I decided then that I would try with my stories. Her stories had their own distinct voice that also did not follow a true formula. I felt as if there really would be people that would 'get' where I was coming from.


So there you have it. That is how I began writing for Literotica. When I submitted my first story I had no idea that there was a way to vote, that there was a ranking, that there were contests with the possibility of winning cash. I just wanted to share my stories and to see if anyone thought they were interesting or if I was just wasting my time. My mentality was of a blogger due to my MMORPG days at IMVU and so interacting with my readers became a necessity. I viewed comments as a learning experience because they come from my audience. I need my audience's feedback. I realized that not all authors on Lit feel that way. Not all authors take criticism and learn from it. Not all authors even seem to care about their readers. 

One day when I was stalking Nerd4Music, I saw that I was on her favorites list on Literotica. I almost blacked out! Soon I discovered rankings and I saw Juicy listed at 35 in the IR category and I beamed in pride that I was on the list! One day I was voted most popular story for the month and I hyperventilated. And then I was in the number 1 spot. My desire to be published faded because I knew that I had reached people with my odd stories and that satisfied me.


Will I stay with Literotica? No. Unfortunately I need Literotica so that my readers can find my stories. But Literotica is not for me. Will I continue to blog and host free stories on my site? MOST DEFINITELY.