Pep interview with Monica BookDevour

On August 16th I had a great time being interviewed by a co-Ohioan; Monica BookDevour. I'm starting to get pretty good at giving interviews!

Fast Friday 5 with Pepper Pace

Seduction; An interracial Romance Anthology is now available exclusively on Amazon

Hi everyone,
the project that I have been working on with CeCe Monet is finally available. It's released exclusively on Amazon through KDP which means that they have it for 90 days and afterwards we can than release it to B&N for the Nook readers

Secrets, romance, sex, love, sensual passion and drama!

Pepper Pace and CeCe Monét really turn up the heat in the first volume of this new book series “Seduction,” which is dedicated to spicy, sensual, racy, contemporary romances and trying predicaments. This first volume features 6 different blazing stories about sexy interracial couples.

1-900-BrownSugar - Pepper Pace
Monica didn’t know that nice women who were devoted to their husbands, and that took pride in their looks and their homes, still got cheated on, just like anyone else. She soon discovers that there is another side to her good-girl persona just waiting to be revealed, and her Unknown Client is just the one to help her discover it… but what really hides behind the voice on the other end of the phone?

Fudge Brownies 2: Besties - CeCe Monét
Overworked mover and shaker Sean Hirsch is adjusting to his new life in New York City, following his breakup with diva extraordinaire Beverly Simmons. Meanwhile, Tina Bradford is totally in love with her long-time best friend; now she just has to get them both on the same page about how they’re destined to be together… So what happens when two busy professionals literally bump into each other during their quests for love, passion, fulfillment, and freedom from their past heartaches?

A Wrong Turn Towards Love - Pepper Pace
*A darkly comedic misadventure befalls a lone Black woman that takes a wrong turn, which leads to murder, the Klan, and a big sexy mountain man named Bodie. *Warning: this story contains racist language.

Lucky - CeCe Monét
Missy Jones is a single Mom who’s seriously down and out and could use a drastic change of her crappy streak of luck and quick too! That’s when she meets mischievous, mysterious, and seriously hot Miguel Sánchez. Yet as everything gets turned upside down in Missy’s world, what will she discover that Miguel is hiding? Can she really trust him, or will she have to opt to keep trying her luck alone in the world without him?

The Delicate Sadness - Pepper Pace
The world that Rosia Banks thought she would always live in came to a crashing halt with the death of her husband. Now a widow at the age of 37, she must either recreate her life, or else continue existing in the safety of her loneliness. It takes a man that she has never laid eyes on, and who’s so different from anything she’s ever experienced before, to show her the way.
 
The Question - CeCe Monét
Shy lady Jerricia Robbins, aka JR, never dreamed that the amazingly talented and ultra sexy guy, Kazuki Nakayama that she’s had her eye on from a distance, and for a while, would so suddenly ask her a single question that would completely change her life…

 

price $7.99

Two New Pepper Pace Books: The Throwaway Year

Several years ago, while I was transitioning from writing stories to writing good stories, I lost a nearly completed novella. You can't imagine the anguish of having your words disappear. But it wasn't just any words...it was the first time that I'd written something that I knew; absolutely believed was good.

Every word just gone in one day. I went into a horrible funk in which I stopped writing any of the ideas that flowed in and out of my head. It was two years before I began writing again; and that was after posting a story called Juicy on Literotica. 

I wanted to re-write it but it never felt like the right time to not only re-write it but to TOP the story that I'd lost. Over the years I put down the parts that I remembered, improving the story as I've grown as a writer. The Throwaway Year is different than the first version, but I no longer feel that that's a bad thing. This story excites me all over again and I'm proud to offer it as my first novella of 2013.

COMING SEPTEMBER 2013

The Throwaway Year

Hayden Michaels had given six years of her life to MyKell before he informed her that things hadn’t been right for a while. He had met someone else. And that’s when she opened her eyes and saw the mess that she was; financially, emotionally and physically. Never able to maintain the discipline to carry through with any weight loss goal, Hayden makes a bold decision. She will throwaway an entire year of her life; moving towards her goals with no thought of pleasure or pain.

As she recreates herself Hayden meets situations and people that help her to realize her worth, namely a man who has been written off by society. But the question becomes whether Hayden can accept the faults of someone else without allowing herself to go backwards? 

EXCERPT:

April 2011 

It was Sunday morning and Hayden had no desire to get up and dressed to start her day.  The TV was turned on to The Food Network and Paula Deen was cooking something deep-fried, fattening, and more than likely deadly. Her stomach grumbled--right now she would eat ten of whatever Paula Deen was cooking!

MyKell was laying quietly, eyes staring at the TV screen.  He’d been quiet all weekend.  “Hey, you want to go to The Cracker Barrel for lunch?”  They had lazed through breakfast and now it was early afternoon.  MyKell’s eyes seemed to flinch.   “I’m paying.”  She interjected before he could object.  MyKell put the cheap in cheapskate.  He was 42 and had just gotten his first decent paying job since they’d been together.  All of his other jobs had been in sales where he barely raked in enough commission to cover his own personal expenses let alone enough to help her out financially.  They had been together for nearly six years and Hayden knew the routine.  If she wanted to go out to eat then it would be her treat.

MyKell turned to her slowly.  “Hade, I need to talk to you.”

Oh shit.  He’d lost another job.  The hell with this! He’d only been working at the place for six weeks-

“I met someone else.”

Hayden blinked.  “What?”  Her heart had momentarily frozen in her chest and was now fluttering rapidly against her ribcage.  MyKell pulled himself out of the bed, looking like someone had socked him in his stomach instead of the other way around…

“I’m sorry, Hade.  But things haven’t been right for a while.  I’m moving out.”  He walked to the closet while she stared after him with her mouth hanging opened…Things hadn’t been right for a while… How could he be saying this when they’d just made love last night?  She had picked him up from work Friday and for once they’d had a good evening.  He had allowed her to ramble on and on about work and her best friend Dani’s problems with her man of the hour.  He had actually listened to her intently without rolling his eyes and stating that he was tired of hearing about her whiny-ass friends.

Was that why?  Was he only being nice to her because he knew that he was going to do this?

Her breath froze in her throat as she watched him pull on a jogging suit; a 42 year old man that dressed like a 22 year old in his Sean Jean urban gear and Timberland boots.  And then like a boomerang her mind sprang back. This entire weekend had been fake, just a bone he’d thrown her to ease her pain.  She watched his back thinking; he has met someone else.  He has fallen in love with someone else.  He is not in love with me anymore…

Every new thought brought another crashing pain.  She was thirty-five and had given this man six years and now that he had finally gotten a decent job he was leaving.  It was her house that he had moved into because why should two struggling people have two households?  And it was her paycheck that had kept them fed when he quit a job because it was yet another low paying job not worth his time.  Hayden felt the tears burn the back of her eyes and she thought that she would rather die than to let him see her cry.

She already felt foolish enough.  Things hadn’t been right for a while…but she hadn’t known that.

MyKell placed a suitcase on the bed and began loading things into it.  He was talking about making arrangements to pick up the rest of his things.  She wanted to get up but she couldn’t.  Beneath the bed covers she was still naked and…well, he already had someone else.  How could she let him see her naked when he had another woman?  She quickly averted her eyes. She wouldn’t look at him because then she would see that tall caramel colored man that she remembered from six years ago; with his toned body and thick curls due to his mixed black and Hispanic heritage.

Back then she was pushing thirty and convinced that she would never find a man that would want her for more than just a booty call or a stepping stone to something better. So even though now he was a lot less muscular and a whole lot greyer, she didn’t see that because he would always be that fine man that had chosen her.

Hayden realized that the real reason she couldn’t look him in the eye was because she was afraid that she would see in them just what she really was to him; a fat, short, yellow skinned, freckled face black woman with kinked out sandy red hair.

“Hayden?”  He was talking to her.

“Just take your things now.”  Her voice was a whisper though she was trying to speak normally.  She gripped the bed covers and slid to the end of the bed while he watched her with his dark, hurt eyes.  There was a pile of clothes on the floor; hers, his.  She picked up the panties that she’d shed the night before and pulled them over her big thighs, knowing that he could see the crack of her ass when she bent over.  She quickly put on yesterdays jeans and a t-shirt, both were dirty, but it at least didn’t require her to walk across the room to the dresser for something fresh.

She dressed quickly wondering when he had met her; this other woman.  Was it someone he worked with?  Someone she knew?  She wasn’t going to watch him walk out the door because-yes he was the one leaving her, but she wouldn’t watch him do it!  The tears were running down her face suddenly, but she kept her head down so that he wouldn’t see.  She would die if he saw her crying.  He’d used her, faked it with her, but she would leave with her dignity.

“I’m going to leave.  When I come back…if you could just not be here.”  Then she hurried out of the room and down the hall as the first sob forced its way from her mouth and the hot tears blurred her vision, dripping down her face and from her chin.  She grabbed her purse and slipped on flip-flops and then she was hurrying out of the house and to her car.  MyKell didn’t have a car but…well he had someone else and SHE probably had one.  Yeah, chances are, she would have one.

She started the car and pulled out of her driveway without looking.  Thank God she lived on a residential street that saw very little traffic, or she might have been hit.  Hayden gripped the steering wheel as the tears and sobs wrecked her body.  Her chest ached when she thought about the six years and how easily he’d been able to say that he’d found someone else…after all that she had done for him…

Knowing that it wasn’t safe for her to continue driving, Hayden pulled into the nearest place where she could safely lose it. It was the parking lot of a KROGERS’ grocery store.  After she was safely stopped she stared at herself in the mirror, not recognizing the ugly woman that looked back at her.  Hatred bubbled up inside of her, but it was all directed at herself. She hated her too light skin with its freckles scattered across her nose. Redbone. High yella--but not pretty, she didn’t have the long flowing hair or the limber body that most people associated with light skinned females. When she looked at herself she simply saw an out of shape woman with a Don King mess of hair covering her head.  When she reached up to wipe her blotchy face of its tears and snot she smelled her unwashed body.  She averted her eyes in disgust. 

I hope you enjoyed this excerpt. All feedback is welcomed!

Two New Pepper Pace books; Seduction; An Interracial Romance Anthology Vol 1

When is the last day of summer? Well I have two books will be released BEFORE that date. My friends, blog followers, and fans have been patient while I waited for the return of my MOJO. Now whether it is back or not you will have to decide...but I did promise that you wouldn't see me until I felt as if I've upped the ante in my writing.

I think I've done that. With that said I'd like to provide an excerpt for each Pepper Pace story included in this contemporary IR Romance collection.

TO BE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 2013

Let me introduce you to Author Cece Monet. She has penned a popular series of IR romance books entitled; The Chocolate Chronicles (available on Amazon). Her series are centered on Asian men and black women, and that is not a subject easy to find in the IR genre. Her writing is very smart and her characters are very deep. If you like AM/BW stories the way I do then check her out.

In this collaboration there are a total of six stories, each of us contribute 3 short stories (short stretches the description. This will be a BIG book). As I'm not yet positive which three she will be including I won't name Cece's stories but what I've read is yummy.

My stories are vastly different from one to the next but you will find that in each I have revisited characters from previous stories...and possible foreshadowing of future stories for these popular characters.

1-900-BrownSugar

Monica didn’t know that nice women who were devoted to their husbands and that took pride in their looks and their homes got cheated on just like anyone else. She soon discovers that there is another side to her good-girl persona just waiting to be revealed and her unknown client is just the one to help her discover it…but what really hides behind the voice over the phone?
 
EXCERPT:

Monica’s heart leaped and she took a few deep breaths and then answered the softly ringing phone. “Hello, this is Sugar,” she said in a deep, sexy voice.

“Mmm. Hi sugar. My name is Cal.”

“Cal. I like that name.” Monica closed her eyes and tried to get into the moment. “So, Cal. I hope you like Brown Sugar because I’m feeling very lonely tonight, baby.”

“Well, I’m a little lonely tonight myself Sugar…is that what I call you? Sugar?”

“That’s what they call me, baby. How about we take care of the business first…so we can get down to the fun.”

After they took care of the financial end of the transaction Monica nervously tried to get back into the flow of their earlier conversation.

“So, Cal. What do you do?”

Cal hesitated. “Well Sugar, I was hoping we could talk about what you do.”

Monica grimaced a little at her mistake. This isn’t a date! She reminded herself. “What I’m doing now Cal is lying on my bed,” She should talk about her coochie…“listening to music and…” Say it! Say it! “hoping to talk to someone sexy enough to get me off.” Damnit! She didn’t say it!

“Oh yeah?” Cal said, voice deep with a southern drawl. “What do you look like?”

Monica hesitated, sweat beads popping up on her forehead. She hadn’t thought about that! She decided to be daring. “Well I’m almost six feet tall. Do you like it thick or do you like thin Cal?”

“Thin,” Cal replied anxiously.

“Good because I’m tall and lanky…with big breasts-uh titties,” she added, “and silky long legs. And-”

“Do you have a big ass?” Cal asked in a husky breath.

“Oh yes. My ass is…booyah.”

“Booyah?”

“Uh-huge,” she added quickly. “Have you ever sucked on some big brown titties, Cal?”

“No.”

He sounded like he was a country bumpkin straight from the hollows. He probably dreamed about brown skinned women while sexing his white wife.

She suddenly smiled to herself and in a knowing voice she asked, “Would you like to?”

“Yes!”

A Wrong Turn Towards Love

A darkly comedic adventure befalls a lone black woman that takes a wrong turn, which leads to murder, the Klan and a big sexy mountain man named Bodie. *Warning: strong racist language.


EXCERPT:

...Bodie wasn’t even a mile down the road when he did another U-turn.  His mama always said, ‘God don’t like ugly.’  Also, he guessed he’d be pretty pissy too if he stepped into an all black bar and someone gave him shit.

He pulled back into the parking lot searching until he spotted a beat-up Honda Accord with a slightly less cocky woman sitting behind the wheel.  Bodie got out of his truck and gestured for her to roll down her window.  She did, seeming relieved.

“What’s wrong with your car?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve been having problems with the transmission.  But every time before when it stopped I’ve been able to get it started.”  She glanced into the woods.  Bodie looked over in that direction but didn’t see anything.

“Well pop the hood and let me see what you got.”  He peered inside.  “Turn her over,” he yelled.

She tried but it was dead. 

“You got gas, right?”

She rolled her eyes but hid it quickly.  “Yes; I just pulled over and put gas in it.”

“Great.”  He mumbled.  He slammed the hood shut.  “Listen, I’ll drive you down to the Holiday Inn.  In the morning I’ll come back and tow the car to the garage.”

She glanced again out towards the woods and then back to Bodie, hesitantly.  He smiled then stopped because that would likely scare her more.  He wasn’t used to smiling and figured it would look strange on his face.  He knew that his height and build intimidated some. He reached into his wallet and pulled out his wrecker license. 

“Or if you like, I can just come back with the tow truck.  It might take me an hour or so-”

She opened the door quickly while keeping her eyes on both Bodie as well as the woods beyond him.

“You got a fear of the woods?” he asked, scratching his goatee.  She shut and locked her car. 

“No; a fear of people running around in the woods wearing white hoods.”

Bodie’s expression grew fierce.  “That would be Sully Pranger; him and his buddies are playing games.  The Klan don’t really suit up unless its parade day.” They had probably heard about the lone black woman at Stubby’s and decided to have some redneck fun.

She gave Bodie an amazed look.  “There’s really Klan here?!  I mean I just thought you all were just a bunch of rednecks…” The ‘you all’ comment was not lost on him, but he had to admire the fact that she was more outraged than afraid.  She quickly climbed into the truck and then he did as well...

 

 

 

The Delicate Sadness

The life that Rosia Banks thought she would live came to a crashing halt with the death of her husband. Now a widow at the age of 37 she must either re-create her life or continue existing in the safety of her loneliness. It takes a man that she has never set eyes on and so different front anything she’s ever experienced to show her the way.  

 

 EXCERPT:

Chapter 1

MIMIROSE1989, September 28-I don’t know exactly why I’m writing this. I began this blog two weeks ago and never even made a post. Someone I know suggested that it might help to blog my thoughts. But when I sit in front of the laptop and think about what I should write, all I can think is why in the world would anyone give a damn about what I have to say or how I feel? You don’t even know me so why would you care about this emptiness, this loss that’s so rooted in me that I don’t even remember who I used to be?

But today is a different day. And I’m beginning to realize that what I write about is how I feel and what I think and maybe someone else might need to write about what they feel and what they think. Maybe they can do that here. Maybe we can just do that together. 

So I’ll start by explaining my blog title. I named it The Delicate Sadness after reading an article about Japanese Noh masks. Noh is a traditional Japanese theater where the actors wear masks which depicts their emotions.  One such mask is called delicate sadness and is so elegantly designed that it is meant to illicit a sense of sadness from the audience. But its not just about sadness, because with a tilt of the head, delicate sadness becomes a different emotion; one mask with many different facets.

I think that many of us must wear delicate sadness sometimes. I know that I plaster on a face that doesn’t show just how shattered I am. But how else do we stop people from trying to put Band-Aids on our wounds? As if there was anything that can hold together all the broken pieces…

I am so lost. But I don’t want to wear the mask anymore. I just want to be manic when I’m whipping around my already clean house re-cleaning it for the third time! I want to be a zombie when I can’t pull myself out of my bed even if I’ve already been asleep for 12 hours! I’ll be the nutcase because I take Prozac and then suffocated by loneliness when I wake up in the middle of the night because I caught a smell of my husband on his pillow.

Yeah.

The mask stays on because I can’t stand the idea of my friends and family looking at me with the same sadness that I have been trying so desperately to rid myself of. I will just keep tilting my head, plastering on my smile—but underneath I am still the same sad me.
 I hope you enjoyed the excerpts. I missed you guys!