Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Releasing Today: The Clash by Crystal Kauffman

In writing the three books of my erotic trilogy, Guardian’s Realm, I challenged myself to make things as hard as possible on my characters. In The Combat, my heroine Gabrielle wanted to save her sister, who’d been turned into a vampire. I gave her a Guardian for a hero, but Davin isn’t just any Guardian in the battle against rogue vampires, he’s got personal reasons for hating them, and believes they should all be destroyed. Gabrielle’s sister included.

In The Collision, I tried to up the ante by putting a Guardian together with a vampire and banishing them to a remote Romanian prison castle together. To stir up the mix I threw in an innocent human slave who needs sex to stave off her withdrawals from the vampire drug she’s addicted to, and even tossed in a few man-eating hell hounds for fun. Vampire Fitch would love to indulge Gladiolas’ needs, but Guardian Balin takes more convincing. He’s more concerned with their vampy company, and the nagging familiarity Fitch inspires in him. The worst part of all: there’s only one bed all three of them have to share.

Next I thought of how I could increase the conflict yet again with The Clash. Not only did I put a jaded human Vampire Task Force agent with a six-hundred year old vampire female, but I gave her money, beauty, and prestige. Robert and Cvetelina first met in The Collision, and did not part friends.

Robert learned to hate all vampires when his son Matthew was turned almost five years ago. When Robert learns his son is in Bucharest, he needs Cvetelina’s help to find him. So not only did I put him with a resentful vampire who’s already been threatened into assisting a government agency once, I dragged Robert halfway across the world to an unfamiliar, unfriendly territory where he doesn’t speak the language, know where he’s going, or even like the food. Almost immediately he’s dosed with the vampire drug and finds himself bound to the bed in Cvetelina’s country manor, where he faces (or rather, faces away from) a mischievous house guest with a big pink butt plug.

Yeah, you could say I’m evil to my characters, but I always let them have their happy ending. I hope you like Robert and Cvetelina’s story, out today from Loose Id. To celebrate, one lucky commenter will win a free copy in their preferred format.

6 comments:

Cathy M said...

Happy Release Day, Crystal. I've read The Combat so far, and you've got me hooked.

caity_mack(at)yahoo(dot)com

Eva S said...

Congrats on the release! I love everything with vampires, will look for your books!

eva.silkka at gmail.com

Anonymous said...

Congratulations Crystal! We're release day buddies! (My book, Enough, debuted from Loose Id today too). :) I wish you a TON of sales!

Savanna Kougar said...

Crystal, wishing you a ton of sales as well. Congrats! Cvetelina sounds like kind of heroine.

J.A. Saare / Aline Hunter said...

Congrats on your new release! Wishing you much success and many sales!

Jaime

Mary Quast said...

Congrats!
Yesterday was my birthday. Wow... two yummy releases topped my list!