Guest post and Giveaway with Inez Kelley

TURN IT UP
Author: Inez Kelley
Publisher: Carina Press
Pub. Date: August 2011
Word Count: 85, 000
Format: Digital

Sexual innuendos and tensions sizzle as Dr. Hot and the Honeypot, co-hosts of the raciest night-time talk show in three states, heat up the small station radio waves on ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’. Best friends Dr. Bastian Talbot and self-proclaimed sex-goddess Charlie Pierce share mattress-scorching banter in public but their personal lives are PG-friendly.

But Dr. Hot has a secret. He wants to be more than her medicine-man sidekick. He wants forever. Charlie doesn’t do forever. Sex is easy, love is temporary. She will be his lover, but never his wife. Undaunted, Bastian sets a plan in motion ON AIR to win her hand and puts a proverbial lock on his zipper: No sex without marriage. Charlie turns the tables and turns up the heat in an on-air wager.

Listeners in three states tune in to learn who will win in the Race to Wed or Bed.

I’m old school. I fed my reading addiction on the bodice rippers when they were really bodice rippers, when the women were many times Too Stupid To Live and the men complete asses we were told to love. And I did, I loved them all. I lived in the boonies and a library day was a once a year occurrence. The school library introduced me to classics and award winners but they had a limit of two books per week. I read that many in a day.

I consumed words like air and sucked down book after book, grocery bags full, purchased at yard sales and flea markets for a nickel to a quarter a piece. Tucked in those bags were more than romances, however. There were Dean Koontz and Stephen King, Star Trek and murder mysteries, police drama and epic fantasies, Hollywood tell-alls and historical biographies.

The first super thick book(to my early teen mind) I read was a fantasy I remember in vivid detail. It was my first exposure to a world outside my own that hadn’t been created on a television screen. I still own it. It is out of print and the few reviews I can find on it are less than wonderful but I don’t care. *I* loved it. It expanded my mind outside my narrow box.

I shudder to think of my 13-year old daughter reading some of the things I did. I read Scruples before I had my first kiss and Wifey before my first pimple. But my parents were just glad I was out of their hair. For my thirteenth birthday, my mother bought me four Harlequin categories and lip-gloss. Subliminal message maybe? Hmm

Whatever it meant, it sealed my fate. Those bags and bags of books never lasted long enough. I started crafting my own tales. There is no doubt they were –as I was myself— shaped by what I had read. I had a small problem differentiating between the genres, however. My romances often had horror elements or my historical look at an event was tinged with a love story or my mystery had a hunky detective who kept thinking about kissing the main suspect. 

See the pattern there? Romance, in every single one.

Maybe I didn’t have a problem after all. Romance was my love and I can’t seem to write anything without it. So what if it had other elements tucked in the pages? I still read a wide variety of genres and get a small smile when a subplot or thread of romance weaves its way into the story. Romance lives.  Everywhere. It refuses to be boxed out or shut it. So do I. My stories will always have romance front and center but that doesn’t preclude me from adding in a touch of history, a dash of horror, an element of fantasy.

My newest release is all about wordplay as foreplay. TURN IT UP explores the lighter side of sex and the deeper meaning of forever. It’s sassy, funny, poignant and real.

We have a free copy of TURN IT UP up for grabs, just leave me a comment. Simple, easy and thanks for stopping by. (please make sure to include your email address in your comment so we can contact you if you are the winner)

~Inez

Now go spread the word, let all your friends know that they have a chance to win a FREE copy of Turn it Up by Inez Kelley!!!