It’s Sunday snog time and now anyone can join in! Authors, post up a sexy smooching snippet from one of your published books or write something completely new if you like and share it with us! Remember if your kiss is published to let us know where we can pick up the whole story from and give us a bit of background too. Once you’ve completed your Sunday Snog post use the box at the bottom of this post to enter your link so that people who visit me here can find you and also please link back to this post somewhere on your page so we can keep the traffic flowing! If you tweet use the hashtag #sundaysnog and make sure to spread the news abroad and lets get the world snogging on a Sunday!

If you’re unpublished you can join in too, just write a sexy kissing scene (you can use the words in my title for a prompt if you’d like!) publish it on your website/blog and add your link to this post. Sorted. Everyone’s welcome to join in.

This will become a weekly thing for anyone and everyone to join in. I will still be hosting a guest snogger here at victoriablisse.co.uk once a month but this is so I can give them a little bit more of a showcase, oooooh. So come on folks, lets snog!

This week the snog comes from my sexy seaside story Sweet Surrender.

She doesn’t know what she wants but he does.

How do you mend a broken heart?

Helen goes on holiday to Scarborough and meets Tom. He is an attractive local artist who takes Helen on a tour of the sweet seaside town. Tom becomes more than just her guide as his dominant nature brings out her own submissive side and a shared joy of exhibitionism.

You can pick up Sweet Surrender at Total-E-Bound today for just £1.69 (or the equivalent in dollars!)

Now for those wanting to join in Snogs of any length, any intensity and any heat level are welcome. Just remember to link me up from your site and have fun reading through all the different snogs on this lovely Sunday. It’s always good to read other people’s works, you never know when you might happen upon a new favourite author! Also feel free to use the Sunday snog banner, here’s the image link for those of you who want it!

http://www.victoriablisse.co.uk/hosted/1454203819sundaysnog.png

So what are you waiting for? Pucker up!

Do you want to know more about Johnny the Djinn, star of Silver Screen Dream? Then pop over to the Hitting the Hotspot blog today and get a preview of my upcoming Bollywood story!

Another set of six pack abs, and I’m going to scream!

I want to thank Victoria for having me as her guest today and for allowing me to rant on about one of my pet peeves: perfect bodies in erotic romance. Actually, I’m not all that happy about the emphasis on bodies at all. Obviously, “erotic” means sex is part of the equation, and sex usually physical interactions between bodies (but maybe not always…see below). However, I personally get extremely bored by a never-ending stream of tall, buff, muscular guys without an ounce of flab. They just seem – well- plastic. And I’ve never really had a thing for department store mannikins.

When I think back over the men I’ve loved the most, not one of them had anything like a typical romance hero body. Yet I was physically attracted to them – not because of their bodies, per se, but because of the way their bodies expressed who they were.

One of the great loves of my life was, to be bluntly honest, fat. He was also extremely tall (about 6′ 4″) which made his weight less obvious – and probably caused us look pretty silly together since I’m barely 5’2″. I didn’t care. His size emphasized the D/s power dynamic between us. I found his physical presence, his bulk, remarkably sexy – so much so that I sometimes still find myself reacting to strangers with similar physiques.

Another guy I was crazy about was just the opposite, lean and kind of skinny, with longish black hair and a straggly pirate mustache. God, was intense there chemistry between us! He was smart, creative and bohemian, and really looked the part – what I call “the dark poet” type. I met him at a party and was seized by instant lust that soon turned into hopeless love. Our relationship had its bumps in the road, but at its best it was a meeting of the minds expressed through transcendent melding of our bodies.

Then there’s my husband. He’s a darling but I doubt anyone would ever think I married him for his looks. He reminds me a bit of a baby-faced troll. (Hopefully he’ll never read this! He reads my stories but has no patience with blogs!) I love his body, though. It’s cuddly and tender, hard and urgent, depending on our moods. And he loves (and respects) women, possibly more than any other man I’ve known. (Women tend to have similar feelings about him, too.) He uses his body to demonstrate that love.

My books include a variety of body types – not only for my heroes but also the heroines. The hero of Raw Silk is a tall, powerful alpha type, but Mark from Incognito is a medium height, medium build, bookish, glasses-wearing professor, and Rick Martell, the crafty industrialist in Ruby’s Rules, is actually modeled after my long lost poet. Ruby can’t understand why she’s so attracted to such an ordinary, rumpled looking guy. I sympathize, remembering my reactions to D.

When I write ménage, I frequently visualize heroes with strongly contrasting bodies: skin tone, build, degree of athleticism. In Bodies of Light , my recently published science fiction tale, Alyn is fair skinned, hairless, and fine-boned, while Zed has the bronzed complexion, black locks and sturdy build of a Mayan warrior. In Wild About That Thing, coming in the September collection Treble, the heroine is torn between burly, blond, bearded Southern boy Zeke and slender, elegant, head-shaved New Orleans blues man Remy.

As for my heroines, they include the tall and willowy Miranda (Incognito), short and athletic Kate (Raw Silk), petite Anglo-Asian Ruby (Ruby’s Rules) and statuesque, voluptuous Stella Xanathakeos (Exposure). I will never, ever, make comments about my heroine’s bra size, but I do like to write ladies who have plenty of curves and aren’t afraid to show them off. (I know my lovely hostess Victoria has similar preferences, and I applaud her for that.)

Coming back to Bodies of Light – although I just described the heroes to you, in fact, I embarked on writing this tale by asking myself if it was possible to write a sex scene that didn’t involve physical bodies at all. I don’t want to elaborate because I’ll give the plot away, but let me just tell you that the answer is yes.

Are you curious? You can buy your own copy of Bodies of Light from Total-E-Bound . Or you can enter my ongoing contest and possibly win a copy. You have a few more days, and it’s easy as pie. I want you to tell me about what body types you prefer in your heroes and heroines. Just write me an email at contest [at] lisabetsarai.com with the subject line “Bodies”. On July 15th, I’ll randomly draw one name from all the emails I receive and give that lucky individual a copy of the ebook.

Once more, I want to say thank you to Victoria for hosting me. You can find out more about me and my books at my website Lisabet’s Fantasy Factory, http://www.lisabetsarai.com, and my blog Beyond Romance, http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com.

Tanith is here today as part of her blog tour and she’s telling us all about her heroes. Yummy, I like a good hero or two! Thanks for joining us today!

My experience of traditional romance stories is that they have one hero and one heroine.

True, The Hand He Dealt isn’t exactly traditional. But, given that it’s mostly heterosexual with some f/f and f/m/f ménage thrown in, it’s unusual in that it has two heroes: Astra’s conflicted boyfriend Harry and Sasha’s college footballer boyfriend Ash.

Astra’s relationships with both heroes were great fun to write as they developed and changed. Harry gets his own POV while Ash doesn’t, as Harry has a lot more personal development to undergo than Ash, but Ash is much more straightforward. He wants what he wants, but doesn’t always know how to get it.

Harry and Ash represented two sides of my own tastes in men. One is smart, sweet and nerdy – I’ve always had a taste for geeks, probably because, growing up, I was one. The other is athletic, arrogant and jockish – friends of mine like to say I like a bit of rough, and Ash is it. One is intelligent but physically weak, the other muscular but inarticulate.

And Ash and Harry also represent two sides of the same coin. Both feel love deeply, but Harry is open about his emotions while Ash hides behind his overly masculine persona. Both like the idea of penetration – their own – but Harry secretly dreams of men while Ash secretly wants it from women.

And, of course, both are in love with the same woman – Astra Scott.

The Hand He Dealt
by Tanith Davenport
ISBN: 978-0-85715-570-2
Genre: Contemporary Erotic Romance
Publisher: Total-e-Bound

Buy Link: http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=1244

Just letting you know guys that I am at The Romance Reviews all day in their lounge chatting. I will be giving away spot prizes all through the day!

Also, if you go to the Sizzling Summer Reads event page you will find the first question will win you a copy of Artistic Sights, Heavenly Delights if you answer it correctly!