Dusty Miller Now in Paperback.

Dusty Miller

Dusty Miller is thrilled to announce that the first of her stories are now available in paperback.

Passion is the novella trilogy Project: Passion collected into one handy and low-cost 4 x 7” paperback from Lulu.com.

Falling in Love is a collection of six short stories of love, romance and erotica. That book is also a pocket-book sized paperback, also from Lulu.

Both titles are listed at $4.99 but with the 15 % discount, the price is $4.24 + S & H.

***

In other news, Long Cool One Books designer J. Thornton is working on 5 x 8” trade paperback versions through Createspace. By using Createspace-assigned ISBN numbers, those books will be in all the expanded distribution channels, and ultimately linked to their ebook counterparts on all Amazon/Kindle outlets. J. says the 4 x 7s and the 5 x 8s must have different ISBNs, and this is true of ebooks and any other formats as well. So you learn something new every day around here…

I probably have enough short stories for a couple of more collections, and if I know anything at all, it's that we’re always working on something new. around here...

Bye.

Smooches.

END

Escape from Bondage, an excerpt.

Coming soon.

The night was restless and warm for early December. Huddled under the blankets, she thought she heard a faint rumble. A winter thunderstorm was not unheard of, but hardly welcome right now. She’d only been at St. Marie for a week, but finally her spiritual and physical exhaustion had worn off. All of a sudden she was up again, almost manic in her mood. Today, all day, her nerves were completely jangled. It wasn’t just the move and the transfer, or the thoughts of seeing Braden from time to time. Not after the terrible last three months, where they didn’t see each other at all, ultimately leading up to her transfer. The reality of what she had done was catching up, and she had to start teaching a new class Monday morning at eight-forty-five sharp.

Now she couldn’t sleep. The room was too hot. The blankets were too thick, but to take them off meant a draft and a chill. Air whistled around the window and much of it came in. She was on one side, and then the other, with her upper knee drawn up and supported by the balled-up blankets. It was like her brain just wouldn’t switch off.

Rain lashed the rooftop, less than ten feet away in her third-floor suite, way up under the eaves, a bit bigger than her room for all those years back home. That was one way of describing it. It wasn’t home. She wondered if it ever would be.

She was in a semi-aware state, not unpleasant in itself. If only she could drop off into real slumber. Heather would be ever so grateful. Sleep was the last refuge. She’d read that somewhere.

The place had its own atmosphere, and in the long hours of the night when quiet reigned, the big old house had a set of obscure noises all of its own. Most of them were unidentifiable, but the pish-pish-pish of the heating pipes and the sound of someone in another room flushing a toilet or getting a drink of water were familiar enough. The occasional loud crack or pop could be put down to the age of the building, or the settling of the ground it was built on. It was the expansion and contraction of the maple hardwood floors, when the sun crossed it during daylight hours. The house had a life of its own by now, being over a hundred years old.

The distant crawling whine of transport trucks on the highway, or cars in the street out front weren’t threatening. Voices of people going by were clearly outside and down there, respectively. Branches scraping at the weathered brick wall outside made her hair stand on end, at least until she figured out what it was.

Her eyes opened and she looked at the clock. Only a little after one a.m. She still had time to get a good night’s sleep. God, please.

She had just closed her eyes and rolled over when a solid clunk came against the wall under her window. At first, she though how pleasant it would be to look out into the treetops in summer…

“Ah.” She turned her head and neck against the resistance of the pillow, which was a lot softer than she was used to. “Um.”

It felt good, but it wasn’t sleep.

There were more small sounds, little bumps and a rasping sound. She thought it was the tree branches again, the wind must be really picking up out there.

Her eyes flickered. It wasn’t working…it was like she just couldn’t drop off. Every so often she had a night like that, of course. It was never welcome.

A strong thud came right at the window, looming eight feet away from the foot of her bed. Panes rattled and the curtains trembled.

“Argh.” She thought for a moment and then decided to whisper a single expletive. “Shit.”

There was quiet now except for the sound of light rain on the glass. She was just turning from her right side to the left yet again, when the sound of a regular tapping on the window made her growl in frustration and finally snap on the light and sit up, strongly tempted to go over and reassure herself it was just branches in the wind. She glared in the general direction of the offending window.

“Eek!”

There was a dim red shape in the glass, visible through a narrow gap in the dark brown, patterned curtains, down low just over the sash. It took sudden form in her consciousness.

Her jaw dropped.

Braden! What instinct for self-preservation stopped her from shouting his name, or anything at all for that matter, was a blessing of the first magnitude.

Oh, my God.

His hand beckoned, as he mouthed words silently. His face was wet from the downpour as she swung her legs out of bed and went to the window, putting her toes down first and making a minimum of thumping sounds of her own. She pulled the curtains away and tried to lift the window.

The thing was sticky in the guides. She bent low, put her back into it and got a good grip.

She bit her lip. It made a groaning sound. She shoved the thing up as high as she could get and then stood back, keeping the window up with her left hand as Braden clambered up and over, dripping a trail of water and grinning like a drunken idiot who has just won the lottery after a lifetime of total mediocrity.

Her eyes slid to the window. Braden nodded, and took over. He eased it down until it was up just enough to get his fingers out from under it. She looked around, and settled on a rolled-up magazine to keep the window from dropping the last bit. He stuck it under and gave a small push on the top of the frame. He pulled the curtains tightly closed. They billowed slightly in place from the remaining air flow.

Putting a finger to his lips for silence, he pointed at the bed and so Heather gratefully retreated to somewhere soft and warm.

Sitting with knees up and a blanket over her legs, she watched as Braden took off his ball cap and opened his jacket. The silence of the room was all too loud now. What in the hell was he thinking?

Yet the thoughts of having sex silently, which perhaps might not be truly impossible, stirred her and she wondered if Braden was some kind of a genius. The last three months had been sheer hell. Her groin throbbed at the thought of sex. The first week here, had brought on a kind of desolation of the spirit. She had been struggling with it. He stood at the end of her bed, looking down in total seriousness. His initial smile had vanished.

She licked her lips and watched his eyes, breathing deeply in anticipation.

Unzipping his jacket, he came over and sat down on a small chair she used for dressing. He reached into his side jacket pocket and pulled out what looked like a sandwich bag. She wondered if he had condoms in there. The notion of a snack or something seemed out of odds with what was happening…

He opened the top and proffered a note in her direction.

“Read it.” The words were barely perceptible, but they both flinched slightly from the unthinkable possibility of one of the other sisters waking up in the next room or across the hall.

His eyes traveled the walls and the layout as he held a small flashlight, elbow propped up by the night table, and she opened it up and began to read.

End

Author's Note:

I'll be reading through the novella a couple of more times but the story will be available on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Diesel Books, Sony and Kobo, as well as Amazon very, very soon. Thank you for reading the excerpt.

Project: Passion. An Excerpt.

Free Digital Images net.

Her heart faltered. She contemplated the unthinkable. In the soft evening air came the unmistakable pop and rattle of a small outboard motor. The place was deserted this time of the season.

She could do nothing, for the odds were it was nothing, probably just a fisherman or more likely two of them, out for an evening troll. They would go up one side and then go back down the other side of the lake.

The word troll stuck in her mind. Yes, an apt word. She could troll for cocks…there was nothing stopping her.

With a quiver in her midriff, Heather turned and bolted up to the tent. In the unlikely event that it was Braden, and that in spite of finding Heather not there and just giving up, he was coming after all, there were a couple of things she’d been putting off. If it wasn’t Braden, there was small likelihood of them coming ashore anyway. She could always get a little kinky later on and masturbation in the wilderness could be very good. It had enough temptation of its own. That was an idea she was more comfortable with…

Aware of the pun, she was too terrified to smile. Braden was coming ashore. It had to be him. Please God, let it be him. She raced to get ready.

Heather was quickly on a gravel beach, on the far side of a small headland, thirty yards from the campsite, as the sound of the motor built and built.

The logical conclusion was that it was coming straight towards her site. The lake narrowed at this point, widened out into a basin, and then there was a landing a mile and a half away on the other side of a small curving bay. A long range of low hills receded off to the southwest.

Her canoe lay on the beach, visible for several kilometres at least.

Heather stood, letting the Nair on legs, lower back and tummy do its work. She had never done this before, and after careful reading of the instructions, again with the terror at work on her system, was hoping she still had enough time. Her thoughts were all mixed up, in some ways she was hoping whoever it was would go right on past.

What if they stopped and it wasn’t Braden?

What if they stopped and it was Braden?

Could she really do it?

What if they stopped, and it wasn’t Braden, and what if she was all dressed up in the skimpy shorts she’d cut off from stolen jeans, and what if she had her lips done in that nice hot pink gloss she’d picked up that day? What if she wasn’t wearing any top and three teenage boys stepped out of a boat and decided this was too good a chance to miss?

What if a couple of horny and very hairy fishermen wanted her? Big arms and bristly whiskers. What about that, eh? It’s not like anyone around here knew her, or that anyone here was anything but a tourist from somewhere far, far away…she wondered how much of that actually went on. What if they laughed and called her a slut or a whore, and beat her up and left her for dead…of course she was just scared. She knew that. She was a big girl, she could probably take care of herself. It made for an interesting mental picture, though, runaway nun beats off attackers, but even so…even so. If it was a pair of lesbians in a boat, she would try and get them interested…she might be interested.

She’d heard of sexual tourism, but this was different. This was her and didn’t she have the right to try and act out a fantasy too? She wasn’t prepared to take a lot of abuse from anybody. Not if she didn’t have to…she could always dive in the tent. She would run off into the woods and not come back until they left.

These were all very good notions. She abruptly waded into the shallows and began rubbing the drying dirty foam off of her skin. Real women, normal women…surely she was a normal woman at some level, but they did this all the time. The impression was all new to her. Unlike shaving there was no need to go back and do it again. She popped up out of the water and staggered back up to the beach. The bottom there was all sharp rocks and she wanted a razor to do her bush and armpits again.

The motor noise sounded all too close.

With a stab in the heart, a stab of hope and a gush of anticipation, something that made her gasp for breath and wave her hands around in confusion, the boat was coming right towards her. It sounded like they were right there, as she brushed her teeth, applied the gloss, and threw on what little costume she’d had the nerve to arrange. Once or twice she had taken a bath with bath beads and lots of foamy, blue-coloured water. It always made her horny. It was a shame she couldn’t do that now. She could be waiting for him in a foamy blue bath. She loved how her body looked in the foam. Every part of her vision had its dark side. What if Braden had been lying about a few things? And what if he didn’t come, either? Now that all of her hopes and terrors, fears and desires were up. What if he brought a friend or two and they gang-raped her? Her face lightened at the thought. Heather was hyperventilating and moaning quietly, mouthing curses in her state. God, yes, rape me…but be gentle and do it slowly. One at a time please, boys. No! She could suck a cock at the same time. A big one. She could have slapped herself in her sudden rage, but controlled the impulse.

The motor was so loud that Heather couldn’t even think straight anymore.

She had wine in a cooler. Get the man drunk. Get them both drunk. That was a plan…men were easier to handle when they were drunk. She’d read that somewhere. Especially if all you wanted was sex. She’d laughed at the time, but that was what it said.

All dried off, in a pair of cut-off jeans, with rings on her toes and a silver ankle bracelet, her mom’s charm bracelet, clip-on ear rings, a black ribbon with a bow on it around her neck, with her lips done and her skin all smooth and satiny from the hair removal, Heather took a couple of deep breaths and headed back to her camp and the place where her orange canoe lay on the rocks like a beacon to any passing stranger. Topless was too terrifying. She ran to her pack and grabbed a black undershirt, the sleeveless kind, one she’d cut off just below the nipples, nervous that the thing would fall out of her packsack or something somewhere in the real world and everyone would know who she was and laugh. She put it on, grateful for its slight warmth as the evening was coming on and she was shivering and shaking like a leaf, taking the binoculars with her.

She had never felt less horny in her life.

#

Screened by shadows and a thin clump of cedars, Heather studied the figure in the boat. In this light it was hard to tell, but she was pretty sure a white face would have shown up.

It had to be Braden. Her heart began to thump deep in her chest. She ran up the hill and put the binoculars in the tent. Then she went back down to the shore to wait.

The man in the boat, God he looked big, gave a big white smile, waved and then half turned to do something with the motor.

It sputtered to a stop and the aluminum fishing boat, bows piled high with colourful nylon bags of camping gear, drifted maddeningly slowly towards the beach as Heather stood petrified.

Wrong shoes!

She still had on her neoprene surf slippers…too late now.

The smell of perfume, underarm deodorant and the taste of a dry red in her mouth was all she had to comfort her as she waited.

“Hi, Heather!”

“Hi.” Heather managed to get it out, barely.

She was so scared. The guy wasn’t fat or anything, and he seemed to be about the right age.

He had a shirt on, and shorts, and a set of aviator sunglasses. He was barefoot. His hair was short and he wasn’t dressed like a hip-hop artist or anything like that.

Heather waded out into the sandy shallows, guiding the boat in and steadying it as Braden got out.

“You look very nice.”

“Huh? Oh.” Heather didn’t know what to think just yet, but it was a start.

“Um, thank you. Braden.”

They took a look at each other, and she wondered what he thought. The guy was tall, taller even than her, and that was saying something. He was heavier too.

The mental picture of what this might look like if it actually worked thrilled through her and she wondered what was wrong with her breathing…

“Let me help you get this stuff out of the boat.” This was a nice safe subject and would buy a little time.

She concentrated on just breathing and not saying anything for a while. This had to work. It had to.

Braden gave her a casual little pat on the ass. Her nipples straightened up inside the tee shirt.

“Thank you. I’m sorry I missed you at the boat launch, but I got hung up in town.”

Heather said nothing as she still felt guilty at bolting. It hadn’t done her any good anyway, had it? She’d never had a man touch her there before. The shock was intense. The wind whipped around her naked skin, bringing a flush of new-found awareness. Her body was coming alive.

The pair of them worked at getting Braden’s tent pitched, surprisingly big but he’d rented everything at an outfitter’s and took what was offered. Heather felt Braden’s eyes upon her, but it was all right after a little while, and in their internet chats they had agreed beforehand that nothing might happen. If so, they would try to enjoy the outdoors and shake hands like friends when they left. The question of payment had never come up. She would have done it, though.

It would be a shame not to give it an even chance.

She had fantasized about it often enough, but there was every chance the reality would be totally different and not at all what she really wanted. They both knew that in advance. They were both adults, and in control of themselves.

They didn’t talk much at this stage of the game.

(End of Excerpt.)

The erotic novella Project: Passion is available on Amazon.

Forty Minutes for Romance.

Excuse me: I have about forty minutes for romance.

In Project: Passion, the first of a series of three novellas, Sister Heather breaks free from her fears and indulges her erotic fantasy during a week at the lake with a guy she met on the internet. His name is Braden Mitchell.

Here is a brief precis of Rendezvous:

Sister Heather is just dying to see Braden again. Her fantasy has become reality, bringing with it new challenges. Using a contrived excuse, she escapes for two whole days to meet him at a trade show, with the pair hoping to pack as much sex and fun as possible into a limited time. Heather is falling in love with Braden, who understands her needs and is surprisingly gentle. It’s not just about kinky sex anymore.

Spring is in the air.

Spring is in the air, blah-blah-blah. Young men aren’t the only ones whose fancy turns to thoughts of love.

I was trying to figure out when I might actually squeeze a little romance into my own life. It’s not like I have much of a schedule. I probably have forty minutes a day of free time. Other than that, I’m too tired to give a shit the rest of the time.

Maybe that’s why fantasy is so important, huh?

Basically just a single mom who prefers to use her brain rather than sell her body (or merely some head) to feed her kid, once Meredith is off to school I can sit on the couch and watch TV. There are shows I do watch, but I’m more likely to be at the computer with the TV going in the background.

Some days it’s the radio, some days it’s pure blessed silence. I’ve gotten to know the sounds of the place pretty well. When we first moved in here, I scraped off the carpet and underlay and just let the floor breathe for a while.

The floor snapped, crackled and popped for about three or four months afterwards. I like hardwood floors, though. The old rug was almost enough to get the place condemned.

The fridge has a sound. The traffic outside has a sound. A baby is crying near an open window somewhere in this little neighbourhood. There are thumps from an adjoining unit. There are trains in the distance. It never ends, it just ebbs and flows.

How do I balance my life? All that mom/career stuff? I don’t, really. I just do everything that’s work and very little that’s fun. I can squeeze in forty minutes here and there to write. When I hear of great novelists spending years visualizing their masterpieces, I can only envy them all of that unlimited free time.

While doing a laundry, or loading up the dishwasher, I can see a few things in my head. It’s like daydreaming in technicolour. I remember the first bits, and then build on it, until it’s a whole imaginary world inside of my head. When I sit down to write, it seems to fall into place in a natural progression, unforced, vibrant and spontaneous. When it’s over, I end it.

Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

It’s only natural to begin with short stories.

Right now, I have the basic plot for the third and possibly final novella in the series involving Sister Heather and Braden. I have an idea for another short story, and another one on the go.

That’s one up to about five or six thousand words. Only one problem: no sex in it so far, so I kind of set it aside. If it’s a novel, I don’t want to commit to it right now. It takes too long to get to the naughty bits.

A short story is a quick fix or something. I don’t really know what it is about short stories, but I like doing them. I might as well keep doing them and learn as much as I can about writing erotic tales. When I’m ready to do a novel, I’ll give it a try.

END

Here is 'Rendezvous' on Smashwords.

Squee! Life is just Dope.

Squee!

I published my first book on Smashwords. Signing up was easy enough and the interface self-explanatory although I had to try the load-up three times. For some reason the category selection process takes three shots.

My first novella, ‘Project Passion’ is now in the line-up for Premium Distribution. Now I’m all exciting about doing more writing.

What a thrill. I still have to go through the usual checks, although on the advice of a friend I downloaded free copies in Epub and Kindle. They look so good it curled my toes.

I had no idea it was that exciting. Objectively speaking, I probably should put in the blurb that it isn’t a full-length book. I need to do some social networking.

In other news, I made my first submission, ever. That’s a cute little 4,000 word story, sent to a real life erotica ‘zine!

Life is just dope right now.

Please take a look at my book.