Thursday, August 29, 2013

Fun and Games with the Writing of Bind and Keep Me


Releasing Friday!

by Cari Silverwood
In the lead-up to publication on August 30th, I’ve written a fair few serious blog posts about my next book, Bind and Keep Me. So I thought it might be better to make this post about the quirky things that happened.
This book falls on the dark and edgy side. It’s capture fantasy and dubious consent, and darker than the first one in the Pierced Hearts series, Take Me, Break Me. You will find romance among the pages, but it isn’t the main focus. Where the first was about how a sadistic Dom discovered who he really was, this book is more about throwing something terrible at him that can destroy his life, and watching him find a way out of the mess – a way that may not be morally, or legally, right.

Five Fun facts

1. Underwear Mishaps.
There’s lots of underwear flung about, wrenched off and cut off in this book and when I did my first major re-read , I thought I detected an error. So I removed a spot where Steph has her underwear mentioned. I sent the book off to my editor, only to find that the underwear had been there after all and my editor was puzzled at them being missing.
On Facebook, the day after she sent the manuscript back, she asked if I’d found the missing underwear. Which slightly boggled the minds of some readers of my wall posts. I had to reassure them that it wasn’t actually my underwear. My editor has suggested my next book title be, The Case of the Missing Underwear.
2. Rat Island.
There’s an island mentioned in the story called Rat Island. Although most of the other places in the book are real, if twisted a little, Rat Island is a figment of my imagination. I needed a place to send my people to, is all. So don’t go boating about off the coast of Queensland, Australia, looking for it. You may find whales, sharks, and jellyfish, but you won’t find my island.
3. Killing Jodie.
Before I even began writing this book, I knew I wanted a new woman in the mix and I was worried that an M/f/f  relationship would stop some people from reading the story. So I asked my street team if they’d mind if I killed off Jodie. I was threatened with pitchforks, and other lethal-ish implements if I dared to kill her off.
Though I glared at them, they persisted. Seeing that I prefer to remain un-skewered by pointy things…guess what, and who, ended up in the book?
4. The Chair Scene.
There’s a sex scene in the book where naughty things happen to Steph while she’s tied stomach-down over a chair seat. It was only picked up by one of my beta readers that having sex, and particularly oral sex, would be gymnastic if it were done at chair-seat height. I solved it in typical Cari Silverwood fashion. My way is to always avoid major re-writing, at all costs. My simple solution – put the chair up on a coffee table.
5. The Aussie Glossary.
Because most of my readers seem to be American, and because my earlier publishers always insisted on US terminology and spelling, I went with this for Bind and Keep Me. So even though the story is set in Australia, I did use US spelling, and in some cases, I used US terms for things. Most of these swaps are covered in the Aussie and US glossary at the end of the story, if you feel inclined to read it.
As I say at the top of the glossary, I felt that some words were just too confusing and I didn’t want to jerk readers out of the story and have them going, what the hell?
I use this sentence as a prime example:
Klaus put on his thongs, opened the door, and went out onto the beach for his morning stroll.
Although I use that, there are, in fact, no thongs, aka flip flops, in the story.
There are however four-wheel drives, aka SUVs. And I may have used kitchen counter instead of kitchen bench. And there are certainly some eskies, aka coolers, at a picnic.
To my utter embarrassment, after the book had gone off to be formatted for publication, I asked my readers on Facebook whether they preferred Aussie terms and most of my US friends said, yes! Apparently it adds to the feel of the book. So if in the next book an alpha man is wearing thongs, and apparently nothing else, now you know that he’s suavely dressed, has his junk completely covered, and that he does NOT have a skimpy underwear fetish.
6. Hashtags
This is just for Stephanie Christie who has both a Klaus fixation and a thing with hashtags. She has invented both #klauswithdrawal in the weeks leading up to publication, and #bdsmsnoopydance. So I’m just saying, present me with enough silliness and I may get my revenge by putting it in a blog post.
7. Chapter Torture
The gap between Chapter 17 to Chapter 18 is, to say the least, interesting. I teased Sorcha Black with this as she was my crit partner and I tossed her chapters as I wrote them. If you read the book, you will find out why leaving her at the end of Chapter 18 for two whole days was torture. I think I may have invented a new type of cliff hanger ending.

Early praise for Bind and Keep Me

“Bind and Keep me, leads you down a depraved path full of dark desires that you know are so wrong, but feel too good for you to care. Cari Silverwood makes losing what we all cherish—our freedom—sinfully erotic.” - Bianca Sommerland, author of Deadly Captive
“Enthralling and seductive, Bind and Keep Me brings the taboo into our basements and locks us inside. A must-read for lovers of dangerous erotic fiction.” - Skye Warren, author of Wanderlust

Bind and Keep Me Blurb

How far would you go to protect your love and your life?
When two deaths turn his world upside down, Klaus must wrestle with a problem that goes soul deep. With Jodie it was capture fantasy but now he’s made the fantasy real, dragging her along as his accomplice. No one should feel so good about something so wrong.
Maybe his soul is darker than he feared. Maybe the rules shouldn't apply to him.
Warning: Dark erotica Mff with BDSM themes, capture fantasy, and dubious consent.
Contains spanking, bondage, caning and piercing, and one alpha possessive man about to toss aside his morals and take what he wants.

About the Author

Cari Silverwood writes the way the world should be - dangerous and sexy with bullets piercing the darkness and lovers wrenched close by ropes. When you need escape, when you need that rough lover to bring you to your knees, here you will find stories to singe your fingers. The taste of adventure, the tang of BDSM, the burn of fantasy run wild. Brace yourselves, if you dare to read.

And...in this real world, she has a lovely family in Australia, with the prerequisite teenager who dwells in the dark bedroom catacombs…a husband who raises eyebrows when he catches glimpses of what she writes, and a furry menagerie of other animals barking, meowing, and swimming about the place. 

Party and Prizes

Join Cari at the release party for Bind and Keep Me when she is giving away a signed book to TWO lucky winners!  The Facebook party starts at 9 pm EDT, August 30th, on Facebook here

2 comments:

  1. Stephanie ChristineAugust 29, 2013 at 9:52 AM

    zomg! I'm in a blog post:)I won BaKM and just finished it. This book is like the most delicious of dark chocolate! #Klaushigh #don'tknockthehashtags :)

    ReplyDelete