She
Knows She's Beautiful
By Annabeth
Leong
Erzabet,
thanks so much for hosting me again! It's great to be here.
My
favorite review of Design
and Scandal so far
said, "Kahala Lin is the type of woman I’ve always aspired to be"
(and thanks for that, Pauline Michael at Night Owl Reviews). I'm so proud the
reviewer felt that way, especially because it wasn't easy for me to write
Kahala. It brought up a lot of my own issues, in fact.
I knew
when I started writing the book that I wanted Kahala to be proud of herself and
her body. I wanted her to be on the other side of the societal shame about
being a curvy girl—full of acceptance, owning her sexuality, and okay with
being different from the mainstream concept of beauty.
I had no
idea how hard that was going to be for me to write. Honestly, that's not at all
how I think about my own body. Too often, the sight of myself in the mirror
brings a sort of sick, hopeless feeling. Just last night, I was out shopping
for bras. It wasn't a good night for that (sometimes it just seems like
insecurity is in the air), and the way I looked under the dressing room lights
was making me tear up. I ended up leaving the store empty-handed, to the
disappointment of my husband, who gets excited about the idea of picking out
pretty lingerie.
I
remember how it felt to write the sex scenes in Design and Scandal. Normally, I turn myself on when
I write sex, and I do it with exuberance. When I wrote these scenes, I was
cringing inside. I worked hard to allow Kahala to be herself and to be
unashamed, but she turned out to be farther down that path than I was. I made
sure that James was not just accepting but crazy about her, but I had trouble
believing the things he said. I edited the first few chapters over and over
again, trying to get the tone right. After I turned the book in to my editor, I
felt a backlash of shame. I was so sure she was going to come back to me and
say that my scenes weren't good.
On the
contrary, my editor was excited about the heat of the book and the confidence
of the main character. And a funny thing happened as I was working on my
edits—coming at my sex scenes as a reader and editor rather than as a writer, I
found they had been transformed. I saw the affirmation, the sexiness, and the
sense of connection gleaming out of them. I saw the beauty that I knew Kahala
ought to have. I'd managed to give it to her despite my battles with my own
insecurities, and that made me so happy.
This is
what amazes me about writing. My characters can go beyond what I'm able to actually
do and feel. They can be better, wiser people. Writing can present a vision, a
possibility. Kahala isn't perfect, and she can be shaken. Her attitudes about
women's bodies change over the course of the story. In the end, however, I
wrote a character who's a lot stronger and braver than I am.
I'm not
exactly sure which parts of Kahala touched the reviewer I mentioned at the
beginning. She may admire her for different reasons. But Kahala is the type of
woman that I, too, aspire to be. Someday, I want to look at my body with the
same confidence that she has. Songs frequently celebrate the idea of a woman
who doesn't know she's beautiful, but I say, forget that. Someday, I want to
know I'm beautiful the way Kahala does.
Excerpt:
“I
said I wouldn’t bother you,” James said slowly.
“What
if you’re not bothering me?”
James
allowed his fingers to dart out and brush the palm of her hand. Kahala closed
her eyes. Her face looked even softer when she relaxed. He leaned forward and
pressed his lips to her cheek. Her hair smelled like pikake flowers, sweet and
clear. He whispered in her ear. “I’ve never seen a woman more my type than
you.”
She
turned her head until his mouth touched not her cheek but her hot, plush lips.
They stayed still that way for a moment, her breath tickling his upper lip.
Then James lifted his hands to her shoulders and pulled her close. Against his,
her body was all curves, all woman, all flesh he wanted to explore with fingers
and tongue. Her mouth opened to him and he forgot himself in the flavor of her
kiss.
“I
love this dress but I want to tear it off you.”
He
felt her lips curve. “Well, don’t do that.” She guided his hand to a set
of laces running down the left side of her body.
His
fingers closed around a bow tied at the bottom of her thigh. He tugged one tail
of it experimentally. “Am I allowed to do this?”
“I
locked the trailer door when I came in.”
James
took that as permission. He pulled the bow apart and touched the bare brown
flesh the action revealed. He kissed the base of her throat and cupped the side
of her thigh, massaging a little. Kahala’s flesh yielded to his touch, molding
itself to the palm of his hand. James slipped the laces open farther, tracing
the webbed pattern they made over the upper part of her leg.
He
wanted her so much that his throat felt tight. She felt right under his
fingers, under his lips, like everything he’d been missing through months of
travel and publicity appearances. “I don’t know if I can go slow,” he
confessed.
“I
don’t want to go slow,” Kahala said. “Finish pulling out those laces.”
James
didn’t need to be asked twice. He undid the rest of them, his heart pounding as
more of her body spilled out of the dress and into his hands. He slipped the
fabric out of the way, thinking he wanted to get her naked as soon as possible.
That
was before he saw her underwear. James actually stood back and gaped. Her red
bra did not attempt to contain her large, delicious breasts. Instead, it only
lifted them, making her curves even rounder and more alluring. The garment
projected a lazy, sensual air, like a thing strapped halfway on for a brief
foray out in the middle of a day in bed. It covered her nipples only partially,
the dark, puckered flesh peeking out above scalloped lace. A red thong framed her
generous ass and cupped her mound, revealing hints of the shape of the lips
beneath. But where most thongs resorted to elastic strings for the waistband,
this rose into a wreath of lace that cupped the lower part of her stomach and
emphasized how every curve of her body flowed into every other—breasts to
stomach to hips to thighs. The sight left him torn between touching her and
gazing at her.
When
he managed to meet her eyes again, Kahala was grinning. “I made those, too,”
she said.
“I’ve
got no worries about what you’ll do with me,” James said, remembering the
costume she was supposed to be designing.
Kahala’s
wink made him forget it again. “Good,” she said, “because I plan to do plenty
with you.” She glanced toward the bed in the back of the trailer. “Why don’t
you get on that?”
Blurb:
Costume
designer Kahala Lin didn't get into her line of work to make clothes for tiny
models. She dreams of creating high-fashion masterpieces for BBWs such as
herself. When she's hired to work on costumes for the science fiction movie Laser Sentinel, she passes up the opportunity
to dress the film's heroine and ends up with the hardest job on set—pleasing
the demanding and devastatingly handsome star, James Corwin.
James is one
of Hollywood's best known actors, but he's in trouble when he's forced into
working on this dud of a movie. James can't relax and enjoy the shoot on
Hawaii's black sand beaches. He needs to prevent this film from becoming an
embarrassment, starting with making sure he's not shot wearing nothing but
spandex, a headdress and a ray gun. His collaboration with the new costume
designer starts out promising, but soon he's so busy taking off her clothes
that he's hardly thinking about what he'll wear at all.
The press,
however, discovers their relationship almost before it begins, and the
resulting scandal threatens both their livelihoods and James' chances with
Kahala.
A Romantica®
contemporary erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave
Buy
Links:
All
Romance eBooks: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-designandscandal-1303171-369.html?referrer=6bdb1f9160564c0525b41f36e51861a0
Barnes
and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/design-and-scandal-annabeth-leong/1116524070?ean=9781419947018
Ellora’s
Cave: http://www.ellorascave.com/design-and-scandal.html
Bio:
Annabeth
Leong has written erotica of many flavors. She loves shoes, stockings, cooking
and excellent bass lines. She always keeps a new e-book loaded on her phone and
a paperback stashed in her purse, but her eyes are still bigger than her
stomach whenever she visits a bookseller. She blogs at annabethleong.blogspot.com,
and tweets @AnnabethLeong . Watch for her next contemporary erotic romance from
Ellora's Cave, Heated
Leather Lover.
Giveaway:
Check out the rafflecopters below for information on
how to win one of my giveaways! For the all-digital giveaway, I'm offering a $5
gift card to Ellora's Cave, and digital downloads of two of my other EC titles.
For the goodie bag, I've got some fun swag from EC's Romanticon 2013 (the
physical prize is US only due to the cost of mailing—apologies to my
international friends and fans). Good luck!
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Thanks so much for hosting me, Erzabet! It's always a pleasure to be here.
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