Category: Daily Musings

Bare and Frosty

At least that’s how it looks around here. For the last few weeks, I’ve been overhauling my website and I figured it’s past time for an update on the blog. I don’t mind this bare minimum look, that’s my goal for the next few months heading into the new year –

Okay, aesthetics aren’t my thing, clearly but I like to think that I have become better at graphics since 2021.

And yes, as a reader, I prefer less clutter on the screen, but I am not my reader (thankfully) and I realize I need to jazz this space up a little and at the very least, put new  “Here’s my book” pages up. I’ll get to it.

-not the full year, just the first handful of months. I have re-arranged my universe to take time to play with a new series. Because when one series ends… that’s what happens.
Something new.
And I’m really excited to dive in.

I’m starting to get lured in by this new world.

I wrote the Bandit Brothers Series because they were books I wanted to read:
Characters not new to kink. 
Emotional story lines. 
Side of suspense that made you turn the page.
Canadian settings. 

It’s been immensely fun and quite a ride.

This time, I’m writing the books I need… maybe I can draw in things from that fictional world into my own, like:

Coming home to lick your wounds. 
Soft place to land. 
Second chances. 
By the sea. 
An old flame still flickering… 
The group that has your back. 
A place that welcomes you, even though all you wanted was to leave… 
Small town. Away from the city.

Stuff like that…

But before I dive into the new world, Mercy’s Sinful Delights has a hold on me.
I go to bed thinking about Hunter, Cyrus and Delaney and then I wake-up thinking about them and I don’t know if I have had characters that are so utterly demanding and loud before, not quite like this. There is something about this trio and they are demanding to have their story told.

So in-between making merry and bright, I am scrambling down words, with the clock in the background… And this is why the Sinful Delights Series is currently out of kU. I don’t have an exact release date for the final book in the Sinful Delights Series (oh, and you know, other writerly business things also made the decision to leave kU with these books).

Five Days of Christmas Spice is still free for a little bit longer, on all retailers here: https://books2read.com/FiveDaysOfChristmasSpice and you can pre-order Flame For Always here: https://books2read.com/flameforalways

One of the things I love about writing is how it is an escape to create another reality but there are also other ways I bring this into my life.
This past October, my Mate and I watched the current Great British Baking Show and we are hooked on the Game of Wool: Britain’s Best Knitter and we eat copious amounts of snacks while doing it.
Sometimes your joy is pretending to be pensioners in Tottenham.


The whole length

Well, it’s not the white stuff falling but rain and I’ll take it. Like I said over on Mercy’s instagram, I have a to-do list as long as a monster’s c*ck and by now I’ve drank that first cup of coffee and the next one sat cold.

On today’s agenda is reading through the final edit of Five Nights of Yes, Ma’am, the next Mercy Denton book, book three in the Sinful Delights Series. You can pre-order it here and if you want to be the first to  read it, join the ARC team here.

What’s required to be on my ARC Team?

Read the book, review the book. Don’t steal it!

That’s it.

I don’t care how large your following is because sometimes, size doesn’t matter. Matters when it comes to that to-do list however and I need to keep going.

Hoping your Monday is filled with all the caffeine you need!

 

The thing about help, disability and kink

Those who know me well, think that it’s ironic that I wrote a whole series centering the damsel-in-distress-trope, but the thing is? I love this trope. I’m always trying to up the stakes in the suspense plots, to push the boundaries of realism, to make it even harder for my characters to untangle themselves on the way to the HEA

When it came to writing Ares and Josie, I wanted to make sure that it was the situation that caused her the distress. I wanted to write the story in a way that made it clear Ares was not out to save her from the perceived distress of being disabled.

I needed Josie’s autonomy respected. I needed her to stand up for herself and call people out on the toxic offers of help.

And even though Ares was going to be a forceful part of rescuing Josie, he needed to be the kind of Dom that listens. Actually respects boundaries instead of running them over. He needed to support her, offer that support in a way that could be refused.

It might be Ares’s nature to try and fix things for her, to make her life easier, to offer her help but Josie knows her own mind and just because she’s disabled, doesn’t mean she needs to be saved from her disability.

The thing about putting “help” in a kink setting is that help has to be consented to, even if the character has a disability. The boundary held and respected. When you put offers of help in that kind of setting in shines a light on how helpful help actually is…

Maybe it was my wishing for that (“help” being offered in a way that can always be refused, not with the expectation that it is accepted just because it was given) to be an every day experience that brought this forth – and I’m okay with that.

Flame For Keeps is out tomorrow.

 

candles on beach

 

 

An HEA With A Disability

“It’s simply an accident of birth that I’m not even more important.”- Hyacinth Bucket [Keeping Up Appearances] 

 

This snowy Monday morning, I’m thinking about the accident of birth. About taking chances, even so. Keep going when the chips are down, that kind of thing.

For no reason at all.

This week, with the release of Flame For Keeps, I’m doing something I never thought I’d do.

At one point, I never thought this book would get into the hands of readers and I might have screamed into the void.

When expectations don’t meet reality, it can take a bit to get over it and get on with it and with the release of Flame For Foe, that’s what happened. Readers had asked me for a book about Quinn’s little sister ever since she first appeared in Flame For Two. So I expected the release to go well.

It didn’t.

I got my first ever hate mail about a fictional character. A neurodiverse character, who acted like a neurodiverse human didn’t find the warm reception I thought she would. But I love that book and the readers who love Flame For Foe love it and I write for readers who want my books about power exchange relationships with messy characters and spicy times (my unofficial tagline).

But Flame For Keeps was drafted. If readers didn’t like Flame For Foe…how were they going to react to a book with a disabled FMC? I didn’t have my armor patched up well enough to find out and I needed a break from from the Bandit Brothers world, so I paused all projects though I did go back in and lightly edit a few books and I think there was a cover change in there…

So I launched a pen name and released three books before I went back to the Bandit Brothers world. Because Ares deserves a HEA and Josie has been one of those side characters ever since the series started and their story wouldn’t leave me alone.

“Change her…so she doesn’t have a disability.” went through my mind but I couldn’t. Didn’t want to.

Throughout those cameo appearance Josie shows up with mobility aids…except for in Flame For Foe and she as an internal as to why that is…so to change her from being a disabled character to not just because I was a scaredy cat over it? I couldn’t do it.

Besides, there’s a part of me that needs this character with her disability to be in this series and I kind of love her.

But I never thought I would write a character that shares things in common with myself, in this way.

For over a decade I have written about disability and kink in other places before becoming a romance writer, but this felt too raw, too personal. In writing Josie, I had to separate fact from fiction My own lived experiences from my character’s and in doing so, brought me to confront how inexplicably background, socioeconomic status, molds one’s experience of being disabled.

This might be the book that caused the most self-reflection yet and it was hard to write through it at times.

But Josie gets her HEA, the Bandit Brothers Series has another book and I’m going to keep on writing, despite everything. Many thanks to the readers who have waited for this book and have kept me writing.

flame for keeps

 

When she likes it like that…

Sold To Her Enemy: A Night To Remember Auction is the latest Mercy Denton book and when I knew this was going to be an enemies to lovers romance, I wanted readers to buy in.

I didn’t want the characters to immediately like each other after one encounter.

I wanted the angst to be high.

The dislike to be strong. The hate vibes on both side to crackle – because that’s the kind of enemies to lovers I like to read.

And when I was thinking of adding the kink element, the power exchange to this book, I wanted something that was inherently unbalanced to drive what the FMC could be raging against but also…something she liked…done by someone she hates.

She likes it. Hate the fact that he’s the one doing it.

Even by him…she can’t help how her body responds.

During the interview Mckenna had prior to the night of the auction, she checked “yes” to humiliation, degradation and objectification.

She likes those kinks.

And maybe, the fact that a woman, who is in her late 20’s knows what satisfies her sexually does irk some readers?

Or maybe it’s because she chose things that are on the hard limit list of many?

Even if it rubs the line of dub-con she consented to those acts.

The fact that its Adrian, the man who destroyed the life she had, that is engaging in these acts, still doesn’t mean she needs to be saved.

Doesn’t mean he’s a bully.

Doesn’t mean she can’t handle it.

I know that this book isn’t everyone’s cup of tea – and that’s okay! – but for those who love these kinks and this trope? I hope you’ve enjoyed Mckenna and Adrian’s story.

A bookbubreview

Hello September!

 

A ballpoint pen drawing of a pin up girl

Ah, the heatscape of the summer is nearly behind us and if you’re celebrating back to school, I hope it goes smoothly for you and Happy Tuesday to the rest of us.

This month I am going to do everything I can to get Josie and Ares off to beta readers and if the timing is on my side, maybe a Bandit Brothers surprise. I want to get back to Mercy’s Domme book so badly that it’s acting like my carrot to get through these edits.

I can’t wait to share these books with you! Readers keep me writing and I am so grateful.

This week in my newsletter, look out for a new bonus scene featuring Mulberry and Nick from Flame True. If you haven’t read Flame True, like all the Bandit Brothers books, it can be read in Kobo Plus for free here.

Gotta go make that chai latte and get back to the words!

 

Pre order flame for keeps by raleigh damson

 

Get Your Spicy Waffle Here!

Going to take myself and my laptop out of the house because the way I spend release days is by writing the next book and not checking my dashboard a thousand times. But finally.

Sold To Her Enemy: A Night To Remember Auction is out in the wild and I am so grateful, happy, crying, throwing-up, screaming, you know all the things.

What better way than to celebrate with character art that sets the whole tone of the book? Adrian is going to ignore her as Mckenna serves as his c0ckwarmer.

Release day for Mercy Denton

 

Reason This Pen Name Isn’t A Secret … or

#disabledlikethat

Three days before release of Sold To Her Enemy: A Night To Remember Auction and TikTok throws a fit and insists on being re-installed on my phone. Fine.

But then I can’t login into the mercywritesspice account because…I don’t remember the password. It’s a combination of letters and numbers and I swear, swear, swear that I pressed the save key for my phone to retain it in its memory.

But no.

If you’ve read here before you may recall that this is the second time I’ve lost the Mercy Denton account.  It’s she second time this year! that I have had account-password problems. Social media isn’t everything when it comes to book marketing but it helps to have a presence.

Especially three days before release day.

This is how #disabledaf affects my writing life.

Is it a “challenge” to overcome? No. It just is.

Do I hate that this happens? I mean, it’s an annoyance but I’m going to go burn down libraries.

I think it’s funny and highlights the irony of me ever thinking for a moment that I could just not mention being disabled (which I did, briefly, back when I started).

And because I can’t give up this blogging habit, here we are.

And maybe, there is another chaotic gremlin who is also #disabledaf out there seeing themselves in this post.

This is also an example of why I am so grateful I didn’t keep Mercy Denton as a “secret pen name.”

I don’t know if I could ever pull that off! Anyways, I went in and edited Raleigh’s TikTok so that it’s “Raleigh Damson also writing as Mercy Denton” and that actually makes it easier than maintaining two separate TikTok accounts.

I’m aware that the advice is to keep it all separate but I’m in Canada, I don’t have as much geo pull and I’m not out to make my TikToks go viral.

“If I didn’t marry you or give birth to you, I won’t remember your birthday,” is something I need on a mug.

And if I do? You should feel honoured. You should send me presents, honestly.

***

Anyways, if its hot as a demon’s snot where you are, I hope you’re staying cool. I’m hydrating with non-coffee things too and gong to get words down on Ares and Josie.

 

The next book in the auction

5k words down on the book I am not supposed to be writing at the moment is a win that’s going to set me up nicely for the rest of the week. I’m wondering where that warm-sunshiny vibes are, trying to organize my home into something that isn’t a lost box of wonder and finish up a bonus scene for Mara and Evan — it kind of turned into a novella and I might just hit send because it’s fun to give your readers things.

I made chocolate chip cookies. What I like in a chocolate chip cookie is the soft, thin, and chewy kind, but this is elusive and I think out of a hundred tries I manage to get it right twice…but I saw on the clock app this hack where you take the pan out of the oven with two minutes left on the cooking time and smash it with the bottom of a mason jar.

What the hay, the cubs thought it was fun and it kind of gave the desired result but it ended up spreading the chocolate chips out of the batter and ended up with a chocolatey splish splash effect…it was a tasty experiment anyways.

The next book in A Night To Remember Auction is out now! My Soul For Sale by Cassie Lein 

my soul for sale by cassie lein

New Doms and slow progress

I spent this week writing as much as I can on Mercy’s next book. It’s unannounced, there is no pre-order for it yet and I haven’t revealed the title, but I can share that it is Theo and Callie’s story. I gave myself my birthday week to get as much of a start on it as I can before I set it to one side and get back to Ares and Josie. I’m loving these new characters and want to spend more time in their world! And I can’t wait for readers to read this book – it’s the first book I’ve released featuring a male submissive.

Mercy’s next release is Sold to Her Enemy: A Night To Remember Auction out later this month, on the 21st.

My hand is still healing and it’s making typing slow – which is making me a little grumbly because the word count on the somewhat secret male submissive book would be higher if I had my normal speed – and it’s a little achy when it rains which makes me feel like kind of crotchety which isn’t a downside; there is a huge part of me that kind of digs the hedge witch image.

In my emails today, I spotted this great deal from Golden Angel. Grab the Nights at Stronghold: Stronghold Doms Boxset for $0.99. These books are fun and spicy with memorable characters and definitely a great deal!

Golden Angel boxset deal