The Initiation of Ms. Holly by KD Grace-Review, Guest Post and Giveaway
The Initiation of Ms. Holly
by KD Grace
Release Date: February 4, 2014
Genre: adult,contemporary, erotica
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Sex with a mysterious stranger aboard a train leads Rita Holly to an initiation into the exclusive and secretive Mount club. Sophisticated and deviant rituals await Rita, as do the endless intrigues and power struggles deep within the heart of the organization.Rita learns that membership of the Mount Club is not for the sexually repressed. During her initiation, sex with her new lover from the train, Edward, is forbidden but Alex the dance instructor is happy to take his place and Leo the zoo keeper is happy to encourage Rita’s animal instincts. With more and more titillating punishments in store and the club’s sexy head Vivienne intent on her failing, will Holly succeed in her lengthy and lurid initiation?
REVIEW
3.5 out of 5 for this reader folks!
Before getting into this review, I am going to say that this book is not for the easily offended. This was a harder erotica novel with explicit sex scenes, language and many a head game. If this kind of reading is not your cup of tea, I will dare say that you will not enjoy this book. If it is your cup of tea, or you are okay to push your personal reading boundaries, then check out my review!
The Initiation of Ms Holly by K.D. Grace is a contemporary erotic novel set in London England, present time. We meet our leads right away as they have a rather “chocolate intense” encounter when the passenger train they are travelling on loses power and submerges everyone in the dark. Plucked right out of a naughty fantasy, this er ..”joining”, leads to a number exchange and a journey that was crazy hot.
Rita Holly cannot stop thinking about her encounter with Edward. When she receives a text to meet him at the mysterious “Mount Club”, she is fascinated and terrified all at the same time. She learns that Edward is not only a member of the “Mount Club” but he has also requested that Rita be initiated into the club. Rita, while completely gobsmacked, is intrigued and finds she is a tad eager to complete her initiation training. While convinced by her boss to do a journal expose on The Mount Club, Rita also begins to bond with the members making her choices harder and harder. Edward also is forced to be slightly elusive and most assuredly secretive by the truely bitchy high counsel member Vivienne. Rita doesn’t understand why Edward must do all Vivienne says. The deeper Rita becomes involved in her initiation process, the more secrets are revealed. Is all this worth it?? This is a question that Rita must answer for herself.
Ok … so .. lots of sex. I mean LOTS of sex. Lots of role play, kink, menage, and same sex. Character development was on the weaker side due to all of this sex. I had a bit of a disconnect with Rita and Edward because of all that was going on and how fast their relationship happened. I will tell you this however … BRILLIANT VILLAIN! Vivienne was the character that I love to hate, and she was so screwed up and such a first class ^&%% she stole this book and over shadowed every one else. The secrets revealed in this book were awesome as well, and towards the end I was high fiving K.D. Grace’s and her way of pulling the entire story together.
So if you love a serious smutty read, check this one out.
Copy supplied by the publisher
Reviewed by Rachel T
Why a good proof reader is necessary
First of all, I’d like to thank the lovely folks at The Reading Café for having me over. It’s truly a pleasure to be here. I’d like to share four reasons why I think a good proof reader is so important to an author.
I
’m very good at self-editing. I don’t send out a manuscript that isn’t as clean as I can make it. I’m sure that’s something all writers strive to do. If the manuscript isn’t clean, it reflects badly on me as an author; it shows lack of respect for my editor, and it detracts from the star of the show – my story. With every novel, novella and short story I write, I read my final edit out loud. I often go through the manuscript from the last chapter to the first so my brain can’t fill in what’s supposed to be there, but isn’t. The bottom line is, no matter how good I am at self-editing, there are things I miss. From time to time, my brain does fill in what I expect to be there. Usually what my brain misses is something obvious, something someone looking with fresh eyes would catch immediately, something I would catch immediately if I were looking at someone else’s manuscript. On top of that, we all have weak areas in our basic writing skills. I know that punctuation is my weak point. My lack of confidence with commas can easily be offset with a good look-see by someone else who is more punctuation savvy.
The second reason it’s important to have a good proof reader is that it makes everyone else’s job easier. By everyone else, I’m speaking specifically of the editor who’ll have to read the finished manuscript. Clean manuscripts make everyone happy and showcase the story rather than the scaffolding on which the story’s built.
Thirdly, I’m sure I’m not the only one ever to read a novel that’s been poorly edited. Mistakes get through. It’s true. We’re all only human, but the more mistakes that get through the editing process, the more attention is drawn to the scaffolding and away from the story itself. The one thing we writers NEVER want is anything that will draw our readers’ attention away from the story we’re telling. We want our babies to shine with pacey plots, interesting characters and fantastic settings. We don’t want our babies to be tarnished by typos, grammar and punctuation errors or worse. With the meteoric rise of self-publishing, lack of proof reading and poor editing is a much more common problem than it used to be. In most cases the writer and the editor are the same person. Under those circumstances it’s crucial to have a good proof reader who is someone else.
The final reason why a good proof reader is so important is that a writer spends a whole lot of time and energy creating a story she hopes will intrigue, entertain, and even inspire. It’s safe to say that, on average, a novel of 80-100 thousand words is at the very least, six months’ worth of hard work and quite often much more. All writers know the kind of blood, sweat and tears that go into making their story shine. A novel is way too much work to send it out the door without making sure the story being told is polished and pristine, spiffed up and ready to dazzle.
A science teacher I knew used to start every year reminding his students that first impressions are lasting impressions. Nothing could be truer for fiction writers. If our novel, novella or short story has had a good proof reading, then the story will leave the lasting impression, not the lack of proofing.
~~K.D.~~
He practically fell on top of Rita, his hand grazing her left breast in the complete darkness. She yelped and grabbed him to keep from losing her balance.
“God, I’m sorry!” He gasped. “Bloody nuisance, this, isn’t it?” His voice was warm, melodious, by far the most pleasant thing that had happened to Rita since she left Paris. “Oh dear. You’re trembling. Are you all right?”
“I’m claustrophobic” her words were thin and shaky, as though she didn’t fully trust herself to let them out. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t know where we are.” For an embarrassing moment, she realized she was still clinging to him, but the embarrassment passed, and suddenly she didn’t care. If they were going to die trapped in a train in the Eurostar tunnel, buried beneath a gazillion gallons of water, she’d just as soon not do it alone.
He either understood, or was too polite to leave her in such distress. He wrapped his arms around her engulfing her in a muscular embrace, the scent of which was maleness barely masked by deodorant and some spicy cologne, both fading at the end of a day much longer than either of them had anticipated. “Don’t worry.” In the darkness, he misjudged the distance between them and his lips brushed her earlobe. “It’s just an electrical malfunction. Anyway we’re better off down here than in the snowstorm up above. Sounds like all of London is shut down. Who’d have expected snow this late in the spring? Never mind that, where else do you get the chance to cuddle strangers in the dark?”
He pressed a little closer to her, and she was relieved to find other thoughts, thoughts more welcome than those of their predicament, pushing their way into her head. He felt good, broad-shouldered and tall, easy to lean on.
“Why are you huddled here in the corner rather than hunkered down in your seat?”
She concentrated on his warm breath pressing against the top of her ear. “I was on my way back from the loo when the lights went out and…”
“And this is as far as you got.”
She nodded against his chest, homing in on the reassuring sound of his heartbeat.
“Shall I help you back to your seat then?”
The train lurched forward, and she yelped again, tightening her grip around his neck. “No, please. It’s better if I just don’t move.”
There was a long pause. “Do you want me to stay with you?”
She realized the poor man had little choice clenched in her strangle hold, as he was. “I don’t want to be any trouble,” she lied.
He readjusted his stance and tightened his embrace. “No trouble at all. I can’t think of a better way to pass the time than in the arms of a beautiful woman. You are beautiful, aren’t you?”
In spite of the stress she felt, she forced a laugh. “Gorgeous, actually. Too bad you can’t see for yourself.”
He ran a hand down the contour of her spine to rest low on the small of her back. “I don’t have to see you to admire you.”
The thought that the man was rather cheeky barely crossed her mind before he lifted her fingers to his lips and planted a warm kiss across the back of her knuckles. “I’m Edward. I’m from London. Clearly you’re not.”
“Rita,’ she replied. ‘I’m from Seattle, but I live in London now.”
“Well Rita, from Seattle, we’ve established that you’re an exotic beauty. Perhaps you’d like to return the favour.” He lifted her hand to his face and guided it gently over the slight stubble of his cheek. As her hand cupped his well-formed chin, he pulled her middle finger into his mouth and nibbled it, teasing the pad of it with his tongue. Suddenly her struggle to breathe had nothing to do with being claustrophobic.
“Well?” He asked pulling her hand away to massage her fingers. “What do you think? Am I acceptable?”
If he was cheeky, she was downright brazen. She stopped his words with her mouth, amazed at how easily she had found the mark in total darkness. Perhaps it was the darkness that made her so bold, but whatever it was, he didn’t disappoint. His mouth was warm, opening eagerly to the probing of her tongue, responding in kind, caressing her hard pallet, nipping at the fullness of her lower lip before pulling away just enough to speak.
“There, you see? It’s not so bad being in the dark, is it? The other senses are too often overlooked, which is very sad, since they offer such exquisite delights.” His hand moved up to cup her cheek, and he raked a thumb across her still parted lips. “Taste, for example. Few pleasures exceed that of the tongue.”
She heard him fumbling in the darkness, then she heard the rattling of foil. ‘Open your mouth,’ he whispered. “I have something that’ll make you feel better, guaranteed. Oh don’t worry, it’s nothing illegal.”
Reluctantly she opened her mouth, which he primed with a wet kiss, then slipped a chocolate truffle between her lips. It was covered liberally in cocoa and warmed exquisitely almost, but not quite to the steamy melting point of his body temperature, which only enhanced the sharp, edgy flavor that separates expensive chocolate from the cheap stuff.
She gasped her surprise, then moaned softly at the intensity of the taste.
“Don’t bite,” he kissed her jaw, then her throat. “Savour it, roll it around in your mouth. There are places on the tongue that taste only sweet and places that taste only bitter or salt, or sour. Chocolate can have all those flavors. Caress it in your mouth like you’re making love to it, and you’ll be amazed at what you taste.”
She cheeked the truffle, slurring her words as she spoke. “I thought I was tasting you.”
He chuckled softly. “Everything tastes better with chocolate.” Without another word, he took her mouth, plunging his tongue deep against the melting truffle, whirling it, lapping at it, sighing with the pleasure of it. The more liquid and heated the truffle became, the more liquid and heated Rita became.
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K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she is, otherwise, what would she write about?
When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She also enjoys martial arts, reading, watching the birds and anything that gets her outdoors.
K D has erotica published with SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.
K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available. She was nominated for ETO’s Best Erotic Author 2013.
K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition are all available.
Sourcebooks and KD Grace are offering a paper copy of THE INITIATION OF MS. HOLLY by KD Grace to ONE (1) lucky commenter at The Reading Cafe.
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5. Giveaway is open to US and Canada only.
6. Giveaway runs from March 3 to March7, 2014, 2014
