Sweet Candle Melts: Seize Me From Darkness #Book Blitz

Book Blitz Event

A very dark and disturbing with non-con sex and torture

This book is part of a dark erotic fiction series and may disturb some readers.

In this dirty, bloody world we live in, the answers to prayers aren’t always pretty angels.

Retaken by human traffickers, Jazmine’s one hope is ex-cop, ex-mercenary, Pieter, a man with a glower that stops lesser men in their tracks. She prays he can save her.

But this savior is far from perfect and his flaws may prove as devastating to Jazmine as the torture of her captors.

The fire of dominance never dies.

Cari Silverwood is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling writer of kinky darkness or sometimes of dark kinkiness, depending on her moods and the amount of time she's spent staring into the night. She has an ornery nature as well as a lethal curiosity that makes her want to upend plots and see what falls out when you shake them.

When others are writing bad men doing bad things you may find her writing good men who accidentally on purpose fall into the abyss and come out with their morals twisted in knots.

This might be because she comes from the land down under, Australia, or it could be her excessive consumption of wine.

Freaking out readers is her first love and her second love is freaking out the people living in her books. Her favorite hobby is convincing people she has a basement...though she really doesn't. Promise. If it existed it would be a terrifying place where you would find all the dangerous things that you never knew you craved.

Own me Until Forever, Book 5 in the Pierced Hearts series, will be out late 2014

Seize me From Darkness by Cari Silverwood
(Pierced Hearts #4) - Can be read as a STANDALONE!
Publication date: September 23rd 2014
Genres: Erotica, Romance

My website, if you're curious about my other evil pursuits: http://www.carisilverwood.net/

To find out about upcoming releases, please join Cari's mailing list here carisilverwood.net/about-me.html

http://www.carisilverwood.net/index.html

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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4912047.Cari_Silverwood

Views From other Readers

A*hole heroes

How much a*hole do you like in you’re a*hole heroes? Fifty percent? A hundred? It’s a question I’ve been contemplating lately because there seems a large number of a*hole heroes in dark erotic stories. I mean, let’s face it, when the guy starts out by kidnapping the woman then dragging her back to his lair there’s a high chance he’s not going to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. He might get Bachelor of the Year but that’s only because kidnappers are good at manipulating the system.

If there’s one small problem with this, it’s that my men don’t tend to follow the trend. I like to have them showing their good side at the beginning of the book and it’s only after that nice start that they descend into a state of mind where defiling the heroine seems justified. To me it’s dead easy to show reasons why an evil man would decide to do terrible and nonconsensual things to the heroine. Figuring out why a good-ish man would do those same things – that’s a puzzle I love to solve.

Writing a bad man doing bad things is the equivalent of writing about why apples fall to the ground. As well, I have this thing where I detest giving up my heroines to truly bad men. These men need to earn her devotion, her love...or her slavery, whichever it is that happens. If the men are too damn evil, I get an urge to exterminate them partway through the story.

Which is funny, since I can definitely read about assholes in other people’s stories doing the raping, pillaging and enslaving – it seems I just don’t like to write them into mine.

What percentage of asshole do you like in the men in your dark stories? Would you be game to walk up to them in real life and date them or at least say hello?

When I began writing Seize me From Darkness, I knew I was writing the most a*hole-ish of all my main characters. Pieter still begins as a good guy. How does he transform from that into someone I’d be reluctant to spend the night with even if I had a SWAT team outside the bedroom window? He does it with a certain amount of flair, a hefty dose of kick in the door and drag her out by the hair, and a big dose of a*holery.

If dark books keep going like this, a*holes will take over the world in 2015.

Corrupting the Innocent

Are you an innocent or do you read dark erotic fiction? Because I have a strange hunch those two things don’t go together.

Dark erotic fiction seems to attract readers for all sorts of reasons. Its naughty, it’s shocking, it’s disturbing and often it will hit the taboo button. Why do you read it? Do you know? Do you even care?

I’ve got a bit of a fetish for figuring out the whys and hows of what I write.

Readers love to see the woman in dark books, who may often be forcibly ravished or kidnapped, become the one and only woman who can evoke some sort of caring or loving emotion from the man. When someone first said that to me, my first thought was, ohmigod, that’s no different to what many romance readers want from the average hero. I’ve heard exactly that reason given for why Fifty Shades of Gray became so popular. They loved seeing Christian get hung up on a one and only woman, and get his darkness healed – made ‘better.’ Not that I agree that BDSM needs to be exorcised from people. It’s consensual, it’s between adults, what’s not to love about people being open about sex?

That aside, it was the idea of a ‘fallen’ man being redeemed by the love for his perfect mate that readers supposedly fell for.

Is that your reason for reading these? Maybe you’re new to reading dark fiction and are still at the exploding brain stage where you sit back and go, why oh why am I reading these, after each book? The morality in dark erotic fiction is generally so far outside the normal range that it can really make you doubt yourself. But it is normal. A lot of people, mostly women, love these. It’s fiction, remember that. You can always put a book down. Basically, it’s a consensual way of role playing sexual fantasies in a safe way – similar to roleplaying rape with your partner because it turns you on. No one forces anyone to read.

As I’ve written more of these books I’ve figured out a little of why I like to write them. All the usual attractions of writing apply but with dark stories there is an extra thrill because you can go all out with the pivotal scenes. Both the hero and the heroine can be tormented with awful decisions as well as put through grueling scenes where there may be erotic tortures. These scenes are often mindfucks. The more of these what-the-fuck situations in a book the more interesting these dark reads become.

In a way, everyone involved can be corrupted and taken to that edge of the awesome abyss of darkness – reader, hero, heroine, even perhaps the author. Whether you’re still borderline innocent or thoroughly corrupted, I hope you enjoy these books for what they are – one of the ultimate genres of thrilling reads.

My Writing of Dark Erotic Romances

I was asked why I write this genre by one of my beta readers and to be honest it’s for two reasons. The first is that I’ve always been enthralled by dark scenes in stories – the serial killer tying the heroine to her bed and torturing her before he thinks about killing her, the ancient Gor series where Earth women are kidnapped and taken to another planet to be enslaved in a Swords and Sorcery type setting, Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Dart series (swoon), and many more.

Second reason? I always knew I loved these but writing a contemporary book with this sort of depraved story as the WHOLE PLOT? I’d not have thought to do it without having read Bianca Sommerland’s Deadly Captive and partially read C.J. Robert’s Captive in the Dark.

Though I didn’t finish reading the latter, it inspired me. I know it’s a great and well-written series but the man in it just never appealed to me. I don’t like bad men as the hero in most books unless I can see a lot of good from square one. Captive in the Dark made me wonder if I could write a book where the man began as a good man.

I planned a story where I could slowly reveal my hero’s inner monster – the part of him that was ecstatic to be a sadist and a Dominant. That story became Take me Break me, a book that featured in the #16 New York Times bestselling collection called Make Me.

Since then I’ve continued my trend of having the man a good person at the beginning of each book. Although Chris in Make me Yours Evermore was a bad guy from the start, his accomplice, Andreas, my Good Samaritan cross happy kidnapper, kept the trend alive.

If making the man good at the beginning is one thing that sets my stories apart from most dark books, another feature might be my settings. I often show off the Australian landscape. All our wonderful beaches and rainforests deserve some attention. In this latest book, Seize me From Darkness, I’ve set most of the action in Papua New Guinea, which is a deeply tropical country, across the sea, to the north of Australia.

However, because much of Seize me From Darkness takes place inside the House, a place designed for the housing and training of sex slaves, I didn’t get to describe much of Papua New Guinea. I did get to show a tropical island though, with gorgeous white sand beaches and assorted sea life. One reader has told me that reading my Pierced Hearts series is like taking a beach holiday. Amusing, considering what happens in the books. I dearly hope her holidays don’t feature torture and abduction. Fiction will always be far more consensual and safe than real life, unless someone glues the eReader toyour hand and props open your eyelids.

So there’s some of why and how I write dark fiction. I love it, and it’s my sexual fantasyland too. Enjoy your fiction. Don’t let anyone take it away from you.

Limp-wristed or Kickass heroines?

This is a little like the question you get at that well-known fast-food chain when you buy a burger – would you like a kick-ass heroine with that? In dark erotic romances (even if the romance is a little one-sided) you often have a story where the angst revolves around the man forcibly convincing her that he’s the yang to her ying. If she comes up short in the feistiness and kick-him-in-the crotch department...where’s the story?

Like they say about most books – it’s not the ending that matters so much as the journey.

We often know, or have a fair idea, as to how these stories will end, but seeing that change in her as no becomes yes or maybe or sometimes just my life with this man has a lot of pluses compared to my old one and I really do fancy him and his muscles/ motorbike/ helicopter...all of that is why we read these. Plus the odd plot twist that surprises us...and the smoking hot sex.

Nevertheless, there may be limits as to kickassedness. If she’s too good at kung fu or taking out hordes of crack-crazed criminals with a shotgun, it does get a little difficult for the man to hogtie her and sit on her. Balance is always necessary. Either that or the author has to supply him with a ton of smarts and some great luck. Sometimes this manifests as him going oh look at the pretty sunset while he locks on the handcuffs.

I started thinking about this when someone told me they loved that Jazmine in Seize me From Darkness wasn’t limp and emotionally frail. I hadn’t even considered her as kick ass. But in a way she is. Just not in the I can kill a hundred enemies with my pinkie finger way. It made me wonder how defiant people want their heroines in these books. If my story wasn’t set in the everyday world, I could add in a very tough heroine. But then I think a bit deeper and realize that a lot of the buzz I get from reading or writing these is because they’re based on the real world.

I think most readers like these dark erotic books with a high quota of ‘real’, which means most heroines won’t be taking out terrorists with machine guns. But am I wrong?

Playing God in Dark Erotic Romance Writing

All writers get a bit of a god complex. We have these imaginary but often seemingly real (in our heads) people who we get to play with. We get to experiment and see what will happen if a weird twisty plot thingummy falls at their feet or on their heads. When you translate that general role of the Grand Deliverer of the Hand of Fate into being the author of a nasty dark erotic book you get the same woohoo and mwhahahahaa satisfaction from the writing, only 10 gazillion times better.

You see a good book is a book where bad things happen, where obstacles topple in front of our characters, and oh baby, the obstacles we get to play with in these nasty stories...

One of the essential ingredients you need to possess to be a writer is to like torturing your characters. Then after all that torturing, pages and pages and pages of it, finally, at the very, very end, you can let them reach that carrot on a stick you’ve dangled before their eyes for like most of their story lives. You pat them on the head, feel happy for them, and also sad all the crazy stuff is over.

You can also leave them wallowing in misery, or dead. Authors can be cruel and should probably be in therapy.

Then you rub your hands together in glee and begin another story. More torturing characters. Yay!

Of course, in dark erotic stories the torture often really is torture, even if the woman (assuming it is) gets to have a few dozen orgasms during it. You can even sprinkle in some horror with the gritty romance, the kink, the nasty villains, and the sexual depravity. That’s what attracts me to writing these – the vast scope. I can swing from writing sex scenes so hot the plastic on my keyboard melts, to writing moments where the blood gushes and the screams echo. You can gather by this that daisies and fluffy unicorns and rainbows are not my natural environment.

If you ever see a rainbow in my story, there’ll be most likely be a rip-roaring gory battle scene on the next page along with a unicorn gasping out its last breath. The virgin will be tied up, naked, and over some black knight’s saddle with him trotting off into the sunset with his prize.

Darkness gets under a writer’s skin.

It’s taken me a while to sort out what I can do in my Pierced Hearts stories, and I’m still learning. The first book was so tame compared to where Seize me From Darkness goes that I’m a bit stunned. Each book has grown darker and more terrible in what the hero is willing to do to keep his woman, and more violent in what the villain might wish to do to my main characters. In fact books one and two had no true villain at all.

When I do write villains, you should really keep your fingers and toes clutching your eReader at all times, or risk being minus a few body parts by the end of the story.

Mmm, villains.

You have been warned. Keep your eyes open while reading, no flinching on pain of severe chastisement, take a torch with fresh batteries, and hang on tight for the ride in Seize me From Darkness.

Surgical replacement of souls and digits is not included in the price.

Excerpt:

There were days I wanted to be so close with Pieter that our skin would merge. He was big, powerful, a rock of serenity in the middle of this mad place. Then there were days I’d look at him and remember what he’d done, how good he was at killing, and I’d recognize my previous foolishness.

He didn’t understand how most every little thing he told me about himself was reinforcing my fear of him.

I didn’t understand why he could nevertheless make me catch my breath when he stripped off for a shower. Or like now, when he’d looked at me through those dangling untidy dark locks while doing push-ups. With his... fucking shirt off. Swallow thy tongue. The little octopus on the back of his shoulder gleamed and writhed as his muscles slid.

Yep. He affected me not at all. Trying not to look hot and flushed, I shifted my legs and stared at the paintwork instead.

Pieter was my own private tiger and I was locked in the cage with him.

Drooling at men wasn’t new. Having a thrill run through me at the potential for a man to grab me and do something unexpected to me – that was new.

What he’d done in the other room was him. He liked hurting me, liked fucking me and tying me up. That knowledge riveted me to this wall. There was fear and there was fear.

He could hurt me, badly, if he wanted to. I didn’t think he would, but he could.

A little bit of fear was a whole lot of thrill.

As he shifted infinitesimally nearer, I squirmed up the wall, trying to merge with the white tiles. A quarter inch, an inch? His body heat and his scent was a living force. This was the man who’d napalmed my ass. Any closer and I’d be lost.

“You didn’t run.”

I glanced to the side. “I um...” Run? Good idea.

With his whole hand, he gripped my jaw, as if he wanted to be sure I stayed put, then he dragged me back to the middle. Past a few dangling locks of hair lurked his clear brown eyes.

“Hello, there.” That bear-growly voice of his should be illegal. “Place your fucking palms on the wall and keep them there until I say not to. Do you need more incentive?”

I’d flinched at the fucking. Wimp.

He pinched one of my nipples between finger and thumb and squeezed.

Gasping, and in increasing pain, I slumped as far as I could go with my nipple his hostage. That I’d become even wetter horrified me.

The pain dazzled. Like the cut of a scythe, it separated me from everything else that had happened before, from all the terrible things that might happen. All that mattered was him, concentrated. Distilled male.

Still unsure why, and what the hell I was doing, I crept my hands onto the wall. I felt the dips between the smooth square tiles. Water dribbled down my skin. His hand stayed on my jaw as did his crushing hold on my breast. And I loved it.

All those games we’d played meant nothing when he was like this. I saw him for what he truly was. I was dealing with the devil.