Guest Post: Kitti Bernetti!

Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Kitty Bernetti to the blog, to talk about her Secret Library novella, The Thousand and One Nights.

I was delighted to be asked to write for The Secret Library. I find it a challenge to work to a brief and this one was very clear. The females had to be feisty, the males Alpha – a classic romance combination and one that is bound to lead to conflict which is the lifeblood of any romance. Plus, we all know that if you put romance and sex together you have a totally heady cocktail which is what The Secret Library is all about.

I had already written two novellas, ‘Regency Nights’ and ‘Desert Nights’ and both at heart had been love stories. So, I was raring to go. The names for my hero and heroine in ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ came really easily and it was those that helped define the characters.

The name, Breeze for my heroine was a gift. For it gave me something of that all important back story that makes a character multi-dimensional. Characters need to have history, a past which makes them who they are. The word Breeze conjures up all sorts of feelings. Just look at the dictionary definitions which list: a light current of air, to progress swiftly and effortlessly. That is how my character Breeze Monaghan would LIKE to be. However, real life has dealt Breeze a different hand. Her life is more hard-edged and I like my characters to suffer to get their heart’s desire. Underneath her sharp edges, Breeze wants that easy breezy life, she deserves it, she’s a hardworking girl who looks after both her sister and her mother. Breeze is a protector, who will do anything for her family. In fact her world is very complicated. By the time she locks horns with our hero Sebastian Dark it’s got to the point where her life’s practically boiling over. He catches her breaking the law and that’s when the sparks start to fly.

Sebastian Dark is just that, a dark ruthless character who walks over others having spent his whole life building a fortune. He uses people and when he knows he has power over Breeze his instinct is to use her. She will be his entertainment just like Sheherazade in the Arabian nights who had to tell a tale each night to entertain a king and avoid being executed. Seb demands that Breeze entertain him in order to save her skin. The big question is can he use her and walk away or has he finally met his match?

Here’s the explosive moment in The Thousand and One Nights when Seb confronts Breeze with her crime.

Sebastian Dark filled the doorway, shutting out the light with six foot four of six-packed male. His voice as menacing as a fisted hand struck her like a blow to the chest. ‘It seems you suffer from a great deal of insomnia Ms Monaghan.’

‘I…’ thoughts flailed about in her head as she struggled for composure. ‘I had to finish the quarterly report. It’s all done now, I was just going.’ She shot him one of her devastating smiles and watched it land on stony ground.

‘I don’t think so, Ms Monaghan.’ He raised one eyebrow and squared up to her. She tried to breathe but it felt as though all oxygen had been sucked from the room. There was no escape. She glared at him.

‘Let me out. I want to go.’

‘You’re going nowhere. Unless you want to go to jail, that is.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She spat the words out, like a cornered rattlesnake ready to strike. Attack she’d always found to be the best form of defence. It had certainly worked when she was a child defending her sister from the bullies who taunted her. Breeze stared insolently back, every bit the Ice Queen. She’d get herself out of this, she had to. Her mother and sister depended on her. They were the only thing that mattered in this whole crappy world.

‘You know exactly what I mean.’ He slid into the room and slammed the door firmly behind him.

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Kitti Bernetti has had short stories published in a number of anthologies. This is her third novella. She finds the best thing about writing erotica is that it totally frees the imagination. Kitti has written contemporaries, sci fi, historicals, ghost stories, romances, stories set in fifties Hollywood, and paranormals. She has had some great reviews and some rotten ones but as Oscar Wilde said, ‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’ She’s rubbish at social networking, but does her best. You can find her on Facebook and follow Kitti Bernetti at http://www.kittibernetti.moonfruit.com/ as well as on her blog at http://kittibernettis.blogspot.co.uk/

*****

The Secret Library is a new range from Xcite Books which will appeal to the female romance reader market. Each book contains three specially commissioned novellas guaranteeing a satisfying and varied selection.

The story content is relationship led with a strong alpha male hero, a level of conflict and a climactic, explicit ending.

The covers are deliberately designed without visual imagery to be discreet. These books could be comfortably read in public, given as gifts and left on a bedside table.

The Secret Library contains six books with three erotic romance novellas in each:

Traded Innocence – Toni Sands, Elizabeth Coldwell and K D Grace

Silk Stockings – Constance Munday, Jenna Bright and Lucy Felthouse

One Long Hot Summer – Elizabeth Coldwell, Penelope Friday and Shanna Germain

The Thousand and One Nights – Kitti Bernetti, Primula Bond and Sommer Marsden

The Game – Jeff Cott, Antonia Adams and Sommer Marsden

Hungarian Rhapsody – Justine Elyot, Charlotte Stein and Kay Jaybee