My book from Anne Elser arrived on Monday and I could not be happier! It is absolutely stunning! From the colors to the calligraphy, no iota of attention to detail was spared.
I got to pick the color scheme, and she did an awesome job putting this together. It is a solidly built and beautiful book to look at, a full 8.5 x 11 in size with lined pages on the inside so I can keep track of all my (ahem) naughty adventures. My family has been Ooo-ing over it since I unwrapped the box. My husband just gave me a knowing look. I think this Sunday, we are going to send the sisters to the movies so we can make our first entry into my new journal! 
Thank you, Anne, for all the time and hard work you put into this. This is truly a treasure!
I’ve turned in the final edit on Black Sheep, so that is now going to be released as a Kindle and paperback book. It’s got a beautiful cover, and should hopefully be available for purchase in the next couple of weeks.
I am still hard at work on Incubus Moon and Jinxie’s Orchids. Incubus Moon has now topped more than 500 pages. It is the longest project I have every tried to write.
How to Live Without a Man is not only finished, but is currently being published at DisciplineandDesire.com
What’s up next in the Que? I’m through the second draft of Incubus Moon, am going to spend the rest of the week getting the hardcopy corrections entered and then I’ll print out the next and hopefully final draft for revisions. This is not a spanking book, however. Rather, it’s a dark fantasy Ménage à trois with two alpha males, one of which is extremely dominant. I guess you can take the spanking author out of the spanking romance genre, but you’ll never get the bdsm completely out of the book.
Jinxie’s Orchids is also in the queue and will hopefully be done by the end of July. With only three chapters left to go, that shouldn’t be an impossible deadline to reach, even with my focus still being on Incubus Moon.
And on an even more interesting note, I’ve received some really neat fanmail here lately. I’ve been contacted by a publishing house, Ellora’s Cave, who would like me to submit for publication with them. I haven’t got anything ready to send, but perhaps that can be a home for Incubus Moon. And I’ve received an email from a really nice woman who does calligraphy art. She teaches and she creates the most awesome custom-made books. She going to make me a Naughty Girl Journal, of sorts, and I could not be more excited! You can find her blog here and I seriously recommend taking a look. Her work is absolutely gorgeous!
Thank you to everyone who has sent me a little note of hello. I love hearing from you and am desperately trying to get back to everyone in a timely fashion. Someone has me on their spam list, however, and I’m having to wade through a lot of garbage just to get to you. If you haven’t heard from me after a few days, give me another shout. And to whomever has put me on said spam list: Dude, there oughta be a special place in hell…
Okay, so it’s a brand new year and my belated resolution is to keep up with this blog a heck of a lot better than I’ve been. I’ve got plenty of news to share, so this may as well be the place to do it.
A few months ago I came out of the closet, so to speak, regarding my aliases. I’ve got a few. Maren Smith, everybody knows. But there’s also Denise Hall and Darla Phelps. Each alias is a different genre. Maren Smith writes romantic spanking-oriented stories, everybody falls in love and there’s a nice happily-spanking forever after at the end. Denise Hall writes the harder core bd/sm novels. You will still find spanking, but that’s where the unwilling captives are, along with the bondage, anal sex, etc. Darla Phelps writes age play, so if the Daddy/little girl fantasy is not for you, then do not buy a Darla Phelps book. In a few months, I’ll be developing another alias, one for books that do not have spanking in them at all. I don’t yet know what that is, but I’ve finished the hard writing on the first book that will be published under it so I guess I’d better pull out the phone book and eeny meany chili beanie it.
Now that that’s out of the way, what are we going to publish this year?
Under Maren Smith:
How to Live Without A Man – Five out of seven chapters are finished. I’m going to work on the last two now.
Jinxie’s Orchids – Three chapters left to write. Still.
Soul Mates – The much longer version of the short story Kindred Spirits, four chapters left to go.
?? – A western has been requested, but I don’t know yet which story line I’m going to take off the plot board and finish. It’s been narrowed down to two possible selections. It was requested for this year, but I don’t see me getting to it before summer’s end.
Denise Hall – I haven’t put out a Denise Hall story in years. Her next one is slated to be The Outback.
Darla Phelps has just finished Pets 3: Bebe. This is going to be published by the end of the week, and then her next project is either Victor’s Girl or Baby Sara, with an exceptionally strong leaning towards Victor’s Girl.
What do you know, this is even the order I’m going to finish the project’s in, with the exception of my new non-spanking alias. That story will be squeezed in between How to Live Without A Man and Soul Mates. So, now everyone’s caught up to date and so is the blog. Lovely how that works out!
Both surgeries have now been done and I get the second cast off tomorrow. Yay! I’ve been very good this time. I’m letting the doctor cut the left cast off, so I’m sure I’ll be able to do the rest of my healing sitting down. 
And I am still writing. I will have Jinxie’s Orchids done by the Fall and new books for each of my alias this year, so help me.
Slowly but surely I am recovering from surgery. It’s been one week, and it’s taken this long for me to figure out that I’m not a good surgery patient. I cut my cast off after only a few days and now I’m trying really, really hard not to cut my stitches off. Thank goodness I’m getting them removed on Monday. In the meantime, I’m getting a lot of writing done albeit one-handedly. Hopefully, I’ll be back to normal soon.
In writing news, still working on Jinxie’s Orchids. I’m on Chapter Seven.
For those who know me, I write fetish erotica. I’ve been doing this for…wow…years. I was first published with the now defunct Blue Moon Books, and then the equally defunct Masquerade Books. Those were both miserable experiences and I will likely never, ever, ever (knock on wood) publish through a mainstream publishing house again.
In 2000, I discovered Discipline and Desire, where I quickly signed up and started reading. I hadn’t gone more than two stories into the site when I stumbled on one so well written that I was inspired to write the author and let her know how much I loved her work. Unwittingly, I had responded to a ’serial’ story in a genre that hadn’t yet taken off. So when the author responded, she thanked me politely for my feedback and then challenged me to write the next chapter.
So I did. Being as I was responding to a challenge and not particularly intending to get published, I sent the story (brilliantly titled Autumn’s Story) to the author, who forwarded it to the owner of D&D, who quite promptly sent me an email with a contract attached. He also asked if I had any others just lying around the house, because he’d love to see them. And so Varden’s Lady (a closet project that I had started writing when I was 15 and supposed to be doing my homework) found the light of Internet publication. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since then, I have published more than 100 novels, novellas and short stories on a handful of different sites. But Discipline and Desire continues to hold a special place in my heart. It is the place where I got my ‘real’ writing start, and I will always consider it my home.