Guest Blog by Sommer Mardsen (author of two stories in Xcite’s new line Secret Library)

Reality TV Addict Writes Romantic Tale…

If I were a newspaper reporter and had to title this blog, that’s what I’d call it. I have two stories in Xcite’s new, and sexily spectacular, The Secret Library. Today, I’m going to dish about how reality TV shaped my first story Taste It.
First, might I say, I am MUCH better than I used to be when it comes to these shows. I was a reality TV whore at one point. I pretty much would watch any of it if it happened to be on TV and nothing else interfered. It started back in the day with Survivor, went to Big Brother, then grew to Iron Chef and alllllllll the cooking shows. Oddly, for some reason, though, I drew the line at the Bachelor/ette shows. Not sure why. I guess even addicts have standards. 😉
My steamy story of lust, love, stress and cooking, Taste It was born of my reality TV addiction. I love the cooking shows most for some reason. Any of the Top Chef(s), Chopped, Next Food Network Star, Worst Cooks, Around the World in 80 Plates etc and so forth. So, basically, if Top Chef and Restaurant Impossible and Chopped had a threeway and a baby was born, my story would be the product of that union!
Watching sooooo much of this stuff (hours and hours and yes even reruns) really amped up my already hardy love of cooking and baking. I like to think that all the reality food TV chatter made my cooking and food references in Taste It even more realistic. Plus, it was fun to base fiction on ‘reality’ (come on, a good part of this stuff is scripted, so I used ‘reality’ loosely 😉 ). It also allowed me to add one more hurdle to the sticky mess of my characters hooking up—like TV cameras.
Cameras introduce another stressor to my couple’s already frayed nerves and compounds the blissful anxiety of new attraction and wooing. Even though she’s drawn to him, Jill really wants to beat Cole, but she also wants to kiss Cole…and then some. Basically, poor girl simply has a head full of Cole. And he’s got a head full of her, but he’s a bit more forward about it. Despite a blossoming attraction, Jill and Cole are competitors fighting for a victory. They’re each bogged down with their personal need to win. Being part of the final three and dealing with the constant bright lights and intrusion of being recorded is maddening to say the least. Talk about panic attacks. But Jill’s a fighter, there to defend her good name against a tainted past. As always, she finds a way to make it happen when she needs stress release. Yes, even on set.
As you can imagine, Cole—fighting against demons of his own with the rush of competition— won’t let something as small as being taped 24/7 get in his way of making the connection he wants to make with the lovely Jill:

From Taste It by Sommer Marsden:
She rushed down the short hall to the rest room. Even the
camera men didn’t follow them down here. So that was
good.
Pressing the lock on the door handle, she rested her
forehead to the cool metal door. ‘Calm down,’ she said to
herself.
Jill couldn’t do her normal morning runs. Not with the
shooting schedule for Best Chef. Plus when she did manage
a few times, the cameras had followed her. Unsettling and
annoying, to say the least.
She had stopped drinking on camera because they often
had to wait hours for a verdict and most of them had ended
up a bit tipsy the first time. But for calm Cole. So drinking
was out. She’d stopped eating during deliberation because
over the few weeks of shooting her jeans had started to get
tight. So, basically no stress relief.
Well, not no stress relief.
‘Not here,’ Jill said to herself. But even as she said it she
knew that there were no cameras in the bathroom. It’s why
when any of them got super emotional or enraged they
tended to head for the rest room.
She shook her head. ‘No.’ But even as she said no, Jill
pressed her hand to the cool door and leaned against it, her
forehead still touching the metal too. But her free hand slid
under her chef’s coat and down into her jeans. Past the silly
panties she wore for luck that were emblazoned with candy
and cakes. Into the humid warmth that was the V of her
thighs. When she pressed a fingertip – just one – to her
thrumming clit, she let out a sigh that was like a drug addict
taking their first hit of their vice of choice. Sheer relief.
Bliss. Calm.
Jill added a second finger to the first, already slippery
with the juices of her sex. It was the raw sugar dream that
did that, she bet. It was imagining him licking that
crystalline, diamond-like sweetness off her skin before
burying his face between her legs and making her come.
A shuddery sigh slipped free of her parted lips and she
slid two fingers deep inside her slick cunt. She pressed her
G-spot almost violently and ground her plump, needy clit to
her palm as she fucked herself with trembling fingers.
It was just when she skated that crisp clean line of
impending orgasm, just when she was ready to tip that she
heard him say through the door, ‘Whatcha doing in there,
Calvert?’
She reared back a little but kept her hand flat to the door
as if that were keeping it closed. She was so fucking close –
too close to stop now – but her circles slowed. Somehow, in
the stress and need, the slowing made the feel of it that
much sweeter. A fresh rush of pleasure filled her pelvis as
his voice filled her head.
‘Nothing,’ she said to the door.
His voice snaked through the crack where the door was
set in its hinges. You couldn’t even slide a piece of paper in
that crack but his voice drifted through just fine. Through
that crack and into her brain.
‘I think you are. I think you’re doing something … dirty.’
‘No,’ she gasped. But his voice and the feel and the stress
and all of it blended together to create one giant mélange of
craving.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Go away.’
‘No,’ he said. She could hear him smile for God’s sake!
Jill shook her head and her tired mind readily supplied
her very dirty dream of him putting his mouth to her. Eating
her the way she’d seen him eat his competitor’s food.
Rolling her on his tongue, licking her to savour each flavour,
pressing his lips to her heat and her moisture and …
Her pussy started to flex around her fingers and Jill bit
her lip none too gently to stifle any noises she might make.
He would know. He. Would. Know. And that made it all
better and all worse at the same time.
‘I think you’re touching yourself and I think you wish it
was me doing the touching.’ His voice seeped through into
the cavernous space to the bathroom.
Where were the cameras? Where were the cameras? Her
mind chattered at her but there was no stopping it. So even if
the cameras were there it wouldn’t stop her runaway
orgasm. There would be no stopping it –
‘And I think I’d very much like to be the person doing
the touching,’ he finished in his sultry-sinister voice.
And she came. Jill swallowed all her sound but one tiny
Gnit! The sound that would happen if a hiccup, a sneeze and
a sexual release got together and had a baby.
There was a single chuckle from behind the door and
then his footsteps. She didn’t need the footsteps, though. She
could feel that he was gone. And that was so unsettling Jill
refused to even think about it.

As for the the question I always, always, always get asked about my heroes…Who is Cole? Well, if Robert Irvine, Gordon Ramsay and Scott Conant got together, had a threeway and a baby was born… you get the picture.
As for my reality TV addiction. I currently watch Top Chef, Chopped, Around the World in 80 Plates, The Real Housewives of New Jersey (I do Atlanta too, sometimes. And OC…), Worst Cooks, Next Food Network Star, Restaurant Impossible, Big Brother, Duck Dynasty, Survivor, Flipping Out with Jeff Lewis, Watch What Happens Live…I did say I was getting better right?
XOXO
Sommer
*****
Sommer Marsden’s been called “…one of the top storytellers in the erotica genre” (Violet Blue), “Unapologetic” (Alison Tyler), “…the whirling dervish of erotica” (Craig J. Sorensen),and “Erotica royalty…” (Lucy Felthouse).

Her erotic novels include Restless Spirit,Big Bad, Long Lost, The Best of Sommer Marsden, Angry Sex and Hard Lessons. Sommer currently writes erotica and erotic romance for Xcite Books, Mischief Books, eXcessica, Ellora’s Cave, Pretty Things Press, Resplendence Publishing and House of Erotica. The wine-swigging, dachshund-owning, wannabe runner author writes work that runs the gamut from bondage to zombies to humor.

Sommer’s short works can be found in over a hundred (and counting) erotic anthologies. Her short stories have also been included numerous adult and romance magazines–both in print and online.
*****
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