Nature, storms in particular, speak to me. There’s something electric about a storm’s strength and energy that stops me in my tracks and demands my full attention. Maybe I feel a downpour’s power as intensely as I do because I live surrounded by nature. There’s no hiding or denying what sometimes rages around me.
Taking Her Down
When I look out my office window, I see a great swath of sky, trees, and hills and am reminded of a childhood spent in a small, isolated logging camp (yes, really) in the middle of a Northwest forest. In winter it wasn’t unusual for snow to block off the one road to civilization and more than once, a summer fire burning a few miles away trapped the handful of residents.
My family has owned a wilderness cabin with a spectacular view of a deep lake and massive mountain for decades. I know how the countless evergreens look and sound when wind gusts lash them. I’m caught by a mix of awe and fear whenever I stand with my arms outstretched as snow slowly buries me. If I lose sight of that small cabin, I might never see civilization again.
I mention these things because that’s how the dark hero in my latest erotic romance Taking Her Down feels as a storm challenges his sanity and compels him to treat a woman as no civilized man would. On the surface, Ward is an attorney, but he isn’t satisfied with that existence. He can’t quiet the restlessness that drives him to turn women’s submissive fantasies into the real thing.
Shana, an ordinary woman with a carnal appetite of her own, signs up for an erotic twenty-four hours on a tropical island with a domineering man. What she doesn’t know, what she can’t defend herself against, is the power a sudden and violent storm exerts over Ward. He’s no longer a man with a suit and briefcase. Instead he grips rope and a gag. He sees, not the woman who hired him, but prey. Helplessness.
Okay, so Taking Her Down stretches credibility but isn’t that what most fiction does? Fiction is about conflict and living, breathing human beings. Fantasies are explored within the pages of a book or on a reading device, fantasies that sometimes skate dangerously close to the question of survival.
I wrote Taking Her Down to push not just my characters’ boundaries but my own. How many risks was I willing to take and could I bring readers with me? In addition, I was determined to wrap nature around Ward and Shana, to challenge them to survive not just the storm raging outside but also the one taking place within their hearts. One thing I was certain of before I wrote that first page—they would never be the same.
Writing is about putting down one word at a time, creating one sentence and then another, stringing paragraphs together and getting verb tenses right. It’s about not overusing a word or repeating oneself or, shudder, forgetting where the plot is going.
It’s also about creating worlds out of imagination and throwing characters into those worlds and therein lies a writer’s fun. And that is why I keep doing what I do, why I sometimes step bareheaded into a snowstorm.
Taking Her Down:
Controlled by a man ruled by dark forces, what was domination fantasy becomes Shana’s reality. There’s no escape. Only submission.
Domination is a word, a whisper, what feeds Shana’s erotic fantasies.
Then she signs up for the opportunity to be mastered on a private island. She’ll willingly remove her clothes and submit to a little BDSM playacting. When her twenty-four hours ends, she’ll return to her ordinary world and sex toys.
What she doesn’t know is that the man waiting for her is controlled by dark forces. He can’t fight his compulsions and doesn’t want to. He’s no actor hired to fulfill women’s submissive fantasies. Instead, he’s at the island because something beyond his control is turning him into a Dom, a Master. He must feed his carnal desires.
When a storm hits, he becomes wild. Savage, even. A man who knows a natural submissive when he handles her.
This is no game for him. He won’t let her escape.
He can’t.
Author bio:
Vonna Harper swears she’s safe and sane, at least relatively so. Just because she can’t control her imagination or what comes out of her fingers doesn’t mean the men with the butterfly nets are looking for her. She writes erotic romances, A LOT. Like a whole great big bunch. The majority of them explore submissive and domination themes. When not risking her keyboard catching fire, she pretends to know more about gardening than she does, lets her two rescue dogs take her on daily walks, and loves her family.
URL: https://www.totallybound.com/book/taking-her-down