Blog Tour Stop, Guest Blog & Contest: Riptide Publishing’s O Come All You Kinky Anthology

Thank you for joining us on the O Come All Ye Kinky virtual book tour! For two weeks, anthology editor Sarah Frantz and her merry band of authors will be stopping by some of your favorite blogs to spread kinky holiday cheer! How, you ask? Well, if you don’t know what candy caning is yet, pick up your copy of O Come All Ye Kinky from Riptide Publishing today and see how these authors get into the holiday spirit.

Whether you’ve been naughty or nice, follow our tour for the chance to win one heck of a stocking stuffer—a $100 gift card to The Stockroom, where kinky dreams come true! Leave a comment on the post below by Dec. 16 and you’ll be entered to win. Check out the complete tour listing to see all the places we’ll be stopping by to chat about BDSM, the holidays, and all eight steamy stories, and comment on each post to earn more entries.

*Holds up mistletoe* Look at that—our lovely host today is under the mistletoe! You know what that means—a big kiss from the entire O Come All Ye Kinky group for hosting us today! We hope everyone enjoys today’s post from Ava March.

“Holiday Shopping: A Lesson Learned the Hard Way” by Ava March

When it comes to holiday shopping, there are those who shop early, those who buy at a steady pace throughout December, and those who procrastinate & find themselves at the local CVS drugstore at 10pm on Christmas Eve, thinking Sally would love a new 6-pack of batteries in her stocking this year. I usually fall somewhere between the last two options, procrastinating until about a week before the holidays and then frantically rushing from store to store to get everything on my list.

This year though, I decided to not be a procrastinator. My grand idea was to do some door-busting shopping on Black Friday, get a lot done then. A few stores were opening at 9pm on Thanksgiving and I thought, “oh, they won’t be busy, who shops on Thanksgiving evening?”

Yeah, I was really wrong.

So as I was standing outside the store in the longest line evah (seriously, it wound almost all the way around the outside perimeter of the very large store), on a windy night in the cold sprinkling rain (gotta love the Midwest), I got to thinking about the Christmas Season. I’m totally of the twenty-first century—I love my cell phone, lurve the internet, and have a fondness for long hot showers and Poptarts. While I write Regency romances and love the time period, I have no desire to go back in time and live during the Regency. But while waiting in the longest line evah, I had a moment when I was longing for the simplicity of a Regency Christmas.

“’Twas the Night,” my story in the O Come All Ye Kinky anthology, takes place during Christmas night in 1820, during the tail end of the Regency Era. Then, the Christmas holiday season did not have the huge commercial focus that it has today. The focus was more on spending time with loved ones. Traditions included lighting the Yule log on Christmas Eve, attending church services on Christmas morning, and a lavish dinner on Christmas with family and friends. Christmas trees weren’t even popular. That tradition wasn’t embraced by the masses until the Victorian Era. It wasn’t as if they did not decorate at all, but the decorations were simpler. Think evergreen or holly sprigs. And gifts were more commonly along the lines of a new toy given to a child than a mammoth pile of presents.

I did eventually get through the longest line evah, filled my cart, and then waited in an even longer line to check out. I got some great deals and kidlet should be geeked come Christmas morning. But I learned my lesson. No more 9pm Thanksgiving night/Black Friday shopping. Next year, I’m going to try to be a steady-pacer and do more online shopping.

So what kind of holiday shopper are you? Did you brave the Black Friday lines, have you already discovered the joys of online shopping, or are you a procrastinator extraordinaire?

Title: O Come All You Kinky by Ava March, Alexa Snow, Elyan Smith, Jane Davitt, Joey W. Hill, Katie Porter, Kim Dare, L.A. Witt
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Genre: M/M, F/F, BDSM, Contemporary & Historical, Romance
Length: 317 pages/Word Count: 89,000

Summary:

Here’s the blurb for Ava’s story, ’Twas the Night.

Percival Owen yearns for the nights when he can kneel before his lover, even though no self-respecting gentleman willingly submits to another. Michael wants his first Christmas with Percy to be perfect, but is frustrated by Percy’s inability to ask for what he wants. The gift Michael offers Percy—and that Percy offers in return—is the best Percy could ever hope to receive: his will to submit.

And here’s what you can expect to find in the anthology as a whole:

Christmas is a time of love and joy, and the New Year is a time of renewal. But they are also times of stress and strife, family drama, pressure and heartache—a potent mix of high expectations and conflicted emotions. Add in power exchange relationships, kinky gift swaps, and unconventional love in a sometimes unforgiving world, and you have a formula for a sizzling anthology of stories that tug at your heart.

From Ava March’s forbidden Regency love between men, to Katie Porter’s scorching hot contemporary tale of two women discovering holiday happiness, everyone will find a favorite here. Pervertible toys abound: Lambda Literary Award finalist L.A. Witt’s candy cane, Jane Davitt’s wrapping paper and tape, and Alexa Snow’s Christmas candles all please and delight. Newcomer Elyan Smith and fan favorite Kim Dare both celebrate New Year’s Eve with romantic flair and kinky fireworks, while bestselling author Joey W. Hill’s poignant story of discovery and commitment will lead you home.

Whatever your desires, we invite you to explore new fantasies and old with these eight kinky tales of holiday happy endings.

20% of all proceeds from O Come All Ye Kinky will be donated to the Domestic Violence Project of the National Leather Association–International. (If you buy the book, digital or print, from Riptide’s website, more money goes to the charity because we’re not paying third-party vendor fees.)

You can find out more about the anthology and all the stories here.

About Ava March:

Ava March is an author of smoking hot M/M historical erotic romances. She loves writing in the Regency time period, where proper decorum is of the utmost importance, but where anything can happen behind closed doors. You can find Ava at her Website, her Blog, on her Goodreads page, on Facebook, and on Twitter.