5 Secrets to Successful Stripping

By Juliet Madison…or rather her creation, Ty Roxford, quality adult entertainer and dancer, and hero of Juliet’s new novel!

1. Confidence – If you don’t have it, get it. Stripping cannot be successful without a good dose of confidence in yourself. But you have to strike a balance too, don’t become over-confident to the point that you come across as an arrogant ass.
2. Eye Contact – This, my friends, can make more of an impact than the stripping itself. Never underestimate the power of deliberate, focused, and sexy eye contact. Find someone to connect with and hold their gaze a few moments longer than usual. Tell them a story with your eyes. But don’t turn it into a staring competition, then you’ll just look plain weird.
3. Practice – You can’t just wing it. A successful strip is a performance, not a random display of clothing removal. Each performance needs a beginning, middle, and an end. It needs to attract attention immediately, then tease, then build momentum towards the final act. If you’re not confident enough to practise your moves in front of a mirror, then you’re not confident enough to perform. Treat it with professionalism, and your audience will be satisfied.
4. Quality garments – I can’t emphasise this enough. Do not buy crappy stripping garments! Trust me, I know from personal experience that although leather pants can look sexy, they’re not so sexy when they get stuck during removal and your performance turns into a sumo wrestling match. With yourself.
5. Classy not cheesy – It is not the fact that clothing is removed that is sexy, it is the way in which it is removed. The thrill of a strip is in the teasing, and teasing needs to be subtle and classy, or it will look ridiculous. You want your audience blushing, not scrunching up their faces. A wink here and there, a teasing smile, a curved finger enticing them towards you, and even a caress of their hair. And don’t forget to throw in a few impressive dance moves.

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Mixing romance, humour and a sparkle of magic, Juliet Madison is back with a new full-length novel about a bride-to-be, a mystery and the stripper next door.

When bride-to-be Sally Marsh attends a weekend away with her bridesmaids, the last thing she expects is an uninvited guest: the ghost of her fiancé’s ex-girlfriend.

Red is quirky, loud and distracting, and Sally is soon desperate to find the reason behind her presence, so she can rid herself of her embarrassing shadow before the wedding day. Unfortunately, the ghost is reluctant to share the reason for her existence, but very enthusiastic about Ty, the surprise hen’s night stripper who keeps showing up at awkward moments.

Time is running out for Sally, but it’s also running out for Red. By the time all is revealed, Sally will be tested to the limits, and go above and beyond everything she’s ever believed in order to ensure not only her own happy-ever-after – but Red’s as well.

Haunted Ever After is available for pre-order now.

7 Reasons to include Rugby League in your Romance Reading

by Cate Ellink

You don’t need to know anything about rugby league to read Deep Diving even though it features a rugby league playing hero. He’s on holidays, so not a football to be seen! But I love rugby league and here are a few reasons why a little rugby in your romance can be a good thing:

7.  A rugby league team needs men with brute strength, sneaky men with brains, speedy men fleet of foot and super agile, and every one of them are built with muscles upon muscles. A man-type for everyone!

6. It’s an extremely physical game with no helmets and generally no padding. When you’re at the game, close to the field, you can hear the whooof as air is expelled when two men hit each other in a tackle. There’s the thud of hard-packed muscle against hard-packed muscle. Sometimes the hits are so big, you jump in your seat. It’s EXCITING!

5. The National Rugby League (NRL) competition that has 16 teams competing. The teams come from the Sydney area (9 teams), Newcastle, Canberra, Brisbane, Gold Coast, North Queensland, Melbourne and New Zealand. The competition begins in March and finishes in October each year. Each year they take a few games to grounds far and wide—interstate and regional. As well as this, there’s rugby league played in suburbs and towns right across NSW and Qld and scattered through other states too. You can always find a game to watch and they’re always exciting – even the kids!

4. There’s a State of Origin series where three games are played between the best NRL players chosen to represent NSW and Qld. These games have become the most physical and a showcase of Rugby League. Many of these players go on to represent Australia.

image via news.com.au

3. 13 men take the field, plus 6 on the interchange bench. With 16 teams, that’s 304 very muscly men to watch each weekend…not to mention linesmen and referees.

image via illawaramercury.com.au

2. I have family ties to rugby league. It developed and split from Rugby Union back in 1908 (my great grandfather was involved). Rugby Union was the amateur game (i.e. not paid) whereas Rugby League was professional (i.e. paid). Although they’re both paid now, don’t be mixing up your Rugby League and your Rugby Union; they’re very different games. Rugby Union is the one called ‘rugby’. Rugby League is abbreviated to ‘league’.

And the Number 1 reason…

…is unfathomable. Two of those sneaky men with brains snuck their way into my affections – one when I was a teenager and one more recently when I should know better. Put them side by side and there’s little similarity. So, it’s not their looks that captivate me. It’s something about them, their attitude, their brain, how they play footy. I think they both play similar style games and they’ve had similar career achievements. My infatuation is some abstract thing I can’t understand or explain but my heart beats strong for both my sporting heroes.

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From Cate Ellink comes a sun-soaked, sandy, seaside erotic novel about a tropical paradise, two athletes used to getting physical, and a sex-filled, no-strings holiday fling. 

Samantha is celebrating her newly retired status from competitive triathlons with a diving holiday in her favourite place in the world: Australia’s Lord Howe Island. But all divers need a buddy, and Sam can’t dive solo. A chance meeting with rugby league superstar Cooper Sterling in the dive shop seems serendipitous. Sam can’t wait to have a partner who might be able to keep up with her.

It soon becomes evident that Cooper and Sam are compatible both in and out of the water, and things gets seriously sexy. But Sam is disinclined to be another football groupie, and Cooper has been burned before. So the rules are clear: a holiday fling, no strings attached, and they part as friends at the end.

But as the final days of their time together come to a close and a life apart becomes a reality, Sam and Cooper start to question their decision. Is this holiday fling really the finish line or can Sam and Cooper turn their friendly competition into more than sizzling sex?

Deep Diving is available for pre-order now from all good e-book stores.

RT Post 4 – The Art of the Selfie

In which Kate stalks readers, reviewers, bloggers, and authors. No one is safe.

Today was a day for meeting people. Harlequin Australia set us up with an absolute mountain-load of free books on USB keys that we are giving away to readers, bloggers, reviewers, and random passers-by with the message that Australian romance rocks, and they need to get into it now.

But one of the best things about being at a romance conference for everyone involved in romance (because everyone involved in romance loves reading romance, and everyone is enthusiastic about romance) is meeting favourite authors.

Oh, boy, did I meet some favourites!

Just from today:

Me, Keri Arthur and Escape Artist Donna Maree Hanson! (check out Donna’s squid necklace)

Escape Artist Nicole Flockton

Rachel Vincent and I. I also got sneak peeks at the covers for her upcoming series and they look AMAZING!

Escape Artists Rhian Cahill, Sami Lee and fellow International Heat author Lila Dubois

Victoria Dahl (squee! I love her so much!)

Megan Hart (who is *so* gracious)

Zoe Archer and Nico Russo, a truly awesome couple who write truly awesome books. Check out Zoe’s Blades of the Rose series for fab, diverse action-adventure romance

Not to get all hipster or anything, but I’ve loved Larissa Ione since she was writing for Secrets. Yes, that makes me a better fan than you.

Courney Frickin’ Milan, everybody. *And* she knew who I was from Twitter. I just about died.

There will be more photos from the Giant Book Fair tomorrow, so be prepared.

One of the things I highly recommend to future RT attendees is to take part in the games sessions. They’re much more low key, a lot of fun, and a great way to meet people and authors alike, as everyone is interacting with everyone else. I hooked up with Gabby and Rudi from Orchids and Peach Cocktails, and headed up to Bad Boy Bingo! , wherein if you won Bingo, you had to read a dirty passage from one of the attending authors’ books out loud. I, who never win anything, won a Bingo on the first go-round, and had to read from Megan Hart’s Broken.

I don’t know if you’ve read Broken (you totally should), but it’s not the easiest book to read out loud. Luckily, after the first round, we had a special guest, who came to do our reading for us:

Shane

That, right there in the yellow shirt, is a cover model. And he started reading the passages for us.

First, he did it from the front. Then he did it from the middle.

An equal opportunity for appreciation of fine literary readings.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, he did it without his shirt.

Damn fine literary readings.

Poor man was blushing all over the place by the time he finished, but he was much applauded for his efforts.

Next up: Bourbon Street!