This Week At The Tiki Hut -- Cris Anson

This week's guest at the AuthorIsland Tiki Hut is Cris Anson who writes for Ellora's Cave and she stops by to tell us all about how she ended up on the cover of her brand new release WHAT SHE NEEDS!

15 Minutes in Angelo’s Arms
by Cris Anson

Ellora’s Caveman Angelo exploded into our consciousness at last October’s RomantiCon, Ellora’s Cave’s first annual erotic romance conference. (He has since graced dozens of Ellora’s Cave covers.) The quintessential tall, dark and handsome Venezuelan riveted everyone’s attention as he danced. Made our hearts beat faster whenever he smiled, which was often. Charmed us all when speaking with us in his delightful accent.

For a lucky few, he was more. Saturday morning of the conference, I was invited to participate in a photo shoot with Angelo at his virgin cover-model gig for Ellora’s Cave. My immediate reaction: Is the Pope Catholic? Does the sun set in the west?

If you’ve attended a Romantic Times convention, you’ve seen the Mr. Romance contestants or the Ellora’s Cavemen posing as a group with one attendee at a time, proceeds to charity, three minutes max and on to the next person in line. And yes, I have a few of those poses myself.

But this. This was fifteen minutes of permission to stand seriously close to Angelo, to look deeply into his warm brown eyes, to run my fingers through his long black hair. To have his undivided attention as he held me in his muscular arms.

Have I mentioned that Angelo is hawt?

He was wearing only a towel, as you can see from the photo gracing the cover of my July release WHAT SHE NEEDS, and I’m not positive (or maybe it’s wishful thinking), but he might have gone commando. Be still, my heart!

Alas, I could never quite forget the photographers arrayed around us—standing, kneeling, moving to get different camera angles. Furniture had been moved to the side. Sunlight poured in through the hotel room’s windows. Lights had been set up to the side and behind us. Directives flew like machine-gun fire.

“Look this way.” “Turn around just a bit to your left.” “Now move behind her.” And so on.

The results astounded me. Or, I should say, the results of Ellora’s Cave Art Director Syneca’s efforts with PhotoShop astounded me. I look like…someone Angelo might want to get closer to. Like someone living the script she wrote. Like Delia Barnes, the heroine of WHAT SHE NEEDS, who found her younger man in a most unexpected place—an erotic romance convention.

Here’s the blurb for WHAT SHE NEEDS:

Older widow Delia Barnes greets fellow authors before an erotic romance convention sporting a black eye, which she explains away with “I didn’t say ‘Yes, Master’ quick enough.” Sitting at the bar, burned-out ad executive and former Dom Kurt Reinhardt overhears that comment once too often and interrupts to suggest, “Maybe you need a new Master.”

Urged by her friends to accept the younger man’s invitation to learn some D/s basics—hey, an author needs to do her research, right?—Delia joins him to get first-hand experience at being submissive, starting with removing her panties in a corner booth. Later, she learns more than she bargained for when she spends a weekend at Kurt’s home with his eager business partner added to the mix.

But an innocent misstep brings Delia’s world crashing down around her. Can she trust Kurt with her heart…and her life?

You can read an excerpt of WHAT SHE NEEDS and buy the book here.

If you want to know more about RomantiCon 2010, here’s the link. We’ll be eagerly looking to see which of the Ellora’s Cavemen attend.

To read more about me and my books, please check out my Website , my MySpace page and friend me at Facebook.

Oh, and one more thing about WHAT SHE NEEDS mirroring real life: I attended my first Romantic Times convention sporting a black eye. This photo of me with Mr. Romance finalist and Ellora’s Caveman John Fish was not PhotoShopped.

If you enjoyed this mini-peek into a model’s hard life, I hope you’ll take a moment to comment (this will enter you into the drawing for a prize). Thanks for stopping by!


PS - Please leave your email address, so Cris can contact you if you are this week's winner!