I am super excited to have the lovely KD Grace, writing as Grace Marshall, as a guest today on the blog! I adore her books and hope you will take a chance and check her out. I'm sure you'll fall in love with the characters as much as I have!
Food Porn, or the Way to a Reporter’s Heart
I’d
like to thank Illustrious Illusions for hosting me on the last day of the Interviewing Wade Blog Tour and Giveaway.
It’s a pleasure to be here. Today I want to talk about food porn. There are few things we humans do that have more of a mystique about
them, a sense of magic and alchemy attached to them than the making and the
sharing of food. When a meal is shared, it becomes so much more than simply
taking sustenance; it becomes an intimate sharing in one of the main acts necessary
for sustaining life. Perhaps that’s why the hospitality surrounding sharing a
meal has long been considered sacred.
I’m not a foodie. I’m
actually a food Philistine, to be honest. I cook my own meals with fresh
ingredients, lots of fruits and veg, but if it takes more than thirty minutes,
and I can’t make up enough for leftovers, it ain’t happening in my kitchen. I
don’t do pre-prepared meals and I seldom eat out, but this isn’t about me, this
is about Carla Flannery and Wade Crittenden and their kind of food porn. Neither of them have time to cook, and
both have the kind of metabolism we all dream of. They are able to eat
anything, anytime, and in large quantities without gaining an ounce.
***
‘I’m starving,’ Carla said
opening the refrigerator door. ‘If I’m gonna be up at this hour I’m gonna eat.
You want some eggs?’
Wade looked at her as
though she’d asked him to run naked through the streets with her. ‘OK, so I’m
not super-chef extraordinaire like my father, but I can cook eggs. You want
some?’
He made an incoherent sound
deep in that broad chest of his and nodded dumbly.
She pulled out a skillet
then turned back to him. ‘You want bacon?’
‘You eat bacon?’
‘Oh don’t start on me about
the calories and the cholesterol,’ she waved a hand at him, ‘I’m my father’s
daughter. I eat whatever I want. I’m having bacon. You don’t have to.’
‘I’ll have bacon.’ How was
it possible for a man to blush over bacon?
‘Toast?’
‘I’ll have what you’re
having,’ he managed in a voice that sounded like someone was trying to choke
him.
***
I hadn’t actually intended for eating to become such a big
part of the story when I wrote Interviewing
Wade. But what I discovered was that eating was one of the safe,
stress-free, comfortable places where Wade and Carla could come together in the
beginning, and actually get to know each other. As the story evolved and as the
stress and the danger mounted, eating became even more a place where they could
both be together and take comfort. Carla is an investigative journalist whose
ground-breaking stories have put her in high-demand. Busy is her middle name.
She doesn’t cook anything more complicated than eggs, and that not very often.
But her father cooks fantastic Italian food when he’s got time, and he knows
her eating habits, so he always invites her to dine. Mostly she survives on
takeaway and junk food, but with the metabolism of a mountain goat, as Wade
says, it doesn’t really matter what she eats.
***
‘Good,’ Wade said at last, covering his full mouth with the paper towel
she’d given him in lieu of the napkins she didn’t have.
‘Thanks. You think this is good, you should see me make Pop Tarts.
‘I like Pop Tarts,’ he said.
‘The secret is,’ she leaned across the table, ‘you’ve got to get the
toaster set just right. And then afterwards,’ he leaned closer with wrapped
attention, ‘afterwards I put butter on ‘em and stick ‘em in the microwave until
it melts.’
Wade’s eyes were huge and very green in the kitchen lighting. He
looked dead serious, as though she had just given him her secret for cold
fusion. ‘I never thought about
melting the butter on them in the microwave,’ he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
***
Wade has a brain that is constantly on overdrive. He seldom
sleeps, and he’s always in the process of inventing and creating. That means
he’s always hungry. Every room in his lair, affectionately known as ‘Wade’s Dungeon’ is always well-supplied with
foooooood! Lots of food! Of course he doesn’t cook, and he has a rotating list
of places where he can order in, being the recluse that he is. Yes, my hero and
heroine are even more food Philistines than I am! And as the story evolved, I
began to realize that eating together, for them is a place of convergence. It’s
a place of letting down boundaries and the place of flat-out, playful return to
animal pleasures.
Also
sharing food eases the tension between them and it is in eating together that
they tend to feel comfortable enough to talk to each other, to let down their
barriors for just a little while, even if it’s just long enough to share their
recipes for the best ways to eat Pop Tarts. I’d like to share with you an
excerpt in which Wade brings Carla back to the safty of his Dungeon after she
has had a very frightening run-in with a stalker and Wade eases Carla’s stress
by quite literally feeding her Chinese food. Bon apetite!
Interviewing Wade
Blurb:
The Executive
Decisions Trilogy may be over, but the story continues. Intrepid reporter,
Carla Flannery, wants to interview Wade Crittenden, the secretive creative
genius behind Pneuma Inc. But when, against all odds, Wade actually agrees to
the interview, Carla suspects ulterior motives.
Carla has made a
lot of enemies in her work and when Wade discovers she’s being stalked, he
agrees to the interview to keep her close and safe. As the situation turns
deadly, lives and hearts are on the line, and the interview reveals far more
about both than either ever expected.
Interviewing Wade
Excerpt:
The dining
area smelled of Chinese food. Lynn had spread the feast on the coffee table in
front of the ratty sofa. For a moment, Carla stood staring at the food, feeling
slightly nauseated. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said.
‘Come on, you
need to eat. With your metabolism, being what it is, if you don’t you’ll have
wasted completely away by morning.’ He settled her onto the least lumpy part of
the couch and then sat down next to her. When she made no effort, he opened the
waxed cardboard containers and surveyed their contents. Then he ladled up a
spoonful of egg flower soup and totally surprised her by bringing it, with a
steady hand, to her lips. ‘A little bit,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to hurt
Lynn’s feelings, do you?’
She opened her
mouth, and he carefully spooned it in and watched while she swallowed. ‘Since
when have you cared about hurting anyone’s feelings,’ she said. The soup had
felt good against her throat, and it wasn’t so difficult to open her mouth when
he spooned up the next bite. ‘I don’t, really, and just for the record, Lynn
doesn’t care about mine either, but I’m not above lying to get my way.’ He
ladled another spoonful into her mouth and this time she made an mmm sound at
the back of her throat as she swallowed.
‘And are you
getting what you want?’
‘You’re
eating, aren’t you?’
He gave a
little gasp of surprise when she took the spoon away from him, dipped up a nice
fat egg drop and pointed the utensil in his direction. When he stared at her
like she had two heads, she laughed softly. ‘Come on Crittenden, open up. Here
comes a choo-choo.’ She wasn’t sure if he opened his mouth for the soup or
because he was about to say something rude. Either way she took advantage and
shoved the spoon home. When he took the bite, holding her gaze as though he
didn’t quite understand what kind of creature had assaulted him with a soup
spoon, holding her gaze with absolutely no sexual innuendo, but her insides
trembled and hollowed anyway.
‘It’s good,’
he said, his cheeks turning a warm shade of pink, as he took the spoon back and
returned the favour, and this time he didn’t protest when it was his turn,–
even as she picked up a pair of chopsticks and brazenly served up a sloppy
mouthful of Singapore noodles while he sat with his mouth slightly open, making
her think of a hungry nestling waiting for a worm. The thought made her giggle
at the last instant, and he barely caught the end of an escaping noodle in time
to slurp it off his chin and into his mouth. ‘You’re sloppy, Flannery,’ he
said, licking his lips with two flicks of his tongue that made her breath catch
and her nipples ache.
Dear Christ,
he had no idea whatsoever what he did to her. This time, as she waited
open-mouthed for her bite of soup, his hand was far less steady and at least
half of it ended up in her cleavage. She yelped. ‘You did that on purpose.’
‘Did not’ he
said. Handing her a napkin and watching wide-eyed as she dabbed away chicken
broth.
‘Did so.’
‘Did
not,’ he said. Then he filled the chopsticks dangerously full of noodles and
brought them toward her mouth. ‘This –’ he fumbled the chopsticks and the whole
bite slipped off the ends and right down between her breasts ‘—I did on
purpose.’ The noodles were no hotter that a steamy bubble bath, but the
act itself, coming from Wade Crittenden, was scalding hot. She barely had time
to gasp before he set the chopsticks aside and efficiently undid the top three
buttons her peaches and crème blouse. Then he began the slurp and nibble
process of cleaning up, with long strokes of his tongue up the sided of her
breasts before he blazed a well-nibbled path into the valley where the lacy
bronze bra cupped her breasts to form a perfect receptacle for the errant
noodles. He nibbled skilfully into the depths and up the wet, rounded sides of
each breast, slurping and nipping as he grazed
‘Holy fuck, Wade,’ she said,
curling her fingers in his hair. ‘I think there’s room in there for a little
kung pow chicken, maybe some fried rice.’ At some point, he’d managed the rest
of her buttons, probably when she was busy concentrating on his eating habits.
Then he slipped down both bra straps at once, running his hands up the outside
curve of her breasts to lift them over the top of the cups enough to nibble and
lick her nipples, which she was pretty sure he didn’t get any noodles on, and
even more sure that she didn’t care. She gasped and bucked against him as he
nipped her hard with his front teeth and then sucked deeply enough to draw the
judder of her pulse up through her breast and out onto the swirling tip of his
tongue. She fell back against the arm of the sofa as though she had suddenly
become boneless, and he eased her legs apart with the flat of one hand and
began to stroke her through her trousers. ‘Perhaps the spring roooolls,’ she
gasped and writhed beneath him. ‘I can think of a lovely place you can put one
of those.’ Just then he slid up her body, eased his hips in between hers and
began to rock and shift.
Buy Links:
Voted ETO Best Erotic Author of 2014, and a proud member of The Brit Babes,
K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex,
well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she is, otherwise, what
would she write about? When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She also enjoys martial arts, reading, watching the birds and anything that gets her outdoors.
KD has erotica published with SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.
K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, Fulfilling the Contract, The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Witches trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available.
K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition are all available.
Find
Grace Marshall/ K D Grace Here:
http://www.thebritbabes.co.uk Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KDGraceAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KD_Grace
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/kdgraceauthor/
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Thanks SO much for having me over! Always a pleasure to be here <3
ReplyDeleteHave really enjoyed this blog tour ... Love Wade & Carla!
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