Today I’m thrilled to welcome the talented Bethany Leigh to my site. She and I have been friends for a long time and she has forgotten more about writing than I will ever know.
She writes domestic dramas and detective stories spiced up with spankings and romance. Her books are: Freedom, set in an alternate Edwardian England; Betrothed, a short prequel to Freedom; At Dead of Night, a contemporary whodunit; and just this week, A Cure For All Ills, an anthology of short domestic discipline stories. All are published by Blushing Books.
Bethany lives in Australia. When she’s not writing, she likes hanging out with her family, catching up with friends over a wine or coffee, and spotting kangaroos, wombats, kookaburras and other fabulous wildlife in the bush near her home.
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This week we’re looking at A Cure For All Ills, the anthology that includes both real life problems as well as some time travel. Some of these stories are the most authentic to real life imaginable.
Blurb:
Many misdeeds – one punishment
Maddie's hot new date loves to cook – but she avoids eating at all costs.
Sarah has perfect plans for her anniversary – but Dan's disappeared into his man-cave.
Ginny's always let her dog run free in the 'on-lead' area – but now a fine has turned up in the post.
Maddie, Sarah, Ginny and the other feisty women in these stories all have problems. And they all have men who believe that a spanking is a cure for all ills.
Excerpt:
Depressed and exhausted, Maddie took a long shower. The hot water felt comforting and the fruity aroma of her shower get lifted her spirits a little. It was okay, she told herself; it was a temporary lapse; she was back in control. She would go for a run or to the gym. Or maybe she would drive to the pool too, swim some laps. She’d burn off all those calories. And right at the end of the day, when Adam was due home, she’d go to the supermarket and replace everything she’d eaten so that he’d never know what had happened. And she’d never, ever do this again. She could beat this thing.
“Maddie.”
She jumped and shrieked. Oh, God, she thought, it could be – not Adam, he was at work.
But it was. The shower curtain was pulled back and Adam’s hand was switching off the shower. “Dry yourself, put on some clothes and come downstairs,” he told her curtly. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
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Getting to know Bethany Leigh
Tell us more about your new release
It’s a collection of short stories and is titled A Cure for All Ills. Whereas my first book, Freedom, was an alt-history and my second, At Dead of Night, was a detective story, A Cure for All Ills is a collection of honest-to-goodness domestic discipline stories. One of the stories features a spanko time-traveller from the future making illicit trips back to 1680s London to track down the legendary spanker Whipping Tom, but all the others are contemporary, featuring women in DD relationships and whose partners see – or come to see – spanking as ‘a cure for all ills’.
Two of the stories feature a woman whose partner uses DD to help her overcome a severe eating disorder. What made you write about this?
I was bulimic throughout my twenties and used to long for a man like Adam to enter my life, take responsibility for my eating, and save me from my self-destructive dieting obsession. It didn’t happen for me, but it does happen for Maddie. When I first tried my hand at writing a DD story, the eating disorder scenario felt natural for me – troubled heroine with a serious problem, caring partner using tough love to help her recover. So ‘A Cure for All Ills’ was the first DD story I ever wrote and the other one featuring Adam and Maddie, ‘Far to Go’, was the second.
Describe one scene in a novel that stayed with you long after you closed the book
There are so many – mostly to do with a fabulous twist in a murder mystery or sci-fi plot. But if we’re talking spanking scenes that stayed with me, I’m old enough to remember when spankings appeared in mainstream literature. It was always an unexpected thrill to turn the page and find yourself reading a spanking scene. I don’t remember anything at all about the Jeffrey Archer novels I read years ago apart from the spanking scene in Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less where the hero spanked his girlfriend in the car. There was also a Jilly Cooper romance called Octavia I remember nothing about apart from the scene where the drunken heroine was spanked by a man she’d just met – and, of course, later she married him!
If you could go back in time, would you change anything about any of your books?
I’d set the events of Freedom and Betrothed in a Ruritanian kingdom rather than an alternate Edwardian England. I briefly considered doing so when writing Freedom, but thought it might not work given the settings were so very Downton Abbey-ish. But there was confusion when Freedom was released – some readers thought it was a badly researched historical novel as opposed to completely fictitious world that just happened to contain grand Downton Abbey-style houses and take place in the years the Suffragettes were active. So if I could time-travel like Louise in ‘Time and Again’ I’d make up a country name to go along with the made-up bedding ceremonies!
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Find Bethany on Social Media:
http://bethanyleighromance.blogspot.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Bethany-Leigh-108399886191157/
http://www.amazon.com/Bethany-Leigh/e/B018Z9NLSK/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1449447482&sr=8-1
Twitter: @writerbethany1
Buy Links for A Cure for All Ills: