"Jonah Sweet of Delancey Street"

Jonah Sweet of Delancey Street isn't like anything I've written in the past. First, because the erotic subplot gets into light BDSM. I've talked about how I've never written BDSM before on my blog, and I've also talked about the fact that I'm curious about how it's written. For a long time, I always thought of BDSM books as having highly erotic covers, with dark images clad in leather and chains. I also thought of the storylines as being more intense, in the sense that everything revolved about the sexual nature of the story.

In this case, that's not what JSoDS is about. The BDSM is erotic, but I get into more about role-playing than any of the hardcore BDSM or kink. Jonah is a virgin when he meets David, so I didn't want to get into anything that might be too deep for him. I also talked to a few people I know who are into BDSM in order to get first hand interpretations of what they consider BDSM. Two guys I know have a secret "playroom" in their basement that was designed and fitted by a well known construction company in my area who does these things, on the down-low, for people who are willing to pay enough to have them installed. In any event, I discovered a whole new world that left stunned more than once.

So while there is light BDSM in this book, and the main plot revolves around the love and the often complicated relationship between the two main characters, Jonah Sweet and David Abernathy, I wanted to add something more emotional. Something that most readers could relate to...a subplot that would humanize David and make people like him. He's not an easy man. He's a self-made billionaire who tends to treat people like dirt. He's not only a master in his world of BDSM, but also in the business world and every other aspect of his life. In fact he welcomes confrontation so much he looks forward to firing people. There's a reason for his behavior, which I can't mention because it would spoil the book.

There's also a secret about David's past that not many people know about. It's something that happened to him a few years before we meet him in the book. It takes a while for Jonah Sweet to actually find out what this is. But when he discovers this secret involves a little boy in a wheel chair and a mom and dad who can't stop grieving, he sees David Abernathy in a different light. And this moves their relationship forward in a way Jonah never expected.

Here's a raw version of the blurb, below. There was one huge important element for me in this book: I wanted the two main characters who get into BDSM to be equals when they aren't having sex, where no one is dominant or submissive. In other words, Jonah may be willing to get tied up and spanked in David's state of the art "playroom" on Delancey Street in New York City. But he's not willing to be tied up, so to speak, when he's out in the real world with David. And it takes David a long time to realize that if he wants Jonah to stick around, he has to learn how to stop controlling everyone and everything.

The book will be available through the Amazon KDP program sometime in June. As soon as I know the release date, I'll post about it. It's a full length novel with about 60,000 words, and will be offered for .99, as I did with "Chase of a Lifetime." And it's still a very humble venture and I'm still learning more about self-publishing as I go. I'd also like to add, just for the record, I had many reasons for self-publishing my fiction this past year. The least of which had to do with being bitter about traditional publishing. I still love working with publishers and I have nothing negative to say about them. I'm still working with both the publishers I've been working with for the past seven years and I love them both. Two fellow authors, one from Loveyoudivine.com and the other from Ravenousromance.com each won a Lambda Award this year and I'm proud to be working with publishers like this. I think when an author and a publisher wins an award like a Lammie, the quality is there. I also think agents are invaluable, if you can find the right one. I just like having the control sometimes, and that's as simple as I can explain it. Self-publishing gave me that control.

Jonah Sweet has a secret need to be dominated and punished, with whips and chains and leather cuffs. He also has a degree in puppetry from a good university, but can’t find a job and is still with his mom and dad in Queens. So he signs up for cooking school, hoping to learn a trade. But it’s nothing like he thought it would be and he winds up flunking everything from cutlery to hard-boiled eggs. The only other skill Jonah has is the ability to read other people's thoughts, which he knows isn’t going to get him very far.

On the day of an important cooking exam, Jonah meets David Abernathy, the owner of the cooking school and a billionaire who owns restaurant chains, casinos, and real estate. The harder Jonah tries to impress David the worse it gets. But handsome David Abernathy sees something in Jonah. With no explanation at all, David sets Jonah up in an office, buys him a brand new wardrobe, and brings him into his unusual home on Delancey Street.

Though Jonah is stunned by all this, he’s even more stunned by the fact that he can’t read David Abernathy’s thoughts. But Jonah is in no position to turn any offers down. He takes the job in spite of David’s rude, nasty disposition and his erratic rants. From there they enter into an unusual relationship filled with light bondage and discipline and more love than either one of them could ever have imagined.

When David introduces Jonah to a little boy in a wheel chair and explains his past, Jonah only falls deeper in love with David. He discovers a gentle side of David no one knows about. But will intense love and exotic sex be enough to compensate for David’s complicated personality and his vicious need to control everything? And will Jonah be able to put up with David’s public outbursts and his violent moods?

Ryan Field

Romance Author

www.ryan-field.blogspot.com

rfieldj@aol.com