Blog Tour – Review, Guest Post, and Giveaway: Once a Brat by Kim Dare

Posted by Becky Condit on February 15, 2013

“You signed my arse.”
GENRE: M/M, BDSM
RATING: 5 Sweet Peas!

BLURB: Experienced dominant Marcus has a stalker. On the plus side, the boy following him around his local leather club is gorgeous and a self-professed submissive. Unfortunately, he’s also inexperienced, bratty, and liable to drive Marcus insane within his incessant chatter and questions.

Bret Daniels fell head over heels with Marcus the moment he first saw him. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get Marcus’s attention and prove his worth as a submissive. He might not be a traditional sub, but he knows he has a lot to offer a dom who can handle his quirks.

When Marcus gives in and agrees to do a scene with Bret, sparks fly. One scene quickly becomes another, and another. But will it be a case of once a brat, always a brat? Bret intends to prove to Marcus that—expectations and experiences aside—he deserves his master’s collar.

JOSIE GOODREAD’S OPINION: Bret Daniels is a novice to the BDSM scene, he’s never submitted to any man before but he wants Marcus Tremayne, has done so since he first set eyes on the man, the day he walked into the leather club Spread Eagle. Bret knows Marcus is a dom and despite having no idea how the scene works Bret stalks Marcus for weeks before then man shows any interest in him until Marcus decides to show Bret what submitting really means. The first scene is a public spanking but that only convinces Bret that Marcus, and submitting to Marcus, is all he wants, only problem is how does he convince Marcus to feel the same?

I adored both MC’s, but Bret was my favourite, so deliciously naïve and innocent, he really didn’t know what being a sub meant, he just wanted to be with Marcus, and was prepared to do anything to make that happen. I loved the way he argued with himself to start with, debating whether to disobey Marcus, just to see what Marcus would do, but how he quickly decided that basically anything Marcus did was fine by him!

Marcus is exactly what any Kim Dare fan expects from a Dom, masterful, fair, controlling and so very possessive of his sub. Marcus soon realises that Bret is special, quite unlike any other sub he’s ever met, and he can’t let anyone have Bret but him, even going so far as to write his name on Bret’s arse after their first scene together, which leads me into my favourite line of the book.

‘You signed my arse’

Sums up a Kim Dare book nicely.

I adored Once a Brat; it’s exactly what you expect from Kim Dare, cute and sweet, and a perfectly beautiful Valentine story.

Once a Brat is Book 3 of a series called Kinky Cupids (formally called I blame Bret). Kinky Cupids is a series of novellas released one each Valentines season. The stories follow the same group of characters. The secondary characters from one book become the primary characters for other books. So, the books are best read in order as part of the series.

My only regret is it wasn’t longer, but as Once a Brat is actually a prequel to the two existing stories in this series (where Bret tries some matchmaking on his own) I can at least visit them again in the other books.

Title: Once a Brat
Author: Kim Dare
Publisher: Riptide
Publication Date: February 9, 2013
Series: Kinky Cupids
Length: 94 pages
Favorite Character: Bret

BUY LINKS:

GUEST POST BY KIM DARE

Hi everyone – Thank you for joining me on my first ever solo virtual book tour, and thank you to my lovely hosts for making me so welcome here!

All week I’ve been turning up on some of your favorite blogs to chat about my latest release with Riptide Publishing – Once a Brat.

Intrigued at the thought of mixing brats, leather, and Valentine’s Day with kink, love and a happy ending? Tag along this week and find out a little bit more about how the book came into being, what to buy for your kinky valentine, and a whole lot more!

I’ll also be offering the chance to win titles from my backlist and coming soon list. Keep reading to find out what you need to do to enter the giveaway.

My Kind of Brat

I love brats. I know a lot of people look down on them. They can appear childish or annoying. A lot of the time, they come across as spoiled. But there’s still something about brats that I love, and that’s what happens when brattiness is combined with a genuine desire to submit to another person’s will.

There are all different kind of submissives, and a million different ways to submit, so this isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing, but time and time again I’ve seen the same pattern play out. A strong, dominant personality meets a willingly submissive personality. They fall in love. Blink, and suddenly the submissive is unrecognizable.

Intentionally or not, the dominant personality completely overwhelms the submissive. The dominant’s likes become the submissive’s likes. The dominant’s views become the submissive’s views. I guess this happens with all couples when they first get together. One pretends to enjoy rom-coms when they’d rather be watching sci-fi. The other person indulges their lover’s inclination to go hill walking when they really would have preferred to have a long lie in on a Sunday morning.

However, I think that in a kinky couple, this can become far more pronounced. From sex to supper time, it all becomes about what the dom thinks and wants. If the sub is cool with this, good for them—I hope they live happily ever after. Some subs dream of being re-created by their dom into a “better” person—a made to measure, ideal sub. That’s great. But if it’s something that the sub has slipped into by accident, it can quickly get very complicated and very difficult for them.

A lot of subs find it hard to stand up and make sure their voice is heard in a relationship, and to make sure that they don’t lose themselves in an effort to please their dominant. I’m probably closer to this side of the submissive spectrum than I’m comfortable with. I have to make a conscious effort to remember what I like, rather than fall into agreeing with someone else, just because I want to make them happy. Even if I don’t want my preferences to be indulged, I have to remind myself that they still exist—that I am still me, and not the extension of someone else.

Brats don’t seem to have that trouble. They make sure their opinions and their desires are well known to their lovers—although I will admit that they might not always choose the right moment to speak up about them!

My kind of brat—the kind I love writing about—has a heart of gold and a personality strong enough to withstand any niggling submissive inclination to nod, smile and agree with things not just outside their head, but inside it too.

Enter Bret, one of the characters in my new story. Bret is a brat. He knows it. He accepts it.

He says the wrong thing, he acts without always thinking things through. Sometimes he does things that his dominant, Marcus, isn’t thrilled about, but one thing that he always does, is be himself. There’s no polish to Bret. He’s new to the scene, out of his depth, but by damn he’ll still keep everyone around him on their toes and he’ll certainly make sure he doesn’t forget who he is.

There’s a lot Bret could learn from more experienced submissives. But I think it’s easy to forget that there’s something that a lot of subs can learn from him.

Subs are people. We have likes and dislikes, we have personalities, dreams and, even if we choose to follow someone else’s lead, we have minds of our own. It doesn’t do any harm to remind doms of those facts every so often. It’s often good to remind subs of it too. Bret was a very fun way for me to do that.

What do you think of brats? Love them, hate them? Let me know in a comment. Even if you don’t want to say anything about brats, leave a comment and you’ll be in with a chance of winning three e-books. Keep reading to find out all about Once a Brat and the competition.
You can find out more about the story, read an excerpt or buy the book by clicking here.

And here’s the details for that giveaway:

Leave a comment on this post by Sunday 16th February and you’ll be entered into the hat for a chance win three of my backlist or coming soon titles. Two winners will be chosen at random, and each will receive three e-books of their choice. The only book you won’t be able to pick is Once a Brat.

Check out the complete tour listing to see all the places I’ll be visiting. If comment on each post, you can earn more entries into the giveaway.

About Kim Dare:

Kim Dare is a twenty-nine year old, full time writer from Wales (UK). First published in 2008, she has since released close to eighty BDSM erotic romance titles. While most of Kim’s stories follow male/male relationships, she also writes about characters that enjoy male/female, female/male (female dominant), female/female and all kinds of ménage relationships. Kim’s titles have included contemporary stories, fairytale re-tellings, vampires, time travelers, werewolves and werelions—not to mention the occasional wereduck.

Regardless of the gender of her characters or the different genres they inhabit, from short stories to full-length novels, there are three things Kim always wants to give her characters—kink, love, and a happy ending.

You can find Kim on her website, contact here by e-mail, or check out her blog.