Jessica Nyman's Blog: An Unexpected Vacation is Ranked #3 on Amazon!

My third title, The Emperor's Gladiatrix is live on Amazon.

The plot is thickening and our heroine is trying to figure out if she's changing the history and whether she can save the emperor from getting assassinated without messing up the timeline. She's doing so much for him and even planning to leave all the comforts of the 21st century behind to permanently move to the 1st century AD ancient Rome... To be one of the many lovers of the most powerful man in the world.
You have to be insane to do such a thing! But all logic and reason flies off the window when you are crazy in love.

She's doing all that, risking so much, throwing everything away to be close to him and what does he do? He stages a gladiatrix fight in the arena, offering himself as the reward! The beautiful women of the Roman nobility line up to fight before the eyes of a quarter million people for a night in his bed.
Crazy, right?

I mean, why would any woman would put up with this crap? Why on earth?
You gotta read all three volumes to find out.
Every single female reader who has read the first two stories has told me Caligula is smoking hot and they want that magic locket to go to ancient Rome. I wonder if they will change their minds and be mad at Caligula after reading Vol. 3, but I very much doubt it. The man IS hot!

And here are the excerpts:

We climbed up the stairs and turned into the corridor leading to the palace wing where his bedchamber was. Mixed feelings raged in my heart. He held my hand… This was the first time he'd done that. I burned for him, but I couldn’t get my mind off of how he'd eyeballed Fabiana at the banquet. My insides burned with a hotter fire than the night I'd watched him have sex with the acrobat woman.
But he was the emperor of Rome. He could have any woman. He could have a dozen of them. But tonight he was having me instead...
We passed the guards in the corridor and walked into his lavish bedchamber hand in hand. He seated me on the bed and took his place next to me.  His hands cupped my face and he looked in my eyes… God, those eyes!
“Give me that fire, my little thirst-quencher,” he said, his voice deep and husky.

***

    “I’ll punish you for your insolence!” he said, lifting himself up. He ripped a long piece from my ruined dress, roughly turned me around, and tied my hands. Then he laid me on my back, with my hands under my butt. His eyes were wild and full of fire.
    “Punish me, Caesar!” I pleaded.
    He ripped another piece of fabric and stuffed it in my mouth. Now I couldn’t beg even if I wanted to.
    “You will keep quiet, woman!” he commanded.
    My whole body shivered. I remembered how incredibly aroused I got when he chained me up and interrogated me in the dungeon. I had to admit it turned me on even more when he was rough. Anger boiled away in passion.
    He pushed my legs apart, squeezing the flesh of my thighs.

 Buy it here: When In Rome Vol. 3: The Emperor's Gladiatrix

I have received my first blog review from Tina at A Reader's Review.

I'm very humbled by her amazing review and having trouble finding the words to express my feelings. Wow! She is clearly a professional reviewer, it's quite humbling to get such a flattering review from a top notch blogger.
Here, go read it on her blog: http://areadersreviewblog.com/2015/04/25/double-review-when-in-rome-an-unexpected-vacation-book-1-and-the-emperors-dungeon-book-2-by-jessica-nyman/

Thank you so much Tina!

I am now ready to reveal the title for the 3rd installment in my debut erotic romance series When In Rome. (First 2 parts are listed here )

The title is (ta daaaa) The Emperor's Gladiatrix. So, we have more story going on here with the political intrigue and we get to see the gladiatrix fights. Of course there are steamy sex scenes, but there's more actual story than sex going on here. Yes, the ancient Romans had female gladiators fighting in the arena for centuries, but the popular culture totally glosses over this fact. I've never heard of them until I started writing this series and researched the ancient Roman history. Great many Roman chroniclers wrote about them, there is even of solid evidence like reliefs depicting them in action. There is one relief on display at the British Museum (see the Wikipedia page here for more info and a photo of the relief.)

The movies and the tv shows make no mention of the gladiatrixes. It's a shame, really. There is going to be a minor plot twist about the gladiatrix business in Vol. 4. In Vol. 3 Caligula gets more dominant and shows more of his charming bad boy side. Our heroine has been appearing quite submissive, but she has some mojo and she's actually not all that submissive. She will surprise you later, I promise!

I wish I could ay more but I don't want to spoil the story. It will go live in a few days, just wait and see!

The second part of my series, The Emperor's Dungeon is Free today and tomorrow on Amazon. Grab your copy before the promo ends!

http://www.amazon.com/Emperors-Dungeo...

I just read an article about the current hot trends in erotica and what I read disturbed me to no ends.
Here is what I think about these hot trends:

Breeding: Oh please. What is sexy about getting knocked up?

Lactation: Gross, just gross. I see a lot of 'Lactation Taboo Erotica' branded stuff on Amazon. I really don't understand what's sexy about the human cow fetish.

Pseudoincest: I suspect this became a hot trend after the real incest porn in Game of Thrones. Incest stories are not allowed on Amazon so the authors who are trying to make a quick buck get around this with the pseudoincest with the step relatives. Amazon erotica categories are flooded with stepbrother and stepfather erotica. Everyone is writing the same damn thing.

Billionaires: Boring cliche. It has been around since the 70's in Harlequin romances but it became a huge trend after the 50 Shades of Grey. Where's your imagination, people? Why  thousands of billionaire stories? I think I'd get bored after reading two.

Shame porn: That's just disturbing. I see a flood of 'Rich/powerful/noble woman ravished and humiliated by a gang of  lowly men' kind of stuff and it just turns my stomach. It makes me sick to  to think women actually get off on those.

Monster erotica:  Yeti, Bigfoot, Ctulhu creatures - I don't see what's sexy about them but it's obviously a fetish theme. Chuck Tingle makes a killing writing parodies of those.

Bestiality:  It's not allowed on Amazon unless it's involving extinct and fictional creatures. Ravished by the T-Rex, nailed by the unicorns and what have you. Yuck.

All of those trends make me lose all hope for the human race. You will never see me writing any of the above.

My debut story When In Rome Vol. 1: An Unexpected Vacation for over 500 downloads in less than 2 weeks, currently ranking #6 in Kindle free Historical Erotica and #14 in Paranormal Erotica, #2,165 in the entire Kindle Free store.

Grab it while it's still free, it won't be for too long!
If you post a blog review send me the link so I can spread the word.
If you post a review on Amazon and Goodreads I'll send you a virtual hug for it and feel grateful forever!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VL8KT6U



An Unexpected Vacation: A Sizzling Hot Erotic Romance (When In Rome Book 1)

I have finished formatting, received the cover from my wonderful cover artist Lillian and submitted it to Amazon. It should go live sometime tomorrow.

Those of you who have read When In Rome Vol. 1: An Unexpected Vacation will love it. There's more about the mysterius magic locket, a really cool new character and hardcore bondage with heavy iron chains and fetters in the Roman dungeon. And our heroine will have a big and important quest, a much bigger mystery to solve. She will also learn more about Caligula and find herself facing a big dilemma.

The sex scenes are even steamier than the first story according to my beta readers and the plot gets more complicated with conflicts and dilemmas to solve.

I will update when it goes live. I'm working on wrapping up the third story in the series which has even more cool stuff and exciting events. Stay tuned!

I am writing this post after a random reader review I have received on Amazon and Goodreads.

The review says:

Back in college, a professor of mine offered us the theory that the stories of Nero's reign were outrageous pieces of propaganda design to destroy the love the people had for him. "An Unexpected Vacation" seems to begin from this theory with the emperor Caligula. This book is to be continued, and we'll see if the author intends to pursue this thinking further. But what she has now is hot, fiery Ancient Roman fantasy that will set any mild-mannered woman on fire (and those who are a bit ruder will be satisfied as well).

 This is actually true about both Nero and Caligula. I'm a history nerd (I hope I am not ruining my erotica author image by stating this fact!) and I'm quite particular about my research. The snarky, sexy, bad boy Caligula character I am writing is actually the most historically accurate Caligula you can get in the erotica market.

Most of Caligula's horrendous reputation comes from two chroniclers: Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Suetonius was born twenty eight years after Caligula's death and his main work titled The Lives of the Twelve Caesars reads like a sacandalous tabloid collection. He has written terrible things about every emperor, but the stuff about Caligula ended up being the most famous. He wrote far worse things about Caligula's predecessor Tiberius but no one talks about Tiberius, no one made movies about Tiberius and most certainly no one writes erotica about Tiberius.

The other notorious things known in the pop culture about Caligula come from Cassius Dio, who was born a whopping hundred and fourteen years after Caligula's death. None of these guys who wrote the terrible, bone chilling things about Caligula had ever seen Caligula. Caligula's contemporaries, the famous stoic philosopher Seneca included, don't mention incest relationships or sex scandals about Caligula. Well, the man was fond of sex, but it was just normal polyamory stuff, nothing gross or shocking (unless you find polyamory between consenting adults gross... I certainly don't!)

Modern scholars totally discredit those scandalous accusations. None of the modern historians take Suetonius serious. I have consulted with several people with master's and Ph.d on ancient history, including one with a degree on ancient Rome's sex life. There was no solid evidence to prove any of the notorious accusations, including the (in)famous floating bridge he had built by having hundreds of ships tied together. Archaeologists found no evidence of that.

He did have two luxurious pleasure barges, which have been dug up from the bottom of Lake Nemi, but then again that was normal for the kings and the emperors of old. Modern day billionaires have gigantic luxury yachts and private jets. Nothing to criticize about having a pleasure barge. If you were the emperor or empress of Rome you wouldn't sail around in a fishing boat, would you?

There is this famous legend about Caligula being all crazy and making his horse a consul. The truth behind that is also different: Caligula was a smart guy with a rather dark sense of humor and the modern historians write that the whole thing stemmed from a humorous statement he made when he was telling the senators how much they sucked, in the lines of "Even my horse would be more useful  for the state than you guys if I made him a consul."

The rumors about the mass executions are also untrue. He forced one guy to sacrifice himself, to make an example of him. The guy was saying he would sacrifice himself to the gods if Caligula recovered from his illness, for the purpose of brown nosing and Caligula forced him to keep his word, to teach a lesson to the aristocrats that brown nosing is a bad thing to do. He waged a war against the nobility and in the end they killed him. And of course, since the nobility writes all the histories, they spoke ill of the man.

Common people loved Caligula and called him 'Our star.' I have read this in some essay but forgot to save the link, so I can't cite the source but I will edit this post and add the citation if I come across it.
When a big fire broke out in Rome, he handed out loads of gold solidus to the people who lost their homes, and paid extra to those who lost family members. He abolished taxes to ease the financial burden on the common people and small business owners and got harshly criticized for that too. He also tried to bring back the democratic elections and let the people elect the senators and other officials. Cassius Dio wrote 'Giving the vote to the rabble would be a disaster for the state' about that attempt. The senate and the patrician class were greatly disturbed by this idea of Caligula, and that might be part of the reason for them to plot his assassination.

You can verify some of these facts from Wikipedia and dig up academic papers to verify the rest. The long and short of it is that my Caligula is the most historically accurate one out there. I even based his character and dialogues on the real dialogues recorded by his contemporaries.

As for Nero; the common image about him sitting on top of some high place and fiddling while Rome burned is a lie. According to the reputable sources, Nero was hundreds of miles away from Rome when she burned and fiddles didn't exist back then. When Nero returned to Rome and saw the devastation he was stricken with grief and composed a sad lament with lyre. He spent a huge amount of money to rebuild Rome and compensate the people who lost their homes and property. He was an artist and not much of a statesman, so they wrote horrible things about him decades after his death just like they did to Caligula. And unfortunately all the bad stuff stuck and ended up in the common pop culture. This is indeed sad and disturbing.

Now, enough of the intellectual content. Will Caligula die in my story, or will his 21st century lover do something to save him without messing up the timeline?
You will find out when I release the rest of the series!

I have noticed a lot of top trends in the erotica section of Kindle store. One of them is BBW getting the hot stud. However I haven't seen any stories involving the geek girls getting the hot guys. Why not? There is a market for it in the romance genre, most definitely. I have seen one author who has dozens of books published about geek girls getting the hot studs, Greek gods, etc. She is traditionally published and looks like her books are selling like hot cakes. Why aren't people writing this in the erotica genre?

Well, I did. In my story the geek girl travels back in time, to ancient Roman Empire, and hooks up with the smoking hot emperor. She will do some badass stuff in the next installments.

Grab your copy while it's still fere, here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VL8KT6U

This came as a very nice surprise. I didn't expect it to rank that high to be honest. I know it's a good story and something totally new and original, a story with so much more than just sex, but I didn't expect it to rank #34 in the entire historical erotica category amongst some 3200 odd ebooks.

It's ranking #15,009 Free in Kindle Store. This is great news. I'm humbled. I hope to hear back from the people who read it!