Deck The Halls Giveaway!

Deck the Halls Giveaway

Okay, so it’s no secret I love the holidays. This time of year definitely rivals all the others in terms of my affections, and to celebrate appropriately, I am announcing a massive giveaway! Between now and December 15, 2010 at 12:00PM CST, two participants will have the chance to win a signed trade-paperback copy of Ripples Through Time. Three runner-ups will win a free e-copy of Firsts.

To enter:

1) Follow my blog and comment on this post with your name

OR

2) Follow me on Twitter (and let me know you want to be entered in the contest).

AND IF YOU LIKE…

3) Do both! It is NOT necessary to be eligible, but it’ll get you a second entry.

If you already follow me on Twitter, I have no intention of leaving you out. Just RT one of my contest reminders, and it’ll give you a second entry. That being said, only two entries possible. I’ll love you if you RT my contest reminders more than once, but it won’t increase your chances.

Due to the fact that I am quite poor, I am restricting the Ripples Through Time paperback recipients to US only. However, anyone in any region is eligible to win a free e-copy of Firsts.!

So spread the word! Tis the season!

Insert Working Title Here

My good friend and colleague Madelyn Ford has posted two wonderful pieces on pre-editing. They can be found here and here.

A little over a week has passed since submitting Lost Wages of Sin (Book #1 in the Hellfire Series) to Samhain. I hate this part, which is no surprise since I'm no good at it. I've already bemoaned the fact to my crit partners and friends, but patience is definitely not my virtue. In the meantime, I have started working again on "Blackout" and hope to have it complete - or at least somewhere near complete - by the end of the year. I'm doing my best not to start work on the second Hellfire book until I receive word on the fate of the first. In the meantime, I have two active WIPs and a handful of other ideas to keep me occupied.

Likewise, I believe I’ll start writing short Dante/Ava stories once the fate of Lost Wages of Sin has been decided. Hopefully, readers will fall in love with them as I did.

I've also decided to compile a list of my current favorite books and their authors.

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Recommended Reading

Book: Dead, Undead, or Somewhere in Between
Author: JA Saare
Buy Link: http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781770650145
Author's Website: http://www.jasaare.com/
Reason: The author’s voice and wit, her characters, and the OMG! ness of the end. Ms. Saare creates such vivid worlds and fills them with real people. She is likewise not afraid to push boundaries and comfort zones. There aren’t enough words for how much I love this book.
My full review here.

Book: Lucifer’s Daughter
Author: Eve Langlais
Buy Link: http://www.liquidsilverbooks.com/books/lucifersdaughter.htm
Author's Website: http://www.evelanglais.com/
Reason: Creativity, characters, and voice. Also, Satan’s parenting skills are hi-larious. This book definitely works as a standalone, but from the way it left off, I’m anticipating another…highly anticipating. I’ve also put this author on my TBR list, and from the looks of things, I have a lot of catching up to do.
My full review here.

Book: Coercion
Author: Lux Zakari
Buy Link: http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_12&products_id=315
Author's Website: http://luxzakari.com/
Reason: This novel is an emotional rollercoaster with an ending that I began praying for halfway through. The unexpected happy ending. Ms. Zakari killed me over and over again, and though there were definite assholes and general people you didn’t like in the story, no one came across as two-dimensional. I could fully sympathize with every character.
My full review here.

Book: 666 Angel Lane
Author: Lori Green
Buy Link: http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=3_31&products_id=300
Author's Website: http://twooldfartstalkingromance.blogspot.com/
Reason: This book made me laugh and cry, not to mention kept me on the edge of my seat. How can you turn a reality-TV program into a battle between life-and-death, good-and-evil, heaven-and-hell? Read and see. You will not regret it.

Book: Down in Flames
Author: Sarah Ballance
Buy Link: https://www.nobleromance.com/ItemDisplay.aspx?i=136
Author's Website: http://www.sarahballance.com/index.html
Reason: Just the WOW factor. Brand new author with an emotionally rich story and vivid characters. She’s gotten her second contract, and it’s not hard to see why.

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The Top of My Constantly-Growing TBR List

Book: My Avenging Angel
Author: Madelyn Ford
Buy Link: http://www.samhainpublishing.com/romance/my-avenging-angel
Author's Website: www.madelynford.com/

Book: Betrayal: The Awakening
Author: Angela Steed
Buy Link: http://www.bookstrand.com/betrayal-the-awakening
Author's Website: http://www.angelasteed.com/

Book: Surrender to Sanctuary
Author: Leah St. James
Buy Link: http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=surrender+to+sanctuary
Author's Website: http://www.leahstjames.com/

Book: Damaged Cowboys
Author: Stacey Espino
Buy Link: http://www.bookstrand.com/damaged-cowboys
Author's Website: www.staceyespino.com/

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What is everyone else reading? Any recommendations?

Status report

Well, I had a very good weekend, but it wasn't particularly restful. My best friend of 10 years and I ventured to Washington DC for Jon Stewart's March To Restore Sanity. The actual rally was too packed to watch, but I got to hear Ozzy play a bit of "Crazy Train" and listen to good parts of Stewart and Colbert's talks and banter. Whatever I missed will be covered by TiVo.

In the meantime, my friend and crit-partner, Jaime Saare, finished reading "Lost Wages of Sin," and I've both completed and edited my synopsis. I plan now to reread at least the first five chapters, but otherwise start preparing for submission. I've also begun plotting the next book in this series. I just can't help myself.

Today is my blogger day at Romancing the Muses. My topic: Stealing The Show: Writing People v. Writing Characters. Hope to see you there!

Another one bites the dust...

Lost Wages of Sin

Erotic Paranormal Romance



This is now complete! I've sent it to my CPs and will begin piecing together blurbs and synopses to send off.

Definitely the first in a series, that will be at least eight books long. I'm so freaking stoked.

I'll blog updates on what becomes of it now.

Small victories

Well, I'm over the 50k mark. I have still a chapter and an epilogue to write. At the very least, I made my word-count goal. I'm hoping I'll have that complete by tonight, but tomorrow is a tad more realistic.

I haven't given any thought to blurbs or synopses in months. Granted, I'm not going to send it anywhere until my crit partners have looked at it. I'm also going to let my husband read it, which is a huge step for me. While he knows the nature of my writing, I've never been brave enough to let him read it. He keeps asking about it, though, because he knows how excited I get toward the end of a project and he seems interested about the premise.

Anyway, right now I'm aiming for Samhain, though I think I'll submit to Liquid Silver and Ellora's Cave (this just for kicks...it has plenty of descriptive sex, but not enough to get in-house, I think).

More later.

I haven't finished a WIP in a while, but I'm now within 3k of my 50k goal on Lost Wages of Sin. I have roughly a chapter and a half left to complete before I send it off to my CP's and start seriously thinking about where to submit it.

Lost Wages of Sin


I'm so excited!

Vampires and Demons and Shifters, Oh My!

A part of me likes to believe I was into the whole "vampire" thing long before it became popular. A friend of mine sent me the first three books of the Sookie Stackhouse series before anyone had heard the term “True Blood,” and I devoured them before patiently waiting for the next one’s release. I had never really been one to purchase romance novels before then, and actually hadn’t imagined legitimate, royalty-paying publications printing the sort of raw, explicit, sexy material I enjoy reading. I first encountered erotica through the art of fan-fiction, and naively believed the realm of explicit fiction solely reserved for the Internet. It makes sense now, of course, years and many, many, many books later that the phrase “sex sells” applies to all media. Of course, I knew about romance novels, but I hadn’t thought the sexual encounters would be anything more than clever allusions to the act itself. And while this has been the case with a handful of authors, this misconception was at the blame of my own obliviousness until I started reading.

I’ve been a huge vampire buff for about ten years now, therefore I began devouring every vampire romance I could get my hands on. After Sookie Stackhouse, it was Lynsay Sands, Christine Feehan, Amanda Ashley, and Sherrilyn Kenyon. I’d spend hours in a bookstore, buying more novels than I could read. Even today, I have a healthy collection of books I haven’t cracked open. I tell myself I’ll get there eventually, but the stack keeps growing by the year. Point being, I loved a good paranormal. I’d read werewolves and demons on occasion, but vampires were my poison. It was actually around the time Twilight took the world by storm that my interest in the paranormal at last began to wane.

I’m not talking in terms of writing. I’ve written paranormal romance for so long that writing anything else seems strange and unpredictable to me. My world might change from project to project, but some staples remain the same. Yet over the past year, my reading library has expanded from strictly paranormal to mostly contemporary, with perhaps a paranormal title thrown in there out of habit. I likewise have entertained more contemporary ideas (one I’m very excited about) and even more I will likely never get around to writing. Still, when it comes to the sort of stories that motivate me in terms of creativity, it has monsters…more than likely vampires.

My current project is no exception. The main world-focus contains angels and demons, which is something I’ve never touched, but my hero is a vampire. This world will likely be expanded in further series, as I’ve fallen in love with the premise and have enough side-characters that their story, including Lucifer’s, will need to be told down the line. I plan to include shifters and other paranormal aspects the more it grows, but vampires have always been my first paranormal love, and paranormal heroes have always been my writing preference. There’s just something about a larger-than-life hero that gets my engine going.

Still, while my creativity seems to be led by the paranormal, I keep selecting contemporary romances for my bookshelf. I’ve published two to date, and have another in the works, and I do feel a sort of accomplishment upon drafting a new non-paranormal. I hope to expand my personal writings in that direction, as well.

At any rate, I definitely won’t be short for ideas anytime soon.