Happy Saturday! I have joined a 2023 Sewing Room De-Clutter challenge and now there is a little more space in my sewing room. Unfortunately, all that stuff that I am going to throw away, donate or sell is now cluttering up the rest of my apartment. Oy! Hopefully it will all be gone by the end of January. Maybe. We’ll see. 🙂
Don’t worry, even though I am spending 20-30 minutes a day in my sewing room I am still working on Lobo’s Mate. It is supposed to be a VERY short story, but that darned Lobo keeps complicating things. Gen is more than ready to move past kisses but they are on the road and their circumstances aren’t very comfortable so he wants to wait until they reach the den in Kearney. Sheesh. Quit being such a gentleman and make a move, you moron.
Here it is, seven days into the new year and I haven’t read at all. I have several books waiting on my kindle, but between working, the de-clutter challenge, knitting to finish late Christmas gifts, and writing, I haven’t had time to read. I hope you have many lovely books to dive into this year.
This is the time of year when we traditionally reflect on the past year and list our hopes for the new year. Seems like Every Single Year for the past few years I predicted it would be better than last year. Man, I suck as a prophet!
2022 started out great for me. I had beat the colorectal cancer and had written a big chunk of a new fantasy romance called The Storm King. But in June I had a routine scan (routine being that I had moved for quarterly scans to scans every six months) and a spot was found on my liver. I had a biopsy that confirmed it was cancer and then in July I had ablation. That is where they shot microwaves into the spot on my liver to cook it dead. (sounds fun, right?) In September it looked like that was was successful. A few weeks ago I went for my regular routine scans (I am back to scans every three months) and things look good. There is a spot they want to keep watch on, but it has not grown in the past 6 months, so they don’t think we need to do anything about it unless it starts to grow. So watch and wait, with scans scheduled for March 2023. Right now I am stage 4 with mets (metastatic cancer) to liver. But there is nothing that needs treatment right now so maybe this is the end of it. Maybe not. Time will tell. I feel pretty good.
In late October my baby brother Rob died of a heart attack. He was way too young. Here he is last Christmas. I never even knew that he was proud of me being an author. I did know until I met some of his co-workers at his funeral and they told me that he bragged on me to them all the time. He wasn’t a perfect guy by any means but he had a big heart and I miss him.
So. 2023. What are my plans for the next year? I am going to try to ENJOY myself more. Stress about the day job less. Knit more. Make a Mood Blanket. Take days off work for the fun of it instead of only taking time for medical stuff. Finish the little short story Lobo’s Mate. Finish writing The Storm King and The Fire Prince. Start The Ice Lord. Read for the fun of it. Have more fun.Life is too short to not enjoy it!
I wish you all the very best 2023! I won’t predict it will be better than 2022, since that seems to be a curse. 😉 But I hope we all find less stress and more fun in the new year.
If his eyes were blue and the tattoo was a wolf with a long stemmed rose in his paws, this would be Sky. Maybe. OK, not really, but I like the image!
2022 has been another challenging year. But let’s not worry about that now. This weekend I am going to relax and enjoy Christmas. Due to the nasty roads I am not having family come for Christmas. That means all those cookies I made will have to be eaten by me. Sad day. LOL
I am working on a short free read called Lobo’s Mate. Do you remember Shadow’s cousin Laura the Lobo? The loner wolf whose best friend was his Beagle? I am about 2/3 done with it. This story is just a little gift for my readers. It will not be professionally edited or formatted, and it is definitely not a good place for someone new to the series to start. The expectation is that the reader will be familiar with the world so I don’t have to explain the plane crash and how society has changed since the Times Before. I had fully expected it to be done in time to post for Christmas day. But remember how I said 2022 had been a challenging year? Well, the cancer is back and has spread. My baby brother died of a heart attack. His fiancée caused a lot of trouble for us, his siblings. So I did not get the story done in time for Christmas. I am so sorry for that. I will post a chapter a week, and then when it is completed I will send out the whole thing in my newsletter in a format that you can download to your kindle, kobo or nook.
Hello, everyone! Last weekend I attended the Annual Reader & Author Get Together. I have attended that convention every year since 2011, except for 2020 and 2021. So this was the first time in a few years. I had a blast. It was so good seeing people.
Some highlights for me was the raffles. All the money raised went to Cancer Free Kids. In less than 30 hours the raffles won a total of $44,086!!! Isn’t that awesome? I made the T-shirt quilt to raffle off and that was won by one of the hardworking volunteers. And I won a basket too! A coffee lover’s basket. See? One of my favorite things in the basket was the cup. 🙂 There were several books and you will see some of those in an upcoming newsletter giveaway.
Another thing I enjoyed was the book signing. Being a shy introvert, I am always nervous about signings. But at Lori Foster’s con it is pretty easy because everyone is so nice. And it helped that I had a team of helpers to carry my books and swag, fetch me water, help me with making change and putting ‘signed by the author’ stickers on the books I sold. Huge kudos to these gals! Christine, Jessica and Alyssa are the best.
My table at the signingChristine, me, Jessica, and Alyssa
I came home with a a lot of swag. I won blackout bingo hosted by Brian Feehan. His mother, Christine Feehan, was unable to attend but she still provided a bunch of raffle baskets, sponsored a meal, and sent prizes for bingo. I won and so did a friend, Jessica Bowes. The grand prize was a lovely big bag stuffed with great swag. Jessica and I split it. I think we were both happy with the results.
So I came home with a bunch of great stuff that I plan to share in an upcoming newsletter giveaway. I also came home with Covid. I think it is a pretty light case, but all the fun things I planned to do this week on my vacation have been put on hold while I take multiple naps and read some of the books I got at RAGT. I hope to get a newsletter sent out during the last week of June with links to enter the Books & Swag Giveaway.
I hope you all are doing well and having a great summer, or winter, for those of you on that side of the world, and finding time to enjoy a few books.
I have been busy with all kinds of things these past few months. I have been knitting, spinning, and quilting as well as reading and writing. And of course, I’ve been working the day job. I can’t wait to retire! But that’s still a bunch of years away. Sigh…
I am working my way through Ruby Dixon’s backlist. It is extensive so it is taking some time. If you haven’t ready Ruby Dixon I recommend her. Her heroes are frequently rough and even brutal but never, ever to the heroine. To their ladies, they are big protective teddy bears. Someone once told me she thought I was like Ruby Dixon. That is a huge compliment to me. I’m also enjoying Ann Aguirre, Michelle Diener, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, and Emma Hamm.
My next big thing coming up is Lori Foster’s Annual Reader & Author Get Together. It takes place near Cincinnati, Ohio in a few weeks. The book signings are open to the public. I will be signing on Saturday June 11 from 3:00-5:00pm. If you are in that area I would LOVE to meet you! For the location, click the link above.
One thing they always do at the RAGT is a wonderful raffle. SO MANY people donate terrific raffle baskets. The proceeds go to Cancer Free kids. You can imagine that as a Stage 3 cancer survivor, I am all on board with donating to this wonderful cause. My cancer treatments were challenging. It was a year of pain and exhaustion. I honestly did not know if I would live to beat cancer. Really, can you say Not Fun? I cannot imagine going through that as a child, or what a horrible thing it would be for the parents of a young cancer patient. I plan to buy LOTS of raffle tickets. I would love to win something, but knowing the money goes to helping juvenile cancer patients is well worth it. And I decided to donate something too. I took old T-shirts from the event and made them into a quilt. I sent it off to be professionally quilted and I chose the Hearts and Cancer Ribbons quilting pattern. I thought it was appropriate. I just need to add the binding. What do you think? I hope this raffle quilt will raise a bunch of money for Cancer Free Kids.
The Reader’s Quilt for RAGT22
Writing News!!
You may know that I am working on the first book in a fantasy romance trilogy called The Lords or Erabir. I’d decided to write it in first person from the heroine’s point of view. I was all excited and writing along very speedily for the first 30,000 words. Then… Well, I don’t know what happened. I started to be a little dissatisfied with it. I forced myself to keep going, but it was hard. I brought it to my local critique group and we discussed it. Some of them suggested that maybe first person wasn’t for me. I was stubborn though. I already had 30K words! I didn’t even want to THINK of re-writing so much. So I kept plowing on, but it became harder and harder and slower and slower. Finally, at 50,000 words I admitted defeat. 1st person just isn’t for me. Two months ago I began my re-write.
I am happy to report that I am back on track. I still have 2300 words to review and re-write and then I will be writing fresh stuff. At 57,000 words I am about 3/4 done with the first draft. It feels good to be back on track. I have added three scenes from the hero’s point of view. I think that is one of the things I was missing in 1st person. In all my other books I have several scenes from the hero’s point of view. It lets the reader know what the hero is thinking and how he feels about his lady.
So, that is my update! I hope everyone is enjoying a lovely May. Wishing you all many lovely hours of summer reading!
In America the fourth Thursday in November is set aside as Thanksgiving Day. That is today! I am thankful for so much. It sounds kinda corny, but I am thankful for you, the people who read my books. Thank you for reading my books, for leaving reviews, for recommending my books to your friends, for leaving comments. I know I am not the Great American Novelist. I write stories because 1) I love to write. And 2) because I want people to be able to find an escape from life for a few hours. Life kinda sucks sometimes, right? If someone reads one of my books and has a few hours of relaxation and fun, then my job as an author is complete.
So THANK YOU! I know this time of the year gets pretty crazy, but try to find a couple of hours to grab a good book and relax.
I can’t believe tomorrow is Halloween! I know it is a favorite holiday for a lot of us, including Glory Peterson Wolfe, the heroine from Wolf’s Glory. I have a treat for you: a little peek at Shadow and Glory a year after their book ends. Read on!
Glory folded her arms, considering the exterior of the small house her mate had built for her. It was painted white, with a wide porch of natural wood on three sides, and a chimney made of native Black Hills stone climbing the fourth. A wisp of smoke rising from the chimney showed white in the sapphire blue of the late afternoon sky. Glory stepped back a few yards, looking at the postcard-perfect view of the house against the reds and golds of the autumn foliage. It was cute.
Glory didn’t do cute. How could she turn cute into scary? Halloween was only a few weeks away. Except for last year, she’d always gone all out decorating for her favorite holiday. Last year … Well, last year she’d been too busy to do anything for Halloween. Between surviving a plane crash, meeting and marrying a hunky werewolf, and finding out she’d gone forward to a time after Armageddon, she’d completely lost track of the days.
But this year would be different. Glory put her hands on her hips, strolling from one end of the house to the other, considering where the spider webs would look most effective.
“Sunshine.”
At the scolding sound of her hunky werewolf’s voice, Glory turned to see him walking toward her from his mother’s house a hundred yards away. Shadow was, as always, all but naked in just moccasins and a breechcloth. His hair, black and thick and heavy, hung down his back to his butt, leaving his broad, beautifully muscled chest bare. At six feet and six inches tall, he was the only man who made Glory feel petite. Hell, he was six inches taller than she was, and almost outweighed her. The fierce Lakota Wolf Clan warrior, who was a terrifying sight in battle, tenderly cradled a pink and blue bundle in one arm.
“Sunshine,” he scolded again. “You are supposed to be lying down, resting.”
“Quit being so bossy. I just wanted to think about how to decorate for Halloween.” She lifted her face for his kiss and twitched the edge of the baby blanket aside to peek at their daughter’s face. “Hey, there, little Miss Vicki,” she cooed.
“Sh, she’s sleeping.” Shadow hooked his free arm around her waist and towed her up the steps of the porch into their house. “I thought you wanted to call her Victoria.”
“Well, yeah.” Glory watched him set the baby down in her cradle with as much care as if the afghan Lisa Madison had made was wrapped around nitroglycerin. “Victoria for my grandmother, Jillian for Jill, and Tara for your mom. But Victoria Jillian Tara Wolfe is a big mouthful for such a little thing.”
Not that Vicki had felt that little while she was being born. The books in Kearney’s library talked about the joy and beauty of childbirth. They were lucky she wasn’t allowed to burn them. Joy and beauty, her ass. Still, Glory didn’t remember the pain nearly as vividly she remembered the expression on Shadow’s face: terror and joy and awe, all mixed together, as he held the screaming scrap of humanity that was his daughter in his big hands. Glory wished cameras still existed. She never wanted to forget that sight or that moment in time.
“Hm … I wonder what she should be for Halloween? I think I could put together a little witch costume. Do you think we could get a pointy hat to stay on her head?”
“Sunshine, she’s only five weeks old.”
Glory reluctantly agreed. “She’s too young this year, but soon she’ll be going all around the neighborhood Trick or Treating, going to parties, playing with the boys …”
“PLAY—” Almost too late, Shadow remembered to keep his voice low. “Playing with boys?” he hissed, his eyes taking on that weird werewolf glow.
“Uh-huh. You know, Chase and Raven and Matt.”
His eyes went back to normal. “Oh, her cousins, you mean.”
Glory hid a grimace. Their daughter was going to have a hell of a time finding a boy brave enough to date her. That was years away, though, and Glory’s thoughts were on something in the present. She watched her mate put another log on the fire, admiring the way the muscles in his back bunched and smoothed as he moved. Her mate was mouthwateringly sexy. “For this year, I have the perfect costumes for us.”
He turned in a flare of hair, eyes wide in apprehension. “I don’t wear costumes,” he warned her.
“Good,” she purred. “I like you naked best. I thought I could be Little Red Riding Hood and you could be the Big Bad Wolf.” She let her fingers comb through his hair, smooth down his chest to the knot of the cord that held his breechcloth up. “But I don’t have a costume, so I guess we’ll just have to pretend. If I took off my clothes, could you pretend to take a red cloak off me?”
He swallowed hard. “Sunshine, is it too soon? It’s only been a few weeks.”
“Almost six weeks. Jill says everything has healed up just fine after the birth.” She succeeded in loosening his breechcloth. It dropped, showing that though his words were reluctant, his body wasn’t. She took him in her hand, loving the heat and the weight of him. “I’ve missed you, Big Guy.”
His teeth caught her earlobe. “I’ve missed you, Sunshine. I’ll go slow, I promise.”
“Go as fast as you want, but remember the baby’s sleeping. Don’t roar and howl at the end like you always do.”
“Me?” He let go of her ear to give her a wolfish grin. “Who is it that screams my name when she comes?”
She faked a scowl. “I’m not anywhere near as loud as you.”
Shadow lifted her lightly into his arms and shouldered his way into their bedroom. “We’ll see,” he threatened.
Glory surrendered to his hands and mouth. This was a contest she could live with. And if she lost, well, she could live with that too.
Twenty minutes after their bedroom door closed, a roar and a scream woke the baby. In the cradle her grandfather had carved for her, Victoria blinked startled blue eyes, shoved a tiny fist into her mouth and fell back asleep.
Are you like me? Even though my TBR (To Be Read) pile is sky high I still like to go back and re-read old favorites. Sometimes I don’t even read the whole book. I just go to my favorite scenes and re-read just those few pages. Since a lot of my old favorites are in paperback, this is easy. The book falls open to my favorite spots automatically. I love my kindle, but sometimes I like the comfort of holding a book in my hand while I revisit old friends. I don’t want to give you spoilers, but some of my favorite scenes that I re-read are from books by Sally Watson and Laura London, Ilona Andrews and Grace Draven, Wen Spencer and Steve Miller and Sharon Lee.
Occasionally I will come across a favorite scene in my of my own books. I thought I would share this one with you. It is from Victoria’s Cat, near the end when Vic has to introduce her new husband to her father.
One week later, the train, which had been retrieved from where the Kansas-Missouri troops had abandoned it, pulled into the Kearney station. Victoria stared out the window.
“I think every single person in Kearney is here. And more than half the Clan,” she added. Torn between joy at seeing her family, and terror at seeing her family, she swallowed. “Oh, no. There’s dad.”
Marty leaned over to look out the window. “Is he really angry, or does he always look like that?”
“Well, he just looks like that.” It wasn’t quite a lie. He did just look like that when he was ready to tear someone’s head off. “Oh, look, there’s mom.”
There were twelve of her cousins on the car with them, all of them waving madly at friends and family on the platform. Victoria waited for them to disembark first. They didn’t. She made shooing gestures at them. “Go ahead,” she ordered them. “Get off the train and be sure it’s safe like you always do.”
Eagle flashed her a wolfish smile, all bright teeth. “Oh, with dad and the rest of the Clan out there, it’s safe. We’ll wait until you’re done getting yelled a— er, hugged by mom and dad. We’ll just stay here where it’s safe and watch.”
Marty stood up, favoring his hip only slightly. “We’d better go face the music, Vic.”
He stepped off the train first and turned to steady her. Silence fell as a path opened between them and her parents. She saw other members of the Clan standing a short distance away, silently watching their Alpha. Her father, Wolf’s Shadow, Alpha of the Lakota Wolf Clan, jabbed a finger at Marty.
“You,” he bellowed. “You are the man who married my daughter, even though I ordered you to stay away from her.”
“Yes,” Marty began, but her father cut him off with an outthrust arm.
“She was stolen from you.”
“Yes,” Marty tried again. Her father glowered and raised his already considerable volume.
Well, I am cutting it off there. I don’t want to spoil it completely. I hope everyone has a fantastic week with lots of good reading material to keep you sane. 🙂
What a long, hot summer it has been! It was the second hottest summer on record in my neck of the woods, here in Fargo, North Dakota, USA. It cooled down nicely in the past week, although Sunday is expected to be 93 (about 33 or 34 Celsius). Of course, some of you are probably welcoming spring about now.
Little Miss Dottie, 12 weeks old
I have kept myself very busy during this long hot summer. The day job has been (as always!) stressful. I did write quite a lot for the first half of the summer, and that was fun. The second half found me buried under other stuff. Like playing with Little Miss Dottie, my new kitten. That should be fun, but I am her favorite chew toy, so… But what is not at all fun is cleaning out my mom’s house to get it ready to put it on the market. Man, my mom was *this close* to being a hoarder. The realtor’s photographer is coming on Wednesday 9/22/21 to do pictures and that is the day it is officially for sale. So tomorrow I go once again to do some final cleaning. You know, washing windows, scrubbing the registers and switch plates, etc. Part of me hates to see it go. My family lived in that house for 45 years! But it will also be good to have it gone. Then I will be able to get back to a more productive writing schedule!
So… Writing news. I am about 2/3 done with the rough draft for The Storm King. My goal was to have the rough draft done by September 1. Yeah. Not so much. To get myself back into it, I am going through the rough draft chapter by chapter and doing some self editing. I thought I would share the first three chapters with you here. This is still very rough but I hope you will enjoy it.
The Storm King, the Lords of Erebir, Book 1
Jerriel of Erabir is a warrior king who was captured by his enemies when he was a teenager and made their slave. The enemy governor’s daughter fell in love with him and helped him escape. He swore to come back with his father’s army to avenge himself and to take her home to be his wife. Now, ten years later, he has conquered his enemy, city by city, and has taken brutal revenge on those who enslaved him. All that is left for him to do is find his Lady Valdis and live happily ever after.
But Ashley Johnson is not Valdis. She is an older-than-average college student who used to write dreamy romances to while away her time in the treatment rooms at the cancer center. She never finished the story of Jerriel and Valdis, but now that she has somehow been dropped in the middle of the world she created when she was sixteen, she’s going to find out how it ends.
This Jerriel is nothing like the sweet teenager she made up. She is not the beautiful noblewoman she wrote about. Can they each learn to love the true self of the other?
Chapter One
I was so close. After way too many years I was almost done with school. I let out a breath and closed my laptop before looking across the table at my roommate who was also my best friend. “Maya, I am finally going to get my degree.”
The sound of the coffee grinder at the other end of the coffee shop almost drowned out my words, but Maya looked over the top of her own laptop and smiled. “Yeah, you are. It’s been a long, hard road, but you are almost there, and you’ve fought like heck for it. You deserve it.”
Tears stung my eyes. It had been a long, hard road. I hadn’t graduated from high school until I was nineteen, hadn’t started at the university until I was twenty, and now would be getting my BA at twenty-five. At the same age, Maya was working on her doctorate.
“I’m a little old to be getting my first degree.”
My best friend blew a raspberry. “Ashley, you’re not old. There’s a woman in one of my classes who must be pushing sixty. I think you are amazing. Consider what you went through. A lot of people would never have gotten this far.”
I glanced away, pretending to check out the coffee shop. I didn’t want to think about ‘what I went through’. Keeping up with my schoolwork after being diagnosed with ALL—Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia—at fifteen had been impossible. My normal had gone from giggling with Maya about nail polish, hairstyles, and boys to chemotherapy infusions, baldness, and bone crushing pain.
Maya pointed a finger at me, its perfectly rounded nail painted a glaring purple. “I know what you are thinking. But that is done. You are cured. Your hair is halfway down your back—it is gorgeous, by the way, you witch, so thick and glossy, like polished walnut—and you are about to have your B.A.”
I had to laugh. My hair was medium brown, boring brown, and I usually wore it in a high ponytail that brushed my back a few inches below my shoulders. All the weight I’d lost during my fight with leukemia was back. Sadly, it had all taken up residence in my midsection. I was just a little over five three, and my legs were long and slim compared to my poochy belly. My eyes were brown, too, but I liked to thing they were a pretty shade of brown, almost golden brown, with a slight tilt at the outer corners. They were the only beautiful thing about me. Maya, on the other hand, was a tall blonde with sky blue eyes and a slender, hourglass figure. She looked like a bimbo, but her mind was brilliant. She was getting a PhD in chemistry. I was pretty sure bimbos had no interest in being chemists. Only the fact that she was the best friend anyone could ever have prevented rabid jealousy from blackening my heart. At sixteen, when most girls spent an hour every morning getting their hair ready for school, Maya had shaved her beautiful blond hair off to give me moral support when my hair fell out in clumps from chemo. See? Best friend ever.
First, a little bit of news. I am still working on The Storm King and hope to put out a little teaser in a few weeks. I’ve had a terrible cold for the past two weeks. It was so bad that I had to take some time off from work. I even had a Covid test, just to be sure. It was negative. But I went several days without writing a word. I am back to it now, and the manuscript is at 38383 words, but that break put me back from my expected first draft deadline of September 4. Also, my nephew and his family are coming into town tonight and I hope to spend some time with them this weekend. I haven’t seen them since my mom’s funeral two years ago. The next weekend my cousin and his family are coming up from Milwaukee. So I will lose some writing time, but it is so nice to see people I don’t get to see very often.
My next bit of news is about my new furbaby. Her name is Dottie. She is about 6 weeks old now. A friend rescued her and her motherless siblings when they were maybe a week old. I kinda fell in love with her pictures and today Callie brought her home to me!
I hope you are enjoying summer (unless you are on the other side of the world. Then I hope you are enjoying winter) with lots of good reading and no covid!
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