Tuesday Teaser 5/21/13 – Ellie and Quill

In the light of the rising sun, Ellie looked down at her folded hands, noticing the grime under the nails with resignation. Keeping clean while traveling on horseback was so hard. She glanced quickly at Quill’s hand where it rested on her knee and saw that it was amazingly clean. Perhaps all dirt disappeared when he transformed from wolf back to human? How unfair was that? But that wasn’t the topic of conversation.

“All I want is to never be far away from my family ever again. I loved Neal, but we argued about moving so far away from everyone and everything we knew.” She drew a deep trembling breath. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but when he died and left us alone I was angry with him. So angry.”

“I will always protect you.” The sun had peeked over the horizon and shot rosy golden rays to gleam in Quill’s tawny curls. He ducked his head to look deeply into her eyes. “The entire Clan is your family now, and they will care for you and Connor and Tommy. You’ll never be alone again.”

His words made her dream come true. Greatly daring, she put a hand on the back of his neck to pull him down to her lips. His eyes widened. She felt his heart thundering against her breast. She closed her eyes and kissed him. She had meant to give him a quick peck of gratitude, but when he sighed against her lips she couldn’t help but open her mouth to catch his breath. She forgot her teeth needed brushing and her hair was tangled mess and her clothes were crumpled and dew damp. He smelled so good and his body was so warm against her she forgot everything but the taste of his mouth when she slid her tongue over his.

Tuesday Teaser 4/30/13-Wolf’s Prize

Today I’ll be working on revisions for Wolf’s Prize. I’m really happy with it. Here’s a tiny tidbit for you.

     Quill lifted his head to look down at her and her breasts protested the absence of his mouth. “Better stop,” he said in a rough tone.

     “Stop?” Ellie echoed, drowning in the desperate heat he roused in her.

     It was too dark to make out his expression, but she could see him nod. “I’m not going to take advantage of you.”

     She almost cried, “Why not?” before swallowing the words unspoken. He had agreed to wait for their wedding night, and the darned honorable man was going to keep his promise. That should have made her happy, right? Right?

Tuesday Truth: 4/23/13 Wolf’s Prize

The rough draft  of After the Crash Book 5 Wolf’s Prize is done!

Mind you that is only the first step in getting the book completed. I need to:

1. Go back and do some revisions. There’s a fairly lengthy scene I want to add, and some details I need to remove, and a plot point I need to play up a bit more. I may do some re-writing of the last few pages.

2. But before I do all that I want the story to sit for a few days so I can come at it fresh.

3. Revisions should take about a week.

4. Then it gets sent to the beta readers for them to read it and let me know if it works forthem or if there are some scenes or dialogue that needs work.

5. I take all the commetns and suggestions into consideration and do a final revision.

6. Submit to the publisher.

After that is a whole nother sent of revisions, then editing, then line editing, then Release Date.  Geez, it’s like giving birth!

Character Creation Winner!

The commenter whose name was drawn was …

JODER!!

Congrats! I have sent an email and character sketch form to her. Thank you to everyone who came along on the hop. It was fun and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

Love a Tree, Read an E-Book!

 

loveatree

Welcome to Maddy Barone’s stop on the Earth Day Bloghop from Just Romance Me! If you’ve fallen off the hop you can Click Here to get back on.

You can win tons of great prizes on this hop, like gift cards to your favorite online bookstore, free downloads of ebooks and more! Some of us are offering additional prizes to a commenter on our blogs.

I’m offering something a bit different this time: a character in the last book of my current series. My After the Crash series takes place in a future post-apocalyptic world where women are rare and werewolves are on the hunt for mates. You can find out more about the series by clicking the Books tab above. My winner will be able to craft a secondary character in Wolf’s Princess. This character will work in the house of ill repute Sky runs. The winner will decide what her name and appearance will be. Will she be working as a prostitute or a domestic? Young or old? Will she be loyal to Sky or betray him to his enemy? Will a wolf choose her for his mate? Will she accept or deny him? All that will be decided by the winner.

If you’d like a chance to craft a character just leave a comment on this blog post before 6pm central time on Sunday April 21. I will be drawing a name  at 7pm and will email the winner that night. As always, the folks who are on my newsletter list are automatically entered twice.  If you’d like, you can sign up here. 

Good luck and have fun!

 

 

Author Swag for the Annual Reader & Author Get Together

swag

One of the fun things about reader conventions is the swag the authors hand out, right? Bookmarks, Romance Trading Cards, magnets, sticky notepads, pens, key chains, emery boards, lip balm and… Oh, boy! NAIL POLISH!!!!!

     Yes, I ordered 60 bottles of custom nail polish for the Annual Reader & Author Get Together that Lori Foster and Duffy Brown put on every year near Cincinnati. Now, I couldn’t possibly afford to get 525 of these babies to go into the swag bags each attendee will receive, so I’ll be handing them out on Saturday June 8 at 11:20 in the Liquid Silver Books boardroom. My publisher is offering each of their attending authors a 20 minute meet & greet. I’m not above bribing people to attend! If you’ll be at the RAGT please come visit me on Saturday morning! Pick up a bottle of Carla Crimson, Lisa-Love, Shadow’s Sunshine, Quill’s Darling or one of the other luscious colors created just for me by Pam at Paintbox Polish on Etsy. She was  professional and so easy to work with that I can’t recommend her highly enough.

Tuesday Truth 4/16/13: Earth Day Blog Hop

It’s not at all unusual for North Dakota to get snow in April. In fact it happens more years than not. But I have to say, I think a foot and half is a bit much. Here in Fargo we got only 10.4 inches, which is still way too much. Spring will be coming eventually, though. We just have to be patient.

loveatree

Spring means … EARTH DAY! And what a better way to celebrate our wonderful planet than by giving the gift of ebooks? Save a Tree, Read an E-book!

The hop will be starting this Friday April 19 and going through the 21st. The grand prize will be a $75.00 gift card to the online book retailer of the winner’s choice,  with smaller amounts also being given. I am donating a free download of any of my books. And I’ll be offering something a little different. Check back at www.JustRomance.me  this weekend to find out what my special prize will be.

A Tidbit from Rose & Sky’s Story

I’m working hard on Quill and Ellie, and plan to have the rough draft done by April 20. But while I was washing dishes, a scene and a bit of dialogue between Rose and Sky came to me so I snuck an hour in on Wolf’s Princess. Here is a snip. Rose and Sky are at his place in Omaha.

Rose stamped her way up the stairs and into their room, wheeling on Sky when he slammed the door closed behind them. “Why did you do that?” she seethed.
His voice was almost frighteningly gentle. “Because he hurt you.”
“Barely. And so what?” She forced her fists onto her hips to better resist the urge to punch him. “I can take care of myself.”
His voice lost a fraction of the gentleness. “That’s my job. You belong to me.”
“Since when?” Kicking him was too tempting, so she flung herself to the other side of the room and spoke between clenched teeth. “I’m here for two months so you can court me. I don’t recall Taye giving you a bill of sale for me!”

Happy Anniversary To Me!

Well, it’s sort of an anniversary …

It was 3 years ago today that I decided to steel myself for rejection and submit Sleeping With the Wolf to a publisher. From January to March, 2010, I’d written one big story with both Carla and Lisa’s stories all mixed together, and sent chapters as I finished them to the gals at work as a type of gag gift. We were all tired from working overtime and it helped cheer us up. My friends (named purely coincidentally–cough, cough–Lisa and Carla) urged me repeatedly to send it to a publisher. I was flattered, and I have to admit I liked the idea of being a Published Author ™, but I resisted. I mean, only “real” writers submitted to publishers. But l I finally agreed just to get them off my back. When it was rejected they’d have to quit bugging me, right?

That was scary. What if the publisher didn’t like it? What if they did? It took me another 2 months to work up the nerve to chop it into two parts, one for Carla’s story and one for Lisa’s, polish it up and submit the first three chapters of Carla’s story per the publisher’s submission guidelines. I thought it was a cute story, not very serious, kinda cheesy and not remotely publishable. I pretty much expected a form rejection letter, so imagine my shock when they wrote back in only a few weeks, asking for the full manuscript. Yahoo!!!

But I still steeled myself for rejection. Just because they’d asked for the whole story didn’t mean they’d want to publish it. You see, I suffered what many would-be authors do: self doubt. I still struggle with that. I mean, I usually think I’m a decent writer, but not a great writer. But sometimes I can’t imagine why anyone would want to spend their book money and time on one of my stories.

In only a few more weeks Liquid Silver Books offered me a contract for Sleeping With the Wolf. It’s not unheard of for a first time submission to be accepted, but it’s not a general rule either. I was shocked, ecstatic and horrified, all at once. I signed the contract in July and it was published in November. From November 18, 2010 to December 31, 2012 I’ve sold about 6500 copies of Sleeping With the Wolf. That’s not a best seller in most places, but it’s pretty darned exciting for me.

That one gutsy decision altered my life SO QUICKLY. I thank God for it, and I thank my friends for their support. And I thank YOU, the readers. I used to write purely for the fun of it, and I was happy with that. But the feedback I’ve received from you has made me see that writing for myself is fun, but nowhere near as satisfying as writing for an appreciative reader. Thank you.

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