Move over Christmas...

It's time for someone else to take center stage.

Happy New Year Everyone! See you in 2011!

My apologies to the weather guys

I'm sorry. I take back everything I said early yesterday about how wrong you always are and how much you exaggerate snow storms in order to make people panic and force them out to the stores to boost the economy.

This time you were right.

Here's the upstairs deck - there's more than 15 inches of snow piled up against the door and it gets deeper after that. Nobody was kidding when they said this storm was going to be a bad one.

We're still waiting for the plows to come and plow us back in and so we can dig ourselves out again. I'm so glad nobody has to go anywhere today.

I really hate it when the weather guys are right about stuff like this.

Merry Christmas!

Have a Merry Christmas everyone! I hope Santa brought you all you asked for. I'll be relaxing on the couch today with my new Kindle.

What did Santa bring you?

New in Print!

Rihana has seen a lot in five years working as a psychic for the NYPD, but the murder of a freelance reporter makes her question if she really wants to continue her law enforcement career.


The dark vibe she gets from this case is nothing new, but the main suspect, sexy, enigmatic tattoo artist Heath, leaves her heightened senses burning. She can read him like a book—and she can see his innocence but she can’t prove it. His feral sexual thoughts make her insane with need and her desire for him jeopardizes her job and the investigation.

When she learns the truth about the man who can strip her soul bare with a glance, will she give up everything she knows to flee with him to a safer world? Or will she become a psychic killer in order to destroy a ruthless assassin and put an end to her lover’s exile?



 
SLITHER is now available in print - visit Ellora's Cave for more details!

The No-Brainer

One of the hazards of raising kids is having to answer all the tough questions they pose. If you've been on the receiving end of any of the golden classics like 'Where do babies come from?' or 'Why is the sky blue?' you know what I mean.

Kids are always putting us parents on the spot, so it's especially refreshing to be asked a question with an easy answer.

My son won the No-Brainer award tonight when he asked me this as we were in the car on the way to pick up my daughter from an after school club:

"Mom, if there was actually, physically, a zombie apocalypse, would you allow me to have a weapon and to kill zombies?"

Gotta love those easy ones.

"Of course," I said. "Not only would I allow it, I'd very likely insist upon it."

DS: "Good."

It's nice that he's thinking ahead. Getting all those pesky permission issues out of the way before the actual, physical zombie apocalypse hits. I'd hate to have to worry about it then.

Beat the rush!

Get it while it's hot - or maybe before... I was just browsing around over at Amazon.com and noticed that my January release from Samhain is available for PRE-ORDER!

I've never been available for pre-order before. It's so cool.

I asked Santa for a Kindle for Christmas, so if he brings it, I'll think I'll order Uncross my Heart ahead of time, just because I can!

Interview with a Gargoyle

Do you have any questions for the gargoyle?

I do, but they'll have to wait a while. I just signed a contract with Samhain for my full-length paranormal romance, Interview with a Gargoyle.*

Here's the blurb:

Darkness has ruled the life of Blake DeWitt for over a decade. Cursed to spend each day from dawn until dusk encased in the hideous form of a stone gargoyle, he’s reached a new level of desperation. A chance encounter with a dying demon puts cake decorator Melodie McConnell in possession of the key to Blake’s freedom, but only her death will break the curse. How far into darkness will he go to reclaim the light?

*Yes, the title is a play on Interview with a Vampire. And no, actually there's not really an interview involved in the story, but nevertheless, if you have anything you'd like to ask a hunky hero who turns into a gargoyle by day, just let me know and I'll pass it along.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a happy Turkey Day everyone. I'm off to the kitchen to start cooking. This year the feast is at my house, so I've got a lot to do. I may try to squeeze in some work on a new story later tonight, once I convince the kids that clean up is THEIR job.

This year, despite the economic downturn, I still have a lot to be thankful for. Good friends, family around me, a new home where I'm comfortable and secure, good health and moderate professional success.

May your day be full of love and good food and may all your holidays be happy ones.

Art shot

A peek through the trees at the Easton Tower in Paramus at Saddle River Park. This is from my two-hour walk last week. If I didn't have a massive head cold, I'd be walking today too. [Even though I should be writing]. I thought this picture would make a good 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

Is it just me...

...or do you think it's a bad idea for scientists to be teaching e. ecoli bacteria how to solve math puzzles?

This article caught my attention and scared a little bit of the crap out of me also. Apparently researchers can train e. coli [yeah, the really bad bacteria that you don't want to find in your hamburger or your spinach salad] to solve sudoku puzzles.

So as if it's not bad enough that e. coli is smart enough to get into food, now those of us who have trouble solving sudoku puzzles can feel inferior to a bacteria.

I'm on somebody's list

Amazon's list - that is - as of 7:25 PM EST today here is the Amazon Kindle Top 100 Paid Bestseller list, Romance Category:

1. Happily Ever After by Nora Roberts
2. Call Me Mrs. Miracle by Debbie Macomber
3. Cowgirls Don't Cry by Lorelei James
**4. The Matchmakers by Jennifer Colgan
5. Disintegration by Scott Nicholson
6.Whatever You Like by Maureen Smith
7. Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
8. Maggie's Mates by Bronwyn Green
9. Vampire Moon by J. R. Rain
10. The Perfect Christmas by Debbie Macomber
11. Trust Me on This by Jennifer Cruisie
12. Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich

Somebody pinch me. I'm on a list with La Nora, Jennifer Cruisie and Janet Evanovich? I must be dreamin'.

**Updated to note: The Matchmakers is holding steady at #2 on the Romance list now.
**And it was just kicked out of #2 by Disintegration by Scott Nicholson, I'm now at #3

Auspicious beginnings

When is a good day to start something new?

I ask because because I realized this weekend as I was gearing up to begin two new projects that I might have been putting off starting on them in order to wait for the 'right time'. You know how a lot of diets start on January 1st or on any given Monday? Some people wait for a full moon, or a new season to embark on a new path in life or an important journey and some people just jump in when the mood strikes.

Which one are you?

I tend to feel like the start of something new should coincide with something. I find I put thing off until other things occur. Usually it's a wait and see thing - let me see how Y goes before I start X. The day after this, I'll do that.

I'm not sure it's a good thing or a bad thing. Does giving a project or a life change or a journey of some kind an auspicious start help it along or is it just an excuse to put off until tomorrow [or a month from now or until the next new millenia] what you can and should be doing today?

I decided this time, I would toss the auspicious beginning out the window and just jump into a new project. So we'll see how it goes.

What about you?

A new record

Today marks the day that my contemporary novella, The Rebound Guy, hits the top of my personal best seller list.

Up until now that title has been held, believe it or not, by my very first published story [which is no longer in print at the moment]. The Rebound Guy is about friends who take the plunge and become lovers, taking the chance that their new relationship won't stand the test of time. It's my favorite type of love story and apparently, readers' too - because people seem to be snatching it up like hot cakes.

I'd love to hear from anyone who's read The Rebound Guy - tell me what made you buy it. Was it the hawt guy on the cover? Was it the blurb or the idea that the old 'we can't get together because it would ruin our friendship' song is just a lame excuse?

Talk to me, I know you're out there.

Mini NaNo word count

I wrote 12,559 words over the course of the weekend. Technically this tells me I could write a full novel in 20 days if given the right conditions [conditions which could never actually exist, but nevertheless, it is a remote possibility.]

The down side is only about 3,000 of those words actually stand a change of being published one day. Most of what I wrote involves a story I now realize I will likely never finish because it's just not interesting enough.

Are you NaNo'ing? If so, how's it going?

Smell Like A Monster

I was just surfing over to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and I saw they'd posted this video, which has to be the funniest thing I've seen since...well, since I saw the actual commercial.

Check it out.

MiniNaNoVaCay

That about sums up my weekend. I get a mini-vacation while DH and the kids tackle a gaming marathon at UberCon. I spent the week trying to decide if I wanted to go for a Spa Mini Vacation - where I take long walks, bubble baths, paint my toenails and sit with my feet up watching sappy movies, or if I wanted to do a Mini NaNo.

Let me tell you it was a tough decision. Being as November is NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month and so many of my writer friends are digging into their writer caves to turn out 50,000 words in 30 days, I figured it was fitting that do some NaNo'ing of my own. Last year my Mini NaNo produced Icarus Rising which is now available from Liquid Silver Books, and also a good portion of Icarus Unbound which will be coming soon from LSB. Those books have spawned two more, which are currently on my drawing table, but as much fun as Bernadette's world of flying hotties is, I felt like I needed a change, so I cooked up a contemporary plot and decided I'd throw myself into writing for the next couple of days while I don't have to do any cooking, laundry or ferrying of kids to or from school.

I have to say, it's still a hard decision to sit down and write non-stop for any length of time. The decision not to sit around and watch TV all weekend was easy - I have a hard time doing nothing, but it's been especially difficult for me lately to concentrate on writing [notice how I'm blogging now, btw, not writing fiction]. This weekend was supposed to be an experiment to see if my brain still worked well enough to put a decent amount of words on paper. I need to get in the zone...which has been disturbingly illusive lately.

I still don't know if I'm going to accomplish any real NaNo'ing this weekend [or should that be NoWri'ing?] We'll, either way I still plan to enjoy having the house to myself while DH and the kids battle gamer funk* and try to avoid catching Con Plague**.

I'll let you know how many words I actually do produce. Wish me luck and maybe next year I'll be telling you where you can pick up a copy of this year's MiniNaNoVaCay novella.

*Gamer Funk - the aroma of unwashed gamers who hardly eat and barely shower during a convention

** Con Plague - also known as Nerd Flu - the major head cold you get about a week after returning from a Convention

Speaking of years

The other day was Samhain Publishing's Fifth Birthday and that got me to thinking about how long I've been doing this writing stuff. It seems like I've always been a writer - since I was ten years old anyway and a school friend of mine and I decided to write our own soap opera. We created a cast of characters and gave them all complicated lives and problems. That was more than 30 years ago [yes, I'm that old] and we didn't follow the characters for very long, but I remember the creative process very well.

I'd like to say who would have thought then that I really would be a published author today, but I did think it at the time. Once I caught the writing bug, I dreamed of seeing my book on shelves, of doing book signings and appearing on talk shows to talk about how cool it is to be a full time writer.

Well, 30+ years later, I've seen my books in stores, and I've sat at a table and had people line up to have me sign copies of my books for them [it's just as much fun as I always imagined]. I've never been on a talk show, but I have been interviewed a number of times and that's cool too.

I've been published for five years, and oddly enough, I've been blogging for five years too - hard to believe I've managed to fill up my little corner of cyberspace with so much talk. It's been a long, often tedious journey and I know I still have a long way to go.

How about you? How long has your journey been? Where are you headed?

I'm Free!

Okay, well, I'm not free, but one of my books is.

From now until November 14, 2010, you can pick up the Kindle edition of The Matchmakers for absolutely FREE at Amazon.com.

Currently The Matchmakers is out-freeing the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lewis Carroll and Jane Austen, and it tops the Best Selling 100 Free Kindle Book list for Romance. My goal is to keep it there for the entire two weeks, so drop by Amazon and pick yourself up a copy of the The Matchmakers today!

Happy Birthday Samhain!

Today, Samhain Publishing turns five years old today and I'll be over at Samhain Cafe helping to celebrate by posting excerpts from all of my Samhain titles and my next release - Uncross My Heart.

Drop by the cafe and say hello!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/samhaincafe/?yguid=113644739

How often...

...do you beat yourself up?

Weird question, I know. I ask because I find I beat myself up a lot. And it's never a fair fight. Whenever I screw something up, which is quite often, I tend to take it to heart and question all of my abilities. What's wrong with me? How could I make that mistake? Why didn't I do this or that differently? Is everything I've done since also wrong in some way?


It's miserable and counterproductive, and yet I can't stop sometimes. I hate beating myself up, yet I often feel like I need to be beat up a little bit, to take my lumps because just picking myself up, dusting myself off and walking away from a mistake with my head held high seems so…arrogant. Shouldn’t we suffer at least a little humility when we make a mistake?

I have to admit I envy people who can let mistakes roll off them like water. They don't sweat it, they don't fret, they don't feel bad for a moment. They don't waste any time beating themselves up, no mental black eyes or bloody noses for them. They just move on – sometimes to the next mistake, but at least they're moving.

Meanwhile, I'm the one in the ring with the gloves on trying to knock myself out.

When you make a mistake, large or small, do you beat yourself up or let it roll off you and move on?

The play's the thing

I was in CVS on Saturday and just happened to peruse the small selection of books they have – mostly out of curiosity, since I tend to buy my books from mail order distributors where the prices are better.

One title caught my eye right away. I was drawn to the dark, spooky looking cover and it took me a minute to realize why the image didn't quite make sense to me.

The title was Eat, Prey, Love. But this was not the blockbuster book/movie by Elizabeth Gilbert which I had just finished reading, btw. This book was the new paranormal Avon release by Kerrelyn Sparks. I read the blurb and decided against buying the book [the word 'orphans' put me off], but I had to give props to the author who will certainly get a lot of attention for her book by choosing a play on words that will have fans of Eat, Pray, Love [and there are millions of them] looking twice.

I've had a bit of a sideways relationship with the clever play on words title. One of my earliest books, Bonfire of the Vampires [not currently available] was a play on Bonfire of the Vanities. And I'm still looking for a home for my paranormal romance Interview with a Gargoyle. I'm not an Ann Rice fan but hey, the title works.

I wonder if using a play on words really does boost sales of books like Julie Kenner's The Givenchy Code or Demons Are Forever.

What do you think? Do you find a play on words title to be clever or lazy? Do you think it generates interest in the author's work or just confusion?

There's a ghost on my deck

In keeping with the spirit [LOL] of the season, I took this spooky picture of the ghost that inhabits my back deck.

He's nervous because in a few days he's going to be polyurathaned {sp?}.

It's 10/13

This is a sequel to a post from November 2005 - where I talked about always noticing the time when it's 10:13 - and how it's sort of been a guidepost for me. If it's 10:13 - I can figure I'm on track somehow. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and eventyually I'll get where I'm supposed to be going.

So today was 10/13 - [yeah, I know, there's one every year] but this year I happened to notice when it was 10:13 AM also.

Nothing special was happening at 10:13 AM on 10/13. I was at my office - and my boss and I had just come across a rather glaring error having to do with the distribution of meeting minutes. He gave me the wrong ones to distribute. I distributed them. Everybody voted on them thinking they were the right minutes. The only reason we found out they were the wrong ones was that someone noticed a typo which turned out actually not to be a typo when we tracked it down, but that led to the discovery that we had the wrong pages to begin with.

Either way, not the finest hour of the day. The right minutes got found, copied and distributed and will be voted on appropriately - so I wonder, was 10:13 on 10/13 telling me it's all good, even when it's slightly screwed up? Or is it just a time of day, a day out of the year like any other?

What were you doing at 10:13 today?

Exercise your right to vote!

Not into politics? That's okay. You can go over to Whipped Cream Reviews and vote for Slither for Book of the Week!

Read the 4.5 Cherry Review HERE!

Release Day!

Available today from Samhain Publishing:

Genre: Paranormal Romance

ISBN: 978-1-60928-214-1

Length: Novella

Price: $3.50 Get it during release week for $3.15!

Separated in time. United by forbidden passion...

 

This book has been previously published.

Warning: This title contains explicit, forbidden sex, ritual sex, a sex god, and naughty hieroglyphics.

Read an excerpt HERE!

Laugh of the Day

Watching Smallville tonight where Michael Shanks, Stargate SG-1's resident archeologist Daniel Jackson, is guest starring as...well, as Hawkman, who also happens to be an archeologist and is excavating a newly discovered tomb of Iciss.

I'm waiting with baited breath for someone's eyes to start glowing.

Shout out for a Diva

Romance Divas own Eden Bradley has a new book available! Check it out at Samhain!

BLOODSONG, Book Two Eden Bradley's Midnight Playground series, is out today from Samhain Publishing! You can find it at MBaM, Amazon, and other retail outlets!

An ancient vampire, an ancient grief…a love that makes his blood sing…

Midnight Playground, Book 2

London, 2069

Aleron is ancient, powerful, immortal…a vampire who idles away his time playing at his favorite haunt, Midnight Playground. His favorite toys: beautiful young men. His game: BDSM, experiencing through the minds of his partners the sensations he can no longer quite feel himself.

The one thing he has vowed to avoid at all costs is love, especially for a woman. In a hundred years he has never been tempted to break that vow—until a lovely mortal woman enters his dungeon to watch him play. And his blood hums the ancient song of long-forgotten desire.

Raised in the Indian slums of London, exotic dancer Meeraj enters Midnight Playground a woman with nothing left to lose, numb to all but the most extreme forms of stimulation. As she watches Aleron’s blood play, she knows only his razor-sharp skills will satisfy. And she catches an odd mental glimpse of the grief that shadows his heart.
From their first touch, they are caught up in a whirlwind of exquisite agony that releases their emotions from the weight of the past. Exposing them to risks they’ve both fought to avoid. Love…and loss.
***

Visit the Smutketeers blog for contests running all week long to celebrate the release of BLOODSONG!

Esta bien!

I've been interviewed at Soy Cazadora de Sombras y Libros. Come check it out - don't worry, you don't need to read Spanish. The interview appears in English also.

http://soycazadoradesombrasylibros.blogspot.com/2010/09/entrevista-en-exclusiva-jennifer.html

Tales from a blackout

Oh, the drama.

Last night our power went out during a freak lightning storm. DH and I were at Back to School Night when the kids called us. They were home with my mother, sitting in the dark while the dog peed himself because storms make him lose both his mind and his bladder.

We missed out the school refreshments [which were to be the high point of my evening] and hurried home to dig up flashlights and light candles. Once we were all safely assembled around the dining room table watching the tiny flame of one of my jar candles, my husband anounced "This is why I could never handle an apocalypse."

Hmm. Yeah. Because in an apocalypse the biggest thing you'd have to worry about is stepping in a puddle of dog pee in the dark.

My son fretted because our alarm system was off line. I told him "You've survived the last 12 years of your life with no alarm system. You can manage for one night."

"But someone could just walk right in," he replied.

"Um...we DO have locks on the doors and a...well, a dog, for what he's worth. I'm sure we'll be fine."

Then the carbon monoxide detector in his room started beeping - not because it detected anything but because the battery was low. Without thinking I suggested we unplug it, and DH asked, "What would that accomplish?"

DS pipes up with: "My death."

So in addition to burglars, he's worried about carbon monoxide poisoning while he sits in the dark.

I prayed the lights would come on soon because things were just getting out of hand. Of course leave it my daughter to save the day. She brought out a pack of cards and offered to teach me Egyptian Ratscrew.

As much as I was not in the frame of mind to screw any rats I agreed and before long I was slapping sandwiches left and right [this is still a basically PG rated blog, so don't worry.]

After she beat me at Ratscrew, I decided to go to bed. Darkness and boredom tend to make me sleepy. I'd just closed my eyes when the lights came back on and order was restored to the universe.

I'm so glad it wasn't an apocalypse. I can't imagine the drama that would have caused.

Lost and Found

I've blogged about the art of losing things before. I'm a maestro [sp?] when it comes to misplacing things and the things I lose have a tendency to resurface years later in a place that I could have sworn I looked.

Today I took my mother to the doctor and there was a women in the waiting room who had lost her keys. Clearly they had to be somewhere in or around the office since she'd managed to get there, but there was no trace of them in her purse, the exam room or the waiting room. I imagine she finally found them out in the parking lot because she did evantually go outside and she didn't come back. All the while she, and the rest of us, where searching for her keys, she kept saying, "They'll turn up." And of course, she was right because they HAD to be somewhere in the vicinity.

I wish I could have that attitude when I've lost something. It'll turn up. It usually does. Sometimes decades later, but it does. I'm not that calm about the whole thing. Usually I panic when I lose something, not so much because whatever the item is can't be replaced [even a set of keys can be remade, as much os a nuisance as it might be]. It's more the idea that I should have put the object in the right place, I shoudl have kept better track of it. I'm more angry at myself than at the universe.

Today, it's funny, I learned a new feeling that goes along with losing something and finding it again. I was in a mild panic because I trekked all the way to the bank to retrieve a document from my safety deposit box, and the document wasn't there. My first instinct was to tell myself, therefore it must be at home. It was not in the first place I looked when I got home, but it was in the second place I looked, so naturally I was relieved I hadn't lost it, but instead of being able to leave it at that, the relief was immediately replaced by a nagging fear that I will now misplace the document again.

Silly, I know. I know where it is. It's a logical, safe place that I should be able to recall if I need it, but still I had to check the spot several times and worry that maybe I should put the document somewhere else.  Finding it just wasn't enough, now I have to go overboard to make sure I don't misplace it again.

Maybe it's me. Maybe it's just that losing something is so traumatic I have to try to protect myself from having to deal with it. Maybe I'm just neurotic, but it's not enough to say, "It'll turn up." I need to know it will always be where I need it to be.

How do you feel when you misplace something? Do you get angry at yourself, angry at the universe or do you just gamely keep looking and tell yourself you'll find it eventually because ultimately it's around somewhere?

So many stories

As thrilled as I am to be working on more ideas for the Icarus Reborn series, I'm still nagged by all the other sequels and series and stories I've wanted to write over the years.

I keep a running list of ideas, many of which have been on the list for years and just haven't gotten to them. Granted some of the ideas were a bit lame, or thinly plotted, some are no more than a sentence or two defining a very vague plot, others are full five-page synopses of stories that are completely written in my head and just need to be spilled out onto paper.

If I had a team of assistants who could transcribe ideas directly from my brain I might have a chance of seeing all these stories finished one day, but I'm sure then they'd only be replaced with yet more ideas.

How many ideas do you have in reserve? Does it frustrate you not to have them all on paper at once?

And yet more awesome

I won the lottery...with book covers this year. [Had you worried for a minute there, didn't I?]

2010 has been THE most amazing year for book covers, and they justs keep getting better!

Here's the cover for Icarus Unbound [blurb can be found two posts down] the second book in the Icarus Reborn series, coming soon from Liquid Silver Books!

My awesome cover artist, April Martinez really captured my characters here. This is exactly what I pictured Jaran, the hero, to look like and Lara is even more perfect than the image I had in my head - which admittedly was a bit fuzzy. I always try to have a clear idea of what my characters look like, but on occasion they remain a little vague. The cover images have done the trick for me here, though, and made my characters even more real for me.

Do you always know exactly what your characters look like? Or have you ever written a character who remains a bit shadowy even if you've included a basic description of them in your book?

Teh awesome in teh house

I've been meaning to post this for a while - just because it's so cool.

We were very fortunate when we moved to our new house that we have a great basement space, part of which DH turned into the family game room. There was a big blank wall on one side which was unpainted, so DH decided to paint it black {no, he's not a Stones fan} and then his good friend, Damian Charpentier, offered to paint a gorgeous background to go with the 6-foot-tall Fathead sticker of Green Lantern DH bought as his centerpiece.

Here's how the whole thing turned out.

Damian painted the planet, the stars [with some help from his wife, Evan] the galaxy, the TARDIS and the space station.

If you'd like to see more of Damian's work, check out his website at http://www.warpaintminiatures.com/.

Coming Soon!

In response to reader inquiries :) here's a preview of my upcoming releases:


OCTOBER 1, 2010

The Concubine's Tale - Samhain Publishing
by Jennifer Colgan

When an ancient papyrus scroll comes up for auction, gallery curator Cait Lang draws the distasteful task of notifying her boss’s favorite client, Grant Pierson. The rare art and antiquities collector’s arrogance grates on her nerves, but most of all she resents her own weakness for his athletic body and deep brown eyes.


It’s the hieroglyphic scroll that draws Grant to a private, after-hours showing at the gallery. But the lovely Cait’s narration of the erotically charged story captures his interest. Determined to hear the rest of the tale—and spend more time in Cait’s company—he convinces her to join him for dinner.

The intricate, sensual tale transports Cait and Grant’s imaginations into the past. And the depictions of sexually charged temple rituals inspires them to explore their own hidden passions—in Cait's apartment.

Even as Grant succumbs to Cait’s charms, the drive to own the scroll hums in the back of his mind. If he isn’t careful, though, he’ll not only lose the chance to hear the end of the story, he’ll lose something more precious. The missing piece of his own life—Cait.

 
2011
 

Uncross my Heart - Samhain Publishing
by Jennifer Colgan
 
Julian Devlin isn’t a vampire. That’s his problem. He was respected, powerful and of course, immortal, until his former ally, Enoch Lambert, cast a spell that turned Julian human again.


Zoe Boyd is the quirky, fashion unconscious owner of Dollars and Sense, a consignment shop that handles wedding dresses, baby clothes and vintage jewelry. Her life is about finding creative ways to make old things look antique, not about helping a vampire get his fangs back. Then she meets Julian and her world turns upside down.

Convinced that Julian has lost his marbles, rather than his fangs, she agrees to help him lay low while he tries to find a trustworthy magic user who can reverse the spell and help him take revenge on Lambert. When the moment comes, however, Julian finds himself with a dilemma. His human self has fallen in love with Zoe and he knows that once he transforms back, she’ll mean nothing to him. Will he give up his undead life for her, or turn his back on the only woman who makes him long for mortality?

TBD

Icarus Unbound - Liquid Silver Books
by Bernadette Gardner
 
The only full-blooded human member of the winged population on Icarus, Laramee Faulkner has longed to be accepted as one of the tribe. Since childhood, Jaran, the adopted son of the Icarian leaders, has never let Lara forget that she’s different. As a boy, he teased and taunted her. As a man, he has the power to give her everything she’s always desired, or tear her away from the world she loves.


When Jaran chooses Lara as his mate, she’s certain his plan is only to humiliate her, but his passionate kisses and sensual commands ignite her long-suppressed desires. Will she be able to resist the erotic temptation and make him pay for all the years he tormented her, or will she give in and claim her birthright as a member of the Icarian race even if it means giving herself to the man who made her feel like an outcast?

It's not the spider itself

...that freaks me out {okay, yes, it sort of is} as much as the question of how the damn thing got into the bathtub in the first place.

It was about 10:00 PM last night when I meandered in the bathroom and saw this. Needless to say chaos ensued. I kid you not, this was the biggest spider I have ever seen. It was fortunate he was somewhat contained since DH was sound asleep and would have been a bear if I'd woken him up.

I dispatched the beast forthwith, but the nagging question since then has been - where did it come from and where had it been hiding before it showed up in the tub?

A Labor of Love

Happy Labor Day everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the day. I was busy pretty much all day, and my work isn't over yet.

As promised, today I have an excerpt from my newest release, Icarus Rising, available TODAY at Liquid Silver Books!

WARNING! The following is an R-rated excerpt.

Every nerve in Caleb’s body burned. White hot flames seemed to emanate from the point just below the nape of his neck where the symbion had plunged its siphon into his spinal column.
This was supposed to be safe and painless! His panicked brain supplied only snippets of his conversations with Raymond Danson and Arilani.

The average Icarian is ten years of age when they are joined to a symbion. The process takes only a few moments and appears to be completely painless. Danson’s words echoed, mixing with Arilani’s assurances.

The siphon pierces the sheath around the spinal cord of the host and creates an instant connection. Within minutes, the young Icarian gains control over the symbion wings and launches into the sky for his or her virgin flight.

Through a blurry haze of shock, Caleb registered the feel of hands on his body, turning him over, wiping sand from his eyes and his lips.

Someone shouted his name. Danson. Bastard. Caleb wanted to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and choked the life out of him for this. Fortunately for the geneticist, Caleb couldn’t so much as control his own breathing at this moment or he would be homicidal from the pain.

“Don’t move him. Let his body and mind adjust.” Jidar’s deep voice cut across the jumble of worried exclamations that filled the air. Was that Zara crying? Caleb tried to look for her, but all he managed to do was flop his head to one side and spit salty liquid into the sand. Blood. Had he bitten his tongue? Or were his insides dissolving from the fire racing through his veins?
Vaguely, he registered movement on each side of him. The violet-tinged gray wings of his symbion flapped ineffectively, throwing wet sand in all directions. A naked Icarian female held one of the quivering limbs in her hand and administered an injection.Caleb felt it. The slim needle pierced flesh and muscle that had only moments ago belonged to a separate being. He screamed again as ice flowed from the injection site, numbing the wing and that entire side of his body.

Someone sat on his legs, and he couldn’t imagine why until he began to convulse. His body heaved against the half-dozen people now holding him down. Each movement stripped his nerves raw as though he were being flayed alive.

The sand under him felt like a million diamond-hard blades. The salt breeze stung his eyes like acid.

A gentle caress on his thigh brought him instantly aware in a different way. A surge of desire spread through him, tightening his abdominals as female hands slid over his skin. Pain became pleasure so intense he moaned and shifted his hips toward the sensual touch. He smelled her arousal, a willing mate so close he could see her, yet his eyes refused to focus. His brain told him he needed her to complete him. He needed her body wrapped around his, eager to receive the seed that drew up inside his cock, and pulsed to a shuddering orgasm... Hot semen spewed over his belly and his legs and in his ear Zara’s sweet voice whispered to him.

The violent release left him temporarily weak and light headed. His body ached all over from the exertion brought about by no more than her fingers brushing the taut muscles of his leg.
Oh God. Oh God. He’d just come in front of every single member of the research team.
“We’ll take care of you. You’ll be all right. We’ll make it stop.”

He wanted her. He wanted her so badly that he would die without her. “I nee ... I need...”
“Give him air. Let him talk. Caleb, what are you feeling?” Danson’s voice grated like screeching turbines in his ears. He snarled a response, and some of the hands clamped over his limbs loosened their grip.

Something in the back of his mind told him it was time to fly. Being held against the ground was unconscionable torture. He had to get away. A burst of raw power erupted from somewhere in his ravaged brain, clearing the numbness from the left side of this body. For an instant he was invincible.

He tore at the hands clutching him and heaved himself up on shaky legs. Figures crowded around him, Icarian and human. They blurred together in one homogeneous threat.

Only Jidar was smiling.

Caleb spread his wings. His wings. They’d always been his, and they always would be. He crouched, and before anyone could make a move to stop him he launched himself into the air. The alien part of his brain rejoiced. “We are free!”

“We are finally free,” he agreed. “And they will never control us again.”

He circled the beach once, swooping low just to hear the startled exclamations of those assembled. Some scattered, others ducked. The Icarians only stared, expressions of triumph and curiosity blending on their faces. At the edge of the crowd, though, one figure stood alone.
Tears glistened on Zara’s face as she pressed two fingers to her lips and raised them into the wind.

He wanted her. And when he returned, he would finally have her, but for now he had to go as far away as he could or risk taking revenge on the people who had tried to kill him.

To find out more about Icarus Rising, visit Liquid Silver Books today!

Are you ready to fly?

My first title from Liquid Silver Books will be available on Monday, September 6th. Here's the stunning cover art by April Martinez. And here's the blurb:

To save a dying race, sociologist Caleb Faulkner will forfeit his humanity. He has volunteered to join with an alien creature in order to take part in an ambitious breeding program designed to spare the dominant race on the planet Icarus from certain extinction.

Dr. Zara Abbott has spent months helping to prepare Caleb for the joining, hiding her feelings for the man who will become the mate to an Icarian female as soon as he receives his symbiotic wings. When the joining proves disastrous, Caleb and his alien symbion can think of only one thing, mating with Zara. After so long preparing to sacrifice Caleb to the Icarians, will she be able to refuse the man who makes her heart take flight?

Stay tuned for an excerpt and purchasing info!

SEPTEMBER!

Sorry to yell, but I'm soooo happy August is over. I know - I must be nuts. Summer is awesome...yada yada. But really, August just seems to be hot and long and dry and listless. I never enjoyed August and I'm always thrilled when it's over and September begins. Don't get me wrong, today is just as hot and dry as yesterday was, but there's just something more energetic about September. I get energized and I want to get things done.

Anyone else out there love September? Give me a shout and we'll do the September Happy Dance together.

Everybody loves cats

Even wild monkeys, apparently. Loving this story about a wild macaque who adopted a stray kitten. It does not get cuter than this.

Comparison shopping

Two ways to increase the wardrobe:


Bought for $40.00 at Dress Barn: two 3/4 sleeve button down shirts



Bought for $20.00 at garage sales: 2 fancy shirts, 2 gauzy shirts, 4 short sleeve t-shirts, 1 three-quarter sleeve t-shirt, 1 pair of pants, 2 button down shirts, 8 sleeveless t-shirts.

This is why I'd rather go to a garage sale than to the mall. Have you gotten anything awesome at a garage sale lately?

Guilty pleasures

Currently I’m reading The Island by Elin Hilderbrand. Her books have become autobuys for me and the funny part is, I realized I like her books so much because they’re so different from the books I typically read, edit and write.

Ms. Hilderbrand writes about the wealthy and privileged who tend to live on or near Nantucket – where she herself lives. She seems have great insight into the desperate lives of the people the rest of us may envy for their money, their opportunities and the views out of their beach house windows. Her books are compelling and the fascinating thing is, her characters are not likable. At least to me.

I’m a big one for reminding authors whose books I edit that their hero and heroine need to be likable and sympathetic. The worst thing you can do in a romance novel [aside from kill one of them off] is to make either of the main characters do something that will have readers jeering and hoping the other one kicks them to the curb. Secondary characters can be as nefarious as you want but the leads have to be people we would invite into our homes, serve a cup of coffee and insist they tell us all their woes. They need to be people we not only like, but that we like so much we root for them to fall in love and live happily ever after.

Ms. Hilderbrand doesn’t write romance. She writes women’s literature which often contains romantic subplots, but the stark beauty of her books is that I love them even though I’ve never once identified with or rooted for any of her characters. They all seem to have too much of everything. They’re wealthy, attractive, talented and usually sit within arm’s reach of all they ever wanted – yet they manage to find ways to screw up their lives and do a lot of whining about it and feeling sorry for themselves along the way. They’re people you want to smack.

Yet I can’t put the books down. And I realize I feel guilty about this because reading her books for me is like reading a gossipy letter from a friend – ‘remember so-and-so? Well, you’ll never guess what happened to her. Can you believe this?’ In real life, it’s feeding the green eyed monster, getting your jollies when someone who sits well above you on the ladder of ‘success’ turns out to have dirty clay feet. In real life, it’s bad – but in book form – pure heaven.

Do you have any favorite authors whose books make you feel guilty because you wonder if maybe you enjoy them for the wrong reasons? Is there a wrong reason to enjoy a good book?

It's one cat-tastrophe after another

Vampire kitty complains about the size of his coffin.

Floccinaucinhilipilificate with me

Come on. You know you want to.

At lunch today my daughter handed me an index card with this word on it.

Floccinaucinihilipilification : noun, the act of declaring something worthless.

Apparently it's the longest word in the English language that does not contain the letter 'e'.

When I read this, I immediatley thought of this article which I'd seen last week. Nothing fits floccinaucin...whatever, better than the literary product of a member of the cast of The Jersey Shore.

So what would you like to floccinaucinihilipilificate? In addition to anything written by Snookie, I think we should consider nominating all sesquipedelian words for floccin...whatever...fication. Who's with me?

Wonderland 2 ways

I've always been interested in viewing the same story from different viewpoints. I like to get a different take on things now and then and last week I was able to do that with the classic Alice in Wonderland.

I started out watching Syfy's rendition of the story - Alice, starring Caterina Scorsone as Alice and Andrew-Lee Potts as Hatter.






Then I watched Tim Burton's big screen adaptation of Alice in Wonderland with Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Johnny Depp as Mad Hatter.

I was very surprised to find I liked Syfy's version much better.

While I think Tim Burton tried to remain true to the original story, Syfy did one of their 'bold re-imaginings' which I normally don't enjoy. They made wonderland more of an alternate universe rather than a dream land. They gave it some science and ramped it up to the 21st Century. In addition, Syfy made their story a romance - by making Hatter the unlikely hero of the piece rather than just another bizarre character in a parade of bizarre characters.
While I'm not a Depp fan to begin with, I found that besides the wild makeup and merry-go-round of accents, his character didn't seem as invested in Alice as Potts's Hatter was. The growth of their relationship made the Syfy version a much more entertaining story, despite the relatively low budget when compared to Burton's visual smorgasbord.
If you've seen both movies, I'd love to know what you thought of them. In general do you like to compare versions of a story - or once you have a favorite do you prefer to stick to that?

Alice and Hatter from Syfy's Alice.

New in Print!

My very first Ellora's Cave Print Book is now available!

TAMING A ROGUE includes:

Rogue Theta
Lilliana's mission is to neutralize a rogue super-soldier. Abandoned after an alien raid that decimated his outpost, the cybernetically enhanced Theta represents a threat to galactic security. When Lilliana locates her target, she discovers he's more than a rampaging war machine. His sensual touch unleashes her deepest desires and she begins to question the ethics of her mission the moment she looks into his eyes.Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Gaige gave up his name, his home and his freedom to volunteer for the Theta project because he thought he had nothing left to lose. Now, with his cybernetic implants on the verge of complete breakdown, his only hope is to avoid hurting anyone before his autonomic functions shut down completely.The beautiful assassin sent to kill him piques more than his curiosity, though. Her supple body and intoxicating scent set Gaige's long-suppressed needs against his enhanced survival instincts. The man he once was is drawn to the sexy huntress whose mission is to destroy him at any cost. Who will survive and who will become the hunted?

Rogue Heart
A Chi-series-enhanced human, Onika can seduce any man, but the fatal flaw in her biological programming is that she falls in love with her targets. When Zed, the enigmatic scientist who created her, wants to see her, she chances a reunion, determined to convince him to change her biological programming and free her from her enslavement to chemical lust.

When she finds Zed has been brutally murdered, she feels relief and terror. No one can save her now, least of all Aidan Fynn, the attorney assigned by Central Command to represent her. Given into Fynn’s mercurial care, Onika faces the greatest challenge of her life to not fall hopelessly in love and lust with the former soldier once he learns the only way to gain her trust is to take her to his bed.

ON SALE NOW - at http://www.jasminejade.com/p-8618-taming-a-rogue.aspx

It's Deja Vu all over again

Do you read books more than once?

I used to. I had a number of books that I loved and read over and over again – chief among them, believe it or not, was Splinter of the Mind’s Eye by Alan Dean Foster. This was a Star Wars story written back when no one even knew Luke and Leia were brother and sister. I devoured it and I could even recite the opening lines…

But I digress. After a while I gave up reading books more than once. I just didn’t have time and there were so few books I loved enough to go back and start at the beginning. Some that I’ve tried to read again haven’t kept my interest the way they did the first time around.

Yesterday, I finished Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs, and it wasn’t until the last chapter of the book that I realized I had definitely read it before.

In the beginning of the book there are a few details of a grisly murder that rang strangely familiar, but I figured hey, serial killers are often trite and cliché, they copy the crimes of others, so maybe this killer just happened to be similar to a killer in another book I’d read once.
I read happily on, actually enjoying the book and finally, when I got to the big reveal at the end, one of the details of why the killer killed struck me as completely unique. This wasn’t something two authors had come up with. I’d definitely read the whole book before.

I’m more upset with my failing memory than with the idea of rereading a book I’ve already read when I could have been reading something else. I enjoyed the book, and enough time has obviously passed that I really thought I was reading something new. Maybe I should start making notes on the books I read, because I tend to forget plots pretty quickly.

I haven’t forgotten Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, though. I can still picture the boggy jungle planet, the glimmering read crystal and the underground lake. I’d actually love to read the book again, but my dog eared copy is long gone.

Have you ever read a book twice without realizing it? Or do you have a better memory than I do. Good thing no one needs to know what I had for dinner last night. I’m not sure I can recall that either.

Loftier aspirations

Yesterday I attended a 3-year-old’s birthday party. Well, a party for two three-year-olds actually. Twins. They’re quite a hoot, these two, and I get a kick out of some of the things they say.

Yesterday’s giggle came from asking them the question, “What do you want to be for Halloween?”

The little girl’s answer was fairly typical. ‘A Tinkerbell Ballerina.’ Of course, what little girl doesn’t want to dress up as a fairy and dance around?

The little boy won the day though. His response?

“I want to be a potato.”

'What kind of potato?'

“A mashed potato.”

I can see the fun his parents will have explaining that one on people’s doorsteps. ‘What’s that on his head?’

“A pat of butter of course.”

The kid definitely marches to his own drum.

I remember when my son was little and we asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his first response was: An apple.

I had visions of people asking me, “So, Mrs. Colgan, what does your son do for a living?”

“He’s a professional apple. In college he minored in orange but apple is his real calling. And on the weekends, he jams with a bunch of grapes.”

Sometimes I think I missed my own calling by spending three quarters of my life aspiring to be a novelist. I should have just followed my true love and become a chocolate bar.

We could use some new classics

Don't you think?

I'm sure there are hoardes of bibliophiles out there who will stock up on the rotten tomatoes to lob at my blog after this post, but here goes anyway.

When will we stop torturing kids with the 'classics' of literature and let them read some newer, and hopefully more interesting stuff?

My daughter's summer reading assignment was Catcher in the Rye, which she just slogged her way through. She confessed she hated the book, and she felt much the same way about the books she had to read last summer too. I forget those titles, but they were similar intruments of brain cell destruction. [No offense to Salinger fans, but I have yet to meet anyone who actually enjoyed Catcher.]

It really bothers me, not that these old standards have managed to endure for all these years, but that at a time when there are so many things vying for our kids' attention, schools still insist on a diet of maudlin, depressing, confusing literature. I'm not saying that none of these books have any merit, but when the majority of kids hate what they're reading, how are we going to ever hope to turn out a new generation of book lovers?

I was lucky that despite having been made to read Atlas Shrugged in high school, which I recall as eight million pages of boring after boring after boring, I still loved to read. I adored Gone with the Wind and War and Peace and Little Women. I was the kid who spent all my allowance on books. I'm also lucky that my daughter likes to read, and spends a good deal of her own allowance on books [though a lot of them are manga].But not every kid out there has a taste for reading, and why should they these days when TV, video games and iPods command the lion's share of their brain power?

I'm not suggesting we make Harry Potter and [heaven for fend, Twilight] mandatory reading, but I'm sure there are some fun and interesting books out there that teenagers and pre-teens can learn more from than how to buy Cliffs Notes.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The Kebox Paradox

I'm forced to confess that I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the produce department at the supermarket. I wander around there ooohing and aaahing at all the pretty fruits and vegetables and I have been known on many occasions to bring home some exotic plant material just because it had a funny color or funny shape or strange name.

Today was one of those days.

DS and I were shopping [I got the kid out of the house!] and we came across a huge crate of dark green bowling balls for sale. They were sitting next to a crate of odd looking objects that faintly resembled cantaloupes but with stripes. These things were solid dark green and they weighed a ton.

The sign above them said: KEBOX MELONS $3.99 each.

Okay. Not a bad price for a bowling ball. I conferred with DS who was noncomittal about trying a new and exotic fruit. He's always worried about getting a mouthful of something that doesn't taste good, so he often refrains from trying new things. Finally, being the adventurous Mom that I am, I talked him into it and we carefully lowered one of them into the cart, which immediately began to list to one side.

The thing was heavy. DS took it back out of the cart and hauled it over to the produce scale where it made the dial spin around wildly like a compass in the Bermuda Triangle. It landed on 9 pounds, which is awfully hefty for a melon. I knew this had to be good, so we lobbed it back into the cart and off we went to the checkout, both of us pushing the cart.

I got the thing home and spent some time just admiring it, imaging what jewelike flesh might appear once I cut it open. I fantasized about the exotic flavors we might discover and what interesting recipes I might find when I learned all the ins and outs of the mysterious KEBOX.

I brandished my carving knife and sliced...and found out I'd bought...
a watermelon.

Apparently whoever was in charge of writing signs at the supermarket could not separate the I and the C, thus smushing them together to form a K.

It was an Icebox melon. Sigh.

So there went my plan to conquer the new world of the exotic KEBOX. The upside is, I probably would have paid a lot more for it when I believed it was some alien fruit sensation, so $3.99 was stil a bargain.

Evolution of a submission

So yesterday I psyched myself up and prepared a query letter to send to an editor I've been wanting to contact for a while.

I did all the usual pre-sub stuff. I obsessively checked the letter, obsessively checked the spelling of the editor's name, though I've submitted to this person before and gotten it right. I re-read the query submission guidelines on the publisher's website and doube checked the e-mail address, then triple checked the e-mail address.

I checked the wording of the query again, looked for spelling errors, saved the query to my Word files making sure I changed the file name so I didn't accidentally erase something I might need in the future.

I copied and pasted all the proper text into an open e-mail, double checked the wording of the subject line, and the editor's addy one more time, made sure to update my address and phone number and double checked everything again. Obsessive much? Me? Nah.

Then I hit send.

I breathed a small sigh of relief and told myself it was all up to the universe now. Knowing I could reasonably expect a response in three or four months, I went about my business.

About 20 minutes later, I found myself opening my e-mail account. Two thoughts went through my mind, one being I was hoping for a reply from a friend I'd been e-mailing with trhoughout the day and the other thought was, "Oh, here I go, back on the obsessively checking e-mail ride."

I watched as my e-mail account pulled up new mail and deposited it in my inbox. A digest from one of my publisher groups, no biggie. And something with the very same subject line as the e-mail I'd just sent to the editor.

Oh crap. I e-mailed the query to myself.

I've done this before. It's the ultimate 'just shoot me' feeling. I mean, how dumb can I really be?

Moments before my head hit the desk, I realized the 'From' addy was the editor's, not mine. The editor had responded to the query.

In 13 minutes.

And asked for the full.

Giddy, mildy hysterical laughter ensued for a moment. Then I replied to the request, attached the full manuscript and hit send.

Now back to obsessively checking my e-mail. Rinse and repeat.

Doin' the toner dance

So yesterday I actually finished a novella!!

Got a little elbow strain from patting myself on the back. I got to the end of the first draft of the sequel to Icarus Rising [my upcoming Liquid Silver release]. Icarus Unbound is now ready for the first round of editing. Hurrah!

Of course, I needed to print it out - I like to curl up with hard copies of my manuscripts to do first round editing, this way I can physically cut and paste things. Sometimes the old fashioned way just works better.

I was six pages to the end of the printing and my toner cartridge crapped out on me.
Never fails. I haven't printed more than 1 page at a time in last six months so I guess the strain was too much for it.

I had to take the cartridge out, shake it all about, and put it back in to get two more pages. Then I had to do it all over again. And again, until I finally got the last of the pages to print. I'm ever so glad I didn't double space.

Now DH is out at the movies with the kids, and then he's going to swing by Staples and pick me up a new cartridge.

Have you ever done the toner dance?

I'd keep a spare on hand, but darn they're expensive. Maybe I'll ask for one as a Christmas present so this doesn't happen again.

Then again, if I'd had a spare, I would have just popped the old one out and replaced it, and I wouldn't have squeezed those last six pages out.

I write like...

I just came across this on one of my author loops and decided to try it out.

Apparently you put in a few paragraphs of something you've written and the analysis tells you which author you write like. I entered the first few paragraphs of my 2011 Samhain release, Uncross My Heart and here's what I got:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I'm not sure if I should be flattered or worried. What do you think?

Who do you write like?

Excerpt from The Concubine's Tale

Coming in October from Samhain...


Khanu’s heart clenched at the spectacle that met him when he returned from the courtyard. The sight of Nayari lying limp in the arms of one of the priests nearly sent him to his knees.
“What have you done to her?” He didn’t wait for a reply but scooped her fragile body into his arms. The other priest bowed and backed up a step.

“I had to stop her from escaping. I found her scurrying through the back corridor searching for a way out through our chambers.”

“You had no right to injure her. You should have called me.” Khanu swung Nayari around and headed for her room.

“This way, warrior. We’ll take her to a room below where she won’t escape so easily.”

Khanu hesitated. He looked down at her face, so beautiful in this artificial sleep. Her shallow breathing worried him.

“What did you do to her?”

“A balm to make her sleep.”

Khanu growled. She’d be groggy and sick when she awoke. Grudgingly, he followed the priest to a dark flight of stone stairs. He squeezed his broad shoulders through a narrow door and set Nayari on a small cot in a windowless chamber lit only by a torch in a sconce on the wall.

“Bring water.” He cradled her head in the crook of his arm. “Then stay out of my sight.”

“Of course.” The priest bowed out of the room, and Khanu indulged in a curse upon the man’s family ten generations to come. Why would she try to escape? Surely the priest was mistaken. As the dutiful concubine of the magistrate, it should have been her pleasure to await the arrival of Ammonptah.

She lay in his arms, her face a portrait of innocence. He brushed her lustrous hair from her brow and pressed the back of his hand to her fevered skin. What would Ammonptah do if he found her thus?

The priest returned with a bowl of water and a cloth, and Khanu glared at him. “Post a guard at the temple gate. Enemies of Ammonptah are everywhere it seems.” Even in this room, he added silently.

Once the priest had gone, Khanu tended to Nayari. Drops of cool water squeezed from the cloth onto her head roused her slightly, and she moaned.

“You’re safe,” he said when her eyes fluttered open. She stared at him for a moment, her eyes blank. Then she surged upward, fear clouding her expression. She screamed once—a short, tortured sound that Khanu cut off by clamping a hand over her mouth. She struggled in his arms, and he hushed her, rocking her against his chest.

“No, I’m not.” Her voice trembled as she recounted what the acolyte had told her.
Khanu had heard the name Benak-Ra before. He’d seen tales of the man’s cruelty strike fear in the hearts of many seasoned warriors. A fragile creature such as Nayari would wither at his hands.

His loyalty to Ammonptah dissolved as she finished telling him about the plot to unseat Pharaoh. “I will not let them give you to the wizard.”

She settled against him finally, and her breathing returned to normal. When he looked down at her, tears spilled over her cheeks. “But Ammonptah is our master.”

“Not any longer.”

“What?” She trembled in his arms. The sensation of her supple body shuddering against his turned his thoughts to further betrayal of Ammonptah.

“We will escape.”

“How? The priests are watching.”

“They’re watching the front of the temple. They believe I’m loyal to Ammonptah and will do as I say. We will leave here in a few hours, before they rise for their morning prayers.”

Her honey-colored eyes searched his and, beneath the fear, he saw trust and admiration. She put her hands on either side of his face and brought her lips close to his. Her breath was sweet. “Tell me your name.”

“Khanu,” he whispered, so close to her mouth that the word echoed between them. “Servant of Nayari.”

She kissed him then, and a sensation that had to be borne of the gods shot through his body. Every muscle went taut, and the ache in his loins exploded into flame as her tongue slipped between his lips.

****

As promised

The awesome cover art for my upcoming Samhain re-release:

When an ancient papyrus scroll comes up for auction, gallery curator Cait Lang draws the distasteful task of notifying her boss’s favorite client, Grant Pierson. The rare art and antiquities collector’s arrogance grates on her nerves, but most of all she resents her own weakness for his athletic body and deep brown eyes.

It’s the hieroglyphic scroll that draws Grant to a private, after-hours showing at the gallery. But the lovely Cait’s narration of the erotically charged story captures his interest. Determined to hear the rest of the tale—and spend more time in Cait’s company—he convinces her to join him for dinner.

The intricate, sensual tale transports Cait and Grant’s imaginations into the past. And the depictions of sexually charged temple rituals inspire them to explore their own hidden passions—in Cait's apartment.

Even as Grant succumbs to Cait’s charms, the drive to own the scroll hums in the back of his mind. If he isn’t careful, though, he’ll not only lose the chance to hear the end of the story, he’ll lose something more precious. The missing piece of his own life—Cait.

October 2010

I'm baaaaaaaaack!

Did you miss me?

Did you know I was gone?

Well, never mind. In case you did know I was gone and in case you did miss me, I'm back in cyberspace and trying to hoist myself back on the writing wagon.

It's been a tedious six months with looking for a new house, finding one, getting everyone moved in and all kinds of work done fixing the place up. We're marginally settled now - my old house is still on the market and I know it will be a job selling it in this economy, but my hopes are high and my fingers are crossed.

In the mean time I thought I'd dive in to an equally challenging task and start trying to keep up my blog again and get some writing done before the summer is over.

I haven't been a total schlub. I have the re-release of my crosst-time adventure The Concubine's Tale coming from Samhain in October [stay tuned for a preview of the awesome cover art!] and I've got my first Liquid Silver release Icarus Rising {TBD}.
I'm working on the second book in the Icarus series and a couple other novellas, so I hope to heating up cyberspace once again in the 2nd half of 2010.

For 2011 I have plans to make it the year of the eBook - stay tuned for more details. Right now I'm off to see about updating my websites [I know, I've been seriously lax] and then to get some actual writing done!

More soon so visit often!

Home Sweet Home

Whew. What an experience.

Yesterday, after six months of searching, negotiating, and paperwork, we finally closed on our new house. It's been a wild ride, and the fun is only just beginning since now we have to clean it, paint most of the rooms, and figure out how to organize all of our stuff and our lives so we can move our daily routine exactly 1.1 miles from our old house to a new town.

The new place has a smaller yard [I have to say goodbye to my giant maple tree :(, the pool :), and all the various an sundry critters and creatures that reside in the mini-jungle I call my back yard right now.] But on the upside all that room we're giving up outside is now inside - I'm gaining a dining room, cabinet and counter space in the kitchen that is to die for, the kids will have a game room, DH has his own office with a built-in desk and I will have my own office [with a door! and it's own private deck!] Maybe in a month or so, when all the dust settles, I can hang my shingle up on my office door and call myself a serious writer again, since I haven't been one during most of this tortuous process.

Things I've learned from this experience:

1. Real estate agents never sleep - ours seemed to be on call 24/7 and available at a moment's notice to do anything and everything associated with finding us a house and helping us buy it.

2. Banks and mortgage brokers can kiss my shiney metal a$$. New rules and regulations, while I can see the merit in some of them, are basically designed to waste time, paper and money. What good does it do to make someone sign a paper saying they promise the money they borrowed from the bank was NOT used to fund terrorist activities? Do they really think the terrorists are going to tell the truth there? Seriously?

3. The term 'broom swept clean' is open to a lot of interpretations. The least of which is 'clean.'

4. The most fun [and scary] part of walking through your new house is finding all the goodies [and baddies] the previous owners left behind. Ours left us champagne in the fridge and a freezer full of ice cream! They also left all the garbage cans full and 10,000 plastic hangers, and a few things we haven't yet identified.

5. The post office does not really understand the concept of forwarding mail. They may have invented it, but they don't really understand it.

All that being said, here's the new place - this is the real estate photo, not one I took myself. Home Sweet Place I Can't Wait to Repaint and Furnish.

Catch you after the holiday weekend. Have a great one and hug your realtor today!

Are you still LOST?

So who all watched the 2 ½ hour LOST series finale last night? I was glued to it…and still remain somewhat confused, but I think I sort of get the mythology.

I won’t go into spoilers. All I’ll say is, I’m glad for happy endings for the major players, I’m glad none of the really annoying characters showed up, like Anna Lucia or Michael and Walt, and most of all I loved the spiritual component of the ending – this huge soul family has all come back together to welcome one of its own into the fold and move on to another plane of existence.

I still don’t get the smoke monster…or the polar bears, but maybe they weren’t as important as everyone thought.

So what’s your take on LOST? Are you glad we were all finally kicked off the island or would you go back if you had the chance?

Signed and sealed

Today I feel like a writer. I haven't really felt like one in a while, because I've had to push writing to the back burner in favor of all the angst and stress that comes with buying and selling a house.

Somehow, in the middle of it all, thought, I didn't manage to write, edit, submit and sell a new novella! Well, Bernadette did.

Today I [she] signed a contract with Liquid Silver Books for the first of a sci-fi series. The novella is called Icarus Rising [my NaNo story] and here's the blurb:

To save a dying race, sociologist Caleb Faulkner will forfeit his humanity. He has volunteered to join with an alien creature in order to take part in an ambitious breeding program designed to spare the dominant race on the planet Icarus from certain extinction.

Dr. Zara Abbott has spent months helping to prepare Caleb for the joining, hiding her feelings for the man who will become the mate to an Icarian female as soon as he receives his symbiotic wings. When the joining proves disastrous, Caleb and his alien symbion can think of only one thing, mating with Zara. After so long preparing to sacrifice Caleb to the Icarians, will she be able to refuse the man who makes her heart take flight?


I have a portion of the next story in the series written - called Icarus Unbound and now I've got to get cracking on that. Off to dust my keyboard and put some fresh ink in the printer.

Stay tuned for more info!