Just a quick progress report. I like to do those—just for me. I figure if I put my writing life out there, including my goals, successes and failures, I’ll shame myself into stepping up my game up.

In April, I will finish Beloved Captor. I will get to the end of the short novella for Samhain. I will write a proposal for a Nocturne Bite, and I will write two short stories. That’s a lot. But I can do it, if I stay focused. Here goes…

Remember, you can still enter yesterday’s contest. I will pick the winner tomorrow. Today, you can earn two more chances to win!

Just a quick note here because I’m blogging at Access Romance today.

I wrote the big external climax, the big exciting battle, yesterday—and now, I can see the end of the book wrapping up very quickly over the next two days. Then I will have about a week’s worth of edits to complete before I can ship my Berkley book out the door. Cross your fingers it isn’t complete crap! I’m enjoying it.

I finished the rough draft of chapter 3 of Bad Moon Rising. Today, I’ll edit it, then I’ll look for a Beta reader or two to see how they like it and hopefully find any typos I couldn’t see. So it’s just days now until I will put it on my website for you to enjoy. If you haven’t read chapter 1 & 2—do it now! Bad Moon Rising

I don’t know what this will tell you about me, but these are all the things that clutter up the top of my large, light oak corner desk:

* monitor and printer
* Galileo thermometer
* desklamp
* small bottle of purel
* hand lotion
* two fruity coasters waiting for a cup of coffee
* three flash drives
* bamboo plant
* dragon holding a letter opener
* crystal pendulum
* small King Kong statue
* pink plastic bucket holding Post-its
* telephone
* address book
* pink computer paper
* flower-bordered notepad
* flower-bordered Post-it cube
* small yellow basket holding two cameras, Iron Man Pez dispenser, smiley-face stress ball, sucker with a grasshopper in it, chapstick, nail file
* Russian lacquer-ware pen holder
* Dragon pen holder
* electric pencil sharpner
* crystal frog with more pens
* candle
* glass star with “Superstar” written on it
* book of affirmations opened to “I am talented”
* leather-bound, hand-made book, intended to be my personal Book of Shadows but which instead has pages of pretty stamps because I was experimenting with them
* tape recorder
* dragon stapler
* standing file with things I haven’t looked at in months
* three worry stones: carnelian, bloodstone, clear crystal

Tell me 5 things sitting on your desk now!

I had a terrific day with my daughter’s family yesterday. Didn’t worry about making a wordcount. Didn’t itch to get to my computer. I headed to Hot Springs with my camera and a credit card.

My SIL, his mom, the red-headed hellion, the 5-year-old, and 1-year-old were all loaded up, and we headed first to downtown Hot Springs. Parking was tough to find because it was a beautiful sunny day with a nice breeze and EVERYONE headed to the strip.

We started at Bubbalu’s for hot dogs and hamburgers. A woman came up to ooh and ah over the baby. The baby gave her a scowl. “She must be shy,” the woman said. SIL said, “No, ma’am, she’s just mean.” And that’s the truth. Little Girl doesn’t have a shy bone in her body, but she has a temper and she did not want to stay in her stroller.

We stopped in at several little specialty shops, the 5-year-old and I bought matching shiny pink scarfs to wrap around our necks and blingy necklaces. The girl-child got stopped several times to be told how beautiful and “fashionable” she was. The same folks chuckled at me as they passed. This was the girl-child’s last day of Spring Break, and we’d told her it was her special day. She kept remarking on how great it was that everyone showed up to help her celebrate.

While we were walking, I passed a family with this dog and had to stop them to get a picture. Don’t you know there’s a story somewhere in that picture?

The shopping was nice. Stopped in Tillman’s which is an estate sale store and saw some amazing pieces. Faberge eggs, jewelry from The French Quarter that dated back to the late 1800’s. So much bling I thought I’d died and gone to heavan. I forgot to ask if they had lay-away… But never mind. Daughter and I are already plotting our next trip there—just have to save a bit to get something special!

Girl-child’s wish was to go to the petting zoo, so off we traipsed. This is us in the goat cage, feeding bread to the goats. It’s the only shot you’ll see of me, because after I saw what the wind did to my hair that was over!

The highlight of course was the alligator house. They keep them inside in winter and the gators huddle under heat lamps in the pools. Being so close, with only a 4-foot fence surrounded by chicken wire, didn’t make me feel very safe. I know they can jump that height and that chicken wire isn’t enough to hold them back if they do attack, but they looked very well-fed and lethargic.

Read the rest of this entry »

For all you writers, I’m blogging today at the Novelists, Inc. Blog, talking about one of my favorite things—working the plan. I’d love to see some familiar faces there today!

And for those of you who aren’t writers, I have a question for you…

What is the c-c-c-coldest you have ever been in your life, and what is the (whew!!!) hottest you have ever been in your life?

My answers will be in the comments!

Psst! The name of the winner of my BAD contest can be found at the bottom of this message.

Well, the book is out. I hope I enticed you enough with snippets that you are eager to buy your own copy. When you read it, let me know how you liked it and whether you want more Red Stiletto stories.

Something nice happened the other day. I received a message from the Australian Romance Readers Association that Darkness Burning is a finalist for Favourite Erotic Romance for 2009! A very nice honor indeed. And you should see who is keeping me company in that category!

Favourite Erotic Romance
Bengal’s Heart / Lora Leigh
Bite My Fire / Mary Hughes
Caleb (The Shadow Wranglers) / Sarah McCarty
Claimed by the Wolf / Charlene Teglia
Darkness Burning / Delilah Devlin
Laid Bare / Lauren Dane
On These Silken Sheets / Sabrina Darby
Perfect Formation / KB Alan
Sweet Persuasion / Maya Banks
Taboo / Jess Michaels

This announcement is so timely because I just received the copyedits of Darkness Captured, DB’s sequel. That book will be out in September.

So, today that’s the first thing I’ll be working on. Then it’s right back to the big book for Berkley. I’ll be checking my email, so let me know when you get a chance to read Bad, Bad Girlfriend. I want to know if you laughed as hard as I did during that one particular scene…

There were 97 entries in the contest for the Amazon.com gift certificate. And many of you figured out how to enter as many as 6 times, increasing your odds. Smart. I won’t make you suffer and drag this out. The winner (by random number generator) is…Elise Crafton Antes! Elise—email me!

We’ll get to the picture in a bit. 😉

This week wasn’t a complete bust, but productivity was hampered by the fact I had so many critters and kids pulling at my attention.

I finished a chapter of the big book, began work in earnest on the next chapter installment of my free read, Bad Moon Rising, and I finished another chapter of the third Lone Star Lovers book. Not balls of fire, but progress nonetheless!

This coming week, I have to really knuckle down. (What does that mean? Knuckle down… Knuckles dragging the ground means you’re primitive. That will bug me now.) I want to finish 4 chapters of the big book, and I can if I shut everything out. But I also want to finish the few pages left of the free story. And I’d like to complete one more chapter of the Lone Star book, so that I have a chance of finishing the thing this month too.

So that’s my progress and my goals.

Back to that picture.

Remember those two dogs that mated this week? I took my camera outside with me early one morning. The dogs were standing butt-to-butt while the male was waiting for his eretion to wane to free himself. I snapped the pic, thinking it would be funny to post, but this is more interesting, don’t you think?

What is it? Two werewolves? Two hellhounds? Tell me what you see.