According to my own New Year’s tradition, I spent New Year’s Eve productively. I believe in heralding in the New Year in the same way you wish the rest of the year to go. So I wrapped up the second chapter of Bad Moon Rising (the link should be up sometime later today) and a short story for a Cleis Press anthology. Then I returned to FWD&J, revised my way through chapter 6 and wrote a rough of the final chapter. A very good day for me!

I like to take the first day of the year to review what I accomplished in the previous year and state my plans for this year.

In 2009, I enjoyed seeing 19 new releases.

2 Single Title books
1) Texas Men (Kensington)
2) Darkness Burning (Avon)

10 Novellas
1) Jane’s Wild Weekend (Ellora’s Cave)
2) Obsessed (Zane)
3) Saddled (Samhain)
4) Unleashing the Tiger (Ellora’s Cave)
5) Lockdown (Ellora’s Cave)
6) Hotblooded, in Tempted by a Cowboy (Kensington)
7) Stone’s Embrace (Samhain)
8) Knight of My Dreams (Ellora’s Cave)
9) Unbridled (Samhain)
10) Raw Silk (Ellora’s Cave)

3 Short Stories
1) Eye of the Storm (Harlequin Spice)
2) The Hired Hand, in Lesbian Cowboys (Cleis Press)
3) Have Sex Will Travel, in Sexy Little Numbers (Black Lace)

4 Re-releases
1) Invite Me In, in Naughty Bits (Harlequin Spice)
2) Frannie ‘n’ the Private Dick (Ellora’s Cave)
3) Unleashing the Tiger, in Altered States (Ellora’s Cave)
4) Ride a Cowboy, in To Serve and Protest (Pocket/Ellora’s Cave)

Pretty darned impressive, I think. If I stick to my plan for this year, 2010 will look very much the same. This is what I have release dates for now but doesn’t include novellas I have in the works for Samhain and Ellora’s Cave.

1) 01/12/10 – LONE STAR LOVERS: UNFORGIVEN (Samhain)
2) 04/??/10 – MISS ADDIE’S GARDEN, New Love Stories Magazine
3) 05/01/10 – STONE’S EMBRACE, Captive Souls anthology (Samhain)
4) 06/01/10 – THE OUT-OF-TOWNER, Girl Crush anthology (Cleis Press)
5) ??/10 – THE WEEKEND, Lesbian Lust anthology (Cleis Press)
6) 07/01/10 – THE OBEDIENT WIFE, Fairy Tale Lust anthology (Cleis Press)
7) 10/1/10 – COWBOY FEVER anthology (Samhain)
8) 11/01/10 – DARKNESS CAPTURED (Avon Red)

The big push this year, besides the many novellas I will write for epublishers, will be to sell another proposal to a New York house. Cross your fingers. I have two strong proposals already making the rounds and am working on several more to get out the door in the coming months.

And that’s my look into the past and forward.

I do have some resolutions. Three are promises I will make to my readers. You’ve been so loyal to me; I have to make sure I return the favor.

* I plan to offer free chapters or stories in my newsletter at least every two months.

* I will blog every day, come rain or shine, and will do my very best to please you with the content.

* I will continue to write the sexy stories you love. And I will try, try, try to keep them romantic, although if you read me, you know I tend to add some gritty realism in my stories, because so much of what I write is what I’ve experienced, either vicariously through my friends and family or directly. I tend to write what I know, even if the hero is a vampire.

Sound fair? What are your resolutions?

Do you even know from whence that expression was derived?

Lemme tell ya. It’s when you have two full moons within the same calendar month. What does that mean? It’s a very special moon that you save very special magic to work. And statistically speaking, it only occurs every 2.72 years, but you will have one at the end of this month and another at the end of January!

What does that mean for you? Make today count. Do something with someone you love. For me, I’ll be pounding out pages because that’s what I love and where I want my “magic” spent.

Have a great New Years Eve! ~DD

Psst! For yesterday’s winner, you’ll have to scroll to the bottom of this post! ~DD

Well, I’ve finally arrived at the last days of the cruise. It was a 10-days, 9-nights cruise, and still I hated to see it end. Sasha White and I had a wonderful time. I managed to get some work done here and there. Nothing impressive. The best benefit for my muse was the chance to experience new things and take in some incredible sights.

For the more ambitious traveler, cruise ships offer non-stop entertainments. My favorite was the ice show, which I watched twice. It was spectacular, and I wasn’t even a little bit prejudiced by the fact that one of Sasha’s friends from back home was part of the cast! Most of my shots are blurs, like this one, because there’s so much movement. But the colors are lovely, aren’t they?

At the center, the guy holding the other skater aloft is Brad, Sasha’s friend, whose suggestion it was that we cruise on this ship.

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My cruise buddy, Sasha White, and I are posting pictures with a theme today—something that made us smile on our cruise. Hers has to do with towel pets and mine is watermelon art. And we’re both running contests for signed books and a gift from the islands. So be sure to hit her site today too!

Here’s what you have to do to win a copy of To Serve and Protect: 1) Send an email to me privately, listing what you think each of these 11 works of art represents AND 2) post a comment somewhere on my blog. That simple. Oh and here’s my email address: DD’s Email

The morning after we left the islands for our long trip back to Newark we had a treat lined up in The Promenade. Watermelons had been carved and served as the centerpieces for a buffet lunch. I couldn’t resist taking pictures of every one of them. Good luck and don’t stress about getting them absolutely correct! Guesses count!

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If you’d like to see what kept Sasha amused (me shopping, and shopping and shopping), head on over to her website too! Sasha White’s blog

The next island stop on our cruise was Labadee, Haiti. I didn’t know a thing about what to expect in Haiti except what everyone emailed me—it’s dangerous and dirty, don’t take the cabs because you’ll be robbed and killed. I actually was looking forward to that Haiti. I wanted to hit a voodoo shop. Wanted the third world pictures. Instead, I ended up in a place so pristine my mother would sit on the toilet seat. Labadee is privately owned by Royal Caribbean. So the experience is restful, peaceful and beautiful, but anything other than authentic.

Sasha was quite pleased. All she wanted to do was lie on the beach. I must have annoyed the crap out of her. I couldn’t just lie in the sun. We tipped a guy to set up our loungers, but I didn’t spend 10 minutes in mine. I swam, I wandered down the beach to the…ahem…shops. Like I needed to do more shopping, but I was BORED. However, the scenery was seriously gorgeous.

Here’s the dock where we arrived.

I tried to get a shot of this guy without being too obvious. I pretended to snap a pic of our monster boat, but he wouldn’t turn around. His abs weren’t a 6-pack, they had to be 12-freaking-pack!

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I’m taking a break from the travelogue. It’s a lot of work getting those pictures posted! Besides I like my little routines.

Sundays are for reflection. Some of you may go to church to clear your head and heart. I prefer a different sort of internal process. I like to take stock of what I’ve accomplished and set plans for the next week—after giving myself a break for being less than perfect. Plus, a little meditation or a lot of affirmations helps get my head in the right place if I’ve suffered any disappointments (a rejection, a less than stellar review, a son who hasn’t called!).

Since I haven’t posted an SRP since before my trip, I thankfully have a little more to report than I would otherwise. You know December was all about the cruise—the first vacation that wasn’t centered around a writer’s conference since I became a writer. Not that I wasn’t being one aboard ship. I slammed some pages, interviewed travelers and crew (not that they knew it), and drank in setting details so that I could describe them later in a story. The cruise was lovely and just the right way to end a very strange year.

I haven’t finished anything so far this month. I am working on the last scene of Bad Moon Rising. I’m determined to get it out to you before the end of the month, but you all gave me a very difficult problem to overcome. How do I get a woman who has just met two very scrumptious men in the open and readied to have sex with them both?

I am halfway through a short story called Textile Free that I have to finish before the end of the month for another Cleis collection. By the way, I love writing those. Someday, I may just write a whole book’s worth of short stories of my own. There’s nothing more satisfying than wrapping up a story, and with shorts it doesn’t take weeks to get there.

My novella for Ellora’s Cave is giving me fits. It had such a cute opening, but the closer I get to the end, the more I know I didn’t get the conflict right. So, I’ve pushed it aside to give myself some think time. That one I’ll have to finish next month because I’ve dawdled over it so long.

I guess I’m having a crisis of confidence. I’m not the sort to sit around and cry when things don’t go exactly the way I want. Instead, I revise my plans. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. I can’t stand it when I’m a crybaby, so instead, I have to get up, dust myself off, figure out what hasn’t worked, and change my course.

And with the new year just around the corner, I’m determined to step out on the right foot. I’m listing my resolutions. Have you started yours? Care to share?

BTW—I’ll be hosting the Ellora’s Cave chat loop this afternoon, 4 PM-8PM CST. Email me if you need the link!

Yesterday’s winner will be named at the end of this posting! ~DD

Here’s hoping everyone spent Christmas day surrounded by family.

My parents and I descended on my daughter and her family. So we got to watch the 11-month-old unwrap gifts (translated: play with wrapping paper). The six-year-old is in Texas with her daddy, and we missed her, but got a chance to concentrate on the other baby’s first Christmas. Getting to Hot Springs was a little tricky though. With all the rain we’ve had, the roads leading to Arkadelphia were flooded. At Clear Lake (someone with a wicked sense of humor named it because it’s a murky swamp with alligators), I did try to see how far I could get, but when the water got 6-inches deep and I couldn’t see the edges of the road, I turned back and took a different route.

Our meal was great and very relaxed—something I will no doubt look back on with fondness because I’m back on my diet today. Turns out I only gained six pounds on the trip. I didn’t backslide that far!

But it was enough to keep me out of those “booty jeans” yesterday. 😥

Anyway, back to the cruise. A funny thing happened in St. Thomas. I forgot to take pictures of the town because I got caught up in a shopping frenzy. If you’ve never been there, it’s a mecca for jewelry. I caught the fever! I bought two sets (ring, earings, and pendant) of bright blue topaz and purple tanzanite and tons of semiprecious stone bracelets, which I gave away as Christmas gifts. So the photos that follow were taken after I’d finished most of my shopping.

Except these first two. When we debarked at the dock, these tourist taxis that sat a dozen people met us to take us into town. All of them were brightly colored and decorated. We didn’t ride with “The Muscle Man” but I had to snap a pic.

Here’s a view of St. Thomas from the dock.

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