This was in my inbox yesterday!

From The Romance Studio: “…The seventh book in the My Immortal Knight series, Knight of My Dreams is by far the best. The story is such a perfect contrast between light and dark, past and present, vengeance and redemption, that it leaves you aching with its haunting beauty. Quentin is a fierce warrior, who loves his wife and is ready to sell his soul to the devil in order to save her. Kamaria, on the other hand, is not the devil she wants all to think she is, and the hints of vulnerability she shows only make her the most powerful character in this story. Moreover, Darcy, along with all the secondary characters, does not fall short in her complexity and strength…But no question, this book is intense in every sense of the word, and it is ready to rob you of your breath.”

And after a lot of wallowing, I have managed to make progress. Everything on Sunday’s To Do list is complete. So I’m a day behind—so what! I still hope to complete the novella for the Kindle project by Thursday. Have to see where Sasha is with her story…

For any of you who are waiting for contest materials to be mailed, I worked on a huge stack yesterday. I’ll mail them when I’m on my way to Little Rock tomorrow. You should have them in your hot little hands soon!

And lastly, the pool temperature finally rose above 80 degrees! The water’s warm, clear and I didn’t have to fish any critters from the depths. It’s all good.

That’s what my horoscope said today. Spooky. Here I am looking at yesterday’s To Do list and trying to reprioritize with today’s list. Had a headache all day yesterday and couldn’t look at the monitor except in short spurts. Will start with the critiques I owe to the ladies at Rose’s. So sorry to be late.

Only 8 more days of May and I have to make a strong finish. Must turn off the Tweetdeck, the Facebook, and try not to look at the email. At least for today. I’d never last the whole week. 🙄

We’ll get to the SRC in a moment.

I have a little bit of a headache this morning. Mead always does that to me. Don’t know why I drink it, except that drinking wine with an Asatru priest (he follows Norse pagan beliefs) and an eclectic witch seemed the thing to do and it was truly delicious!

I went to Hot Springs yesterday with the red-headed hellion to visit the pair I met a few months ago and talked about on this blog. Bill gave me a rune reading and Red had the fairy cards read. We stayed for a few hours chatting with their friends. Lovely night.

Here’s Bill. I coaxed him into his robes.

These are the girls who were there. The red-headed hellion is the one in orange. She has her hair pulled back in a bun. Lisa, the witch, is to her right.

Had to snap this. It’s a fairy door the couple made to encourage fairies to enter their home. I’m so getting one for my office.

On the way home from their house, my daughter and I stopped at Wally World for a few things, and I passed a whole display of How to Train Your Dragon toys. This one roared at me to take him home. Really. All I did was tap him on the butt.

One little random note here. I opened the latest RT Bookreviews Magazine and found a review for Fairy Tale Lust, which will release July 1st.
4 1/2 stars from Gail: “This original collection puts a deliciously sexy twist on familiar fairy tales. Many talented writers provide a wide range of stories, including m/f, f/f, classic and contemporary.”

Okay, back to the business part of the blog.
I have nearly completed a rewrite of the last 5 chapters of the novella I had so many problems with last week. I’ve never done such an extensive revision before. I know, I’m spoiled. But I do feel better about it. There’s humor in there and more of their growing relationship. Thank goodness I found the heart.

“Take a blow torch to your belly fat!” That was the subject of a spam mail I deleted this morning. It’s a pretty effective sentence. Gives the reader an instant image and the theme of the spammer’s message. Whoever wrote it has real talent.

So does whoever wrote “V is for Vampire” for Powerman 5000.

“Nobody loves you when you’re skin is so pale,
and your teeth are gettin’ sharpened and your black friggin’ nails.
Nobody needs you when your eyes turn wide
and the light of day can keep you up all night,
because V is for Vampire, V is for blood…”

Maria Mena’s song “Sorry” paints a picture and grabs your emotions.

“He grabs my wrists
as my fingers turn into angry fists
and I whisper, ‘Why can’t you love me?
I’ll change for you’…”

Don’t you feel her anguish?

When the singer whispers these words, don’t you feel his?

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,
I’m sorry, I am sorry’…”

All these writers paint a picture in a few well-chosen words, and we novelists have a hard time telling a story in a whole friggin’ book. We all use words. We all sweat over them. They have to convey a single message, a single vision, a single scene in a person’s life. A novelist tries to drop a reader into another world and transport them into another person’s life in 400 pages.

I’m not saying a novelist’s job is harder. I’m just thinking I would have sucked as a spammer or a songwriter.

Yesterday’s post was a lot of fun. I’ll have to solicit photos from you all again. Here are the pictures some of you sent me to share glimpses of your addictions!

Heather has a thing for skulls. Her mother indulged her with a great purse. I think I could like this addiction too!

Julie has a collections of Dreamcicles—and I learned something because I had never seen them before. The big sad eyes really pull a person in!

Ilona isn’t collecting daughters with vivid hair (she can’t have mine!), but her husband has an extensive collection of dragons that you can catch a glimpse of in the background. It’s a good thing she didn’t include her address… Just sayin’.

Anna loved the post so much, she put pics of her obsessions on her blog. Her first love, books, was a common theme yesterday. And another I share, although I collect mostly history and mythology books. I wouldn’t consider the romances (other than a few keepers) as a collection, because as I read them, I let them go.

Here’s Anna’s other obsession, costume jewelry. My daughter would love her.

If you’d like to add a picture of your obsession, it’s not too late!

Ilona sent me a link to add her collection of soft toys to the list!

I started to take just a picture of my growing Disney/McDonalds collection of dragon action figures from the movie How to Train Your Dragon, but realized when I looked around my office that I’m becoming a little obsessed. Dragons are my new collectible.

I think I only lack one dragon—the one with the boy riding his dragon’s back… hint, hint!

My sister brought this one back to me from Guam. It’s carved in jade.

The little green one is another of the Disney dragons, but behind it is a dragon clutching a letter opener, part of my dragon desk set.

I didn’t know until just now that there’s a dragon pen sitting inside that dragon cup. See his golden snout sticking out? (Unusual pens are another thing I love to collect. I’ll show you them another day.)

Doesn’t everyone need a dragon stapler?

Don’t we all have something we collect that makes us almost giddy whenever we find another object to add? What do you enjoy collecting? If you send me one picture of whatever it is that you collect, I’d love to post it!

I’ll name Monday’s winner at the bottom of this post. In the meantime, welcome my an old friend of mine from Texas, Meg Benjamin! Here’s what she has to say about her latest release:

As I’ve said before, probably way too many times by now, I can’t listen to music while I write. Wish I could, but I can’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t like to listen to music while I’m doing other things, however. In fact, one of the things I really miss about Texas is the great music you hear all the time. Texas musicians just rock, and no matter where you live in the state, there’s always a road house around the bend somewhere. You know how there are some songs that just kind of wash over you, like audible warm water, and some songs that make you just want to, well, move? Texas musicians specialize in the latter.

Which brings me to my subject—James McMurtry’s song “Red Dress.” Now McMurtry is one of my all-time favorite Texas musicians, probably best known for his “Choctaw Bingo,” which is a real rave-up. But “Red Dress” is one of those songs that makes you want to do a little hip swinging. Every time I hear it, I end up swaying in my seat. It’s slow, sensuous, with a really heavy beat and oddly ominous lyrics (you get the feeling the singer is going to be ripping that red dress to shreds any minute). And it haunted my thoughts when I was writing Wedding Bell Blues. I wanted a scene where my heroine, a “good girl” named Janie Dupree, could cut loose and give some hints about the bad girl that lies beneath the surface. That gave me the idea for a scene where Janie and her friends danced to McMurtry’s “Red Dress” while the hero, Pete Toleffson, watched. I have to say, every time I worked on this scene, I started by playing “Red Dress” to get myself in the mood. Here’s an excerpt. If you want to judge how well the song fits the action, there’s always iTunes!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

A series of guitar chords, rhythmically hypnotic, came over the sound system. Docia jumped to her feet. “Come on, ladies, let’s do it,” she called, heading for the concrete slab. Allie trooped behind her, as Janie turned to beckon to Bethany.

“Oh, Christ,” Cal murmured. “Here we go.”

“Here goes what?”

Cal shook his head. “You’ll see.”

The song had something to do with a red dress. Pete managed to get his brain to register that much. The singer seemed to be upset because his girlfriend was wearing a red dress he didn’t recognize and he figured she was playing around.

The slow, sensuous rhythm of the guitar and bass filled the air and the four women moved their bodies more or less in unison, like some cowgirl chorus line.

Pete glanced at Wonder and saw him swallow hard as he watched Allie.

Then he looked back at the women again.

Janie Dupree moved in a graceful swaying motion, her eyes closed, as if she were dancing for herself alone. She raised her arms above her head and moved her body back and forth, the most elegant bump and grind he’d ever seen.
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