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!

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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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I have a winner to name, but I’m thinking I will do that on Thursday AM, so if you want a second chance to win, go ahead and post a comment today to let me now you stopped by!

The reason I sound a little rushed is that I have two houseguests, Allie Standifer and Shayla Kersten. We stayed up late last night plotting world domination and trying to figure out if we wanted to hit Hot Springs for a spa day. I’ll let you know later whether we made it or just lazed around the pool.

I’ve known Allie for a number of years. That makes her sound old, which she isn’t, because she’s the baby of the Rose’s Colored Glasses Roses. We met when I lived in San Antonio. Now, I have known Shayla since before cell phones so we really are that old.

Sorry for the short post, but I have to make some coffee and pry my eyes open before the other two stumble out of bed. It would never do for them to think I’d rather stay in bed than have an adventure! I’ll try to remember to take pictures today. Until tomorrow, adios! ~DD

Be sure to post a comment today to be in the running
for a free signed copy of this book!

I hope someday to write more cowboy stories set around the Palo Duro Canyon. If you’ve never been, it’s the second largest canyon in the U.S., and you can’t miss an amazing good time—cowboys and one big natural phenomenon.

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

Tough and rough, tall and dark, these are men a woman never forgets. Experience pleasure like no other in the arms of a cowboy…

Mustang Man by Vonna Harper
Acclaimed horse trainer Miguel Perez is used to the unexpected from his work with wild mustangs. But nothing prepares him for the bolt of desire he feels when he meets Dawn Glass, as he’s eager to work his sexual healing on her in every possible way.

Long Hard Ride by Melissa MacNeal
Rodeo rider Michael White House is grateful when Diana Grant stops to pick him up in the middle of a rainstorm. But with one touch his gratitude quickly turns to lust and an uncontrollable desire to lay her down and ride her hard all night long. “Hot Blooded” – Rancher Adam Youngblood is always happy to help a damsel in distress. But before he’ll pull the sweetly curvaceous and fiercely independent Cass McIntyre to safety, he demands promises of unconditional sexual surrender.

Hot Blooded by Delilah Devlin
Rancher Adam Youngblood is always happy to help a damsel in distress. But before he’ll pull the sweetly curvaceous and fiercely independent Cass McIntyre to safety, he demands promises of unconditional sexual surrender…

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

When the first small drops began to fall, Cass McIntyre welcomed the light shower the forecasters had predicted. Already halfway up the route she’d chosen, she’d worked up a nice sweat.

The rain quickly cooled her skin, which was caked in a thick, itchy layer of canyon dirt and chalk. The lazy breeze accompanying the rain fanned the burning cuts on her bare legs and arms, giving her a mental boost of energy.

After another fifteen feet into her ascent—chilled and achy now and getting a little impatient with the worsening conditions—she found a narrow ledge. She unhooked her biner from the rope, and decided to wait out the cloudburst, a rare occurrence in the Panhandle and extremely deadly because the rock face she climbed had become as slippery as mud.

She took small comfort in the phrase she’d heard over and over since she’d first moved to Canyon, Texas that ran like a mantra through her head. If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.

Her mistake had been believing that piece of homespun advice.

Not that she was anything more than mildly annoyed at this point. The awe-inspiring view from her perch above the canyon floor placated her restless nature and soothed the deep ache in her chest that had choked her at the start of the climb.

Low-hanging clouds obscured the sunlight and provided an unexpected cooling to a hot spring day. Soft, gray mist filled the Palo Duro Canyon, softening the light and air, the moisture causing a burst of brilliant color to erupt from the fading wildflowers carpeting the rough terrain—bright orange from Mexican hat and Indian blanket, and a cheery yellow daisy-like flower whose name escaped her at the moment.

Determined to salvage some enjoyment from her adventure, she settled on the ledge, dangling her legs over the side, and ignored the water soaking through her thin tee and shorts.

Half an hour into the storm that had grown steadily more insistent, she kissed off making the summit and planned a quick rappel to the distant hollow below.

However, as she unwound her long rope from the straps of her backpack for a hasty descent, her narrow perch disintegrated. Rock made fragile by the water splintered into rough shards and gravel that tumbled down the sheer precipice.

Cass dropped the rope and jammed her hand into a crevice in the rock to anchor herself while she reached beside her for her pack. But she was too late.

More of the ledge crumbled. The backpack slid away, leaving her stranded with only the shorter rope she’d used between cams—not nearly long enough to attempt a descent.
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