It’s past noon here. I stayed up until after three last night, couldn’t sleep, kept going through my gazillion emails to see what all I’d missed and owed. Woke up around 10:30 AM, and about had a heart attack, because I was supposed to go to the 5-year-old’s school to eat lunch with her today. That started at 10:50, and I live a good 45 minutes from her.

So, did I blow it off? Could you? I dressed, washed my face, teeth, brushed my hair and was out the door in three minutes. Then I flew like a bat out of hell. Got there ten minutes late, and broke a dozen laws to do it, but it was all worth it.

Now I’m back home and going through my pictures. Wanted to post something quick just to get it up and thought I’d share this.

As always, there’s a story that goes along with this. This was our first day at the lake house. Only Sasha and I were excited about the water. The rest thought it was too cold, but Sasha’s from Canada, and I’m just a plain ole crazy water baby. We took out the paddle boat, although neither of us had ever been in one. We laughed our asses off just dragging it into the water and trying to board. But we made it in and started pedalling.

What we didn’t know, that the girls hanging off the balcony knew, was that there were two fishermen in a motor boat watching us. We started pedalling, but couldn’t figure out how to steer, so we were going in circles and laughing like crazy. One guy elbowed the other and pointed at us, and they started laughing. When I finally figured out there was this little lever I could push forward and back to steer with, we didn’t care so much that I couldn’t seem to steer in a straight line, so we kept making circles until our stomachs hurt.

After that day, the ladies always headed to the balcony whenever we started walking toward the beach.

I promise I have some very nice pictures of the lake and the ladies to share, but I haven’t downloaded them yet to my PC, so I’m sharing something Sasha sent me from our first night there. If you don’t recognize it, that’s the moon, looking very like a space ship. And if you look down and to the right, you’ll see a little green orb. Now, if you remember my blog from a really long time ago when I went on a ghost-hunting expedition, that’s a ghost “orb”—only swear to god, I’ve only seen them white. I’m thinking…moon-ship…that has to be an alien’s ghost!

I’ll be back tomorrow, and I promise I’ll have those winners announcements and more pics!

I’ll be in catchup mode for a couple of days. I arrived home around 9 PM CST last night. Only took me an hour to get from the airport (it’s easily an hour and a half drive)—didn’t know I’d flown. Guess I was eager.

I have tons of email and laundry to do. I want to be able to get back to work quickly because I still have Lora Leigh’s RAW to get ready for at the end of this month. September cannot be all about fun.

I’ll do a recap of everything I accomplished, saw, learned in the coming days. For now, I’m unwinding.

Oh! And tomorrow I’ll announce the winners for the Flashback books. Thanks to everyone who checked in here while I was gone. I did get access to read the comments and appreciated it very much.

To my retreat buddies—beware! Pictures are coming! 😈

Anything else? Yeah, the pool is calling me. We missed each other very much. Until tomorrow!

While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Last Day…

Okay, now the song’s in your head. Bwahaha! 😈

Sometime later today, I’ll be back online and pouring through a gazillion emails. If I was lucky while I was away, I got a chance to check in a time or two. Otherwise, it will take a couple of days for me to climb out from under the mountain of messages and laundry.

As soon as I can I’ll announce the winners of the books I offered. I’ll post pictures of my cottage-mates and talk about our wild old time—or at least as much as they will let me without having to plead the 5th. Can’t wait to hear who you’ve been doing, too! Later! ~DD

While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 2…

Just a little glimpse into the story that will be coming out in November with Samhain. Excuse any typos; this hasn’t gone through editing yet. Also, if you’re a little squeamish about male-male sex, stop reading now.

There are moments that can change the course of a woman’s life from one heartbeat to the next. For Dani Standifer, this was that moment.

She’d arrived in Two Mule, Texas a day earlier than she’d planned, intending to surprise her boyfriend. But the surprise was definitely on her. Rowan Ayers’s body, hardening with arousal, demonstrated more poignantly than any “Dear Jane” letter that she’d been gone far too long. He’d moved on.

Everything she’d ever dreamed of for her future evaporated like the sweat glistening on his naked chest.

As well, it hurt that he’d chosen this place to bring another woman. The isolated, ramshackle line shack had been their favorite place, their secret love nest. The cabin sat nestled in a thicket of scrubby cedar, a tall live oak providing the structure shade from the late afternoon sun. The shack was situated inside the Ayers fence line, equidistance from both of their ranch houses. Perfect for the trysts they’d shared throughout high school and during summer breaks from university. Here, they’d explored their young bodies, talked about their dreams for the future…and made plans.
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While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 3…

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

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

In a post-Apocalyptic future with cities decimated by a nuclear winter, people have fled to rural areas to become the prey of criminals and werebeasts. Rancher Kate McKinnon runs “Sanctuary” — a last refuge on the western frontier. While driving her surviving wranglers and integrating refugees into their self-sufficient refuge, she escapes her responsibilities the only way she has left — via ham radio to pockets of other survivors. One man, Ty Bennett, is her confidante and she thinks she might be falling in love with him. Although they’ve never met, he seems to know her heart.

On a patrol to siphon gasoline to run the ranch’s generator, Kate and her cowboys are attacked. They are rescued by Ty and a band of his ex-military “brothers”, who are there to bring her and her refugees to a safer place. She soon discovers he and his men are another breed of monsters — vampires! And she’s brought vampires into the refuge.

Already half in love with the human woman, Ty fights his own nature and appetites while seeking redemption for his many sins. Can he overco me Kate’s prejudice and choking responsibilities to get her to trust him with their lives, even as she succumbs to his seduction?

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

“How much ammo you got on you, girl?” Shep shouted from the opposite end of the church.

She patted her duster pockets. “Enough. I don’t miss much.”

“Don’t look like we need silver load.”

He was right. What surrounded them wasn’t werebeasts—it was the lowest form of human life—those who preyed on the survivors.

“Well, this will be easy pickin’s,” she murmured and steeled herself for the coming confrontation.

Kate didn’t wait to hear what they might say.

The only thing they wanted was her—women were a scarce commodity on the frontier. She took a bead down the barrel of her pistol and squeezed off a shot through the windshield of a pickup, pleased at the splash of red that exploded against the glass.
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While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 4…

Tomorrow, you’ll get a chance to win Sanctuary—my one and only published story with Whispers, which released in 2005. For now, here’s what I kept on the old website as my “Story Behind the Book”.

I write so many vampires that it really becomes a challenge to find something fresh to say—especially something outside my MIK world, which has taken on a life of its own!

So when Whispers asked for a submission, and they wanted something paranormal, I decided to place my story in the “near” future about twenty years from now.

First, I imagined how the world might be changed if some of our current political issues weren’t resolved well. I’m such a pessimist I imagined the worst possible outcome—a modern Armageddon.

In the time before technology, people believed in magic. So I wondered how that might be inverted. When technology begins to fail, will the magical creatures crawl back out of the darkness? In my future world they do!

But how would humans exist? I looked out my window at my front yard, which borders a ranch and thought that a Texas ranch might be a pretty self-sufficient place if forced back into a subsistence mode. So I put my heroine on a West Texas ranch patrolling her borders to make sure the creatures of the night don’t invade, while trying to keep her people safe and fed.

What would be her greatest fear? Facing one of those creatures. So, naturally the hero has to be one. Their story isn’t new. I just hope I built a really interesting adventure for them to meet and fall in love.

While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 5…

I’m taking a break away from my personal blog to let any writers among you know about the Plotting Bootcamp that starts up next Monday. It’s something my sister and I have run very successfully for years.

What makes our class different from all the other plotting classes out there? We give you feedback every step of the way. You build your story from the ground up, and we help you through feedback on the exercises and through frequent live chats. We do this so well that we have many writers coming back again and again for help refining their latest work-in-progress.

Here’s the information about the class. I hope you’ll join us!

What you can look forward to during Plotting Bootcamp:

Learn a methodical approach to harness your creativity in order to produce an in-depth plot for your next novel! Sound scary? It is-when you’re staring at an empty page without a compass and a map to guide you through the novelistic jungle. Your DIs will lead you through four weeks of activities that will help strengthen your abilities to: capture the conflicts, the major plot line and subplots; deepen your knowledge of your characters; and conceive of and develop an in-depth, by-chapter description of your book. Elle and Delilah will accomplish this with weekly lessons, bi-weekly chats and daily online communication. Be ready for bivouac!

Interested? Click on this link to enroll!

Testimonials:

I would highly recommend this course to everyone who is even thinking about writing a book.
~Laurean

Thanks for all the insight. You taught me how to think as a novel writer after many years of banging out ad copy.
~Tim
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