While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 6…

September’s Moon is the Harvest Moon. According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft, it’s “a time of protection, prosperity and abundance.”

There’s energy in this month. It’s time to harvest grain—which translated means September’s a time of prosperity. Winter’s beckoning, but for now you can celebrate.

I’ll be thinking of you. And missing my daily blog. Maybe. Depends on how well the ladies and I get along. Six days of togetherness? Don’t they say that three days is the rule—after which company and socks begin to stink? I know I mucked that one up, but you get my drift. Can’t wait to share pictures!

While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 7…

Remember to post a comment for a chance to win this book!

All Knight Long was released in March 2004, and is the third in the My Immortal Knight series!

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From In The Library Reviews: “Author Delilah Devlin’s My Immortal Knight series is a wonderful group of books that’ll keep the readers anxiously intrigued through out all the series.”

5 Angels from Fallen Angels Reviews: “Ms. Devlin knows how to use her words to draw you into her story. She has created characters that are easy to fall in love with. When you combine her excellent characters with the great plot, this story becomes a must read.”

A member of an elite police unit sworn to hunt vampires, Joe Garcia’s life is turned upside down when he’s transformed into one. On a quest for a cure, his search brings him to New Orleans in a last ditch effort to recover his humanity.

Professor Lily Carlson, a renowned expert in vampire lore, has a “condition” of her own. Her sexual libido has been in hyper-drive for months. Her only defense is to hide behind her glasses and tweed suits and stay as far away from men as possible. However, she’s thrilled to discover vampires really do exist when Joe shows up on her balcony.

Although Joe deflects her attempts to make him a case study and confirm a few vampire statistics, he is drawn by her powerful allure. When werewolves join the chase and track her through New Orleans, Joe’s cop instincts tell him there’s a mystery to solve. Intent on protecting her, he must seek help from the last vampire on Earth he wants to ask. While his hopes for deliverance from his fate dwindle, Lily’s life is forever altered by an unexpected “inheritance”.

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The small sign in the café window read: Welcome Vampires and Sanguinarians! (No blood products provided—none permitted on premises! The Management).

Joe Garcia snorted. Every human in the place was a walking, breathing blood product—a portable soda fountain for the Fanged Ones.

He pushed through the glass door and tried to dampen the hope that rose in his chest, causing his heart to beat faster and his hands to sweat. Thusfar, he’d met only disappointment in his long search. This might be just another dead end—the last one he could afford before his cash ran out and his credit card was maxed.

Professor Carlson was his last hope.
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While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 8…

If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’m presently sitting in a cottage somewhere near Seattle with five other multi-pubbed authors, hard at work. Since we were told the lakehouse doesn’t have Internet connection, I preposted blog entries to keep you all entertained while I’m gone. And to keep you coming back, I’m offering chances to win some of the books I’ll be featuring here. So, be sure to stop and read, then don’t forget to post a comment to enter!

Tomorrow’s posting will include a chance to win All Knight Long, which originally released in March 2004. What you may not know is that I used to keep a page on my old website for every book, called “The Story Behind the Book”.

Here’s what I wrote back in November 2004 when Joe and Lily’s story first came out!

I love old B-horror movies.

Honestly, the cheesier the better! And I’m not talking about slasher movies. Give me a vampire lurking behind the curtains, or an alien pod-person chasing a woman with his stiff-legged gait. I’ll never ask why she can’t outrun him—because I know she subconsciously wants to be captured!

Growing up, I rushed home from school each day to see the latest episode of the horror-soap Dark Shadows because Barnabas Collins gave me the shivers. “The Blob” was my favorite movie—I watched it so many times I could quote the dialogue. If Peter Cushing or Vincent Price were in the cast, I was glued to the tube. Those were seriously creepy dudes!

I considered myself a vampire and werewolf expert. By the time I was eight, I could tell you every way you could kill a vamp or become one. Before I ever understood what sensuality and desire were, I thought vampires were the perfect boyfriends—attentive, snappy dressers, and they could disappear from your bedroom in a whirl of mist if your mom poked her head inside your room at night.

I also had a favorite fantasy. I knew I wanted to meet a dark, dangerous vampire, be tied between two stakes, and forced by him to become his girlfriend. My fantasy always ended with his teeth piercing my neck because my little imagination thought the excitement ended there!

Of course, my fantasies changed as I grew older—the details about what happened after the bite grew more important. I worried about rug burns on werewolves’ haunches, how a teenage vampire might shower off the blood and be in bed before his parents discovered him missing for the night.

I also watched King Kong again and again. There was something intensely thrilling about that large, hairy male ape and his one-track obsession with Fay Ray. When she was draped over his large, dark palm in her negligee, she didn’t look like terror was the only emotion she was feeling.

Now I’m an adult—perhaps a little arrested in the maturity department—and a writer. Since I never outgrew daydreaming about monsters who stalked unawakened virgins through dark, deserted forests—I’m free now to revel in my imagination. Daydreaming is now a profitable activity!

When I sit at the dinner table, I may wear a little smile because Joe Garcia’s search for his humanity led him some interesting places. I let the poor guy indulge in all his manly-monstery impulses. And the best part is, I can keep “living” in my alternate reality as long as I don’t end the series!

“Cowboy” is a calling, not a gender—and some of the toughest cowboys aren’t boys at all. “Cowboy” is also a legend, an attitude, and a state of mind. With stories that are edgy as shiny spurs and tender as broken-in leather, these lesbian cowboys work hard, play hard, and love hard, in the saddle and in the bed. They know what they want and take it, and give back as good as they get. The settings range from Australia to New England to the Great Plains and the Rockies and span the decades from the romance of the Old West to today’s torrid tales.

While The Cat’s Away Countdown – Day 9…

One little bit of news before I get to today’s release. Yesterday, right before I started packing, my new editor at Samhain offered me a contract on two related cowboy stories, Unbridled and Unforgiven. Now, I just have to come up with a series title because I know I have at least one more story to follow that thread. So put your thinking caps on! The stories all involve cowboys and are set in Texas!

If you’ve read me very long, you know I love to experiment, whether it’s with genre or sexual diversity. Today’s release features fifteen lesbian adventures from some of the best erotica writers out there, all centered around an American icon—the cowboy.

“Cowboy” is a calling, not a gender—and some of the toughest cowboys aren’t boys at all. “Cowboy” is also a legend, an attitude, and a state of mind. With stories that are edgy as shiny spurs and tender as broken-in leather, these lesbian cowboys work hard, play hard, and love hard, in the saddle and in the bed. They know what they want and take it, and give back as good as they get. The settings range from Australia to New England to the Great Plains and the Rockies and span the decades from the romance of the Old West to today’s torrid tales.

Contributors Radclyffe and Jove Bell depict today’s fearless femme rodeo riders, holding their own against the men in the limelight—then holding another woman close at night. Cheyenne Blue shows the conflict between traditional cattle ranching and the new environmentalism in the wilds of Australia while Delilah Devlin’s lesbian cowboy is every inch a woman and more than a match for any man. Sexy, steamy, and crackling with erotic energy, these stories are sure to rivet.

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Footsteps scuffed across the planked porch, and Ariana lowered herself beside me on the bench overlooking the paddock. From the corner of my eye, I noted the damp hair and the bare expanse of skin that shone like warm honey beneath a pair of cutoff shorts. She’d bathed and smelled faintly of flowers.

I intended only a quick glance at my companion, but my gaze landed on another thin tank top, this one buttoned down the front with the upper two opened. The shadowy wedge of skin between her breasts was bare. Nipples, unfettered by any bra, sprang against the pink cotton.

“Thought since it was just us girls…” she drawled.
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Tomorrow’s the day. At the butt-crack of dawn, I’ll be on the road to the airport in North Little Rock. Then many hours later, I’ll be stepping off the plane in Seattle, where hopefully, I’ll be met by my writer buddies who will have arranged a rental vehicle to get us to our retreat cottage.

And even though I’m the Queen of Focus, this past week has been a bust so far as writing is concerned. I can’t keep from thinking about what to pack, what I want to take to work on—and the many ways I can think of to dodge cooking duty. That’s not something I ever mastered. I burn Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.

Let me reflect on what I have managed to accomplish, and my setbacks, for the month. Then I’ll give into the urge to turn giddy with excitement about my working vacation.

On August 1st, my “Brief” Eye of the Storm was released by Harlequin Spice.

The first was also the day I received acceptance on The Out-of-Towner for an upcoming Cleis Press anthology, entitled Girl Crush.

From August 9 – 15, my sister and I conducted the annual Write 50 Books a Year free workshop at Rose’s Colored Glasses.

This month I wrote a short story entitled The Obedient Wife and submitted it on August 14th for the Cleis Press anthology Fairytale Lust.

On August 18th, I received a “reject, but would like to see revisions or something new” from an editor I’m targeting. After spending a day wallowing in disappointment, I brushed myself off, enlisted help from a friend, talked to my agent, and came up with a new plan of attack.

This month I wrote chapters 2-9 of my neverending story about two firemen and two best girlfriends. I submitted the story, tentatively titled Juicy, on August 21st.

The rest of this month, I finished a chapter on a futuristic, worked on revisions of a paranormal proposal and dabbled with new projects plotting, but nothing else is finished.

So, yes, an eventful month and a productive one, but I did come in two chapters shy of my goal for the last project. Which if I factor in the two EXTRA chapters I wrote on Juicy kinda evens out. So I could claim success, right?

Now that I’ve bored you to tears with my report card, I’ll sign off. I have clothes to iron, shampoo and conditioner to pour into travel bottles, and undies to find.

I’ve preposted blogs for the entire time I’ll be gone, along with several chances for you to win stuff, so be sure to stop by. I’ll be “live” again on September 10th.

Love ya! Adios!! ~DD

Today’s posting is just a quickie to let you know that Frannie ‘n’ The Private Dick is being re-released as a single novella on September 14th. So if you haven’t read it before, get ready!

5 Flames from Sizzling Romances: “…Frannie and Niall are a lusty couple that will make you laugh out loud. Niall’s patience is continually tested by Frannie’s outrageous actions. The author has created a wonderful couple that will not be forgotten…”

From Hoot Island: “Vampires can have love lives just as screwed up as anybody else’s, and here’s the proof.”

Bent on catching her cheating fiancé in the act, Frannie Valentine got sidetracked by a little thing like dying. When she awakens, Frannie learns her pampered “life” will never be the same, so she turns to the man responsible for her “undeadness” and demands he take on the responsibility of teaching her the biz-the PI biz.

Niall Keegan never intended to make himself a mate, but Frannie’s string of minor disasters, which ended with her dying in his arms, took the decision right out of his hands. While the mating part isn’t bad, making the disaster-prone Frannie a PI may just be the death of him.

Click on the cover to read an excerpt!