I’m late! I’m late!

I’m channeling the Mad Hatter. I took a test on Facebook yesterday to see which Alice in Wonderland character I am—and I was the Mad Hatter. It sooo fits me today. I went to bed at 1:00 AM last night. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I remembered I had a doctor’s appointment 70 miles away at 8:00 AM! So needless to say, no morning blog. And to make matters worse, I’m at Access Romance today talking about “Following my Manic Muse”.

I’d love for you to drop by and keep me company. Here’s where you go:
Access Romance

See ya there! ~ DD

I’ll recap the last week.

As you can see from the progress bar to the right, I finished Unbroken, then wrote a quick short story for Cleis’s upcoming Girl Crush anthology (which got accepted yesterday—woot!). Unbroken is a very sexy cowboy story about a couple having to get past infidelity. The Cleis thing was a short challenge for myself—just 3000 words about a lesbian affair. And don’t forget about my new release, Eye of the Storm. It’s my 11th for the year!

We had so much rain this past week that the pool cooled from 90 to 80 degrees and I had to drain off the excess water three times. The ground is so saturated, a large apple tree fell and knocked out a portion of the back fence. The deer gorged on the leaves of the tree—so there’s your silver lining.

My daughter and I threw around ideas for a Young Adult novel, and I think I have the opening scene for something really spooky. Will have to do a lot of plotting for this one because there will be a larger cast than I normally deal with and a spookfest I have to nail.

Then I went on a reading binge of intrigue books. At the end, plots started swirling in my head, and I came up with one that I’d love to start writing, but will require research of its own.

So, this next week will be spent in geek-mode, reading through my library of occult books and surfing the net for bomb-making and Homeland Security-related articles. But I can’t spend the whole time reading, so I think I’ll start a new story, something quick and light that I can pound out in between all the hard, boring work.

According to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft, August’s moon is the Wyrt moon. WTF does that mean, you ask? Wyrt is the Old English word for plant, so Wyrt moon refers to the Plant or Herb moon. It’s time to collect your magical herbs, time to reap the harvest.

What does that mean in a metaphysical sense? This is the time to reap what you sow. So hope like hell you’ve built some great karma.

One year ago, Marcus healed Janie’s broken heart with his love. Now she has returned to Jamaica to see if their passion is as strong as before. Then Marcus’s friend Cade shows up, too.

Janie never really liked Cade, but when Marcus asks her to take them both to her bedroom, Janie soon learns that the two men know exactly what she needs…

The book is out today! Click on the cover to read more about it. Then follow the link to the eHarlequin site to purchase it! Two hot men, a raging storm…how can you go wrong?

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

One year ago, Marcus healed Janie’s broken heart with his love. Now she has returned to Jamaica to see if their passion is as strong as before. Then Marcus’s friend Cade shows up, too. Janie never really liked Cade, but when Marcus asks her to take them both to her bedroom, Janie soon learns that the two men know exactly what she needs…

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

Just a quick FYI, I opened my email today to find an acceptance for a short story I wrote for Cleis Press’s Girl Crush antholoy, coming Spring 2010! Woot! Since I’d only shipped it the day before, I’m pretty pumped.

First note. Yesterday was a phenomenal day of writing. I finished up the latest proposal I’m aiming at a New York house, revised it, and shipped the sucker to my agent. I hope like hell he doesn’t think my idea was too far out there, because the deeper I went into that futuristic (but oddly ancient) world the more I grooved on the story. After I put that one to rest, I opened up a half-written short story, added pages to hit the needed wordcount for a recent call for submissions, and shipped that one too!

Every single goal I had for the month of July I’ve fulfilled. That doesn’t happen often. I plan my work around a large, continuously changing goal spreadsheet. I always aim high, work like a demon to hit the mark, but give myself slack to fail at the smaller, less important tasks. The short story was the small, unimportant task for the month.

Second. One of my favorite review sites, Two Lips Reviews, is having a scavenger hunt and offering up a ton of great prizes to celebrate their third anniversary of operation. I have an icon hidden somewhere on my site that you have to find! Here’s the link to check out the rules: Two Lips Contest Rules

Last. You know that I have a new release tomorrow—a Harlequin Brief, entitled Eye of the Storm. Following is an excerpt.

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

When we stood outside my door in the darkened hallway, I drew a key from my jeans pocket and handed it to Marcus, ignoring Cade.

Cade hovered close behind us while Marcus turned the key in the lock. Did Cade think I’d slam the door in his face as soon as Marcus crossed my threshold? I wanted to do it—but not as much as I wanted his steady gaze on my body when I stripped for Marcus and lay down on my soft bed and opened my legs.

I wanted him hot, hard, and wanting to be Marcus as he plunged inside me.
Read the rest of this entry »

Two days ago, I found out that the Spice Brief I’d contracted to publish MONTHS AGO, will be released on August 1st! Huh. A little warning would have been nice since I didn’t have the cover or the blurb. But rather than them sending it in advance, I scraped it off the eHarlequin site so you can look it over now! Best news, it’s available for presale now! Link to eHarlequin

So maybe the white guy on the left doesn’t look like the tanned, muscular hunk in my story, ditto for the black dude on the right. But you get the idea, right? Sexy threesome, a storm a-brewing…

Eye of the Storm will be my second Spice Brief. I’m not so keen on writing them because they don’t pay as much as Ellora’s Cave or Samhain and a girl’s gotta eat, but I like to try to find new fans. Maybe someone will buy the book, find my website, and have to read everything I’ve ever done.

I can dream.

If you’ve forgotten the first Brief I wrote, you can check it out by clicking on the cover.

This is one of the most sigh-worthy photos I’ve found. I plucked it from Gerard Butler’s website a long time ago. It comes from a scene in the movie Timeline. I printed it out and tacked it to my cork board. Whenever I need to remind myself what romance is about, I just look up.

Sometimes writers like to use photos as prompts to get our imagination spinning out new ideas. I haven’t written a story inspired by this photo yet, but I’d love to give it a try.

If you were the writer, staring at this picture,
what sort of story would you conceive?