This morning I’m heading to Little Rock to meet with Shayla Kersten to nail down the details for a public presentation our local RWA chapter is doing at the library where we meet. The topic is, “So you think you want to write?” We have the program, all the media stuff, etc. to figure out. It will be the third Saturday in April, so if anyone lives nearby, put it on your calendar!

This week was hectic. A mild word. The red-headed hellion took a part-time job and I took over babysitting while she was at work. I’ve decided I will pay her to stay at home. She came home the second day and her jaw fell to the floor. She couldn’t understand how her house got so messy. I couldn’t understand how two children could be so bad. Still, I did manage to get some work done.

* I completed Handy Men (tentative title), a quickie for Ellora’s Cave, and shipped it to my editor—and yes, it’s about a threesome. These days I can’t conceive of a love story that doesn’t have multiple men in it. One of those dudes has to stay home to help take care of the kids—my heroine’s not going to have the energy to do it by herself!
* I completed Chapter Five of Cat Tails: Bad Moon Rising. I sent it to my webmistress for her to format it and get it up on my site. I’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready for you to read.
* I’m making great headway on my BDSM novella. The hero’s an ex-military cop and sexy as hell. I don’t want to finish it too soon, because then I’d have to say goodbye to Cross McNally.
* I worked with a web designer to put together the template for the Girls Who Bite website. It’s done, now the art will be passed to my webmistress for her to complete the work.

Not a shabby week, huh?

This next week, I do have to finish that BDSM novella, no matter how much I’ll miss Cross and his growly voice. Then I’ll dive into the next project. Something Urban Fantasy. I have this idea about a girl and her… Yeah, sooo not telling you. 😕

Psst! See the bottom of this post for my “Dress Elvis” winner! ~DD

It’s uncanny how accurate my horoscopes have been lately.

This was mine for Friday. Notice the part I highlighted? Traffic might be clogged… Friday, I had a doctor’s appointment in Little Rock—normally an hour and fifteen minute drive. But some poor trucker rolled his oil tanker on the freeway, which closed all lanes in both directions. Drivers were forced to take little back roads, which then clogged those roads all the hell up! It took me three and a half hours to get to Little Rock. I missed my lab appointment and then was five minutes late for the doctor appointment and had to reschedule. If only I’d believed! I shoulda stayed home.

And then there’s yesterday’s…

That’s me—“overwhelmed.” But I’ll talk about the work in a minute. Here’s today’s question:

Do you read your horoscope? Has yours ever influenced you to change something?

This week, I really wanted to be coming up on the end of the short novella and the the Cat Tails chapter, but I’m at roughly 60% on both. Friday killed me—the long drive, and then I had to wait in Little Rock for Hazmat to clear the freeway. So I brainstormed with my sister who was there to chaperone for a wrestling team. It was productive, but I didn’t get any pages done. It killed my momentum. I do however intend to finish both by Tuesday so I can wrap them up for February and start something new!

The winner (by random number generator) of my “Dress Elvis” contest is…Rachel Firasek! Congrats, Rachel, and be sure to send me your snail mail addy!

Y’all are only interested in who won that creepy Dead Elvis doll. But you’re gonna have to wait until the end to find out. That’s just the way I roll. And don’t you scroll down! That’s cheating.

It’s Sunday. Time for me to brag or blush. But first I have to tell you what happened to me yesterday on my way to my Diamond State Romance Authors meeting.

I’m taking a back road, lots of winding turns. The road straightens out for about two seconds, and my foot gets a little heavy (I was listening to Five Finger Death Punch’s Bad Company). A cop comes around a turn. I glance down. Yeah, I’m speeding. Please don’t stop me. Please don’t stop me.

In my rearview mirror I see him do a three-point turn in the middle of the road and know I’m sunk. Crap!

I’m bending over, reaching into my glove box, when he walks up and knocks on my passenger-side door. I look up into the prettiest blue eyes shaded by a State Trooper’s hat. And he has that jaw—you know the one. Straight at the edge, jutting, with hollows in his cheeks above. His mouth’s a straight line. Super sexy, and I’m starting to blush.

“Ma,am, do you know you were driving 17 miles over she speed limit?”

I squint and wrinkle my nose. “Sounds about right.” (I sound like a freaking genius!)

He pauses, probably to figure out if I’m being a bitch. “Was there a reason you were in such a hurry?”

I usually blurt the truth. But for once I was able to press my lips together to keep from telling him I was listening to Five Finger Death Punch, because I thought maybe he’d think I was cussin’ him in code.

So instead, I say, “Uh, I was listening to Disturbed.” I know, another bonehead answer, but it’s better than the time I told the cop I was “blow-drying my car.”

Anyway, I got another ticket. Third here in Arkansas, but none has made it on my driving record so far. Phew! And I wasn’t mad. I figure I will take the ticket off my taxes as “research”, and besides, he was the finest thing I looked at all day. It was just the price of admission.

Back to the report card…

* Last week, I started work on the next free chapter of Cat Tails. DiDi and Mason are in bed. Again. So you’ll have some nice smutty sex at the start.
* I am at 90% completion of my little novella. Did I mention it’s a MIK?
* I had a long conversation with marketing at one of my publishers, which prompted me into a frenzy of activity to get them information and to galvanize the other authors involved in the project.

And that’s about it, other than the DSRA meeting yesterday, which turned into a late lunch and stretched all the way until 4 PM. Had a great time even if I didn’t get any writing done.

So, back to Bony Elvis. He’s been keeping a smile on my face all week. I hate to let him go. But, I did promise, didn’t I? The winner of Dead Elvis is…(drumroll)…(by random number generator, as always)…Jen B! Jen, congrats and email me!!

A view of the pond in the back yard…

For a week that played out the way it did, I was surprisingly productive.

I spent two days driving the folks back and forth to Little Rock for surgery appointments, in not so great weather. However, I brought along pen and paper and scribbled out two proposals for new anthologies. Clever ones, I think.

Then the weather turned worse and we had our second snow storm of the season. The red-headed hellion’s pipes burst, and suddenly, I was covered up in children 24/7. That should have been it, but somehow (maybe because it was a mental escape!), I managed to get nearly halfway through a new novella. So for those writers out there—there really are no excuses!

Summing up my accomplishments:
* I completed two proposals for short story collections to follow up Girls Who Bite and shipped them.
* I revised a synopsis and shipped it to an editor at her invitation.
* I brainstormed a fresh idea for a Kindle novella and am 42% through the manuscript.

The weather thawed enough yesterday that my daughter was able to get her pipes fixed. Hopefully, the repair will hold. This next week I want to finish that short novella, finish a free short story, and begin a new novella for Ellora’s Cave. If my wordcount meters don’t start filling in quickly, give me a nag!

The winner of the $25.00 gift certificate is posted at the end of this blog!

This is kind of a random blog today. For my own sake, I NEED to do a Report Card so that you can all scold me, and I can get mad at myself and get to work! On the other hand, I’ve been gone so long that I’ve missed making a few little announcements. So read on!

Real quick recap. I wrote 3 pages this last week. 3 FREAKING PAGES. Nuff said? 3 FREAKING pages a week will get you a book in a FREAKING decade. So puh-lease, tell me how lazy I am. Or better yet, how you’re waiting anxiously for the next story. I need to picture your grasping hands reaching through the monitor to wring my neck if I don’t get to work.

So, on to other more interesting things…

I have a newish interview up at Coffee Time Romance. Check it out if you’d like to know a little more about what was in my crazy head when I wrote Darkness Captured! Interview at Coffee Time Romance

Thought you might like a sneak peek at a book that’s coming out in July 2011. I have a short story in this compilation, entitled Hot Out Here.

Twenty-five unashamedly modern romances with a strong erotic element aimed at the women’s market. Twenty-five unashamedly modern short romances which don’t shy away at the bedroom door from the crème de la crème of contemporary romance writers, including Lilith Saintcrow, Louisa Burton, Anna Windsor, Susan Sizemore, Michelle M. Pillow, Rebecca York, Charlotte Stein, Shiloh Walker, Victoria Janssen, Saskia Walker and Cathy Clamp.

This is writing which is more direct, less euphemistic, and frankly accepting of sexuality – fiercely hot stories of flesh and blood and feelings which will entrance and beguile romance readers.

Here’s a little snippet!

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

Beads of condensation, glittering jewel-like in the sputtering candlelight, ran in rivulets down the sides of Jason’s ice-cold beer.

Detail I shouldn’t have been able to note, given the fact I wasn’t anywhere near him.

As I lowered my nephew’s toy binoculars, I reflected that I had indeed sunk to a new low. You see, my bedroom window conveniently overlooked Jason and Robert’s fenced backyard. A fact that never registered with the previous tenants, but one that proved too delicious to ignore after the arrival of the handsome duo.

I began a furtive surveillance at once. One that had me cringing in embarrassment each time I greeted them in passing and feeling even more ashamed when we struck up a friendship.
Read the rest of this entry »

Real quick! You can still vote for Breaking Leather—see yesterday’s post just under this one!

First, thanks to everyone who bought True Heart and pushed it to #1 on the MBaM site! Woohoo!

And thanks to everyone who helped me get the word out about Ravished by a Viking. More than one person told me they’ve seen the book “everywhere”—let’s hope that translated to sales.

In the meantime, I’m working. Not as focused as I should be. Working on promoting those two books all week ate my lunch. I only accomplished about half of my goals for the week. But I wasn’t idle. When I got bored with one thing, I opened something else.

* I wrote three chapters of a cowboy story.
* I completed a synopsis for the follow-up to True Heart and sent it to my editor for approval.
* I resurrected a story I wrote and sold in 2005 to a publisher no one found. I’m hoping to resell the story, but first I want to do a little revising to make it more “me”.
* I pulled out two other half-written projects from under the bed, looking for quick wins.

Not a stellar week, but not a complete bust either. This next week, I will get in as much writing as I can, then on Friday, Sis and I are heading to Jackson, Mississippi to teach a plotting bootcamp, Friday through Sunday. Those are always fun and intense.

The red-headed hellion is no longer working nights, and is in fact looking for a job. In the meantime, we’ve been enjoying our evenings. We love to watch movies together—scary ones especially. She finds me endlessly entertaining because I grope the pillow and jump at the scary parts. This week we watched:

M.Knight Shaymalan’s Devil—too predictable for one of his films. I just love his Ah-Ha! moments, and this one didn’t have one you couldn’t see from a mile away.

Smoke Signals—my second time seeing this Native American, coming of age story. Still every bit as funny and poignant as I remembered.

Dark City—yeah, did anyone see that one when it came out? I found it in the $5 bucket at Walmart. I loved it. It was dark, and very, very different. Think, 1940’s Hitchcock crossed with Buffy’s “Hush” episode crossed again with a mass alien abduction. Yeah, very different.

DVD on Iceland from the Icelandic Tourist Board—did I mention that dd and I want to head there this August?

Don’t forget! There’s still time to enter your vote on the final Cat Tails poll and win an e-gift certificate! See Saturday’s entry!

What a week! If you haven’t checked out my bog in a while there’s a lot happening. THREE CONTESTS are running right now. Be sure to enter them all. I really appreciate all your help getting the word out about my upcoming print release Ravished by a Viking. I want this book to do well because I would like to continue to write about my Vikings in space. Sounds like a strange concept, but just wait until you read the first book. I really think you’ll be hooked!

This week I finally finished the novella for the Harlequin Bite. The Warrior will be out in June 2011 and is part of the Time Raiders series. I had a terrible time writing that story because I was so burned out with the other two December 1st deadline books (Enslaved by a Viking and Girls Who Bite), but the two extra weeks it took to finish the Bite were well worth it.

In addition, I started a new short novella—a straight to Kindle project. It’s a western, so those of you who love the cowboys won’t have to wait terribly long to see it.

This week is of course the rush to Christmas. I still have a few gifts to buy, but I’m almost there. My sister’s family will be visiting for the holiday. We’ll have a full house, and knowing my sister, we’ll be huddling at the kitchen table brainstorming new projects for the new year.

I’ll be starting my countdown to my two January 4th releases this week. Both Ravished by a Viking and True Heart are set to debut on the same day. Of course, I will have to throw most of my effort toward the Berkley print book. My hope is that you will want them both, but Ravished just has to be a success. It’s my first book for Berkley and I want to write so many more for the publisher. Anything you can do to talk it up to get the pre-orders looking good would be very appreciated. Writing’s hard enough. Selling just isn’t in my skill set. That’s why I have to rely on word-of-mouth. If you love the book and tell someone else about it, then hopefully sales will generate. That sounds crass, but it’s the absolute truth that the first book out the chute will determine my fate. I put my heart and soul into the story. I wrote the kind of hero I fantasize about. I told a rousing tale filled with sex and danger and glittering new worlds. You’ll just have to see. 😉