Wel­come! I’m hav­ing a real hard time with putting Novem­ber in that title. I swear we just had Valen­tine’s Day! This year is pass­ing so quick­ly! Sor­ry I missed last week’s update, but  I was in the mid­dle of a blog hop with a ton of oth­er authors, so I put the sta­tus on hia­tus. Now I’ve got two weeks’ worth of news to share. Kin­da. Check out that wood pile. I’d be afraid to use any of that wood and ruin the work of art!

Work in Progress News ~ I did it again. I start­ed a new book before fin­ish­ing the one I was work­ing on (or the oth­er eight in the IP file) I wrote over 2K the first day I start­ed it, so it felt good to get some words in. This one is filed as Grant, and it will be a short sto­ry by Olivia involv­ing a boss and his employ­ee. I like to have shorts in the IP file, so if I fin­ish this one first, I’ll have to come up with anoth­er plot to keep my balance.

Back­list News ~ Retreat got a very nice five star review this week over at Man­ic Read­ers.  Alber­ta  says “I loved this ten­der and very poignant love sto­ry, Retreat that has loads of con­flicts, dif­fer­ing goals that must some­how mesh if they are ever to find hap­pi­ness togeth­er. I loved Jake as a mod­ern day hero who would do any­thing to get Andria back in his arms. Five Stars.“ Retreat is one of the books I wrote at the same time as two (maybe three?) oth­ers, and so often I for­get that I even had any­thing to do with it. It’s like my shy qui­et child being raised amongst wild monsters.

Indus­try News ~ Ama­zon announced its Kin­dle Own­ers’ Lend­ing Library, which is a ser­vice for Prime mem­bers only, and not every pub­lish­er is on board with this, but think of Ama­zon as a dig­i­tal library. Where you can only check out one book per month. And you have to be a club mem­ber to get in. But no late fees! I think it’s a great idea, and I hope my books are in the KOLL for the élite Ama­zo­ni­ans out there. (Look­ing into this) Barnes and Noble made their own announce­ment. It seems that with the mid-month release of the Nook tablet (rumored to be $249) , the Nook col­or mod­el will drop in price to $199. That’s good news for the nook­ies out there!

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ This week Olivia got this one: “dot to dot pic­tures erot­ic”. I spent about five min­utes star­ing at that search term, won­der­ing what the per­son was actu­al­ly look­ing to find. Then I start­ed won­der­ing if there were any out there. Then I got a piece of paper to make my own. Then I thought about my kid find­ing it and actu­al­ly doing the dot to dot.  Then I shook my head.

What I’€™m read­ing ~ I read Cat Grant’s Once a Marine this week. This comes from the brand new dig­i­tal first pub­lish­er Rip­tide Pub­lish­ing. After read­ing this, and now that they’ve opened sub­mis­sions, I might just see what I can do to write some­thing wor­thy. Once a Marine is a love­ly sto­ry about a Marine dis­charged under DADT. This book is writ­ten in first and third per­son, that is to say the first per­son point of view for Marc, one hero, and the chap­ters in the oth­er hero Cole’s point of view are writ­ten in third. You’d think this would be con­fus­ing, but it isn’t, it was very smooth. Once a Marine is get­ting rave reviews, and is a best­seller at Ama­zon. Cat sure did a great job mak­ing Rip­tide look awe­some for their launch.

Hero Quote ~ From my newest WiP men­tioned above.

“I notice the way your heart beats like a rab­bit’s every time you come into my office. I notice how your pupils dilate when I get close to you. On the very best days I notice oth­er things.”

Favorite Song of the Week ~  Jack­son Foote and crew cov­ered Lil Jon’s Get Low <–might want to watch this first to get the full effect. I can’t get enough of this one. Both ver­sion­s NSFW!

That’s it for me, folks. I’m work­ing all week­end at the Evil Empire, where they’ve already start­ed pip­ing in Christ­mas Music. I guess we don’t need a Novem­ber anyway.