June is over! Folks, that’s not good news. The sum­mer months need to last longer! II’m try­ing to enjoy every day of these few months. This pic­ture tho, was tak­en in Col­orado Springs, where it seems the entire state of Col­orado has burst into flame. Please keep them in your thoughts. Pho­to via Rachelle Gard­ner.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ I love this song. Lis­tened to it a lot this week, and only just now found out that Phillip Phillips is an Amer­i­can Idol guy. (I don’t watch.) Enjoy his Idol per­for­mance of Home:

New Release News ~ Wyoming Solace came out on June 26th! It’s now avail­able at all your favorite retail­ers in ebook form, and in print next year.

Back­list News ~ I heard a rumor last week that my book Tessa’s Pride is required read­ing at a Texas university’s Erot­ic Writ­ing class. I’m not sure how to con­firm this, but I did hear it most­ly direct­ly from a stu­dent! Pret­ty cool, huh?

Indus­try News ~ I’ve told you all about the sad state of Dorch­ester Pub­lish­ing. It had filed for bank­rupt­cy and I wor­ried about the authors and agents who were wait­ing on months (years?) of roy­al­ties. News leaked this week that bar­ring a huge twist, Ama­zon will pur­chase Dorch­ester Pub­lish­ing, and it looks like the giant will even issue back pay­ments! I admit I haven’t stud­ied this deal, but from my pov, it looks like pret­ty good news. [source]

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ “bloody foot­print”.   believe it’s from my flash fic­tion blog hop post. I’m sure it’s not mass mur­der­ers try­ing to Google clean-up options.

What I’m read­ing ~ I read book two of Cat Grant and Rachel Haimowitz’ Pow­er Play series. Like book one, this isn’t for the light-heart­ed read­er, but I squirmed a lot less read­ing this one than the first. Both mens’ per­son­al­i­ties real­ly shone in this one.

Hero Quote ~ From Cody, my 19th cen­tu­ry cow­boy on nam­ing a horse:

 “I haven’t named him. I like to see the tem­pera­ment of an ani­mal before I name one. The only names I came up with weren’t polite enough to use in prop­er company.” 

That’s it for me. Have a great week, and make some time to do a rain dance or two for the west­ern states. We need it badly!