Wel­come! Anoth­er week in par­adise over here. We’ve had some won­der­ful weath­er! So after a very stress­ful Tues­day, the US can now put the elec­tion behind us. I was nev­er so hap­py to see those yard signs come down. On a relat­ed note, yard signs in Wyoming are pret­ty lethal.  This image is the US dis­tort­ed by pop­u­la­tion and by votes for Oba­ma (blue) and Rom­ney (red). Pret­ty cool.

Work in Progress News ~I’ve been more pro­duc­tive this week than I have in a long time. I used to have a 2K word goal per day, but now I’m lucky if I get 1K. I’m present­ly in the mid­dle of the inti­mate scene that just won’t end. Also, I was going to make this a Christ­mas sto­ry, but decid­ed to just take that thread out since I already missed that dead­line. Still chug­ging away!

Favorite Song of the Week ~ I’ve shared a Jack­son Foote cov­er with you before. This is a new one and I just love it: Mer­cy (orig­i­nal­ly by Kanye West)

Tweet of the Week ~ So many good tweets! The most retweet­ed tweet of ALL TIME was one sent on Tues­day by Barack Oba­ma right after the elec­tion. But here’s a dif­fer­ent kind of smile:

If writ­ers took the “write what you know” rule seri­ous­ly, most new nov­els would be called Con­stant­ly Dis­tract­ed By The Internet.

– Sixth Form Poet (@sixthformpoet) Novem­ber 6, 2012

Indus­try News ~ Ama­zon has announced a Month­ly Prime Mem­ber­ship. The $7.99 month­ly fee will direct­ly com­pete with Hulu and Net­flix for stream­ing video (did you know Ama­zon has stream­ing video?) and for book lovers, you can bor­row eli­gi­ble books! You end up pay­ing almost $20 more than if you pay the $79 annu­al price, though.

What I’m read­ing ~ Shy­ing Away, a con­tem­po­rary west­ern m/m. Blurb: Quinn Don­ahue will do any­one once, so when Aaron Miller spots Quinn mak­ing his moves in a Van­cou­ver gay bar, Aaron thinks he’s found just the guy to relieve him of his unwant­ed vir­gin­i­ty. Quinn, how­ev­er, has appar­ent­ly decid­ed to make an excep­tion to his usu­al open-bed pol­i­cy. He may be an unre­pen­tant con­nois­seur of one-night stands, but he’s not going to dis­ap­point a sweet kid like Aaron by giv­ing him a hot night and then leav­ing while the sheets are still warm.

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ I love typos. Some­times they make great new words. Here’s what found me last week: “the sis­ter found my eroth­ic books”

Book Snip­pet ~ From Cov­er Sto­ry, my short con­tem­po­rary cougar sto­ry about a cov­er mod­el and the old­er woman play­ing the part of his lover:

Click.

“I’m just going to unbut­ton your shirt. We’ll leave it on as long as you’d like.” Anoth­er but­ton slipped free.

“Okay.”

“Stop me if you start to feel uncomfortable.”

Click.

He released anoth­er but­ton. Then two. “Touch me Cate. Let me feel your hands all over me.”

Those clicks were from the cam­era, if you could­n’t tell. Some­times it’s hard to get the full effect in a short excerpt. Okay folks, I’m back to writ­ing. See you next week!