Ugh. Sep­tem­ber. That means snow is around the corner.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Here’s what’s going on around here:

Work in Progress News ~ I’ve been spend­ing the week going through Olivi­a’s book Falling Star. I’ll be repub­lish­ing this one at a low­er price, so I had to go through and make sure there weren’t too many ellipses (uh…yikes. I kin­da went over­board with those things. Again.)

New Release News ~ Oh boy. You guys are gonna love this. Cari­na Press has a great pro­mo­tion going for Roman­tic Sus­pense books, includ­ing Pre­View which comes out on Mon­day!  I’m team­ing up with six oth­er Cari­na Press RS authors for a scav­enger hunt of sorts. Click the ban­ner and you’ll get more infor­ma­tion. (Post goes live Mon­day, but you nev­er know what you’ll find when you click that ban­ner…)Also, I’ll be guest blog­ging at a few dif­fer­ent places around the webosphere, I’ll be  sure to post links once they’re live.

Indus­try News ~ This is just a small seg­ment of the indus­try, but it’s big news for me and a ton of oth­er authors and read­ers. Ellora’s Cave Pub­lish­ing has dropped its prices on all EC books at the major dis­tri­b­u­tion sites like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. EC has long been crit­i­cized for their inflat­ed dis­tro prices. For exam­ple Olivi­a’s only EC book At Ease, orig­i­nal­ly sold for $4.45 at the EC site, but $8.45 at Ama­zon. Now only $4.48! At Ease is a very short (17K) novel­la, so almost $8.50 was way too pricey in my opin­ion. So woohoo for EC! Wel­come to the age of the Kin­dle and Nook! (Like how I put my sub­lim­i­nal pimp in there?)

Real Life News ~ Kids are back in school, life has qui­et­ed down. This com­ing week­end I’m tak­ing them on a trip to Yel­low­stone, so maybe I’ll post some pic­tures after that. Oth­er­wise, my “real life” has just cen­tered around guest blog posts for next week and get­ting Falling Star ready for repub­bing. I guess that’s pret­ty bor­ing. Sorry.

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ Some­one found AlannaCoca.com by search­ing for the word “hairy”. Wow. I hope my site was on page 768 for that search, but okay. Over at Olivi­a’s Place, I had this one: “because i’m worth it”. And I hope my site was on page one. In bold.

Hero Quote ~ Can’t help it. I’ve got to post some­thing from Pre­View, since it’s the birth­day book.

“I know a lot about you. I know now you’ve got me right where you want me. Close enough to prove how much I want you too.  I also know you start­ed this lit­tle fight just so I’d put my hands on you.”

 Favorite Song of the Week ~ My daugh­ter start­ed singing this the oth­er day, and it’s been stuck in my head since. Now watch­ing the hokey video, I think I’m done with it. What a riot!

 Okay, there’s your blast from the past for the week.

Also, I’m part of the JustRomance.Me blog hop this week­end. Join us HERE, we’re giv­ing away plen­ty of books, and we’ll be chat­ting on Mon­day, so you’ll have a chance to chat with a hand­ful of authors, and ask us what­ev­er you’d like to know. See you there!

 Last week of August. All sum­mer I’ve been enjoy­ing the weath­er, and the end of August tells me that the snow will start to fly soon­er than I would like.

I don’t want to talk about it.

The pic­ture here is from a recent trip to the moun­tains near the Wyoming/Colorado state line. Each tree has an inter­est­ing per­son­al­i­ty, yeah?

Work in Progress News ~ After final­iz­ing FLIPPED, and send­ing it off to two pub­lish­ers, I took some time to go through Alan­na’s book  FINE PRINT to get it ready for self pub­lish­ing. What I learned was that in 2009 I loved ellipses. I prob­a­bly took fif­teen or twen­ty instances out of that man­u­script. I’m work­ing on Falling Star now. Same thing. I don’t know what it is about those three lit­tle dots…

New Release News ~ So excit­ed for Alan­na’s book PREVIEW to get a sec­ond shot. I real­ly like this sto­ry. Twists and turns and love. I made a trail­er for it last night. I post­ed it along with an excerpt on the PREVIEW book page, or you can see it below. Let me know what you think!

Indus­try News ~ I found it inter­est­ing that Simon and Shus­ter acquired the print-only rights for John Lock­e’s suc­cess­ful­ly self-pubbed books. With the swing being toward E, the fact that S&S has seen Lock­e’s poten­tial, and is will­ing to forego ebook rights to make him hap­py, is pret­ty amaz­ing in my opin­ion. Good on ya, S&S! If you can’t beat em.…join em!

Real Life News ~ Kids are back in school, which changes the dynam­ics of my entire lit­tle town. Pop­u­la­tion increas­es by about 20K (all 18–20 yrs old) who don’t know where they’re going. Need­less to say I stay off the roads as long as I can.

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ I’ve got two this week. Some­one got to Alan­na’s site by search­ing for “dirty foot­prints on the floor”. Not sure how I feel about that, but I’m buy­ing a mop tomor­row. Over here, some­one searched for “A tease”. Now that’s fun­ny. They found my book AT EASE, which I nev­er real­ized what a squished up url would look like. Awesome.

Hero Quote ~ From a book I’m rework­ing for self pub­lish­ing, FALLING STAR

“Because with her I am just Adam Her­li­hey. I don’t have to be any­one else. I want to get to know her, and I want her to get to know the real me. Not what Opin­ion Mag­a­zine tells her; not what the tabloids write about me. Understand?”

Favorite Song of the Week ~ So many songs, so lit­tle web­space. Today I’d like to share one that plays a big role in my upcom­ing release PREVIEW, I give you Kei­th Urban:

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, though I’m not a huge fan­girl of Kei­th Urban, he did inspire the afore­men­tioned book FALLING STAR, about a cos­mopoli­tan-coun­try music star trou­bled by liquor but tamed by one good woman. Though the hero in my book does­n’t have a sexy Aussie accent, I think that would have been too obvi­ous, yeah?

Okay, that’s it for me this week. See you next time!

I know you all won­der what I do all week. Espe­cial­ly if you fol­low me on Twit­ter, you must think I don’t do much. Okay, you’re most­ly right. Still, to make myself feel bet­ter, here is my to-done list for last week.

Work in Progress News ~

Well I fin­ished FLIPPED. Sent it off to two pub­lish­ers. One I real­ly real­ly want, and the oth­er is a close sec­ond. Could be a month or more before I get an answer. The joys of sub­mis­sions. sigh But it’s done now and I real­ly enjoyed writ­ing it. Now that I’ve stuck my toe in that pool, I feel a bit more com­fort­able with the genre.

New Release News ~ PREVIEW will be released in just over two weeks! So excit­ing. If you haven’t seen it yet, I did add a com­ing soon to my home page, you can check out the cov­er which, until recent­ly, I’ve been keep­ing under wraps. Cari­na Press has some fun stuff planned for its release, I’ll share more soon.

Indus­try News ~  This might not be so much pub­lish­ing news, but HP has dis­con­tin­ued the Touch­pad, and all webOS devices. It’s a sad sad day for me, I real­ly love my webOS phone, and had the Touch­pad on my wish­list since before it came out. Unfor­tu­nate­ly they were too pricey for me, and now that they’re cheap, they’re all sold out. This is my luck.

Real Life News ~ Took a short trip to the resort town of Dil­lon CO yes­ter­day. It’s a gor­geous lit­tle town, too bad it rained the entire time. I did get some nice pics tho. The one above I took with my beloved Palm Pre Plus (SEE? See how awe­some my phone is? Click it for the large view.)

Search Term of the week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ This week: kara sori­en­to. This has hap­pened a cou­ple of times, for both web­sites. Peo­ple search­ing for char­ac­ter names. I assume it’s peo­ple with these names won­der­ing what’s out there about them. I don’t know about you, but if I found a book where the hero/heroine had my name, I’d love that.

Hero Quote ~ From Olivi­a’s recent­ly com­plet­ed book FLIPPED:

I’ll be hon­est with you. I’m scared. But if I don’t do this, I’ll be scared for the rest of my life. This is just for me. For my men­tal health. To prove that I can do it.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Okay, not the most epic of Pink Floy­d’s songs, and not their most famous, but the video has stuck with me for many years after it came out decades ago. Back when they showed videos on MTV.

Also, I’d like to thank David Gilmour (or his wife more like­ly) for cut­ting his hair.

That’s it for me this week. One more week until sum­mer offi­cial­ly ends. Live it up!

Howdy! Hap­py Sat­ur­day! Report­ing in for my week­ly update:

Works In Progress News ~ I just fin­ished the first draft of my first attempt at a m/m. It’s a short and spicy sto­ry about best friends turned lovers. They teamed up to flip a house, and along with oth­er plot points, I came up with the title FLIPPED . I’ll share six sen­tences tomor­row on my Six Sen­tence Sun­day post, if you’d like to come back and see. I’ll have to fig­ure out where to send it now, or if I should just hire an edi­tor and self pub­lish. We’ll see.

Indus­try News ~ Intro­duc­ing the Kin­dle Cloud Read­er!  Not that I endorse any one read­er over anoth­er, but this is an excel­lent way to read ebooks online using either your lap­top (Chrome brows­er only atm) or Safari. Sounds like Ama­zon found a neat lit­tle loop­hole in Apples anti-com­pe­ti­tion pol­i­cy for use in their iPads and such.  And again, I’m not endors­ing the Kin­dle or any­thing, but they’re sell­ing refur­bished mod­els for under $100 if you’re in the mar­ket. I promise, some BN or Kobo news next week.

Real Life News ~ School starts soon here (YAY!!!). Now that school clothes are pur­chased, it’s time to hit the office sup­ply store, which is more fun than clothes in my opin­ion.  The 16yo might dis­agree. I’ve been tak­ing my portable office (lap­top) out­side to enjoy sum­mer while it lasts. The hours out­doors has shown me that the birds and squir­rels that reside in my trees have very…um.…interesting per­son­al­i­ties. Nei­ther species likes the cat. Not that the cat seems to notice or mind. Have you ever seen a cat roll her eyes? It’s pret­ty entertaining.

Search Term of the Week aka How Peo­ple Found my Web­sites ~ You guys prob­a­bly think I make these up. Espe­cial­ly when you see the search term that brought one very spe­cial Googler to AlannaCoca.com: alan­na dri­ving naked Seri­ous­ly. I feel like I should apol­o­gize to this web surfer for not giv­ing them what they were look­ing for, but I’m pret­ty sure there aren’t any photos/discussions of this par­tic­u­lar Alan­na dri­ving naked. Keep look­ing, buddy.

 Hero Quote ~ A quote by Trevor, the hero in Alan­na’s upcom­ing Cari­na Press release on Sep­tem­ber 5th (that’s right around the corner!)

“There’s some­thing between us. The first time I looked at you I felt it. You feel it too. I know you do.”

 Favorite Song of the Week ~ I Owe You a Love Song by the Shiny Toy Guns. This group is real­ly great. They cov­ered a Depeche Mode song and did a bril­liant job. Their cov­er of Major Tom was fea­tured on a com­mer­cial (I for­got what the com­mer­cial was, I think a car or some­thing) Any­way, they’re rel­a­tive­ly unknown, but a fan put this video togeth­er since they don’t have an offi­cial one. Enjoy!

That’s it for me, folks. Have a great week!

This week went by even faster than the one before! I guess that’s a sign of some­thing. Not age though, shut up.

Well, here’s what I’ve been up to this week:

Works in Progress News ~ Con­tin­u­ing on the short for Olivia. I had to wait and see what these guys were going to do, I kind of put them in a pick­le, but they worked it out, just like I knew they would. In the process I dis­cov­ered some hid­den bag­gage, which total­ly explains a whole lot. Pants­ing is pret­ty fun when I learn these char­ac­ters just like a read­er. I’m right at 9K words, and now I’m work­ing on the big scene. If I put my nose to the grind­stone this week, I could have it done by next Sat­ur­day. We’ll see.

Indus­try News ~ I got noth­in’. Either there was­n’t any news, or I did­n’t think it was wor­thy enough to remem­ber. Pathet­ic, I know.

Real Life News ~ I’m off this week­end to Den­ver. Going to take the kids for a lit­tle back-to-school shop­ping and I’ll meet some friends for lunch. It’s pret­ty nice being able to make a day trip out of the city, it’s also nice dri­ving away from all that at the end of the day. The short dri­ve is usu­al­ly pret­ty good for my cre­ativ­i­ty also, so maybe I can think my way through a WiP or two.  Oth­er than that, still enjoy­ing this gor­geous sea­son of warmth and sun­shine. Total­ly addict­ed to work­ing out­side, my lap­top is cov­ered in tree sap.

Search Term of the Week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ Okay, this one from Olivi­a’s dash­board just bugs me: “posi­tion secured free”. I get a vari­a­tion of this every week, for var­i­ous book titles. Just a sug­ges­tion, if you’re look­ing to pirate a book, you won’t find it on the author’s web­site. {swear­word}

Hero Quote: Today’s quote is from Cody Camp­bell, the cow­boy hero from Wyoming Solace.

His eyes stud­ied her face for an inter­minable moment before releas­ing a con­de­scend­ing snort. “You’re a hor­ri­ble liar, Elise. I wouldn’t sug­gest you try that again. It doesn’t become you.” 

 Favorite Song of the Week ~ Josh Groban has an amaz­ing voice. He could sing just about any­thing and make it sound good (case in point: Josh Groban sings Kanye West­’s Tweet Stream) I’ve got a few faves by Josh, this one ranks near the top. A South African song about apartheid.

 Well that’s my week at a glance. Now get out there and enjoy summer!

Howdy! It’s the last Sat­ur­day of July. Already. The sum­mer sure goes quick­ly. I’m not going to let it go with­out a fight though!

So here’s what’s up this week:

Works in Progress News ~ Kick­ing butt on Olivi­a’s short m/m. These two are talk­ers. Not just telling me their sto­ry, but there is a lot of dia­logue in this one, which is fun for me to write, and it seems to move the sto­ry along at a nice pace.  I’ve got a few title ideas even, but noth­ing that’s set in stone. These two guys are best friends flip­ping a house togeth­er. I was­n’t inspired by Ty Pen­ning­ton, but I’ll watch him work shirt­less any day. It’s at 6,700 words now, aim­ing for 15–18k

Indus­try News ~ Ever take your Kin­dle to a book sign­ing, and wish your favorite author could sign your ebook? Well here we go. Author­graph is here. It’s so easy, just pick the book, the author gets an email, the author dig­i­tal­ly signs the book and it gets resent to your Kin­dle. Awe­some, huh? Check it out, all my books are there! Author­graph

Real life news ~ I’ve dis­cov­ered the joys of Net­flix. I did­n’t think my life was lack­ing until I found every episode of Cheers on Net­flix. And Quan­tum Leap. And Psych! Seri­ous­ly, this is not a good thing for some­one who should be writ­ing. I can’t wait for school to start so that tele­vi­sion can remain off all day!

Search Term of the Week aka How Peo­ple Found My Web­sites ~ This week some­one found me by search­ing for: wait for it…

speak­ing div­i­dends sat­ur­day july 23 2011 going press

Yeah. I don’t know. I’ve got nothing.

 Hero Quote ~ Well, it’s kind of a con­ver­sa­tion between Tes­sa and Josh from Olivi­a’s Tes­sa’s Pride.

“What are you doing?”

“Unpack­ing,” he answered with­out hes­i­ta­tion. He’d kept his back to her, but she heard him clear­ly enough.

“Well, yes, but…why?”

Josh straight­ened, then turned his head to pin her with a lev­el look. “You told me to make myself at home.”

 Favorite Song of the Week ~ My teenag­er is learn­ing Bus­ta’s rap. I’ll keep you informed. NSFW

Okay, that’s it for me. I’m work­ing all week­end at the Evil Empire so each of you should feel sor­ry for me. Starting.….now.