Six Sentence Sunday 1/16/11

Alanna Coca

Anoth­er Sun­day, anoth­er six from my silent WiP. The only rea­son this file gets opened at all is to post six sen­tences every week. Even­tu­al­ly the SSS will catch up with me, and I’ll have to actu­al­ly write the damn thing.

Sigh

Any­way, we join Brynn in the hotel:

The street below was as qui­et as it ever would be, but news­pa­per and trash col­lec­tion vans rushed to fin­ish up before the city awoke.

With anoth­er men­tal wake-up slap, she stum­bled into the bath­room. Not time to day­dream. Tues­days were always busy. Three surg­eries sched­uled today, and she’d be on call at the hos­pi­tal tonight. At the end of the week she would have some down time.

Okay. I swear this book will get excit­ing soon. I promise! Thanks for stop­ping by. With 58 SSS posts on the Six Sun­day Site to choose from, I real­ly appre­ci­ate those of you who chose my bor­ing six to read! Have a great week everyone.

Flash Fiction Friday 1/14/11

Alanna Coca

Start­ing some­thing new here. I used to find pic­tures of hot­ties every Wednes­day, and write fic­tion­al scenes about them. I found it to be a fun exer­cise, and a lit­tle bit of dis­ci­pline in my high­ly unstruc­tured life. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, one of the mod­els pic­tured emailed me, upset that there was a “false sto­ry” attached to his pic­ture, so in a knee jerk reac­tion, I pulled all of my Hump Day Hot­ties. For all of you that aren’t in the pub­lish­ing indus­try, the cor­rect term for false sto­ry is “Fic­tion”, which is what I do. So I decid­ed to start some­thing new with my false story.…er.…fictional scenes. I’ll post a pic­ture and write a scene. I’d like to encour­age my read­ers to either con­tin­ue the sto­ry where I left off, or write their own scene. It’s a fun lit­tle work­out for the brain. Ready?

Janine hid behind a tree, try­ing to con­trol her gig­gles. Marc had fall­en asleep on their pic­nic blan­ket, just as she’d hoped. When he asked her to rub sun­screen on his shoul­ders, she’d slathered it on pret­ty thick in prepa­ra­tion for this moment. 

He fid­get­ed in his sleep, and she clutched the bag of flour clos­er to her chest, but he did­n’t wake up. He deserved this. Just last week he’d plant­ed a rub­ber snake in her trunk. The week before that he’d got­ten one of his friends to call her at work with a pho­ny accent and ask about rent­ing her office space to film porn. She still would­n’t admit to laugh­ing about that one. The kick­er was when he rigged the front door with pull string pop­pers. She had dropped her gro­ceries, and a jar of pick­les broke. The house still smelled like pick­les, and Marc still laughed about it.

Yes, he deserved this. Janine tip­toed over to him, her heart pound­ing wild­ly. She was care­ful not to let her shad­ow fall over his face. That would wake him up. Instead she stood a bit to the side, and held the paper bag over his face. She tucked a fin­ger in the fold at the bot­tom, and before she could talk her­self out of it, she ripped the seam. She squealed almost before the white pow­der hit his skin, and gig­gled all the way back to safe­ty behind the tree. She peeked around it, hop­ing to see him strug­gling fran­ti­cal­ly with the mess. Instead, he mere­ly wiped his eyes, shook off his hands, and rolled over onto his stomach.

She was in so much trouble.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this scene are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Six Sentence Sunday 1/9/11

Alanna Coca

Six more! Wel­come back to the SSS post. Wow, lots of par­tic­i­pants this week. I already have a hard time mak­ing them all every week, so I appre­ci­ate you stop­ping by.

We’re join­ing Brynn in her hotel room after she left her los­er hus­band Jack.

Heal­ing The World char­i­ty teamed up with her prac­tice, the Bone and Joint Surgery Cen­ter to bring a five year old acci­dent sur­vivor from Soma­lia for much need­ed recon­struc­tive cran­io­fa­cial surgery. Along with the media cir­cus sur­round­ing lit­tle Nad­if’s surgery, there was the heav­ier than nor­mal load of sports injuries, all of which meant some long hours on her feet.

Of course, the whole rea­son she took on the addi­tion­al patients was due to her sit­u­a­tion with Jack, so if she chose to blame the man for her stress, she was jus­ti­fied. The email she sent him yes­ter­day, insist­ing that he stop call­ing her phone did no good. He called as she ate a soli­tary din­ner deliv­ered by room ser­vice, and left anoth­er voice mail when she failed to pick up.

Brynn pulled open the drapes, and stared down at the Dal­las sky­line, the lights twin­kled all the more furi­ous­ly, as if they knew that the sun­rise would soon mute them.

Wow those were long sen­tences. I swear that’s only six! That’s it for me. Hope you can vis­it a good chunk of the rest of the blog­gers post­ing their six sen­tences at the main web­site. SSS is grow­ing!  On another sub­ject, if you’re a blogger/author, and would like to join in a blog hop, I’m putting one togeth­er for Valen­tine’s Day, just click HERE for info. Have a great week everyone!

Release Day!

Alanna Coca

Today’s the day! Last Call gets pub­lished around 7pm EST. I thought I’d jaunt around the webosphere to spread the good news. I was at Ashe­lynn San­ford’s place last week, and I was inter­viewed at Jeanne St. James’ blog today. I also guest blogged at Romance Writ­ers Behav­ing Bad­ly. Tomor­row I blog over at Liq­uid Sil­ver Books’ blog Sil­ver Expres­sions

Stop by and say hello!

See more about Last Call on my books page, and the buy link goes active around 7pm EST

Woohoo!

Six Sentence Sunday 1/2/11

Alanna Coca

Wel­come back! I hope you all had a great Hol­i­day break. I don’t know about you, but it sure went fast for me. I bare­ly got my shop­ping done in time. Next Christ­mas I’ll be more pre­pared. (I always say that. I’m such a liar)

Any­way, back to six sen­tences from my WiP. You might have for­got­ten what was going on, Brynn had just left her cheat­ing hus­band, and checked into a super nice hotel:

The alarm woke her, though it seemed she bare­ly closed her eyes. She pound­ed the snooze but­ton, fum­bled for the off switch, then swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and sat some­where near upright. It was the only way to ful­ly wake up. If she lounged in bed, she’d like­ly fall back asleep. The sun had yet to rise, so it seemed unnat­ur­al for her to do so, but she was used to the ear­ly morn­ings; all sur­gi­cal recon­struc­tion work was sched­uled at pre-crack.

She would like to blame Jack for her sleep­less nights dur­ing the past week, but it was work.

Pret­ty bor­ing six. I should stop the pro­gres­sive post and try to find six good lines from my books and WiPs.  Maybe next week lol. Be sure to check the Offi­cial Site for the rest of the par­tic­i­pants! Also, I’m in the mid­dle of a blog hop, where we’re giv­ing away a Kin­dle 3, and lots of ebooks! When you’ve read all of the SSS entries today, stop by http://justromance.me  to see how to enter.

Thanks for drop­ping by!

Romancing the New Year

Alanna Coca

Wel­come! I hope you’re hav­ing as much fun read­ing these scenes as we are writ­ing them.  If you’re just wan­der­ing by this post, check out the entire list of authors by click­ing HERE to go to the beginning. 

The fol­low­ing is a work of fic­tion. The char­ac­ters, inci­dents and dia­logues in this scene are of the author’s imag­i­na­tion and are not to be con­strued as real. Any resem­blance to actu­al events or per­sons, liv­ing or dead, is com­plete­ly coincidental. 
Text © Olivia Brynn, Pho­to © Aaron Rohde.

Okay, on with my ver­sion of what’s going on in this picture:

“Can we go home now?” Jen­nifer checked her phone again. William should be call­ing any minute. She real­ly did­n’t want to be in a noisy bar when he final­ly did.

“We can’t go home yet.” Chris­tine dragged Jen­nifer and Alex across the crowd­ed dance floor toward the bar. “We have to at least wait until midnight.”

“If I miss William’s phone call because you two kept me pris­on­er at a stu­pid bar all night, I’ll nev­er for­give you.” Jen­nifer pout­ed, but her jut­ting low­er lip was lost on Chris­tine, so she turned to Alex for help. “Can’t you con­trol her?”

“Con­trol her?” He grinned. “I can bare­ly keep up. See why I love her?” Alex’s eyes went to Christine’s ass as they wend­ed through the throngs of people.

“Which makes me a third wheel. Why don’t you dis­tract her, and I’ll call a cab?”

“William will call back if he can’t reach you the first time. Quit being such a stick in the mud.” Chris­tine faced them in a rel­a­tive­ly clear spot near the bar. “He’s prob­a­bly bring­ing in the new year with his bud­dies anyway.”

The new year came hours ago in Afghanistan. He did­n’t get to cel­e­brate.” Jen­nifer tried her pout again.

“I promise, once that ball drops in Times Square, you won’t want to rush home to wait for a phone call.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“I’ll put my life sav­ings on it.” Chris­tine winked at Alex, whose lips twitched in a sup­pressed smile.

Jen­nifer watched the cou­ple curi­ous­ly. Some­thing was going on. “No deal. Your life sav­ings is pay­ing for my next drink.”

Chris­tine laughed. “Yeah you’re right. That’s why I’m dat­ing this Sug­ar Dad­dy.” She walked into Alex’s embrace, care­ful not to spill their champagne.

Jen­nifer could­n’t watch. As much as she loved Chris­tine and her boyfriend Alex, see­ing them togeth­er almost every day only made her long for the rela­tion­ship with William that she’d had to put on hold when he was called for duty.  He was sup­posed to be home for Christ­mas, but as usu­al, gov­ern­ment sna­fus delayed his dis­charge. Now she hoped he’d come home by Valen­tine’s Day. Jen­nifer pulled her gaze away from her feet to find Chris­tine and Alex still lost in each oth­er. Maybe she could walk home…

Alex was the first to come up for breath. “Get your­self anoth­er glass of bub­bly. Only two min­utes to midnight.”

Grate­ful for the excuse to leave the lov­ing dis­play, Jen­nifer found an emp­ty stool at the bar where a man was lean­ing.  As she wait­ed for the bar­tender to make his way over, Jen­nifer took a deep breath. Damn. The stranger beside her wore the same cologne  as William. Jen­nifer bit her lip, and swore to breathe through her mouth until her drink arrived. Was it her imag­i­na­tion, or did the entire bar get sud­den­ly qui­et? She snuck a glance at the man’s hands then up his suit jack­et until she reached his face. When she met his eyes, she blinked. It can’t be.

“William?”

“Hap­py New Year baby.”

© Aaron Rhode Photography

While I have you here… ahem…I just thought I’d point out that on Mon­day my next release comes out. It’s titled Last  Call, and it’s a short fun read. At least it was fun for me to write it. I hope it’s fun to read as well. Find more infor­ma­tion by click­ing the cov­er there. Thanks for stop­ping by. I hope you all have a won­der­ful and safe New Year, and good luck in the Kin­dle drawing!

Romancing The New Year

Alanna Coca

Wel­come! I hope you’re all enjoy­ing the scenes so far. If you’re just hap­pen­ing across my post, click HERE to go to the begin­ning of the tour to be eli­gi­ble for a pletho­ra of prizes includ­ing an e‑reader that you did­n’t get for Christmas! *

The fol­low­ing is a work of fic­tion. The char­ac­ters, inci­dents and dia­logues in this book are of the author’s imag­i­na­tion and are not to be con­strued as real. Any resem­blance to actu­al events or per­sons, liv­ing or dead, is com­plete­ly coin­ci­den­tal. Text © Alan­na Coca, Pho­to © Aaron Rohde

As soon as I saw this pic­ture, I saw the fol­low­ing scene. It’s pret­ty obvi­ous, so I won’t be sur­prised if it’s dupli­cat­ed by anoth­er blog­ger today. Still, here’s my version:

Cindy glared at her broth­er and his fiancée. “Would you two knock it off? If Greg and I are going to hook up, it cer­tain­ly won’t be with you around.” The man in ques­tion had leaned over the bar to order anoth­er beer. Camil­la and Car­son had been play­ing match­mak­ers for months. They’d final­ly man­aged to get Cindy and Camil­la’s broth­er Greg in the same place at the same time. From the begin­ning of the New Years par­ty, they’d been push­ing their sib­lings into con­ver­sa­tion, and even using the open bar as a tongue-loosener. 

“You have to admit, Cin, the guy is per­fect for you.” Greg poured anoth­er glass of cham­pagne for Camil­la before emp­ty­ing the bot­tle into his own glass. “Hell, you two haven’t stopped talk­ing since the par­ty started.”

Cindy watched Greg, and more specif­i­cal­ly, the brunette at the bar that inched clos­er as Greg wait­ed for his drink. “Yeah, he’s a good guy.” And cute. And both men­tal­ly and finan­cial­ly sta­ble. And inter­est­ing. And he smelled good…

“I can vouch for him,” Camil­la winked. “As a mat­ter of fact, I can give you some great dirt about his for­ma­tive years.”

Cindy fid­dled with her plas­tic orange arm­band. She would nev­er admit to either Car­son or Camil­la that she’d been attract­ed to Greg since they met at their sib­lings’ engage­ment par­ty last sum­mer. She’d even awoke from a few dreams star­ring Greg. The fact that they’d final­ly con­nect­ed dur­ing this New Year’s par­ty was only giv­ing her more hope.

“You’d bet­ter get anoth­er drink. They’re about to count down to mid­night.” Car­son shoved her toward the bar.

Cindy went along with the ruse, because she secret­ly want­ed to wedge her­self between Greg  and the brunette.

“Good luck get­ting a drink,” Greg leaned over to speak direct­ly into her ear, though the bar was­n’t loud enough to war­rant it. “They’re pret­ty busy.” 

“Ten…nine.…eight…” The entire bar start­ed to chant. 

“Oh no!” Cindy cov­ered her mouth in mock sur­prise. “But I have to have a drink for the toast. How else can I bring in the new year?”

“…five…four…three…two…”

“How about this?” Greg spun her into his arms and cov­ered her sur­prised mouth with his. 

Cindy slipped her arms around his back and opened her mouth to his maraud­ing tongue, and she bare­ly heard the crowd shout­ing, “Hap­py New Year!”

Okay, I might have gone a bit long with that, but I could­n’t stop in the mid­dle! Okay, on with the Hop. See you at the end, I’ll be in the chat room dur­ing the des­ig­nat­ed times, I hope to meet some of you there!

What’s Up?!

Alanna Coca

Since dis­con­tin­u­ing my Hump Day Hot­tie scenes, I’ve missed my week­ly brain exer­cise, so I’ve decid­ed to write a scene each Fri­day, and hope that my blog vis­i­tors will pick up the scene and con­tin­ue the sto­ry in the com­ments, or write their own scene based on the pic­ture I post. What do you think? Would I be talk­ing to myself? Did that ever stop me!? Since the next two Fri­days are already tak­en for real life fes­tiv­i­ties, I’ll start on Fri­day Jan­u­ary 7th. I hope you join me.

Also, get­ting ready for a blog hop on New Years week­end. It’s going to be a great time, with big­ger prizes than ever! Start your new year with some romance by some great authors. And me too.

Two weeks from today Olivi­a’s next book Last Call comes out from Liq­uid Sil­ver Books! Head on over to Olivi­a’s Web­site to get the low down, and read an excerpt. It’s a fun lit­tle sto­ry, but it fea­tures a fire­man, so it’s HOT!

Right on the heels of Last Call comes Tes­sa’s Pride, out on Feb­ru­ary 21. Olivia also should be start­ing edits soon on anoth­er short hot read At Ease. Anoth­er man in uni­form too…

I guess that’s it for my updates. See you soon!

Six Sentence Sunday 12/11/10

Alanna Coca

Wel­come back! Last week just flew by, with all the shop­ping and hall-deck­ing. I’m still not done. sigh

We’re also in the mid­dle of a blog hop, with tons of prizes, so if you have a chance, just scroll down to the next post to join in the fun!

Now, on with the post:

Each step away from him snapped the last of the ties hold­ing her there. By the time she checked into the How­er­ton hotel, she felt like she had just shed a six year old skin. The house­keep­ing staff bus­tled in ahead of her to unpack her cas­es, turn her bed down, and lay a fluffy white robe at the foot of the bed. Brynn stared at the whirlpool tub in the mar­ble bath.

She could get used to this.

After a day of her world being flipped upside down, she found that good room ser­vice, a mas­sage, and a feel-good black and white movie worked won­ders to help a girl relax. She did­n’t even miss Jack­’s snoring.

Okay, so that was sev­en sen­tences. Don’t tell on me. Change one of those peri­ods into a com­ma or some­thing. See all of the oth­er Six Sen­tence par­tic­i­pants at the offi­cial site. Thanks for stop­ping by!

Holiday Rush Blog Hop

Alanna Coca

Wel­come! If you’re just hap­pen­ing across this post, you can begin the offi­cial Hol­i­day Rush Blog Hop by click­ing HERE. Tons of prizes, tons of eye can­dy. What more could you ask for on a win­tery weekend?

Yes­ter­day, as I’m search­ing for the per­fect blog post for this blog hop, I got an email with the fol­low­ing pic­tures. Now, maybe it’s cheat­ing to grig­gs like that, but when I was stress­ing, and the email came in just at that “omigod­whatamIgo­ing­to­post” moment.…I like to think of it as A Gift From Santa.

The fol­low­ing are pic­tures of Christ­mas around the world.  Click on each to view it full sized, they real­ly are beau­ti­ful in imax version.

I hope it’s warm and cozy in your cor­ner of the world.  Leave me a com­ment, telling me which of the above loca­tions would be your dream Hol­i­day trip, and I’ll ran­dom­ly choose one to win a paper­back copy of my first nov­el Wyoming Solace. Good luck, and on with the hop!

Holiday Rush Blog Hop

Alanna Coca

Wel­come to my blog! You should be here via the Booknib­bles tour bar, but if not, just click HERE to get start­ed! We’ve got a pletho­ra of blogs, eye can­dy, and con­tests with prizes for you, so I’m glad you’re here to par­take in the Hol­i­day goodness.

pho­to from http://www.123rf.com

This is the Christ­mas Angel. He already knows your naughty side. That’s why he’s here in blue jeans. He’d also like to know where you store your mistletoe.

Thanks for join­ing us on the Hol­i­day Rush Blog Hop. I hope to see you at the CHAT on Sat­ur­day night (7pm EST). Kudos to Michael from Booknib­bles for dri­ving this tour bus. On the next screen you’ll find the entry form for your share of a huge grand prize, and also the poll for you to vote for your favorite post/site on the tour. Good luck to all!

Discontinuing Hump Day Hottie Posts

Alanna Coca

After receiv­ing a surly, and rather dis­turb­ing email, I’ve decid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue my week­ly flash fic­tion slash eye can­dy posts, affec­tion­ate­ly known as the Hump Day Hot­ties. All for­mer posts have been pulled.

I apol­o­gize to any­one out there who might have been offend­ed by my fic­tion­al­ized scenes under the pho­to of any man who is not cur­rent­ly a romance nov­el cov­er model.

What’s On My TBR:

Alanna Coca

Although I’ve already read the pre-edit­ed ver­sion since I’m lucky enough to be one of Gem’s beta-read­ers, I’ve got the fin­ished ver­sion of this spicy west­ern on my desk­top, taunt­ing me, telling me I don’t real­ly have to write any­thing. I MUST read Five Card Stud by Gem Sivad.

If you’ve not had the plea­sure of sam­pling Gem’s work, I sug­gest you drop what­ev­er you’re doing and head over to her web­site to read some excerpts. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Gem Sivad’s Website

See? I was­n’t kid­ding. Gem’s voice is so com­plete­ly per­fect, I don’t think I’ve ever read an author who sounds like she just stepped out of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry the way she does. 

Here’s the blurb for Five Card Stud:

When boun­ty hunter Sam McCal­lis­ter sees Eden Pace play­ing pok­er for the first time, he los­es all inter­est in the cards; instead, the thought of play­ing stud with the lady gam­bler stirs his cock to life. Eden’s the pret­ti­est woman and the best card sharp Sam’s ever met. Good thing he has a few cards up his sleeve. 

Eden’s doing her own out­law hunt­ing. She’s on the trail of her husband’s killer and Sam’s in her way. To get free of this hard­head­ed, soft­heart­ed, gor­geous man, Eden tries strip pok­er and naked truth-or-dare, but when Sam ups the stakes, car­nal sub­mis­sion and desire are unleashed.

When Sam dis­cov­ers Eden’s want­ed for mur­der, he fig­ures his bed is the safest place for her. But tak­ing Eden pris­on­er isn’t as easy as Sam expects. He’s in a high-stakes pok­er game with lust on the table and his heart on the line, because one taste of Eden just isn’t enough.

See how Eden looks so prop­er on that cov­er? Look close­ly at her eyes. There’s a pas­sion­ate woman behind that fan, and she sure does­n’t hide behind any sense of Vic­to­ri­an propriety.  Check out the trail­er, made by yours truly:

You might also want to check out the first Boun­ty Hunter book Wolf’s Ten­der, star­ring Sam’s cousin Char­lie Wolf McCal­lis­ter. Click the cov­er above to go right to Five Card Stud’s buy page at Ellora’s Cave. After you read it, come back and let me know how much you love it!

Six Sentence Sunday 12/05/10

Alanna Coca

Hap­py Sun­day! Con­tin­u­ing on with six sen­tences from my unfin­ished WiP:

“Come on, Brynn, we can work this out.”

“There is noth­ing to work out. It’s over.”

“I’ll fight a divorce.” His voice turned fran­tic. The fire behind his brown eyes was enough to cause Brynn to step back, but not enough to back down.

“Fight it then; it won’t change the out­come. You have thir­ty days to get off my prop­er­ty. The house is going up for sale.

Jack’s face quick­ly turned to a bright shade of red. “You are not leav­ing me.”

Brynn smiled. “You’re right, Jack. I’ve already left.”

Have a great week. Be sure to vis­it the rest of the SSS crew at the offi­cial site.

Six Sentence Sunday 11/28/10

Alanna Coca

Hel­lo! Hope every­one had a great Thanks­giv­ing week! Can you believe it’s over? Bring on the shop­ping, eh?

There are a bunch of short sen­tences here, so I’m post­ing more than six.  Con­tin­u­ing on from last week:

“So if your heart isn’t involved it isn’t cheating?”

“Exact­ly. I’m not going to divorce you for her. I’ll break it off. She’s noth­ing to me.”

Brynn nar­rowed her eyes. Was the man in need of psy­cho­log­i­cal help? She hadn’t real­ly expect­ed him to read­i­ly admit to his phi­lan­der­ing, and in the same breath ratio­nal­ize it like that. “That’s too bad, because she’s all you have now.” She tried not to smile the way she des­per­ate­ly want­ed to. “Which means you have nothing.”

Have a great week. Be sure to vis­it the rest of the SSS crew at the offi­cial site.