I just sent in anoth­er round of edits for Pre­ja Vu. I end­ed up adding almost five thou­sand words. Those of you who have been fol­low­ing the progress of this par­tic­u­lar book will remem­ber how I rant­ed about not real­ly lik­ing the hero, Trevor. (Old blog post) I thought I had him whipped into shape. I end­ed up falling for him, like I do all my men, but my edi­tor Sharis must have tapped into my psy­che and saw my orig­i­nal dis­taste. You’ll be hap­py to know that after dig­ging inside Trevor’s head a lit­tle bit, I was able to fig­ure out what made the guy tick, and why he was behav­ing the way he did. After slap­ping him around, he start­ed talking.

I also had a good week on the Olivia side of my brain. A release date for For A Price, and a cov­er for Falling Star. Go see it…you’ll love it too!

I just got an email from the PTB at Liq­uid Sil­ver Books. We have a release date for my first book…For A Price!

Sep­tem­ber 21, 2009

Click on the com­ing soon tab to read the blurb, and click on the book cov­er for an excerpt.  Release date days are almost as excit­ing as cov­er art days, and only slight­ly less excit­ing as release days them­selves, and con­tract days. All of which call for choco­late and black­ber­ry brandy.

Sigh. I love my job.

Here is the new book cov­er for Falling Star It prob­a­bly does­n’t make you want to weep hap­py tears like me, but you have to admit, it’s pret­ty good huh? Blurb and excerpt are on my “com­ing soon” page, so go get a taste of Adam, and tell me what you think!

You wake up and find a nice yum­my cov­er art draft in your inbox. Aman­da Kelsey does such great work, I don’t know why she both­ers send­ing me a first draft! The cov­er for Falling Star is just absolute­ly per­fect! I can’t stop star­ing at it! She used the same mod­el that I showed you all (see below).  I can’t wait to show it off, but she’s got to get it all approved and legal and stuff, and then I’ll post it here for the world to see.  Thank you Aman­da! Vis­it her at her web­site !

I’ve been slack­ing. Actu­al­ly, not slack­ing so much, I’ve been busy with proof­read­ing for my pub­lish­er, review­ing for an online review site, and edit­ing my upcom­ing release Pre­ja Vu. Still I look at my WIP and sigh. Not much has changed on that thing in almost a week.

It seems like I do that though, I slack for a while, then I hit it full force and write 10k in a day. (Okay, not real­ly. I think 6k is my all time record, but 10k would be pret­ty nice.)

Edits are going well, my new edi­tor Sharis is won­der­ful! First round is done, and vir­tu­al­ly pain­less. knock on wood

I’ve also decid­ed to walk my dog on a dai­ly basis. Oh yeah, that’s right. Me. Exer­cis­ing. Can you believe it? I wore a pedome­ter for a while when I worked as a man­ag­er at Wal Mart. I aver­aged 15 miles. Now I walk the mutt around the park and I’m winded.

Here we are, my new home on the web. Do you like it? Isn’t it cozy? Since Alan­na does­n’t think I’m good enough to war­rant a full fledged web­site *evil glare*, the word­press blogs give a lit­tle more flex­i­bil­i­ty with pages and such.  I like it, I hope you do too! The only prob­lem is that I lost all of my oth­er blog posts.

Lit­er­ary mas­ter­pieces, I tell ya!

So I’ll catch you all up as to what’s going on with me: I just fin­ished edits on For A Price. I have a cov­er and every­thing, so we’re just wait­ing on a release date. Oh so very exciting.

I signed a con­tract with Liq­uid Sil­ver Books for my next one, Falling Star I also post­ed a pic­ture of the hero Adam Nash. I’ll post it again, just because he’s so darn yummy.

,

See the cocky expres­sion? Adam is so full of him­self, but he can’t real­ly help it.

Well, it did­n’t take long to catch you up, did it? I guess I haven’t done any­thing that spec­tac­u­lar. 🙂 Okay, back to work. Alan­na’s strug­gling with her WIP, and I’m try­ing to help her. Both of my books came out so eas­i­ly, I don’t know what her prob­lem is.  I’d branch out and go solo, but we share a laptop.

Oh yeah, and fingers.

Woo hooo!! Night Owl Romance has cho­sen Wyoming Solace as a Top Pick! I get com­pli­men­ta­ry com­ments from friends and fam­i­ly about the book, but it’s always nice to hear it from some­one who does­n’t know me, and isn’t afraid to hurt my feel­ings. Here’s a snip­pet of the review, and a link to Night Owl Romance. http://www.nightowlromance.com/nightowlromance/reviews/Review.aspx?daoid=3954

“Elise Vick­er­son is def­i­nite­ly a woman with a lot of back-bone. She is not your usu­al cow­er­ing damsel in dis­tress. Though she has suf­fered a lot she is ready for any­thing that comes her way now. Cody is def­i­nite­ly a man she wants but is afraid to feel for him…Alanna Coca did a beau­ti­ful job on bring­ing out the emo­tion in her char­ac­ters and in me. You will feel Elise’s heartache in cer­tain chap­ters. Cody is a hero after my own heart. He is def­i­nite­ly your cow­boy — One to pro­tect you. I just loved it!” ~ Melinda

Thanks Melin­da!

Well folks, work­ing on a new project. This one I start­ed from chap­ter one, ignor­ing the books that have thou­sands of words already. Then last night I dreamed of a very cool twist for the end. No, I’m not gonna tell you! My hero­ine in this book, which is with­out a title at this point (big sur­prise) is mod­eled after one of my old boss­es in one of my old jobs. A tough all-busi­ness woman who I acci­den­tal­ly on pur­pose bumped into one day just to see if she was made of flesh and bone. Just writ­ing this char­ac­ter is giv­ing me an ulcer, I don’t real­ly see how my for­mer boss could actu­al­ly live this way! Okay, back to work. Have a hap­py and safe Inde­pen­dence Day, don’t drink and dri­ve, and aim those fire­works AWAY from your face 🙂

Clear off the bar, and climb on up with me. That’s right, it’s time for a hap­py dance num­ber three! Liq­uid Sil­ver has accept­ed my lat­est man­u­script Retreat for pub­li­ca­tion!! Can I get a “yee haawww”??

I sup­pose this is what hap­pens when you write three or four books con­cur­rent­ly, I’ve got more in the queue than any­thing, and I’ll be busy with edits until Christ­mas, but I just LOVE writ­ing my smut.

Some­one grab a bot­tle of that wine, and a big ‘ol box of choco­lates. I’m too busy dirty danc­ing with Chan.

I can’t work when it’s too qui­et. I think that comes from my 18 years in big-box retail. I need cry­ing babies, ring­ing tele­phones, walls full of TVs, and over­head speak­ers in order to get any­thing done. Since I don’t have that in front of my lap­top, (and real­ly, I must be thank­ful) I lis­ten to a lot of music.

When I wrote Wyoming Solace I lis­tened to a lot of ’90s coun­try. Garth Brooks, Clint Black and even Alaba­ma. I don’t know if the book took me to that place, or if the music took me there to write the book. shrug

Writ­ing Pre­ja Vu, I lis­tened to a lot of HipHop. Flo-Rida, Tim­ba­land, Justin Tim­ber­lake, Black Eyed Peas, etc.

Recent­ly I’ve been putting my entire col­lec­tion of tunes on “shuf­fle” and I get a sur­prise every 4 min­utes. 🙂 I get Kei­th Urban fol­lowed by Josh Groban, Eminem after that, then Pink Floyd to round out my all-encom­pass­ing musi­cal tastes. Got­ta love Rhap­sody and/or iTunes!

It’s not cry­ing babies or pis­sy pro­duce pur­chasers, but it’s a living!

Okay ladies and gen­tle­men (and every­one else who might read my blog, you know who you are…) I’ll need every­one to cross their fin­gers or toes, or what­ev­er else you may cross. I just hit the “send” but­ton to sub­mit Retreat for pub­lish­ing. You all want to see me hap­py, right? You want to see anoth­er Alan­na Coca book right? Good answers. I’ll keep you all informed about any progress.