So I’ve moved from week­ly blog posts to month­ly sta­tus updates. One would think this would free me up to write more, but that has­n’t quite hap­pened. May has been a very busy month! Let’s hope June set­tles down enough for me to be able to get some­thing done. I real­ize I haven’t even post­ed a RT Con­ven­tion recap, so I’ll post my slideshow for you to peruse: 

When I got back, it was straight into the finale of my daugh­ter’s soc­cer career. What a blast. I’m such a proud mama. After that, she  grad­u­at­ed high school, so I had invi­ta­tions to send, par­ty to plan.…busy busy busy.

I also got to see Ludovi­co Ein­au­di and his ensem­ble in con­cert in Boul­der, CO. If you don’t know who this is, it’s my plea­sure to intro­duce him to you here. (This is an hour long video, so feel free to play this in the back­ground as you go about your day.)  Is he bril­liant, or what?

I did have time to read a few books, but I’ve got to tell you about Tan­gled by Emma Chase. I don’t like to review books here or any­thing, if I men­tion I read it, you can bet I liked it enough to share, but this one real­ly is a great read.  I love the author’s voice. It’s writ­ten in first per­son in the hero’s point of view, which is unique. Here’s part of the blurb: 

Drew Evans is a win­ner. Hand­some and arro­gant, he makes mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar busi­ness deals and seduces New York’s most beau­ti­ful women with just a smile. He has loy­al friends and an indul­gent fam­i­ly. So why has he been shut­tered in his apart­ment for sev­en days, mis­er­able and depressed? He’ll tell you he has the flu. But we all know that’s not real­ly true.

So there you go. That was my month of May in recap. Let’s hope June brings sev­er­al great word-count days! I’d like to get back in the saddle.

Howdy! I’ll be at the Romance Times Booklovers Con­ven­tion this week! I’m very excit­ed, but sad that not all of you can be there. So I’ve set up a live video stream, and when­ev­er I can, I’ll turn it on and share the fun. I’ll tweet a link when I’m about to stream, so be sure to fol­low me on TWITTER. See you there! Watch live video from alan­na­co­ca on www.justin.tv

 Yes, I’ve stopped writ­ing my Sat­ur­day Sta­tus posts. I decid­ed to only do one per month, sort of like a month­ly newslet­ter. I’ll try to make the posts a bit less friv­o­lous as well, but I’m not promis­ing anything.

My first month­ly post will go live on May 1st, so if you’d like an email when it gets post­ed, just enter your email address on the right.

Any top­ics you’d like to read? Would you like guest blog­gers? I want to be inter­est­ing but not tl;dr.

Let me know if you have any ideas. Also–isn’t this pic­ture just great? I want to make busi­ness cards out of it and hand them out by the handful.

Howdy!  Here’s a pic­ture of some pro­mo­tion­al mini-cov­er flats I just recent­ly received. They’re actu­al­ly “fold­ed busi­ness cards”. Inside is a blurb and QR code. Want a set? Email me and I’ll drop some in the mail for you! I’m still try­ing to come up with a way to dis­play them on my table when I do book sign­ings, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

Work in Progress News ~ Ugh. I haven’t writ­ten much of any­thing at all. I went on a short lit­tle vaca­tion this week and bare­ly turned on my lap­top. Let’s hope that’s what I need­ed to get back to it. I hate being this unproductive.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Mad­ness by Muse. It’s been out a few months, not sure why I haven’t heard it until recently.

Book News ~ I found Tak­ing Her There up for pre­sale! You can now find it at Ama­zon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Woohoo! Also found the audio­book for Tes­sa’s Pride at iTunes and Ama­zon for only $2.99 which is even less than the dig­i­tal book.

Tweet of the Week ~ I’m pret­ty sure this is a dig at CNN’s Steubenville cov­er­age…

What I’m read­ing ~ Bed­ding the Wrong Broth­er (Dal­ton Broth­ers #1) by Vir­na DePaul. Meli­na Park­er prides her­self on being a lady in pub­lic, but after she’s dumped yet again for being a lady in the bed­room, she’s ready to go back to school. Deter­mined to find her inner sex diva, she enlists her child­hood friend, Max Dal­ton, to tutor her after hours. Instead, she ends up in the wrong bed and gets a les­son in pas­sion from Max’s twin broth­er, Rhys Dal­ton, a man Meli­na’s always secret­ly want­ed but nev­er thought she could have.

Today’s Tear­jerk­er ~ 60 sec­ond video that real­ly tugs on the old heartstrings:

Book Snip­pet ~ From Cov­er Sto­ry, my con­tem­po­rary May/December short story:

Cate glanced over at the cam­era, but Bo used two long fin­gers against her cheek to bring her atten­tion back to him. “For­get he’s here, Cate. It’s just you and me.”

She tried to swal­low, but her mouth was too dry. “Okay,” she croaked.

“I won’t do any­thing you don’t want me to do. You’re in charge here.” He stroked her fore­arms and clasped her hands.

Click.

Cate bit her lip

“Now, we’ll start by get­ting used to me being close to you. Try touch­ing me.”

She dropped her gaze to his pec­torals. Why not? It was com­plete­ly safe. Her touch would­n’t fill him with desire. He would­n’t take advan­tage of her–hell, he was­n’t even attract­ed to women!

She raised both hands to cov­er the dark cir­cles of his nip­ples. Hot. His skin was so warm. She curled her fin­gers, dent­ing the smooth flesh of his pecs.

“That’s right,” he growled. “Learn me. Don’t be shy. Noth­ing is off lim­its to you.”

I hope you’re all start­ing to get some beau­ti­ful spring weath­er. Just send it my way when you’re done with it. I’m patient. Have a great week!

It’s here! Start­ing For­ev­er is now avail­able at Ama­zon, Barnes & Noble and All Romance Ebooks! It’s pend­ing at iTunes, so I hope it will go live in a day or two. This is the fol­lowup sto­ry to Falling Star, and it includes chap­ter one of my work in progress, the sec­ond full book in the Earth Scents series. Isn’t the cov­er gor­geous? It’s the same mod­el for Adam as the FS cov­er, and I think the twin­kle in Jade’s eye real­ly shows through. Thanks, Booknib­bles for the great cov­er, and thank you Sharis May­er for editing.

Work in Progress News ~ This week I spent some time refor­mat­ting Falling Star. I put Start­ing For­ev­er at the end of the file, so now it’s got more of an epi­logue. For those of you who already pur­chased Falling Star, you can redown­load the new ver­sion free of charge most places (Ama­zon should be send­ing out an email some day). If not, please email me direct­ly and I’ll send you the new version.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Kiss me, I’m Irish! All the Dublin­ers’ songs were favorites in my house grow­ing up. This par­tic­u­lar song  I took a lik­ing to since my mid­dle name (kin­da, dif­fer­ent pro­nun­ci­a­tion) is fea­tured at 2:48, so I fig­ured they were singing about me.

Back­list News ~ Fri­day, the UPS man vis­it­ed me, and left me with a box full of Wyoming Solace paper­backs!(pic) My author copies came in, and I spent way too long caress­ing them. Wyoming Solace is my first nov­el, so it always has a spe­cial spot in my heart. It comes out in print on May 7th, but it’s avail­able for pre­order at Ama­zon or Barnes & Noble

Tweet of the Week ~

What I’m read­ing ~ Exclu­sive­ly Yours by Shan­non Stacey. This is the first in a series, so I’ll be pick­ing up the oth­ers soon… When Keri Daniels’ edi­tor finds out she has pre­vi­ous car­nal knowl­edge of reclu­sive best­selling author Joe Kowal­s­ki, she gives Keri a choice: get an inter­view or get a new job.

Book Snip­pet ~ From Com­pa­ny Ink:

“Fol­low me.”

With plea­sure. She walked behind him, with thoughts of the com­pa­ny pic­nic, when he showed up in a pair of loose-legged jeans that defined his ass with more love than the suit pants she saw him wear­ing five days a week. At least on “Casu­al Fri­day” he went with­out a suit jacket.

He led her down the hall­way until the car­pet changed from indus­tri­al to plush, muf­fling their foot­steps as the chat­ter from the cus­tomer ser­vice calls fad­ed. He stood aside at the door to his office, ges­tur­ing her in ahead of him. Ever since her sex dream three months ago–which began with that very move–Sidney could­n’t stop her libido from perk­ing up each time she entered the mas­cu­line space.

“Have a seat.” He waved her to one of the two leather chairs fac­ing his desk. “I’m not say­ing you made a bad deci­sion, but before your cohorts line up at my door ask­ing about the move, I need an explanation.”

Sid­ney remained stand­ing, and clasped her hands in front of her. “Is there a problem?”

“You tell me.” He left her stand­ing, and sat in his huge exec­u­tive chair.

Doubt­ing that her cur­rent prob­lem was any­thing sim­i­lar to his, she moved her clasped hands behind her and wait­ed. The man hat­ed awk­ward silences almost as much as being called Sir. Luck­i­ly she had patience in spades.

Okay every­one, be sure to have a hap­py and safe St. Patrick­’s Day! 

Cov­er Reveal! I’ve got two actu­al­ly. This one is for my August release with Samhain. What do you think? I like the flir­ty sauci­ness. Cin­ema­cov­er by  Booknibbles.

Head on over to the Tak­ing Her There page to check out chap­ter one! I’ll show you my oth­er cov­er next week.

Work in Progress News ~ I don’t want to talk about it.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Tell Me Ma by Gael­ic Storm. I love these guys, saw them live right after they got famous from play­ing on the movie Titan­ic. There’s no video so I just have the music bar. Enjoy:

Tweet of the Week ~

If you want to see into the core of a some­one’s soul, watch them eat pop­corn when they think they’re alone.

– Ash­ley (@ashleycrem) Novem­ber 17, 2012

Indus­try News ~ Fol­low­ing Ama­zon’s suit, Apple filed for a patent to sell used dig­i­tal media, so that should be inter­est­ing. [source]
What I’m read­ing ~ Wolf-Bit­ten by Ella Drake:

Nev­er run from a were­wolf, unless you want to get caught.
He is her betrothed, her erot­ic dream, her worst night­mare. Allie is a woman on the run. Brock is the were­wolf hunt­ing her. Allie ran from home to avoid her fiancé, Brock. Unwill­ing to tie her­self to a were­wolf, she wars with her divid­ed long­ing to run to him and her urge to run away.
Book Snip­pet ~ From At Ease:

“I hope you know I missed my cal­cu­lus class today. If I fail, I’m blam­ing you.”

He smiled against her abdomen. He hadn’t even asked if she had oth­er plans before drag­ging her across cam­pus to his apart­ment. Not that she put up much resistance.

“You’re in luck.” He licked a cir­cle next to her navel. “I hap­pen to be an excel­lent calc tutor.”

She laughed, and the sound tick­led his cheek.

“If it makes you feel bet­ter, I just skipped a pret­ty impor­tant test in philosophy.”

Jaycee sighed, a long indo­lent sound. “I hope it was worth it.”

“Def­i­nite­ly worth it.” He nib­bled on a rib and she squirmed.

Every­one have a great week!

It’s March! That means shed­ding dogs, chirp­ing birds at five in the freak­ing morn­ing, and mud. I’m kid­ding. I’m excit­ed for spring, though here on top of this moun­tain spring is more like win­ter for the rest of you. The best part about March besides base­ball? For the next few weeks you’ll get to hear my favorite IRISH MUSIC! You lucky people.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ I’m one of sev­en chil­dren in my big Irish fam­i­ly. Imag­ine all us kids under the age of ten, all lined up singing this song to a house­ful of well-imbibed St. Pad­dy’s rev­el­ers at our annu­al par­ties. I did­n’t know what I was REALLY singing about until I was around 20.

Work in Progress News ~ Work­ing away on Ris­ing Heat. I got stuck in one area, and skipped ahead to a scene I knew was com­ing. I leave myself lit­tle notes in the mar­gins like “tran­si­tion here” and “fix”. Some­times I for­get what I want fixed by the time I revis­it that scene, so I’ve tried to be more spe­cif­ic late­ly. This week I dis­cov­ered a lit­tle fac­toid via YouTube that I’ll have to tweak Start­ing For­ev­er before I put it up for sale. I’m so wor­ried that I’ll get a fact wrong!

Back­list News ~ A new review on Ama­zon for Falling Star. Lisa says: “Adam and Jade were great char­ac­ters. Want­ed the book to go on for a lit­tle longer. I wish I could have got to know the char­ac­ters a lit­tle more. But on a whole, I was still intrigued with them and want­ed more. I did love it!!”

Tweet of the Week ~ The fun­ni­est thing about this is that it’s prob­a­bly true:

What I’m read­ing ~ Dou­ble Head­er by Abi­gail Bar­nette. When Javier Var­gas was trad­ed from the Port­land Pio­neers to the Grand Rapids Ben­gals, he didn’t just leave his team behind… he turned his back on the love of his life. Now, a year lat­er, short stop Zach Mar­tin is play­ing for the Ben­gals as well, and Javier can’t believe he ever walked away from the scorch­ing heat between them.

Today’s Tear­jerk­er ~ Seri­ous­ly. Two tissues.

Book Snip­pet ~ From Wyoming Solace:

She was beau­ti­ful. If only he could reach that patch of ten­der skin beneath her ear with his mouth. But he couldn’t with­out mov­ing too much. Her head grew heavy on his biceps, slow­ly cut­ting off the blood, caus­ing his fin­gers to tingle.

He wouldn’t move for the world.

Okay folks. Have a great week!

Wel­come! Anoth­er snowy week here in the Rock­ies.  Luck­i­ly I have remote start on my car, so I’m much more tol­er­ant about how cold it gets 🙂

Work in Progress News ~ Edits for Falling Star 1.5 are com­plete, and the cov­er artist is hard at work. The title I came up with is Start­ing For­ev­er. I real­ly want to fin­ish Ris­ing Heat, the next book in the Earth Scents series before I put it out there, but at the rate I’m writ­ing, I’m not sure how long that will be. I am plug­ging away though, and my goal for RH is April 15th. Most­ly so I can go to the RT Con­fer­ence feel­ing like I did some­thing to deserve it.  I’m only about 10K in, and I expect it to be about 50K, so I’ve got a long way to go. I think for Start­ing For­ev­er I’ll put it up on my web­site as a free down­load while I con­tin­ue writ­ing #2, so as soon as I have a cov­er I’ll let you all know.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Some­times a week calls for some old school Floyd. This guy did a good job with the video. Enjoy:

Back­list News ~ Joy­ful­ly Jay gave Flipped four stars! “…noth­ing earth shat­ter­ing in terms of con­flict here, but the sto­ry is sweet and a lit­tle mushy with some nice heat.” Sweet, mushy, and hot. Sounds a lit­tle bit like oatmeal!

Tweet of the Week ~ Very few tweets make me lit­er­al­ly laugh out loud. This one got me. It still does.

Indus­try News ~ Accord­ing to Boing Boing: “Indie book­sellers sue Ama­zon and big pub­lish­ers over DRM (but have no idea what “DRM” and “open source” mean) A group of inde­pen­dent book­sellers have filed a suit against Ama­zon and the major pub­lish­ers for their use of DRM, which, the book­sellers say, freezes them out of the ebook mar­ket”. Yikes.

What I’m read­ing ~ I was look­ing for some base­ball books because well…spring fever. Found this one for only a buck!  “After years of hard work and keep­ing her nose firm­ly to the grind­stone, Dr. Hol­ly Bell has final­ly achieved her dream: a posi­tion as a pedi­atric sur­geon at a pres­ti­gious teach­ing hos­pi­tal. Chil­dren’s lives rest in her skilled hands. That means total ded­i­ca­tion to her work and her patients with­out let­ting any­thing or any­one get in the way. And a hot affair with a super­star ath­lete is most def­i­nite­ly get­ting in Hol­ly’s way…”

Today’s Tear­jerk­er~

 Book Snip­pet ~ a bit from Tes­sa’s Pride:

Her habit of twirling one black curl in time with her mouse clicks made Josh’s lips twitch with the need to smile.

“Quit star­ing.”

Tes­sa didn’t even look up, but she did stop chew­ing on that lip.

Josh grinned. “Why should I?”

“You make me ner­vous. I’m not used to peo­ple star­ing at me.”

“I can’t help it. You’re beautiful.”

She blushed. Damn, that was sexy. Even her eye­lash­es flut­tered. He set his lap­top aside and moved onto the couch beside her. “Is this better?”

“Are you still star­ing?” The last word raised in pitch when he nipped her shoulder.

“I’ll close my eyes.”

Okay folks, have a great week.

Wel­come! Hope you all had a great Valen­tine’s Day. This pic­ture is from Rus­si­a’s mete­or land­ing which was beau­ti­ful and also scary as hell.  Watch­ing the dash cams made me real­ize that the Russ­ian peo­ple are much calmer than we Americans.

Work in Progress News ~ Well, I fin­ished my short sto­ry, my cri­tique part­ners did­n’t hate it, so that’s a good thing. They sug­gest I tweak the last scene, so I’ll do that. Still unsure whether to pub­lish this guy while I write Dean’s sto­ry (book two) or wait until Dean is almost done. I’ll keep chew­ing on it. In oth­er news, I got the first draft of my cov­er for Tak­ing Her There. I real­ly like it. Fun and flir­ty. I asked for one change, we’ll see if they can accom­mo­date, then I can show it off! Excit­ing stuff.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ A new one from The Piano Guys. They also record­ed the instru­men­tal ver­sion, and I almost post­ed that, but this female singer Megan Nicole took my breath away. Some­one to watch.

 Tweet of the Week ~ I know I’ve shared this guys’ tweets before, but he’s just so good at these 140 char smiles!

Indus­try News ~ Looks like the Depart­ment of Jus­tice approved the Pen­guin and Ran­dom House merg­er, so it’s offi­cial­ly the Big Five. Still wait­ing for the Ran­dom Pen­guin Twit­ter account…

What I’m read­ing ~ Snow­fall by Cameron Dane: Togeth­er for four years now, Chris­t­ian and Jon­ah from A Fos­tered Love are still wild­ly in love and pas­sion­ate­ly attract­ed to each oth­er. Jon­ah has nev­er seen snow, and Chris­t­ian thinks he’s set in place the per­fect Valentine’s Day week­end away to show his man some­thing new.…

Today’s Tear­jerk­er~ A month or so old, but still awe­some. A lawyer moves in with his moth­er so he can let a home­less fam­i­ly live in his house for a year:

Book Snip­pet ~ from Retreat:

Jake chuck­led. “Do you like the truck?”

Well, that was ran­dom. Andria shot him a queru­lous glance. “Sure, the truck is nice.”

“Big, isn’t it?” He laid his right arm over the bench seat between them and smiled like a naughty child.

“Well … yeah … there’s plen­ty of room…” Andria looked into the back of the cab, where there was anoth­er seat large enough for three more passengers.

“Andi?”

She looked up. He divid­ed his atten­tion between the rough road and her mis­un­der­stand­ing eyes. He reached down and slapped his right thigh.

“Get your ass over here.”

Aaannnd she did. Okay folks, see you next week!

First of all, I hope every­one in the east is safe and warm with the win­ter storm. While you all name your storms after Dis­ney fish though, we here in Wyoming will con­tin­ue to get 15 inch­es of snow and not com­plain. We’re tough like that. Sec­ond­ly, isn’t that pic­ture of Calvin awe­some? Some won­der­ful guy took some C&H pic­tures and super­im­posed them onto some real pho­tos. Click on that pic­ture to see more.

Work in Progress News ~ Soooo close to fin­ish­ing this book! Well, it’s not a long one, so I should­n’t be too proud of myself. This will be the sec­ond book in the Earth Scents series, but since it’s most­ly just an epi­logue to Falling Star mixed with a pro­logue of Dean’s sto­ry titled Ris­ing Heat, I’m label­ing it as Earth Scents Book 1.5. I hope that makes sense. I’ve thought of a title…I think. I’ll reveal that when I know for sure.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Sure­ly you all heard the news about a hitch­hik­er who saved the day when he stopped a man from a mur­der­ous ram­page. The Gre­go­ry Broth­ers (known for the Bed Intrud­er hit) are back with this song, which real­ly is touch­ing. And funny:

And you don’t even have to thank me for that ear­worm. That’s a bonus.

Tweet of the Week ~

Indus­try News ~ This week Ama­zon received a patent to open “an elec­tron­ic mar­ket­place for used dig­i­tal objects,” includ­ing e‑books, audio, video, com­put­er appli­ca­tions, and more. So this means sec­ond-hand ebooks and used mp3 music. The patent was filed in 2009, and just award­ed this week. Of course it sent quite a tremor through the indus­try, since there has always been a fine line between an ebook “pur­chase” and a “dig­i­tal license”. A patent does­n’t mean Ama­zon will fol­low through with any­thing, so for now it’s all just spec­u­la­tion. We shall see.[source]

What I’m read­ing ~ Croc and the Fox by Eve Langlais. The blurb is pret­ty long but here’s the hook: An ornery croc dis­cov­ers he does have a pulse when a hot to trot fox decides to latch on, and nev­er let go. Tongue in cheek humor, siz­zling moments and a tiny, evil vil­lain await.

Today’s Tear­jerk­er ~ New­town CT received lit­er­al­ly tons of sym­pa­thy mail after the Sandy Hook school shoot­ing. Moth­er Jones, and Tum­blr Sto­ry­board have teamed up with a local hero to dig­i­tal­ly archive all of these as a memo­r­i­al. Grab a tissue:

Book Snip­pet ~ From Treat, my free read pre­quel to Retreat:

“Well, here you go, Miss Ham­ton.” He hand­ed her Jaun­tie’s reins and her hel­met. “Show me what you know.”

She shook her hair back to put the hel­met on. “I know lots of things.” She lift­ed an eye­brow and saun­tered around him to mount the horse. “Might take all morn­ing to show you.”

Jake shook his head, a dev­il­ish grin hid­ing behind his eyes. “City slick­ers get so cocky with any kind of horsepower.”

That’s it for this week. Thanks for stop­ping by!

Hap­py Ground­hog Day!  I try to watch this movie every Feb­ru­ary 2nd. I’m tempt­ed to kid­nap the ground­hog most years. I feel ya, Bill!

Work in Progress News ~ Still pick­ing at Falling Star 2 (or 1.5?) I keep going back to cut words because I seem to want to go off on some dia­logue tan­gent and the sto­ry isn’t going any­where. Jade is a chatterbox!

Favorite Song of the Week ~  I like this song for two main rea­sons. One is because I can belt out the cho­rus (in my car usu­al­ly with the vol­ume way up) and I sound SO GOOD! When I’m alone. The oth­er? Guyliner.

Also, I think I’m the only one who sees the Adam Ant similarities.

Tweet of the Week ~

What I’m read­ing ~ Make You Sweat by Pia Veleno: Dur­ing his first vis­it to the fit­ness cen­ter, Tyler meets the sculpt­ed and toned Cody Daw­son, fit­ness instruc­tor and sexy gay man. Not only does Cody help Tyler learn how to use the strength train­ing equip­ment, but he crash­es through Tyler’s fan­tasies and lures him into bed.

Today’s Tear­jerk­er ~ Good guys make the best heroes.

Book Snip­pet ~ From PreView:

She stud­ied the knot of his tie, pic­tur­ing his hands as they tied the silk. She imag­ined watch­ing those nim­ble fin­gers but­ton­ing his crisp shirt, tuck­ing it into his form­fit­ting trousers. Even sim­ply tying his shoes. The inti­ma­cy of imag­in­ing this man dress­ing for their date was enough to make her shiv­er. She start­ed again with the tie and pic­tured him loos­en­ing it. Slid­ing it from around his neck and toss­ing it aside. Then the but­tons, one by one slip­ping through the holes, expos­ing a wedge of that smooth, hard chest…

“Stop it, Ryann,” he groaned.

She blinked a cou­ple times and brought him back into focus. “Stop what?”

He grinned dev­il­ish­ly and leaned toward her. One hand snaked around her neck and pulled her cheek against his. “Stop look­ing at me with those hun­gry eyes, or I’ll be tempt­ed to take you right here, and damn any­one who might not like to watch.” He fin­ished his lit­tle speech with a ten­der nip of her ear­lobe, then sat back in his seat.

When you’re done read­ing this sta­tus, be sure to click HERE! And hap­py Ground­hog Day 🙂

Howdy! It was a good week here on top of the moun­tain. I got a lot done and we had some beau­ti­ful weath­er. Keep remind­ing me that glob­al warm­ing is a bad thing.

Favorite Song of the Week ~ Ok it’s not so much the music as the dancer, but I think they both work well togeth­er.  What do you think?

 Tweet of the Week~

Have just writ­ten: “he got hold of the flap­py thing that clos­es on a truck” because I don’t know the name of it. Shut up ok, writ­ing’s hard.

– Char­lotte Stein (@Charlotte_Stein) Jan­u­ary 24, 2013

Work in Progress News ~ I’ve been work­ing dili­gent­ly on the sequel to Falling Star! I’m so proud of me. I had one real­ly good day, but the next day I end­ed up cut­ting almost a thou­sand words. That’s how it goes, I guess. As soon as I come up with a title I’ll let my cov­er artist know so we can get the ball rolling! Also this week I filled out my cov­er art request for Tak­ing Her There. That’s when I real­ized I nev­er men­tioned my hero­ine’s hair or eye col­or. I just left it up to Samhain’s cov­er artist. That should be fun!

Indus­try News ~ What would you think about an ebook­store that only charges after you’ve fin­ished the book? Or most of the book, or spent more than six sec­onds on a page? Read more about Total Boox

What I’m read­ing ~ I read a book I did­n’t like. I even fin­ished it. Not exact­ly sure why, though I did skim a good por­tion of it, the whole time I’m think­ing “wow, I hope no one skims my books”. So then I Â re-read one of San­dra Brown’s genre romances that she wrote back in prob­a­bly the ear­ly 1990s, not yet avail­able in dig­i­tal: “She was ter­ri­fy­ing­ly alone on a Texas high­way about to deliv­er her first child when a rugged stranger in a pick­up truck stopped to help her. Leigh Bran­som had lost her hus­band eight months before when he was trag­i­cal­ly killed on the job. This fate­ful meet­ing on a lone­some high­way brought a hand­some, new man into her life…yet he was a man with secrets and the pow­er to break her heart again…” Just found all the old cov­ers, had to post the one with the orig­i­nal title. Awesome!

Today’s Tear­jerk­er ~ Okay, this sto­ry has been all over the inter­net this week, but in case you missed it, here’s the gist: A Hous­ton wait­er, Michael Gar­cia, is being cel­e­brat­ed for stand­ing up for a lit­tle boy with Down syn­drome. The sto­ry is heart­warm­ing if you’d like to read and/or watch the news clip HERE

Book Snip­pet ~ This one from my work in progress which is as yet name­less (HELP!) which fea­tures Jade and Adam from Falling Star as they dri­ve down the high­way in front of her parents:

About thir­ty min­utes into the ride, Jade leaned over the cen­ter con­sole to lay her head on his shoulder.

“Keep your head up where your mom can see.” Adam squeezed her leg. “I’m still try­ing to impress them.”

“If you impressed them any more, they’d adopt you.”

He laughed. “That would make our rela­tion­ship a bit kinki­er then, would­n’t it?”

“Well maybe,” she gig­gled. “But it would be good coun­try music song fodder.”

“Oh, you’re gonna pay for that one.”

That’s enough out of me for the week. See you next Saturday!

Wel­come! I’ve got great news to share. I’ve signed a con­tract with Samhain Pub­lish­ing for Tak­ing Her There! It’s ten­ta­tive­ly sched­uled for an August release, but I’ll be sure to keep you informed. I’ve got chap­ter one post­ed for your read­ing plea­sure. Let me know what you think!

Work in Progress News ~ Well this week’s work in progress real­ly was­n’t writ­ing. I did work a bit on Falling Star 1.5, but I spent a lot of time work­ing on some pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als for this year’s Romance Times con­fer­ence in ear­ly May. I’m let­ting my inner Martha Stew­art come out, and like this blog post, my ideas always look a whole lot bet­ter in my head.

Indus­try News ~  Now 54% of U.S. chil­dren aged 2–13 are read­ing ebooks, more than dou­ble the 23% of U.S. adults who are e‑reading. Great news for the future of ebooks! I’d like to request some more mid­dle school ebooks, from all of you chil­dren’s authors read­ing this…

Favorite Song of the Week ~ YouTube real­ly is a mec­ca of tal­ent. This guy has it in spades:

Tweet of the Week ~ Mil­lion dol­lar idea:

What I’m read­ing ~ The Christ­mas Propo­si­tion by K.A. Mitchell. Because I dis­cov­ered a K.A. Mitchell book I had­n’t yet read. So I fixed that. “It’s Christ­mas in Epiphany, Pennsylvania–the busiest time of year for Mel Hal­ner. But run­ning the fam­i­ly Christ­mas tree farm has worn down his love for the hap­pi­est sea­son of all, and late­ly Mel’s been won­der­ing what if he’d said yes to a tick­et out of town with mil­lion­aire Bryce Cam­pi­on three years ago.”

Today’s Tear­jerk­er ~ A new fea­ture on my sta­tus posts. I was going to make these sep­a­rate blog entries, but I think I’ll just put them here instead, since I already have your undi­vid­ed attention:

Book Snip­pet ~ from Posi­tion Secured:

“I guess you had some cop fan­ta­sy, huh?” He gave her anoth­er one of those slant­ed, naughty grins.

Mari shook her head. “I hate cops.” His pup­py dog frown was so cute, she couldn’t resist laugh­ing. “I got a tick­et on the way home tonight. You just have bad timing.”

“Ah, now there I dis­agree.” He kissed her light­ly. “I don’t think my tim­ing could have been better.”

Have a great week, everyone!