Free Fic Friday - Chapter 6

It's Free Fic Friday again! Chapter 6 of CODE NAME: WILLOW is up.

This week, I'd like those of you who are reading the story to do me a favor--please tell your reading friends about Free Fic Friday. One of the reasons I decided to make CODE NAME: WILLOW available for free is that I don't have any books out in 2009. I have new books coming (I'm hoping as many as three books out next year), but I'm a fairly new author and an absence from the bookshelves of over a year doesn't do much to help build my readership.

So if you're reading CODE NAME: WILLOW and enjoying it, please tell someone else about it!

FREE FIC FRIDAY - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of Code Name: WILLOW is up!

Lots happening in this chapter--blink and you'll miss something.

Today's bling for commenting: I'll pay your way (up to $25) to a Reader's Luncheon of your choice. (Birmingham's Southern Magic is holding a great one in the fall, with the delightfully subversive Anne Stuart as our keynote speaker). So if you comment and you have a Reader's Luncheon in mind, be sure to mention it in your comment.

Now, get to reading!

Sold again!

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this!

I sold two more books to Harlequin Intrigue, both in the Cooper Justice series!

I don't have final titles or even publication dates yet, but I've agreed to the terms and I'm hoping that at least one of the two new books will come out in 2010. The first book, working title RUNNING FOR COVER, features Cooper brother Luke, a former Marine Intel officer whose secretive past is about to catch up with him big time, including the son he never knew he had and the woman he never stopped loving.

And the second book, working title BULLETPROOF BACHELOR, features Aaron Cooper, a Chickasaw County Sheriff's Dept. investigator looking into a suspicious fire that damaged the home of one of his high school classmates, formerly nerdy brainiac Melissa, a lawyer whose pro bono work with battered women may have put her in a killer's crosshairs. Aaron barely knew her name in high school, even though she nursed a secret crush on him. But this time around, it's Aaron who's all hot and bothered, while Melissa has plenty of good reasons to resist the charms of the youngest Cooper son.

I'll update you with real titles and publication dates as soon as I know them.

FREE FICTION FRIDAY

Chapter 4 of Code Name: WILLOW is up.

If you commented last week, be sure to check the comments section for a note about who wins the free books from last week's contest. (Little hint--all of you!). Just follow the directions in my last comment and your free book will be on the way.

This week, alas, I don't have a prize to give away, but I still love to hear your comments as you read. And if you made a comment last week, be sure to check the comments later today--I'll be addressing some of what y'all talked about.

Oh, Hey...There's the Other One...

Chickasaw County Captive is now listed on amazon.com. Along with Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming, that's two of my books you can now pre-order.

Too bad they won't be out in time for Christmas gift-giving...

Free Fic Friday - Chapter 3

You know the drill by now. But this week, I'm sweetening the pot with a little contest. Somewhere in Chapter 3 of Code Name: WILLOW, I reveal how long it's been since Maggie's seen her father. How long is it? The first person to post the correct answer here wins a free $20 amazon.com gift certificate.

Now go read! Then come back and comment!

Update: Because I still want y'all to have reason to revisit this thread even after the $20 Gift Certificate is gone, I'll sweeten the pot a little here. I'd like for those of you reading to comment on what you've liked, what you haven't liked, what themes you see, what characters intrigue you—because I'm a feedback addict. And by the end of this weekend—10 pm central time on Sunday evening—I'm going to draw two names randomly from the commenters on this thread. The winners get signed copies of any one of my backlist books I still have available. (I think Forbidden Territory may be out of stock, even here, though, just to warn you).

So, come on, folks. Show me a little comment love!

Well, Would You Look at That...

Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming is up on Amazon for pre-order. Order early, order often!

Here's a blurb to whet your appetite:

On the trail of the killer who murdered his wife, Wyoming cop Riley Patterson finally has the break he's been waiting for—a survivor. But while Hannah Cooper can't remember anything about her attacker, her attacker remembers her. After a second attempt on her life, Riley offers himself as Hannah's personal bodyguard. But will his growing attraction to Hannah put his case in jeopardy, especially if his best chance to catch a killer puts her directly in the crosshairs?

I actually read the whole novel, beginning to end, last week while doing my final edit of the book before it goes to press. I'm not one who enjoys re-reading my books once I've turned them in to the editor, but I have to say, I found myself sucked right into Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming again. I think it's the tormented, grieving hero who pulled me into the story. It was satisfying to see him come to life again over the course of the story as he found more to live for that just revenge and his wife's memory.

I hope y'all enjoy the story as much as I did!

Free Fiction Friday - Chapter Two

Chapter Two of Code Name: WILLOW is up on my website! Go read, then come back here to talk about it.

If you missed reading Chapter One, no fear. It's still up. Each chapter stays up once it goes up so that anybody coming to the story late can easily catch up.

Free Fiction Fridays are Here!

Visit my website to read the first chapter of CODE NAME: WILLOW, a full-length romantic suspense novel I'm offering, a chapter at a time, on my website every Friday through November.

Here's a little blurb to get you started:

When a former First Daughter's in trouble, there's only one man to go to for help. Too bad Maggie Stone swore she'd never turn to Secret Service Agent Jack Bennett again...

Yeah, kinda vague. But you'll figure out pretty quickly what's going on. Just go read the chapter.

Then come back here and talk about it! And you can be honest; I'm not sensitive. I love to hear feedback, good, bad or ugly.

Shout Out Time

Time for one of my favorite kinds of posts: the shout out! This time, it's a big shout-out to my Southern Magic chaptermate, Naima Simone, for her first sale to Ellora's Cave!

Her book, Sweet Ultimatum, is tentatively scheduled for publication later this year. Visit Naima's website: http://www.naimasimone.com/ for more information.

Way to go, Naima!

Oh, Yum

Davidoff's Cool Water cologne for men has inked a new deal with Josh Holloway of LOST, ensuring that we get a few more lovely shots of Josh and his pretty, pretty self gracing the pages of magazines in the foreseeable future.

Be sure to click the link because there are nice, big, oh-so-yummy pictures besides this one.

Josh Holloway's character on LOST, James "Sawyer" Ford (more recently known as Jim LeFleur in his 1970s life), is an interesting, complex guy. A family tragedy (his parents' murder/suicide) turned into a boy's quest to find the con man who tempted his mother away and led to his father's homicidal act. But in the process, James became "Sawyer," the conman he wanted to destroy.

Manipulative, larcenous and driven by a thirst for revenge and his own self-loathing hidden behind the veneer of ruthless disdain for anyone else, the Sawyer who crashlanded with the others on the island was a sarcastic, selfish and disruptive force of nature. His schemes to preserve his own life and comfort at the expense of everybody else turned him into a villain early in the series. But as we learned more about his background through his flashbacks, and more about his inner life through his occasional moments of connections with the other survivors, we began to witness a gradual but significant change in the character. I would go so far as to say that in this past season, Sawyer became a true hero.

It'll be interesting to see if his heroism was purely a circumstance of the bizarre situation they were in or if maybe he can sustain the growth for the final season of LOST.

On a personal note, I used Josh Holloway as the inspiration for the character Maddox Heller in my third book, FORBIDDEN TOUCH. Clearly, as you can see from the book cover photo, the art department did not take my description of Maddox as having sandy blond shoulder-length hair into consideration at all.

Oh well, can't complain too much. The FORBIDDEN TOUCH cover is still one of my favorites. It's my first (and so far, only) cover with the heroine on it, and what's funny is, though they got the hero completely wrong, despite my detailed descriptions of him, they got the heroine, Iris Browning, perfectly right, even though I barely gave them anything to go on, since I hadn't really "cast" her with an actress or a model as I had with Maddox.

Don't forget, even though Forbidden Touch has been off most bookshelves for a while, you can still buy it as an ebook at Harlequin online.

A Little Love for the Troops from 3 Funny Guys

Carson Daly, Zachary Levi and Joel Moore discuss the their support for the troops. (minor language warning)

(h/t Big Hollywood)

Not Your Grandma's Bodice Ripper Anymore

Interesting article on the social stigma of reading/writing romance and how the genre is making breakthroughs in some surprising places. (h/t Wayne Jordan)

Accidental Potatoes

Have I mentioned that we have a small worm farm? My mother, my niece and I love to fish with live bait for shellcrackers and bluegills, among other things, and red worms are the go-to bait for these feisty little sunfish. However, we found that often, when we were done fishing, we had as much as a whole box of worms left over.

A box of worms can cost as much as a dollar or more, so it seemed a waste to just pour them out in the ground once we were finished fishing, and we knew they didn't thrive in the small cardboard boxes, so I decided to look up worm farming on the internet to see if it was something we could do at home.

Sure enough it's very easy to raise your own redworms. You just need good soil, a large container, a sunny but temperate area to put your container of soil and worms, and table scraps like potato peels, fruit peels and cores (don't use citrus--it makes the soil too acid), and other vegetable scraps like the woody ends of asparagus or the wilted outer leaves of lettuce or cabbage.

So we started our worm farm, adding new additions to the gene pool for a while when we'd have leftover worms from fishing. And now, we have a big flat plastic container full of worms and dirt.

You need to change out the dirt now and then, but that's also a plus, really, because the worm castings in the old dirt are a fantastic natural fertilizer for plants. We changed the dirt early in the spring and then used the discarded dirt to use in planting our vegetables for the summer. Yeah, there were a few red worms left in the old dirt; hard to get them all. But that's good, too, because redworms do the same thing in the plants that they do in soil naturally--eat the leaves that fall off and excrete a natural fertilizer.

What we found, to our surprise, however, was that there was something else in the soil besides the worms and their castings. There was apparently a piece of red potato with an eye still in it, because one of our planters that we hadn't planted anything in yet suddenly began sprouting a potato plant. It's big, lush and responding beautifully to nothing but occasional watering. A couple of weeks ago, it bloomed, and today, I harvested the first four baby red potatoes from the accidental potato plant. We're going to have them either for lunch or dinner.

We're thinking about planting potatoes on purpose next year. They seem to thrive in our climate and being in the container rather than the ground doesn't seem to faze them.

Forbidden Territory

My first book, FORBIDDEN TERRITORY, is very hard to find new online, and y'all know how I feel about buying new if you can.

Powell's Books has one available. First come, first served!

What is Patience Smith Really Like?

The lovely folks at Pink Fuzzy Slippers Writers give you a chance to find out with their interview with the Silhouette Romantic Suspense senior editor.

I love my editor and writing for Intrigue, but this interview really tempts me to pitch a few things Patience's way, just so I could work with her.

There. Are. No. Words.

The Top Five Awful Disney Crossover Toys.

I'm an unapologetic capitalist, but...dude.

If you were stranded on a deserted island...

(Crossposted from the Intrigue Authors blog and the eHarlequin Intrigue Authors Blog)

We're doing our spring cleaning at home a little late in the season, in order to turn a basement den into a small apartment for my sister. Unfortunately for me, the basement den is where I've stored about half my books, so now I have to find room for them upstairs. Except, if there were room upstairs for the books, they'd have already been up here. So you know what that means: it's time to cull.

Culling out books is hard for me. I'm a collector by nature, and many of these books I've had since childhood. But as I go through the books, I'm finding that many books that once meant a lot to me I can now get rid of without much pain.

Writing books have been some of the more obvious casualties, now that I'm published and know more about what it takes to be a writer. The books that were once so valuable to me for their information and support are now headed to charity or the local library in hopes that they educate and inspire other aspiring writers still reaching for the brass ring of publication. Also gone are the piles of romances and other novels I bought over the years as I tried to find my niche as a writer. Not all of them, of course; the ones that spoke to me, that helped me find my genre and my voice, stay on my shelves in an honored place.

I have books I bought as reference material for a specific novel that I'm now getting rid of because the novel is written, or the reference book turned out to be useless. I have books that I'm getting rid of because they're literally falling apart at the seams or they duplicate, in some way, other books I have. (I have a large Shakespeare compendium I bought in college that's in wonderful shape; what's the point in holding onto those little paperback versions of specific plays?)

The classics stay, even if I didn't enjoy them, because I have nieces in grammar school who aren't too far from needing those books for their studies. I have books that I seldom read but keep for sentimental reasons, like the books written by a writer friend who passed away tragically early from cancer. I kept my college textbooks forever, but I'm finally letting some of them go--Algebra, Trigonometry--while I hold onto others--Zoology, Spanish, all my English textbooks--because I think they might be useful to me yet. Who knows when I might write about a hunky biologist and a sassy English professor who end up on the run in South America? (...jotting that idea down in the idea file...)

I've often played along with the old game, "If you were stranded on a deserted island, what's the one book you'd want to have with you?" It's fun to speculate. It's not so much fun, however, to have to reduce your book collection by nearly half. I can attest to that personally.

However, I do think I could probably come up with a list of five books I'd have to have with me: The Bible, Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE, THE STAND by Stephen King and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. (But I sure would miss ROBERT FROST'S POEMS, PERSUASION, JANE EYRE, the Harry Potter books and THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN).

So, what about you? If you had to trim your book collection drastically, what would go? What would stay? Or is this a subject too horrifying to contemplate?

Introducing...Cooper Justice

Coming from Harlequin Intrigue in 2010:

COOPER JUSTICE

The Coopers of Chickasaw County, Alabama believe in truth, justice and family. They also want to believe that love can last forever—but danger has a way of finding each of them at the worst possible moment...

CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING
January 2010

On the trail of the killer who murdered his wife, Wyoming cop Riley Patterson finally has the break in the case he's been waiting for—a real, live survivor. But while pretty tourist Hannah Cooper can't remember anything about her attacker, he remembers her. After a second attempt on Hannah's life, Rileyoffers himself as her personal bodyguard. But will his growing attraction to Hannah put his case in jeopardy, especially if his best chance to catch a killer puts Hannah directly in the crosshairs?

CHICKASAW COUNTY CAPTIVE
February 2010

Someone is targeting Jefferson County Assistant District Attorney Sam Cooper— and using his family to do it. After an attempted kidnapping leaves Sam's four-year-old daughter Maddy traumatized and his teenaged niece in a coma, Sam knows he needs help protecting his family and finding out who's behind the attack. But is a young, female police detective with a notoriously tragic past really the person for the job?

Literary Nightmare

Last night, I dreamed that my editor wanted me to write a short book (67 pages) with another author's hero (but Intrigue had the right to use the character). The hero's name was Dominic, and he'd appeared in two books by a now-deceased author. (Helpfully, she'd sent me the two books by that author in which Dominic had appeared). It seemed that Dominic was a time-traveling immortal who, at one point in his time-traveling history, had raped a woman. Oh, and in the first two books, he'd had a torrid affair with the same woman, so readers might expect him to end up with her or something.

You might think that part of the dream was the strangest. But no, for my editor showed up in person to discuss it with me, and turned out to be not a female, as I thought, but Adrian Paul dressed in a very natty suit. Which, I admit, might normally be seen as the best part of the dream, except in my dream, he was clearly batting for the other team.

(Only I would have a dream about Adrian Paul in which he was gay. Sigh).

Then I woke up.