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Archive for January, 2010



Sunday Report Card
Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Just a note. I’ll be playing host later today at the Ellora’s Cave chat loop, along with Shayla Kersten. Join us if you can. We’ll run from 4-8 PM CST!

Since we rarely get snow here, I traipsed outside yesterday with my camera. Here’s a view of the pond in the backyard. It’s cold outside, but pretty enough I don’t care. Besides, I have no intentions of spending anymore time out there than it takes to turn on the pool pump! I’ll take my Vitamin D in a pill, thank you very much!

Today’s Sunday, but it’s also the last day of the month. And what a month January was!

* On the 1st, I finished revising and shipped Fun With Dick and Jayne to Ellora’s Cave, which has been accepted, edited and is waiting for a cover and a release date now.
* On the 6th, I wrapped up a short story for Samhain’s Valentine freebies. Love in Bloom is set to release on February 7th, and here’s the cover!

When Amanda meets her old high-school crush, he doesn’t remember her. A bouquet of flowers and a lost towel spark an affair neither one will forget.

* On the 7th, I got “The Call” from my agent, telling me that a futuristic proprosal we’d sent to Berkley sold! I wallowed in the moment for a week before I got serious about clearing off my desk so I could get to work.
* I finished doubling the word count on a novella for Ellora’s Cave and shipped First Knight on the 25th.
* I finished a short story for the Mammoth Book of Hot Romance and shipped it on the 27th. Cross your fingers it makes the cut!
* I shipped Textile Free, an erotic short story, to Xcite.
* Lastly, I’m going to hit page 100 on the Berkley book today.

So, a very productive first month of the year!

February will be every bit as busy. It’s crunch time for the Berkley book. I want to hit page 300 by the end of the month. I have a proposal for Blaze that needs some work. I have to change the setting, which changes quite a few elements of the story. I want to write a short story for Cleis’s Passionate: Romantic Erotica collection. I’d like to get halfway through the next story in the Lone Star Lovers series, and I have chapter three of Bad Moon Rising to write! So if you don’t see progress in my colored bars to the right, nag me. I have to work hard this month.

Here’s one last picture from my back yard that I’ll share. This huge, 200-year-old oak in my back yard is gorgeous in the warm months, but a little creepy without its leaves. Y’all have a great week!

Sneak Peek: Fun With Dick And Jayne
Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Psst! If you want to know who won the Cat Tails poll contest, scroll to the bottom!

First off if you’re not 18, WTH are doing here? Okay, my civic duty’s out of the way.

Did you know I sold another book to Ellora’s Cave? The title is Fun With Dick and Jayne, and it’s a ménage. Could you tell from the title? I just finished final edits and am waiting on the release date and cover. I thought I’d be lazy today and save my stubby fingers for the pages I want to pound out on my big book. So, here’s a sneak peak inside the new story.

This is what it’s all about:

He didn’t know the nightly peepshow was just a naughty invitation…

Garrett knows what he’s doing can get him into trouble, but he can’t help himself. Every night, as he arrives home, the blonde across the alley gets busy with her boyfriend with the blinds open. He’s spent the past two weeks getting an eyeful and falling deep into lust.

But when Garrett sees a man in a black ski mask sneak into his sexy neighbor’s bedroom, he doesn’t know he’ll be the one captured.

Jayne has a nice life with a nice lover who sees to her every need, but she’s still drawn to the lonely man across the alley. She’s been sharing her deepest fantasies with him from afar, but is ready to up the stakes. When she talks Richard into enacting a dangerous scenario, everything works out as planned. Only Garrett’s not happy about being played. And he’s got reservations because she already has a lover and he’s not into threesomes. Guess she’ll just have to convince him otherwise.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

They were going at it again, and he was gonna get arrested. Which would be pretty damn embarrassing, considering he was cop.

Like clockwork, the couple across the alleyway started banging the minute his car pulled into the garage.

The street along the back of the parallel rows of one-story houses wasn’t much of a buffer. Driveways spoked off the narrow, paved road. Only twenty feet separated his garage from the bedroom window across the way.

Last night, he’d loosened the garage light bulb to make sure it didn’t give him away when the door slid up. Tonight, he flicked his car’s overhead lamp switch off so that the light wouldn’t beam the moment he exited. Carefully, he closed his car door, pushing it with his hip to muffle the click as it locked, walked around to the back then sat with his butt against the trunk to watch the show.

They had to know anyone walking by could see every damn thing—every drop of sweat, every short curl of pale blonde hair. She faced the window, clutching the bottom windowsill, her breasts bouncing every time Boyfriend slammed her ass.

God, her tits were Grade-A prime. Cherry nipples, topping creamy mounds.

Her blue eyes closed, her mouth rounded, and he knew when she came because she always wore the same expression—her cheeks growing rosy, her eyebrows drawing together tightly and the corners of her mouth curving like the cat that licked the cream.

And if the wind hadn’t been whistling through the alley, he would have heard the whimper she gave when Boyfriend milked the last little contraction of her orgasm.

Fuck. He needed his own woman. Maybe she had a twin. Because he sure as shit wouldn’t be satisfied with anyone who wasn’t her, Jayne Peabody—Jayne Hotbody as he’d begun to call her. He’d had her plates run so he’d have a name to assign the woman who’d played a starring role in all his fantasies this past couple of weeks.

They’d finished and Boyfriend was pulling her into his arms, wrapping them around her belly and cupping those beautiful breasts as she snuggled against his chest.

It was time to leave. The show was over for the night.

Then her eyes opened, and Garret Masters could have sworn she looked right at him. He cussed softly, straightened and raised his arm, pulling down the garage door and shutting off the sight of her mouth stretching into a wide grin.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I know I was stingy. I’ll share more once I have a pretty cover to offer you.

Back to the contest…

The option you chose for me to write is, “She awakens handcuffed to the bed, the shower running. Mason steps out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.” I’ll be working on that in February and hope to get it to you by the end of the month. The winner (by random number generator) of the Amazon.com egift certificate is…Fedora!

Contest continues…find me at AR!
Friday, January 29th, 2010

Be sure to cast your vote in the Cat Tails poll below to qualify for the Amazon.com gift certificate! The contest ends tomorrow!

In the meantime, you can catch me at Access Romance, talking about what I do to find the fun in writing. And I talk about you guys and the story. I’d love to see you there. Access Romance Link

Cat Tails Poll and Contest!
Thursday, January 28th, 2010

The winner will be announced Saturday. So, be sure to cast your vote,
then post a comment so I know who voted!

First, thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions about what should happen next in Cat Tails: Bad Moon Rising. If you haven’t had a chance to read the last installment, you need to do it before you vote.

Everyone who votes (and leaves a comment so I know who voted) will be entered to win a $10.00 Amazon.com eGift certificate. So hey, you get to choose what happens next and you get a chance to win something. There is no down side here!

Which two covers do you like best?

  • #6 (30%, 37 Votes)
  • #3 (27%, 33 Votes)
  • #1 (20%, 24 Votes)
  • #2 (12%, 15 Votes)
  • #4 (7%, 9 Votes)
  • #5 (4%, 5 Votes)

Total Voters: 76

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Nina Pierce: An Alternate Future
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Please welcome today’s guest, Ellora’s Cave author, Nina Pierce! ~DD

I’m not sure what it is exactly about science fiction that totally intrigues me. Perhaps it’s the fantasy of anything goes or the what if of alternative reality. Whatever the draw, I find stories about the future just suck me right in.

I’ve watched i-Robot, Logan’s Run, Star Wars and X-Men countless times. I’ve read Anne McCaffrey’s “Freedom” series until the pages were dog-eared. And don’t even get me started on Star Trek. I can name an episode from the original series after watching 5 seconds… okay 10 seconds…of any clip. So to set my stories in a new world just seemed natural for me. I love creating places that either don’t exist or occur in the natural world that’s been changed and imagining the things that could be.

My newest novel Healer’s Garden takes place in an alternative future…a world where a virus released during the melting of the polar ice caps in the late 21st century killed off nearly all human males and a large portion of the females. It’s now the 23rd century. Sperm is no longer viable for artificial insemination, cloning has not been perfected and infants that are born rarely survive. Woman outnumber men fifty to one, but they are genetically superior having been born with advanced gifts of telekinesis, visions or the highest honor—healing.

The situation is dire. In order for the human race to survive the government has stepped in and built breeding facilities where every woman is expected to reside for two years in hopes of procreating. Men of acceptable genetic viability are raised to work as breeders at these facilities known as Gardens.

And this is where my story begins.

Healer’s Garden is the story of a gifted Healer who has managed to hold off her obligation to the Garden. But Jahara Hriznek is nearly twenty-eight and no matter how prestigious her position, she can no longer put off the inevitable. She must now mate with a male—a distasteful task.

Brenimyn is the breeding instructor at the Garden of Serenity. He’s been enslaved for nearly three years, required to copulate with all woman who request is services. But he waits impatiently for the one woman who has been prophesied to help bring about equality between the sexes. But he’s not sure how much longer he can wait.

Jahara doesn’t want to enjoy the sinful rapture only Brenimyn brings to her body. Brenimyn has no intention of dousing the flames of desire licking at them until Jahara is completely his—body, mind, and heart. But when the government finds their loving relationship a threat to the natural order, there may be more than their stubborn wills at stake.

Please enjoy this excerpt from Chapter One:

Jahara Hriznek’s life was over. The evidence weighed heavy in her hands. In the time it had taken to do the retinal scan, her future had been stolen from her.
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Odd bits
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Yesterday’s winner will be named at the end of this posting. ~DD

This popped up in my inbox this morning. Don’t you just love Google Alerts?


From Night Owl Reviews, 5 out of 5 stars:
“… This is one hot book. This is my first m/f/m, m/f/m/f, f/f, and m/m all in one book! And whoa nelly, this was a smoking hot story….”

Ahhh, feels good. Yesterday, I added a scene to Fun with Dick and Jayne during edits. I added 700 words to First Knight and shipped it to my EC editor. Cross your fingers she likes my little medieval vampire story. Then I worked on editing what I have so far of Beloved Captor. I hope today that I get some serious pages under my belt.

I thought you might like to see what Samhain is working on for the cover of my print release in October. The book will include Saddled, Unbridled and Unforgiven. What do you think?

Okay, I’ll stop teasing. The winner of yesterday’s contest (by random number generator) is…Rasha! Be sure to stop by tomorrow. My guest will be Ellora’s Cave author, Nina Pierce. Y’all have a terrific day!

Flashback: Cowboy
Monday, January 25th, 2010

Tonight I’ll be chatting live at Writerspace—at 8 PM ET with the Ellora’s Cave Authors, then at 9 PM ET with the After Midnight Authors! Join me if you can!

If you post a comment today, you’ll be in the running
for a free download of this book!

This excerpt is from the first short story I wrote for publication. Something short, sassy and in first person. It was released by the Wild Rose Press in 2007.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Caught in a sudden thunderstorm on a lonely stretch of Texas highway, I pull into a dingy little diner to wait out the rain, never dreaming the cowboy of my dreams would follow me inside. Now I have a couple of choices, play it coy and safe? Or go for the big brass buckle…

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Lightning clawed the dark like a crow’s foot, illuminating thick thunderheads that glowed yellow-green and ominous. The color of the sky before a tornado twisted its nasty tail.

Glad to be out of the rain and safe from the jagged, streaking light, I shivered against the cool vinyl booth as another flash lashed out like the end of a whip, lighting the horizon so intensely that for a moment the darkened parking lot was bright as high noon.

That was when I saw the large pickup roll in, pulling a horse trailer. It ground to a halt beside the diner’s plateglass window. The driver wasn’t going to bother trying to park it in the flooded lot.

I heard the muffled slam of the truck door, but the end of the lightning strike flickered out, plunging the parking lot back into darkness. The driver would be soaked before he even hit the door. Only twelve feet, but the rain was coming down in sheets. I’d been lucky, arriving before the worst of the storm struck. Mostly dry, I’d peered through the window at the deepening night, waiting for a lull. I’d read the clouds as well as any West Texas native and headed to the nearest shelter. The tiny diner with its 70’s style brick façade, split vinyl bench seats, and peeling, laminated counter tops was a welcome haven. The attached string of motel rooms was part of Plan B if the storm didn’t wane before midnight.

My arrival had been nearly forty minutes ago. Except for a bored waitress smoking a cigarette at a far table, I was the only occupant. Until now.

The door squeaked open, and a cowboy strode inside. He pulled off his cream-colored hat and shook dark brown hair like a dog, sending droplets of water lashing against the glass door. His white T-shirt, soaked almost to transparency, clung to the hills and hollows of sharply defined muscles along his chest and abdomen.

Setting his cowboy hat on the table, he sank into a booth near the door, his expression a study in irritation. Dark brows drawn in a fierce frown, his lips crimped in a thin line.

The man needed a reason to smile.
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