Darkness Burning was nominated for “Favourite Erotic Romance” by the Australian Romance Readers Association! How cool is that?

Tonight around midnight, when the red-headed hellion arrives home from work, I’m packing up and heading home. I’m supposed to attend the monthly meeting of the Diamond State Romance Authors tomorrow morning, but that’s looking iffy because all I want is uninterrupted sleep—about 10 hours worth—before I pry my eyes open. Last night, I pulled down web sources for my daughter’s college assignment, and stayed up to help her work on it. She was too exhausted to get it done quickly on her own. Our heads didn’t hit our pillows until 2:30. The 6:30 alarm came ALARMINGLY fast. Couldn’t resist that. Sorry.

Dogs are walked, baby fed. Wonder if she will oblige me by going back to sleep so I can nap a little this morning. Do you know how you start to ache all over when you’re really, really tired? I should probably try to get a shower and wake up enough to write, but I’m not sure my brain’s gonna cooperate.

I should have the copyedits for Darkness Captured (my September Avon release) waiting for me when I arrive home. Can’t wait to see what changes the editor wants. Or if she wants huge revisions. My guess is not because she would have gotten them to me sooner if there were huge issues. I’ll be surprised if that’s the case though because DC is way out there. My heroine ends up in the Land of the Dead and has to be rescued. All kinds of strange things and creatures, and kinky sex happen. Oh wait, she should know by now that’s what happens in one of my “dark” books.

~DD

I don’t get those women who want to bear children after forty or, God forbid, fifty! Children are for the young. I’ve only had a small three-day dose, but I’m exhausted. Have you ever tried to tell a 1-year-old that the reason she cries is that she needs sleep? Or that dropping her toy over the side of the playpen out of reach isn’t a screaming offense? There’s no reasoning with her. And although the 5-year-old has some verbal skills, she still doesn’t get the concept of let’s sit so the dog doesn’t get overexcited and stops barking. Nope, she runs circles around the couch yelling at him to shut up. There’s a reason I had a house husband. I don’t have the maternal gene.

It also doesn’t help that there’s so much Irish running through their veins. Everything that happens, happens loudly.

Yesterday when the 1-year-old went down for a nap, I did manage to finish another chapter of the big book, but I didn’t make it back to any of the smaller projects. Maybe I’ll work up the nerve to put the shock collar around the neck of the barracuda with a tail (the dachsund) so he will stop barking and I can think. He’s old and grumpy and likes to check you with a bruising (not puncturing) bite. Or maybe I can just shoo him out the door and he can go play with the pit bull next door.

For stories, that is. I love it when readers tell me they’d like to see a story about a guy and girl who…

Yeah, and I’ve written a few custom stories like that. It’s fun and challenging to take input and then craft something special and unique. So, if you had a writer willing to take suggestions, what sort of story are you dying to read? Tell me, and you might see it in print.

So be creative. Or just have fun. Sometimes the most off-the-wall ideas make the most interesting stories because then the writer has to think a bit about how something like that might actually happen.

You would have laughed if you’d seen me this morning, standing on the back porch watching two dogs, butt-to-butt, getting it on. My life. The 5-year-old is off at school, and I’ll be writing my fingers to the bone while I have some quiet time (if the 1-year-old cooperates).

Yesterday was not a good day. One of the little Yorkies I loved tangled with a logging truck and lost. I watched it happen and there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. She slipped out of the fence and ran for it. This morning I’m still down. Such a sweet little thing, but my only consolation was that she didn’t suffer.

I’m back at the red-headed hellion’s house for the next few days, and since she’s on dial-up, I limit my access to Internet. Her menagerie is a lot of work. The chickens are the easy part, if I can manage to dodge the rooster—he’s just plain evil.

I did get a short story out the door yesterday before I left. Cross your fingers it made the cut! Thanks to Brandy and Heather who read it to make sure it didn’t suck too badly. Today, I’ll keep my laptop on my lap (imagine that) and work while I keep the 1-year-old away from the light sockets.

Between this blog, the After Midnight blog and Facebook, there were 43 entries in yesterday’s contest! So without further ado (another of those phrases I don’t understand), the winner (by random number generator) is…Christiana Toups! Christiana, email me!!

Color me shocked when the announcement was made yesterday. My very first title at Samhain was the most downloaded book for 2009! Thanks to everyone who bought it—and if you haven’t yet, well, post a comment today and you’ll be in the running to win it. If you already have SADDLED, then I’m sure I can find something in my backlist of eBooks to interest you!

In fact, post a comment here, then mosey on over to After Midnight Fantasies to check out my next release, Bad, Bad Girlfriend. If you post a comment there you will get a second shot at the prize!

5 Stars from Just Erotic Romance: “…I couldn’t put this story down! It was danger, betrayal, sexy and fun all rolled together into the perfect erotic romance. The plot was brilliant, and the characters unique…The sexual scenes will make you clamp your knees together and dream of a sexy cowboy or two of your own…”

5 Stars from Vixen Reviews: “…What starts out as an innocent effort to warm Kate up turns into some of the most erotic sex I have ever read along with some of the best dialog I have seen in a book so far this year…The chemistry and interaction between the three of them is well written and keeps you chuckling and turns you on. The characters themselves are so well written you feel for them and you want them to make their alternative relationship work….Saddled is heart-stopping and fascinating!!!!!!!…”

4.5 Blue Ribbons from Romance Junkies: “…Delilah Devlin’s storylines never fail to pull readers into the story and SADDLED is no exception…Of course the sex scenes are scorching and adventurous with the perfect blend of emotional turmoil to ensure readers keep Ms. Devlin’s name at the top of their ‘must read’ list.”

Slippery when naked…

When Bobby Blackhawk and Cale Yancey see a car slide off the highway and into an icy creek, they’ve got only minutes to get the beautiful driver out alive. And only one way to save her from hypothermia: take her to their isolated cabin, get naked…and hope like hell that when she wakes up, she doesn’t scream the place down.

Katherine Duvall opens her eyes in a strange bed, and the tingles flooding her body aren’t entirely due to restored circulation. She’s snuggled between two handsome men, one a gruff, gentle giant, the other a sexy, playful Native American. Having just left her fiancé romping with another woman, she’s not quite as shocked as she might have been.

In fact, these two lonesome cowboys could be the perfect bookends to satisfy her hunger for revenge and bolster her dented self esteem. It’s not long before their raging hormones are melting the snow on the cabin roof.

To their surprise, they find something else is melting, too. Their hearts…

“Samhain Publishing is very pleased to present this trophy to Saddled by Delilah Devlin for 1st place in the Best Selling E-Book 2009.”