I don’t have a child underfoot until late this afternoon. And tomorrow, dd has the day off, so no children until Monday! Wheeeeeee! Not that I don’t love them, but, jeez! Now, maybe, I can get some pages done and figure out how to end my short novella. I managed to get through the Big Black Moment, but now I want a fun ending and can’t find it! Mr. Muse is hiding in sheer terror from the the two-year-old.

So head down. Twitter and Facebook off. Phone on vibrate…. You all have dirty minds! 😉

Got any tried and true ways to attack an exploding in-box?

And to all of you who posted a review of Breaking Leather! Many thanks! Every little bit of postive exposure helps. Authors are forever grateful when a reader takes the time to tell us what they enjoyed about something we spent time and heart creating. The winner of the gift certificate is…Rasha! Rasha, dear, send me an email!

I’m dragging my butt out of bed late. Need coffeeez, said in my best zombie voice.

I do have a winner from yesterday’s Flashback contest. By random number generator, the winner of the free download is…Crystal GB! Congrats, Crystal! And send me the email address you’d like me to use to send your free read.

And since I’m being lazy this morning, I thought I’d put up a photo prompt and see if you all had any thoughts about what sort of story might be lurking inside all those pixels. This photo was taken on my cruise last year with Sasha White. This was at the docks at St. Thomas, but could be anywhere your imagination takes you.

Reminder: Two Contests continue through tomorrow!
1) Give me ideas for the next chapter of Bad Moon Rising. See details here.
2) If you post a review for Breaking Leather on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or the MBaM sites, and send me the link, you’re entered! Prize: $25.00 Amazon or B&N gift certificate.

Can’t you already guess what I’m talking about? Sexy professions! And none of those do it for me, personally.

Short and sweet.

What professions, beyond the obvious (cop, fireman, cowboy),
do you find sexy and why?

Remember, I’m not asking strictly to fill a blog today. You might see your sexiest profession in a book coming soon!

Reminder: Two Contests continue!
1) Give me ideas for the next chapter of Bad Moon Rising. See details here.
2) If you post a review for Breaking Leather on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or the MBaM sites, and send me the link, you’re entered! Prize: $25.00 Amazon or B&N gift certificate.

Reminder: Two Contests ongoing!
1) Give me ideas for the next chapter of Bad Moon Rising. Post an idea, you’re entered. See details here.
2) I’m looking for reviews for Breaking Leather. If you post one on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or the MBaM sites, and send me the link, you’re entered! Prize: $25.00 Amazon or B&N gift certificate.

This wasn’t a terribly productive week. I experienced burn-out after a month of NaNo and rushing toward the end of three deadlines.

* I finished the Berkley Viking book on Monday and shipped it.
* I finished reading through all the Girls Who Bite submissions, edited those I wanted, and arranged them in the order I thought they worked best, then shipped the manuscript to Cleis on Tuesday.
* The last deadline, I stalled on. I am almost to the end of chapter 5, but I’m so tired my mind’s been muzzy.

I took yesterday completely off. Watched a movie (Splice), took a sleeping pill and was out for nearly 9 hours. I’m still stalled, and this next week looks to be very, very hard for me sleep-wise, because I’ll be doing a lot of babysitting for my night-shift daughter. There are reasons people should have babies when nature intended—when they are young! Who has the energy for them otherwise?

Anyway, wish me luck. I have to finish TW this week because I committed to writing two short novellas this month. No rest for the wicked, it seems. 😉

Why I Write Straight from my Shameless, Outrageous, Warped Imagination
by Ashlyn Chase

I just read an article about how comedy writers should not use too much humor and how they should temper it, i.e. curb the urge to let the heroine crawl out the bathroom window. Huh? What’s wrong with that? Hey, I’ve done it myself (and I’m not just talking fiction!).

Fine. Some people aren’t comfortable letting their slips show. Isn’t that what editors are for? To reel us in when necessary? I don’t care if my Freudian slips show and it seems to be okay with my editors. Even more okay with fans. I can hardly believe that I actually have fans or that my work generates great reviews and reader mail! Maybe others are warped too, I don’t know.

What I do know is this. 1) Our world can use a few good belly-laughs and a lot of love. 2) I enjoy writing when I’m having fun with it and the more fun I have the less I care what people think. And 3) Readers can tell when words come from a place of passion and truth. My passion is making people laugh.

And truth? You might think that’s an odd word to describe a fiction writer’s goal, especially one who writes Vampire and Shapeshifter comedies. Here’s the thing…a wonderful quote I read ages ago said it best. “You must be fearless to be a writer.” I wish I could remember the fearless female’s name, but I can’t. The idea being that each writer has some sort of truth to tell, regardless of the manner in which they tell it. It takes guts to tell your own truth with your own voice. If you try to write “safe” you run the risk of boring your audience, and boredom is death to an author.

We all have words to live by. Whether positive or negative, some of these words hit a chord and stick. I’ve found some wonderful mentors along the way who’ve imparted words of wisdom I’ll never forget. My number one wise woman was my mother. She often said to me, “Nothing ventured; Nothing gained.” Yup. She was right. Well, except when great things just fall into one’s lap with absolutely no effort, but how often does that happen? It even takes faith, foresight, and effort to buy a lottery ticket.

She also said people would be jealous of me all my life. Wow, that was a trip to lay on a teenager! But she was right about that too. And you can’t let jealousy stop you. Some people will be jealous of the time you spend writing. Tough noogies. Some will be jealous that you can do something they can’t. Yay you. Who knows…some people might even be jealous that you once had the guts to climb out a bathroom window to avoid a lounge lizard who thought he could charm your pants off. So what? Be fearless enough to write about it. Whatever your gift, embrace it. Be passionate about it. Write whatever you really love and take no prisoners!

For those of you following the Girls Who Bite project (and those of you waiting to hear about who gets accepted)—I wrapped up the book and shipped it to Cleis. I included one or two too many stories in the collection, but will let the editor there do that cut. And until I hear final approval of who remains in the lineup, I’m keeping mum.

I know I hate it when I’m waiting on an acceptance, but now I’m on the other side of the fence. And I get it. Needless to say, I had many, many wonderful stories I had to leave out. Some didn’t follow the guidelines (especially that Happy For Now or Happy Ever After thing), and some were a little too gruesome for a romantic-leaning collection. Some were wonderfully written but with a similar theme to another story I included.

As soon as I hear anything, I will start sending out acceptances and rejections.

In the meantime, I have one more book to wrap up this week. Almost there…

NaNo Day 29:
Viking-2—3185 words
TW—0 words 😥

Today’s the last day you’ll see that annoying little note at the top of the post. The one where I brag or whine about my page count for the previous day. I’m finished with NaNo for 2010—which means, I finished the book. The Viking one, that is.

I wrapped it up early yesterday afternoon after spending a week polishing the pages I had. I only had the last chapter to write after I finished the edits. Sixteen frigging pages today for a total of 406 pages of sexy goodness. And since I was thoroughly sick of it by the time I wrote “The End”—I shipped it to my Berkley editor. Hopefully, by the time she sends it back for her rounds of editing, I’ll recover my enthusiasm.

That doesn’t mean I get to rest. I still have two more deadlined books to complete this week. Last evening, I threw myself straight back into edit mode, but on the Girls Who Bite book. Someone else’s words—a lot of someone elses. I should wrap that one up tonight, and again, I’ll ship it to my Cleis editor. Oh yeah, I have to write the foreword for the book.

I think I better brew a cup of coffee because it’s going to be a long day. Oh! And how cool is this? Last night, Breaking Leather was #1 on MBaM, and Four Sworn made a return appearance at #8! Woohoo!