The winners of my latest contest are listed at the bottom of this post!

The big news of the week was the surprise release of Veiled Alliance. Here’s hoping you all ordered your copies along with the copies of Un, Deux, Trois, Menage! last week! Hey, a girl can hope! Anyway, I spent the latter part of the week trying to get the word out about my new print book.

I was hampered this week by the temporary demise of my satellite. The three days I was without Internet could have been great, uninterrupted writing time, but I had things in the air that needed to be communicated, so I parked for a day at my daughter’s to pre-post blogs and do some back and forth on another project.

Yesterday, I spent the whole day in Little Rock, shopping with my daughter and attending the pharaoh’s exhibit at the Arkansas Arts Center (I’ll talk about that tomorrow).

I only managed to finish one chapter of one book for the whole week. Very, very sad indeed. I’m almost afraid to set down my goals again in case some other catastrophe besets me, but here goes anyway.

This is what I hope to achieve this week:
* Finish EC Quickie
* Begin work on Dream Lover short story
* Work on characters and plot for Viking story
* Write lesson on queries for FFnP class
* Place order for promo items for Lora Leigh’s Readers Appreciation Weekend

That is, after I plow through 1,002 emails that accumulated in my inbox while my Internet was out. I’m house-sitting for a friend on Lake Hamilton for the holiday weekend. I’m hoping the change of place will help me keep my nose to the grindstone.

So, back to the winners of my “While Delilah’s Away” contest. Thanks to everyone who commented on my blog and facebook. All your entries counted. The winners of the $25.00 gift certificates, by random number generator, are…Christine Rivero and Beth C! Ladies, be sure to email me so that I know where to send the eGift certificates! Congratulations!

Early this afternoon I noticed I hadn’t received any new emails, and that just never happens. I called my Internet provider, and after two and half freaking hours talking to a very nice Indian who had me run every diagnostic in his notebook, we finally threw in the towel and decided a technician needed to come out to fix it. I have satellite, and I live in the boonies. So, it might be as long a week before I’m up again.

I made the trip to Hot Springs to visit my daughter and use her satellite to post this message. And I’m pre-posting several more to tide you all over until I can be here live again. To keep you stopping by I’m running a contest. Here are the rules:

Stop by every day and leave me a note. One posting = one chance to win.

Simple right? I’ll give away two $25.00 Amazon.com gift certificates to two lucky winners.

I’ve pre-posted excerpts and sneak peeks at some things that will be released in the coming months. You’ll be entertained. I can’t wait to see what you all have to say. And if some of you would be kind enough, please hit the tweet button every day to get the word out!

I love Mondays. Usually. I know that sounds crazy to all of you who have Evil Day Jobs, but Mondays, for me, are normally filled with bright shiny possibilities. Sure, I don’t have to travel farther than 25 feet to get to my office from the bed, but Mondays still count.

This Monday is more like my usual Sunday—the day I clear up any messes, run errands and get ready to hunker down for the week to write. After today, everybody is back where they belong and my world returns to normal. I have two family members who went away this last week to opposite sides of the country, and I don’t like that one little bit! I need the people around me to keep to their routines so that my chaotic life and thought processes aren’t excited by their unpredictability.

Selfish, I know. But I never claimed to be perfect.

This morning, I have to head over to babysit for SIL so that he can take my new dog Fenris to the vet to get his junk removed. Then I race back home and try to get some pages under my belt before heading to the airport in the afternoon to pick up the red-headed hellion. I’ll be lucky to write a paragraph. I need isolation to get significant pages done, or a coffee shop where no one knows me.

I’ll celebrate Monday tomorrow.

This has been a crazy busy year, and it’s only half over. Following is a list of upcoming releases with dates where I have them. Mark your calendars.

6/18/10 – UN, DEUX, TROIS, MÉNAGE! anthology (Ellora’s Cave)
07/01/10 – THE OBEDIENT WIFE, Fairy Tale Lust anthology (Cleis Press)
07/??/10 – PLEASING SIR (Me!)
08/01/10 – THE WEEKEND, Lesbian Lust anthology (Cleis Press)
Summer?/10 – VEILED ALLIANCE anthology (Ellora’s Cave)
09/??/10 – FOUR SWORN (Samhain)
09/21/10 – DARKNESS CAPTURED (Avon Red)
11/1/10 – COWBOY FEVER anthology (Samhain)
11/01/10 – THE MORNING RIDE, Passion: Erotic Romance for Women (Cleis Press)
01/??/11 – RAVISHED BY A VIKING (Berkley Heat)
Spring?/2011 – HOT OUT HERE, The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance anthology (Running Press)

Since there’s still time to finish novellas for Ellora’s Cave and Samhain, I might be adding a few more.

So, on to the report!

1) This week I had two new releases, both from Ellora’s Cave. The first was the reissue on Monday of Warlord’s Destiny as a single novella rather than as a part of an anthology. Nice! The second was a surprise release of the print book, Un, Deux, Trois, Menage! on Friday. I hope everyone got their copies!

2) Not a whole lot of writing this week, although I did manage to add to the quickie I’m writing for Ellora’s Cave. It’s a shapeshifter story, BTW.

3) I finally hit on the idea I want to work on for Cleis’s Dream Lover anthology. It’s quasi-plotted, or at least I know who the hero and heroine are and that’s enough for me to start writing.

4) The Plotting Bootcamp is rolling along. Authors are applying themselves to their homework. Sis and I are reviewing it and making suggestions for improvements to help them pummel their WIPs into shape.

5) The really big news of the week was that my Berkley editor approved the synopsis for the second Viking story. So now I can start working on the thing. Since I spoke with her, I’ve been studiously avoiding the book, and working on anything but, telling myself that I have to clear my desk before I dive in, but that’s not true. I never need a clear desk, or even a clear mind, to start something new. I’m just dreading the 85,000 words. LOL

6) Lastly, and this is happy news, the first Viking book has been moved up on the calendar. Ravished by a Viking will be published in January 2010!

What do I plan to accomplish this week?
* Finish EC Quickie
* Write Dream Lover short story
* Work on characters and plot for Viking story
* Plot the next chapter of Bad Moon Rising (no, I didn’t forget all about it!)
* Place order for promo items for Lora Leigh’s Readers Appreciation Weekend

I was a little more flush in the pocket than usual this month, so I decided to splurge on some more art for my walls. Remember “Blueberry Blast”? I enjoyed that painting so much, I went back to my friend’s gallery to hunt for more treasure. You may look at my choices and scratch your head, but I don’t always pick the things that go with my decor or that someone might think is the best art—I pick things that speak to me.

I’ve watched this watercolor for months. Every time I went into the gallery, I’d wind up, standing in front of it, reading the little note the artist wrote about the origin of the bottle tree, and yesterday, I decided it had to be mine. I’m going to hang it near my bed, I think. Maybe the bottles in the pictures that trap the “haints” will work their magic on me while I sleep. (Although, really, I kinda like nightmares. Several of my books have stories straight from my dreams.)

I saw this one when the artist dropped it for consignment last month and told her I thought it would be mine. Since it was still there and it felt like the time was right, I bought it. It’s going up in my office, next to my desk. Now, I just need a little fairy door to hang beneath it to entice the fairies to play while I work.

I have another oil painting from this artist of wine with grapes. When I look at them both, I think of when I lived next to a vinyard in Germany. This one’s an oil painted on a tile.

If you have favorite bits of art that you’d like to share, send me a pic and I’ll post it!

My favorite man-meat website, Just Beautiful Men, is at it again. The blog-owner played with photoshop to produce this image. I snagged it, because sometimes, I just need a little inspiration.

So, using this photo as a writing prompt to spur story ideas,
what sort of ideas come to your mind?

A note from Vonna:

Stop the world. I want to turn off my brain.

Okay, I don’t really mean that. Ever since I invented Vonna Harper, I’ve been writing like a mad woman and enjoying almost every minute. Writing, like life, isn’t always a smooth ride, but what fun would it be without the downs.

The world is spinning like crazy these days and I feel as if I might get thrown off if I blink. The reason is simple: publishing is changing as never before. Ten years ago almost no one had a thought to electronic publishing. Now it’s the wave of the present and future. Ten years ago writers mostly wrote. Now the Internet has changed that and writers are expected to promote like energizer bunnies. Twitter. Facebook. Blog. Trailer. Contest. Newsletter. Etc. Etc.

Oh and don’t forget pirates who take the labor of our imaginations and sweat and steal it.

Okay, I won’t go there.

Maybe its just me, but the moment I’ve finished edits on a story and turn it over to the publishing company, it fades from my mind. I try to remember when its coming out so I can give a shout-out, but by then I’m neck deep in something new plus investigating putting some old books out via Kindle, volunteering for NINC, my favorite writer’s organization, taking my mother to the doctor, taking my husband to the dentist, taking a dog to the vet, putting on my Mother & Grandma hats—the whole nine yards.

All right, it’s mostly my fault (except for the broken water pipe). Somehow I wound up writing for no less than four erotica publishers: Kensington Aphrodisia, where I’m in the middle of a three book contract. Samhain, where I as of today threw another manuscript on my agent’s desk. Ellora’s Cave, where I’m waiting to hear on two submissions. And Loose-Id, where I’ll be submitting a theme story.

I need an assistant. I need a wife. I need a slave.

In case I haven’t bored everyone and/or scared them away, I’d like to give a couple of shout-outs. On July 27, Falcon’s Captive will come out in print from Aphrodisia. The cover gives me sweats & I loved writing about a shape-shifting falcon/woman and the hunter who captures her.

Borrowing from the back cover blurb:

“High above the desert valley, the Falcon Jola circles over the band of warriors below—men who have invaded her land and killed her mate, leaving her alone and longing for the piercing pleasure she once found in her lover’s arms. She will resist these outsiders at all cost. But in a moment of human weakness she is caught. Naked and alone, she fights her captor and vows never to submit. Yet as she lies beneath his rock hard length, her traitorous body responds to his touch.”

Hope Falcon’s Captive can live up to that.

One of my most recent novellas at Ellora’s Cave is Winter Of The Beast (yes, I have a thing for creatures).

Borrowing from another blurb:

“Dio of the Puma clan is a skilled warrior and hunter. What he doesn’t feel prepared for is his new role as ruler of a clan with few women. Does he have the necessary leadership and compassion or will his need for sex dominate? Only the massive, mysterious Beast knows.

When her cruel husband casts her out, Tawia can no longer call herself a Falcon. Her future a frightening unknown, she heads into the wilderness as winter approaches. The Beast watches.

Captured by the enemy warrior, Tawia fights her body’s demands. Trust is as incomprehensible to her as the relationship between Dio and the great puma. But neither man nor beast are willing to set her free.”

Yes, I also have a thing for capture/bondage.

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