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!

Not the most productive week ever. I did manage to write the last three chapters of what was supposed to be a quickie for EC, but is now nearly a novella. I still have 1000 words to add during final revision. I started a short story, but I’m not feeling it, so I need to proceed with caution on that one. I don’t want to get too far along, then decide to scrap it. I’ve done some thinking about my big book and made some notes for a couple of scenes, but I stayed away from it last week. This week is when I hunker down and begin the long haul to the end.

So this week, I will finish the quickie-novella. I have to do first round edits on Fun With Dick and Jayne for my editor—she wanted me to work on the transtion leading into the last scene of the book. The Plotting Bootcamp winds down, so my online life will uncomplicate. But most of all, I want 50 pages of the big book under my belt before I enter February. So if you see me slacking off, kick my ass!

This week on the blog, I want to come back with blurbs for Bad Moon Rising for you to vote on what happens in the next chapter. I’ll do a flashback excerpt and give someone a chance to win the book. And I really should pull an excerpt from something you haven’t seen yet to give you a sneak peek. Any preferences?

And just a quick note. A couple of weeks ago I wrote a short story for Samhain’s Valentine free reads series. My story, Love in Bloom, will be available for download on February 7th! Yeah, I know it’s a corny title, but it suits the story—you’ll see!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! ~DD

I have the five-year-old underfoot today. Why do I keep thinking she’s six? She corrected me. I’ll be busy until I unload her later this afternoon, so here’s a question…

If you could experience a sailing adventure/cruise on any river, lake, or ocean in the world, what body of water would you choose for the trip?

I think I’d like to float the Yangtze River. It stretches from Tibet through China and I’ve been dying to see that side of the world. Don’t be shy with your answer. You could choose a rowboat on your grandpa’s pond.
😉

For any writers out there, I’m blogging at Novelists, Inc. today and talking about one of my favorite productivity games, Timed Writing. If you’ve got time, I’d love for you to stop by. Here’s the link: NINC Blog

Yesterday, I finished the rough draft of what was supposed to be a quickie for Ellora’s Cave. Now, I’m only 1000 words away from a novella, so I have to go back through with thoughts of expansion. Shouldn’t be hard. I usually just add to the sex.

Still haven’t heard from Teresa, my “Quick Contest” winner.

Can you say, going, going, gone? 😥

And thanks for the help brainstorming yesterday. You are a wicked, kinky group of ladies. I’ll think about your suggestions and craft them into short blurbs for you to vote on. In the meantime, yesterday’s winner (by random number generator) is…Aimee!

My horoscope today. No kidding. “You’re a space explorer, setting out into the unknown. Make contact with Houston.”

Anyway, I’m back! Still tired and my butt’s tingly from sitting for hours in a car, but I kind of like tingly, so not so bad. And I have pictures! They’re not as fun as the cruise pics, but you know I have to share. Thanks so much to the ladies who took over my blog while I was gone. Looks like you all had fun! We’ll do that again!

Have to start with this picture. My sis, Elle James, forgot she was wearing her reading glasses and we bumped heads while she held the camera above us. She thinks I deleted this one.

Sis and I left Arkansas on Friday, and headed up north to snow country. A writer’s group in Omaha invited us up to conduct a weekend-long plotting bootcamp. We do them a couple of times a year. They’re exhausting, but also a lot of fun. I like hanging with other authors and helping them put together a plot for a book. Brainstorming is fun so long as the book’s not mine!

The group was a nice mix of newbie-writers and multi-published authors. I won’t mention names to protect their privacy, but I was pleased and a little intimidated going in. That lasted about five seconds once everyone started talking about their stories.

I shot this out the car window as we drove. I don’t see snow that often, so it’s cool to me. That drive, BTW, was 12 hours! I broke it into two legs. 4 to my sister’s, then we drove 8 together. Like I said. Tingly butt.

The Omaha group set everything up in a hotel. Here we are arriving. Had to include this pic because that’s sis’s butt. She’s gonna want to kill me, but she’d have a long drive to do it now.

I don’t have a lot of fun photos because the weekend was cram-packed with work. I took a couple of shots while everyone worked on their lists of story conflicts. This was a rare quiet moment.

The bootcamp class is dynamic, and usually looks more like this. Wish you could see her schnauzer slippers. We kept to sweats and slippers for comfort.

The whole reason I love to do the bootcamps is a chance to hang with my sis and do something we both love.

While I’m away, I let my friends come out to play. Welcome Lexi from Romance Writer by Night… ~DD

I’ve got a confession to make.

I used to hate Valentine’s Day.

That’s a horrible thing for a romance writer to admit, but it’s true. This whole season, stretching from the day after Christmas until Valentine’s Day, is the season of romance, right? Well, it’s not so easy to stay festive when you’re single. I’ve got a birthday right before Valentine’s Day, too, just to add that extra kick. It was a triple whammy: no midnight kiss, another year older and then another dateless Valentine’s Day! Yay, me! How could I think of romance when the whole world was a huge reminder that I was single?

I’ve come to realize, though, that hating Valentine’s Day and singledom in general is no way to go through life, especially as a not-yet-married romance writer. If ever there was a time to make lemonade from the proverbial lemons, it’s right now. So I’ve turned my attitude around, and I’ve discovered that the lemonade has been good for my writing, too. Here’s how.

1. Window Shopping for Heroes

Checking guys out. It’s one of the biggest perks of the single life. Not that women in relationships can’t check guys out, of course they can. No harm in looking, right? Especially if they’re looking for heroes to star in their stories. Hey, they can’t all look like the SO or the DH.

But there’s a certain shameless freedom that we single ladies can bring to the table. Even if all we do is look, the knowledge that we could do more than that—flirt, swap numbers, fly to Vegas for a wild weekend culminating in an Elvis-themed wedding—makes the whole project more exciting. So when we check guys out, we can do it with a dual purpose. That guy across the room might have the perfect look for our next story, or he might turn out to be our real-life leading man. Wouldn’t that be an awesome “how we met” story?

2. Being Positively Wishful

It’s not easy to think romantic thoughts when your one of your eight bags of groceries has exploded in the parking lot, leaving you alone, in the rain, to put everything back together so you can get it up all those stairs to your home. That’s not easy at all. (Don’t ask how I know.) But it does pay off. Before I learned to love Valentine’s Day, I’d have lots of colorful words to share with the parking lot and my groceries and my nonexistent boyfriend about how wonderful it was to be lugging two weeks’ worth of food all the way from the car to the front door. Now I’ve seen the light.

Today, when I’m faced with one of those single-girl challenges like leaping across the rainy parking lot without dropping any of my single-serving frozen foods, I ask myself this question: How would I rather have this work out? Then I let my imagination run with the idea.

Maybe a hot stranger hops out of his car with an umbrella. Maybe I chase a wayward can of corn down the sidewalk until it rolls onto the patio of his studio apartment. Maybe, while I’m huddled beneath my raincoat on his patio, rearranging my groceries, I catch a glimpse of him through the sliding glass door. Maybe he’s a good-looking artist, the lean, intense type, adding the finishing touches to a painting … of an equally lean, intense male model … who sees me on the patio. Now that’s nice, isn’t it? Even though, in reality, I haven’t left my pile of spilled groceries in the parking lot, far from my front door, I’ve got a nice story idea in my head and a smile on my face. That won’t put my stuff back in the bag or stop the rain, but that hey-it-could-happen feeling does make the heavy lifting more bearable.

3. Making the War Stories into Your Stories

Into every woman’s single life wanders the occasional Evil Ex-Boyfriend.

Okay, maybe “evil” isn’t the right word. After all, none of my exes has plotted world domination, or built a weather machine designed to melt the polar ice cap, or re-animated the dead. At least not that I’m aware of. But Evil Ex-Boyfriend has a certain ring to it that Amoral, Self-Absorbed Creep doesn’t.

Thoughts of the Evil Ex have a way of resurfacing in a single girl’s mind at this time of year. Well, that’s fine. Now those thoughts have a place to go: the WIP (Work-In-Progress). I used my memories—the despair, the blame, the shock, all that great stuff—to add detail to my heroine’s breakup with her own Evil Ex. The more I thought about it, the more detail I could weave in, from the icy prickle of anger to the smug expression on Mr. Evil’s face. My heroine’s Evil Ex became someone who felt real without becoming a copy of my real exes, and getting those feelings onto the page made me feel better about surviving that pain.

I’m not a huge believer in the New Year’s Resolution; I’ve got some long-term commitment issues, which I’m sure are totally unrelated to my current single status. But I am determined to take advantage of the single life, both the perks and the unhappy memories, as Valentine’s Day approaches. Singledom’s been pretty good to me, all things considered, and now it’s making me a better writer, too.

What’s not to love about that?

First, thanks to everyone who posted or sent me an email about yesterday’s release, Unforgiven. I’m thrilled you like it so much, but I did tell you Cutter would be hot as hell!

Tomorrow through next Monday, I’ll be out of town again, so I invited some ladies to entertain you while I’m gone. No fans, feathers or shiny poles, just their very wicked imaginations! Here’s the lineup:

Thursday—Shayla Kersten
Friday—Michelle Polaris
Saturday—Lexi, from Romance Writer at Night
Sunday—Ann Cory
Monday—Ari Thatcher

Be sure to drop by and check out their wares! 😉

And where will I be? The ladies in RWA’s Omaha chapter invited my sister, Elle James, and I to run a plotting bootcamp over the weekend. So we will be on high octane all weekend long, trying to corral 17 active imaginations. It’ll be a blast, and thank the stars we don’t have last weekend’s weather to contend with on the drive!

Today, I should hear some news. If it happens, I’ll be sure to come back here and let you know what it is. I swear I don’t mean to be coy, but I can’t tell until it’s wrapped up in a pretty pink bow. And I just can’t keep the excitement to myself, so I have to hint!