Quick NaNoWriMo update: I’m at 35971. Not a huge gain, but it could have been nothing, nada, zilch. Gotta see the bright side. Today will be challenging too because I’m heading back to Little Rock for the monthly Diamond State Romance Authors meeting.

Since I’m in a rush to get a shower and get out the door, I hope you enjoy a peek at something I’m working on now. Please forgive any errors—I am not an editor, I just write these kinky little things.

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“A girl’s gotta do what girl’s gotta do,” Jolene Ledbetter muttered and cinched the belt of her silk robe tightly around her waist.

She eyed the long, hard body stretched across her soft cotton sheets and just barely suppressed an appreciative sigh. No, she wasn’t going to slip back into bed with the man—no matter how tempting the package his large hand caressed in his sleep.

Even snoring, he oozed sex appeal. His nude, six-feet-four, hard-muscled body sprawled diagonally, taking up most of her queen-sized mattress. The sheets were pooled on the floor at the foot of the bed, because they’d both dozed off, sweating after the last round of mind-blowing sex. A dark, bluish shadow hugged the curve of his jaw and she could well imagine how it would feel scraping against her breasts or between her thighs.

“Mmm-mm-mm,” she breathed, not wanting to wake him, not just yet. She still had to work on suppressing the need curling deeply inside her belly and stiffening her noodle-limp backbone.

Time for Gabriel Devine to piss or get off the pot. Time for him to man up.
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Quick NaNoWriMo update: I’m at 35,202 words now!! And I finished the rough draft of the partial for LIT. It’s massively ugly at the moment, but I’ll work on editing it over the next few days because I want to get it into my agent’s hands next week.

I’ll be out of pocket today. I’m going to see my doctor in Little Rock for my bi-annual checkup and to get any vaccinations needed, if any, for my cruise next month. The appointment’s in the morning, and then at noon I’ll be meeting Shayla Kersten at The Beanery for a “write-in”.

So I won’t be online until tomorrow night. Likely my inbox will have exploded with more Harlequin vs. RWA messages, so it will be very slow going to catch up. Y’all behave, now!

Quick NaNoWriMo update: I’m at 32,978 words! If you look at the list of my current progress meters—that’s what I’ve achieved so far for November. And that novella I finished last week, Bad, Bad Girlfriend, was accepted by Ellora’s Cave yesterday!

I know, I’m cheating. NaNo is supposed to be about a writer completing a single 50k novel in a month, but it’s just not in me to work on one thing at a time. I’m working on three now. I’d wanted to keep it to just two, but yesterday this scene came to me, and I knew I had to get it down while it was vivid in my mind. Here’s a peek, but keep in mind it’s rough, unedited. But maybe a little fun too, huh?

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

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.

Quick NaNoWriMo update: Yesterday, I hit 30,310 words. And I ironed out the issues with the start of the paranormal story I’m working on. No worries!

I’m very close to releasing the first installment of Bad Moon Rising. If you haven’t already done it, be sure to sign up for my newsletter. I’m loving the story so far, and I think you will too. Here’s a little about the story to whet your appetite! It’s short, but I can’t give too much away. You only meet the first hero in this scene, but you know it gets hotter pretty damn quick!

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Here’s what the story is about:

On a whim, romance author DiDi Devereaux decides to travel to remote Louisiana bayou country to take possession of a house she inherited from a reclusive relative. But before she reaches her destination, she drives her car into a ditch to avoid a large animal that leaps into her path. Rescue comes in the form of a sexy sheriff, whose gruff demeanor seems to hide a feral attraction. As DiDi settles into her new home she finds herself torn between her attraction to the sheriff and the raw, handsome bad boy whose offer to help her renovate her home is a little too convenient and tempting.

Nothing in Bayou Noir is what it seems. When strange things begin to happen, her natural curiosity leads her into danger…

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DiDi’s driving on a small donkey track of a road deep in the Louisiana bayou country late at night …

Things were looking bleak. She considered pulling to the side of the road at the first rest stop, if she ever found one, or at a widening of the road’s shoulder and sleeping in her car until the morning. Wouldn’t be the first time.

David D was giving her a headache, so she glanced down to eject the CD.

When she looked back up, something large and black darted into the road in front of her then stood there, caught in the headlights.

She slammed on her brakes, causing her car to swerve onto the soft shoulder. Her tires caught the edge of the road and sank, spinning the rear of the car around. Before she could compensate, her car left the road, crashing into the ditch, water splashing up the hood and drowning her windshield in water and long grass.
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Quick NaNoWriMo update: I’m at 27,645 words! I don’t like the start of one of my two new stories, so I may scrap it today and begin again.

In three weeks, I’ll be flying to the port and boarding a cruise ship. I’ve never been on a cruise, but I will have the best company imaginable to assure a good time. Sasha White’s my buddy, and just the sound of her laughter gets me in the mood to party!

I still have things to get done on my To Do list. On Friday, I’ll be at the doctor’s and asking about vaccinations. My passport arrived, so that’s another worry out of the way. My daughter gifted me with new purple luggage as an early Christmas gift—her contribution to my trip.

The most worrisome thing now for me is wardrobe. Did I mention I’ve been dieting? I thought I’d trim down a little, just enough to give me a boost of confidence. I’ve dropped two sizes in a month. So I’m waiting until closer to the date of my flight to shop for new clothes. I didn’t know how much I’d lost until the booksigning. Then I was flying to the back of my closet, looking for a pair of slacks that fit, and the “skinnier” ones I found were still loose! Nice problem to have? I guess. But I hate shopping, and good luck on finding capris this time of year!

A quick note! I’m blogging in two places today. Catch my blog about my Sunday meeting with the witch and the Odinist at After Midnight Fantasies!

If you were at the Barnes and Noble on Chenal in Little Rock last Saturday night, you probably wondered what all the commotion was about. I’ll just say, you can’t get four women who write smutty romance in the same space without all hell breaking loose. The pics look tame, but this was before we started trouble. Here are my booksigning playmates.

I shared a table with Shada Royce and Shayla Kersten because we all could sign copies of Sexy Little Numbers. Never, ever put me next to Shada again—the girl’s a bad, bad influence!

Here’s the lovely Anna J. Evans!

And the very sweet and demure Sandra Jones (bet she wondered what the heck she’d signed up for!).

We did have folks stop to buy books or chat. Here’s Katie and Chris from the Little Rock reading group I visited a few months back. Heather B stopped by too, but I forgot to snap a pic!

A couple of things had us cackling like hens. A man walked up to us and asked if we’d like to know what our work had done for him, then he pulls out his cell phone. I’m thinking, oh boy, he’s going to show us pictures of his man parts, and everyone’s eyes widened. When it was a pic of his baby, we all fell out.

Same guy came back after a little while and asked us how our husband’s liked what we did.

I popped up with, “Mine moved to Virginia.”
Shada said, “I’m divorcing mine.”
Shayla quipped, “Mine’s dead.”

Okay, guess you had to be there, but we laughed like hyenas.

I’m sending a big thank you to Lynda from the staff at B&N for setting this up. Yeah, that’s how I felt by the end of the night!

Quick NaNoWriMo update: No progress at all to report. But I had a great excuse!

(Don’t miss my pool story at the bottom!)

I’m at the midpoint of the annual NaNoWriMo challenge. The challenge is to hit 50,000 words by the end of the month. I’m on track at 25,880.

With that 25k words, I’ve finished a novella for Ellora’s Cave—Bad, Bad Girlfriend—which I love because I let me comedic muse loose for that story. One of the people who read one particular scene between the heroine and her girlfriend said it was like a Lucy and Ethel scene and kept her laughing. Since, the girls were getting themselves deep into trouble, that comparison fit!

I’ve also finished the first chapter of the free read that will be sent out with my next newsletter shortly. Thanks again to everyone who voted for the story elements they wanted to see. You made it a breeze to write!

I’ve also started on two new projects. I’m in the opening pages, and it’s hard to make huge progress when I’m still feeling my way through the characters and dreaming up the plot, but it will come.

One of my great excuses for not writing yesterday was a booksigning I went to in Little Rock. I’ll post pictures tomorrow and tell you all about it then. I had a wonderful time with my fellow DSRA authors.

The other great reason I didn’t make progress last night, and probably won’t today, is because I have contest entries to judge that have to go out the door! And tonight, I have critiques to wrap up for the Rose’s Colored Glasses critique loop. Okay, I’m a procrastinator, but there is a method to my madness. I didn’t want to pull away from the writing and waited until I had one day where I could devote my time to reading through everything. So today will be another loss.

And I have to fit it all around a trip I’m making to meet with a man who casts runes and a witch.

Non-writing related, but did I mention my venture into the pool? Recently, we had days and days of heavy rain which produced yellow algae in our pool, turning the water slime green. We’ve tried every chemical under the sun to clean it out. The other day, I had the pool brush out, scrubbing at the bottom to get the scum loose. I opened up the telescoping pole to reach the bottom of the deep end and the brush and six feet of pole dropped into the water.

Well, I couldn’t leave it there. But damn, the water’s cold! So I suited up in my wetsuit (picture sausage stuffed into a casing) and waddled out to the pool. I dove and dove, but could only dart down and up because it was so dang cold I was gasping. At last, I got my hands around that sucker and brought it up. I am sooooo glad the pool is a couple hundred yards off the road.

But I feel heroic. I love it when I rise to a physical challenge, even if it’s only swimming through green sludge in a cold-ass pool.