Free Read: Christmas Story

Okay, kids! Tomorrow's December 1st and I just can't wait anymore. So my free-read Christmas story, I'll Be Home for Christmas, is going up now! 

I'll leave it up until the New Year.

Please stop by and share the eggnog.

(And if you find any illustrations or artwork that would go with it, be sure and let me know.)

Six Sentence Sunday 11-28-2010

Another little Six Sentence Sunday teaser from  Sleepy Hollow Dreams: 

“Ryck.”   The word spilled from her throat now, somewhere between a plea and a prayer. “I’ve waited for you forever.”

“Not as long as I’ve waited, sweetling.”

His mercurial eyes probed her expression, his hot gaze sliding over her kneeling body with possessive intent as if he wished to claim her--as if he could not wait another second to thrust inside her. The blatant sensuality made her mouth go dry.

Be sure and visit the other Six Sentence Sunday authors!

Excerpts

          Have to admit, I used to choose print novels by their blurbs and the inside one-page teaser excerpt. Sometimes now,  you'll see an author portrait on the back jacket. And inside, there may be pages and pages and pages of one-liners praising other books--some not even by the author in question. Those never work for me. Don't care what the author looks like or how many cats she has. And the one-liners are just extra pages to pass over until you get to the heart! (If I'm reading on an e-reader, which I almost always am now, those are particularly annoying!)
          But blurbs and excerpts? Yeah, definitely. Aside from glowing recommendations from people I know in real life (or now, through social media), blurbs and excerpts are what make me think, "Ooooh. I'm so hooked!"
         Used to be, with the one-pagers in a print romance novel, that the excerpted bit was fraught with sexual tension, perhaps the moment leading up to the first kiss. Not so much anymore. The excerpts you see on the internet go on much longer. Sometimes they are action scenes. Sometimes they are sex scenes. Sometimes they leave the reader wanting more, much more. And sometimes...not so much.
         So I'm trying an excerpt for Healing Hearts.
         With Sleepy Hollow Dreams picking an excerpt was a no brainer. Had to have Katy running from the Headless Horseman. The Wild Rose Press had a word-limit. Which my editor expanded to get Ryck into the picture! (Ssh. Don't tell.)
         I'm having more trouble deciding with Healing Hearts. First encounter? (And, if so, from which character's point of view?) First kiss? Potent sexual tension? Wicked banter? Something from the danger zone?
          Grrr. I want to excerpt all of it. Healing Hearts releases February 28 from Carina Press. So there's time. But I'd like to post something on this blog's Healing Hearts page now!
         

What do you think?


How do you choose? How would you choose?

Help me out here, peeps!

I'll send a copy of Sleepy Hollow Dreams to the commenter with the best (or most random) suggestion!

Six Sentence Sunday 11-21-2010

From Cole in Her Stocking, my romantic suspense WIP. This is Lara's first glimpse of Cole, an FBI agent working undercover at an airport dive:

Lara headed toward the bar, and nearly collided with the bartender who glided  from the opposite direction like a great white smelling fresh blood in the water.

Powerful shoulders the breadth of a two-by-four, a Flight Risk T-shirt pulled taut over toned abs and pecs, muscled legs that fed a pair of biker boots. And black jeans too snug to slip a wallet--or a condom--into the back pocket.

Lara jerked her focus upward. Eyes the color of ice chips flicked over her with the predatory awareness of a shark.

Holy heart-stopping Hannah, she thought, we're gonna need a bigger boat.


     Be sure to visit the other Six Sentence Sunday authors!

Holiday Sweets & Treats

Just in time for your cooking & gift-giving delight! The 2010 Garden Gourmet Holiday Sweets & Treats Cookbook from The Wild Rose Press !!  It's gorgeous! It's delicious! And it's FREE!

(And me and my super scrumptious Gingery Sleepy Hollow Drunkin-Punkin Bread Pudding are featured on page 73!

Enjoy!

A-Maize Me!

Not to brag or anything but I make a hella good chili and I'm pretty awesome with soups and stews (basically, everything you can throw into one pot). My adventures in cookery tend to begin and end there. Mainly, I don't have time. Also, I don't like cleaning up.

But lately, I'm all about the bread pudding.

The Wild Rose Press, publisher of Sleepy Hollow Dreams,  will put out a holiday sweets cookbook and my submission to that was "Gingery Sleepy Hollow Drunkin-Punkin Bread Pudding with Hot Buttered Rum Sauce."  Candied ginger, one of my favorite treats, galore.

No, you're not getting that today! Be good and maybe one day soon.

My HVRWA chapter will throw its annual Holiday Party next month and the thought of that, and some tweets I saw on Twitter yesterday about creamed corn, put me in mind of the Cornbread Pudding a chaptermate brought to a party past. I have the recipe scrawled on a teensy scrap of paper that, judging by the printed remnants on the other side, must have been torn from an old newsletter. You can find the same recipe all over the internet. I'm guessing it must have been on the back of a Jiffy Corn Muffin box at one time or another.

But it's still YUM! (And kind of Thankgsiving-esque.  You remember, Squanto and the Native Americans teaching the Pilgrims about maize? Saving the illegal-alien Puritans from imminent starvation and all? )

So since the Halloween Candy Apple recipes went over like apparent gangbusters...here without further ado:

HOWDY PILGRIM CORNBREAD PUDDING

1 can creamed corn

1 can kernel corn (drained)

1 cup sour cream (8 oz.)

3 beaten eggs

1 stick butter (or margarine)

1 box Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

Preheat oven to 350° (Jiffy says 375°--use your oven discretion!) and grease 1-1/2 quart oven-proof bowl or casserole dish. (At this point, my chaptermate's recipe just smooshes all the ingredients together and pours them into the greased bowl. That works!) But if you want to complicate things, here's thusly:

Pour butter and corn into prepared dish. Blend in sour cream. In separate bowl, beat eggs and stir into casserole along with muffin mix.

Bake 35-40 minutes in 375° oven or 1 hour in 350° oven. (Personally, I think 1 hour is too long. Main thing: DON'T BURN IT! I like it MOIST!) It's done when the center is firm and/or the knife and/or toothpick is more or less clean (You know the drill!)

Squanto would be so proud!

 Maybe we'll do Indian Pudding or Hasty Pudding one of these days!

 Did I mention? I'm all about the puddin'!

HEALING HEARTS!

It's FINAL! 

Healing Hearts releases from Carina Press on February 28, 2011.

And now I can splash the gorgeous cover by Angela Waters hither and yon (not that I haven't been already, but still!!)

And here's the blurb:

As a girl, Emma Whiteside asked Adam Caldwell, Viscount Riverton, to wait for her to be of marriageable age. Now, twelve years later, Emma hates Adam as much as she once loved him, holding the former army major responsible for the death of her brother on the battlefield.


Adam already blames himself for the loss of the men under his command. But the fiery young woman Emma's become sparks his arousal, as well as emotions Adam thought long dead. The passion between them makes him want to reclaim the man he was before the war.

Though she tries to hold on to her hatred, Emma's longing for Adam is undeniable, especially after the two share a smoldering kiss. Still, Adam is certain no woman would want a man so damaged. Can Emma prove him wrong?

 

(Thank you, Elizabeth Bass and Angela James!)

Two for Tuesday

      I'm playing along with Two for Tuesday today at the Women of Mystery blog. Decided I need a little push to get back to Surfer Dude & Co.  (Currently being torn in too many directions.) In the middle of a couple of WIPS--wildly different--both of which I like. Which to do, which to do? Lara & Cole (contemporary romantic suspense), Pierce & Mia (futuristic paranormal)?

Surfer Dude temporarily wins the day:

Pierce massaged the pebbled QWERTY tattooed on his forehead by the keyboard. He appreciated the Sirens’ thematic unity, but their off-the-charts decibel level tonight could deafen a dolphin.

Here's how you play: Pick two sentences from a book you're reading, and two from a book you're writing. (I'm declining to do the first part of that equation today, because I just read a sentence in a book that's consuming me, by an author I love, that was so clunky and awkward I couldn't believe what I was seeing!)

Have fun  with it, peeps!

Six Sentence Sunday 11-14-10

         Just because I want to look at the unfinalized version of my squeeingly beautiful cover again...a six-sentence excerpt from Healing Hearts, coming in February from Carina Press:

           The viscount's gaze skewered her like a rapier as he took the decision out of her hands.

           “The show is over, madam--I’ve entertained you long enough.”

           His deep voice reached her across the windy bluff, affecting her as if he stood close beside her, his hand encircling her wrist and pulling her forward, the rich timbre resonating through her, as intoxicating as sherry. Her hunger flared.

           Emma took a gulp of salt-tinged air and emerged from concealment to face him.

           “We meet again, Miss Whiteside.”

~

Don't forget to check out the other awesome Six Sentence Sunday authors.

Sneak Peek

I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be doing this yet, since it hasn't been finalized. On the other hand, no one told me I couldn't.

So ... ssh. (I won't tell if you won't.)

Here's the cover (unfinalized) of Healing Hearts, coming February, 2011 from Carina Press.

Squeeeeeeeeeee!

You have to click on it to get the full impact.

How GORGEOUS is Adam?

Damn. I'm in love.

(Maybe it's the five o'clock shadow.)

Six Sentence Sunday 11-07-10

         A few weeks ago, I offered a glimpse from Aidon's POV.  Here's Stephanie's. From my currently-being-revised WIP, Pomegranate Seeds.

          This guy puts his brothers--none of them slouches in the hot hunk department--in the shade. Even unconscious, his power beams off him with the force of a gazillion giga-watts, like the energy generated by an exploding sun. My fingers itch to stroke through this unbelievable stud muffin's thatch of midnight hair, to rip the linen shirt off his thick, muscular shoulders and wander across his toned six-pack--despite the broken arrow shaft jutting from his chest.
         He murmurs something in a voice that throbs through me, ramping up my excitement, his hard, sensual mouth curving in a smile so sexy I wonder if my knees will actually buckle, if I'll actually fall on top of him. I know he's doped up with lust-poison but the idea of us tangled together in an ecstatic fever of sweaty limbs makes my pulse speed up as if I'm the one who took Coop's arrow in the heart.
        I am such a goner.

And don't forget to visit all the other awesome Six Sentence Sunday authors!