Vixenwriter

2006 has been an amazing year for me. Probably the best year of my entire life. 2005 was hard, lots of high highs and very low lows but 2006 I think was the year I finally hit my stride and met a lot of goals I had for myself.

January – I spent a lot of time recovering from the end of 2005, LOL. I got a new website design from the most incredible Frauke and Croco Designs. I sent out Giving Chase to Samhain, got a cover for Sleight of Hand.

February - Sleight of Hand released from Whispers – my first release of 2006 and my first novella! I hit the first major block in writing Threat of Darkness (way back then) and I worked on Tri Mates.

March – went to Las Vegas with Megan and Anya and had such a great time. Celebrated Megan’s book deal with Spice, Anya landed an agent and shortly thereafter I did too. It’s been a very good year for the Mavericks! Got the idea for GWAB.

April – Cascadia Wolves: Enforcer released from EC. Tri Mates is contracted. I sent in Thrice United to my editor as well. Got some pretty covers as well.

May - Offered contracts on Thrice Bound and Reluctant. Got edits on multiple books. Finished Sword and Crown

June – Giving Chase releases! Sudden Desire releases – both are new arenas for me – romantic suspense and a contemporary quickie – both did very well but Giving Chase did so well it renewed my confidence. Anya Bast sold two books to Berkley – Witch Fire comes out in June of 07! Taking Chase was contracted.

July - my hard drive died and I lost pictures of my children. Oh that sucked! I wrote and wrote and wrote.

August – Vengeance Due released. I took my first solo vacation with my husband in over a decade – to Las Vegas. Got the idea for Stripped. Dealt with the death of our hard drive, took a family vacation. My four year old turned 5, my 1 year old turned 2. My agent hooked me up with Jodi Lynn Copeland and Anya Bast to pitch a Vegas themed anthology and I start writing Stripped.

September – Reluctant releases. I get deep into writing and editing. My agent pitches the What Happens in Vegas anthology and Goddess With a Blade.

October – Threat of Darkness and I continue to be at odds. I pick it up and put it down several times. Finally, at month’s end, I figure out the problem and finish up in relative ease and get it to my editor. Did edits for Sword and Crown and Taking Chase.

November - Tri Mates releases and I find out Thrice United will also release. On the same day Taking Chase releases. November was a very, very busy month. I SOLD STRIPPED TO HARLEQUIN SPICE! I sold Ascension and Threat of Darkness to EC and I got started on Chased. All told, I wrote right about 90K words in the month of November between original wip, edits, etc. November was a month that was incredibly productive and also gave me so much to be thankful for. It fueled me and got me back on track.

December – Finished Chased, finished a revision of Enclave – crits, more revision, off to editor and agent. Nearly done with partial of The Others, started revision of the next book after Ascension that is currently without a title. Wonderful holidays with my friends and family. Three CAPA nominations.

All in all, I’ve got a whole hell of a lot to be thankful and grateful for. Yes, I have worked damned hard, but without my family, without my readers and my friends, without my editors and my agent who all believe in me and support me – I don’t know where I’d be, but not here, looking back at a year of wonderful moments and successes.

As a way to say thank you, I’m going to do a contest. All you need to do is comment on the blog. Between now and January 3 – I’ll take the commenters and toss em into the randomizer and pick three winners who’ll win one of their choice of my available titles – including paper. Good luck!

I normally talk about books on Friday but this one is special for a few reasons. First of all, right up front, Megan is one of the people on the planet I flat out adore. Seriously. Very few people can make me laugh like Megan can. She’s just a joy to be around and I’m thankful to count her among my close friends.

Secondly – this book is amazing. I mean, when I first read it, I had to put it down and pick it up and read it again immediately. Yep, I was fortunate enough to have seen this book from the seeds to final product and it’s been stellar from day one. This story gets under my skin. It’s fragile and deep and beautiful and sad and joyous. It IS a romance – you know how I can say that? I’ve read it. I’ve read people talking about what the book is and isn’t but they haven’t read it. Is it a traditional romance? It does have a romantic resolution, it does have the couple together at the end and happy. Nothing about this book is what I’d think of as traditional though. It’s, I don’t know how to describe it really.

Elle is one of those characters that once I read her, she stuck with me. I didn’t like her all the time, she’s very flawed. But all humans are flawed and she’s got reason to be. And yet, she rises above and overcomes. Elle is probably one of the most three dimensional and compelling characters I’ve ever read.

And Dan, oh sigh. I lurve Dan. He’s so not your typical chest beating alpha male. Oh he’s a man, masculine, sexy, smart, just enough wicked to make you all tingly. But he sees Elle, sees her in a way that makes her freak because it’s hard to be known like that.

This is not “a woman’s sexual journey.” There is sex, very well written sex that is in some places, so insightful and raw that it made my nerves a bit jangly because Megan has this way of writing that simply distills so much emotion and sensory information down into a few pages – it’s vivid and sharp and unforgetable.

I suppose that’s Dirty in a nutshell – vivid, sharp and unforgetable.

When I read the first draft of this book, I knew it was something special. Not just good, not even just great, but one of those books every author dreams of writing someday. Megan has outdone herself. Do yourself a favor – Amazon is shipping now and it’s already in stores here and there with the official release on the 1st – grab it.

Here at the Samhain Blog - today I’m talking about secondary characters using Polly Chase as an example. Come by and say hey!

We’re slowly recovering here. The kids are still hyper after yesterday but only two meltdowns for my two year old today versus one hella large one and several small ones yesterday. We went to the mall (I know, insane!) but we had a mission, one store and one thing and it wasn’t that bad at all. Now we have new dishes, yay!

You know, here’s the thing, it’s been like, thirty years since I’ve played with a Barbie doll but one would think they’d have improved the Barbie shoe situation. They have not! I put Barbie’s f*ckin shoes back on two dozen times yesterday before they finally got lost. If Barbie can dance a jig and sing Karoke and ride a horse, how come her shoes still fall off when you move her?

And what is it with the “ho” barbie? I was in a large chain toy store a few weeks back (looking for the one of the 12 dancing princess barbies, sigh) and came upon not only those vile Bratz dolls but a “bling” barbie who looked nearly as ho-ish as the Bratz did, only without those collagen injected lips. My goodness it’s hard to raise a daughter with all of this junk out there, I don’t need dolls with hoochie momma shorts and enough eye makeup on to make a las vegas showgirl look plain. Blech! (oops, that paragraph brought to you by the word “tangent”).

My sons got new legos, the tiny ones that are like little plastic daggers in the soles of your feet at midnight. They’ve taken the 1,000 pieces and transformed them into a giant ship. And play dough, and art supplies, model kids, my middle monster got a nintendo DS, modeling clay, etc. So much stuff, we opened presents for a very long time.

My daughter got a few dolls of the ballerina type which she loved. She’s big into ballet right now, which makes me very happy because I love ballet and I’m so glad I can share that with her. She’s tough as nails, my daughter, but very girly too. She also got some my little pony stuff. More of it anyway. I now have even more pony hair to brush and she’s got them all set up in a little corral on her coloring table.

Okay, back to life now. I’m so very close to finishing my edits on Ascension and I’ll get them finshed up tonight, thank goodness. Then back to The Others, yay! My husband is off until after the first of the year and we’ve got all sorts of home improvement projects to finish. It’ll be nice to have him around more, too.

Have a great Tuesday!

I love Christmas Eve. It’s the calm before the storm, LOL. My kids are relatively quiet this morning, watching Christmas themed puppet movies and eating breakfast. They do come in and check out the tree hourly to see if anything has been added though.

Today we’ll bake and have a quiet dinner and watch a movie after the kids go to bed. And get the coffee all ready because my children will be up at O Dark Thirty tomorrow and we’ll sit, drinking coffee as the sky lightens as Christmas music is on in the background and we’re all warm and safe together here in our house while the kids play with the one thing you thought they wouldn’t care about and ignore the big thing you thought they would, LOL.

Then a big breakfast, more coffee and I’ll have that nearly weepy mom moment when I think about all the Christmas mornings I’ve had with my children and now they’re all growing up and my family, which started with just me and my man has now expanded to five and we’ve got these three great kids who’ve ruined my carpet and break things on a regular basis but I wouldn’t trade em for the world.

The lights are so pretty this morning. Soon my house will smell like nutmeg and I’ll end up doing the dishes fifteen times between now and tomorrow night. But I’m so thankful, and have so much to celebrate.

For those who celebrate, Merry Christmas. I wish those of you who celebrated Hanukah and Solstice a lovely post holiday week! I notice it wasn’t dark as long yesterday! Merry and Bright – much love to you and yours! Peace to us all.

So I come downstairs this morning and my husband says to me, “hey, will you clean up the espresso machine? I’ll make some for us when you do. OH and by the way, you appear to have been nominated for a bunch of CAPA awards.” All nonchalant.

So I go to the computer and look through like three dozen emails and there’s a list on the Samhain author loop.

Romantic Suspense:
Taking Chase

Paranormal Erotic Romance: (also nominated, my buddy Megan Hart!)
Cascadia Wolves: Enforcer

Favorite Author (which I have not a snowball’s chance of winning)
Me! (against MaryJanice Davidson and Christine Feehan)

I’m bawling here, I remember seeing the list last year and congratulating my friends and thinking, “one day I’ll be nominated” but Favorite Author? Wow. I’m so blessed. Congratulations to all the nominees, there’s a really wonderful bunch of books and authors nominated!

So it’s Book Talk day! Wooo!

This week I finished a revision, got crit, did more revision and sent it away, away. I also have edits which I started yesterday as well. But the point of that meander down off topic avenue is that I had time to read! Well, partly because my oldest son broke a tooth and I sat in the dentist’s office yesterday for a long stretch, but still.

So this week I read, Billionaires Prefer Blondes and Gift Wrap Optional. I also started (and am loving) Bound For The Holidays.

Gift Wrap Optional is TJ Michaels’ Wild Winter Quickie just out from Ellora’s Cave. And I loved it (of course). First of all, it makes me sad that you don’t see heroines as mothers very often. Melaniece is a mom of two grown children. I loved the interaction between mom and kids! It’s a story about second chances and well, I have a soft spot for second chance stories.

And okay, more than that, the chemistry between Michael (yay a red haired hero!) and Melaniece is wonderful. This is a quickie but TJ builds the tension well, not wasting a single word. The sex? Wooo baby, nicely written and hot, hot, hot!

I don’t want to give any spoilers, but Gift Wrap Optional takes the story of second chances at love and gives it a fabulous paranormal twist. A fabulous quick read that I really enjoyed.

Suzanne Enoch’s, Billionaires Prefer Blondes is the third in her series that follows slightly “retired” cat burglar Samantha Jellicoe and hot billionaire Rick Addison. I’ve always liked Enoch’s historicals but I fell in love with Sam and Rick and have eagerly read each new book about them (if you haven’t read Flirting with Danger and Don’t Look Down yet, why not?)

I like that Enoch gave us some more of Sam and Rick and how they’re attempting to both fit themselves into a relationship they were both clearly not expecting. Neither is perfect and there are moments in each book where you want to smack the crap out of one or the other of them.

The secondary characters are wonderful (Stoney is one of my favorites ever) and the overall story is clever and has a little bit of a twist.

BPB is quick, the chemistry between Sam and Rick is believable and very well done and the romance is realistic (to a point, we are talking billionaires and cat burglars here, LOL) in how two people who have been very independent fit another person into their life. I can’t wait to see what’s next for these two.

I’ll write up Bound for the Holidays when I finish it. But it’s Mackenzie McKade, so you know it’s gonna be good, right?

Brenda Williamson tagged me in the Five Crazy Things Meme.

The thing is, I’m very odd so uh, here goes, LOL.

1. I absolutely loathe the sound of iceburg lettuce being cut or torn. I makes me gag (I’m not kidding)

2. I know every line from Valley Girl. I had it on tape when I was in high school and I watched it every day.

3. I didn’t read romance until I was in my 30’s

4. Although I am very blunt and thick skinned, I will cry at the movies or while reading a book.

5. I met my husband when we were both 18 – by total fluke. Two months later we were living together and twenty years after that, we’ve got a mortgage, three kids and a lot of wonderful history.

Tag, hmmm, who shall I tag… Megan Hart, Shelley Munro, TJ Michaels, Anya Bast and Amelia June

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