Vixenwriter

First up - Boundless, a brand spanking new anthology from Annie Dean, Bonnie Dee and Dionne Galace

I have to say how much I love Annie Dean’s voice. I find her stories quirky and unique and her heroines are unlikely and that makes me love them even more. I’ve read some snippets of Grimspace, her upcoming release from

Seven Days is compelling in a nearly disturbing way. Dean’s writing is excellent, immersive, her details are vivid and suck you in immediately. Teresa is not the heroine you’ve read nine hundred times and yet, you know her anyway. There’s a lovely fairy tale quality to Seven Days. Beautiful and in some parts achingly sad. This is not your average romance. It’s bigger in scope and yet smaller and more intimate than most too.

Bonnie Dee’s The Straw Man is up next - I quite liked the story where we’ve got a woman bemoaning her fate and lack of a perfect man to a scarecrow who then shows up, quite alive to be that perfect lover for just one night. The sex is really hot! It’s a quick, entertaining read.

Lastly, Dionne Galace’s Waking Kitty - I gotta say, I loved how irreverent and young this story is. Funny, sexy, well written and the characterization was excellent. I gotta say, what I often hate about authors trying so hard to sound hip is that well, it comes off as trying too hard. But Galace’s Kitty and Jack are fun, funky, real and flawed and provide heat, sexy tension and a really enjoyable read.

Anne Stuart’s Devil’s Waltz - dooood! Okay so I love Anne Stuart and this book was no exception. I don’t often read historical romances but I do love a well done one and Devil’s Waltz qualifies.

Christian isn’t quite as hard as some of Stuart’s other heroes but he’s deliciously morally gray. He’s shallow and selfish and a pretty pain in the butt. But at the same time, he’s not a lost cause. His back and forth with Annelise is quirky and fast paced and the heat wrenches up with each new encounter.

Thing is, Stuart does what she always does, she draws you into liking her hero even though you know you shouldn’t but at the end you, and the heroine aren’t sorry you gave him a chance.

Annelise is not your typical regency heroine. She’s not a peerless beauty with golden blonde ringlets and a rosebud mouth. She’s a spinster with a great background and no money. She’s essentially doing the regency era version of couch hopping because work is beneath her. And well, whatever, I get that was the attitude at the time and I think it was a great way of not making her perfect.

Christian is not a big romantic. He is a killer when he has to be. He’s dark. He’s relentlessly selfish at times and yet, Annelise is his match in a way that humanizes him and the way Stuart writes them both - it works.

I read a few more books but I’m on deadline and we have a visitor so I’m gonna break off for now and finish later~

The follow up to Ascension, Fire and Rain, is now available at Ellora’s Cave!

I love this world and this pack. They’re different from my Cascadia wolves and it was a lot of fun to write romantic suspense with a paranormal backdrop. I’d actually planned to write one of the other wolves first but when I wrote Rain, I knew her match would be Laurent. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And to celebrate - I’m holding down the Cave on the 6th with oodles of excerpts and prizes all day tomorrow! I’ll cruise in at 10 am eastern/ 7 pacific and party until 5 eastern/2 pacific.

Right now I’ve got excerpts from:

Fabulous list, no? I hope to see you all on the 6th!

I’ve got a book coming out on Wednesday! This is the follow up to Ascension and is Laurent and Rain’s story…

Rain Foster works as a waitress while working hard to make her career take off. Her paintings are the center of her life until Laurent Cole walks into the cafe. Suddenly she’s dealing with a very alpha male pursuing her and the not so very tiny detail that he’s a werewolf too.

Laurent Cole has been the Third in Command in the Cherchez Wolf Pack for decades. His life is simple, good - but he knows he’s missing something and when he claps eyes on Rain, he knows what it is.

Their coming together is complicated further by the past Rain has worked so hard to keep a secret. Laurent isn’t about to let anyone do his wife any harm and Rain begins to believe Laurent and her new family will keep her safe.

But the world becomes more complicated every day…

Oh and I’m running a contest to win an ARC over at the Ladies of the Club Blog!

Excerpt Behind The Cut - 18 and Over Only!

Read the rest of this entry ?

A few things - there is a world of difference between voicing concerns in a professional manner and ranting like a crackhead. Really, it’s not unprofessional to take your concerns to the publisher or your editor and if you receive an answer that doesn’t satisfy you, it might be something to take public. And yet, when an author says, “I’ve had some trouble receiving my royalties from crazycrackhead press” she can do so without posting rants absent paragraph breaks, punctuation and written in all caps without benefit of a spellchecker.

We all get frustrated. We all get downhearted about things that happen and many times, those of us who want to keep a career anyway, try to find solutions to our problems either behind the scenes or privately. And if we go public, we choose our words carefully because this is a very small industry. I realize this doesn’t give a week’s worth of blog drama to others but there’s a lot to be said about authors who keep their mouths shut and deal with problems professionally behind the scenes when they can and professionally in public when they need to.

That doesn’t mean you need to be fucked over by crazycrackhead press! It doesn’t mean you should be silent when your friends tell you they plan to submit to crazycrackho press. There are plenty of ways to deal with problems without telling the world your dog ate your homework or jealous bitches are out to get you.

I’m not the epitome of professionalism. I’d totally wear a costume to a booksigning. I sing showtunes in public hallways. I say bad words and let my kids eat potato chips and watch Spongebob. But if I can refrain from three screen long, incoherent rants in all caps where a good eighty five percent of the words are misspelled, so you can you. I swear.

Take a deep breath, drink some tea, but don’t hit “send” until you’ve given yourself some time to think. Most of the time I type, save and come back later to edit (hell, I edited this three times) Don’t be a douchebag, don’t threaten to sue, don’t accuse people who don’t agree with you of being jealous bitches, don’t tell us how much money you make, don’t tell us how important you are or what a great writer you are. Don’t tell us about your financial troubles or your wild daughter. This is oversharing and it’s not necessary. It’s tacky and grotesque and it’s not professional.

Today a really fabulous anthology releases! The new releases don’t appear to be up yet but they should be soon. Boundless features three novellas by Annie Dean, Bonnie Dee and Dionne Galace and I was lucky enough to get an early peek and I’ve got to tell you, it’s really good. I’ll do a full send up on Friday for Friday Booktalk but all three stories are my kind of novella with heroines you don’t see every day

I lifted the blurby bits from Annie’s site…

Seven Days by Annie Dean
Teresa intends to devote her life to the church, immaculate and untouched. Into her quiet life comes a beautiful devil sent to test her purity and her determination. She is silent prayers at midnight; he is the flash of gold in a gambler’s palm. She has known nothing but service and self-sacrifice. He has known nothing but centuries of carnal sin. Neither know anything about love. If she denies him, she condemns him to eternity in hell. If she yields, she forfeits her soul. Who will emerge victorious? To find out, join Dev and Teresa for Seven Days of temptation.

The Straw Man by Bonnie Dee [re-release]
A lonely woman imagines the perfect man and accidentally conjures him into being on All Hallows Eve. For a single night she has the lover of her dreams, but a night isn’t nearly enough. Can she find a way to turn her fantasy man back to flesh and blood?

Waking Kitty by Dionne Galace
Jack Ridley is an old-fashioned reporter. He doesn’t believe in anything unless there’s a ton of evidence to back it up and even then, he may still have a question or two hundred for it. Until he meets Kitty Jones and falls like a ton of bricks. Suddenly, Jack can’t seem to care that the ducks in a nearby park are turning pink or giant statues of naked men are appearing out of nowhere in the middle of downtown Chicago traffic.

Pink-haired Kitty Jones is beautiful, flirtatious, and seemingly happy-go-lucky. Under the cheerful, self-assured façade, however, she is slowly falling apart. Not only does she suffer from blackouts and wakes up unable to recall where she is or how she got there, she seems to be seeing dragons… everywhere. The only person she can turn to now is Jack Ridley, a tough-as-nails reporter who seems to have a few secrets of his own.

Yesterday was just, ugh, such a day! I wasn’t much up to getting online but I wanted to do my Friday booktalk because it’s one of my favorite things to do (I love books and I want people to read the fab things I come across)

In no particular order, on my vacation I read:

Marianne Mancusi’s Moongazer: Kudos to Dorchester for all the risks it lets its authors take with lines like Shomi. It gives me hope.

Moongazer is the second book released from the manga-esque line Shomi and it’s just as good as Liz Maverick’s Wired.

In this story, Mancusi gives us Skye, but is she Mariah? And a dimension flipping world of Terra, devastated by war and famine and those rich enough leave through Moongazing to live on Earth.

Skye gets pulled to Terra where people there think she’s a revolutionary named Mariah, including the very sexy blond who whisks her away on his hoverbike.

Mancusi delivers lots of taut action, steamy romance and excellent storytelling and I can’t say enough wonderful stuff about Moongazing so I’ll close by urging you all to get out and grab this one for yourselves.

Michelle Pillow’s Bit By the Bug: Folks if you haven’t read any of Michelle’s books you’re missing out. She writes across several genres and kicks ass at all of them. Bit By The Bug is a contemporary erotic romance.

Pillow gives us a fabulously intellectual hero (oh how I love smart men) who’s geeky and sexy all at once (not done enough and geeks are so sexy) and a smart, silly and warm heroine. Their chemistry is wonderful and tangible and the story is heartwarming as well as funny.

I loved the interactions between Kat and her sisters and also, the reality of what it’s like to be a working person who’s trying to make her dreams come true.

Kelley Armstrong’s No Humans Allowed:In this latest installment in Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series, we finally get Jamie’s story! I’ve been waiting for this one for some time and that it features Jeremy is just icing.

The overall storyline was very interesting. Jamie can see and communicate with ghosts and she’s off to Hollywood to star in a reality TV show. Jamie has issues with her mom and with her fame. She doesn’t know if she’s doing things for herself or to prove things to others. It’s a great example of Armstrong’s ability to write wonderfully three dimensional characters.

I thought the scenes between Jamie and Jeremy were wonderful and sexy and it was great to see Jeremy come out of his reserved shell in those times.

I can’t wait to see what Armstrong has for us next, I can only hope it includes a wee bit more romance (I know they’re not technically romance novels but I think her writing is so fabulous I’d love to see it!)

Sasha White’s Trouble: I’m telling you, Sasha needs to send me an ARC of Karl’s story or I’m gonna have to tackle her at RT and I know what she looks and sounds like so she can’t hide from me.

Trouble is the story of Samair and Valentine - two very unlikely people in a very unlikely romance and yet, White has the hand to make it work and she does most ably.

Her characters are vivid and three dimensional, the sex (as always) is smoking hot and Trouble is just an all around fabulously fun read. White gives us real people with jobs, real people working through personal stuff, real people trying to figure out where someone else can fit in their life when they have goals and dreams that take a lot of time and dedication. I love that. Samair is not some withering heroine who gives up everything for her man but she’s smart enough to recognize the fact that true love isn’t something that rolls up every day.

Nicely done, Sasha! (now, about that ARC…)

Kate Pearce’s Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?: I went on a bit of a Cheek binge and Kate Pearce is someone I’ve read before so I picked this one up and I’m glad I did. Keeping with the theme of working women pursuing their dreams (and this wasn’t planned it just worked out that way, LOL) - Pearce gives us the story of a man who believes strongly in marriage and the woman who is surprised to find herself married to him.

I’m wary of quickie marriage books, firstly because I’m sort of old school about marriage and also because I wonder who these feeble minded women are who marry some dude they just met are and why I’d want to read about them. I did have a bit of trouble overcoming that opening but truly, Pearce gave me two really compelling characters with Lauren and Grayson and I was able to get past my initial disbelief rather quickly.

Grayson is a fabulous hero. A man of conviction. A very old school dude without being a caveman. A man with values without being preachy or condescending. Lauren is smart and trying to overcome some heavy handed parenting to be her own person.

Together, they’re an unlikely match but one that Pearce makes convincing. I enjoyed the book a lot and I’ll definitely be back to read more of her stuff.

Charlene Teglia’s Wild Wild West: Charli’s NY debut and she’s making a big splash all over the place with fabulous reviews! Charli is one of the hardest working, dedicated authors I know so it’s nice to see her getting the kudos she’s worked so hard for.

Is it just me or does the woman on the cover look like Six from BSG? It works for me, LOL! Anyway, three steamy novellas, three hot and sexy cowboys, the american west in a modern setting - how can you lose?

I’m about 1/3 into The Midnight Hour by Patti O’Shea and loving it! I can’t wait to finish it. I’m also in the beginning of Richard Morgan’s Thirteen and it’s beautiful and arresting but it’s a slower read for me because I have to pay very close attention to everything and there’s so much intensity of detail. There’s a lot more on my TBR pile including a huge passel of ebooks. I’ll talk about those next week!

I chose three winners:

Christina Tavener
Cathie Morton
Jennifer Dunne

Okay folks! You have a week to claim your prize - email me and give me your preferences (contemporary, paranormal or a mixture) and your mailing address and I’ll get the books out your way! Oh and if you have any of mine in print you may want to mention it because I’m going to toss one in and I don’t want to duplicate!