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Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
Out and About This Week!

I’m over at Julie K. Rose’s Blog being interviewed about music soundtracks! You can listen to it here and read the full transcript here at Julie’s Writer Soundtrack blog.

And tomorrow/Wednesday the 30th, I’m doing an Author Day at the Raven (Mandy and Michelle’s place!) from noon to three eastern/nine to twelve pacific. I’ll be talking about Stripped, my story in the What Happens in Vegas anthology as well as Celebration for the Dead and my upcoming release, Fated from Samhain. Come by and hang out for a while, say hello and hopefully win something too!

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
What Happens In Vegas is Shipping!

So Vegas is now shipping from both Barnes and Noble and Amazon!

Behind closed doors, the real games begin…

Winning it big.

That’s the name of the game at Las Vegas’s Liege Hotel and Casino, where the hottest fantasies hinge on a roll of the dice…and the tantalizing knowledge that anything could happen before sunrise.

Cocktail waitress Carinna wants a man to tie her up, not tie her down. Little does she know that her most willing partner yet has something else planned for this fiery Latina bombshell.

Dahlia is a burlesque dancer with a brain for business and a bod for sin. Her latest admirer may be a sweet-talking Casanova, but despite what he thinks she’s not giving anything away free.

Meanwhile, Amy has the perfect plan to rob the Liege Casino blind…until the intimidating owner catches her red-handed. Now she knows she’s going to pay… with both pleasure and pain.

Professional shill Cassidy is ready to experience a breathless rendezvous with her “friend with benefits.” But when he proposes five delicious nights of sexy blackjack, the stakes have never been so high.

My story is Stripped. I came up with the idea while, not so surprisingly, I was on a trip with my husband to Las Vegas and we went to Ivan Kane’s Forty Deuce - a fabulous old style burlesque show/lounge in the Mandalay Bay. I came back, ready to write the book and my agent called and asked if I’d be interested in being part of a Vegas themed anthology pitch. I think for me, it was meant to happen and I’m glad it did.

Anyway - an excerpt of Stripped exists right behind the cut!

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Friday, April 4th, 2008
Celebration For The Dead is Now Available!!!

Blurb: Vampire Hunter Minx Rodriguez decides to mix a little business with pleasure when she heads to Mexico to celebrate El Dia de los Muertos. She’s hot on the trail of the vampire who not only took her hostage and tortured her but also killed her friends and family.

Connor Bell finds himself in love with a Vampire Hunter who’s skipped town without notice — much like he did to her just two weeks before. He heads to Mexico to find her and make things right.

Even as they work through their problems and plan a feast to celebrate the lives of those they’ve lost to the Oathbreakers, the threat remains. A Hunter’s job is never done and there’s a job to do in Mexico. The question remains as to whether Minx and Connor can survive what’ll be asked of them both.

And the lovely Dannette is having me at her blog today so stop over to say hello and enter yourself into a contest to win a book!

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Witches Knot: Celebration for the Dead

So tomorrow, the first Witches Knot book in a year will come out from Ellora’s Cave and I’m pretty excited about it. Witches Knot was the first universe I wrote, when I created Triad in 2004. Since then it’s encompassed a lot of things I hadn’t envisioned when I first sold Triad but I’ve loved writing it and I’ve really loved the Charvez witches and all their family and friends.

In Vengeance Due, I brought readers into Aidan’s secret - that there were vampires who weren’t so warm and fuzzy. Vampires who in fact broke the oath that kept the rest of their kind in check. Into town sweeps a group of humans who hunt these oathbreakers. Kael Gardener and his crew of hunters comes to New Orleans and meets Simone Charvez and of course those of you who’ve read Vengeance Due know, Kael and Simone get their HEA after some major angst and oodles of emo.

At the same time, one of the hunters, Minx (Melanie Rodriguez) meets Aidan’s brother Connor, a cop of sorts and a slow romance begins.

Celebration for the Dead takes place not too long after Vengeance Due ends (which is before Thrice United, confused yet?) and it takes us to Las Brisas, Mexico for El Dia de Los Muertos and right smack dab into the middle of a fight between Minx and Connor and he’s got some making up to do and Anton Perdue is back…

With all that said, how about an excerpt? Click the Read More link!

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Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Witches Knot: Celebration for the Dead

So as it happens, April 4th I’ve got a new chapter in the Witches Knot universe coming out from Ellora’s Cave. I’m pretty excited because I’ve wanted to do Minx and Connor’s book since I wrote Vengeance Due in 2006! Anyway, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for my Witches Knot books because they’re where I started and they’ve given me so much enjoyment and creative energy over the years.

Anyway, I thought for Titilating Tuesday, an excerpt from CfoD would be fun…

Adult content behind the jump - 18 and over only please…

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Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
STANDOFF IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Blurby Bit: For most of his life, Cade Warden has put the needs of his Pack first, setting aside everything else—even the emptiness he feels from having no mate. But Warren Pellini and his thugs have a biological weapon, threatening everything Cade holds dear.

Into his intensely focused, lonely life walks the woman he’s been waiting for.

Packless for many years, Grace Pellini has edged back into the good graces of her evil brother, walking a dangerous line to gather information to aid the Nationally Allied Packs. Cade is everything she could have hoped for in a man and a mate, even if he can be pushy and overprotective.

In the midst of their rising passion and desperate search for the key to disabling the weapon, Pellini raises the stakes by calling an ancient Challenge.

Now it’s Grace’s turn to put her protective instincts aside and stand by, Cade’s life in her hands, as her mate risks everything for his people.

Monday, March 3rd, 2008
Series…All Good Things Must End…

Tomorrow, Standoff, the last book in this story arc of my Cascadia Wolves series, releases from Samhain.

I love this cover! Anne Caine does a great job but I must say I’ve loved every single cover in this series. They’ve all been so pretty and done so well - I’ve had great cover mojo.But it’s over. In the last year I’ve ended two series - this one, my Cascadia Wolves and my Chase Brothers books. I’ll continue on with both worlds. In fact I’ve already contracted Unexpected, Megan’s story for August and I really want to write Nathan Murphy’s story to revisit Petal. But while I love series and the sense of home I can build with a cast of characters readers can revisit time and again, I think it’s best if they don’t drag on too long. I want to end when readers want more, not when they’re reading and thinking, “Gah, she really neededed to stop this series two books ago!”

Series enable an author to really dig deep, to create a world built over many books. What that means is I can take a town like Petal and breathe real life into her. I can give Petal traditions like Homecoming, which I’ve come back to in every story. Or in the case of this particular family, the Christmas proposal or wedding. I love that. I love that as a reader! I love how I can take werewolves and create government. Law and order and lawlessness too. I’ve had four books to build a paranormal universe in, which has been a treat. Four books to build the suspense with the werewolf mafia. I’m spoiled and it’s been a great ride.

I think about Nora Roberts’ trilogies and I think she as the right idea. She builds enough to give readers a sense of something big and sweeping and yet intimate at the same time. Very few authors can take it more than four books in the same story setting and make it work over and over. Kim Harrison can (I just finished The Outlaw Demon Wails this last week and OMG! it was fab), Nora as JD Robb can do it with her In Death books - but in a fully realized romance world you don’t see it as often and after book five, it begins to seem all a big stretch (sister’s best friend’s baby sitter’s brother in law’s best friend). I do love spin offs though! Like I love cupcakes. I’ll eat up every book related to the family Jenny Cruisie introduces us to in Welcome To Temptation (and Davy’s story was so good!), or the Chesapeake books from Nora, or SEP’s Chicago Stars. There’s something really special about returning to a world you’ve loved so much.

What about you all? What do you like best about series? Do you read them? Which ones?

PS - I’ve been lucky enough to get early reviews on this one: 5 Nymphs - I’ll say up front that I loved this story. It has everything needed to make a great book…a well written and plotted ongoing storyline, great secondary characters well integrated from previous books and two sexy, determined and dedicated individuals as our hero and heroine. It’s a thrilling story that pulled me in from the very first words and kept me racing through its pages until I reached the action filled end.

4 1/2 stars from JERR: Lauren Dane has done a magnificent job of combining awesome characters and a sparkling plot. I only hope that this is not the last installment in the Cascadia Wolves series.

5 Blue Ribbons from Romance Junkies: I loved the intensity of this storyline and the emotional connections between the characters, but I especially adored Grace’s honest reactions and willingness to stand up for herself. She does it with such style that I found myself immersed in each heated scene. If you’re reading this book solely for the romance, Ms. Dane doesn’t disappoint there either. There’s tons of red hot steamy sexy scenes and of course with a couple that butts heads as often as Cade and Grace do, there’s plenty of make up sex that’ll leave you hot and bothered. Beautifully written Ms. Dane. I’ll be anxiously awaiting more Cascadian Wolves tales in the near future.

How about an excerpt? Behind the jump…
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Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Booktalk - Grimspace - And A Contest

Up front, lest I be accused of hiding it, I know Ann Aguirre. I happen to think she’s fabulous and I talk to her pretty much daily via IM. I also happen to think she’s a really gifted writer and I’ve thought so before I IM’d her all the time.

She’s got a book coming out next week (although I’ve heard it’s on shelves already!) called Grimspace.

Cool cover huh? Penguin/Ace/Berkley does a fabulous job with covers I gotta say.

Anyway - Ann kindly sent me an early peek at Grimspace some months back and when I read it, it blew me away. It’s one of those books what you look at and think, first person? Present tense? But it works. It conveys a sense of urgency, of breathlessness but every once in while it slows, tensing, making that pause sort of delicious before speeding up again. Aguirre’s words are sharp and tensile and some of the passages are so gorgeous in their description that even alone they’d make Grimspace an above average read.

But there’s more of course by way of a story well matched to the breathless manner in which Aguirre delivers it to the reader.

The first time in the book when Jax sits in her chair and she’s describing how grimspace is indescrible? I was there. Aguirre leads me through as Jax prepares and then jumps. I’m now jumped into the book and the journey begins. I love science fiction and futuristics and I read across sub genres and authors but I tend toward the edgy sort of delivery you see with Gibson and Morgan and Grimspace has that. It’s lush in places but the pace keeps it stark at the same time. I loved the action element as well as the romantic storyline. March is as well drawn as Jax, even through Jax’s eyes and they’re well matched on the page. There’s a lot to March but he’s like an iceburg character - much of what he is is below the surface and so we learn it slowly but surely.

There’s something deliciously flawed in Sirantha Jax. Deeply wounded. Prickly, bitchy at times, defensive and guilt ridden. But you know why. You’re in her head, no one holds her more accountable than she does herself. But there’s a resilience in her. She tells herself she doesn’t need anyone else but she does. She tells herself not to take a risk in reaching out but she does. I just really liked her.

Anyway, as you can tell, I dug Grimspace. I think it’s a great mixture of action, emotion, romance with some startlingly wonderful and memorable characters.

The basics: As the carrier of a rare gene, Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace—a talent which cuts into her life expectancy, but makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. But then the ship she’s navigating crash-lands, and she’s accused of killing everyone on board. It’s hard for Jax to defend herself: she has no memory of the crash.

Now imprisoned and the subject of a ruthless interrogation, Jax is on the verge of madness. Then a mysterious man breaks into her cell, offering her freedom—for a price. March needs Jax to help his small band of rogue fighters break the Corp monopoly on interstellar travel—and establish a new breed of jumper.

Jax is only good at one thing—grimspace—and it will eventually kill her. So she may as well have some fun in the meantime…

Okay so because I think Grimspace is such a fabulous book - I’m going to give one away via Amazon.com. All you need to do is comment and I’ll draw at random on Friday afternoon and order it to send it your way as soon as Amazon ships!

Saturday, January 19th, 2008
The Usual…

I finished my part of Taking Care of Business yesterday and now it’s on to blending my part with Megan’s in as seamless a manner as possible. I’m actually quite happy with how it turned out, which is nice, LOL.

Now I need to finish a few synopses this weekend - two are totally done but need slight tweaks, one is 3/4 done and I got an idea late last wee, something I’d been sort of kicking around for a while but I want to get it written while I’m thinking about it. After that, I need to start Sensual Magic, my novella in the second Spice anthology.

In further happy news - Shelley Munro’s Playing To Win - released this week from Cerridwen. If you haven’t read Shell yet, you really need to!

Blurb: Professional rugby player Lane Gerrard is used to women throwing themselves at him, but a scurrilous tabloid article naming him as father of a child sends his temper soaring. The woman he confronts doesn’t fit the blackmailer profile. Kate Alexander is attractive with an enchanting innocence, enticing. A total stranger. Her feistiness draws his unwilling admiration, but the child…he is the image of Lane.

Kate can’t deny her son’s similarity to the sexy man at her door but no way will she hand him over without a fight. Kate doesn’t possess money but she can shower her son with love. With public speculation rife, Kate reluctantly works with Lane to discover the truth. They grow closer as distrust slowly turns to mutual fascination, but the tabloid articles bring out a stalker. Mild pranks escalate into danger, and suddenly Lane realizes Kate is a woman he could love. With Kate and her son, he could have a family. Now, with his heart on the line, this is one game he’s playing to win.

I’ve got it in my hard drive right now and I’m hoping to sneak some time to read it this weekend.

Have a good day, all and if you live round here, stay dry!!

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
Cascadia Wolves: Wolf Unbound is Now Available!

Book Three in my Cascadia Wolves series is now available from Samhain Publishing!

First, to correct my horrible oversight in my dedication I want to thank Angie James, editor most fabulous for helping me always write a better book.

An excerpt after the jump!

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