Vixenwriter

The third Recipe for Love novel, Just One Taste, is now available! Revisit the misfits, outcasts, and renegades of trendy Manhattan eatery, Market–or meet them for the first time.

Just One Taste delves into the scrumptious secrets of aphrodisiacs, and pits ex-con artist Wes against genius (and Nerd Extraordinaire) Rosemary. These two are a clear case of opposites attracting…and striking sparks!

He has a hungry mind.

Bad-boy chef Wes Murphy dreads his final semester cooking class—Food Chemistry 101—until he meets the new substitute teacher. Dr. Rosemary Wilkins is a feast for the eyes, though her approach to food is strictly academic. So Wes decides to rattle her Bunsen burner by asking for her hands-on advice—on aphrodisiacs . . .

She’s got love down to a science.

Rosemary is a little wary about working with Wes, whose casual flirtations leave her hot under the collar. But once they begin testing the love-enhancing power of chocolate, oysters, and strawberries, it becomes scientifically evident that the brainy science nerd and the boyish chef have some major chemistry together—and it’s delicious . . . 


**If you’d like a little taste, click here for an excerpt. To purchase a copy from your favorite bookstore, click here!**

Early reviewers had this to say:

“Readers new to Louisa Edward’s trilogy needn’t read the previous books to enjoy this Just One Taste, but I’d recommend doing it anyway. It’s a solid debut trio, and I’m looking forward to more from this author.”–All About Romance (B+)

“Despite plenty of funny dialogue that will make you laugh in
places you probably shouldn’t—like the elevator, doctor’s
office, or waiting to meet with your child’s teacher—Just One
Taste is a romance novel with substance.”–Romance Reviews Today (Perfect 10)

“Just One Taste is light and fluffy, much like a tasty soufflé that should be savored and enjoyed.”–Babbling About Books

“The plot turns moment to moment from tension to connection, back and forth, before a most luscious ending is served…Four stars!!!”–Crystal Reviews

“The writer not only describes the tastes and scents of the glorious dishes in a way that will make all readers mouths’ water, but the characters are as sinfully delightful as the meals they prepare.”–Night Owl Reviews

Usually Mondays are filled with utter drudgery, but today was not that at all!

I went off and volunteered for a while at the kids’ school for their back to school barbecue and meet the teacher day. Every experience I’ve had with the moms at this school has been totally positive and today was no exception. The last school was a mixed bag, but this one, so far, has been awesome. Kids got their pictures taken, managed to stay clean until after that, met teachers, dropped off school supplies (and discovered I forgot things, sigh).

After that awesome part of the day was over, I got home to find a note from my agent to let her know when I returned and when she called, it was to tell me that my editor at Berkley had read and wanted to contract not only AS IS (Adrian Brown’s book and the last in the Brown sibs series), CAPTIVATED (the last Phantom Corps book) and another contemporary (which is great because I just got another idea while I was on vacation!).

So – Adrian’s book will be out in Fall of next year! Captivated Spring of ‘12 and the as of yet untitled new contemporary will be out in the Fall of ‘12 (add to that MESMERIZED (book two in Phantom Corps) in April, Three to Tango (menage/love triangle themed anthology) in May, Goddess With A Blade in June, Nathan Murphy’s book in August, and the first Bound By Magic book from Sensation out in November.

I gotta run and write now. Or maybe take a nap. But I’m so thrilled!

Though it has that, “could be any day of the week because your life is crazy busy and you don’t know what day it is” feel too.

Here’s a little something for the writers reading today:
Call for goodies!

A great self-promotion opportunity

** Please forward **

The Emerald City Writer’s Conference in Seattle, Washington is hosting it annual conference Friday, October 1st through Sunday October 3rd. This is the largest romance conference on the West Coast. Our featured guest speakers this year are Alyssa Day, Brenda Novak and Barbara Vey, with special guest Cherry Adair. With such great speakers and approximately 250 attendees, the conference is great
exposure for participating authors. We’d love to have your donations!

Send as much or as little as you like. We would be grateful for whatever materials you would like to send. In addition to books and traditional promotional items, we also welcome gift baskets and/or gift items that can be given away as door prizes or used in our raffles. Items need to be received by September 22nd.

Please email the Goody Bag Chairs, Debby Lee and Elizabeth Darvill at ecwcgoodiebags@gmail.com for more information or visit the Emerald City Writer’s Conference website at http://gsrwa.org/conference.php.

This is a great regional conference. I’ll be there in October along with many others. The booksigning is free and open to the public as well.

Let’s see, I’m nearly finished with Believe, a holiday novella that follows some months after the end of Second Chances. Second Chances will be out October 25 and for those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a book originally published in 2005 and I got the rights back two years later and have been meaning to revise and expand it since then. Earlier this year I sent it to Angela James at Carina, who contracted it and then cracked the whip. I’m really proud of the results and I’ve always loved this book and so I’m excited that it’s going to have new life.

I won’t go into detail too much about how Believe fits since Second Chances has some twists, but it’s got some scenes in it that made me blush when I wrote them so YAY!

Believe will be out in December, though I have no idea of the date yet (I could, you know, ask, but I figure I’ll get this done first)

My kids go back to school next week which *hopefully* means more concentrated work time. Next up on the writing plate is Goddess With A Blade, an urban fantasy with romantic elements, also for Carina. This one is NOT a romance, or rather it has a romantic sub plot, but it’s about Rowan Summerwaite, who is, among other things, a vessel for the goddess Brigid. Oh and she’s an assassin. It was to be out in March, but we shifted it to June for scheduling purposes and time to edit among my other releases. Just one of the myriad reasons I love working with Angie.

Then straight to the first Bound By Magic book, which still has no official title. I sent several lists some time back so I’m hoping to hear soon. I’m odd (yes we know this) but I can’t write a book without a title. It disturbs me and I don’t feel like I can settle in until I know it.

Um, oh, I did manage to get some reading in while on vacation. I devoured Jordan Castillo Price’s Psycop series and really did enjoy them. Also caught up with my Carrie Vaughn, Kitty backlog. Finished House of Horrors and now I’m working on Goes to War. Love the books. Love that Kitty has grown over the course of the series. It’s hard to do that, but Vaughn does it and even makes it look easy.

That’s about it for today. Oh! Wanna see the cover for Second Chances? Carina has it up at their Facebook page (my copy will come next week and I’ll post it here and at my website, but it’s very pretty so if you want to take a look see at it - click here to go to the page

I have been thinking a lot about attitude lately. Chiefly, about negativity and how it breeds nothing more, ever, than more negative energy and outcomes.

Misery is a communicable disease. ~Martha Graham

Publishing is in flux. This isn’t a secret to any of us in the business. Things are uncertain anyway for many authors. We’re always thinking about the next contract, how this new release will do. Will we do well? Will we earn out? What will our sell through rate be? Does my editor like the book I just sent her ten minutes ago? Will they like my edits? Whatever there is to worry about, we got it covered. Or at least I do.

So sometimes when something big gets tossed in our path, it’s very easy to fall into a place of *reaction* instead of action. It’s easy because we are people. What we do is a personal thing made very public and that leaves us open to commentary by just about everyone involved in the chain of book production. Our critique partners, our beta readers, editors, agents, copy editors, art departments, marketing, bookstores, readers – all of that. And that includes other authors too.

Sometimes on loops I notice a lean toward negative explanations for things. An author will bring up something, contract problems or a review that hurt (usually because they come at times when our defenses are very low), cover problems, whatever – and people, for the most part, will respond with kindness and good information or advice. But then, something negative will get said. They’re out to get us. Such and such is out to destroy XYZ. Ebooks are the end of the world. Facebook sends death robots to your home. If you don’t sell your books to your high school reunion mailing list you’ll fail. Whatever. These are reactions. And again, we’re humans, in times of stress, we react.

But I want to put forward that NOTHING POSITIVE EVER COMES FROM NEGATIVITY.

To avoid being personal or specific, I just want to urge those in our community to, instead of see everything as a terrible tragedy, to find a way to view things through another lens. This won’t change reality, we’re still facing a crapton of trouble. The economy is shaky, publishing is wobbly. But books aren’t going anywhere. I don’t care how successful some of us are at selling digital books, digital books are not the end of paper, nor are they the end of literature. Things will change, it’s how the world works. But they will change, regardless of how we interpret and respond to the situation.

Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts. It’s what you do with what you have left. ~Hubert Humphrey


In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. ~Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays

No life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it. ~Ellen Glasgow

So I want to say thank you so much to my friends for being supportive when I need it. Thank you to the people in the romance community, authors, readers, editors, agents and publishers. Thank you for taking risks on me, for telling me when I’m being a jerk, for giving me a hand up when I’m down. Thank you to those who take the time to fill the community with their advice and information. We are so much more, so much better than sitting around in the dim making up conspiracy theories about what “they” are doing to “us”. Thank you for proving that to me every single day.

Last week we snuck away for a little family vacation time out on the Washington coast. We stayed at the Kalaloch Lodge – built in 1938. It’s not swanky at all, but it doesn’t have to when this is your view:

Looking toward the bluff cabins and the three trees that always seemed to draw my eye

The weather was typical coastline. Cloudy. A spot of rain. Brilliant sunshine. The second night I sat at our windows and took shots of the setting sun.

Kalaloch itself is stunning. It’s just down the road from Ruby Beach –

And on the east side of the 101 is the Hoh Rainforest. Insanely beautiful! We stopped at the Big Cedar trail

Among other things we flew kites, braved the icy ocean, skipped stones on the various creeks, hiked, walked and climbed over the giant fallen, bleached trees washed up against the shoreline. There was little to no cell reception and no wireless so other than occasionally checking when I got a bar or two to send my parents some pictures, it was totally peaceful. And absolutely necessary after a crazy 2010 so far.

First I’m over at Anya Bast’s blog today with a sneak peek at INSIDE OUT and a chance to win a digital ARC or a copy of Insatiable. Her new book, Cruel Enchantment is coming out next month and it continues in her fabulously sexy and dark world of the Fae. I think this series is her best writing yet. The worldbuilding is fantastic and as always, her characters have great chemistry and the story is amazing. She’s running a contest until the 7th of September with all sorts of great prizes.

Second – I’m really excited to announce that I’ve just contracted Nathan Murphy’s book with Samhain for tentative release in August of 2011. I have to re-title it, but I’ll get you all more details when I get them. I can tell you it’s a reunion story…

The last birthday of the month is here – mini me, my baby girl is six today.

She came when we did not expect her to. In fact we’d decided we were done with having babies and I was getting ready to transition back to work when the morning sickness started, LOL. And she was there, all unexpected and beautiful, though my pregnancy wasn’t the easiest and we worried a lot. But it’s during all the bed rest when I began to write Triad. It was that pause that changed so many things in our lives. Our family is enriched by her light, by her laugh and her bossy ways (don’t know where she gets any of that, I swear). As five, we don’t just enter a room, we roil through it like an invading horde, all laughter and noise and chaos. And she does it with five bracelets and mardi gras beads on.

We joke, but it’s true, that she was meant to be with us. She is fierce and beautiful and whipsmart and she takes no crap from anyone. Of course, we did name her after a Celtic triple goddess so um, we kind of helped that along. Having a daughter is a unique joy and now she’s at the age where she and I can nip off to do fun Momma/Daughter stuff the boys couldn’t possibly care less about. I treasure those moments with her (much like I treasure the trips I take with my boys when it’s just the two of us)

Each one of them as a song I associate with them and the Dixie Chicks’ Lullaby is hers…

Happy Birthday sweet baby girl. I love you something fierce and no you may NOT have my shoes

Hey everyone! Amazon.com is running a sale on copies of COMING UNDONE – SIX bucks each, wheeee!

(Additionally, several other fab books are on sale like the Laced with Desire anthology featuring Jaci Burton and Shiloh Walker’s, Broken)

Today is my middle child’s birthday. All mothers, if they’re lucky, love their children equally, but each of them has different things that make them special. My middle is a wild spirit. He is all gangly legs, a big smile he is rarely without, he laughs and talks a million miles an hour and is is positively filled with mischief and love. Just seeing his face makes me smile.

This one is several years old – but it’s one of my favorites (from a trip to Disneyland – the train ride is the first thing we do every visit and he loves trains)

His name means ray of light because he came to us after some dark times. Like the boy, the pregnancy was easy, in fact the easiest of the three. His birth was stubborn, again, like the boy. And once they put him on my breast, once I felt the weight of him in my arms after all that work – it fell away. The work, the pain, the fear that something would go wrong – all of it passed from me as the warm weight of my son rested against my heart.

Where he is always.

So happy birthday to the boy who is my ray of light. You are my heart and I love you more than I can ever tell you.

This is his song. The one that I hear and instantly think of his smile.

Is Christine (christine14)

Email me your format choice – trade paper I need your address, digital I’ll need your format. Congrats!