Becky asked: How are the Brown men gearing up for the Superbowl? Any special foods or events going on? (particularly Adrian bc he is my fav, hehe)

Well this is a big deal for those Copeland, Keenan and Brown boys – food, beer and football so they’ll be hanging out at Adrian’s place watching on the big screen. ‘Course things are different these days because they’ve got a whole new generation hanging out with them so it’s more root beer and less of the other kind :)

Jen and Pat asked: Do you have any plans to write Phillip’s story from Ascension? Or any of the other characters there like Skye? I just loved those 2 books and would love to hear more about them.

Thanks! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the books. At this point, I have to say I’m done with the series. I would have loved to have continued it to at least tell Skye and Phillip’s stories, but I don’t write for that publisher anymore and having the books at two different publishers is far more complicated than I have the time for.

Kathleen – thank you for the kind words!

IP wants to know if I’m writing any more books in the Federation Chronicles – I sure hope so! You’ll get a glimpse of Wilhelm that you haven’t before in CAPTIVATED. I’d love to do his story and also one for Deimos. I’ve got an idea I’m kicking around for a connected series…

Jess asked about the bonus chapters I’ve discussed that’ll be coming out with the ONCE AND AGAIN print book – the several chapters are called Visits to Petal and it’s my plan to have them accompany new Petal print book releases. This one is called Alone Time and yes, it’ll be in the ONCE AND AGAIN print book as well as being released digitally – free from Samhain. It’ll be out this September! Each new one will detail different characters and couples you’ve met along the way through the Chase series and into Petal.

not everyone can do provocative well. She can.

I’m also working on Laid Open – the Ben, Todd and Erin novella that’ll be out in September. I love this triad! Really, writing Erin is easy for me a lot of the time because she’s such a three dimensional character to me. She’s never shy or coy about getting herself on the page. In that she’s a lot like Polly Chase, who is also a joy to write about.

So these two projects have been taking up most of my time (along with final pass pages for CAPTIVATED and CHAOS BURNING and the galleys for ONCE AND AGAIN and ALONE TIME for the print release in September).

Next up is Mary’s book in the Delicious series. Also have no title for it yet, but I’ve been working on it and making notes as I finish up these other two projects .

Lemme show you the inspriation for the hero in that book (all I’m going to say is that he’s a friend of Adrian’s and you’ll meet him in Tart in November)

Pretty, no? His name is Dimitris Alexandrou

Other stuff – Let’s see, been watching The Walking Dead with the husband. Love that damned show. Also, man oh man, while I do love me some Norman Reedus, it’s Andrew Lincoln who really makes that show for me. I love Rick Grimes as a character. The writing on the show is fantastic. If you haven’t seen it yet, you totally should give it a try.

I’ve got to get to work – have a million things to do today. Enjoy your weekend everyone! (and if you’re interested, I’ve been putting up some snippets from works in progress over at my facebook page…)

But I’m hoping that January is the sum total of crap I see this year!

I don’t feel like laying on the couch staring off into space today! I am up and even wearing pants with a zipper! My fever is finally gone and I’ve been working a little today (on Beth’s book proposal, btw).

I think I’m going to have a blurb for BENEATH THE SKIN to show you all very soon as well…

Have a great weekend everyone.

This is just a few paragraphs from his amazing Letter from A Birmingham Jail (which I highly recommend)

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” men and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

And here are a few other quotes that are in my favorites files:

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.