Vixenwriter

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!

Read the rest of this entry ?

I had a review of Jaci Burton’s Riding Wild ready to go up today but I just received my author copies of Cascadia Wolves: Wolf Unbound so I thought I’d do a contest for some ARCs and put up the review tomorrow.

Work for you?

Okay here’s the deal: I’ll choose a winner from the commenters on this post at 7 pm pacific/10 eastern tonight, December 29.

All I need is why you like any or all of the elements in the book – romance, paranormals, erotic romance, werewolves, shifters, BDSM or heck, even this particular series.

That’s it. I’ll choose at least one winner later today. Good luck everyone!

Taking a break from revisions for Undercover to pop in and get my post up. I hope everyone can take a moment to breathe and appreciate the close of 2007. For those of you celebrating Christmas, I hope your upcoming week is a good one! I’m done with my shopping and most of my wrapping so it’s really just a matter of hanging out with my family and finishing up some work.

Speaking of work – I just realized today my fourth Cascadia Wolves book Wolf Unbound is coming out in eight days! Yep, January 1.

I’m so in love with this cover! I think Dawn Seewer did an amazing job and my Cascadia covers are all so beautiful so I’m thrilled to have another one that’s so fabulous.

I’ve loved this series. It’s the first I’ve plotted as a meta story and it’s been really fun to see where these characters have ended up as they’ve dealt with not just their mates but the werewolf mafia too.

Blurb:

Werewolf Enforcer Tegan Warden has been alone since the death of her mate four years ago. Until she meets Ben Stoner at a local club and she feels something she thought died inside her. Things move very quickly and she finds herself mated to a human man who’s not altogether sure he wants a forever kind of love with a woman he’s just met.

Ben realizes in short order Tegan is not only worth forever love, but a woman who’ll stand at his side without tolerating anything other than a full partnership.

In the bedroom it’s another story, as Ben has finally found a sexual submissive with a spark, and Tegan a man worthy of her submission. Together they work toward building a permanent relationship even as the specter of danger from the Pellini Group grows in the world of wolves.

All around them, the rising violence threatens the Packs and the only thing they know for certain is one another.

An excerpt after the jump!

Read the rest of this entry ?

I finished Cascadia Wolves: Standoff last night. And now my brain has eaten all my every day words. I spent part of my morning as I ordered my children around, pointing at stuff and making “I’m totally serious!” noises. Not that they took me serious or anything, but we all have appearances to keep up.

I’m happy, so very happy with this book. Made me cry when I finished it and it had a sort of rough start but once I hit that sweet spot it really just finished itself with me riding along and typing as fast as I could. I’ll leave it until next week and we’ll see how I feel when I pick it up again.

Now I have edits on Celebration for the Dead and second round on Wolf Unbound and then it’s on to Battlefront! I have it all printed out and waiting for me to pick it up and re-immerse myself in Sera, Ash and Brandt’s world.

All the while listening to Songs of Faith and Devotion over and over. Next week it’ll be something else, but for now, the dark emotion of the songs really gets to me. I don’t think I’m going to have happy and light music in my playlist for a while, LOL.

I had something else I was going to say but my brain ate it. So it probably wasn’t important. Probably. BTW, Jill Shalvis owns my heart right now. I love her writing. I keep wanting to stop what I’m doing to sneak some reading time in.

Over 5K yesterday on Standoff and I’m so thrilled! Last night as I was writing a scene that really only came to me a few days ago, I hit that sweet spot where the words just fell from my fingertips. I’m pleased with what came out and I feel like I *truly* know Grace now where I only got glimpses of her before. I love that! This book has been a lot like Chased was as I wrote it. I feel like I started off with an idea of who Liv was but she really revealed herself to me midpoint and it was a revelation to us both.

Books ebb and flow. Sometimes they’re fast and relatively painless to write. Other times you have periods when you’re sure the book sucks swampwater. I feel with this book I’ve had a clear overview but the writing has been a series of small discoveries as I put it all together.

Each time I write something I learn more about myself, my process and really, about writing in general. There are times when you feel like it’s just not coming together but you keep working and working and suddenly, things move and clear up and wow, it’s not the way you’d originally imagined it at that level of detail but it’s just exactly what it should be.

Because this book is the last in a four book story arc, I’ve had to be careful and weave all the loose threads into the whole. This is an interesting challenge. First because I hadn’t imagined it would *be* a four book story arc when I wrote Enforcer. It just worked out that way when I wrote Tri Mates and suddenly I thought, hmm, this is a big story, wouldn’t it be fun if I actually, oh say, planned out the series in advance?

Anyway, I outlined Wolf Unbound and Standoff at the same time, closing the loop and ending the story and the series. We’ll see if I want to do this again when I finish Standoff, LOL, but right now I’m thinking I would in a heartbeat.

Speaking of Wolf Unbound – I got my cover a la Dawn Seewer yesterday

WHEE! I love it. I’ve not worked with Dawn before but once I opened that jpg I was a fan for life.

Cascadia Wolves: Standoff

26,000 / 70,000 (37.1%)

Wheee! 3K words yesterday and I’m really happy with what I did. I’ve cut most surfing on the web and where I used to not be able to write during the day, I’ve found lately I can work in at least a grand during the day around the wee monster’s schedule. THis is a new development but it enabled me to actually go to bed before midnight last night. Yay Sven! This challenge is helping me to flex my writerly muscles in using my time more wisely.

The bulk of yesterday was a funny but integral fight between Grace and Nina where they finally got each other. I love Nina, she wasn’t very nice the first part of the book so I had to sort of redeem her. And Grace isn’t as bold a character as Nina so the scene had to be done carefully but I do admit, I laughed out loud several times because Grace doesn’t let her bitch flag fly very often but she did with Nina. Anyway, it’s done and it works – I hope, LOL! And now on to labs and sexin and Councils of War, etc.

Got my edits on Wolf Unbound, which sort of works nicely as the two books are so closely tied in to the other.

Signing later today.

Got a very lovely recommended read from FAR for Fire and Rain! Yay and thank you, Contessa.

It’s freaking cold here but no frost this morning. Yay!

Gotta go and grab coffee. I’m in dire need.

I finished Wolf Unbound last night. I thought I’d finish the night before but one scene came to me that I hadn’t anticipated, which works out anyway!

66,027 / 66,027 (100.0%)

I’d been aiming for roughly 70K and with about 3K left, I think it may end up there after revision. I’m really thrilled with where this book took me. When I wrote Enforcer, it started as an idea for a novella for a dangerous jobs type anthology. It didn’t get chosen but my editor said she loved the idea and would love to see it expanded into a novel and though I couldn’t get back to it for another year or so, when I did, the idea shifted into what is probably in the top five of my favorite books I’ve written. I had no idea then that the werewolf mafia thing would be this overarching story arc in all four books but it all really came into focus when I wrote Tri-Mates. Wolf Unbound is Tegan’s story. You don’t see a lot of her in the previous books but her story really called to me. What happens when a wolf loses her mate when she’s very young? What would that do to you if your anchor bond had also found their mate so your life was saved but the hole in your heart kept you from living fully?

She’s not an easy character and neither is Ben Stoner, the stoic cop she ends up with. By the end of the book, the Packs are in dissaray and the horizon is dark with what may come. I can’t wait to start writing Standoff now – Cade’s book and the last in the series.

Now I’ll put it aside and finish up final revisions on Reading Between the Lines! Wheeee!

And possibly, I’ll have more time to tackle this:

My TBR Pile. Not pictured Susanna Carr’s, Pink Ice, Cheyenne McCray’s, Chosen Prey, A mystery antho called Most Likely to Die, Jennifer Dunne’s Fugitive Lovers, a Blaze antho called Boys of Summer and Secrets Volume 8. On my hard drive I’ve got – Charlene Teglia’s Wild Wild West ARC, Marissa Scott’s When Petals Fall, Michelle Pillow’s Date with Destiny and her book with Mandy Roth – Red Light Specialists and Megan Hart’s Gilt and Midnight (her upcoming Spice Brief for September)(there are others scattered but these are my two main piles)

I will say I’ve finished Sylvia Day’s Pleasures of the Night and I’ll talk about it in a minute for Friday Booktalk, and also Maria Lima’s Matters of the Blood (ditto talking about in a minute). As you can see, I’ve got a huge amount of reading to catch up on! I hope I can use a bit of free time this summer to do it.

I just got an email from Angie at Samhain contracting the last two Cascadia Wolves books: Wolf Unbound and Standoff (Tegan’s book and Cade’s book)! She thinks we’ll be seeing WU in February and I don’t know the date yet on Standoff but she’ll let me know soon.

I’m excited by this so much! I LOVE working with Angie and Samhain and I’m thrilled to be able to get these books out!

I want to say – I moved this series from EC to Samhain because it’s taking a while to get new contracts. I am not mad at EC. I love writing for them and hope to do so into 2008. With all the craziness on the internet and the rumors swirling, I wanted to make it clear. This is a business decision with regard to getting my books out on a regular basis and knowing the new contract stuff will take months. Nothing more.

So last night I’m upstairs working on edits and my husband is putting the wee monster to sleep when I hear the alarm on the front door go off and then nothing. I rush down and the door is standing wide open and he’s nowhere in sight. I step outside and he’s not out there. I don’t see wee monster and I call my dude’s name and nothing. It’s really, and I mean like 20 degrees really, cold and I hear a noise as he comes jogging back holding the crushed remains of two of the kids’ pumpkins.

Turns out some little dipshits who need an ass kicking strolled up to our porch and walked away with two pumpkins. But my husband heard them and put a sleeping M down and ran after him. They dropped the pumpkins and ran their little asses off. My husband was worried that he’d left the door open and broke off after three blocks and came home.

Seriously? Who steals a pumpkin from a 2 year old? It’s too late to carve another, even if the pumpkin patch wasn’t picked clean so we’re all sharing our pumpkins but there’s a bit of sadness over it.

Still, we’ve got two darth vaders and a ladybug fairy and a whole bunch of candy so we’ll have a good time anyway. It’s freezing though! I’ll have to bundle the boys up under their costumes because, “moooom! If I wear a coat, no one will see my costume.” Eye roll.

I finished up second round edits on Sword and Crown last night and some last bit comma and clarification stuff on Taking Chase so I’m back to Threat of Darkness tonight, yay!

Speaking of Threat of Darkness, I’ve put up a very sneaky peek of it, Wolf Unbound and Sword and Crown at my messageboard. If you’re not a member, why not?

Another early review of Tri Mates! Holly at Two Lips Reviews gives Tri Mates 4 1/2 lips and says in part: Tri Mates is another wonderful book in the Cascadia Wolves series by Lauren Dane. The intrigue gives these books a whole new dimension. There were so many twists and turns in the plot that I never knew what was coming next. Nick is such a charming playboy that you can’t help but love. Gabe is a much quieter Alpha male, yet he is intriguing in ways Nick is not. Tracy is just a kick butt woman who loves to let her men have control in bed, but only in bed. She is funny, loyal, loving and forgiving. They make a fascinating set and you’re left wanting more of their story. I literally can’t decide if the next in the series should continue their story or move on to the next couple. Of course, I’m waiting impatiently for Cade’s story who is Alpha of Cascadia pack…. Lauren Dane is on my auto buy list and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Thanks, Holly!!

Wolf Unbound

14,000 / 62,000 (22.6%)

So before I start back on my second draft of Stripped, I’ve spent the last two days on Wolf Unbound and gotten a lot done. Last night I laid out part of the “issue” that Ben and Tegan will have to get past and it’s something that happened in Enforcer and also came up in Tri Mates. Oh and the werewolf mafia is back. I freaking love the werewolf mafia.

Of course my two year old, who has gone from high spirited child to utter evil monster in the last week and a half, decided that sleep was for suckers and refused to go down until after midnight last night. My husband and I traded shifts. Honestly, she’s working my last nerve and I went through this with the older kids and I absolutely hated 2 and 3 for this reason. Anyway, the 5 year old woke up the whole house at 6:45 by declaring that his cough was worse at the top of his lungs. Yep, he’s sick, but not that sick. It’s that crap they all get when they start school for the first time. Which means I’m going to get sick and my monster toddler will get it. Sigh. There are days I wish that children were like birds and I could just toss a blanket over their heads and they’d go to sleep. That would be awesome!

I did get about 150 pages into the new Linda Howard last night after I gave up on writing. I’ll talk about it when I’m done. I’m a little put off by the recitation of the twins inability to say their “r” sounds, I think it’s been established and we should move on. But at the same time, it’s LH and I adore her and I am less bugged by it than I would if just about anyone else on the planet did it. And I like that she writes children into her books and makes them real characters. So few authors do that well, the kid is introduced to make the reader feel the heroine is maternal but you never hear about them again and she has all sorts of time to date and have sex and go to lunch with her girlfriends. Who are these people? So thank you LH for writing real mothers.