The Dynamic Trio - Blog

Tomorrow is the first day of December and also the start of my Birthday Bash celebration. For the next twenty-one days I have friends and favorite authors visiting me to help celebrate my birthday. I hope you’ll come along to join in the fun. We’re going to discuss all sorts of things and there are lots of prizes on offer.

I also have a special contest at my website. Click on the extras tab to take you to the contest page where you will find all the details on how to enter. Good luck!

I have a new release coming out on 5th of December. Yay! LAST WISH is coming out from Ellora’s Cave. Check out the blurb and an excerpt here.

On 4th of December I have a List Mom evening at the Ellora’s Cave Chat list. The fun will start around six.

On 5th of December I’m guest blogging at Six Degrees of Sexy.

Our news is full of David Beckham at the moment since he arrived in Wellington, New Zealand along with the rest of the Galaxy football team yesterday. I must admit I’ve been impressed with the man. I don’t know how he manages to live in the full glare of publicity all the time and still show such charm. Tomorrow the Galaxy play our team the Phoenix and interest is high despite football being a less popular sport down this end of the world. We’re all about the rugby, and I can’t wait for the new season to start early next year.

Our local council has just finished laying new footpaths along a part of the seafront that was previously grass. Good and bad. Good because I can ride my bike along the paths and hardly meet anyone. The scenery is great. Bad because I tend to go for longer bike rides. Too much fitness can be a bad thing!

Have a fun weekend. What are you up to?

This is too funny! Anyone ever wanted to be an inventor? Ever wonder how you can do it? Well, just think of the silliest thing you possibly can, draw up some schematics for it and submit it to the patent office. And TA-DA! You’re an inventor.

Check this out!
#10.The Flatulence Deodorizer
Filed in April 2000, the flatulence deodorizer “discloses a pad to be worn by a user for absorbing gas due to flatulence.”

#9.Method And Device For Recognition of a Collision With a Pedestrian
The days of plowing your car into things and not knowing whether or not it was a living person are finally over!

#8.Animal Ear Protectors
Do you have a dog with long, floppy ears, and if so, do you give it food? And if you give it food, is it always getting its long, floppy ears covered in the food that you give it? Is this actually a serious problem that you have to deal with? If so, you should write a letter to your local pet accessory manufacturer and let them know about US Patent #4233942.

For the rest of the 10 Most Ridiculous Inventions, click HERE and enjoy a laugh on me!

TJ

I’m naughty. I forgot to blog this week.

Life at my house has been pretty busy. I’ve been working hard on my writing and have sold another story to Ellora’s Cave. It’s called Lovers at Last and is a contemporary. This one is a Quickie and will be part of the Jewel of the Nile series coming out next year. I can’t wait to see the covers for this series. And I’m not the only author who is impatiently waiting for the art department to give us a peek preview :)

I have a new contest going at my website. Jump over to the contest page for all the details.

And finally, I hope you have time to visit my blog during December to help me celebrate my birthday. Lauren and TJ will both be guest bloggers along with other friends and some of my favorite authors. Think lots of fun and prizes and you won’t be far wrong!

Happy reading. I have a Sylvia Day book calling my name!

I tried to post earlier but WordPress wasn’t cooperating (ggrrr!). I love technology…when it works, and when I haven’t been in bed for a week with some kind of funky cooties. I’m finally starting to feel better.

Just in time for Battlestar Gallactica Razor! I watched it last night and it was AWESOME! Nice bridge between seasons 3 and 4. Also a great way to keep fans interested until next season, which doesn’t start until March.

We’re also getting puppies today! I’ll tell you about that later.

There are new Holiday Hottie wish hints, blurbs, excerpts from Lauren Dane, Mechele Armstrong and Mary Winter! Visit the News page and enjoy!

First a shout out to Frauke at Croco Designs who has (as usual) gone above and beyond the call of duty to not only create a fabulous splash page for my Vegas anthology but who’s spent a huge amount of her time in moving my website from my old host to her fabulous new digs at Janus Portal. She’s a fabulous designer and I adore her work and her as a person!

Also, the fabulous Dreamforge Media is designing a new blog template for the Maverick Authors! I can’t wait to unveil it. All kinds of exciting stuff going on!

Also, yesterday, the new RT came in the mail. I already knew I’d gotten a fabulous review for Ascension but EC had a backpage ad with one of the anthologies I’m in - Feral Fascination as well as in the Spring books preview, the Vegas anthology got a mention! It was quite lovely to see. Also, some friends got some great reviews, which is also nice to see.

Cooking on Battlefront - and I made a Battlefront book page at my website so you can read the loose blurb for it and get an idea of what the book is about. I’m just shy of 50K now, over halfway finished with the book and now that I’m getting ready to transition, I’m feeling better about pacing. The middle of a book is always the hardest for me to write!

Tonight is Battlestar Galactica Razor with my dude! It’s a movie that gives you the story of what happened on the Pegasus when the Cylons attacked up until the start of this upcoming season. Yes, yes I am a sci fi freak and I’m proud of it! This movie is on my calendar I so love the series, LOL. Plus, it’s good date night fodder with my husband.

Monday I’ll work on Standoff, it’ll have been a week since I finished so it had some time to digest.

Um, that’s really about it. I’m going to gorge on Gordon Ramsay today on the BBC. I love him so much.

The other day in my post about plotting on my blog, Gabriele mentioned she does a lot of plotting in her head. I do a lot of plotting and mulling over character motivation in my head, too, especially when I’m walking the dog or cycling or in the shower. It made me wonder exactly what the inside of a writer’s head looks like.

I mean my head is rather full of sex and sex-related things. Given that I write erotic romance I’m fine with this. I have a host of paranormal creatures running around there, no doubt tripping over sex toys and the like. There’s cartons of condoms since responsible writers use them in their love scenes. At the moment I have wizards snarling at feline shifters, a taniwha or two plus of all things, a vampire. That’s a bit odd since I don’t like seeing or thinking about blood and vampires tend to live on the stuff. I’m avoiding him at the moment. There’s a cowboy competing at a rodeo plus a pen of bulls with sharp horns. And then there’s the threesome… Let’s hope they’re being responsible and using some of my condom supplies. They’re certainly using everything else! And then floating around in there are random thoughts about food. What on earth are we going to have for dinner? Then one of the threesome fall off the bed, all hell breaks loose and it’s back to sex. Again.

What does the inside of your head look like?

To everyone celebrating this particular holiday, enjoy it to the fullest!

TJ and family ;D

From Thanksgiving week clear through to the Christmas and Solstice holidays, the Holiday Hotties Contest will be in full effect! You thought the Arcane August contest was wild (and took us a month to recover), but you ain’t seen nothing yet!

The GRAND PRIZE - A big holiday basket filled with spa and bath goodies, along with some yummy treats (please let us know if there is anything you are allergic to when you submit your guesses). We may even throw in a book or two in addition to some second and third place prizes *wink*.

Read the rest of this entry »

Putting down something I’ve written and being tingly and flushed. I mean, wow. Writing sex is an interesting process. Sometimes a scene just flows from you, it connects to something deep inside you and as you write it, you’re really connected and involved. Those scenes I think tend to really jump off the page.

But not every scene is like that in a book. Sometimes the scenes it takes longest to write are the ones I read back on later and they make me sweaty! Other times the scene is one I like (or it wouldn’t be there) but while it serves a purpose in the story, it doesn’t particularly move me one way or the other.

Anyway, last night I re-read Battlefront - this is something I do with any project I sell on partial and then pick up later to write. I have to get back into the book and just having written several books and novellas back to back, I needed to find my way into the story again.

The partial ends on an emotional point. A breakthrough emotionally for Sera after an argument she has with Ash. They’ve been apart for ten years, it’s complicated and I’ll talk more about that later. Anyway, they have sex. And the book has BDSM elements. If you’ve read my BDSM writing you’ll know I like to get to the stuff in between people’s heads and emotions rather than just have a few whacks on the ass and call it a day. So essentially, this scene is about walls coming down and true power exchange. And i’m so happy I can look back at it months later and love the scene!

Battlefront has two heroes - Ash Walker and Brandt Pela - they’re both strong and sexy men but different in important ways. On my wall at my desk I’ve got pictures hanging with my notes -

This is Ash. He’s bald with tribal tattoos in red on the back of his skull. He’s a badass. In a major way.

This is Brandt - he’s smoother, prettier. He’s got long black hair he wears in a braid most of the time. Sera loves to brush and braid it for him, loves the way it feels when he drags it over her skin.

Sera lives in my head - She’s tall and has short blonde hair. Long and lithe. She’s a badass too, but in a different way than her men are.

Okay, back to work!

Everyone seems busy this time of the year. I know I am with the lead up to Christmas. I keep thinking, “Nooooo!” Christmas isn’t that close.

The last few days have passed in a storm of writing. I’ve completed my edits for Assassin, written a blurb and sent both back to my editor. I’ve also sent off my Jewel of the Nile story to my editor and started another. It’s so great when the stars align and the writing goes well.

I used to love reading historicals but went off them a couple of years ago, tired of the constant Regency settings. To me all the books seemed the same. This year I’ve picked up the odd one and enjoyed them. Lisa Kleypas used to be one of my favorites and yesterday I finished reading Mine Till Midnight. I really enjoyed the characters. The heroine Amelia Hathaway manages her brother and three younger sisters, always rescuing them from problems. One sister steals silver and other things, which creates problems, one sister is very weak after surviving scarlet fever and the brother, who has inherited a title is busy spending every penny. He’s heartbroken because his fiancee died from scarlet fever.

The hero, Cam Rohan is part Gypsy and lives on the outskirts of society. He suffers from a dreadful curse, that of being able to make money without effort. (I wish that curse would rub off on me!) The hero is strong, determined and tries to stay away from Amelia but her family difficulties keep brining them together.

It’s a great story where two people defy conventions and fall in love. I’m eagerly looking forward to Lisa Kleypas’ next book.

I’m currently reading JR Ward’s latest book, Lover Unbound. I have to admit, some of the pop culture phrases she uses really confuses me and I have to reread a sentence to work out what she means. And just as an aside - the term shitkickers. I get that they’re boots. They are, right? But that was one term that threw me for a while. I’ve since seen it used in another book.

Anyhow, what are you up to? I know Thanksgiving day is fast approaching in the US.

And lastly, I wanted to mention a Birthday Bash I’m holding over at my blog in December. Yes, it’s my birthday in December and some of my writing friends and favorite authors are joining me to help celebrate. I hope you’ll put my bash on your calendar and come to visit.