The Dynamic Trio - Blog

If you’ve read my books, such as Jaguar’s Rule, Spirit of the Pryde, Primed to Pounce or Egyptian Voyage, you know I really have a thing for large cats. I don’t mean overweight Garfield types, but lions, tigers, jaguars and the like. I was thinking about my need to schedule my family’s next camping trip to enjoy the great outdoors, and a thought came to mind - what would it be like to run up on one of my favorite animals in the middle of the night? I mean, if he wasn’t after ME, of course ;D

Ever wonder what a jaguar sounds like? Well, I’ve got an answer for you. Choose from the several selections on the player below, close your eyes and imagine yourself in the jungles of Belize in the middle of the night…

Strangely enough, the sounds didn’t scare me or make me feel afraid. But after you listen to them, tell me whether they curled your toes! Especially, sound clip number three. Whew!

Love, TJ (a/k/a Big Cat Nutball Extraordinaire)

Okay, I am officially a World of Warcraft nutball. I am totally hooked on this blasted game. It’s all my sons fault - he was always asking me to play Halo and Call of Duty and stuff like that, but they held no appeal for me. Then he started harping on me about WarCraft. Of course, I did what most moms do - I looked at him and said, ‘Not interested’ and went back to my writing. Then one day he pulled a whammy on me - “But mom, it’s something we can do together” then blinked those big brown eyes at me. So huffing and sighing I let him install it on my laptop, grumbling about manipulative children and the like.

Then we started playing together, he was on one computer and I was on mine. AND IT WAS A BLAST! Since he’d been playing longer he helped me through getting started, showing me where things were and which monsters to avoid. The Christmas rolled around and the son who was wrapped up in WarCraft moved on to the games that cam ewith his brand new Xbox 360. But good ole’ mom that I am, I kept WarCrafting.

And by the time the kid came back to the game I was ten levels ahead of him! And now…I’M TWENTY LEVELS AHEAD. Given I don’t do much but work and write, I’ve found myself surrounded by tons of other thirty- and forty-somethings who gather online to play this game and have a good time. It’s like our own little community ;D

This is one of my characters on the Bladefist server. Notice the name? Obviously, she’s got to be a genius to have a name like that! My good friend and author, Heather Holland, dropped in to see Carinian just last night. So if you’re ever online, come by and say hello!

Hi all! I don’t have alot to write about because I’m frantically working on three manuscripts all at the same time. One book is the story of Alaina Bixler, the daughter of Carin and Bix. I hadn’t planned to continue the series after the third book (Kenoe’s story, due out in July) but I got an idea in my head that I just couldn’t shake, so it’s in the works. And speaking of Kenoe’s story, the final book cover has been okay’d and it’s now up on the Samhain Publishing coming soon web page. I’ll have it up on my website soon, too.

I’m also working on books for the Pryde sisters from Spirit of the Pryde. They’ve been on hold for a while, but I’m now hot and heavy working on Niah’s story.

Memorial Day is upon us. Most year’s we barbeque or have people over, but in Colorado we don’t have any family or friends, so we just kind of do our own thing. This year, my son is in Wyoming camping with his dad, and my daughter and I are doing absolutely nothing - which is a fabulous. However if you’re a martini kind of gal, I recently got some new recipes that you just might like…

Check out the Fine Living take on Washington Apple Martinis, Blueberry Martinis, Flirt-inis, Passion-tinis, and more!

Come on over to Lust Bites to tell me!

Now I thought driving in my hometown was crazy, but Dublin takes the cake. Luckily my family enjoys each other and even a stressful situation turned into great fun.

Basically, we got directions - printed, mapped out directions, mind you - to a place called Clontarf. The goal was to visit the Bram Stoker’s Dracula attraction. Why? Because Bram Stoker was born here in the 1800’s and I just love the adaptation of his book about Count Dragul. So anyway, we followed the directions to a tee and still ended up driving for hours with no success. There are no frickin’ street signs here, except every now and again.

The buildings have street names on them, but if you’re standing at a corner and look at the building across from you, it’ll have a different name on it than the one to your right, which has a different name than the one to your left, and so on. Add driving on the opposite side of the street, big double decker buses darting in and out of traffic as if they own it - actually, the DO own it ’cause nobody is dumb enough to challenge them (ROFL!), and the narrowest streets I’ve ever seen and you end up with a very lost TJ and family.

In the end, we laughed, made our way back to the hotel (still can’t figure out how we did that!) and hung out here.

Today, we’re going to try it again. We’re going to visit Glendalough and if we actually make it there, we’ll put up some pictures…if I can get my daughter to upload them. Do you know I’m still waiting for her to send me the pics from my book signing last month? Geesh! LOL!

Talk to you later,

TJ

I have two interesting news items from New Zealand for you today. I know there’s lots of talk on the Internet re authors complaining about reviews and reviewers complaining about authors comments about reviews. It seems we’re quite well-behaved as a group compared to the restaurant owners in Auckland. Several top Auckland restaurants were given bad grades in a recent review by Metro. They struck back in an ad with a recipe for “Preparation of Metro Food Critic Testicles”.

Readers were encouraged to take a “very sharp knife, slice through the sort of skinnie muscley stuff that you find surrounding each of the Metro Food Critic Testicles (there should be two testicles, they can be hard to find)”.

And the Metro Food Critic’s comment - The testicles should be served with a side of “Sour Grapes”. You can read the full article here.

The other item of interest, or at least I found it fascinating, was the thawing out of the 490 kg squid at TePapa museum in Wellington. The colossal squid was caught in the Antarctic waters of the Ross Sea in 2007 and was frozen to preserve it. There’s been all sorts of discussion about defrosting the squid, since it’s not as easy as thawing out a packet of sausages. Here’s the photo gallery showing shots of the squid and you can also check out the webcam showing live action of the defrosting.

In writing news, I’ve received a wonderful review for Fancy Free with a Five Angel rating and also a Recommended Read award. Rachel C from Fallen Angel Reviews said, “Ms. Munro gives us hot sex scenes that have your blood heating and your palms sweating. But that’s not all you get with Fancy Free, you also get laughter, emotion and suspense. Ms. Munro has you guessing the whole time, and with the curiosity of what might happen next riding you, you can’t help but turn the pages until you reach the end. This is the second book by Ms. Munro I’ve read and it certainly won’t be the last. Fancy Free offers everything—steamy sex, at times slap stick laughter, nail biting suspense and of course let’s not forget the cast of supporting characters; they alone are worth the price on the cover. Don’t miss this great read.” You can find the entire review here.

And finally, are you a Cold Play fan? From Tuesday 12.15 UK time they’re giving away a free download of their new song - Violet Hill. Here’s the link.

Hi ya’ll, I’ve been traveling/moving/not-sleeping/plane hopping/running for the gate/running for the train, etc for more than 18 hours so I apologize in advance if this post doesn’t make any sense or starts to ramble ;D

I made it to Amsterdam by the skin of my teeth! What was I thinking booking a flight that connected through Chicago with only a 1 hour window? I must have been sleepwalking when I booked the flight because EVERYONE knows you can’t get into or out of Chicago on time. Duh!

Needless to say when I landed in Chicago I had to literally run for my connection to Amsterdam - which happened to be the ONLY flight to Amsterdam. And I made it…just as they were closing the airplane door. However, the flight crew was excellent and wonderfully attentive. The flight was non-eventful and devoid of any turbulence, bumps or any other vomit inducing moments.

The train ride from Amsterdam to Belgium was somewhat interesting in that none of it was unfamiliar. There were simple brick homes, apartment buildings, green pastures with lots of horses, cows and sheep (which we do see in Colorado just about anywhere but the city of Denver proper. Well, except for the green part. Colorado is DRY and BROWN most of the year). And graffiti. Even in the middle of a pasture with nothing but a single room itty bitty shack surrounded by cattle, there was graffiti. And surprisingly, it looked just like the stuff we have at home, down to the colors and style of writing.

One thing I did see alot of that I don’t see much in Colorado was DIVERSITY!! Amsterdam reminded me of my hometown, San Francisco. People from all over, all different races and nationalities, speaking all kinds of languages. It was cool. Nobody assumed I was American because of how I wear my hear, or the clothes I sported. They just walked up to me and started talking in one of the languages they speak here. When I looked confused, they switched to another language before finally settling on English.

I saw clean cut people. I saw ratty looking people. Young. Old. Rebellious looking teenagers, and sweet looking teenagers. I saw a guy so TALL he had to bend down to fit through the door of the trains. AND THESE ARE BIG FRICKING TRAINS - Think Amtrak, not light rail ;D

I’m in a pretty cool hotel, too. It’s all swanky and contemporary looking on the inside. Outside, it looks like a little brick and brownstone affair with not much to recommend it. It’s got a nice soft bed that’s calling my name, too. I would post pictures…but I forgot my camera! Can you believe it?!!

But no worries - My kids are going to meet me in Dublin in a few days and I made my daughter promise to bring her camera. That promise came with lots of e-mails and phone calls to her. Mind you, this bugging my kid happened BEFORE I actually left home (ever get that feeling you’re forgetting something?) complete with bugging her to pieces in person, on her cell phone and via e-mail!

Later, ya’ll, TJ needs some sleep!

TJ

Here are a couple of ads from New Zealand. The first one from Toyota offended quite a few people, but it’s typical New Zealand humor. It makes me laugh.

This second one is from Speights, a company that makes beer. If you’ve read my books you’ve probably noticed me mention Speights beer a time or two.

First off, the Samhain Secrets-And-Lies RT Partay was a freaking BLAST! Some of the author’s secrets were true eyebrow raisers! And some were flat out funny! Overall, it was a stomping good time with thousands of posts, tons of excerpts for upcoming books (including some sneak peeks that have never been seen by anyone except the author and her editors! Woohoo!) And plenty of contests and prizes. Lots of fun.

Now, for RT. I’ve heard some good stuff and some jacked up bad stuff about the event. Of course that’s to be expected no matter what the event…but what was up with the groping thing folks are talking about? Anybody have the skinny on that?

As for book stuff, I’m having an interesting go of it. I started working on a follow up book to SPIRIT OF THE PRYDE…and it turned into two books - one about Niah Pryde and one for the second set of Pryde twins, Kotara and Koreas. Then when I got back to outlining the next V.C.O.E. book, which was supposed to be Russian’s story, it turned into Alaina’s story instead. In a word, or a few words, I can’t stop laughing and giggling as I move the outlines along. In fact, I’m so excited about these three books, I’m working on them all at the same time and bouncing back and forth between outlining and writing the actual scenes, which is not like me at all.

And you can always tell when I’m having a great time with my writing by the rambling blog posts… ROFL!

Anyway, if you were at RT, what’s the scoop? Did you have fun? What was memorable about the experience? And are you going next year?

I’m hosting the Home Alone partay over at the Samhain Cafe yahoo group. We’re telling SECRETS AND LIES! Come join us. It’s hoppin’ !!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/samhaincafe/
TJ