Samhain IS Open for Submissions

For some reason the RWA has stated in their latest PRO newsletter that Samhain Publishing is closed to submissions. This information is wrong; Samhain IS open for submissions. This was posted by Executive Editor Angela James:

Samhain is open to submissions.

In the most recent issue of the RWA’s Pro newsletter (Prospects) it was reported that Samhain is closed to submissions. We’re unsure where the erroneous information came from, but we are not closed to submissions and have no plans to be. We continue to accept submissions in all genres of romance, as well as science fiction/fantasy/urban fantasy all with romantic elements. Submissions guidelines can be found http://samhainpublishing.com/submissions. All questions and submissions can be directed to editor@samhainpublishing.com

We hope you’ll help us out by posting this correction on your local and specialty chapter loops.

Thank you!

Angela James, Executive Editor

**permission to forward granted**

So if you've been considering submitting, please do! Just follow their posted guidelines, and good luck!

Book of the Week at Whipped Cream Reviews

Whipped Cream Reviews does this wonderful thing called Book of the Week. They post their reviews of different books and allow the readers to choose which book sounds the best based on those reviews.

Very Much Alive has been nominated! Now I would read all of the reviews before making a decision; the honor of being nominated is a reward in and of itself. So go check out some great books and vote for your favorite! The Book of the Week always starts on Saturday!

My Books On Kindle!

Finally! All of my books are now available for the Kindle! Just click on the book covers below to take you to each book. I've updated the links on my website with the Kindle editions, but since I know several of you have been waiting patiently I decided to post them here as well. Enjoy!

And if you're looking for my print book, just click on the book cover for Hunting Love.


I still don't know when the rest of the books will appear at the Sony store, but you can purchase Sony PDF versions of all but Hunting Love at My Bookstore and More.

Edits and As's and Adverbs

I have a problem. I am addicted to two little letters: "ly". Apparently I've run up too much a charge at Lolly's Adverb Store, and I need to cut back on my spending. They're sending a big burly man to repossess the words "softly", "gently" and "slowly". I've been told that I need to join Adverbs Anonymous due to my abuse of those two poor little letters. Maybe someday they'll even forgive me.

See? I did it again! (Is the man going to repossess "burly" too? Cause I kinda like that one.)

You know, when I'm writing I don't quite realize how many times I use the word "as", either. I'm in first run edits on Dare to Believe, my first Gray Court novel, and "as" appears at least four times a page! I'm only on page 40 and spent an entire day doing nothing but rewriting most of the spots "as" shows up in. I think I've added almost a thousand words just eliminating that one!

Is there an As's Anonymous? Because I think I might have to attend their meetings, too. (Wait, As's? That didn't come out right...)

Feh. Off to do my morning stretches before I once again tackle The Battle of the As's. Seriously. I need help.

I Got A Pinch

Brace yourself, this is going to sting a little...

When M, our soon-to-be five year old had to have blood drawn, he complained for an hour afterwards about how he got a "pinch". He has declared that he will "never get a pinch ever ever again", that's how much he enjoyed it.

Wonder what he would have thought of the "pinch" I got yesterday?

I finally saw the hand specialist, and you know what? I DO have arthritis in my hand (like I haven't been saying it for years), I just have it in a joint lower than they thought. He caught it, but the affected joint was on only one of the x-rays. Luckily it's mild arthritis. Unluckily, it required a steroid shot.

Ow.

The needle itself didn't hurt thanks to the constant stream of numbing agent the nurse was spraying on my hand. The doctor even tried to distract me by discussing e-books vs print, which, considering the face he made when I said I was an ebook author, had me wondering how much it was going to hurt long before I saw the needle. He put it in my hand and the strangest sensation coursed through my thumb. I think he literally touched my nerve, which I understand is normal, but still! It pinched!

"Take it easy with your hand until the weekend (I have edits), wear the thumb brace (BUT I HAVE EDITS!). You won't be able to type today (WAAAAH!), but you should be all right by Sunday (EDITS DUE MONDAY!!!)"

Gah. I think I sobbed more over the "don't use your thumb" than I did over the "pinch".

The good news is that he says my hand should be much better some time in the next three to four weeks, and if it's not?

Why, just go in for another shot!

Build A Little Birdhouse In Your Soul

Bonnie Rose Leigh posted a blog yesterday about how music plays an integral part in her writing. Needless to say, I had to comment on it. After all, music and my writing have a definite love affair going on.

I can't write without music. Worse, it has to be specific music. For instance, Steel Beauty was written to They Might Be Giants (which, I've been told, explains a lot). Very Much Alive was written to Enya. My current WIP, My Heart's Desire, wants to be written to a more eclectic mix, but all the songs MUST be happy ones, like Smash Mouth's remake of I'm a Believer.

If I put the wrong music on (Enya for Heart, for instance) my fingers hit the keyboard but the characters turn their backs on me. Yup, the picky little so-and-so's want their music. Travis, of Eye of the Beholder? Refused to work to anyone other than Joe Satriani. Another character from True Destiny whose book isn't coming for quite some time already let me know he wants to be written to Japanese pop star Namie Amuro (sorry, I couldn't find it on Amazon. The intro to the video is WoW music, but it is still pretty damn cool. Trust me, it's worth waiting the thirty or so seconds for Ms. Namie to come on.)

Now I've known people who have to write in absolute silence. Take my friend RR. He needs total quiet, a pot of coffee, soft lighting and about five minutes to get in the zone. This means that, since he has two beautiful kids, he's writing at o'dark hundred. At a silent o'dark hundred anything I write looks a lot like "Red sorceress needs sleep badly." Either that or I freak myself out over the last Ghost Hunters episode, then I need to wake people up and turn lights on... it's not pretty.

So thank whatever deity you pray to for iTunes, because without it and my lovely instant music download I couldn't write.

P.S.: Ever heard Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield? LOVE LOVE LOVE! I just have to figure out which book loves it too!

Doctor, It Hurts When I do YEOWCH!

Traction = Not Fun

Lately it seems like all I do is run to the doctor, the physical therapist, back to the doctor, only to collapse on the floor and hear my husband say "Stretch!"

For anyone who doesn't know (and I'm pretty sure I haven't made a secret of it), I have osteoarthritis in my back and my knee, and this week I'll probably find out if I have it in my hand. So my writing time has essentially been halved as I run around like a maniac trying to not hurt myself anymore. How running around like a maniac is supposed to do that I have no clue. My PT would say that I should relax, do my stretches, take it easy until the pain is gone. My doctor tells me to begin losing weight and exercising regularly, a suggestion that had my PT looking horrified. My husband wants to know if we can transplant my brain into the (cloned) body of Jessica Alba.

Come to think of it, he wanted my brain transplanted into Ms. Alba's clone before I was diagnosed. Hmmm...

After RT my back went on strike, refusing to to allow me to do things like, oh, sleep comfortably. So I finally, after resisting for quite a while, went to physical therapy.

"Traction," says the PT, "will help a great deal, along with heat therapy and ultrasound massage."

My ears pretty much stopped working at the word "traction".

Really, it's not too bad. They strap you into a heavy black corset-like thing, hook you up to an automated pully, set the pounds of pressure, put your feet up on a stool (see picture above), turn out the lights and start the machine. Then the owies begin. At first it hurts, but after a while the heat from the heating pad sinks in and you barely feel it. Then they turn it off and ask you to stand up.

Considering I've been doing my best to keep this blog PG-13, I'll refrain from posting the words that sprang to mind the first time I stood up after traction. Thank God I brought my cane, because I needed it.

I am halfway through my therapy, and it's seriously harshing my writing time. My mornings are pretty much eaten up by it. The days I don't go to therapy have been used dealing with child-related doctors visits, registering M for kindergarten, and getting ready for my next bought of tort... um, phyiscal therapy.

Luckily they haven't started the "strengthening" exercises, just the "lengthening" ones (sounds like a shampoo commercial, doesn't it?). Who knows? Maybe I'll finally break the five foot nothing barrier if they keep putting me on the rack.

All this amounts to me not full-time writing again until June, which means I'm concentrating on Dare to Believe edits (which for the first time might be late!), my current WIP, and outlining Julian and Bunny and Tabitha to a fair-thee-well. That and preparing to beat my dad in a scooter race he's challenged me to. He thinks his old scooter can outrun my Phoenix.

Bring it, Dad. Bring it.

The good news? My back does feel better, so maybe there's something to this traction stuff. The bad news? Guess who got put on hold again. Forgive me, Bunny Watchers. I'm doing my best, but Bunny won't get much work done on him until I've got everything else straightened out.

I've Had Sex With My Brain, and It Was Good

For some reason today I decided to take my current WIP, My Heart's Desire, and add a few love scenes into it. 4k worth of love scenes, to be precise. All I can say is, Dusty will soon be enjoying the fruits of my labor. I expect he'll be encouraging me to work more, in fact.

Don't you love it when your spouse supports your career?

Google? You Out There?

For some reason Google seems to be having difficulties today. Blogger, my Gmail account, all of them are either not responding or when they do respond, are very veeeery slooooow.

So if you're trying to contact me today and I'm not responding it's not me. It's Google.

Now to post this before Blogger dies again...

When In Doubt, Break Out The Vacuum Cleaner

I just finished the new synopsis of Only In My Dreams. If this one doesn't fly, Halle Pumas 5 will be about Sarah and someone who isn't Gabe, because at that point it just hasn't worked out for them. I'll be submitting it to Angie, my editor, today, finishing up My Heart's Desire over the next two to three weeks and sending it out to my betas, and really knuckling down to work on Bear Necessities, the first of the Pennsylvania Shifters (although some work has already been done on that one. Bunny and Julian have already introduced body parts to one another).

Aimee? Thanks for suggesting I use the vacuum cleaner to chase my muse out from under the couch. It worked like a charm.

UPDATE: Only In My Dreams is currently winging it's way to my editor. Wish it luck!

Happy Mother's Day!

Celebrate with a good book, some good chocolate, maybe some good wine. Take some time out and enjoy yourself!

Interview With Jennifer!

I have a new interview up over at Jennifer's Random Musings. Want to know how I describe myself in only three words? Or what my favorite part of being a writer is? I answer all that and more! And don't forget to answer my question: What do you think of fallen angels as heroes?

Get Hooked On A New Series Contest!

It's no secret I love series. I love to watch the people around the main characters get their HEA or their comeuppance, whichever they deserve. So it's no surprise that when the Bree half of Moira Rogers mentioned a contest she and her partner wanted to run to introduce people to new series, I was all over that.

Fifty books. FIFTY. You have got to check this out! Some of the authors who are participating (besides myself with The Wallflower) are Rebecca Goings, Sheila Stewart, Lila Dubois, K.Z. Snow, TJ Michaels, Lynne Connolly... A ton of authors and a ton of books! So if you'd like a chance to win a free book and possibly start a new series, here's your chance to win!

New Releases

Look what I found?

WIP Me, Beat Me, Release Me...

Let's see: what have I been up to this week?

The re-write of Only In My Dreams is out of the Meat Grinder and with my Beta readers. Hopefully the story is a lot tighter than when I first sent it in. It's about the same length as the original (I think), but focuses much more on the main characters and their conflict. Crossing my fingers on it, since if this doesn't work I'll be scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch with different mates for both Sarah and Gabe.

The arthritis is kicking my ass this week. I wound up taking almost a full day off when I realized I couldn't concentrate. Spring will be over soon, the rains will stop, and I'll be able to walk like a human being again. Until then, Aleve? I love you.

Editr Kitteh has forgiven me for being gone for a week. He allows me to open doors and be his pillow again. He even deigned to lick my arm to help me wake up the other day! Too bad it was five a.m., roughly an hour and a half before my alarm goes off. Oh, and he's tried several times to kill me while I feed the dog! So all is right in his world.

And there were new releases this week! Sorry I didn't get them up sooner, but, well... Ow.