Quacking Alone

In MaryAnneia people, places and things have personalities.  Sometimes they’re happy, sometimes they’re sad and sometimes they’re just in a mood to piss me off.  Yes, Virginia, things have issues too. Or at least – my things do.

For example, take my office computer – please.  Nah, I guess I’ll keep it.  In fact, some days, I’d fight you for it.  Others, I’d throw it across the parking lot and dance on its digital corpse.  I have a love/hate relationship with the thing.  In the morning, it doesn’t want to wake up from its long nap. I don’t either, so I sympathize. By the time she’s up and perking, I’m mighty glad to have her help.  But she’s a drama queen.  When I’m heads down on a deadline, focused on whatever words I’m writing at the time, most of my attention is not on the machine. And the machine doesn’t like that. So she’ll throw up a weird error or suddenly, for no apparent reason, Word, Outlook, or Practice Advantage will die.  I’ll yell at her and Glenda, my co-worker in the next office, will chuckle and encourage me to teach the PC who is the boss.  (I pretend I am).

My car - a little red P.T. Cruiser – is my baby.  Like a baby, sometimes she gurgles and purrs and boogles right along. And sometimes she doesn’t.  I often stroke her and encourage her. But sometimes I yell – like when I know the idiot in the other lane is trying to speed up to get in front of me. “Don’t let the jackass in, P.T., I’ll scream.”

Don’t get me started on my ice maker.  It exists to aggravate me.  It’ll be churning right along and then, for no reason, it refuses to sweep out the ice cubes so that more water can pour in.  Or cubes get stuck half in and half out of the sweeper.  And there I’ll be, with whatever kitchen implement I can grab, pouring or poking or prodding. All the while, I’ll be inventing new vile names for the beast until my 14-year-old, Sam, yells in, “You tell it, Mom.”

It hadn’t occurred to me how much of MaryAnneia has crept into my books until I read a reader comment. 

(more…)

I’ll blog about this later but for now – a teaser.

My books present a world I’ve created. Whether its Regency England, the old West, Scotland, or today’s America, if it’s in my book it’s that time period done my way. History is always the backdrop for the story, characters might say or do anything, the hero will fall bat-bug crazy in love and there will be a happy ending.

Are you bold enough to travel over the top with me? Check out my Complete List Of Books and pick up one (or all of ‘em) and find out if you’re game enough to drop your perception of reality and believe in an over-the-top kind of happily ever after.

Quack on over to the All Day, All Night Writing Diva’s blog.  The post up today (8/17) is mine.  It was inspired by comments from a reviewer on Amazon saying that based on the book’s cover, she thought it was something appropriate for a younger crowd – something with a lower heat level. 

Pop by and tell me whether in the virtual bookstore era a cover has an obligation to illustrate the heat level for the book.

I love “bundles.”  You know, those ebooks where you can collect several books in a series for a value price?  I’ve got one up – The Forever Series Bundle.  But this post isn’t about my bundle – it’s about one by an author I’ve discovered fairly recently – Susan Mallery.

Susan’s got a 2 Bundle set up called The Desert Rogues Part 1 and Part 2.  Part 1 has 5 Harlequin-length stories and I believe Part 2 is similar.  I picked up Part 1 a couple of days ago and I plan to pick up Part 2 today or tomorrow.  I always stock up on ebooks for the trip to Orlando to return my eldest to UCF.  So I’ll pick up Part 2 of Susan’s and possible Julie Garwood’s The Ideal Man because I love her work too. I’ve missed out on the last book in Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Chicago Stars series – Natural Born Charmer - and I may pick it up as well. 

I am on the 2nd of the 5 stories in Part 1 of The Desert Rogues bundle and I’m loving it.  These are older stories, but sometimes the classics hold up just fine and these stories definitely do that.  The Part 1 bundle is about a family of sheiks but it’s not a historical. It’s a contemporary.  I loved the first book – Khalil’s story and I’m adoring the second – Jamal’s story.

For all this mass of goodness, the bundles sell for $10.24 on the Sony Reader store but for only $8.38 on Amazon.  I pay a little extra because I don’t own a Kindle but it was still a good deal on the Sony site. 

If you’re looking to get engrossed in some hot desert love, I recommend these books!!!

Recently, I ran across this interesting piece from Joy Online written by John Boakye of The Mirror. It asks whether the reader believes in love at first sight.  As a romance novelist, I find the question very intriguing.  The author of the piece, Mr. Boakye,  suggests that we express and experience love “based on our cultural background, age, sex, education and life experiences.”

Mr. Boakye recounts his own experience of falling in love at first sight with the lady he later married.  He says he was driving along a road when he saw a tall, beautiful lady standing by the side.  It affected him so strongly that he drove into a ditch and amongst the people who came to help was the beautiful lady.  She said that she’d felt the same sensation when she first saw him.

The piece describes love at first sight as feeling that you’ve met “the most romantic person on earth” and you’ll do anything and everything to capture his attention. You see the person as “flawless,” are full of happiness and joy when they’re around and will follow him anywhere.  This person came straight into your heart and stole it away.

The piece says that others are more inclined to accept the scientific explanation of the phenomenon. 

 According to scientists, when you see a person of the opposite sex, the brain stimulates a cocktail of chemicals like epinephrine into the nervous system. This gives you a pleasant outlook of life and makes you react romantically towards him or her.

The greater the stimulation, the greater your emotional feeling. People then react differently, depending on their age, sex and self control. What we call love at first sight is, therefore, nothing special because it could happen to anyone at any time.

The piece says that others don’t believe in love at first sight and think the strong attraction to one special person is a “false sense of love because true love goes beneath the skin.” 

I’ve written a lot about love, but generally more in the “fated soul mate” sense than in the first sight sense.  It’s an interesting point to ponder — Do you believe that love at first sight exists?

It’s a Free Faerie Friday.

That’s right, my book A Faerie Fated Forever is still FREE on Amazon for the Kindle, on Barnes & Noble for the Nook, on Apple for the iPad (have no i-way to provide link), and on Smashwords formatted for nearly every device on the planet.

Grab it, read it and review it.  It’s a Free Faerie Friday – get yours today!

As I’ve mentioned before, my book, A Faerie Fated Forever, went free almost everywhere this week.  I say almost because the old saw about not being respected in your home must be true.  I own a Sony Reader but the Reader Store hasn’t picked up any of my recent stuff – I reduced the price on The Forever Series Bundle,  I put out Duke of Eden,  and just recently I made Faerie free.  Peeps who shop at the Sony Reader Store – email the store and ask why they haven’t picked up the changes!!!  

But I digressed. I tend to do that a lot.  Perhaps it’s a hazard of being a writer.  Or perhaps it’s just me. Anyway, Faerie is free at the Apple iBookstore, it’s free at Barnes & Noble, and on Monday, Amazon (very graciously – thanks a billion, billion to the amazing folks on the Kindle Digital Publishing staff) matched the price.  I’ve been able to see the progress and the reviews on B&N and Amazon, but I can’t see what’s happening at the iBookstore – my current budget doesn’t allow for an i anything. 

The reader reviews have been very positive for Faerie.  There are reviews that aren’t as positive for some of the others. For example, A Sixth Sense of Forever is Boz’s story and it’s very polarizing.  It’s a love it or hate it kind of thing, but that’s okay.  I thought Boz stayed way too level-headed during Niall’s story in Faerie and Colt’s in Golden. Boz was due to have the cover ripped off his cool.  But in a weird way, the one (as I post this, but that could change any second) review up for Sixth Sense mentions the heroine turning into a dominatrix.  I swear I think it’s helped sell the book this week. 

Because the truth  is - all reviews are important.

(more…)

August 6th would  be Lucille Ball’s 100th Birthday, but unfortunately she passed away in 1989.  For an over-the-top writer like me, Lucy’s always been a real inspiration.

Lucy inspired legions of folks, including other celebrities.

“God wanted the world to laugh and He invented you.”

— Sammy Davis Jr., speaking to Lucille Ball at a 1984 tribute in her honor

I’ve described my writing style as similar to ”I Love Lucy” except that the hero is Lucy and the heroine is Desi. 

Happy Birthday, Lucy.  I bet you’re just making ‘em laugh on a bigger stage now.

Hi y’all.  Just popping in to let you know that my book, A Faerie Fated Forever, which has been free for a few days on B&N, Apple, KOBO, and Smashwords, just went FREE at Amazon.  Pick it up for your Kindle by clicking HERE.  

After you check out the view from over the top of love by reading Faerie, I hope you’ll boogle by my author page on Amazon and check out some of my other books.  Two sequels to Faerie are out – A Golden Forever and A Sixth Sense of Forever. (I love both but I have a special place in my heart for Golden.)  Don’t forget to pick up my other historicals, The Duke of Eden and Brotherly Love.   I’ve also got 2 contemporaries – Email Enticement and Griffin’s Law – that take place at the intersection of love and the law.

Happy Reading!!