Happy New Year!

Time to take down the tree and ring in the New Year.  We'll be celebrating at home this year.  Just the way I like it. A little hot cider by the fire.  May your New Years dreams all come true.

Your resolutions, too!

This year I will have four books on the stands, three new Bravo Royale stories and one fun Montana Maverick tale, all from Harlequin Special Edition.

In April, watch for Rhiannon Bravo-Calabretti's story, HER HIGHNESS AND THE BODYGUARD.

I have back cover copy for that one:

CALABRETTIS MARRY FOR DUTY-BUT BRAVO-CALABRETTIS MARRY FOR LOVE 

Marcus is the best man Rhia's ever known, and she's never gotten over their breakup. Now, he's practically strapped to her side. It's like a dream come true...or a nightmare. Because Marcus is as stubborn as ever: she's a Bravo-Calabretti, he's a lowly security guard, and they can never be equals. Ever.  

Then a breathless night that should have brought closure brings something else: a baby. Marcus insists that no child of his will grow up without its own mother and father. Well, Rhia has her own requirement: her child will be raised on love, not the dry bread of obligation. And Marcus has made it abundantly clear that his duty to Montedoro comes before everything-especially his own desires.

                                                                                                                       ***

Then, in July, the launch of an all-new Montana Mavericks series with STRANDED WITH THE MAVERICK.  And finally, in November and December, two more Bravo Royale books: HOW TO MARRY A PRINCESS and HOLIDAY ROYALE. 

HER HIGHNESS AND THE BODYGUARD  and STRANDED WITH THE MAVERICK are already written.  I'll be starting on HOW TO MARRY A PRINCESS the day after New Years.  Can't wait.

Here's to much success for everyone in 2012!

Camillias!

Oh, I am so proud of my camellias.  Not a lot of blooms yet, but still!  And I got three plants last year, all with pink blossoms.  Should have gotten a few different colors.  Ah,well.  I love them anyway!

 

Snowy March Day! And thoughts on plotting.

So I put up a new green, lush forest background for this blog.  And then yesterday?  Snow.  Yep.  In March.  It was kinda pretty, though.

Played back the first of my two taped plotting sessions from Plot Group.  Always interesting what great ideas I get from the group.  And then the way I see the story moving after I've played the tape back.  usually, we plot the heroes a little harsh.  I find more and more I like to dial them back a bit.  Make them more sympathetic.

Well, sometimes.  LOL  In this story--working title: Her Highness and the Bodyguard--the hero, Marcus and the heroine, Rhiannon (yes, a princess) have history.  We plotted it so that Rhia loved Marcus madly in the past and he walked away for duty's sake.  I think I'm going to say they BOTH walked away.  That she had things she wanted to do and marrying at the age of 18 (when they first hooked up) wasn't one of them.  But then they get trapped in a car in a Montana snowstorm.  What do you know?  Nature takes its course...  Mwahaha.

Montana?  you might be wondering.  A princess and her bodyguard in Montana?  Well, see, in the previous story (The manuscript of which I will be starting next week), the heroine, Belle, went to Montana to honor a friend's dying wish.  There she met horse rancher Preston McCade and...

Wait. You don't need to read all that.  Not now.  Later.  Like in December, when Belle's book will be on the stands.

It is a bit odd, talking about books that aren't even written yet.  Odd, but wonderful.  At least to me...

Help! Everything's Changing--and Not in a Good Way!

First off, I do have some good news:  I did get that proposal finished--the one I mentioned in my last post?  I not only got it finished.  The lovely editor on the project has already approved it.  I even started the book that will grow out of that proposal.

Started.  That's the operative word.  Because I can't seen to get all that far along, and the reason is that this book is part of what we call in the romance biz, a continuity.  A continuity book is one where the publishing house provides what we call a "bible."  That's the basic info about what the story will be like and who the characters are.  The author then takes the basic info and makes her own story from it.  A continuity is always a series of books.  As a rule, each of these books in the series is written by a different author.

Issue here: basic info.  It keeps changing.  There are many really good reasons that it does, because my hero is the brother of two other heroes from other books written in 2009 by two other authors.  Those authors changed their "bible" to make better stories.  They even agreed together on the changes they would make.  And then, as so often happens in life, agreements were either forgotten or math errors were made as to ages of characters and what happened when.  All this, I must tell you, was done in good faith by everyone.

Then we add in the fact that we're kind of pushing it scheduling-wise on this particular branch of the continuity.  The books are very successful and the publisher wants more so we're going ahead with another six books by another six authors before the past six books are all on the stands.  This creates no end of trouble for the editor writing the new "bible" and also for the first book in the new series--written by moi.

All that to say, the new "bible" is not ready yet, though my book is due way too soon.  I have trouble writing my book without stats and backstories to agree on.  I'm just funny that way.

Yes, I realize that this is my opportunity to relax and go with the flow instead of being such an anal control freak.  And I am relaxing.  I am.  I really, really, am...

What's that screaming sound? Do you hear screaming....??!!

Displacement Activities

I LOVE to fool around.  As in whiling away the hours when I should be...oh, you know.  Working?

Today, instead of finishing my proposal, I...

Did my workout (I know I'm into serious work avoidance when I would rather exercise than work.)

Called England to beg a lovely woman who edits Harlequin Historicals to judge the final round of my OKRWA chapter's Finally a Bride contest.  She said yes.  As I mentioned, she was lovely.

Watched a tree trimmer and his crew trim the big oak in my front yard.  It looks fabulous, that tree.

Tried a new recipe for cooking skinless, boneless chicken breasts prior to trying a new recipe for chicken chilaquiles, which is a chicken, salsa verde and corn tortilla casserole.

Wrote many emails.

Posted here.  Fooled around on facebook.

Worked on my schedule for updating my website and turning in content for my e-newsletters for the next year and a half.

Considered learning how to play solitaire.  I feel I won't truly excel at displacement activities until I learn to play a few computer and online games.

Looked on Amazon to see if any new covers have come up for books I wrote.  Sometimes the foreign edition covers really amuse me.  Like this one...

Because the heroine is blond in the book and maybe two months pregnant at the end of the book.  And, well, it's a Christmas book.  Not so much as a festive swag in evidence here.  I do like a happy pregnant woman, however, and the woman here certainly appears to be beyond ecstatic.  And don't get me wrong.  I love that I get a lot of foreign editions and am grateful for every single one!

Okay, back to work.  Really.  Seriously....




 

Book Done. And Now I'm on to...

...figuring out the next series of Bravo books.  Not going to write anything about that here, yet.  I want to have a better idea what I'm doing first.  Now, it's like shooting alligators in a swamp.  Blindfolded.  Help!

Also, I just agreed  to launch another six-book Montana Mavericks series.  It will be a continuation of the Thunder Canyon Montana Mavericks.  My book will be out in July of 2011.  So I will be writing that book very soon...

Right after plot group in Las Vegas, which is coming up starting Saturday, August 21st.

Yep.  The days are just packed!

Summer heat, frizzy hair....

We got it! The summer heat,I mean. Seriously.

Yeah, it's only in the nineties. But the heat and UV index is high. Translation: feels hotter than it is. And it's sticky. I go outside and my hair is instantly a mass of fuzzy bedheadedness. The DH loves my hair this way. Cracks me up. I think he likes it when I look like I spend so much time in bed, I don't have the energy to comb my hair when I get up.

I so wish! My life is just too busy to spend it all in bed. And with all the products and devices I use on my hair, well, it so shouldn't frizz like this.

But I remember the up side. The loving smile on the DH's face because I just look so sexy with my hair in a frizzy mass around my face.

And speaking of bedhead, Zac Ephron has a tip for totally sex bedhead hair:
"I’ve never told anyone this before. This is a hair scoop. Shower before you go to bed, and then sleep on your wet hair. Towel-dry it. In the morning, it’s all messed up naturally. If you have that messed-up thing going when you wake up, it’s more willing to stay that way."

Here's Zac fixing his hair:


WTG, Zac!

So how's the weather where you are?

The Annual Tree Photo...

So every year, after I put up the tree, I try to get a nice picture of it. The pictures are never as good as it actually looks.

Honest!

But this year, I tried again...

These three are...no flash, slow flash and full flash. I think I like the slow flash best.

And yet, somehow the fabulousness of my tree is not quite captured. Could it be the fabulousness is all in my head? If so, I have to tell you, wish you could see what I see.

List-o-Maniac--and proud of it

Did you ever see that old movie, MY DINNER WITH ANDRE? In it, two artsy types share a meal. That's what the movie is--the whole movie: a dinner with Andre. Andre, tall, skinny and intense, talks about how hopeless life is, how there's nothing to look forward to.

The other guy--plump and goodnatured--Wally, I think was his name, argued that he got a certain everyday satisfaction from making lists and doing the tasks on the list and then checking the tasks off the list.

I'm so Wally. I keep a clipboad on my desk. It holds a stack of lined sheets of paper. I love to fill a lined sheet with "things to do." You know...

--Renew Drivers License
--Wash towels
--update website
--shred
--organize book closet
--file
--J&M info 2 M&D
--wash windows


I love crossing out the tasks when I accomplish them. I cross out with yellow hilighter. A life coach I once had years ago called that "giving yourself the sunshine." Corny? Oh yes! Satisfying? Even more so.

While I was writing the most recent book, the list kept getting longer and longer. But last week, I finished that book and sent it off to my publisher. I've been giving myself the sunshine ever since. My list could almost be all sunshined up.

But then, there's always something more to add. Plus, I hate washing windows. I'm avoiding that one. Even getting the sunshine isn't enough to tempt me to get to work with my rags and Windex. Thus, my list is forever incomplete. I rather like that.

Do you make lists? Do you find them satisfying...?

I Love Me a Little Dirty Santa...

The game, I mean.

We play it every year at the Christmas party put on at the local country club by the DH's real estate firm. The DH thinks it's dumb. He's always with the, "Why can't we just go and eat, drink and be merry like grownups."

And to that I say, "Bah, humbug! I want my Dirty Santa."

Of course, every year he somehow ends up choosing the gift we will contribute to the game. How does that happen? Wish I knew. This year we brought a couple of interesting drink mixers--both for "tinis," one for crantinis one for chocolate. All attractively packaged with this cool stainless steel shot glass thingy and snowflake-adorned stir sticks. The winner of that one gets to provide her own liqour. I say "her" because a woman won it. The room was dark, lit with candles and little white Christmas lights. Even through the candlelit shadows, I could see she was pleased with it. When the MC of the game tried to get her to hold it up so everyone could get a good look and be ready to steal it, she put it to her chest and said, "Oh, it's just some drink mixers." Clever girl. She went home with it, unchallenged. Personally, I wouldn't want a pair of sweet mixers--not even with the snowflake stirsticks and stainless shot glass thrown in. But the DH said his colleagues love sweet drinks, so that's what we brought.

The rules, in case you're totally lost at this point: Bring a wrapped gift that cost you under fifteen bucks. Yeah, most go over a little. Some don't. Either's okay with me. It's the bright wrapping and the stealing other peoples stuff that draws me to this game. I was probably a small furry creature who stole shiny objects my last life...

Back to the Rules... You draw numbers for your turn. If someone before you opens a gift you admire, you get to steal it. But. No gift can be stolen more than three times. If yours is stolen, you go back to the tree and choose another wrapped gift. Every year everyone argues over how the rules have changed. I don't know. I personally think they stay the same but what's a Dirty Santa game without griping over the rules? This year I wanted the small bottle of Bailey's Irish Creme that came up early. So I stole it. Then someone stole it from me. I forget who ended up with it. But I got a scent burner thingy. You put squares of scented wax in it, plug it in and you have candle scent wafting on the air. Hmm. Maybe not for me...

So I let the DH trade it for a book by the political commentator, George Will. I mean, hello. The DH is a total left-winger and George Will is a conservative. But the MC, also a left-winger, looked so crushed, he just had to come to her rescue. I don't really mind. He's a hero, what can I say? And if I want scented wax wafting around my head, I'll light a candle.

So that's it. Another year's worth of Dirty Santa, another evening of fun!

Know any great holiday games? I have a few more parties to attend...

The Tree

We put it up last weekend--which I guess I mentioned in my last post. Every year, I try to get a good picture. Never satisfied. Here are this year's...
I don't know why it always looks better "in person" than in any of the pictures I take.
And yet, I keep trying...
And trying...
and trying...

Yes, It's Me...

Again. At last.

I know, I know. I haven't been around here much. But I have been blogging regularly--first and fourth Tuesdays of every month--over at the Special Edition Authors blog on the eHarlequin site. Click the link to the blog on the right of the page if you want to drop in there and see what I've been yakking about.

Hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. I did. I put on two pounds just to prove it. ;) I cooked, too. A lot. The pies, the turkey, the creamed onions, and on and on... it was fun and very satisfying. Both the cooking and the eating.

Saturday, we did the tree and the house decorating for the holidays. Even got a nice dusting of snow last night. I feel so festive! If only my pants weren't so tight...

Now, it's back to work after the long, lazy holiday weekend. I'm getting my filing and other stuff in order to day and then digging into my latest proposal starting tomorrow.

How about you? Did you have a great Thanksgiving...?