Matt, my husband, has been working in Russia for the last two weeks, and he’s finally coming home today!!! Several of my friends have husbands that go away for up to a month at a time, so I know I’m really lucky – two weeks isn’t all that long. But, it is the longest we’ve been apart since college, and I can’t wait to see him!!!
On Halloween, I friend and I decided to visit some local graveyards to see if we could photograph any orbs that might be hanging around. Halloween, or Samhain, is the time of the year when the veil separating the dead and the undead (seen and unseen, the various planes – however you want to look at it) is the thinnest. I’m here to say, it was pretty thin last weekend. Look what we found!
The pictures were taken at St. Mary’s in New Salem, MI, Visitation in North Dorr, MI, St. Sebastian’s in Bryon Center, MI and at an abdondoned, one room schoolhouse, also in Bryon Center, MI. This is the school where my Dad and my uncles attended first through eighth grade many, many years ago.
You may want to click on the pictures to enlarge them so you can see all of the orb-y goodness. There are no orbs that I can find in the last picture, I just thought it looked kinda cool…and also really creepy!
I have to tell you about my very dear friend, Margaret. We’ve known each other forever…seriously…since we were fifteen or sixteen. I’m so excited for her. She recently won the Ann Arbor Book Festival’s Short Story Contest!!!! YAY MARGARET!!!! Here’s a link to her wonderful, winning story, Entertaining Guests. If you get a chance, I hope you’ll pop over and read it. It’s great!!!
In other news, Valerie, from Manic Readers 20 Questions Blog, interviewed me! It’s here. If you get a chance, we’d love it if you came over and left a comment!
Well, my first menage releases today from Resplendence Publishing and I’m pretty excited – and of course, a little nervous!
After the blurb and excerpt, I’ve posted what Gideon and Jude look like in my head. š
When a bounty claim becomes a fight of five against one, Jude Caulfield and Gideon Wells step in to help hunter, Wrenn Saunders, before sheās mortally injured. Wrenn soon learns that three is a good number whether in a fight or in the bedroom. Especially in the bedroomāand thatās just where Jude and Gideon want to keep her.
She might be fooling some of the regulars at the Jack Pine tavern, but she sure as shit wasnāt fooling him. Gideon Wells eyed the blonde as she nursed her drink like a broken heart. Her depressed demeanor was Oscar-worthy, but this girl was hunting. Heād bet his right ball her prey would walk through the door any minute.
He leaned back in his chair and observed her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Short, honey-blonde hair framed her face, stopping just past her chin. She had pale, almost translucent skin that reminded him of an angelās or a vampireāsābut he knew she was neither. His gaze rose to her full lips. God damn if she didnāt have a mouth made for sin. His cock stirred behind the fly of his jeans, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
He watched her scan the room in the mirror, stopping when she met his gaze. Huge eyes the color of melted dark-chocolate glared at him, and he couldnāt help but smile. She was a bounty hunter. Heād never seen her, but heād heard plenty about her over the last three years. While most members of the shifter community might not be best buddies, they kept each other apprised of shared dangersālike bounty hunters with hard-ons for feline shape shifters.
Her short, snug skirt rode up her legs, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of her thighs. It was impossible not to imagine how the creamy flesh would taste as he lapped at her. As if she knew his thoughts, her frown deepened and she looked away. He took that opportunity to continue his perusal of her gentle curves, following the delicately muscled line of her leg downward. Her feet were encased in impossibly high heels and thin bands of leather wrapped around her ankles. The sharp contrast of the black leather against her porcelain skin hardened his cock further as he imagined her bound to his bed, wide leather cuffs securing her hands and ankles, her body open and weeping for him.
Her foot tapped in an agitated rhythm against the metal rung of the bar stool and he dragged his attention upward. Her full lips were pursed in annoyance as she stared at him. Raising his bottle, he saluted her, barely stifling a laugh when she flipped him off.
The door of the bar swung open and her eyes darted almost imperceptibly toward the doorway. He followed her gaze and nearly groaned aloud as he saw his best friend zero in on the woman at the bar. This wouldnāt end well.
With an easy grin, Jude Caulfield approached the blonde and leaned on the bar while he ordered a beer. His smile faded as he crossed the room and sank into an empty chair next to Gideon. After a nearly draining the bottle, he set it on the table and sighed.
āThe Montgomery build is on hold and Iām laid off indefinitely, the barās out of Killianās Red, and I just got shot down by the hottest woman Iāve seen in months.ā
Gideon grinned. āSo youāre writing country songs now?ā
āFuck you.ā Jude nodded toward the bar. āWho is she?ā
āIf Iām not mistaken, thatās Wrenn Saunders.ā
āThe bounty hunter?ā
Before Gideon could respond, a triangle of dull light slid across the floor as the door opened, and Spencer Dane entered. Besides being a werelion and an all around dick, he was also the head of the local lion pride. While Spencer might masquerade as a reputable businessman, he was nothing more than a drug dealer using his import company as a front and the members of his pride to distribute his product. The tiny hairs stood up on the back of Gideonās neck and the need to shift burned through his veins. It was more than cats not playing nicely with those outside their own genus. He hated this guy.
āEasy there,ā Jude murmured. āThe last thing I need today is for you to go panther on him. I canāt afford to bail your ass out of jail.ā
Nodding, Gideon took another swig of beer, attempting to swallow his dislike with the cool liquid and watched as the creep made his way toward the blonde at the bar. His beast rose in his chest at the sight of Spencerās hand stroking her forearm, his meaty paws caressing her bare skin.
Gideonās fingers clenched around his bottle as she leaned toward Spencer, giving him a clear view of her ample cleavage. Forcing his grip to relax, he drained the last of his beer. What did it matter that she was flirting with a lowlife like Spencer? Gideon would love to think that she was in the Jack Pine to haul the bastard in, but so far, the other man had managed to keep his illegal dealings unproven, letting his pride members take the fall for him.
The bounty hunter swiveled on her stool. Buttons near to popping, her tight blouse left very little to the imagination, including the hint of black lace that cupped the full mounds of her breasts.
āHoly Mother of God,ā Jude breathed.
āYeah.ā It was the only word he could choke out.
Equally enamored, Spencer laid his hand on her bare thigh as she giggled, peering at him through her lashes. In a move so fast, it must have taken years of practice, she pulled a pair of handcuffs from her waistband and snapped one of the bracelets around his wrist.
Spencer stared at his hand, dumfounded. āWhat the fuck?ā
Hopping off the bar stool, she dragged his hand behind his back as she shoved his torso toward the bar top and wrestled the cuff around his other wrist.
āYouāre under arrest, asshole,ā she said.
āI think Iām in love,ā Jude breathed.
Spencer pushed himself back to an upright position. Straining his muscles, he fought against the restraints. āYouāve got nothing on me, bitch.ā
She grabbed the cuffs and pulled them upward, twisting his arms in his sockets. āDonāt botherātheyāre silver. And actually, I do. Thereās a bench warrant from a judge in Detroit for your arrest. Youāre more than two years behind on child support.ā
āThatās bullshit.ā
āThatās life.ā
āLook, I can triple whatever your bounty is. Just unlock the cuffs and the moneyās yours.ā
With her free hand, she removed a colt from her purse and pressed the muzzle into his back. āIāve got a full cylinder. The rounds arenāt silver, so youāll heal, but I can make sure it hurts like hell before you do.ā
āYep,ā Jude nodded. āDefinitely in love.ā
āWhore,ā Spencer growled.
āHelplessness is a bitch, huh?ā Keeping a tight grip on the chain connecting the cuffs and the gun pressed against his spine, she shoved him toward the door.
Meet Jude and Gideon.
(Okay…in real life, they’re really Jensen Ackles and Keith Hamilton Cobb…but in my head, this is who I see when I think of these two.)
So I found out that my kid rickrolled the school cafeteria for two entire lunch periods the other day.
If you’re not familiar with the term rickroll, it’s when someone sends you a link and you click on it, but instead of being taken to where you thought you were going, you end up here, with the 80s song, Never Gonna Give You Up, by Rick Astley, stuck in your head for days. It also means ambushing unsuspecting people with this song. Killian does this to me all the time while I’m driving. He sneaks the earbud of his mp3 player into my ear and plays songs that I hate, because it amuses him.
Okay, back to Killian and his friend Justin. The high school just installed one of those digital jukeboxes in the lunch room, which seems like an exercise in excess to me, but whatever. Justin decided to play some All That Remains, but before he could punch it in, Killian entered Never Gonna Give You Up.
Then they got an idea. An awful idea. The boys got a wonderfully awful idea.
They pooled their money (more than five bucks) and cued up the song over and over and over. Apparently songs cost fifty cents on this jukebox. However, if you put in seventy-five cents per song, that song supersedes any other song played. So of course, that’s what they did.
The first time the song played, they got some weird looks. The second time it played, there were outright glares and a lot of WTFs. The third time it played, people were shoving quarter after quarter into the machine to no avail. That song played seven times and they managed to rickroll about 66% of the 4000+ students and staff.
I laughed so hard when they told me what they did. I never would have had the guts to do that in high school, but I love that they do. I’m not sure what it is, but my kids never worry about what people are going to think or if they’re going to be judged when they’re being silly or dorky. They just are who they are. I was talking to a friend about that the other day. Her kids are the same way. They just have so much more self confidence than we ever did at that age. I really admire that about them.
Sigh…after writing this post, I have that damn song stuck in my head. I blame Killian and Justin.
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love the crisp autumn weather, the changing leaves, the flickering jack-o-lanterns, but most of all I love the costumes. Thereās something magical about dressing up and transforming into someone or something else.
Despite failing Home Ec (I refused to sew trace all of the pattern markings on my fabric and genuinely failed the cooking portion) Iāve pretty much sewn all my life. I love that you can take a hunk of fabric and actually have something wearable at the end of the day. Itās that whole transformational process at work.
During high school and college, I got involved in theatre. I made a lot of the costumes I wore on stage and made even more for other people when I worked in the costume shop of my universityās theatre ā there were the Elizabethan period pieces, the murdered bride, the holocaust survivors, a swamp monster, lepers…and I canāt even remember what else.
After college, I parlayed my sewing skills into a businessāmaking wedding dresses, veils, bridesmaid dresses and flower girl dresses. Then I had kids. Thereās nothing more insanity inducing than trying to keep your toddler from crawling under the skirts of near strangers while youāre trying to adjust the fit of their dresses. After a while, I
ditched the dress business and went back to my first love ā making costumes.
Over the years, my kids, my nieces and daycare kids have been a fruit bat, dragons, knights, princesses, an Egyptian goddess, a vampire princess, an anamie character, a Jawa, a Stormtrooper, pirates, Harry Potter, ninjas, a 1920s era baseball player, a Ring Wraith, a blacksmith and a kitten.
All of these – with the exception of Jenās wedding dress – were made without patterns. Despite my epic inability to do math, I have a pretty good sense of spatial relations ā at least in terms of fabric yardage and the shape of pattern pieces. I can usually use a picture for reference and come up with a reasonable facsimile.
Unfortunately, I didnāt have a digital camera for most of these costumes, but I can show you some of the more recent ones, along with the last wedding dress I made.
I’d like to introduce brand new author, Kris Norris! Her first ever release, Sacred Talisman, is out today from TEB. I have to tell you, I had the privilege of reading an early copy, and it’s fantastic!
So please take a few moments to meet Kris and maybe leave her a note. š
1.How did your writing path evolve?
To be honest, I never really thought much of it when I was younger. The first I ever thought about writing was when a high school teacher asked me if Iād enter a short story Iād written for her class into a competition. Then I went on to delve into other lines of work until I was pregnant with my first child. Having some time, I decided to finally put to words a story that had been rattling around in my head for what seemed like eternity. I realize now that those voices were not approaching insanity but merely characters begging to have their story told. I took forever to actually finish the book (which will be published by Resplendence late next year) and then I never really put it out there. Instead, I wrote a couple more, finally submitting my work to a few different companies. I was fortunate to come across the best editor ever at TEB who gave me a chance to turn a dream into a reality.
2.What type of research do you do for your books?
For books where I donāt have any personal background, I usually turn to the Internet for photos and information. For example, for Sacred Talisman, I searched a number of vampire sites to see if the views of vampires had changed. With so many beliefs, from the classics of Bram Stokers to the new Twilight, I wanted to get a sense of the different genres of vampires. But as youāll see, I chose to stick to the more traditional viewāI just love the vampires of old.
3.From what or where do you derive the most inspiration for your stories?
I tend to draw on some sort of personal experience for my stories, though, no, I havenāt bumped into any vampires in a dark alley lately. But for my next book, Deadly Vision, I used my time as a 911 operator as the basis for Fallonās character and my love of mountain biking as her passion. I enjoy putting a bit of my experiences into my characters. Then, of course, there are those stories which just worm their way into your head without any warning or previous knowledge.
4.Tell us about your upcoming releases?
Oh, I couldnāt be more excited. My first ever book is out today. Sacred Talisman is a vampire story and is part of TEBās Voracious Vamps series. Itās also the first book in my own vampire series entitled, Dark Prophecy. I quite love Rafe and his unique situation of being a vampire with not only a mission, but a conscience.
I also have another book coming out with TEB on November 9th called Deadly Vision. Itās a full-length paranormal thriller thatās the first book in my stalker series, āTil Death. Thrillers are my true passion and youāll find nearly all of my books have a suspense element in them, even if thatās not the primary genre.
I have two other books due out in December. Another with TEB, Centrefold, which is part of the Christmas Crackers Collection and Checkmate, a sensual thriller, which will be my first book published with Resplendence Publishing.
5.What are you working on at the moment?
Gee, Iāve got so many series going I should be working on several books all at once. But right now Iām concentrating my efforts on the second book in the Dark Prophecy series and my second book in my fantasy series, Enchanted Lovers. Iām also working hard to finish my first futuristic book, which is a new area for me and Iām excited to see where it takes me.
6.What do you like best about being a writer? What do you like least?
I love being able to become different people all the time. Having these characters in your head that jump out onto the computer and take a life all their own. I also love that my morning commute is a pretty cushy ride.
My least favourite aspect is fighting with my characters to get them to do what I want them to do. I know it sounds strange, but sometimes they just donāt play nice. Writing the same scene over and over isnāt very productive or good for the soul. There are lots of times you ask yourself why you do thisā¦ but itās just a part of who you are.
7.What would you do if you werenāt a writer?
Iāve spent plenty of time being other professions over the years. I already mentioned my time as a 911 operator. But I think the job I enjoyed most before kids and writing took over my life, was being a commercial helicopter pilot. Bet you didnāt know I could fly those things. It often comes as a surprise to most people. It was an exciting part of my life and while I miss it, I have to say, I love writing even more. (Oh, and did I mention one of my characters in a future book with Resplendence is a helicopter pilot? Looks like I get to have the best of both worlds.)
8.What do you enjoy doing when youāre not writing?
I love running and mountain bike riding. I live in a fabulous part of Vancouver Island and have endless trails at my disposal. Thereās nothing quite like running or riding amidst old growth forests.
I also love going to movies and just hanging with the kids. Hockey games and art classes take up a lot of spare time.
9.Of all of the characters youāve created, who is your favourite and why?
While all my characters have a special place, my favourite hero is Gage Matthews. Youāll meet him in my second āTil Death book, Deadly Obsession, due out next April. Iām not sure what it is, exactly, about him that makes me swoon. I think itās his vulnerability that only Brooklyn sees that touches my heart. Heās a dominant, action-oriented man, but his devotion to the woman he loves is every girlās dream.
10.Do you find it difficult to keep love/sex scenes fresh and interesting?
Sex, not interesting or new? Actually, yes, this is much harder than most people would think. After all, thereās only so many ways all the parts fit together. And when your book has a number of sex scenes, it can be challenging to keep the encounters exciting. I think the best remedy is to make it more about the emotional journey of the lovers and not just about the physical act. If your characters have a vested interest in the sex, beyond the obvious physical pleasure, it helps to keep the scenes from blending into each other.
11.What makes a man sexy?
Oh, I love this one. For me, sexy isnāt just how a guy looks. As a matter of fact itās so much more. To me, sexy is the deep timbre of a manās voiceā¦ the tilt of his lips when he smilesā¦ the brooding look in his eyes. Iām more apt to say a man is handsome than sexy, because sexy is the whole packageā¦ a walking wet dream.
12.Whatās your favourite food?
Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Okay, I love strawberries too, especially when theyāre dipped in chocolate.
13.Do you have any pet peeves?
OMG. How many pages do you have? People who drive twenty kilometers under the speed limit. I mean, really. Doesnāt your car have an accelerator in it! They put that number up there for a reason. And it really is more of a guideline.
People who take up two parking spots at the grocery car. Come on, folks. Your SUV isnāt that much better than mine.
The insane price of popcorn and soda at the movies. What is with that? I can make a whole bag of popcorn for three dollars and buy an entire case of pop for four!
I’d like to go on record as saying I hate the swine flu. My boys have been sick since Sunday. Last night, just when I thought they were well enough to go back to school today, I checked their temps and they were back up to 102.
In other less plague-y news, the lovely Tina Holland interviewed me. It’s posted on her blog today. Stop by and say hi! š
I have to say, I had an absolute blast at RomantiCon. There’s something rejuvenating about hanging out with authors and readers…even though we kept ridiculous hours. Rooming with Kelly Kirch and Suzanne Graham was wild to say the least, but also a ton of fun.
I also finally got to meet Regina Carlysle, Tessie Bradford, Barbara Huffert, Koko Brown and Cheryl Dragon – five of the most awesome women on the planet. And I hung out with the amazing Desiree Holt, Anny Cook, Cindy Spencer Pape, M.A. Ellis, Tilly Greene, Isabelle Drake and of course, Kaenar Langford.
I also had my very first book signing. It was a little hairy for a while. My books didn’t make it over from the warehouse with everyone else’s, but the staff sent someone back there so I had them about an hour before the signing ended which was wonderful. I was so bummed when it looked like the signing wasn’t going to happen, but EC came through! And…they all sold out in that last hour. It was so cool! However, I forgot to keep out a copy for myself…because I’m just that clever. But I should be getting my author copies soon.
I’ve been so crazy-busy, I don’t think I’ve even posted the cover for the print book. Magic’s Embrace has all three Torrid Tarot stories in it – I Put a Spell on You, Ronan’s Grail and Mystic Circle. When my author copies arrive, I’ll be running a contest to give away a copy, so check back for details.
Okay, back to work. I’m so far behind, it’s not even funny.
I’m running around like a psycho in need of sedation trying to get ready for RomantiCon…and I still have a ridiculous amount to do. I promise to take lots of pictures while I’m there and post them next week.