Thank you, donor

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know who mourns you–a parent, a child, a spouse. I think you’re probably a male, and I know what your blood type is at least. You were healthy when you were alive. You gave three people a second chance at life last night. One of them was my brother, Tom.

I don’t know what made you or your family decide that it would be fine to donate your organs, but I prayed for you and yours this morning, when I got the call that Tom’s liver transplant was done. We don’t know yet if his body will want to accept your generous gift. I pray that the person who needed your heart and the person who needed your lung are doing well.

I wish there was a way I could hug you, and tell you all I want to say. That Tom is the very loving grandfather of three beautiful children. That his community respects him for the work he does with underpriviledged people. That he loves directing local theater, that he’s funny and smart, and a good brother. That he just lost his mom a few months ago. We weren’t ready to lose him, too. You have given us hope, at least bought us time to enjoy his company.

God bless you, donor.

Available today!

“Oh Goddess ” by Gwen Hayes

Read An Excerpt Online
Genre: Paranormal Romance

ISBN: 978-1-60504-367-8
Length: Short Story
Price: 2.50
Publication Date: January 27, 2009
Cover art by Tuesday Dube

Born to protect women’s hearts, her own beats longingly for a mortal. Oops…

Ondina, one thousand years a goddess, doesn’t think much of mortal men. Probably because her sole purpose in life is to protect the hearts of women who don’t want to fall in love. And now one of those blasted men—Jack—has shattered her sacred chalice, trapping her in a mortal body.

Jackson Nichols, on the partner track at his law firm, is the first to admit he always follows his head. Never his heart. Dina is infuriating, messy, condescending, sexy, beautiful and…well, just about everything that doesn’t fit into his meticulously planned life.

Neither expects to find many redeeming qualities in the other. But when push comes to love, which will Dina choose? Her newly human heart…or one thousand years of duty?

*All author and editor proceeds from the sale of Oh Goddess will be donated to the Coalition for Pulmonary Fibrosis. You can find out more about the foundation at www.coalitionforpf.org.

Warning: Recent studies show that consuming beverages while reading this story can cause damage to computer monitors, clothing, and sometimes nearby walls. Reader agrees to hold both Samhain Publishing Ltd. and Gwen Hayes harmless in case of accidental spewing caused by laughter.

Read An Excerpt Online

Ciar Recommends! THE DEVIL INSIDE, Kate Davies

“The Devil Inside” by Kate Davies
Publication Date: January 27, 2009

Maybe it’s living on the East Coast? I never had a cowboy thing. Certainly not a rodeo thing. Aside from clowns, Nascar drivers, or criminals, rodeo stars are on my “least likely to get me to drool” list. So when Kate let me read The Devil Inside before its release, I kinda gulped. Oh noooos…it’s rodeo. Here’s the official blurb, because I’m awful at plot summaries:

Thirteen years after her father was killed in a rodeo accident, Samantha Quincannon is facing her worst nightmare. An EMT, she has avoided rodeo duty like the plague. Now her career depends on her ability to face down her fear. Cody Shaw hasn’t seen Sam since the night of her father’s accident, and their reunion is anything but typical. So is her reaction when a bull ride gone wrong lands him, broke and bleeding, in her reluctant care. And, until he’s well enough to travel, in her bed. He knows he’s far from a model patient, but would it kill Sam not to act like she’d rather climb on a bull herself than have him underfoot?

One thing hasn’t changed—their off-the-charts sexual tension. They both put up a good fight, but soon the heat burns through their resistance.

Even as Sam fights to protect her heart from the one danger she didn’t see coming, something else becomes clear. Rodeo is in Cody’s blood, and nothing, not even Sam, can make him quit taking crazy risks. It’s up to Sam to decide if she’s ready to put on her big-girl boots—and ride.

So I hate rodeo books, but I heart contemporaries! This is the comfort food of romance–and it hit me at just the right moment. The news on the economy is awful, work is stressful, writing is giving me hives, yada yada. The cure? For two nights, Kate Davies. Escapism, for sure, but not brain-dead escapism. Not American Idol escapism. I bought this story and the characters.

In a sense, The Devil Inside is one long scene, drawn out over several days. If you’re a writer, you know that rule about putting the hero and heroine together a lot, from the start. Kate does just that, and it works so well. Sam (the girl) is cooped up in her own apartment with wounded, hunky Cody Shaw–a guy she’s craved for at least thirteen years, no less. And she has to do things like change the poor fellow’s bandages in her own bed.

I mean, come on! That has to be on the top twenty list of fantasies. The guy of your dreams is in your care, he needs you, and you want him. Of course it’s not that simple. There’s some action, which given it’s rodeo stuff was far more interesting than I expected!

Kate is good at the slow burn leading up to white-hot passion. Very good. And her writing is smooth and clear. Her descriptions are great–I really feel as if I know what to expect if I go to a rodeo, or suddenly have to nurse a hunky cowboy back to health ;o)

I did wonder why the rodeo community didn’t rally around Sam and her family when her dad died, but that is answered at the end of the book. And it didn’t strike me as very realistic that a hospital released Cody to Sam’s care…I needed a little more explanation of why that happened.

Despite that moment of needing to just go with the flow (it’s a romance, after all), I adored this book. This is like homemade mac and cheese for the winter-weary soul. Two thumbs up!

Want to win a Kate Davies book? Comment on this post before I post my next review, and you’ll be entered to win one of her backlist ebooks!

No Print Books for Me

Odd, in that I’m preparing for a book signing in Princeton. In that nothing excites me more than getting a box from Samhain with copies of my new release in print. That seeing your book in a bookstore–if you can find a bookstore besides B&N is simply… well, you get all that. And that my previous blog entry is about winning a print book…

I was lugging my groceries around yesterday in those tree-hugging bags–damn, you can pack too much in them. Moose and I stopped in Target for some odds and ends and I walked down the book isle. And the most amazing thing came out of my mouth: Nah, I’ll get it electronically. Huh?

Moose asked if that wasn’t bad for publishing. Well, at Dear Author, there’s a very interesting discussion about epublishing. I have no idea if it’s bad for publishing, and it occurred to me that as a consumer, it’s their job to get it right.

I worked in publishing for about two decades. I know how quickly things can change (like info. you used to sell in print suddenly available free to anyone with a computer). We’re in the middle of so many technology revolutions.

I’m older than the average romance reader, but I fit the other stats pretty nicely. I’ve put “please don’t print this email” on my missives at work. Why would I buy paper when I can be environmentally friendly? Why would I pay twice as much for a book in this economy? Because the “print” books out of New York are better?

Nonsense. Sure, I am not into shapeshifting Hawaiian shark gods–the stuff that some epub companies crank out. Oh, wait, I wrote one of those and it was a great seller and got great reviews.

I’m about to write a review on a book that will be available shortly electronically, and it’s every bit as good as the paper books I’ve bought in the last few years.

So, a belated New Year’s resolution. I have a few old tomes that have been kicking around the family for years. They will stay on my shelf. But I’m done. No print books for me. Unless publishing really screws this one up, as some at Dear Author seem to predict they might. I think it’s just growing pains.

What do you think?

Win a Print Book!

I’m so excited about my forthcoming interview with Cat Johnson (a fellow romance writer who I’ll also be meeting at a signing late in March)! She’s the hostess with the mostess, and I imagine we’ll get silly together when we chat live. Date: Monday, January 26, 9:30 EST. Don’t be late ) I’m going to tell listeners how they can be entered to win a free print copy of any of my books (Mayan Secrets is now in print too!). And ARE also gives coupon codes away during these interviews. Here’s the link if you want to chat or listen in!

Two cool things

We have a new President, and Al finally put a new flag up at his Sunoco station. It’s a good day.

I’m gonna be talking live!

So, for the folks who stop by now and then, please mark your calendars. All Romance Ebooks is going to interview me on their Monday night radio show on January 26! Time: 9:30 EST. Please drop by to hear a truly luxurious, wonderful voice. Yeah. I’ll be there too. Wonder what she’s going to ask about? Uh oh, better look around this blog and see what I’ve said, or erase it all quickly!

Book Fail

Read the review.

Click on that link, whether you like cats or not. I promise, you are not as lame as the people who wrote, edited, photographed, and marketed this title. The blogger is today’s hero.

Sniffing the Past

“Smell is of all senses by far the most evocative: perhaps because we have no vocabulary for it — nothing but a few poverty-stricken approximations to describe the whole vast complexity of odour — and therefore the scent, unnamed and unnamable, remains pure of association; it cannot be called upon again and again, and blunted, bringing with it all the circumstances of its perception. ” — Proust

I would say that coffee and perfume are the two scents that get a nod in romances. We each have a personal memory bank that bonds smells and memories. Mine includes: my mom and Chanel No. 5, my dad and pipe tobacco, things like that. But there are more subtle ones, and those can be very, very strong. Like pines heated by the sun=the days I walked a certain path in Greece, and all the emotions of that point in my life. Gasoline=a terrible car accident when I was sixteen, and the loss of my boyfriend. Even more subtle ones no doubt exist and register all the time, unconsciously. “Why did I just think of that?” Perhaps it was a scent.

We’re often told to use all the senses in our writing, but I think smell is a really tough one to get right. Sure, your character smells coffee. Most of our characters are coffee junkies, because writers are. Can we get a little more sophisticated than that? Do your characters have memories (not necessarily life-altering car crashes) that could flesh them out a bit?

Off to my WIP, to make it stink more. I mean, add a sense.

Who’s Running This Internet Anyway?

Want to get some writing or reading done? I mean, this is your life ticking away… Then what the hell are you doing reading this?
I’ve found lately that some family issues have put the “Oh noooos!” of the Internet Romance Reading Community, or IRRC, waaaay at the bottom of my priority list, and as a result, I’m writing more words per day. I’ve addressed this a few times over the past four years, but I thought January might be a good time (for myself, and you if you happen to be wasting your time here) to recap. In the IRRC, most posts and flame wars can be categorized as the same old topics:
1. What is Ellora’s Cave doing wrong now?
2. What another epublisher is doing wrong now?
3. How dire things are for publishing (serious business, I’m not making fun of that–people are losing their jobs).
4. How epublished authors are victims (or not) of the world. So what if someone still likes print books? They haven’t called you pond scum, no matter how much you’d like to believe it. It’s you doing that to yourself.
5. How writers of m/m or some genre don’t get the x,w,z they deserve.
6. And whatever will happen at the forthcoming conferences.
7. Oh, and something about RWA. Whatever that will be.

If you’re looking for a publisher, you’re going to have to sail through a lot of flotsam and jetsam in the IRRC to stay on course. The best thing you can do, in my humble opinion, is to buy books from publishers who seem to produce books you like. If you like Samhain books, for example, then by all means, write a Samhain author (or twenty) and find out why they love that company. Or Loose ID, where I also had great experiences. If authors are afraid to talk about their publishing company (I mean, more than one), something is probably amiss. If you were job hunting in the real world, thinking of working at ACME Soap Products, you wouldn’t hesitate to ask your friend who works at that company how they like it, right? But you’d take into consideration whether they just got promoted or demoted.

There are only a few types of active folks in the IRRC, and it helps to know the type you’re dealing with:
1. The know it all, who really does know it all, and presents calm, valuable input. I’d site Emily Veinglory as a prime example of this type.
2. The know it all who knows a bit, usually pops in when least expected, and likes to use phrases like “nuff said” to close a topic. Just lay low when you see one of these.
3. The self-effacing know it all (like me), who really doesn’t know much but gives it a shot and sometimes steps in it. Ignore them, they’re pretty harmless.
4. The troll, thriving on controversy, out to slash and burn, looking for a fight. There’s no beating a troll. Just look away.
5. Mrs. Giggles. Do not accept imitators.
6. Nora Roberts. She says what she thinks, and you can think what you want. But you might be wise to listen, because it’s worked for her.

Did I miss a topic or a member type?