I’m now working on Doubleblind. That’s the third Jax book. I’m asked via email whether I intend to write more short stories for the website. Yes, I do!

You can expect a short story about Vel (in his POV) in the spring of 2009. People have been really excited about that, which surprises me. I’m just amazed how much people love Vel. Which leads me to the next question. Does Wanderlust have more Vel? Yes, it does. And he’ll play an even bigger role in Doubleblind.

Last week, I turned in Hell Fire, which is nicely polished. That’s the second Corine Solomon book. Blue Diablo is now up for order on Amazon, which I’m excited about. I’m told we’ll have cover art for it sometime in August, so that’s something to look forward to as well.

I managed to take a few days off, the end of last week and this weekend, although it was full of end-of-school social stuff, kid concerts, and parties we were obligated to attend. You’d think all of that would be fun, but it’s hard for me to enjoy myself when I have a book I need to write breathing down my neck. It would be simpler if I could just hibernate from my family too until the job is done, but they don’t look kindly on that for some reason. Go figure. *g*

This week, I’ll be little seen on the internet, as I’m trying to get some solid word count before I take off for Acapulco on Thursday. So that’s what’s been going on with me. What’s your news?

Twelve years or so ago, I met the man I would marry. The reason I’m thinking about that?

Today is our wedding anniversary. We have a date planned this evening, so after I write this entry I’m going to skedaddle to try and make myself pretty. But first… I feel like reminiscing.

We hadn’t known each other that long when he told me, “Within two years, I’m going to marry you.”

To which I said, “Schyeah, right.”

Imagine his immense satisfaction when we were standing before the minister in Vegas within the time frame he’d specified. At the time, I had a bad dye job, and I’d gotten my hair cut off in a fit of pique. In the old days, when I was upset, I ran off to the salon and got a terrible haircut. Now, I don’t even remember why I got the cut. I’ve since learned to curb that awful impulse, but back then, my hair was short and orange-blond. In my wedding picture, no less. Why’d he marry me when I looked like such a fright?

He loved me.

Marriage has so many cycles. There are highs and lows, points where you seem to fight every weekend, and periods where you don’t talk at all. Sometimes you wonder what made you choose to hook yourself to a crazy person for the rest of your lives. Sometimes you think, “Oh my god, I will never have sex with anyone else, ever.” The longer you’re married, the less this happens, I think. Or at least, that’s been the case for me.

Sometimes I curl up at night and admire the way his hair curls against his neck, the way he smells fresh from the shower, and the way he knows how to exert exactly the right amount of pressure when he’s running his fingers down my back right before I fall asleep. Sometimes I’m happy to realize I’ll never to have look for a date for a function, never have to go through an awkward breakup again. I take comfort in the way he knows what to get me from Starbucks on Sunday morning without even asking (White Mocha Frappuccino and a blueberry muffin).

And sometimes when we’re out to dinner with the whole family, I see the way his eyes return to me even when I’m not talking. It’s the hand he puts over mine, the arm he wraps around my shoulders, like he wants people to know I belong to him. The magic of building a life together is looking forward to stolen kisses and laughing when the kids go “ew” when they catch us. It’s him coming into the kitchen a little too late and asking, “Can I do anything to help?” Then we both laugh because his timing is impeccable.

I know he wants very much to make me happy, but sometimes he doesn’t know how. And I don’t always make it easy because I must regretfully admit to being one of those women. I don’t want to tell him what’s wrong with me, why I’m sad, or what I need to fix it. When I’m upset, I think, entirely irrationally, that “if he loved me, he’d know.” Which I know is wrong, and I’m working on that. I will also confess that on occasion, I’ve actually said, “You know what you did” when he expresses confusion as to why he’s in trouble. I’m working on that too.

There have been successes and failures between us, but we’re still together. I’m pleased with where we are. And I’m really, really proud of him. Some of you may not know this, but our family runs a pharmaceutical company here in Mexico. Here is their mission:

“To make the best quality medicines at affordable prices for the entire population”

They want to make health care accessible. To that end, they’ve instituted a program with their pharmacy franchise, where they keep a doctor on staff. He sees patients for a nominal fee (20 pesos, which is less than $2). Bruluart basically eats the doctors salary, and then the patients can purchase their required medicines from the pharmacy on site.

My husband is part of that. They manufacture medicines for the government for clinics and hospitals. He’s helping to make the world a better place. So when he tells me that his day was boring and he doesn’t have any glamorous news to report, I tell him I’m proud of him. See, he’s helping the sick and making health care accessible to the impoverished whereas I just write stories.

Happy anniversary, Andres.

We’ve finally entered rainy season here. In honor of it, I’ll share a poem by my favorite poet, Sara Teasdale. Her work is well worth reading — her passionate intensity astonishes me.

Spring Rain

by Sara Teasdale

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.

The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light’s stain.

With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say. . . .

I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.

Doesn’t that give you shivers? It’s a perfect representation of the way the weather can carry you back in time to a certain moment. While I love the sunshine, I’ve found myself missing the rain. There’s nothing like the hint of it in the cooling breeze, knowing you need to be indoors by afternoon or you’ll get caught out. Like clockwork, the sky opens up and a curtain of water falls by four p.m. I love the way it smells, the way it softens the cityscape, and gives everything a different look. The streets empty out, everyone taking shelter to watch the display.

Thunder crackles and lightning booms. Sometimes the lights flicker, which is why my husband got me battery backup last year for our anniversary. It’s more romantic than it sounds; he’d noticed my frustration at losing work when the power went out. Now I don’t need to fear the storm. I can just enjoy it. I love seeing how one day of rain perks all the plants up, greening up the city.

Rain, to me, feels like a holiday, as if I should curl up before the window and watch the glorious display. I love the rushing sound of water trickling from eaves to pavement, the delicate tapping on the roof. It makes me want to slow down, snuggle up in my favorite blue fuzzy blanket, and light some candles.

What’s your favorite thing to do when it rains?

If you didn’t know, I finished the second Corine Solomon book last week. Since then, I’ve been relaxing. What kinds of things have I done?

Well, I read an ARC of Eve Kenin’s Hidden. It’s so fabulous! What a follow-up to Driven. I’m hoping there will be more books set in this world because I am completely hooked. Now I’m about partway through an ARC of His Wicked Sins, my first foray into her Eve Silver titles. It’s gothic and atmospheric so far, and I’m digging it.

I’ve watched Futurama, hung out with my family, and played Mass Effect on Xbox 360. I so cannot wait for the sequel. This weekend I didn’t do anything I didn’t absolutely have to do. Since it was Mother’s Day weekend, my family couldn’t even argue. I got a bottle of Mediterranean Breeze by Elizabeth Arden and cards from the kids. Alek made me a picture frame that he painted himself. All in all, it was very relaxing.

How was your weekend? What did you get for Mother’s Day?

PS- If you didn’t know, I’m running a contest over on my blog. The prizes are awesome, and this is the most important contest I’ll run all year.

Well, I am back from RT but not recovered. My brain is sort of unhinged at the moment, so we’re gonna talk about funny expressions today.

Sick as a dog (and I am)

From World Wide Words:

There are several expressions of the form sick as a …, that date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Sick as a dog is actually the oldest of them, recorded from 1705; it is probably no more than an attempt to give force to a strongly worded statement of physical unhappiness. It was attached to a dog, I would guess, because dogs often seem to have been linked to things considered unpleasant or undesirable; down the years they have had an incredibly bad press, linguistically speaking (think of dog tired, dog in the manger, dog’s breakfast, go to the dogs, dog Latin — big dictionaries have long entries about all the ways that dog has been used in a negative sense).

Happy as a clam

Again, from World Wide Words:

The saying is very definitely American, hardly known elsewhere. The fact is, we’ve lost its second half, which makes everything clear. The full expression is happy as a clam at high tide or happy as a clam at high water. Clam digging has to be done at low tide, when you stand a chance of finding them and extracting them. At high water, clams are comfortably covered in water and so able to feed, comparatively at ease and free of the risk that some hunter will rip them untimely from their sandy berths. I guess that’s a good enough definition of happy.

Isn’t it funny how things make their way into our daily lexicon? “Butt-hurt” for instance. I never used to say that, but I heard it from somebody online, describing somebody who is easily injured and takes things terribly to heart (with little or no cause), and now, I use it myself. “Oh she got herself butt-hurt over it when nobody was even talking about her.” Where do you reckon that one comes from? Well, I Googled it, but I didn’t find an origin. One guy claims “West Coast, USA”, but I don’t know how accurate that is.

One of the coolest things about the English language is the way it’s constantly evolving. You can tell when a book was written, based on the ambient slang. What new words have y’all added to your vocabulary lately? I don’t mean book words, either.

Finally, Tina Brunelle needs to email me. She won something on my last blog post.

PS - I have contests here and here.  The first one runs until May 5. Second just has a couple more days left.

It all started on Tuesday night with this…

This yummy little thing jumped started a fabulous time in Pittsburgh at RT.  I had a great time.  And can’t complain about one thing.  Not even the fact I had a sore throat. I thought I sounded sexy after that.

The best thing about RT….seeing old friends and making new ones.

My bestest buddy Kimberly Kaye Terry and I.  Good times!

I loved being on the erotic paranormal panel and holding my own on a panel with Caridad Pineiro and JR Ward.  I was nervous as all get out, but managed to get a few laughs.  And from that I sold probably 10 books at the bookfair.   Very cool!

I had a chance to host a big party with my friends the Allure authors, Sylvia Day, Delilah Devlin, Myla Jackson and Sasha White and we signed books to almost 400 people.  It was AWESOME.  And I of course couldn’t resist the marjaritas…

Best of all, I loved hanging out with the ladies of the Bradford Bunch.  Megan, Lauren, Anya (also sexy super agent man) and Ann rocked big time, and of course the lovely Laura Bradford herself.  I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of authors to hang with.  Beautiful and talented–every single one of them.

It was so good that I’m already thinking about next year in Orlando!

Well, I’m finally recovering from RT 2008. By this I mean I’ve unpacked my suitcase, paid some bills and organized (though not cleaned off my desk,) and started to get back into the swing of family life.  You know. Yelling at the kids, doing laundry, generally being the domestic diva I am.

I didn’t feel well at the convention, unfortunately, and I wasn’t alone. But even so, I came back energized, writing-wise. No, I didn’t come up with a brand-new, shiny, full-fledged idea the way I did last year when Lauren and I brainstormed Taking Care of Business while standing in line. (Though we did talk about a followup to that book!) But I did come home with inspiration and ideas for layering some themes into the edits for my current WIP, Switch. 

I finished SWITCH before I left for RT and had planned to let it sit for awhile while I worked on some other things, but while there my mind kept turning back to it. Switch hasn’t been an easy book for me for many reasons. For one, it took me a lot longer to write than usual, partly because I stopped a few times to work on other things and partly because I struggled with the writing of it. I was really glad to have finished the first draft because it meant I could take a break from it, so to discover when I got back from RT that I really wanted to dive back in was…suprising.

Here’s the thing: I take a lot of my work from my life — not things that have happened to me, necessarily, but feelings and emotions and situations that make me THINK about “what if.” I don’t live everything I write about (my goodness, who has time?) but I do…FEEL it. I do feel what I write. Sometimes I feel it first and hold onto that and use it. Sometimes during the writing I start to feel the work, instead, which is also interesting.

I’d had an inkling about what Switch was meant to be for a few months, and it was pretty far from what I’d first anticipated the book to be. In its first incarnation it was a story about dominance and submission, a woman who finds misplaced notes in her mailbox meant for an anonymous person being given increasingly erotic commands. She discovers she likes the content of the notes — craves it, in fact. But when she discovers who the notes are really for, everything changes and she becomes the note WRITER instead of the note receiver.

The book is still “about” that — it’s what happens, anyway. But somewhere along the way a minor, throwaway character became more important, and now he’s an irreplaceable part of the story. I didn’t expect that.

And somewhere, somehow, the book became about choices. The ones we make, good or bad, right or wrong, and how sometimes no matter how much you think you want something, in the end you don’t take it because not having it is better for you. Sometimes, as Paige, the heroine says, you walk away.

So now I have to finish entering all my receipts and put some laundry away and take a shower and have some breakfast, and then I need to crank up the iTunes and get lost in this world again. But you know what?

I feel it.

M

PS — I was so happy to hang with my lurvely agent the glorious Laura Bradford (or LB as I like to call her) and Lauren Dane, Anya Bast and Ann Aguirre and Vivi Anna, and we missed Cynthia! NEXT YEAR IN ORLANDO!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of my favorite photos –

That’s the best advertising that an author has and it can’t be bought. I think readers forget how much power they truly have. The idea of viral marketing isn’t new. Anyone remember this commercial from the 80s?

The idea of you telling two friends and so on, and so on… that’s viral marketing.

It sounds like a bad thing, but really, what it boils down to is recommending what you like to your friends. I think most people do this automatically to some degree. I know I just squeed to anyone who would listen about The Duke of Shadows. In fact, I loved it so much I’ll be running a contest on my blog.

That’s another example of viral marketing. The reason I’m talking about this today? Well, if you tell your friends about books you love, chances are, they’ll check them out. That means more sales for authors you love. Readers can make bestsellers via word of mouth, and it’s important to share information at the grass roots level.

Why? Because not everybody reads glossy trade magazines or Publishers Weekly. I don’t. The best way authors have to get the word out about their books as via a network of readers, sharing their loves. That’s why I really hope you’ll check out Meredith Duran’s new book. She’s a debut author, but you’re going to be totally blown away. Go get it! If you want more info, check out my blog tomorrow.

Hi everyone! I wrote this post before I went to Puerto Vallarta. I won’t be checking mail until Friday the 28th, so if you’re looking for me, expect a delay in my responses. I’m not even taking my laptop, but I am taking a bag full of books. This is my idea of the perfect vacation. Good weather, lazing by the pool or on the beach, basking and reading.

First, I need to announce the winner from my previous post. KIM H, send me an email, please! You’ve won a copy of Lauren Dane’s sexy NY debut, UNDERCOVER. I’ll pre-order it for you from Amazon, and when it releases, they will ship it straight to your house. But I need an email from you within two weeks, or I re-draw.

Next, here’s a heads up about the contest I’m running in absentia. I’ll wrap it up and announce the winner when I get back. Check my blog, if you like romantic fantasy. Moira J. Moore is awesome. My agent bought me book two as a gift while we were book shopping together in San Diego. (Thanks, Laura!)

Anyhow, I’m taking books by Kim Harrison, Ian Rankin (thanks for the rec, Lauren!), Jo Goodman, Sharon Shinn, Lilith Saintcrow, Morgan Howell, Sharon Sala, Wen Spencer, Joanna Bourne, and Jim C. Hines. As you can see, I have an interesting split between romance, mystery, fantasy, urban fantasy, and sci-fi. I’ll read almost anything that looks interesting in genre fiction, but I won’t touch literary stuff. I think it’s because I read so much of it in college. My tastes these days are determinedly low-brow.

My goal in reading (and writing) is pure entertainment. I don’t tackle issues. I want readers to feel like they’ve had a hell of a ride, once they finish one of my books. What books have entertained the hell out of you?

I’m blogging from the Sheraton, here. I just walked away from my signing table, where people have been super kind in stopping by. Grimspace is selling well. Booksamillion is nearly out of copies, which is awesome. I’ve also met a number of readers who enjoyed the book.

I’m having a good time, but it’s a bit overwhelming. Crowds intimidate me, but I’m doing my best, and I’m having more fun than I thought I would. I thought every moment would seem like work instead of half. *grins* I’ll give a complete report when I have more time.

So tell me what things you guys are afraid of, won’t you? How do you deal with it? There will be a prize involved.