Valentines Treats With Tawny Weber

Okay, I know it’s only the 3^rd, and Valentine’s Day is 11 whole days away.  But hey, it was just July last week and as soon as I blinked, I was taking down the Christmas tree.  Did time fly for you, too?  Or was it just me?  Either way, I figure I’d better get focused on Valentine’s now!

You’d think Valentines is an easy holiday, right?  It’s pretty well defined as a Romantic Holiday (oooh, I love romantic holidays!) Heck, from grade school when we exchange cartoon greetings in white paper bags colored in red and purple crayon (again, was that just me?) to the jewelry commercials flooding the networks right now, the message is clear...  Valentine’s Day is a big deal.

And I know this.

So why am I coming up blank and struggling to think of a gift or fun way to celebrate???!!!!  (picture me pulling my hair out, because that’s what I want to do whenever I try and think about it.  You can see why I need 11 days to figure this out, right?)

Now we do have some traditions.  My husband always gets the girls and I each a box of Sees chocolates.  I always make his favorite dinner that night, even if we do a dinner out together a different night (reservations and crowds are always a pain on Valentines, so we usually do another night the same week).  Usually he brings me flowers.  Always I make him a card.

And always I struggle to come up with some gift or celebration idea that will tell him how much I love him.  Or what it is I love about him.  Or make him feel loved.  Or amused.  Or wishing he’d bought me diamonds.

The problem is, I’ve never come up with that perfect gift.  I’ve come up with some pretty good ones, though.   I’ve gone the chocolate route, and even baked my husband a giant heart shaped chocolate chip cookie.  I’ve made sassy gift certificates; one year I got him a teddy bear.  But I’m tapped out.  I have no idea what to give him this year.

Ack!   11 days!!!  If I’m going to make something, I have to get started.  If I’m going to buy something, I have to get shopping.  If I’m going to cop out, I really should chill.

Hmm... Well, whining aside and as much trouble as I make it, I do love Valentine's Day. So much so that I wanted to end my Under cover Ops series with a Valentine's wedding. Now that's romantic, right?


Well, it is if you ignore that the best man is home under FBI duress, his 'girlfriend' is an agent, out to bust his father, and his brother is now the town sheriff...

Available: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, eHarlequin

SEX, LIES AND VALENTINES 

Con artist Gabriel Black just got busted. By a babe. Drool-worthy (and clearly sneaky) FBI agent Danita Cruz is forcing Gabriel to choose between hard time and scamming his own family for an undercover sting. Now he has to present Danita to his family as his girlfriend. And it's the perfect opportunity to get wickedly even with her....

But Danita has some tricks of her own, and Gabriel's control begins slipping away as raw sexual energy takes over. Their sham relationship starts feeling a lot like...well, the real deal. The Big Question is, will overwhelming desire be enough to make a liar go legit?

Here’s a peek at Gabriel’s first day back in Black Oak, just after he hears the news of his brother’s upcoming marriage: Except 

Yeah... I think there’s plenty of romance to be had on Valentine’s Day. J

So, how about you?

 

• Are you a fan of Valentine’s celebrations? 
• Any clever gift ideas or fun ways to enjoy the holiday I can add to my list of maybes? 
• And do you have a favorite Valentine’s memory? 

Tawny Weber has been writing sassy, sexy stories for Harlequin Blaze since her first book hit the shelves in 2007.  When not obsessing over deadlines, she’s shopping for cute shoes, scrapbooking or hanging out on Facebook and Twitter.  Come by and visit her on the web at www.tawnyweber.com

In December of 2011 Tawny launched her Undercover Ops series with SEX, LIES AND MISTLETOE.  The second book in the series, SEX, LIES & MIDNIGHT is on shelves in January 2012, quickly followed in February by SEX, LIES & VALENTINES.  You can read the first chapter of SEX, LIES & MIDNIGHT on her website, too – all you have to do is join the Reader LoveFest!  Be sure to follow Tawny on her Holiday Survival Tour as she celebrates these three books with tons of fun and a chance for readers to win a $100 giftcard!  

TAWNY WEBER: A Kiss Is Still A Kiss.

Tawny Weber is visiting us with a fun topic—kisses. There are all sorts of kisses. Moms give them out regularly. We kiss our pets, our friends,  boo-boos to make them well, a quick peck as a goodbye to family. Our fairy tales speak of magical kisses that awaken the princess or turn a frog into a prince. There are devotional kisses —such as many Catholics do when making the sign of the cross. Knights kissed their lady fair's hand. The French kiss their fingers in appreciation of good food, or for something excellent— c'est magnifique! Not to be confused with French kissing, which is usually considered intimate, romantic, or sexual.


Let's not forget kisses under the mistletoe or at the stroke of midnight on New Years, which brings me to Tawny's contribution (you get to contribute at the end):

Ten-Nine-Eight-Seven-Six-Five-Four-Three-Two-One and... Kaboom!  It’s kissing time. 

Happy New Years!!!!

Oh, sure, that midnight chime means other things.  Welcoming a new year.  Resolution time.  A clean slate.  Tooty horns and confetti.  Champagne toasts.  You know, all the fun things about changing to a new calendar.

But New Year’s kisses got me thinking about all those other special kisses.

First kisses – I was seven when I had my first kiss. He was the preacher’s grandson and so cute!  He was also my first date, since he (and his grandma) took me to see Disney’s Robin Hood.

Wedding kisses – “I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”  How often did I dream of those words growing up?  Pretty often, actually.  I played that scene out with my Barbie and my brother’s Frankenstein doll (Hey, he was alpha!)  so often, but it was nowhere near as wonderful as the real thing.  And while I wasn’t able to pry the photo of my wedding kiss out of the album to scan it, I did have this one on my hard drive.

Tawny and her husband

Which brings me to the next kiss on my list...

Storybook kisses (not hot sexy storybooks, though – that’d be a totally different blog post. Or, well, hey, I have a few you can check out if you’d like J SEX, LIES AND MIDNIGHT is out now and it’s chock full of sexy story kisses!).  The romantic, deep sigh inducing kind of kisses in fairytales and historical romance novels. These storybook kisses are the ones that reel us in first, which makes us believe in romance and sigh at the sweet, gentle promise they offer.

And then there are the sexy kisses.  The first time you kiss a particular person and know, just know, you have to see what comes next (pun unintended, but it made me grin so I’ll keep it there). There is an early episode of my favorite TV show, Friends, where the gang is all talking about kissing vs sex. The guys compared sex to seeing Pink Floyd in concert, and the kiss to the comedian opening act. The girls  explained that everything you need to know about a guy is in that first kiss. I’d have to agree. Whether it’s in real life, or in a book!

Okay, since I mentioned it, I should share a kiss from SEX, LIES AND MIDNIGHT, right?  So this isn’t Maya and Simon’s New Year’s Eve kiss (they were otherwise occupied at midnight on NYE  J ) but this is their first kiss...

~*~*~

            Triumph was so close, Simon could taste it.
            But...
            His gaze traveled down over her body, noting that she once again wore a dress that covered her from neck to mid-thigh, yet screamed hot and sexy.  The way the midnight blue fabric draped and hugged her curves made his fingers itch to see if the fabric was soft enough to touch that glorious flesh.
No.  Even though his hardening body screamed in protest, he put on the mental brakes.  That wasn't a road he was going down.  She was a case.  A tool at the most.  Sexy, gorgeous and apparently fun, but still means to an end.
            She was so damned hard to resist.  Telling himself it was all in the name of the job, he took her hands again, lifting them both to his mouth.  He brushed soft kisses over her silky knuckles, then placed her hands, palms flat, against his shoulders.
“I need to get this out of the way,” he said quietly.  “It’s got nothing to do with the deal, and everything to do with how I’m feeling.”
She shook her head, looking like she wanted to protest.  But instead her fingers dug into his shoulders.
            Hips brushing a tempting invitation against hers, his hands smoothed down the tiny curve of her waist to the sweet roundness of her hips.  Her breath shuddered, just a little.  Simon almost groaned aloud.  She was so delicious.  Was the reality of her as tasty as the promise?
            Totally forgetting his plan—hell, his own name—Simon pulled her closer, so their bodies were close.  So close, but not quite touching.  Her warm scent wrapped around him like its own caress, making his mouth water, his dick harden.
            Crazy, he thought, as he leaned down to take her mouth with his.
            Their lips brushed, soft and sweet.  Just this side of innocent.  Safe, he told himself.  A Happy Holidays kind of kiss.  Totally acceptable.
            Then she made this tiny sound.  Somewhere between a purr and a growl, deep in her throat.
            And he lost it.
            His mouth took hers.  His tongue slipped between her full lips, taking hers in a dance as old as time.  He coaxed, he battled, he challenged.  And damned if she didn’t do exactly the same.
            Simon’s body screamed in pleasure.  Passion, way out of line for such a simple kiss, demanded release.  His muscles tensed as he forced himself to not grab her and find a dark corner to explore just how good this could get.
            Having to grab control before he went over the edge, he pulled his mouth from hers.  Her eyes were closed; thick dark lashes curving over the tops of her cheeks.  She took a deep breath and slowly lifted those lashes.
            Absolutely crazy.  Breathless, Simon stared into her deep, golden eyes and wondered if she was the answer to his prayers.  Or the curse that would finally take him down.

~*~*~*~              

So... c’mon, sharsies.  

• Did you have a wonderful New Year’s kiss to welcome 2012 into your life?  
• And what kiss stands out as your absolute favorite that you've ever read?
• And which special kiss do you think has the most lasting impression on someone’s life?

***

Tawny Weber has been writing sassy, sexy stories for Harlequin Blaze since her first book hit the shelves in 2007.  When not obsessing over deadlines, she’s shopping for cute shoes, scrapbooking or hanging out on Facebook and Twitter.  Come by and visit her on the web at www.tawnyweber.com 

In December of 2011 Tawny launched her Undercover Ops series with SEX, LIES AND MISTLETOE.  The second book in the series, SEX, LIES & MIDNIGHT is on shelves in January 2012, quickly followed in February by SEX, LIES & VALENTINES.  You can read the first chapter of SEX, LIES & MIDNIGHT on her website, too – all you have to do is join the Reader LoveFest!  Be sure to follow Tawny on her Holiday Survival Tour as she celebrates these three books with tons of fun and a chance for readers to win a $100 giftcard!  
    

Way WAY Out of the Zone

Did you feel it?

In the last year or so, there’s been a cataclysmic shift in the world of publishing. Ereaders and electronic publishing have opened up a whole new world. Writers are taking advantage of these new options to bring their stories directly to readers without jumping through the restrictive hoops of traditional publishers. Plus, both readers and writers are embracing lower prices and higher royalty rates.

I like to think of myself as a fairly flexible person, one who is open to new and different ideas. However, I found myself openly resisting the electronic publishing and reading revolution. To me, there is nothing quite like the experience of holding a book in my hands. I love flipping the pages, the weight of it, the smoothness of the paper. Reading is a multi-senses experience for me that an electronic format simply could not duplicate. Then two things happened to change my mind.

First, two of my best friends received Kindles as Christmas gifts. When I heard the news from both of them, I thought, “What a waste!” These two women were just like me, die-hard book readers. But they both tried and loved their Kindles. In fact, neither of them has bought a print book since receiving their Kindle!

What the heck?!?! I thought. There might really be something to this e-book craze…

Then the second thing happened and made a believer out of me. On March 7th, either my publisher or Amazon (I was never told which) decided to offer the electronic version of my debut novel The Wild Sight free for one week. I wasn’t even aware of this promotion until I received a notice that The Wild Sight was #1 in the overall Kindle Top 100 of Free Reads. It was also #1 on the Amazon UK Top 100 of Free Reads.

In other words, thousands of readers were downloading my book! More than all the other “free” books (both fiction and non-fiction) offered on Amazon and Amazon UK! My work suddenly had thousands of new readers, a huge audience I never expected. Best of all, when the ‘free’ week ended, The Wild Sight continued to stay in the Kindle Top 100 Paid Sales for another two weeks. Plus, sales of my other two books, The Treasures of Venice and The Wild Irish Sea also surged. The latter even made it into the Top 100 for Romantic Suspense. Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather; I was so surprised by the sudden flurry.

Coincidentally, The Wild Sight hitting #1 happened just as I received my latest round of agent rejections. I would hope agents know which books and authors are hitting those Top 100 lists, but apparently it didn’t matter. None of them mentioned representing my new work, at least none that I queried. Since I had sworn I would not sign another publishing contract without an agent to help negotiate the terms, I started to investigate self-publishing electronically. I debated with myself for a long time on how I should go about it, and which of my works to use for this ‘experiment.’

Finally, I decided if I was going to step out of my comfort zone, I might as well step way, WAY out! Several months ago, I started posting hunks of a story strictly as a bonus for the members of my newsletter group. This dark and somewhat foreboding fairy tale about a tortured young girl and the wicked fae princess she must out wit, was kind of a prequel to The Wild Sight, but it was not a romance nor even a novel. Nevertheless, my newsletter readers liked it and I did too, so I polished it up with the intent of making this 14,000 word novelette my first foray into the self-publishing world.

I am thrilled to announce that The Sidhe Princess is now available on Amazon--after a lot more time and work than I expected. 


To do self-pubbing thing right, it's a helluva lot of work! But my philosophy is: if you want your work to be treated the same as a traditionally published book, you have to treat it as if it were.




 I am way, WAY out of my comfort zone and I hope readers will join me!

         

In the rural Northern Ireland of the 1960s, sixteen-year-old Moira Mullins is newly released from her second stay in a mental institution. Her problem is that she can’t seem to escape the notice of the other-worldly inhabitants of the wild lands bordering her family’s farm. Creatures nobody else can see or hear.

When one of these beings, a fairy princess called the Maid of Ulster, offers to foretell the future, Moira jumps at the chance. But the Maid has ulterior motives that could have tragic results for Moira, who learns the future is sometimes better unknown. EXCERPT


BUY: Amazon

Please help me celebrate the release of my novelette today. There’s plenty of cyber-champagne and chocolate, and maybe even a few of the cabana boys from the Romance Bandit Lair! I’ll even give away a $10 Amazon gift certificate to one lucky commenter.

• When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone?
• What did you do and how did it turn out? Would you do it again?

###

Loucinda McGary aka Aunty Cindy

A long-time reader of romances, Cindy discovered and joined Romance Writers of America in 2001. But her stressful career as the manager of a multi-million dollar State and Federally funded program prevented her from doing much writing or traveling. She still managed to squeeze in a little of both, but not enough of either to be truly satisfying. Finally, at the end of 2003 she decided to take an early retirement from her career to fully pursue her twin passions of travel and writing. Cindy likes to set her novels of romance and suspense in some of the fascinating places she has visited.

You can visit her on Facebook and her Website 

Author Stalking: The Roguish Donna MacMeans

Kat Sheridan

My guest blogger, and I hope future contributor, is Kat Sheridan. She's a good friend (and writer) who recently attended a book signing at Barnes and Noble for Donna MacMeans--another very cool writer. Kat shares her thoughts on Donna's latest book and her experience at Barnes and Noble with us.

  

Let me preface this by saying that over the past year or so, Donna MacMeans and I have become friends, first via her (fabulous!) books and an online chat group for historical romance writers (waving madly at the MR Debutantes!) and then in real life. Those intelligent heroines and deliciously roguish heroes that she writes about? They all have a (more than a little) bit of Donna in them.

In her latest work, Redeeming the Rogue, the central plot is summed up nicely by the hero’s best friend (and intriguing, mysterious, delicious sidekick) Phineas Connor: “Have you considered the absurdity of it all, Rafe? That you, a son of Ireland, are traveling to America to impersonate a British minister in order to catch a fellow Irishman?”

In Redeeming the Rogue, Michael (Rafe) Rafferty is an Irishman working as an agent for the Crown to develop a peaceful, political solution to the question of Irish Home Rule. Ranged against Rafferty are the Home Rule League and the Fenians, who killed his parents and believe violence is the only way to achieve Irish independence. Rafferty, with his network of street urchin spies, is more at home in the rough alleys and taverns of London than in its ballrooms. Unfortunately, the new role he’s been asked to play requires more polish.

It also requires someone to play his hostess. And that “someone” would best be a wife.

Lady Arianne Chambers, the daughter and sister of a duke, has lived her whole life in diplomatic circles. Polish, politics, and protocol are in her blood. But like Rafferty, there are secrets in her past and she has very good reasons for wanting to escape London and head to Washington DC with her reluctant, recalcitrant, delightfully roguish protégé. 

I loved that this sensual, sexy, and slyly funny romance included a solid mystery and interesting plot to drive the story. The historical scaffolding on which Donna builds the romance doesn’t overwhelm the central love story, but provides a solid framework for it. Rafferty and Lady Arianne feel like real people. My heart broke right along with Lady Arianne’s (yes, 2:00 in the morning, I’m flipping pages as fast I can and crying my eyes out). Just as she did, I fell in love with Rafferty. And of course, because this is romance, the ending made my heart go pitty-pat. Le sigh.

I had the great fortune of attending my first ever book signing to get my autographed copy of Redeeming the Rogue. Donna’s logo/motif/signature is a peacock feather. She stamps one in every book she signs, and gives you a real one. Since I was a book signing virgin, I’d emailed her to ask what the protocol was. Donna was the Lady Arianne to my rough and unready Rafferty.  I asked Donna: “Will there be readings? Is this a white tie affair? Should I wear my tiara? Is it BYOB? Most importantly, will there be cupcakes?”

No, there weren’t readings (although I understand she thought her fellow co-signer, the delightful Susan Gee Heino would be good at that). Casual attire was fine, but since Donna is well known for her to-die-for feather Victorian hat, we decided the tiara would be fine (have you ever worn a tiara in a crowded Barnes & Noble on a Saturday afternoon? The trick is to act with aplomb, as if it’s perfectly normal, and NOT as if one is on a day pass from a nearby “facility” for the off-kilter).

We did discuss if the final “B” in BYOB stood for books (it’s tacky to bring your own from home—support your bookstore and buy your copy there), or if it stood for bourbon (sadly, liquid refreshments are frowned on in bookstores). Also sadly, the “B” did not stand for “baked goods”, in spite of my fervent hope there would be cupcakes. Because Donna always strives to please her fans, she did add a pink cupcake stamp alongside her usual green peacock feather, just for me!

I hope you grab your copy of Redeeming the Rogue by Donna Macmeans and settle in for a read that will have you cheering and crying and smiling and falling in love (best served with an icy Manhattan. And cupcakes).

Have you ever been to a book signing, either as an author or (slightly rabid) fan? What was it like? Most importantly, were there cupcakes?

Kat Sheridan is an aspiring author, fond of shiny things and bourbon. http://katsheridan.wordpress.com/

Stephanie Rowe: Letting Go Of The Big Picture

My guest is Stephanie Rowe. She is is a nationally bestselling author of more than twenty books. You would think  writing a new story would be a piece of cake, wouldn't you? Well, you would be wrong as Stephanie shares with us.

I will admit it; I can make myself crazy sometimes. I'm one of those people who has all these goals and all this aspirations and a million things on my plate, and I can let it overwhelm me. And by overwhelm, I mean, paralyze to the point at which I am completely and utterly unable to perform.

Most specifically, it happens to me in my writing.

For example, when I sit down to brainstorm a new book, often I will become overwhelmed with how difficult it is to pull the story together. I feel like I have a hundred feelers out in different directions, and I can't get a handle on how it needs to all come together. I'll start feeling like the project is so huge that I can't manage it. I'll start to wonder how on earth I'm going to be able to pull four hundred coherent pages out of the 80 pages of seeming unconnected brainstorming on my computer.

At that point, I usually decide the idea is unworkable and decide to write a picture book instead. Since I can't draw, that's usually not the best idea, but since I have no standards and no expectations when it comes to a picture book, it feels like a brilliant idea.

But of course, the moment I start working on my stick figures of Pilfer the Penguin, my mind keeps drifting back to that one I've spent so much time on. I feel like the idea should work, but when I think of actually trying to write 400 pages on it, my brain goes numb and I lose feeling in my hair.

And that's when I look up and see the sign that I carefully penned and hung on the china cabinet that is directly across from the sofa where I like to work. It says, in bright purple marker:

One minute at a time.
One word at a time.

One small step at a time.

Keep your vision big, but your focus small.

The first time I read it, it doesn't register because I'm too busy feeling overwhelmed.

The second time I read it, it doesn't register because I'm too busy feeling overmatched.

But the third time I read it, I pause. I take a deep breath. And I realize what it means.

It means that although, yes, I need to ultimately write 400 pages that are wonderful, amazing and make my editor do the shriek with delight, the truth is that I don't need to worry about that right now. Right now, my only job is to relax, decide I'm going to have a little fun, and commit to spending thirty minutes playing around with the ideas.

Thirty minutes of play.

I can do that. No pressure to deliver. No pressure to have answers. No pressure to get it right.

Just thirty minutes of having a little fun.

Sometimes, I will even set the timer on my phone, and force myself to play with the idea for a half hour before I can take a break, worry about how it's going, or even think about writing the book.

Little by little, step by step, word by word, once I let go of hugeness of the task and focus only on a little, manageable bit, I can start to move forward again. Something meshes, and I chuckle. I have a cool idea and I jot it down. I don't worry about how it will all fit together. I don't worry that I've been brainstorming for four weeks and I still don't have a story. I simply play.

And then, out of the blue, the ideas will all start to come together. Once that happens, I will go from a state of seeming utter chaos to a complete story mapped out in a day or two without even trying. Why? Because I stopped trying so hard. I stopped putting so much pressure on myself to go from 0 to 100 in one step, and instead, I let myself go from 0 to A to Texas to 53.4 to tulip gardens and around and around until suddenly I found myself standing on 100.

It's not always easy for me. In fact, I just had to go through this latest exercise with my most recent book. Six weeks of brainstorming, a number of days of sheer panic, followed by a deep breath, retreat and relax. Then all of a sudden, click, click, click, everything fell into place and four days later, I'm 20k words into a book I gave up on several times.

• What tricks do you use to help yourself get through the tough moments when you're struggling to accomplish something big or important to you?

Leave a comment and be entered to win a copy of Touch if You Dare.
~*~*~

Touch If You Dare--Soulfire series, Book #2

To save their respective siblings, Jarvis Swain and Reina Knight will have to team up to trick Death himself.

Who better than a bad-ass warrior on a mission? Jarvis Swain is the ruthless, confident aggressor Reina knows she needs at her back--someone even she can't screw up. This unlikely darkside duo with impressive deadly superpowers of their own may just prove that two wrongs together can be more than right...Excerpt 

Buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million

~*~*~

Stephanie lives in New England, and spends every day doing her best to fill it with people, observations and activities that uplift her soul, which include writing, tennis, friends, and  her amazing family.
Four-time RITA® Award nominee and Golden Heart® Award winner Stephanie Rowe is a nationally bestselling author of more than twenty books. A life-long reader, she began crafting stories at age ten, but didn't realize it was her dream until she was an adult.


Once the light dawned, she immediately left behind "work" as the world defines it and went to "work" as she defines it, which means getting up every morning with a smile in her heart so she can spend the day doing that which makes her spirit sing.


Stephanie believes in learning to listen to your heart in order to figure out what your dreams are, and then opening yourself to the inspiration that will direct you there. She believes we all deserve the right to enjoy life, and for the ride to be as easy as we want it to be, and that we all should accept nothing less than making our dreams come true. Find Stephanie on her website http://www.stephanierowe.com and on Facebook

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS: Stephanie Julian

Thanks so much for having me over for coffee, Sia, though I must admit I don’t drink it. So I’ve brought some hot chocolate. And Junior Mints.

I'm thrilled to have you visit Over Coffee again. I always have hot chocolate and teas. I remembered the Junior Mints from the last time you were here. :-) 

I’m really enjoyed reading What a Goddess Wants. You create such a fascinating world.

WHAT A GODDESS WANTS, the first book in my Forgotten Goddesses series.

This isn't your first book set in Etruscan mythology, though, is it?

When I first started writing WHAT A GODDESS WANTS, I was already deep into the two Etruscan series I've been writing for Ellora's Cave for the last three years. All of the books I've published, with the exception of SIZE MATTERS, have been set in this world. 


Actually, the world is the same one we live in; except there are whole communities of magic users normal people know nothing about.


The Etruscans are an ancient race of magic users including witches, werewolves, elves, fairies and deities. The first series I wrote, Magical Seduction, featured the elementals, the fairies and elves, and a witch. The second, Lucani Lovers, focuses on the lucani, the Etruscan werewolves.

Why Etruscans, rather than Greek or Roman?

I chose the Etruscans because there wasn't a lot of information known about this ancient race so I could play with the facts and twist them however I liked. I could take something that had a basis in fact and take it out of history and into the Twilight Zone.

But it also meant I was flying mostly blind. Unlike the Romans or the Greeks, I couldn’t look up a quick answer to anything.  Since I love to do research, this meant I ordered many, many, many books by Etruscan scholars, books not written for the casual reader. But in those 1,000-page tomes, I picked up lots of little tidbits that I could use in my stories.

Have you noticed that my goddesses wear red shoes most of the time? That’s one of those little bits I found in one of those books.

Most scholars believe that the Etruscans based their pantheon on the Greeks’ but, since none of those scholars can agree on where exactly the Etruscans came from or when, I chose to ignore that. Instead, I took what limited information I could find that didn’t mimic the Greek pantheon and expanded from there.

Let’s talk a bit about Tessa. Something I didn’t know and found intriguing is Tessa being a goddess with dual powers and duties.

Tessa in WHAT A GODDESS WANTS is the Etruscan Goddess of the Dawn. She used to lead the sun into the sky at the start of each day until that Roman bitch Aurora usurped her job. Tessa was pretty ticked off about that but she still had her duties as a Goddess of Childbirth. That’s another of those little tidbits I picked up.

Aurora cracks me up. I loved some of your secondary characters, like Sal, and I’d love to know more about him.

All of my Etruscan stories are linked; I was able to build a fairly large community with lots of characters who I love to revisit. For example, in WHAT A GODDESS WANTS, you’ll get to say hello to Salvatorus, who you might remember from SEDUCED BY MAGIC, SEDUCED BY TWO or EDGE OF MOONLIGHT.

You’ll also meet a new race of magical beings, the Cimmerians. Well, they’re not actually new. Robert E. Howard actually wrote about the Cimmerians in his Conan books. Yes, Conan was a Cimmerian, a fact Caligo, Tessa’s hero, grinds his teeth over constantly. Damn Arnold Schwarzenegger anyway.

I have so much fun playing in this world, creating a world within our world and revisiting characters throughout the stories.

And it shows in your stories, Stephanie. They’re fun to read. You said you have other series you’re writing. Anything new coming out in those series you’d like to tell us about?

As a matter of fact, I have another story in the Lucani Lovers series, GRACE IN MOONLIGHT, releasing July 20.

Thanks so much for having me over, Sia.

WHAT A GODDESS WANTS BY STEPHANIE JULIAN – IN STORES JULY 2011 

In his arms, her magic powers are on the rise…

Tessa, Etruscan Goddess of the Dawn, is desperately fighting off a malicious god, but her powers are weakening. She needs a hero and fast, because only sexual energy can give her strength. So she seeks out Caligo, whose sexual prowess is legendary…

 And she’s the only one who can bring him into the light…

Caligo is a fabled Cimmerian warrior determined to stay away from spoiled goddesses who trample heart after they've had their fun. But there’s something irresistibly hot and inviting about Tessa, and he knows he’s her only chance to escape the encroaching darkness…EXCERPT 

BUY: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, All Romance eBooks. 

My Review 

Stephanie Julian is the author of three erotic romance series with Ellora’s Cave. She is a member of RWA and Valley Forge Romance Writers and is a freelance entertainment and lifestyle feature writer. Stephanie lives in eastern Pennsylvania, where she is working on the next two books in the Forgotten Goddesses Series: How to Worship a Goddess (December 2011) and Goddess in the Middle (July 2012). For more information, please visit www.stephaniejulian.com.

Using Social Media Strategy To Promote Your Writing

Blogging and promotion is part of the new job description for the today’s author. Getting your name known in cyberspace. Setting your *brand.*

It either scares the bejeebies out of a writer or they feel at a loss as to where to start. They want to use their time to write, not *play around on the internet.* I was the promotion/marketing director of a small Indie press. I heard variations of this daily.

So many books. I want to look for you, why?

My answer? You can do both. How are your readers going to find you if they don’t know your name and what you write? Books don’t just magically sell because your name is on it. And many writers don’t start that process until they have a contract or a book published, which puts you at a disadvantage of racing to catch up.

Yes, you need time to write but you also have to invest the time to get your work in the hands of your target audience—your readers. So, if blogging and promotion is a must, then learn how to blog in a way designed to gain readers and build a platform of future fans.

My guest is Laurie Creasy. She has graciously agreed to share her expertise to help one get started and how to use social media to promote your work. 

This will be part one of a three part series. 

It’s never too early to plan a strategy for using social media to promote your writing.

More and more, traditional publishers rely on authors to promote their books. In e-publishing right now, you are author, marketer, and sometimes even editor and designer.

To promote what you write effectively, you’ll need momentum.  Here are five ways to build it.

Blog. As a new writer, this may be the most important thing you do in social media. A blog anchors everything else you do – it gives you a place to explain or extrapolate, to test ideas.

Don’t tell me you have nothing to say. Of course you do. If you really had nothing to say, you wouldn’t be a writer. Right?

So write about something you love – something that also touches what you write about. Adore steampunk? Tell us about the clothes, the foods, and the buildings.  If you write fantasy, give us some tips on how you build worlds from scratch.

Not only are you giving your readers great information, you’re building an audience for your stories.

Experiment. I started a Tumblr blog several months ago and floundered until I began taking photos of flowers. Suddenly my blog took off (in a small way). Who knew?

If things aren’t working, try a different angle – maybe steampunk clothes are just too, well, done -- or try a different tone for your posts.

If you don’t do well with a traditional blog, try something different.

Tumblr (tumblr.com) is fun, and it’s an excellent way to show off photos and artwork.

A new service, Pinterest, lets you create the virtual equivalent of a bulletin board for things you’re interested in. (Pinterest is in beta, but you can request an invitation at pinterest.com.)

You may also find that you work well with Storify (storify.com), which allows you to tell a story through tweets and Facebook status posts. Unlike a blog, however, Storify creates standalone pieces.

Play around until you find out what works best for you.

Help and share. Your job as a budding author is to build relationships with everyone, not just big name authors. It’s what your mother always told you: To have an audience, you have to be an audience.

This means you can’t just post to your own blog and ignore everyone else’s. Get in there and comment, question, and even disagree on other blogs.

Yes, it takes time. Yes, you might spend that more productively by writing, and writing is your future.

Let’s be blunt: Selling your writing is your future, unless you like starving in a garret and achieving renown only after you’re dead. The time you put into building your social media presence now is an investment in your writing.

Analyze. What works on a blog doesn’t work on Twitter. What works on Twitter doesn’t work on Facebook.

Figure out what’s best for which platform and why. My job involves maintaining a Facebook page for a large university. I can tell you right now that our audience loves photos of campus, news about our sports programs, news about our research in health, and news about our astronomy research. Any of those will draw likes and comments for us, and on Facebook, likes and comments are the name of the game.

If you have a Twitter and/or a Facebook account, begin experimenting now to find out what mix of content will work for you.

Stop worrying about numbers. Millions of Facebook fans, tens of thousands of Twitter followers – stop right there.  Just stop, OK?

You’re going to buy a friend’s book, or you’re going to buy a book by someone you feel as though you know. If you like that book, you’ll tell others, and if they like it, they’ll tell even more people.

That’s the point of social media, to build friendships. Not only do you want to get to know the people who will buy your book, you want them to get to know you.

After all, readers aren’t really investing in any given book. They’re investing in a relationship with an author they’ve come to trust.

• What strategies have you employed? What have you found to work?
• 
  
• If you have any questions be sure to ask and Laurie will do her best to answer them.

At age 53, Laurie went back to college for a master's degree in Human-Computer Interaction. Her younger classmates introduced her to social media, and she has never looked back. She leads the team that maintains a university Facebook page with more than 200,000 fans -- an increase of 130,000 fans since she began her work in early 2010. 


She has won national, regional, and international prizes for poetry, fiction, and reporting, including the RWA's Golden Heart award for romantic suspense, and has taught creative writing classes.


You can find Laurie: Facebook and her blog

A Highland Wolf in a Kilt!

My guest is author,Terry Spear. She writes Scottish Medieval Romance and paranormal romance.

Terry says, "I've been researching my Scottish and Irish roots for some years now.  Even in my own family there was political intrigue, ties to royalty, romance, and tragedy that inspires me to write medieval stories set in England and Scotland."

I can't say I love all books I've read set in the Highlands, but I understand the allure of reading about the Scots. There is something fiercely proud about highlanders. I'm of Scot decent and proud of my heritage. I know there are some present day Scots who take exception to us Yanks claiming to be Scot.

Whatever. 

Being Scot, and a highland Scot, is more than living in the country of Scotland. Many had to leave Scotland for various reasons, but took traditions with them. For example, much of the old Scottish bagpipe music, folk tunes, some of the dances, would have been lost had it not been for the North American Scots who kept those identifying traditions alive in their new homeland. There were no laws here, you see, forbidding the speaking of the language, wearing of the kilts, or playing the bagpipe or having a form of the highland games, as there was in Scotland. 


In Terry's book, The Heart of The Highlander, she gives us a glimpse of that pride and a corrected view that many, even titled ones, are not rich. Some are still struggling to keep family lands. She talks a bit about what drew her to write about Highlanders and her own Scot heritage.


Welcome back to Over Coffee, Terry! 

Many authors write about Highlanders because they catch the romantic imagination. But I write about them because I have roots in the Highlands—the MacNeills and the Campbells and the tragic love story that was carried down from one generation to the next about a commoner MacNeill’s love for the Duke of Argyle’s daughter. Though her father was angry that she would marry beneath her, he offered for the MacNeill to step off as much land as he could in a day’s time, and he could own it. But the MacNeill was too proud and paid for passage to the Carolinas, and her father disowned her.

The ship sailed instead to the largely uninhabited Prince Edward Island, the captain of the ship being the brother of the man who owned a large amount of PEI and needed it settled by order of the king. So the settlers arrived without the tools to build homes and were unprepared to settle the land.

Lady Elizabeth died, unable to weather the harsh conditions, and two of her children, a very young daughter and a son, of whom we are directly descended, were raised by other families who had come over on the ship. And another son was raised maybe by his dad, being that he was a little older.

The Indians living there helped those struggling to survive to catch walruses to live off of until they could build homes and grow their own food.

My great grandmother didn’t think much of Lady Elizabeth for giving up the easy life she could have had, and we might have lived in the castle instead of those who do now. Her daughter, my great aunt, who was a twin of my grandmother, was so enamored with the Highlanders, she married a Scotsman.

At one point, the Duke’s line died out, and Scotland Yard was asked to locate family members who might carry on the dukedom. My great grandmother and great great grandfather were questioned, but no one had the family Bible that would show the family line back that far.

Nowadays, DNA testing could prove it.

So in my story, although I have changed the names and the circumstances, I did add one part that has all to do with the true story of the MacNeills and the Campbells. But with mine, of course, it has a happily ever after!

And a twist. It’s not about ye ol’ regular Highland hunks, but about a clan of Highlanders who are also a pack of gray wolves, and an American red wolf who has an agenda—which has nothing to do with filming a Highland film at Ian MacNeill’s castle. But even Julia Wildthorn, werewolf romance author, doesn’t know what exactly she’s to find hidden in the castle somewhere. And she didn’t know before she arrived that Ian and his clan are werewolves to boot.

Not only does she have the mission of gathering enough information about the clan to write a sexy Highland werewolf novel of her own, sure Ian wouldn’t like it at all, she’s got to find a way to slip into the castle sight unseen and retrieve the family box. But Ian MacNeill is wary about the little red wolf’s reason for being with the film crew. She’s already lied about her name, and her occupation—which makes him wonder if she’s in bed with the enemy’s clan.

He’s already got enough troubles with losing money to a crook that’s caused him to have to open up his castle to this American film venture, but now he looks to be losing much more than sleep over one hot little red wolf.

HEART OF THE HIGHLAND WOLF is the first of the Highland wolf stories, and I hope you love them as much as I loved writing them!

• Do you have a little bit of history that your family has passed down through the generations that’s fun to share?

One of my Texas friends had a great great grandfather who was hanged for robbing a stagecoach, which resulted in a man dying of a heart attack. Who says genealogy is all birth dates and death dates and boring?

Heart of the Highland Wolf Available now

  My review

Read the first Chapter here (on Amazon) 

Sourcebooks and Amazon is running a kindle special for $2.99 

Buy: e-book or mass paperback. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Books a Million 

Terry Spear also writes true stories for adult and young adult audiences. She’s a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves and has an MBA fromMonmouth University and a Bachelors in Business and Distinguished Military Graduate of West Texas A & M. She also creates award-winning teddy bears, Wilde & Woolly Bears, to include personalized bears designed to commemorate authors’ books. When she’s not writing or making bears, she’s teaching online writing courses.

http://www.terryspear.com/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/terry.spear

https://twitter.com/#!/TerrySpear

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tspear