Category: Blog

Holiday Romance Extravaganza

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Happy Holidays!

I have a confession … I’m not a big holiday person. We don’t have any big family traditions. I don’t put up a big tree. I don’t decorate. I don’t even have stockings for my kids. I’m not a scrooge or a grinch, it just feels like so much work and stress. I much prefer to travel to the grandparents’ houses and have Christmas there and let THEM do everything.

What I do look forward to is the food! All my favorite dishes get served during the holidays. One of my favorites is Cranberry-Apple Casserole. We serve it as a side, but I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a dessert. I’m not kidding. I’ll post the recipe below (which, for full disclosure, I got from epicurious.com).

Another thing I love is presents. Right? Who doesn’t love presents? So what if I told you that for Christmas you could get 150 FREE books and enter to win more than $1000 in prizes?

To celebrate the holiday season, I’ve teamed up with more than 150 fantastic romance authors to give away a huge collection of novels and the prizes including my debut novel, Stitched Up Heart.

christmas-extravaganza

This is a very special “thank you” offer for you, my readers and fans. Many of these books are not free on regular outlets! But if you click here, you’ll be able to load up your e-reader for free! Plus you can sign up to win one of ten Kindle Fires, a Kindle Paperwhite, & one of 10 $50 bookstore gift certificates!
Merry Christmas to EVERYONE!!!

October Newsletter

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I put out my first newsletter at the beginning of the month. My newsletter subscribers are privy to information before anyone else! Upcoming books, exclusive excerpts, & I can guarantee there’s going to be a giveaway in the next newsletter (probably in December). If you want to be in the know, you can sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/b3ABd1

Welcome to my inaugural newsletter!

First and foremost, thank you so much for signing up. I promise I’m not going to be one of those people who sends out a weekly blast full of nothing but ‘buy my book’. 

Second…thank you to everyone who has read Stitched Up Heart and left a review. More importantly, thank you for loving it! I can’t tell you have humbling and inspiring the reviews have been…even the critical ones. 🙂

I won’t call it a theme, but several reviewers have mentioned how they didn’t like that SUH ended in a Happy For Now instead of a Happy Ever After.

As a reader, I don’t like when the romance is tied up in a pretty little bow. I usually want to know what happens after the happy ever after. Seriously, what was Cinderella thinking the morning she woke up after marring the Prince? 

So I admit, I left things with Bree and Jase hanging a little. But don’t worry…they get their happy ever after and so will you. How that’s going to come about…whether seen in the other books in the series or via a novella, I don’t know yet. I do promise you’ll see more of them though.

Now for the bad news…

Denise’s story isn’t next.

WAIT!

Don’t get angry. It’s coming, but there are two reasons Locked Down Heart isn’t coming next.

1) I’ve been invited to take part in a very well-known author’s Kindle World.  Well…it was supposed to be a Kindle World, but it looks like it might be on one of the other, as yet to be determined, platforms. The official word hasn’t been put out by the author, so I’m not saying who it is. What I can tell you is I’m SUPER excited about taking part!

It’s a cross-over between the other author’s world and Combat Hearts. Do you remember Jordan from Stitched Up Heart (if you haven’t read it yet, he’s instrumental in revealing Bree’s backstory)? He’s getting his story. It’ll be released sometime in early November. Once the official announcement is made, I’ll let everyone know.

It does have a title: Rescued Heart.

2) Denise is being difficult. She wants to go to a really dark place and I’m not sure I want to take her there. Everyone loved her in Stitched Up Heart. I want to keep her authentic to her character, so we’re working things out. It usually involves wine. Locked Down Heart is still set for release next year.

What else am I working on?

Tim’s story for sure. 

In Rescued Heart, I’m introducing a new series based on a private security company called The Leonidas Corporation and I’ve already got two of the books sketched out.

Imagine a tall, muscular, hot, alpha-male. Now imagine he’s a single dad to a pageant girl. All sorts shenanigans out of that one!

The second one is going to be about the lone female on the team. She gets assigned to look at a company that is being embezzled from. One of the partners is someone who crushed her heart in the past. I’ll just leave it at that so I don’t give it away.

I have a few other ideas rattling around in my brain that I jot down and stick in random places.

As you probably know, I’m active duty. Well, I have an assignment that’s going to take me overseas for two years. Which means…I won’t be attending any author signings until 2019. Right now, I am planning on trying to attend RWA 2018 in Denver. As soon as I know for sure, I’ll everyone know.

 

On choosing a book cover

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Tomorrow is the cover reveal for my debut novel, Stitched Up Heart. 

When I started exploring this writing/author thing, I lurked and stalked a lot of author’s websites, how-to and advice blogs, writers’ groups, etc. There were (are) two constant pieces of advice: don’t skimp on the editing or the cover.

I lucked out on the editing. 

The cover was a different ball of string. It needs to capture your story and appeal to a wide audience. It’s hard picking a good cover! 

The cover of Stitched Up Heart is not where or what I intended it to be. My initial concept was to NOT have a hot-guy cover. My cover designer, Taylor Sullivan from Imagination Uncovered, and I went round and round and couldn’t really come up with a concept we both liked. Then I found a stock image of a guy that fit the description of my hero.

Okay, I thought. I can work with this. I was all set to get the stock image and Taylor was going to work her magic.

Then, I saw Reggie Denching’s picture of Connor Smith.

I had to have it. This was my cover.

Connor’s hot. Hottie McHottieness, hot. And he’s tall. Ridiculously, six-foot-eight-inches, tall. Wear your highest platform heels and not be taller than him tall (sorry, height is a personal preference).  I can’t even imagine how he managed to fold himself into the back of a HMMWV. I’m only five-nine and I have issues with it. Seriously, there’s no legroom. Add battle-rattle, a weapon, and four other people and it makes for a cozy ride. All I can think is he must be able to fold himself up like a pretzel. …

I digress.

All that is not why I had to have this picture for my cover. When you finally see it, I want you to look at his eyes. Yes, I actually want you to focus on more than his abs. His eyes are what sold me on that picture. There are thousands of hot guy pics to choose from, but I had to have THIS one. 

Because of his eyes.

So, I sold one of my kidneys on the blackmarket (not really, but the pain was probably similar) and made it mine.

That whole series of photos is gorgeous. I don’t know if it’s something Connor has inherently or if Reggie’s that good of a photographer or if it’s Reggie and Connor together, but when you’re reading Stitched Up Heart, I want you to remember Connor’s eyes.

You can go back later and drool over the rest of him. 😉

P.S. I did have to get his Globe & Anchor photoshopped off. My hero was a Ranger. Sorry, Connor. Semper Fi.

☆¸.•*¨*★☆*¨*•.¸☆¸.•*¨*☆★*¨*•.¸☆

Stitched Up Heart, book one of the Combat Heart series, will go on pre-sale tomorrow at all major retailers.

Killing Time

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My best friend and her kids are in town for the 4th of July and I took off from work today. Not to go tour the nation’s capital with them, but because I thought for sure I was going to be hung over today. Turns out, that was yesterday. 

So I have the day off and I’ve done nothing but procrastinate all morning. Including writing this blog post. Anything so I don’t have to fold laundry. Or write. Either of which I should be doing, but obviously, am not.

Because I hate folding laundry and my characters aren’t talking to me. They wouldn’t shut up while I was writing book one, but now that it’s their turn, they’re no where to be found.

Yes, I realize I’m talking about them as if they’re real people. No, I’m not still drunk.

So while I’m waiting for Stitched Up Heart to come back from the editor, I’m going to fold my laundry and then see if I can coax my characters into telling me their story. 

Maybe I’ll make a bunch of teasers for the cover reveal of Stitched Up Heart, which is scheduled for August 18th.

Or take a nap. Ooh! A nap!

Just Pay The Toll

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I’m driving from Washington DC to Maine with the Threenager Twins and decided to use the “avoid tolls” option on the GPS. Epic fail. Worst decision this year. (I’m not going to say ever because, let’s be honest here, I’ve made some pretty spectacularly bad decisions. Any night that involved drinks ending in ‘bomb’ comes to mind.) It ended up adding three hours to my drive and a lovely road trip through up-state New York. 

That being said, here are some thing I discovered on my drive:

  • Up-state New York really is beautiful.
  • NY has changed their ‘rest stop’ signs to ‘text stop’ signs.
  • I have no issue driving over large bridges. Unless said bridges are undergoing construction. Then it’s a little dicey and my very active imagination runs wild.
  • Truckers trying to flash you will slam on the breaks and almost crash if you point a smart phone at them like you’re taking their picture.

On a positive note, the twins did fairly well during the drive and didn’t throw any major tantrums until the end of the day, but that was likely from being overly tired.

Lesson learned: Pay the damn tolls.