To learn about how important the jaguar is to the Maya, stop by Embrace the Shadows today. Bonus: another exclusive excerpt!
Category: Blogosphere
Blog Swap with Toni Anderson
Please welcome fellow Carina Press author Toni Anderson to my blog today, while I trade spots and blog over at her place.
Toni’s novel, Sea of Suspicion, was released on 6/14!
Thanks for letting me be on your blog today, Joely.
JSB: From as early as I can remember, I loved books. As a young reader, my favorite book–the first one I can remember reading myself over and over–was Heidi. What’s the first book you can remember falling in love with?
TA: The Silver Brumby books by Elyne Mitchell. I think I was about 12 when I discovered them and I read them over and over and could never get enough of them. I was a horse-mad child who had to make do with the fantasy, plus they were set in Australia and even back then I needed to travel the world through other people’s words.
JSB: I love books that make me FEEL: laugh out loud, cry like a baby, or even kick the hero (at least until he grovels enough). Can you list a book or two that have made you emotional?
TA: Susan Elizabeth Phillips books do that for me. Both Heaven, Texas and Kiss An Angel made me cry. I also loved Elizabeth Vaughn’s Warprize books. Sometimes you just fall in love with characters and what happens to them, happens to you!
JSB: What popular book has everyone else loved but you just didn’t care for? (I’ll tell you a little secret: I refuse to read or watch the Twilight saga.)
TA: I haven’t read the Twilight saga either J and to my great sadness I can’t get into vampires in general. There are a lot of literary novels I’ve tried and failed to read. And to most people’s utter disgust I’m happy to watch the movie before reading the book.
JSB: Much has been made about the Maya “predicting” the end of the world on Dec. 21, 2012. (If–when!–our readers check out The Bloodgate Guardian, they”ll learn the truth about the Maya calendar cycle.) If you knew the world really was going to end on that date, what’s the one thing you’d make sure you accomplished before then?
TA: There’s not I’ve put on the backburner as far as ‘things I want to do’ in terms of life experience. My passion is travel and I have traveled—on a shoestring with kids in towJ. One thing I wish I could do is take care of my parents more. I live so far away from my family that I don’t get the chance to do much for them. So I’d lavish more time and money (and if the world’s ending Visa can help) on my family!
Thank you, Toni! See an excerpt of Sea of Suspicion below!
About Toni Anderson…
I write Romantic Suspense/Romantic Mystery and my latest book, SEA OF SUSPICION, was released by Carina Press this week and I’m so excited! It’s a moody atmospheric sexy romantic mystery set on the misty shores of contemporary Scotland.
I’m a former marine biologist and conducted my Ph.D. at the Gatty Marine Laboratory in St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland where SEA OF SUSPICION is set. I worked there for 4 years and was lucky enough to meet my husband over the pH meter in my supervisor’s laboratory. Now we live in Canada with our two children. I set my stories in some of the stunning locations I’ve been lucky enough to live and work—the blustery east coast of Scotland, the remote isolated mining communities of Northern Labrador, the rugged landscapes of the U.S. and the Red Center of Australia. I love to travel vicariously through reading other people’s experiences and hope readers feel the same way. I think the most unique aspect of my writing is the use of so-called ‘foreign’ settings.
My first Romantic Suspense, HER SANCTUARY, was released in 2009 to some great reviews, but I was thrilled to be part of the Carina Press launch. I found out I’d sold on Christmas Eve and it was the best Christmas present ever. Although publishing is a team effort, writing that initial first draft is a solitary enterprise. One of my favorite things is connecting with like-minded readers and writers online. I write about my travels on my blog and give updates on Twitter. Readers can sign up for my newsletter on my website, or friend me on Facebook. I’ve also set up a fan page for SEA OF SUSPICION with location photographs and anecdotes. Let me know what you think of it!
SEA OF SUSPICION
Blurb…
Marine biologist Susie Cooper traded her life in America for a dream job on the rugged Scottish coast. Now all she lacks is the right man to start a family with. After their first meeting, she knows sexy Detective Inspector Nick Archer isn’t what she’s looking for. He’s the type of guy whose idea of commitment is staying the whole night.
Nick has returned to St. Andrews for one reason only—to fulfill his vow to find his wife’s killer. Relentless in his twelve-year quest for justice, he has no problem using Susie to get close to his primary suspect: her boss. But the passion between them smolders, and as it ignites, Nick finds himself torn between his past and his present—with Susie.
When one of her boss’s students is murdered, Nick’s investigation draws Susie into a web of madness and betrayal. They will have to learn to trust each other if they’re going to catch a killer…and come out of this alive.
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Excerpt…
The kitchen door flew open, the wind smacking it against the inside wall with a crash. Susie dropped the colander in the sink, shock stealing the moisture from her mouth. There, filling the portal, having to dip his head beneath the lintel, was Lily’s boyfriend, the same guy who’d stared at her in the bar last night.
If the devil was blond, he was standing ten feet away in Leanne’s kitchen.
“Nick! I haven’t seen you in ages.” Leanne bounced toward the tall, sharp-featured man and threw her arms around him and gave him a noisy lip-smack. Susie’s stomach bottomed out.
“Get your hands off my wife.” Dougie ducked through the door and shoved a case of beer into the guy’s side before grabbing Leanne and bending her over his arm for a passionate kiss.
Susie averted her gaze and inadvertently caught Nick’s.
It wasn’t just the packaging that made him attractive. It was the sharp features and intelligent eyes that emanated risk like the Big Bad Wolf checking out Little Red Riding Hood on that wooded trail.
But no matter how tempting he looked, Susie did not want to get gobbled up.
Heat rose in her cheeks as his eyes swept her bare feet, her tight jeans and the big Mickey Mouse transfer plastered to her T-shirt. She crossed her arms.
Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes as he noted her response.
“If you two lovebirds have finished, I’m waiting for an introduction to your guest.” His eyes pierced her. She’d thought nothing could be more unsettling than that soul-hunting gaze, but his voice… He wasn’t Scottish. English perhaps, some northern city with a regional accent she couldn’t place, but his voice. It was deep and smooth and strong, with the power of wind shaping granite and as warm as the summer sun sinking deep inside her like some magical spell that spun music into gold.
“I bumped into Nick in the offy, gave him a ride out.” Dougie, six-foot-four of adorable dark-eyed male, crossed over to Susie and gave her a squeeze. “How’s my favorite bridesmaid?”
She snorted. “Your only bridesmaid. What’s an offy?” She tensed as Nick came toward her, wondering how best to deal with the man. The guy was Lily’s boyfriend, but he made her intensely aware of every part of her body and every possible escape route.
“What you’d call a liquor store.” Nick pushed aside the garlic bread, slid the box of beer and wine onto the counter next to Susie. Their shoulders brushed, but she didn’t flinch. She forced herself to remain still even though he was invading her personal space. He gifted her with a half smile when she didn’t flee.
Dangerous and pushy.
Leanne’s eyes sparkled. “Dr. Susie Cooper, meet Detective Inspector Nick Archer. Susie and I go way back. She just got a lectureship at the Gatty.”
“You’re a cop?” Susie knew her mouth was hanging open, but she couldn’t believe Nick Archer was anything peaceable or law-abiding.
His quick smile told her she’d made a common mistake. People must often figure him for a bad boy, a renegade, whereas apparently the opposite was true—he was a twenty-first century knight. Still, he emitted hazard like a pheromone, and instinct told her Nick Archer would be ruthless at getting what he wanted. Poor Lily.
Yeah, right. Lily ate policemen for breakfast.
He inclined his head. “At your service, Dr. Cooper.” His eyes drifted over Mickey Mouse’s ears, letting her know exactly the sort of service he had in mind.
“How’s Lily?” she asked pointedly, conscious of the effort it took to hold his gaze. She wasn’t falling for the charm or pretending she didn’t know he already had a girlfriend.
The kitchen suddenly felt as though it had been dropped into liquid nitrogen. Every particle of oxygen was sucked out of her lungs by the rapid chill.
Leanne slapped herself on the forehead, at the same time rescuing the cheese sauce she’d made for the lobster thermidor. “I forgot you two had a connection.” Leanne wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to dynamics; she was now looking for a corkscrew. “You’re getting a taxi home, by the way, unless you want a sleepover.” She waved vaguely over at Susie, or it could have been Nick, or both.
“A connection?” Susie frowned.
“Lily is Nick’s sister-in-law, or I should say…” Leanne paused, looking uncomfortable, a rare thing for the self-confident girl who’d grown up dirt-poor and desperate. “Former sister-in-law?”
Rays of light cut oblique angles through the old farmhouse window and highlighted tense skin around Nick’s mouth. When he spoke, there was an odd glint in his eyes that was more complex than sorrow. “Lily was the flower girl at our wedding.”
“You’re divorced?”
“My wife is dead.”
Download SEA OF SUSPICION at http://carinapress.com
Carina Guest: Kaz Augustin
Hello all. I’m another one of those Carina Press authors. We’re blocking all the intertubes at the moment, aren’t we? 🙂 Before I begin, I’d like to thank Joely for having me here. It really is a pleasure meeting all of you.
I was wondering what to write about, and going through the comments on Joely’s past posts, and I thought of…games. And school. And how things come from unexpected places.
Our son, The Wast, had a problem when he was about six. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get him interested in learning. He couldn’t count from one to ten and got lost in his alphabet after “B”. There was no dearth of opinions about him, from being autistic to having major nervous system dysfunction to being severely handicapped. And I know this sounds like every parent who believes their child is an Utter Genius, but none of these off-the-cuff diagnoses seemed right to us. He was a bright child, liked to talk and draw, but just couldn’t get his head around maths and language.
Now, my husband J and I like playing games. And one that particularly caught our fancy at that time was “Spooky Castle” from Hamumu Software, a small indie game developer. It doesn’t have spectacular graphics or complex story lines but it was overflowing with fun and humour and, when you’ve had a hard day at work, there’s nothing better than killing zombies, vampires and skeletons with a hammer! The Wast would walk past and give sideways glances to the game as I played. Then he would settle on my lap and watch. It didn’t take too long for him to reach for the keyboard and try it for himself. And then the learning began. “There are three skeletons in that room. Think you’re fast enough to beat them?” “Put the mouse over that monster. Can you read what it’s called? Let’s spell it out first.” And before I knew it, our son was counting and reading with the best of them.
We’re settled in Malaysia at the moment, and we keep hearing about how “computer games” are evil incarnate. The principal at our children’s school even tells the children that if he hears of any of them playing games, he’ll come to their homes and confiscate the equipment! Of course it’s all bluster but, more importantly, it’s a narrow-minded way of looking at things. Of course we don’t let our children play games six hours a day, but surely there’s a happy, child-customised medium somewhere between “all day” and “not at all”?
What does this have to do with writing books? A few things. First of all, you never know where inspiration will come from. Second, what inspires you may not inspire anyone else, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. And, most importantly, try not to accept anything just because it’s accepted wisdom. Think a little. That’s what I like about science-fiction. It makes me think. That’s why I write it.
IN ENEMY HANDS
The Republic had taken everything from Moon―her research partner, her privacy, her illusions. They thought they had her under control. They were wrong.
Srin Flerovs, Moon’s new research partner, is a chemically enhanced maths genius whose memory is erased every two days.
While he and Moon work on a method of bringing dead stars back to life, attraction between them flares, but that poses its own problem. How can their love survive when Srin forgets Moon every two days?
When she discovers the lethal applications her research can be put to, Moon knows she and Srin are nothing more than pawns in a much larger game. Together, they must escape the clutches of the Republic before they become its scapegoats. But there are too many walls around them, too many eyes watching. They want to run, but they’re trapped on a military vessel in the depths of space, and time is running out….
* My website and my blog. You can also track me down on Facebook and Twitter. Just look for “ksaugustin”.
COMPETITION: I’m giving away two copies of IN ENEMY HANDS at my blog, Fusion Despatches. To be in the draw, stop by and comment at the Competition post, telling me at which blog you read about my book. You have till 30 June!
Guest Post at Kaz Augustin’s Blog
Did the Maya really sacrifice people? Find out in my guest post on fellow Carina Press author Kaz Augustin’s blog!
Carina Guest: Carrie Lofty
Austria, 1804
Eight years ago, composer Arie De Voss claimed his late mentor’s final symphony as his own and became an icon. But fame has a price: fear of discovery now poisons his attempts to compose a redemptive masterpiece. Until a new muse appears, intoxicating and inspiring him…
Mathilda Heidel renounced her own musical gift to marry, seeking a quiet life to escape the shame surrounding her birth. Sudden widowhood finds her tempted by song once more. An unexpected introduction to her idol, Arie De Voss, renews Mathilda’s passion for the violin–and ignites a passion for the man himself.
But when lust and lies reach a crescendo, Arie will be forced to choose: love or truth?
***
Most historical romance readers will be familiar with the term “dowry.” In the European tradition, a dowry was a wedding gift provided to the groom or the groom’s family in order to secure the material future of the bride. If her husband died before she did, a woman was able to stave off poverty. This also gave rise to the term “dowager,” which indicates that a widow has had caused the access those dowry funds.
Whether or not her husband or his family safeguarded the dowry for such an occasion is another matter entirely. Also, whether or not the bride deserved the dowry became a consideration. Some families insisted on waiting until the morning after the wedding before accepting a woman’s dowry and all the responsibility and connections that entailed. After all, if she proved less than virginal on her wedding night…
In Austria, where my June 7 release from Carina Press, SONG OF SEDUCTION, is set, and in other Germanic countries, this process of waiting until the next morning became a common custom. They used the term “morgengabe” was used, the literal translation of which is “morning gift.”
In the formal sense, a morgengabe was the culmination of the marriage contract. The engagement had been solidified by the posting of the banns. The vows have been said before a duly appointed religious official. And the wife had proven a virgin on her wedding night. All set! Commence with the handing over of funds and the happily ever after.
In a less formal sense, however, a morgengabe took on personal significance for some couples. A husband might choose to give his new bride a token of his affection and respect upon claiming her purity as his prize. Necklaces, rings and other pieces of jewelry were often used for this purpose, as were parcels of land, livestock and household items.
Arie de Voss, the hero of SONG OF SEDUCTION, was born and raised in the Netherlands, so he had a few questions on this topic. Here he’s asking the heroine, Mathilda, about a particular necklace she wears:
“Who gave it to you?”
“You and your questions, sir,” Mathilda said. “My husband gave it to me. It is my Morgengabe.”
Arie winced. Since his crass drunkenness at the Venner ball, he had been reluctant to revisit the topic of her late spouse. “Will you make me ask the meaning of yet another word?”
“No.” A faint smile curved her lips. “You must ask someone else, because I won’t explain it.”
The woman. Her mysteries. Those infernal glimpses she provided into her genuine character. Arie hoarded them all.
“Then who shall I ask?”
Mathilda leaned close enough to make her words heard. “You seem a resourceful enough man, Herr de Voss. You’ll think of something.”
What he does once he learns the significance of the morgengabe, however, is not the most graceful thing a hero has ever done. It’s a good thing he’s so cute and talented…
***
Born in California, raised in the Midwest, Carrie Lofty (http://carrielofty.com/) met her husband in England–the best souvenir! Since earning her master’s degree in history, she’s been devoted to raising their two precocious daughters, wrangling the talented authors of Unusual Historicals (http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/), and writing romance. You can find her on Twitter (http://twitter.com/carrielofty), her Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carrie-Lofty/115375868486813), and her blog (http://lovelysalome.blogspot.com/).
“Historical romance needs more risk-takers like Lofty.” ~ Wendy the Super Librarian
Conn Writes a Poem
Never seen anywhere else, an exclusive poem written by the sexiest English professor alive, Dr. Connagher himself! Check out his response to “Lecture vs. Teach” over on Susi’s blog and wish her a happy blogoversary while you’re at it, for a chance to win a free e-copy of Dear Sir, I’m Yours or an advance e-ARC of The Bloodgate Guardian, releasing June 14 from Carina Press.
Guest Blogging about Ruin
Leah Braemel was kind enough to host me today where I talk about the hero of The Bloodgate Guardian, Ruin: The Trials and Tribulations of Naming a Hero. Coming June 14th from Carina Press!
For vacation day 2, Littlest Monster was home again. She probably could have gone, but it was field day, aka play outside all day, and her ear was still hurting. Plus she fell asleep in the car on the way home from taking Middle to school, so she just wasn’t feeling the best yet.
I still managed to work on my plot and had a huge revelation — that totally changes everything I planned to do in this book. Squee and sigh, because it’s a cool twist, but a pain, because I can’t keep as much of my subplots as I hoped.
I’m still struggling with the romance aspect too. I’ll continue working on that today on my first “vacation” day with no monsters at home!
Tomorrow, I’m taking a beginning knitting class in the afternoon at a cool new yarn place that opened here in town. I can’t wait!
Formatting For Kindle
Today, I’d like to welcome Kait Nolan to my blog to celebrate her recent release Forsaken by Shadow. I asked if she could share information about how difficult it is to format for the Kindle.
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I was hanging out in Tweetchat a few weeks ago with J.A. Konrath and a bunch of other writers. We were talking about ebooks, which is no big shock given that Joe’s become a poster boy for putting your work out in e. What positively shocked me to hear, however, was how hard everybody thought formatting for Kindle was. In fact, it seems to be the prevailing consensus that this is a difficult process to do right.
Frankly, I think they’re smoking something. Formatting for Kindle is NOT HARD. Seriously, I finished mine in half an hour, and most of that was spent paging through the output searching for errors (and not finding any). I think I probably had such an easy experience because I’d been through formatting for both PDF and Smashwords FIRST, which eliminated a lot of the buggy issues that seem to come up if you’re just formatting for Kindle. What follows is a very abbreviated summary of steps to take. It doesn’t cover everything. Check out the Smashwords Style Guide and Aaron Shepard’s Perfect Pages for an in-depth discussion of e-formatting.
I guarantee that the number one mistake that people are making is to either a) directly upload their Microsoft Word document into the Kindle processor to chew up (which is going to spit out all kinds of nastiness) or b) directly saving their Microsoft Word document as html and uploading that (which also spits out gobbledygook). What’s the commonality here? Yeah, that’s right. Microsoft Word.
Now don’t get me wrong. There are many things I love about Word. It’s my preferred word processing program in most cases. But it does not play nice with the Kindle system because as Word has become more advanced, it tries to do more and more stuff it THINKS we want for us—which results in embedded codes that produce the ick when you upload it into the Kindle system.
So allow me to introduce you to your new best friend: Open Office. Free, simple, and saves perfect html format files with a little work. Go, download, install. We’ll come back here later.
I want you to go back to your original Word file. We’re going to clean it up a bit first. Do yourself a favor and save a new file right now. If you muck something up, you’ll still have the original.
Now, first and foremost, you’re going to remove any headers, footers, and page numbers. They are really irrelevant in an ebook because with the reader’s option to change the font and size, it mucks up how the text flows on the e-reader, thus plunking down page numbers and headers in weird places. Not to mention that once you change the font and font size, it changes the pagination. Most e-readers have a page number functionality/progress bar kinda thing at the bottom, so allow it to use that for page numbers.
Next up, don’t use any funky fonts. Straight up Times New Roman. Garamond. Maybe Verdana or Georgia. Be sure to use a serif font. What’s a serif font? Well, you have Times New Roman, which is a serif font, vs. Arial, which isn’t. Notice how there are more hooks and lines and such that cross the Times New Roman letters? This is what makes it serif. Serif fonts are easier to read. What about size? You want something nice and standard. 12pt is recommended.
Now you probably have all your formatting that you like already done in your Word file. Italics where they belong. Indents and the like. Go print yourself a paper copy so you know where all that goes.
Whether you’re running Word 2007 or something earlier, I want you to poke around on the toolbar until you find something that looks like a backwards P. It’s called a pilcrow actually. It’s usually around the paragraph settings. This is Word’s Show/Hide feature and it’s going to show you all the formatting in the document. Now click it. You’re going to see all kinds of funkk looking marks like arrows and lines and paragraph returns.
If you see a little arrow in front of a paragraph, it means you’ve used tabs to indent your text. This is a great big no no and is the number one bad habit of writers. Likewise if you see a series of dots ……… That’s creating indents with spaces, also bad. You’re going to find and replace those. In the Find box enter ^t (this is the reference for tab) and in the Replace box put nothing. Replace All. If you used spaces, figure out how many, then enter that many spaces in the Find box and again nothing in the Replace box.
Now you’re going to apply indents using the ruler bar—the RIGHT way to do indents. Make sure your Ruler bar is showing. Now you can either Select All text or just select the text of your chapter (not including your chapter heading). See those two triangle looking things to the left of the rulerbar? Grab the top one and move it over as far as you want your indent. In a print document it would probably be half an inch. This is generally too much indent for e. I like somewhere between .25” and .33”. Do that all the way through your document (assuming you’re doing it chapter by chapter). If you don’t dig indents, you can do block paragraphs by having 2 paragraph returns (those backwards looking P things) after each paragraph.
Those are the big points where stuff gets mucked up. Now I want you to save your document and close it. Now go into Open Office and open your document. Do a quick review to make sure it’s the way you had it in Word (it should be). Now Save As and select HTML. Why not do this in Word? Because Word mucks it up. I don’t know how exactly, but it was a mess when I tried it. Open Office just saves a cleaner HTML file. And this HTML file is what you’re going to upload into the Kindle processor thing.
As I said earlier, these are only the very, very basics of formatting for Kindle. I highly highly recommend formatting your book for Smashwords first using their Style Guide (because of course you’re going to go through Smashwords so you can release to Sony, Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore and others, right?), then using Perfect Pages to fine tune things. The Style Guide is free and Perfect Pages is worth every penny of the $12.60 + shipping. You won’t be sorry.
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For those who are interested, my debut paranormal romance novella, Forsaken By Shadow, is available at Scribd, Smashwords, Amazon, and the iBookstore. It is the first in the Mirus series.
Banished from their world with his memory wiped, Cade Shepherd doesn’t remember his life as Gage Dempsey, nor the woman he nearly died for. But when Embry Hollister’s father is kidnapped by military scientists, the only one she can turn to is the love from her past. Will Gage remember the Shadow Walker skills he learned from her father? If they survive, will Embry be able to walk away again?
Kait’s writing blog Shadow and Fang
Kait’s cooking blog Pots and Plots
Kait on Twitter
Kait on Facebook
Kait on Goodreads
A Live Interview with Molly Burkhart
Okay, folks, I’m typing this interview live. Molly’s sitting here at the table with me (she just said her answer was “blue” even though I haven’t asked her anything yet). So let’s see how far I can get without dying of laughter.
I already blogged about the background idea for My Gigolo. What’s your favorite element in the story? (I think she’s going to say the pirate mini-golf course, so let’s see if I’m right.)
Molly: if I ever won the powerball jackpot, I am building that mini golf course!
(Okay, she actually said the sister dynamic until I said, dang, what about the mini golf?!)
Do you cast your characters?
Molly: not at first. They’re firm in my mind just as they are, and I normally can’t find anyone that looks like that.
If you could have any actor play Jack, who would you choose?
Molly: Goran Visjnic (she had to spell it for me.)
How about Gabe?
Molly: Annie from the original Halloween movie.
Do you plot?
Molly: Bwahahahahaha. I do in a way — it’s all in my head. I don’t use notecards. I love those “happy accidents” as Bob Ross always said.
Do you have a sequel in mind? Or a related story?
Molly: I’d be open to it, either for his friend Brad or Regina, the secretary at the old escort service. But I don’t have anything planned.
So what’s next on your plate, then?
Molly: Well…..I was going to do an urban fantasy for MayNoWriMo, but my Samhain editor is very interested in a steampunk with fantasy elements that’s about 1/4 done.
Wheeee, I can’t wait! I know exactly what story she’s talking about and it will be so. cool.
A serious question: where you ever tempted to quit writing, either this story or the whole shebang?
Molly: never the whole shebang but I’ve tempted several times not to write with the goal of publication. I have to write for my own pleasure and my own sanity, but there are times I wonder why I ever wanted to be published in the first place. Then days like today remind me!
Who do you want to be compared to as a writer?
Molly: I absolutely adore Stephen King, but I don’t want to BE Stephen King. I’d like to be as well read! I’ve always kind of wanted to be a Renaissance Man, a jack of all trades but a master of none. I like to genre hop, even though that’s no longer in fashion.
So if you’re not going to write in a single genre, what’s the one thing we can always find in a Molly Burkhart book?
Molly: Zombies! There will always be some mention or joke about zombies. And someday, I’m going to write a zombie apocalypse! It’s inevitable….just like The Zombie Apocalypse.
Thank you, my most beloved Sis! I’m so proud of you!
Aside: tonight we’ve talked about everything from chicken soup with homemade noodles (yum) to Craig’s List murders to quails that run backwards to poop. (My Dad is raising quail, if you’re wondering how the subject arose.)
My sides hurt from laughing too much!
Molly Burkhart’s My Gigolo
In case the name doesn’t give it away, Molly really is my sister, and her debut novel My Gigolo releases from Samhain today. I’ll have an interview with her later today, but first, let me tell you a little of the background about how this book came to be.
So there we were, standing in my kitchen talking about our good friend Jenna’s recent short story that had been included in the MILF anthology (as Anna Black), which included an older heroine hiring a male prostitue for the night. I made a joke, like “Hey….! Mom’s always bugging you to date, so maybe I should hire you a gigolo! Your birthday’s just around the corner!”
Molly snorted and made some crack about where would I even find a gigolo around here? The more we talked and laughed, the more the idea began to firm in her mind.
My Gigolo is the result.
If you like quirky romance with fun characters in an unusual contemporary romance, check out Molly’s My Gigolo: The Care and Feeding of a Male Prostitue. Bonus: a pirate mini-golf course!
When a good man is hard to find, there’s only one thing left to do. Buy one.
As far as Gabrielle is concerned, her life isn’t at all a mess. It’s simply taught her a hard lesson—never rely on anyone else for her own happiness. It’s not that she’s against having sex. Far from it. It’s just that if it comes with strings tied to the word “love”, she’ll pass.
Now if only she could stop her sister and friends from trying to show her the error of her solitary ways. Especially after their latest trick—hiring a male prostitute for her birthday.
In all his time as a male escort, Jack’s never met anyone as intriguing as down-to-earth Gabe. Or as determined to refuse his charms. She has no idea whom she’s dealing with, though. Jack’s a consummate professional in all aspects of his chosen field. Including coercion.
One minute, Gabe is agreeing to a night of no-strings sex. The next, she’s staring up at a man who turns her body and soul inside out. Jack is staring down at a woman he can’t imagine never seeing again. Both are suddenly aware there are only two ways this could end: a match made in heaven…or sheer disaster.
Warning: Explicit sex, illegal sexual practices, zombies, a clown, and the strangest minigolf course ever conceived.