It's Almost Time For Vampires--And Some Winners!

Yay! Breaking the Covenants is coming out this Friday--after an unforeseen and regrettable delay last week. Rob and I are very excited. We've worked hard on this project (still are--there are more books in it, after all) and are anxious to see what our readers think. For those of you who read the Asphodel series, a moment of warning--this is MUCH different from my fantasy work.

Vampires are fun though. Not as much fun as killing Elves, but what could be?

Tomorrow night I'm doing a chat for writers in the Absolute Write chat room at 9 pm EST. Just click the chat room link at the top of the page. I'll be discussing world building, fantasy archetypes and new mythology--and might very well give a book or two away in the process. Bring your questions and be ready to have a good time!

As for winners---yes I promised you some of those:

Winner of a copy of The Reckoning of Asphodel--Marianne Stephens!

Winner of a copy of Metamorphosis--Babyblue22!

Winner of a copy of The Vampire Covenants 1: Breaking the Covenants--tinkandalissa!

Winner of a copy of ALL my books--Tami!

Congratulations and email me with contact info and the format you want your books in!

Contest!

Because a family emergency is preventing me from attending a scheduled chat, I'm running a biiiiiiiiig contest today. You can find details on Love Romances ECafe.

Just shout out in the comments of this post, and you can win too!

So sorry--I hate to post and run, but I have to get on the road.

Have You Noticed...

...the proliferation and, in fact, glorification of truly ugly people these days? I'm not talking about physical beauty. Some of the ugliest people I know are physically the most beautiful. I'm talking about ugliness of the soul.

I have the television on today for background noise and, because there is absolutely nothing else on, I've had it on the Oxygen channel. After surviving the hell that is an America's Next Top Model marathon, following it up with the show Pretty Wicked has been horrific. Here are all of these lovely young women with absolutely the ugliest souls, personalities and intellects I have ever encountered in my life. I don't even know these people and I am ashamed for them.

Ashamed.

Granted, our society is geared toward the physically attractive. We are pummeled with commercials for weight loss products, cosmetics, clothes and hair care crap from morning to night. Save for the Dove real beauty campaign (which convinced me to spend my money on their products alone) all of the standards our young girls are exposed to for beauty are cookie cutter lookalikes. Women worked way too hard and suffered for way too long to gain equality for the newer generations of women to squander that away on the incessant quest for physical beauty.

I spearheaded a conversation several years ago at a restaurant I worked at. There were probably ten young women there of various ages and I tried to make them all see that a woman doesn't need to be a size two to be gorgeous--or a blonde, or have designer clothes yada yada yada. Even now, it amazes me how little impact my words had. The very next day, they were all dieting again, all caught up in how they looked as opposed to how they felt, what they thought about or how well they worked. In my opinion, it's the fault of "reality" television in a way because that type of programming has taken that type of superficiality and glamorized it to such a degree that that's all our young women think about.

It's very sad.

Beauty is reflected most honestly within a person's soul. Now excuse me while I go touch up my mascara.

Celina, The Wedding Coordinator

I am singularly blessed with my daughters.

Both of them have grown up to be lovey young women. They're smart and working to better themselves. They're independent and likely to remain that way. This weekend, my oldest girl is marrying her fiance' and her sister, who got married last month, is her matron of honor.

Here's where it gets funny.

I hate weddings. I was a caterer for far too long to enjoy weddings. I've set up weddings with over five hundred guests--where indulgent parents spend the equivalent of a house to give their daughters a proper sendoff into the traditional earmark of adult life. I never had a problem charging these people a hundred grand for their sit down dinners with passed hor d'ouerves and a pianist playing until the dance started and everything degenerated into the chicken dance. I always thought that my younger daughter would be the one who'd want a big wedding, but surprisingly and thankfully they just went to the courthouse and got married. My older girl was the one I thought would run away and elope.

I never counted on my future son-in-law wanting a military wedding.

So here I am, two states away, trying to organize a wedding where the bride has very little interest in anything other than showing up to get married. It's actually pretty hysterical; I thought my days of making wedding favors were over. Thank goodness I have all of that experience to fall back on, otherwise this could be just a parody of a wedding. As it is, though, I think I'm going to manange to marry her off with a minimum of expense. Her wedding is labor-intensive as opposed to cost-intensive, which for a poor struggling writer and her family is a good thing.

But man, do I hate tulle.

And then, the dreaded "g" word twice before the end of the year. I am WAY too young to fit into the grandma role but then again being a grandmother at 42 is actually kind of cool. That means I'll be around for my grandchildren's children, God willing. At least I'll be young enough to actually still play with the grandbabies. Meredith (the youngest) is having a girl in June. Audrey (the eldest) doesn't know what her baby, due in October, is going to be yet.

But first, the wedding. Audrey gets married on Sunday, her sister at her side, wearing a dress from a dream and marrying a young man who will be in the Middle East with his unit come the new year. And unlike most parents, who watch their daughers take the marriage vows, I can't sit back and congratulate myelf on a job well done. My daughters being who they are has very little to do with me.

I will be able to sit back, however, and enjoy seeing the happiness of my daughters as they take the final steps from the chrysalis of their adolescence into the big, broad world of 'you're grown up now.' I will know that unlike most of their peers, they are singularly well-requipped to take that step knowing more of the happiness and horrors that await them. And that, I think, is the only thing a parent can't give them.

Bon voyage, girls of mine.

Breaking The Covenants--More News

Hurray! The website for our Vampire Covenants world is up and running! Go check out http://thevampirecovenants.bravehost.com/index.html so that you can find out about our world and how we make our vampires work.

I'm getting really excited by this. Yes, I know there's a lot of people writing about vampires these days but this isn't an urban fantasy. Our vampires are moving through the world of the eighteenth century, when the vampire paranoia was so great that the latter half of the century is called the 'great vampire controversy.' We send them to London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Venice--some of the greatest cities of the era. We take the conventional vampire mythology back to the reader--no sparkling for our vampires, not that sparkling is bad.

A love that blossoms in life can only flower in death.

And this is one hell of a love story. Go check it out and drop back by and tell me what you think!

When the Muse Calls...

...I suppose I have to answer.

I hadn't intended to start writing again until after the first Covenants book was released. Between the wedding and edits and book releases, my plate is fairly full. But today, the muse got angry.

She screamed.

She threw things.

She drank all the beer in the fridge.

Then she informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I was going to by God start writing on a companion piece to Deception Enters Stage Left and that the topic was not open for discussion. Yeah, I know. I'm stupid but I can't help myself. Last night, during the daily struggle to go to sleep at a respectable time, I got this image in my head. I was about half-asleep and I mumbled to the husband to just remind me at some point today about one word.

Harlequin.

It was almost the first thing he said to me today and my muse has been having a fit ever since. While I was doing wedding stuff, I was thinking about harlequins. Promo work? Harlequins. Business stuff? Harlequins. Everywhere I've turned today, there's something that reminds me of Harlequins.

(No, not the romance book publisher, dangit! A real, honest-to-goodness Commedia dell'Arte harlequin with red, blue and green triangular patterns on his clothes and a black mask carrying a slapstick. THAT harlequin.)

So finally, I just gave up. I've been writing non-stop since I finished my to-do list and it's all been about--you guessed it!--the harlequin.

Bet you can't guess what the working title is.

At any rate, either I've written my muse into quiescence or she passed out from her Rolling Rock and Killian's binge because now she's curled up in a ball on the couch with a whole mess of slumbering felines. So while she's asleep, I thought I'd share my new obsession with you.

Dream of harlequins. Sleep tight.

Covenants Cover Art!

Yay! We have cover art for Breaking the Covenants which will be released on April 24th by Aspen Mountain Press!

Hopefully, I'll survive my daughter's wedding this week and can get back into blogging regularly. Here's hoping. But, until then, take a gander at this cover (artwork, as always, by the lovely and effervescent Renee George). Rob and I are both pleased and I'm starting to get excited for the release. You may notice in the hour or so after this post that a new countdown clock has been started.

It would be the Covenants countdown.

*grin*

I love writing.