Next Big Thing Blog Tag

So I ended up getting double tagged. By Katee Robert of Wrong bed, Right guy fame (and fortune), and also by Natalie Damschroder. But the more the merrier right - especially this time of year. The rules of the game - answer a list of questions about your current WIP and enjoy sharing the love. Easy. So here goes. Have a great day.

What is your working title of your book?

Love Lost and Found

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It’s a sequel to The Boss and Her Billionaire. I was in love with Felicity’s character from that book and wanted to give her a story. But it took me a while to work out how as she’d been trapped on a Cruise Ship for the whole last book. Let’s just say this brings a whole new meaning to getting stranded with Mr Tall dark and handsome…

What genre does your book fall under?

Contemporary Romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

 If there was a taller, younger version of Johnny Depp, he’d be the hero, and as for Felicity, hmmm, maybe Reese Witherspoon with one wild and crazy spiral perm wig.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Take one tropical island paradise, one all or nothing business deal, a bunch of lost memories and stir ‒ a potent Pacific cocktail of love, lost and found.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

All fingers and toes crossed it’ll come out with Entangled Publishing to follow the last one.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I’m still going! As any frequent visitors to this blog know, I have a one year old, so writing happens in his sleep times. And those seem to be getting fewer and shorter at the moment, sigh. I’ve spent about a month on it and I’m up to chapter nine. My fabo critique partners also made me rewrite the first chapters as well! I’m hoping that daddy daycare will step up over the holiday season and I’ll be able to rock out the last few chapters.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

A Holiday Affair by Annie Seaton perhaps, and of course, The Boss and Her Billionaire.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

It was the character actually. Felicity. She only gets a small part in The Boss and Her Billionaire, but I like her smarts and her sassy mouth. I figure I owe her.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

How about a tiny excerpt?

…”Best we undress for luncheon don’t you think?” Without waiting for her reply, he dumped his small bag, stripped off his jacket and shirt and peeled down his trousers to reveal turquoise board shorts and an array of ink Felicity would never have guessed at. He stepped into the pool and splashed the water up over his chest, making his tattoos sparkle and his muscles gleam. Oh god. If there was ever a need for a new Caped Crusader, Rick McCashin’s chest could take on Christian Bale’s any day. His tattooed torso was hairless with perfect pecs, not too buff so they looked like manboobs, but firm and smooth and…Must. Not. Look. At. Passenger. Muscles. Say something to distract yourself. “Wouldn’t have picked you for the coloring-in kind.”

            He rubbed his hand over his chest.

Duh. Now you’ll be rude if you don’t look.

“Don’t you like them?”

            “I didn’t say that. Just…”

            “Just what?” There it was again. The way he looked at her, with his eyes hard, piercing, as if he was looking through her and searching for something only he knew was there. She wrapped her arms around her despite the heat of the day...

The writers I'm tagging are:

Jackie Ashenden, Autumn MacCarthur, and Bronwen Evans - whose new release is super close to hitting Amazon. 

Thanks as always for stopping by. Christmas is fast approaching, so if I neglect you all, I apologise. I’ll share just what Santa put under the tree soon!

xMichele

You're all winners in my book

So using an extremely sophisticated method of selection (me writing out your names and then Mr. One pulling one of them out of a hat) *yadkny* is the winner of the Entangled Under the Mistletoe Hop. I'll contact you shortly with your Amazon Voucher. Congrats!

BUT as a thanks for going to the trouble of stopping by and commenting, I thought I'd point you to a free book I contributed to so that everyone can have a little taste of that holiday season spirit.

The Wild Rose Press have just put out their annual free cookbook, full of tasty treats from their authors (I've included my kids sugar free birthday cake, not exactly full of Christmas indulgence, but good for the wee ones)

You can download it for free here.

Next on the agenda is ANOTHER blog hop - this time I've been tagged by the fabulous Katee Robert - of Wrong Bed, Right Guy fame (if you haven't read it yet, check it out, it cracked the New York and USA Today Best Sellers Lists). So I'll be chatting about my current WIP as per The Next Big Thing Blog Hop instructions.

In the meantime, thanks again so much for stopping by. See you soon,

xMichele

Entangled Under the Mistletoe

Don’t forget to check out what the other authors participating in the hop are giving away!   It's December! Wowsers, how did that happen? That makes it a full quarter year since I started out in the world of Romance, and what a time it's been. I  got tweetastic news from Entangled's  Liz Pelletier about how my debut The Boss and Her Billionaire went and so in return I get to say a massive THANKS! to everyone who bought, read, reviewed and recommended the book. And as Christmas is fast approaching, its time for a special Entangled Family Hop!
  I'm giving away a $6 Amazon Gift Voucher to say thanks, and to help you check out even more of the fab books that Entangled have put out this year (why $6? Cos it buys you two Entangled Category romances, yeay). All you have to do is comment here with your email address (the usual) and let me know what your favorite romance character would likely be doing for Christmas.
My fav romance character at the moment is marching her way speedily through my WIP. She'll likely be supping caipirinha, wearing a bikini and checking her cell for updates while she scans the blue sky for any sign of Santa....I wont say anymore!
Happy Hopping, now get ready to fill up your Christmas stocking!
xMichele


Don’t forget to check out what the other authors participating in the hop are giving away! Diane Alberts Rachel Harris Ophelia London Lisa Burstein Nicola Marsh Jenna Bennett Barbara DeLeo Sarah Gilman Chloe Jacobs Kate Avelynn Aleah Barley Candace Havens Tiffany Allee Natalie J. Damschroder Robin Covington Coleen Kwan Karen Erickson Crista McHugh Patricia Eimer Roxanne Snopek Taryn Elliott Michelle McLean Melissa Bourbon Ramirez Victoria James Annie Seaton Boone Brux Robin Bielman Lisa Kessler Christine Warner Jus Accardo Rosalie Lario Stacey Kennedy Robyn DeHart Laura Kaye Cari Quinn Stephanie Draven Paige Cuccaro Katee Robert Bronwen Evans Rita Oberlies Nina Croft Marisa Cleveland Michele de Winton Jennifer Shirk Amy Andrews and Heidi Rice Ros Clarke Rachel Lyndhurst Hope Tarr Aimee Carson and Kate Hardy Sara Daniel Lea Nolan

The Silly Season cometh

And with it, so do more and more blog hops and competitions. I feel like I've signed up for a mountain! Fun times.

Currently The Romance Reviews have their Year End Splash Party. And I'm playing. All you have to do is jump over my website - or go back there if you came from there originally (sorry!) and work out the answer to the question they'll post.
Hint - read the excerpts ;-)

And later on there'll be an Entangled Publishing blog hop - oh so many great authors, so many great books. So come along and join in the fun. Meet new authors, characters and get ready for the Silly Season and its bag of swag!

xMichele

Guest day and another contest!

Today is guest day. I love reading fellow Kiwi authors and so today a new friend Barbara DeLeo (great names start with de...) is stopping by to say hi. I hope you'll give her a warm welcome. She's even generously offered a book for one lucky commenter. Welcome!

Hi Michele and thanks so much for having me on the blog today. Congratulations on all your success with The Boss and her Billionaire and on your new release, A Talon at her Throat.

You write such gorgeous heroes – men who know exactly what they want and who are not afraid to go after it. It’s got me thinking about why there are some heroes that can make me melt into a little puddle while I’m reading, and others who make me want to poke them with a very sharp stick. And I’m also wondering if there are some traits that are universal for heroes. Honesty? Selflessness? The understanding that no matter how much your butt itches there’s never a good time to scratch it?

In the interests of full disclosure, I thought I’d do a top ten list of the traits I like a hero to have.

#10 He knows just the right moment to fill my glass and when to empty the garbage.

#9 Even a white t-shirt and jeans make him look like a god

#8 He’s kind to animals and children, and remembers his mother’s birthday

#7 He smells of hard work and sea breeze and sunshine

#6 Should I swoon, he’d scoop me up without flinching

#5 He understands that ice cream is my drug of choice

#4 He knows my bum never looks big in anything no matter how many times I ask

#3 He recognizes the business end of a fry pan and a vacuum cleaner

#2  He values friends and the time to do the things that make his eyes shine

#1 He laughs and lives and loves with gusto

Now it’s your turn! Barbara has an e copy of her debut novel, Contract for Marriage to give away to a commenter who lists the top three things they look for in a hero.

Contract for Marriage

Buy from Barnes and Noble or Amazon or Kobo

You can find Barbara at:

Website  Facebook   Goodreads  Twitter

Barbara’s Bio

Barbara DeLeo’s first book, co-written with her best friend, was a story about beauty queens in space. She was eleven, and the sole, handwritten copy was lost years ago, much to everyone’s relief. It’s some small miracle that she kept the faith and is now living her dream of writing sparkling contemporary romance with unforgettable characters.

After completing degrees in Psychology and English then traveling the world, Barbara married her winemaker hero and had two sets of twins. She still loves telling stories about finding love in all the wrong places, with not a beauty queen or spaceship in sight.

I am woman, hear me vote!

In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that long ago that us lady folk were thought unsuited to the rough-and-tumble world of public life and politics. Babies and cooking were our lot and it wasn't until 1920 in the USA that future presidents thought about what campaigning to get the women's vote might look like.
Down here in New Zealand, we like to think we're an enlightened lot. Our women's suffrage race beat the rest of the western world and the pivotal right that's being discussed infinitum at present was handed over in 1893. We've had a couple of female Prime Ministers, plenty of female judges and a fair few big company CEOs. It was Kate Sheppard who lead the charge in New Zealand, and in return we've put her on our $10 note. Nice.
Maybe that's why I'm such a fan of female characters who can. Authors like Sarah Mayberry, Ruthie Knox and Leslie Kelly in the Category Romance world and Nalini Singh in Paranormal, really know how to give a girl what she wants as well as telling a great story.
I'd like to think that were I to write a political romance, it would be my heroine running for president and her hero end up cheering her on all the way. Who knows.
Today I'm sending out a universal Thanks to those women who came before and made sure I got my chance at the ballot box. Good luck with your voting if you're in the States, no matter who you're voting for. Let me know if you're celebrating, commiserating, or just pondering the massive impact of such a small piece of (voting) paper.
x Michele

Winners!

Update! By the same super sophisticated process involving me printing out your names and Mr. One playing with them until there was only one left which I used for the previous blog hop, Susan Shapley is the winner of the Long and Short Reviews Blog hop. Congratulations to her and to Becky White, the winner of The Wild Rose Press Halloween Blog Hop!
I really appreciate the time you took to stop by and comment so thanks again, but the rules say I'm only allowed to pick one winner.
I do run competitions here every now and then though so come on by whenever it suits. I'm doing a Q&A with The Romance Reviews later on in the month and there are HEAPS of prizes to be won with that one. www.theromancereviews.com

Susan and Becky a copy of The Boss and Her Billionaire and A Talon at Her Throat will be coming your way soonest. Congratulations and I hope you enjoy. Thanks to everyone who stopped by, I hope to see you here again.
x Michele

Image thanks to freedigitalphotos.net

When things go bad...

They really go bad don't they? In the past two weeks I have been hammered by food poisoning, "manflu", Mr. One has turned into a dribbling snotmonster and my computer has decided to retire early through over use, though not, of course, within its warranty...sigh. I could use a new head as well as a new computer.
Now that I'm feeling slightly better however, everything doesn't seem as bad and I'm a little embarrassed at my woe-as-meing. I mean no one I know was involved in some horrible car crash, there are no terrifying storms on the horizon and we have enough food to eat and water to drink. What's more, I still get to wake up and be a writer. Hey, cool, you talked me out of it.... ;-)
Halloween is fast approaching and while it's not such a big deal over here in New Zealand, because of all the excitement generated over in the states, I'm kinda caught up in it too. So maybe today I'll think about those who have passed. Characters, heroes, friends and family, my thoughts are with you all this week. Love, light and excellent reading material to you all.
xMichele

Guest - Emma Shortt

Firstly, congratulations to the winner of last weeks competition: Janie Stevenson. Yep, I'd love to have a hero with soft downy plumage in his nether regions and the strength of giant eagle wings in his arms. Nice. A copy of A Talon at Her Throat is winging it's way to you as we speak.

Today we have prolific writer Emma Shortt stopping by. And her book in a week release Paying her Debt (yep, book in a week!) is only $0.99 for a tiny short while. Grab yours to see what this clever lady can whip out of thin air!
x Michele

A Book in a Week

I wrote Paying her Debt, my erotic, contemporary romance, in a week. Yep, a week.

It came to me in a flash of inspiration and I knew I had to get the story down as soon as possible. So I sat at my computer and I just did not stop writing. Well, okay there were food and toilet breaks but other than that the family were ignored, the house fell apart around my ears and even whilst I slept the plot invaded my dreams.  

Now I’m quite a prolific writer, less than 25,000 words a week and I feel like I’ve slacked off, but this was something else altogether. If I could bottle the energy I felt in that week I’d be well...writing a book a week!

Paying her Debt has been described as an old fashioned romance with some pretty modern erotic elements and I hoped that it would be my first bestseller for Evernight (one of my two publishers). Up until then I’d had a few paranormal romances published but whilst they’d done okay they weren’t setting anything on fire. Paying her Debt did.

It sold more books than anything I’d published before combined and as I watched the sales figures tally up I couldn’t help but think that yes! I would write a book a week.  Goodbye evil day job, hello full time writing.

 Only it doesn’t work like that.

I’ve never again been able to create an entire, fully edited book in such a short time. I’ve come close. On one very memorable day I wrote 15,763 words. Those words were the ending for my post-apocalyptic romance, Waking up Dead (coming late 2013 from Entangled Publishing), and I was ill for days afterwards. But a book in a week – nope it has never happened. I’ve thought about this a lot and tried to work out why I can’t recreate the energy I had in that week and I’ve come to two conclusions. Firstly at that point in my career I was so desperate for something to sell well that I was spurred on to the point of madness, secondly I had a storyline come to me from nowhere - fully formed - and I sort of wanted to write it so I could read it...does that make sense? Of course these reasons don’t help me to do the whole thing over again, but it is fun to wonder! I’d love to hear from anyone else who has managed to write a book in such a short space of time. Where did you get your energy? Can you recreate the process?

And if you’d like to read the product of my week of madness it is on sale right now for just 99 cents at Amazon.com. I’d be thrilled if you’d check it out. Just imagine if I made the Amazon best seller lists with it! It might even spur me on to try for a five day book...you never know!

Happy reading,

Emma x

Birds of a feather - Give away!

I've always thought it would be kinda cool to fly. I mean, super hero power? Surely flight has got to be well and truly up there don't you think? And sex on the wing? Count me in. So when I jumped into paranormal world, I figured my heroes really needed to fly. Today I thought I'd give away a copy of my latest title A Talon at Her Throat, featuring bird of prey a plenty.

Writing this book I 'dived' (sorry) into research about birds of prey as I wanted my Talon shapeshifters to be able to chose at will which features they'd take from the world's catalog of aeral hunters.
The Brahminy Kite for example calls with a mewing "keeyew"and sometimes take on much bigger birds, even eagles, if they're in a mob. One brave bird. Whereas Kestral, birds of true beauty in their ability to hover and beautiful striped plumage, wouldn't go for anything much bigger than a large lizard. But man are they pretty.

I loved letting the Talon shift between Eagle, Kestral, Kite and even Osprey in A Talon at her Throat. And there's even a gentle-ish owl in the mix. Amazing how those creatures can look wise or brutal with just a slight change of their heads.

There's plenty of bird of prey to choose from. I'd love to know what characteristics you'd pick to adorn your Talon hero. Steel sharp sight? Expansive wing breadth? Or soft downy feathers at his groin? Leave a comment here, through my website, on facebook or twitter to win! 

Thanks for stopping by!

xMichele

Excerpt - A Talon at Her Throat

Her body throbbed, the heat of liquid arousal rushing between her legs. It was wrong, so wrong. And yet, how could it be when every part of her body yearned to fit into his like a neat eternal jigsaw piece. Without meaning to Yasmin felt a gentle rocking start up as she rubbed up against him, her legs spread wide as he held them around his waist.

Her shirt already open, Gray tore through the thin lace of her bra, and the wind against her bared breasts felt incredible, icy on her nipples. As he nuzzled there, Yasmin felt a hand move from her butt to the front of her pants.

Damn! If his hand was there, what the hell was holding her up and safe?

 Before she could protest that he might drop her or that she wasn’t about to get naked mid-air, her pants were spiraling down towards the earth.

With only a small scrap of white lace now separating her from his need, Yasmin felt the slick of her sex urging him on. Never had a man aroused her like this, made her body respond despite her mind’s protests.

His biceps bulged as he shifted her just a little closer and held her against his hard length to stop her wriggling. Her stomach clenched as the power of those muscles promised the strength he would bring should he drive himself into her. It would feel soooo good. “Oh, yes.” She threw back her head.

You can read more or grab your own copy on the Wild Rose Press site or on iTunes.