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.

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.

New Release!

So I'm finally back home in New Zealand and it's release day! Woot! Mr Cover model looks a bit like a young Brad Pitt dont you think?
This one is a long way away from the sunshine filled world of The Boss and Her Billionaire. It's with a different publisher and of course it's a paranormal tale, complete with shapeshifters and goddesses. It was a blast to write, so I hope you enjoy!

A Talon at Her Throat - The Wild Rose Press
Torn between hiding her goddess lineage from mortals and needing her powerful gifts for self-preservation, Yasmin Freeman just wants to be ordinary. But when an assignment leads her to Gray, a Talon shape-shifter able to assume the deadly features of any bird of prey, the true nature of her abilities is revealed.
Fiercely protective of his people, Gray is honor-bound to dispose of intruders, but Yasmin provokes a lustful hunger in him he doesn’t understand—a hunger that drives him to disregard the Talon’s strict avoidance of humans.
Gray’s seductive touch triggers an ancient bonding process Yasmin is powerless to stop. Their bond should hold them together, but without the cooperation of their peoples, humans, goddesses, and Talons could die. Yasmin must face Gray in battle if she is to plead with the Talon elders for cooperation, yet defeating Gray might mean the end of the fragile trust between them.

You can check out an exerpt or buy the e-book from TWRP here.  Or from iTunes here.

I'm not sure what the best thing about release day is, sharing the news, or staring at the shiny cover. What do you think? Any great release day stories to share?
Happy reading.  xMichele