Orlando

I'm in Orlando at moment, attending the RWA National Conference. The Literacy Signing was last night, and it went wonderfully. I loved meeting all of you that were able to come. Next year, it'll be in New York, so if that's close to you, make a note in your diary!

Today, I'm planning to attend the keynote speech by Nora Roberts, which should be fantastic.

Also, if you're at RWA, don't forget to come to the Berkley signing 3-4.30pm, Friday. Free books!

Hope you're all having a great week :-)

Friday Book Club

What's on your bookshelf this week?

Beautiful Tahoe

How are you all? I've still got my traveling shoes on - I took the above photo at Lake Tahoe yesterday. It was an absolutely stunning day.

Guest Author: Cory Daniells

I'm delighted to welcome fantasy author Cory Daniells to the blog today! Please give Cory a warm welcome everyone (and don't forget to enter her giveaway).

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Kissing Cousins, by Cory Daniells

(or why I think bookshops and publishers put too much emphasis on genre tags)

Did you know adventure fiction stories used to be called romances, because of the ‘romance’ of adventure?

Just as I don’t eat only salads, I don’t read only one genre. And from what I’ve seen most readers are like this. They pick their book according to their moods.

I read paranormal romances, dark urban fantasies, regency romances, traditional fantasies and science fiction, as well as children’s books -- I love a good children’s book -- and then there are all the factual books I devour because I’m just fascinated by the world. To be frank, if something looks interesting, I read it. The back of cereal packets, the back of people’s newspapers when they sit opposite me on the train … yes, I’m a sad case.

I’m the sort of person who goes into an independent bookstore and asks ‘Do you have anything obscure and interesting that pushes the boundaries of genre?’

Not that my new trilogy pushes the boundaries of genre. King Rolen’s Kin, is a traditional fantasy, with lashings of rivalry, magic and betrayal.

(Click on the image to see larger version)

I set out to write the kind of book that you curl up with as a reward to yourself after a tough week at work. It will sweep you away (at least I hope so). It certainly swept me away while I wrote it.

The genres I read across are all kissing cousins (even regency romance, which I’ve been hooked on since I discovered Georgette Heyer). The books are only one step removed from each other, with some the focus might be on the adventure rather than the romance, but human beings are motivated by love and there is nothing as powerful as this primal passion.

I’m guessing you are devoted readers (if not of cereal packets), so I’m doing a give-away of the first book of King Rolen’s Kin. To enter, leave a comment with your answer to this question:

What’s the name of the kingdom where the story takes place?

I’ll leave the competition open for 48 hours and announce the winner in the comments.

On that note, I’d like to thank Nalini for welcoming a ‘cousin’ onto her blog. Warning, Gushing Fan-girl Moment -- I have all Nalini’s books. Currently, I’m working my way through them for the second time. (I’ve read the one about Mercy and Riley three times).

My blog.
My website.

KRKhd from Daryl Lindquist on Vimeo.

Friday Book Club

Book club time! What've you been reading and loving this week?

Denver, Colorado

Breaking News: I just found out that Bonds of Justice is to be on the New York Times Bestseller list! Thanks to all of you for your support!

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It's been all go since I arrived in the U.S. I had a fantastic time at RomCon! I posted some photos from it over at Oddshots if you'd like to have a look - I plan to post up some more (likely when I'm back in NZ).

For today, I've got an image from the stunning Rocky Mountain National Park. It's an amazing, amazing place and I'm so glad I got the chance to visit.


Talking about amazing things - I've seen the cover for Archangel's Consort and it is wicked-awesome. I can't share it just yet as it's not quite final, but trust me, you will all love it!

Also, I wanted to post up a link - this week's Book Chat over at Bitten By Books is about the Psy/Changeling Series, so swing by and join in the discussion.

I hope you're all having a wonderful week!

Guest Author - Tessa Adams

I'm delighted to welcome Tessa Adams to the blog today. I read Dark Embers as an ARC and thought Tessa's new world of dragon shifters was dark and sexy and intriguing. You can check out an excerpt on Tessa's website.

Please give Tessa a warm welcome everyone, and don't forget to enter her contest!
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Tessa Adams

Before I start, I have to have a fangirl moment here. Nalini is my absolutely favorite paranormal writer and has been since I read Slave to Sensation many, many moons ago. I am so thrilled that she invited me to post on her blog!

I spent a long time trying to decide what it is I wanted to write about for today and since my latest cover for Dark Embers has generated a lot of comments— and because Nalini has some of the most beautiful covers I’ve ever seen--I thought I’d spend a few minutes talking about how books get their covers.

To begin with, I have to say that I have been incredibly lucky at NAL— they have given me beautiful, sexy, provocative covers for all of my books and I could not be happier. In fact, I just got the cover for Hidden Embers, my second dragon book as Tessa Adams, and I am very excited about it.

Now, I can’t tell you about everyone’s experience with covers—as I think each publishing house does things a little differently—but at NAL, the cover art really is a collaboration—between the author, her editor, her agent, marketing, the artist, and the art director. Wow, when I lay it all out like that it sounds like a lot of work. But then again, that sounds about right. Trying to get a great cover is a lot of work.

Sometimes an author just gets lucky, as I did with my first book, Full Exposure. I had almost no input on that cover—I said I wanted something to reflect the heat (Louisiana bayou in the summertime and Kevin is an iron sculptor who welds his pieces together) and something that reflected Serena hiding away and Kevin slowly stripping her defenses from her. And voila, I got the absolutely GORGEOUS cover for Full Exposure (one of my favorite parts is Serena peering out from the spine of the book).

My Tie Me Down cover, however, took a lot more work. My editor wanted to shake things up a bit, and though one major theme in the book is Cole’s sexual domination of Genevieve, there is one scene where she turns the tables on him. My editor wanted to exploit that scene on the cover—to make the book really stand out from others of its kind (which is why Cole is the one tied up here). But when we first got the cover, the title was in huge white block letters, Cole (with his arms tied behind his back) was dead center and the whole background was dark shades of brown.

It was an interesting cover, but both my agent and I—and to some extent my editor—felt that it wasn’t really catering to the audience (in other words, it looked like M/M erotica and we were afraid that people who bought it and found out it that it wasn’t would be upset). Plus the whole cover just looked really harsh and forbidding and didn’t appeal to us as women at all (a problem since romance novels are geared toward women). So we took our concerns back to the artist, who came up with the present cover—he added a layer of cursive underneath the title, added blood to the white letters to signify the serial killings that are the book’s subplots, moved Cole to the left and put Genevieve in the upper right corner. Of course, now the cover looks like a fem dom book (which it definitely isn’t) and my Genevieve has blonde hair, not brown, but at least the overall cover is really striking and beautiful—and has a subtle feminine touch that I really, really like.

I think my Tease Me cover is absolutely beautiful. The color scheme is an interesting cross between Full Exposure and Tie Me Down, which I love. When my editor came to me, we had originally envisioned the first scene from the book, where the two main characters are on facing balconies in a beautiful New Orleans courtyard. But no matter what the art department did, they—and marketing—just weren’t happy with the finished look. So they went back to the drawing board and the very sexy cover for Tease Me was born. I love it and was glad to hear that readers do as well :-)

Which brings me to my Dark Embers cover, which was another one that was nearly perfect when we got it. When my editor asked what I wanted, I told her a desert scene (my dragons live in the modern day, in the caves under the New Mexico desert) and a hot guy with a dragon tattoo—and what I got was exactly that. But when the original version came back, both my editor and the marketing department were concerned that it wasn’t dragony enough, so she had the art department add the belt buckle and my Dark Embers cover was complete.

So in the spirit of my blog entry, I thought I’d ask what some of your favorite covers have been? Some of my recent favorites are Maya Banks’s cover for Sweet Temptation, Unspeakable by Laura Griffin, Larissa Ione’s for Sin Undone, Nalini’s for Archangel’s Kiss, and Lauren Dane’s Inside Out. Leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of my first Dragon’s Heat novel, Dark Embers.*

*Tessa will close the contest and announce the winner in the comments.

Friday Book Club

...coming to you on Saturday today.

It's time to talk books. What've you been reading and enjoying this week?

Guest Author: Shiloh Walker

I'm delighted to host the lovely Shiloh Walker on the blog today. Please give her a warm welcome everyone, and don't forget to enter her contest!

Stuck

Hello…and thanks to Nalini for letting me drop in on her blog!

Where do you get your ideas?

Writers get that question a lot. I can’t speak for other writers but my ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere in between—a documentary, a random conversation with my husband, a book. And sometimes, I just wake up and there an idea is—like it was waiting for me.

That’s what happened with my current release, The Missing.

Actually, it was more like there was a character stuck in my head. Just there, waiting for me.

The first character to come into my head wasn’t the hero or the heroine, though.

It was Jillian—the hero’s daughter.

I had this little girl’s image in my head, the entire scene, really.

She was sitting in an airport, drawing a picture. When she was done, she shows it to her dad.

She’s drawn three kids, one in each corner of the page. He asks her who they are, and she says, “I don’t know…they are the missing…”

That was the start of the idea. The whole idea emerged from that, and this is one of those ideas that kind of bubbled and brewed in the back of my head for a while before I even attempted to write it. I think it was a year or two.

By then, the characters for the hero, Cullen and the heroine, Taige, had also started to form in my head, too, and once they were there, the story came pretty easily.

But it all started with the germ of an idea—that scene with Jillian, and I don’t know really know where Jillian came from. Of course, Jillian likes to hang out in my head, because not long after that idea popped into my head, another one came.

And this one involves a story where Jillian is grown up. That one won’t be written for at least a few more years, I know—in my mind, she’s still just a kid and I can’t write her story until I stop seeing her as a kid. She’s still in my head, though, and it’s just a matter of time, I think, until I write her story.

And since I’ve got a book out and I should probably do the standard author promo bit…here it is… (and stay tuned, I’m giving away a prize…)

The Missing is now out in mass market…

LOVE LOST

As a teenager, Taige Branch was able to do things with her psychic gift that others couldn’t understand—except for Cullen Morgan, the boy her stole her heart. He did his best to accept her abilities, until his mother was brutally murdered—and he couldn’t forgive Taige for not preventing her death.

PASSION FOUND

Now a widowed father, Cullen Morgan has never forgotten Taige. But what brings her back into his life is another tragic event. His beloved little girl has been kidnapped, and Taige is his only hope of finding her.

A LOVE THAT NEVER DIED

Working together against the clock, Cullen and Taige can’t help but wonder whether—if they find his daughter in time—it isn’t too late for the overpowering love that still burns between them…

And now here’s the prize. I get characters stuck in my head. A lot. Sometimes they are mine…like Jillian. Sometimes they are belong to other authors…like SL Viehl’s Cherijo & Duncan from the Stardoc books, or Nalini’s Elena & Raphael, Jeaniene Frost’s Cat & Bones, or JD Robb’s Roarke & Eve. They get stuck in my head, and not just a particular story, but the characters themselves.

This ever happen to you? What characters get stuck in your head and why? Leave your answer in the comments and everybody who enters will get entered for a $15 GC to Amazon. I will draw a winner from the comments and post the name here in the comments sometime during the next week. Contest open across the globe!

Shiloh Walker

http://www.shilohwalker.com

Website Updated

The website's been updated - including with the first chapter excerpt from Play of Passion. Enjoy!

Bonds of Justice is out!!

To celebrate the release, here's an excerpt!

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Excerpt from Bonds of Justice

The door opened at that moment, revealing the woman at the center of his thoughts. She’d changed into jeans and a gray sweatshirt that covered those curves he was starting to obsess over. He could see the edge of a white T-shirt beneath the sweatshirt, while plain black sneakers peeked out from under the hem of her jeans.

“Is this appropriate?” she asked. “I assumed we might have time to go to the garage as well.”

He ran his gaze not over her clothing, but over the soft curls of her shoulder-length hair. A rich, charcoal black, those curls tempted a man to fist his hands in the softness, tug her close, and sink his teeth—deliciously carefully—into that full lower lip. “Yes.” It came out husky.

She hesitated, as if she’d caught the edge in his tone, but her words when they came were pragmatic. “I’ll e-mail the Councilor from the car, ensure the chief mechanic knows we’ll be coming.” Locking her door after picking up that little computronic gadget that seemed to be surgically attached to her hand, she fell into step beside him, her head not even reaching his shoulder.

“You’re short.” He could tuck her under his arm, and against his body, without any problem whatsoever.

Sophia almost halted. “That kind of observation is rude in all cultures.”

He shrugged, but he’d noted the jerky movement before she smoothed out her stride, considered the implications—Psy made it a point to react as little as possible, regardless of the provocation. And Max was very, very good at provocation when he was in the mood. “I didn’t say you didn’t look good short.”

“I am what is termed a ‘throwback’ to my great-great-grandmother,” Sophia said, her tone pure feminine frost. “She had the identical body type. I will never be slender.”

“From where I’m standing”—Max couldn’t help himself, the devil in him taking over—“slender is overrated.”

Ignoring him with a focus that made his lips curve into a slow, satisfied smile, Sophia pressed her finger to the touch pad for the elevator.

(c) Copyright 2010 by Nalini Singh

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I hope you all enjoy Max and Sophia's story!!

RomCon

I've got my traveling shoes on and am off to the RomCon conference in Denver! If you're attending, please come on over and say hi!

I'll only be posting sporadically during the next few weeks, but I've got several guest authors scheduled to post through that time, so keep an eye out for them!

Friday Book Club

Before we dive into the book club, I have some more linkage for you.

More great reviews are coming in for Bonds of Justice. Here's a snippet from a review by Leontine of Realms on Our Bookshelves.

There is an everlasting quality to the storytelling that makes Bonds Of Justice a one-sitting-read....BONDS OF JUSTICE gave all that is important to me as a reader along with two memorable characters I got to fall in love with.

Follow the link to read the full review. I'm getting so excited about the release!

I've also got an interview up at Kylie Griffin's blog, talking travel, books and dolls. (Curious? check out the interview!)

Kiwi author Helen Lowe has just joined The Supernatural Underground, so swing by and say hi.

And fellow authors Jaci Burton and Anya Bast are talking new releases and giving them away, including one you might recognize :)

Now, onto the book club! I've been reading this fascinating book called Play of Passion *grin* What've you been reading and loving this week?