Friday Book Club

The Friday Book Club is now open. What are you reading and loving this week?

Laura Florand - Once Upon A Rose

Laura Florand can't write fast enough for me. Every time I finish one of her books, I'm over at her website looking for the next release, and saying, what do you meant I have to wait?!

I absolutely loved, loved, loved Once Upon A Rose. The heroine is sweet with a teasing sense of humor, while the hero is, as the heroine puts it, a bit of a "growly bear." Only this big, tough bear's heart is huge enough to hold an entire valley and tender enough that the heroine can make him blush.

This book left me with a big grin and the happy good-book sigh. If you haven't read any of Laura's books, you have such a treat ahead of you! Here's a link to her website if you'd like to explore.

And if you go to Amazon and click the cover of Once Upon A Rose, you can read a long excerpt (the adorable and funny first meeting between the hero and heroine) without having to download. Plus, Laura also has a bonus shorter excerpt up on her site. Enjoy!

Adventures in Proofing

I keep a mental list of the most interesting / funny / difficult-to-spot typos found during the very final round of proofs. Remember, this is after many, many, many people have already read the book, all of whom are looking out for errors.

It shows how elastic the mind is that we so easily recognize what the word is meant to be, or what order the sentence should be in, and keep on reading.

In my final proof typo hall of fame, I have:

Knees that crumbled.

Hands put into the coats of my pocket. 

And now...

If you can spot the typo, don't give it away! Just say you got it. :) Now imagine spotting that typo in among 159,000+ other words. I feel pretty awesome right now. (Until someone writes to me after the book is out and points out a typo I missed and I go gahhhhhh!). ;-)

How did the typo above escape the computer's eagle eye? In this case, it was human error - I made an edit in the manuscript post copy-edits and forgot to run the spellcheck over the addition. But human eyes pick up substitutions like bear/bare, lightning/lightening, so it all balances out in the end.

And yep, that's the final wordcount of Shards of Hope. In manuscript format, it'd probably be 630 or so pages I think. Formatted for the hardcover, it's 483 pages. 

That should keep everyone busy for a few hours at least!

Friday Book Club

The Friday Book Club is now open! What are you reading and loving this week?

Writing

Working on ARCHANGEL'S ENIGMA. Naasir and Venom are hanging out. ;-)

What are you up to?

Proofing SHARDS OF HOPE

A Rock Hard Gif

Hope you're all having a wonderful day! I wanted to share this cute/awesome gif Lege Artis emailed through. (I asked her if I could steal it as soon as I saw it!)

Charlie-mouse vs T-Rex. Grr! I love the look on the mouse's face! It's like, just you wait...

Friday Book Club

The Friday Book Club is now open! What are you reading and loving this week?

Cover Love: ROCK HARD - Releasing March 10th!

I love this cover so much!!

ROCK HARD

March 10th

Preorders available: iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, Nook

In New York Times Bestselling author Nalini Singh’s newest contemporary romance, passion ignites between a gorgeous, sinfully sexy man who built himself up from nothing and a shy woman who has a terrible secret in her past…

Wealthy businessman Gabriel Bishop rules the boardroom with the same determination and ruthlessness that made him a rock star on the rugby field. He knows what he wants, and he’ll go after it no-holds-barred.

And what he wants is Charlotte Baird.

Charlotte knows she’s a mouse. Emotionally scarred and painfully shy, she just wants to do her job and remain as invisible as possible. But the new CEO—a brilliant, broad-shouldered T-Rex of a man who growls and storms through the office, leaving carnage in his wake—clearly has other plans. Plans that may be equal parts business and bedroom.

If Charlotte intends to survive this battle of wits and hearts, the mouse will have to learn to wrangle the T-Rex. Game on.

Click to read excerpt (two full chapters) 

Reviewers: If you haven't already requested a review copy via email or through the blog tour, you can now request via NetGalley. (If you emailed me a direct review request, I'm hoping to get through all the emails tomorrow sometime.)

Charlie-Mouse vs T-Rex

“Get to work,” she muttered and knuckled down.

Gabriel was fine for the first hour, but then he began barking orders even a six-armed woman with a split personality would have had trouble handling.

Finally, pushed to the edge, Charlotte snapped. “I’m going as fast as I can!” she yelled when he asked her for something a minute after he’d asked her to complete another task.

He scowled and held out a file. “This is a priority.”

Grabbing it from his hand, she said, “Fine,” and slapped it down on her desk.

It was over an hour later that he disappeared for ten minutes. When he returned, it was to put a small bakery box on her desk. “I think you need something to sweeten your mood today, Ms. Baird.”

What she needed was for the T-Rex who was her boss to stop snarling and growling, she thought...

A full two chapter excerpt of ROCK HARD is now up on the website! I hope you all enjoy this glimpse into Charlotte and Gabriel's story.

Preorders available: iBooks, Kindle, Kobo, Nook

Friday Book Club

Time to talk books! What are you reading and loving this week?
 

Karina Bliss - Rise

Hi everyone! I emerge!

I posted this on my Facebook page, but wanted to share the rec here as well. Rise is the amazing new book by my friend and awesome author Karina Bliss.

It's emotional and intense and I couldn't put it down. Her rock star is, as the blurb says, "manipulative, honest, gifted, charismatic and morally ambiguous" - he's a fascinating character to get to know, right along with his heroine, the biographer he talks into writing his story. I hope you'll check this book out!

Excerpt here: http://karinabliss.com/books/rock-stars/

In other news, how was your weekend? :-)