Readers's At Home Conference

Thought maybe you'd all like to know about this event! Kate Davies and I will be participating! It's a month away or so, but wanted to let you know so you could look forward to it like we are!

What do tons of authors, tons of prizes, tons of hotties and tons
of readers have in common? They’re attending the first ever
Readers at Home Conference! During the week
of April 26-30, authors and readers will converge on Lucy Monroe’s blog, to
celebrate their favorite genre – romance!

We are giving away Swag Bags to the first 50
readers who register for the conference. To register, all you have to
do is send an email to
Lucy Monroe with your name and mailing address (for the
Swag Bag) stating your intention to attend the RAH Conference. The
Swag Bags are for conference attendees only and we are trusting that
you truly intend to attend the conference and interact with the
authors and other readers on the blog. :) Lucy is shipping the Swag
Bags at her own expense, but many authors have
donated loot for you all, and each Swag Bag will have a free book
inside.

Yes, that's right - the conference is FREE. How cool is that?

Every day there will be multiple authors visiting and guest blogging,
with new posts going live every 3 hours between 6 AM and 6 PM. Lucy
will post a hottie who is definitely hunky enough to be a cover model
and there will be daily drawings for multiple prizes
(more than 50 over the week!!!), including dozens of signed books, a
B&N gift card, a t-shirt, 3 prize tote bags filled with books and
goodies (from Sue G at BTRB and Becke Davis), free online
subscriptions to Affaire de Couer magazine and 2 more Swag Bags given
away each day. What could be better?

Hope to see YOU there!

Readers at Home Conference Sponsors
~ Guest Blogging Authors ~
Elizabeth Amber
Jules Bennett
Jenna Bayley-Burke
Leigh D'Ansey
Jami Davenport
Kate Davies
HelenKay Dimon
Diana Duncan
Cynthia Eden
Kimberly Fisk
Barbara Freethy
Tricia Jones
Nicola Marsh
Kaylin McFarren
Susan Meier
Elisabeth Naughton
Erin Nicholas
Lorie O'Clare
Rick Reed
Maggie Robinson
Patti Shenberger
Gabi Stevens
Kay Stockham
Helen Scott Taylor
Karen Van der Zee
Mary Wine
Other Readers at Home Conference Sponsors
(donated prizes, items for the Swag Bags, etc.)
Affaire de Coeur
Borders True Romance Blog
Monica Burns
Christie Craig
Lori Foster
Donna Grant
Faye Hughes
Margaret Mallory
Becke Martin
Lucy Monroe
Alexis Morgan
Laurie Ryan
J.L. Wilson

So, while a bunch of us are at RT going crazy, you can be visiting
with some of your favorite and some brand new authors - wearing casual
clothes, ditching the makeup and your shoes. Oh, that? I envy! :)

Lucy Monroe

Happy Friday!

On my way home from work, I was trying to decide what to write. Should I do something about the new piece I'm working on? Or about personal struggles that improve your character? Or about the debate between first and third person POV? Blech. It's Friday. I want to give readers something to look at. Something to think about. Something to make them drool! So, behold... Skylar's Best of the Week: Three sexy pieces of eye candy who make down time and media overindulgence such a joy.


Best New Movie to Rent/Buy: Boondock Saints II: All Saint's Day
The sexy accents! The gratuitous violence! The... humor??? Yes, while the first movie was a drama, they've thrown in laughs to the sequel -- and it works! Surprisingly enough to the SO, I decided that this was a must-buy movie after the first half hour.
For some reason, I find humor and comedy much more soothing to the soul than drama. "They" say crying is cathartic; I just get puffy eyes and a sore heart the next day. No catharsis in that.


Best New Song: "American Saturday Night" by Brad Paisley
I'll admit I'm biased, because I think Brad Paisley is just too sexy. He can sing. He can play guitar. He LOOOOVES his wife and kids AND playing for a crowd just seems to make him so happy on stage. But besides all that *swoon*, he's got a perfect voice perfect for upbeat songs like this. He sings about how America really is an amalgam of other cultures -- a good reminder for us all. Oh, and did I mention how unbelievably good his voice sounds?
Don't even get me started on that hat and cowboy boots...


Best TV Show: Burn Notice on USA
I've been addicted to Michael Westen, the main character, since the inception of the show three seasons ago. He's smart, attractive, funny, and can out-MacGyver the man himself. As a burned spy, Michael has been released back into society -- well, thrown is more like it -- without money, job history, or much of a legal identity. All he has are his friends and the skills he's honed through decades of espionage. Its my go-to show on Hulu since 10pm is waaaay past my bedtime.


Ok, I've shared mine... have you seen/heard my "Best Of"s? What are your own? Help me expand my list of talented sexy entertainers!

Skylar

No Food Like Diet Food

As I’ve said before, I’m spending my spring trying to move from humungous to pleasingly plump. A lot of this effort revolves around my treadmill, but I’m also trying to “eat healthy,” which means removing a lot of the ingredients that make food worth tasting. I’m also reading a lot of diet books, not necessarily to get recipes (many of which induce shudders) but to get myself in the right frame of mind for my quest. However, the more diet books I read, the more convinced I become that diet experts have no idea of what food tastes like.

The most common claim you run into in these books is the idea that you can drop some regrettably fattening food from your diet and never notice the change. Substitute fat-free cheese for the real thing, they say blithely. You’ll save mucho calories and you’ll never know the difference. Now look—I love to cook, and I’m actually fairly good at it. That means I know what real cheese tastes like—sharp cheddars, nutty gruyere, tangy manchego, creamy camembert. Spread on a cracker or a slice of crusty baguette. Eaten as a square with a chunk of apple or pear. I know what that tastes like, and trust me, when you substitute fat-free cheese, you do know the difference.

If the “never-know-the-difference” thing doesn’t work, the diet food guys go for the purity card. Green beans, they say, taste ever so much better with just a squeeze of lemon juice rather than all that fattening butter or bacon. Dress your lettuce with a splash of balsamic vinegar and skip the olive oil. And don’t even get them started on the font of all evil, ranch dressing. Or blue cheese. All you have to do is get used to it, they say, and you’ll never want to go back.

All of this reminds me of the time the San Antonio Express-News sent their nutritionist to dine at Paesanos. Now everybody in San Antonio knows Paesanos, an Italian restaurant that originated in the San Antonio World’s Fair in 1968. And everybody knows their crowning achievement: shrimp Paesano. Their shrimp is rolled in bread crumbs then sautéed in butter and finally lapped in the most exquisite lemon butter sauce I have ever had on my tongue. When my younger son was ten, he said of shrimp Paesano, “This is the most wonderful thing I have ever tasted.” So the Express-News nutritionist ordered shrimp Paesano. And the Express-News nutritionist hated it. All that butter. All those crumbs. Didn’t they know that the average person wanted to taste the “natural” flavor of the shrimp—just boiled with just a splash of lemon juice, not covered in some lemon butter sauce? How, she moaned, could anybody eat this stuff?

It was then that I came to understand the basic requirement for any true diet expert—they have to have their taste buds surgically removed.

Nobody is saying you should eat shrimp Paesano every day, unless you can afford a staff to roll you downhill every morning. Obviously, it’s event food that you eat once or maybe twice a year. But pretending that it doesn’t taste great is just pathetic. It’s also the kind of thing that makes people distrust diet gurus. So let’s all agree that butter and cream and bacon and sugar are yummy. And let’s all agree that eating too much of them is going to make you balloon up like that kid in Willie Wonka. Part of “eating healthy” is knowing how to pace yourself.

Sigh. Nonfat cottage cheese anyone?

So what do you say? What do you miss most on your diet? And what kind of diet food have you found that keeps you from whimpering softly?

A Review By Any Other Name

I remember getting my first review like it was yesterday. I wish I could say I handled it well, but I didn’t. My heart raced, my face burned, my stomach turned over, I agonized over each and every word—asking myself, “what does she mean by that?” after almost every other sentence.

Lord knows how I would have reacted if it had been a bad review! Luckily, by the time that happened I’d managed to develop a slightly thicker skin.

Lately I’ve noticed an interesting trend in reviews. I seem to get almost an equal amount of good ones and bad for every new book. Okay…to be honest, the balance may be slightly weighted toward the good ones, but still it’s nothing like the way things used to be back when I was Queen of the 4-out-of-5 (insert symbol of your choice) Review. It’s not just me, of course, I know a lot of authors who’ve noticed the same thing happening with their books. What one reviewer loves, the next one might hate, which brings me to the subject of today’s post.

Let me start by saying I love reviews and I love reviewers. A good review can put a smile on your face that lasts for days and even the bad ones have their uses. But, good or bad, a review is just one person’s opinion, and if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s this: the book that absolutely everyone will love has never been written—and never will be.

Bad reviews can be frustrating—especially if you’ve been waiting and waiting for someone, anyone to review your book. Sometimes you want a sympathetic friend to whom you can whine, “she just doesn’t ‘get’ my story!” Sometimes you just want ice cream (or something alcoholic) to medicate the pain away. Sometimes—if they’re snarky—you want to write something snarky back. But, there's the bottom line: there really is a silver lining in back of that rainy, little review cloud.

Bad reviews can be oddly liberating. People generally want everyone to love them and, as authors, we generally want everyone to love us and our books. That’s never gonna happen, of course, but we want it so much we can become paralyzed and unable to write anything at all for fear of being rejected. Besides, once you  start changing your writing to try and please everyone, you end up pleasing no one—not even yourself. 

A bad review can be a godsend if you let it. It's just one less person you have to worry about pleasing…and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that!

Guest Blogger Leah Braemel Interviews Her Hero

I wrote Personal Protection back in 2008 and I’ve since written/blogged about Personal Protection so often, I stared at the screen for a very long time wondering what I could say about it that I hadn’t said a bazillion times before. To get some ideas, I scrolled back through The Naughty Nine’s previous posts when I found a post where some of the Nine interviewed their heroes. So I shoved my computer glasses up on my head and put on my distance glasses, told Sam Watson to park his (marvellous) butt in a chair and answer some questions for me. Thinking I missed the smirk he gave me (or maybe he was snickering at the two pair of glasses I was wearing), he did what I asked.

How did a southern boy from Georgia end up in Washington DC?

“I first came up here when I joined the FBI—trained at Quantico of course. Moved around for a bit afterward. Lived in Texas for a while, spent some time in New York too, but ended back here right before … well, let’s just say when I started my own bodyguard company, I knew some folks around these parts who had the right connections to people who needed guardin’. It seemed like a natural fit for me. Not to say I don’t head back home every now and then when things get borin’ around here.”

Tell me about Rosalinda Ramos. What’s the biggest turn-on/turn-off about Rosalinda Ramos?

“How does she turn me on? Hell, woman, you ain’t got enough time in the day to hear that list.”

All right, so what first caught your eye about her?

He pulled out one of his famous—or infamous perhaps—cigars and rolled it between his fingers as he considered my question. “I think it was the first time I saw her sparrin’ in the gym. She was this little bitty thing, hundred pounds soakin’ wet, maybe a half inch about five feet and still she took down my second-in-command, Chad Miller, without breakin’ a sweat. Now you have to understand, Chad’s former FBI, just like me. He knows how to protect himself, so takin’ him down wasn’t easy.” He gestured to his cigar seeking my permission to light it, then scowled when I shook my head. He shoved it back into his pocket and leaned back as he continued, “Rosie’s real confident about herself—she knows she can handle anything anyone throws at her. She’s got a real been-there-done-that type attitude, and she has, yet every now and then you see this innocence peekin’ through that I find a real turn on.” He got a far-away look in his eyes. “That and the sexy Blue Morpho butterfly tattoo she’s got peekin’ out from her jeans. It’s pretty sexy watching its wings flutter when we’re …” He cleared his throat and sought his cigar again. “You might not want to include that last bit.”

Too late, I thought as I typed it anyway. “What does she do that turns you off?”

“I let her think it’s all the stuff she uses to tame her hair that clutter up my bathroom, but really, I love her hair, so I guess I can cut her some slack for that.”

Rolling my eyes, I groan. Sam, answer the question, what does she do that turns you off?

“Ah, hell, you wanna get me sleepin’ on the couch tonight, don’t you? All right, all right. She’s got a lead foot behind the wheel. She’s had defensive driving courses and knows how to handle a vehicle in a dangerous situation, but damn it, she’s impatient. She’s always pushing things, wanting to get there faster when sometimes the slow route’s more fun, ya know?”

(Why do I get the feeling he’s not just talking about Rosie’s driving ability anymore?)

All right, Sam, one last question then you’re off the hook--thong, crotchless panties, or nothing at all?

He just about blinds me with his trademark bright smile. “I won’t deny it’s a turn-on to know she’s not wearin’ anything beneath a dress so there’s nothing stopping me if I decide to…well, you can imagine what I want to do. But there’s something to be said for a woman wearing a nice thong with just enough lace to make me wonder what’s beneath. Make me imagine pulling it down off her …” He stared at the ceiling and drifted off for a moment. “Yup, never hurts to leave somethin’ to my imagination. Doesn’t hurt to make me have to work for the prize, you know?”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “I’m not sure Rosie will like to read that you consider her a prize.”

“I wasn’t implying she was the prize. Though she is.” He winked and stood up. “We done here? You got my imagination stirrin’ and now I’ve got a powerful hankerin’ to see Rosie.”

From where I sat, I could see there was more than just his imagination stirring…

She can cover him with one hand tied behind her back. Maybe two.

Sam Watson excels at keeping other people safe. Now a stalker is targeting him, but so what? A few doctored photos and a couple threatening phone calls are no big deal. He can watch his own back. Then again, the view from behind the sexy spitfire assigned to protect him isn’t so bad…

Rosalinda Ramos has managed to keep her attraction to Hauberk Security’s owner tightly under wraps. It’s just as well he doesn’t know. One slip—in the bedroom or on the job—will cost her her heart and her career, so she’s got only one thing on her mind. Protect Sam, whether he wants it or not.

The stakes—and the heat—rise exponentially when she discovers Sam belongs to an exclusive sex club—one she must investigate for potential suspects. Suddenly she finds herself immersed in a world that pushes her boundaries.

Sam delights in leading Rosie deep into his sexual shadows—until they go one game too far. Making him wonder if he can allow the woman he loves to take a bullet for him.

Since I’m never sure if my readers are reading my blogs at work, I worry about providing excerpts – after all, I write pretty steamy stuff. So “just in case” here’s a link to an excerpt on my website ( http://LeahBraemel.com ). Actually because several of my readers on my blog commented about NSFW excerpts, I started up a blog specifically for excerpts so they could check them out when they were in the comfort (and privacy) their home; so if you want to read a bit more, you can go over to http://leahbraemelexcerpts.blogspot.com and read more too.

You can buy the paperback through Amazon.com or The Book Depository.com or download the ebook on your Kindle or from All Romance eBooks

You can find out about Leah’s other books at her website, or on her blog. Or you can follow her on Twitter.

Of Pen Names and Privacy

Kinsey W. Holley is a pen name. Kinsey is the name of my sister-in-law’s dog, W. is the initial of another sister-in-law, and Holley is a family name.

When I first started writing romance a couple years ago, I submitted material to contests under my real name. When I started to place in contests, I thought – holy crap, maybe I can actually get published one day.

Then I thought – Eek! I write graphic sex! There are SO many people whom I wouldn’t want to know about this!

So I made up a pen name.

I'm not ashamed of what I write, but I will confess to a little…embarrassment. One of the sisters-in-law scoffs at this. She says that if she could write books, she’d be so proud of herself she’d tell everyone.

“Okay,” I said. “Pretend you’ve written a scene with the words “clit” and “cock” in it, and then give it to someone’s mother to read. Not your mother, because she’s imperturbable. But someone else’s mother. Or someone your mother-in-law goes to church with. Or one of the guys in your office.”

She thought about it – and agreed that maybe she wouldn’t tell everyone what she wrote.

I've told plenty of people what I do, including one of the librarians I work with. (I just can't see telling my boss. She really doesn't strike me as a romance reader.) Many of my friends have bought and enjoyed Kiss and Kin. But I'm still not ready for people I go to church with, or people Diva goes to school with, or my mother’s husband, or my mothers’ friends – or, you know, my mother – to read this stuff. I may never be. My father-in-law - my father-in-law, people – read my book. Why in God's name did my sister-in-law (that would be the one with the W. initial, not the one with the imperturbable mom) – tell him about it?

Am I being a hypocrite? A coward? If so, I’m not sure I care. Like many people right now, the Hub and I are going through a very rough patch economically; this is not a great time to be a small business owner. I am so grateful every month when I get that royalty statement. If anyone ever criticized me for writing hot romance, I'd point out that my hot romance is paying for my daughter to attend a school we probably couldn't otherwise afford, and for that reason alone I'm glad I do it.

I suppose I could write less steamy sex. But I write paranormal romance, not urban fantasy, and I think most paranormal romance readers expect a certain heat level. I don’t consider my stuff to be erotic romance because the sex-to-story ratio is rather low. I mean, the sex scenes are lengthy and graphic, but they aren’t numerous. In the full length novel I just submitted there are only two sex scenes, and it’s a 100,000 plus word novel.

I’m thinking about this a lot lately because three copies of Shifting Dreams, the anthology in which Kiss and Kin appears, showed up yesterday. I was so psyched! I didn’t even know they were coming. KnK has been available in e format, of course, since June, but yeah – as much as I trumpet ebooks and how wonderful the epub model can be for authors, there is just something magical about holding wood pulp in my hands and looking at my name on the cover:
And then Diva – a reader like her mommy – said, “Oh, a new book! What’s it about?” And I said, “Um, don’t worry about it. It’s a grown-up book.” And she said, “Is it your book, Mommy? The one you wrote?”

Because she knows I write. She knows I’ve written a book, and that it’s been published and that Daddy likes the money it’s brought in. She knows we don’t tell people about the fact that Mommy writes books. But I had to tell her about my writing, because I spend a hell of a lot of time on the laptop and I don’t want her to think I’m ignoring her in order to play video games or something. This is a money-making venture (I hope), and it will benefit her (I hope), and I want her to know about it.

I just don’t want her to read about it. Or tell anyone about it.

Interview with Nara Malone

For my turn to blog this week I decided to interview my critique partner Nara Malone. Nara's debut romance novel comes out Friday March 12 with Ellora's Cave Publishing and I want to help spread the word!

Okay Nara, I’ve read your upcoming Ellora’s Cave release The Tiger’s Tale several times! But others haven’t, so tell us a little about it.

The Tiger's Tale is a story about Marie, a tiger-shapeshifter who was orphaned at birth and raised by humans, unaware of her dual heritage as tiger and woman. Humans have always shared the earth with Pantherian shifters, and while folklore is rich with stories of creatures both human and animal -- therianthropes who can shift between the two states -- humans have always believed they were a myth.

Adam and Ean are tiger-shifters who have discovered that Marie is not human and carries unique genetic traits that could save the species from the terrible wasting sickness that kills most baby girls. They have a week to convince Marie -- a woman raised with conservative views about monogamy and sex -- that she is a tiger and that as a Pantherian female, she must be part of a traditional mating triad to conceive.

The first time I read this, I thought what an ingenious concept this was for a menage story! Of course there's much more to it than the menage, although it is very hot. What inspired you to write this story?

The Tiger's Tale began as a pact between my sister and I. My father was in the end stages of heart disease, she was taking care of him, and the emotional toll on all of us was heavy. We're Texans and were raised up on my Dad's tall Texas tales. We'd both been successful writing short fiction and non fiction, so I thought writing a novel would be a good way to help us get through the time spent hanging out in medical facilities waiting for our father to undergo this test or that procedure. We joined RWA and signed up for a short story workshop. It happened to be an October workshop which took us right into Nanowrimo in November. So we signed up for that too. She finished Nano but I'm a slower writer. In January I polished up what I had, sent it off to Passionate Ink's Stroke of Midnight, and learned I finaled that spring. I will never forget going to visit my Dad at the dialysis clinic, him so small and frail, but his smile as big and bright as ever.

When I told him I was in the running for an award he just nodded and said, "It's about time someone noticed what a great writer you are. I always knew." And if that wasn't enough to make me cry, when we got home that evening, my sister handed me a folder she'd found in the safe with his important papers. It contained the curled yellow pages of a manuscript, The Horses of Hidden Valley, that I wrote with a friend when I was twelve. I can't believe he saved that, that he kept it in the safe. Smile. Sniff.

So with a final under my belt and my father's faith in me to give me courage, I went to work to finish The Tiger's Tale before the winner was announced that summer. I thought if I did poorly in the final evaluation at least the novel would be finished and any criticisms wouldn't derail my progress.

But as I dug deeper into the story, the work stopped being about a pact, or a contest, or even my Dad's expectations. These characters were telling me a story. Marie told me what it is like to land in the wrong nest and grow up trying to be something other than what you are. She taught me what it is like to find the real you and how hard it can be to embrace a version of yourself that the people who know you might not accept.

Adam and Ean taught me about a different view of women and girls, a culture where females are rare and precious. They taught me about making love with all those primitive instincts and desires unleashed.

My research led me to discoveries about human-animal hybrid research, the experiments that involve adding human brain tissue to animal brains. I started wondering what it would be like to be human trapped in a body that didn't allow you to communicate as a human. The story took over and I felt like I was just along for the ride, like a journalist recording events as they happen. As I was wrapping up the story, word came that I had won the contest.

I love how you've learned from your characters. They do become so real, don't they? What were your feelings when The Tiger’s Tale was accepted and when you saw the cover of your very first book?

The actual request for The Tiger's Tale came from an online query workshop put on at Passionate Ink by the editors at Ellora's Cave. Raelene Gorlinsky likes sexy shifters and my first page caught her eye. She asked for a partial and then later the full. The Tiger's Tale was accepted right between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2009. It was like the best Christmas present ever.

I was at work when I opened the email with my first book cover. I'm usually working on five things at once and talking on the phone and helping a customer at the counter, but when I saw that image fill the screen one line at a time, I sat in a chair with my mouth open and just stared. The phone was ringing and I heard the bells on the shop door ring when someone came in. I just sat there staring. My name was finally on a book cover. I can't think how many times I imagined what that moment would be like. I do recall thinking at the time, that it does really happen, that thing you work and struggle to achieve does really happen if you keep hanging on.

Describe the space where you write.

I have so many favorite writing places. This might sound strange, but the primary place is in bed. I wake up at about 4 AM and keep a notebook by the bed so I can start writing first thing while my mind is still close to that dream state and the internal critic is still asleep.

Another place I like to write is when I'm out on the lake at dawn in my kayak. There is something so magical about the sun coming up turning mists purple, gold, and silver. The sound of water slapping the hull, the gentle rocking motion, and even the old blue heron stalking me along the shore, carry me to another state of mind, a journey into that magic creative space. Ideas start bubbling up and I pull my notebook out of a Ziploc bag and start to write. Once I stopped in a tiny cove while the light was still low. I could barely see what I was writing. When I looked up the sun had risen enough to reveal a herd of deer scattered along the shore grazing in the thick grass. It was the perfect place to get into wild mind, that mental state I need to access the world through an animal POV.

Obviously atmosphere is important to you when you write, and nature is wonderful inspiration. When you're inside, do you use mood music or candles? Do you need complete quiet to concentrate?

When I'm writing in bed or in my office I do use things like nature CDs, instrumentals with a thunderstorm or ocean sounds playing in the background. I like the light low, but tend to be absentminded when I'm deep in a story, so instead of wax candles, I use those battery powered candles in colored jars. They flicker like a real candle, but if I forget them the battery runs down instead of the house burning down. I write the first draft or two long hand. I've tried and tried to change that habit. It saves time and paper to write directly to the computer. The words just won't come if I skip that step.

Using battery powered candles is very wise! So easy to get distracted when writing. And I learned something I didn't know about you, that you write your first verions long hand. What other projects do you have in the works?

I'm in the final revisions on the Dungeon Gourmet. I love the central character in this story, Le Marquis de Bond. I call him a blogging French Bondage Chef because he whips up great meals in the kitchen and great lovemaking in the dungeon. He shares tips on the art of cooking and the art of sensual domination in his blog.

I'm mid stage on Mind Games. This story finaled in the Southern Heat contest. It's another Pantherian story and involves a face blind heroine. Face blindness is a rare condition few people know about or understand. I have gone through most of my life thinking if I just learned to pay better attention to people I'd be able to tell them apart and recognize them. My husband heard a news report about face blindness and said they described me perfectly, so I took the test. I scored better on my first calculus test than I did on facial recognition. I got two people right. Two! I didn't even recognize Oprah. But it was liberating to discover it was a brain processing error rather than a personal defect causing my problems. I was able to see the humor in some of the situations that have cropped up in my life and while there is no cure or treatment in the real world, love finds a way to conquer all in Mind Games.

I'm working toward a second big dream that involves new ways to tell stories and the evolution of the book. It's a great time to be an author. Hopefully I'll have something unique and exciting to share about that project in the near future.

I love Bond from Dungeon Gourmet, and can't wait for that story to be out as well. Congratulations Nara on your first release with Ellora's Cave! It's almost as exciting as my own, having gone through this long process with you!