Yes, yes. I know you already know all about me and my famous cat, but I thought you might like to know I’m over at Author’s Block for the next few days being reamed interviewed about this, that, and the other *g*

Why do I think you might like to know?

Because there’s a giveaway or two :)

Just leave a comment after my Author’s Block interview, and you’ll be in the draw to win an electronic copy of one of my backlist books, plus an electronic copy of my latest release, Lightning Rider.

Winner will be drawn on 10th February.

Cheers!

M

I’d like to introduce my guest , the lovely Shona Husk, author of The Goblin King – the first book in her Shadowlands series, and a current finalist in the ARRA Awards favorite paranormal romance of 2011 category.

Today Shona is celebrating the February 1st release of Sharing Sirus, her third erotic romance featuring sexy vampire rock band Lucinda’s Lover.

She’s promised to share a snippet from Sharing Sirius with us — can’t wait!

So dig out your fan (to fan your face when you read this excerpt), pull up a comfortable chair and read on!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Crossing Boundaries

(With Shona Husk)

I like challenging myself as a reader and writer. It’s good to step beyond the comfort zone and try something different. In this case it was making the jump from reading ménage stories to writing one. And what a jump. It’s like a triple shot of romance :)

While there were times I wondered if maybe I had leaped too far, I figured that it was too late to turn back. I had the story plotted, and I loved the story, but triple the romance means triple the work—there’s a whole lot going between every person involved. But as I wrote I realised that was what I liked when reading a ménage story. That extra emotion makes the HEA that much sweeter, especially since I make my characters work hard to get there.

Sharing Sirius also has the honour of having my first m/m scenes (because I thought if I’m writing a ménage it has to be all hands on everyone—I don’t do things by halves).

Here’s a little snippet of Jack and Owen the two sexy heroes of Sharing Sirius:

“It’s my turn. You will listen. Your heart is in the right place—it’s one of the many reasons I love you and it’s the reason I’m not going to kick you out.” Owen stalked towards him, lithe like a predator. And Jack was the prey.

Jack couldn’t hide the smile that curved the corners of his lips. Owen seemed more like the man he’d first known, full of life instead of bored with it all. Was it working already?

“Do you know what it feels like to have your lover catch you with someone else?”

Jack shook his head. “It’s fine.”

It didn’t feel fine, it chaffed like wet linen, but he wasn’t about to admit that. This was not the moment to compare bruises. Owen was obviously regretting what had happened, even though it had given him a new grasp on life.

“It’s not fine. Once the door had been opened, I was unable to look away, such was the need in my veins to find a way to live. Now I have to live with that and the look on your face for the rest of my life.”

“At least you’ll have a life.” Did Owen not realize how much it had cost Jack?

“Caught between the two of you like a bone between two starving dogs? No thank you.”

Jack heard his heart stop. “You’re breaking up with me?” His words came out stilted. “But it was what you needed. You’ll die of boredom.” Hadn’t Owen said he wasn’t kicking him out? What was he going to do? He risked a glance out the window and saw the sun. Oh no. “Don’t make any hasty decisions, we can make this work. A roster or something.”

Owen put his hand on Jack’s chest, over his heart, then it slid up and cupped the back of Jack’s head. He brought their foreheads together.

“I’m not old. I’m ancient, even for a Vampire. I have loved and lost more times than I can count. And I have no intention of starting again.” He kissed Jack, hard and rough. His tongue pushed in, claiming.

Jack gave in, believing that after everything they would be okay, changed but okay. He let the tension he’d been holding on to ease away. Glad to be back in Owen’s arms. Jack gasped and waited for the cut of fangs, but it never came. Owen was too skilled to ever be caught out. The Vampire’s other hand trailed over Jack’s thigh and caressed the growing hard-on, coaxing his flesh to harden further. Jack bit back the moan and flicked his tongue against Owen’s fangs, seeking out what he wanted.

Owen ended the kiss, but kept his hand on Jack’s cock and the back of his neck. The grip of his hands left no doubt who was in command.

“You hungry for a bite?” Owen whispered against his lips. “Want to feel some fang?”

“Yes.” All the blood rushed from his head to his shaft as Owen’s hand stroked his length. Owen’s nail scraped down the fly of Jack’s jeans as if he were considering undoing it. Jack held his breath. He wanted Owen.

Jack’s fingers brushed Owen’s hardening cock.

Owen stepped back. “Then get it from Katya.”

~~~

Sharing Sirius is book 3 of the Lucinda’s Lover Vampires.

In ancient Vampires, boredom can literally kill. When Jack sees Owen beginning to succumb, he knows he is no longer enough. Owen needs the blood of another lover to survive. So Jack turns to Katya, hoping she can entice Owen into living again.

At first Katya denies her lust to her boss, even though she’s wanted him for years. With Jack promising to look the other way, she has a scorching-hot encounter Owen.

Owen doesn’t want to admit what is happening to him. He doesn’t want to cheat and break Jack’s heart, and yet he can’t resist Katya. But Katya and Jack have their own sexy plan. And neither of them intend to lose Owen.

~~~

Check out Shona’s Lucinda’s Lover vampire rock band books at Jasmine Jade/Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

For more information about the Shadowlands series and Shona’s other books, please visit Shona’s website.

Follow Shona on Twitter, and Facebook.

I’m very excited to have a new cover to share with y’all. And I thought it might be interesting to share just how this cover came to be.

The book is Lightning Rider, a bit of a “different” romance in that it features two heroines and two heroes — and no, it’s not a menage-a-quatre. *g* It’s a contemporary paranormal romance with a sci-fi twist.

Here’s the high concept:

Andie Brennan dies in a lightning strike and is miraculously healed and brought back to life. But now she’s sharing her body with an alien—the same alien who rode the lightning bolt that killed her.

So the gist is that Andie, the heroine, has a Lightning Rider Elemental named Karylon trapped inside her. And the two heroes of the piece are Jake, who’ll do anything to protect Andie from her manipulative ex, and Novik, a Lightning Rider who’ll do anything to help Karylon break free from Andie and return to the Elemental plane. Plus, the omniscient Keeper of Portents is about to use Novik to further its grand design. How much is Novik prepared to risk to be with Karylon again? And more importantly for Andie and Jake, who is he prepared to sacrifice?

See? Not exactly a normal romance.

First up, I decided to change the title from the original “When Lightning Strikes” to “Lightning Rider“. I did this because with an eBook cover, you have very little time to impress readers, and very little space in which to do it. By that, I mean that generally eBook buyers are perusing thumbnails. So aside from pictures and fonts that are going to be clearly shown on even the tiniest version of your cover, you also have to have an eye-catching cover that conveys what kind of story it is straight up.

I figured if I used “When Lightning Strikes” readers might expect a straight contemporary romance–it didn’t really speak to the paranormal aspect of the story. And “When Lightning Strikes, a paranormal romance with a sci-fi twist” didn’t really do it for me as a title, even if there had been enough space to stick all that on a cover and still have it be readable in thumbnail form. I went with “Lightning Rider” because I felt it had more chance to immediately convey to the reader that this is a story with a paranormal or sci-fi aspect.

BTW, I subscribe to Joel Friedlander‘s insistence that eBook covers need to be treated differently to print covers. For me, it’s clear, clean and simple concepts, with clear easy-to-read fonts that stand out in a thumbnail all the way, baby. So if my independently published book covers look a little simplistic to you, it’s because I want them that way. (And as Joel complimented my cover designer for the covers of The Crystal Warrior and Freaks of Greenfield High when I submitted them for his October eBook cover design awards, I think I’m on the right track.)

For Lightning Rider, Rob (my husband) and I wanted to include a slickrock landscape element: Rob, because he thought the slickrock landscapes were visually stunning, and me, because the slickrock setting is an integral part of the Lightning Rider story for 3 reasons:

1. Lightning Rider was inspired by an article I spotted about slickrock bike tours in Moab. The article mentioned that Utah has the second-highest incidence of lighting strikes in America. That kicked the warped authorly part of my brain into gear, and I came up with the idea of aliens who ride lightning and use the bodies of humans who’re killed in a lightning strike.
2. The story starts off on a slickrock bike tour in Moab.
3. The story’s climax takes place on a 4WD trail in Moab called Hell’s Revenge.

We also toyed with including a mountain bike in the photo, provided the cover model had her helmet off, and was looking directly at the camera. And we were both agreed that “lightning” had to be a part of the cover.

Now came the difficult part: finding the right cover model to represent Andie, the human heroine of Lightning Rider.

After scouring royalty-free stock photo sites (like, every spare moment for an entire week until my eyes felt like they were bleeding!) to find just the right model, and hoping she’d be as perfect as the model I found to use on the cover of Freaks of Greenfield High, I lucked out big-time. And, BTW, I’m using “lucked out” in the Kiwi sense of having No. Damn. Luck. At. All.

I was very specific in the kind of “look” I wanted–a little to0 specific, as it turned out. Both Rob and I agreed that we wanted a strong stance and a serious expression for our heroine, and she had to be in casual clothes–or at least, exercise clothes. Plus, I envisioned Andie with curly auburn hair and green eyes. We had major headaches with this too-specific brief. It’s about as difficult as finding decent stock photos of good-looking guys with long blond hair! *cough* From The Ashes *cough*

This time it wasn’t me who found the perfect photo, it was my long-suffering husband. And after checking out his “Andie” I had to agree. He’d found two strong photos, both with the same model.

The first had the model on a mountain bike, sans helmet, looking back over her shoulder directly at the camera. And I thought, “Whoa, awesome! That could be straight out of the book! ” The second photo had her standing, staring straight into the camera.

In the end, after much debate we both chose the second photo. It was a much stronger photo, and we felt it had more visual impact than the one with her on the bike–the whole keep it clean and simple and go for visual impact thing again.

“But hang on,” I hear you splutter. “This cover model sure doesn’t have curly auburn hair!”

Excellent point. I was happy to compromise on the “curly” hair, because in the story, I mention that Andie’s ex-boyfriend didn’t like her curls, and used to insist that she straightened her hair–it speaks to the power he had over her that she would adhere to his wishes about how she looked and dressed, BTW. And yes, he is a thoroughly unlikable guy. As for the hair color? Well, Rob didn’t want to muck with it to that degree as he’s not a professional cover artist and he worried it would look too fake.

So here’s one of the really cool bits about being an indie-author: I went back to the manuscript and rewrote Andie as a brunette. Sometimes an author’s gotta do what she gotta do, especially when she’s one of those nit-picky people who hates it when cover models don’t match up with the author’s character descriptions.

Right. So we had our stunning slickrock landscape scene, we had our “Andie”, and we had a really awesome shot of a lightning strike that made me want to “squeeeee!”.

Next, Rob mocked up a cover to see whether the three specific photos he wanted to use would “work” together before he purchased a license to use them–no point in spending money to purchase them if the photos didn’t work together.

We both really liked the look of the cover mock-up, so I approved the design, and Rob purchased the licenses for the three royalty-free stock photos we’d chosen.

Now it was up to Rob to do his PhotoShop magic.

He had to cut “Andie’ from her background so she didn’t look like a bad cut ‘n paste job when overlaid over the background, warm up her skin tone, and play with the lighting so it looked more like an outdoor shot. He also had to shorten her reeeeally long, French manicured nails, which just didn’t work with the whole chick-on-a-slickrock-bike-tour look we were going for! The devil is in the details….

Once he’d found the perfect title font from the thousands he’d purchased, he played with positioning of all the cover elements, color shading, tones, layering, and perspective. Next, he mucked with subtle font enhancements for the title. And finally, he scanned hundreds of different fonts to find one for my author name.  Ironically, he ended up using the same font we’d used for my name on my Crystal Warrior series covers.

Total time spent? Around four solid hours–not counting the hours spent squinting at thumbnails on stock photo sites and choosing the final photos.

And the final result?

I love this cover! It looks great in black and white, too.

And, as an added bonus, Rob and I are still speaking to each other ;-)

**Lightning Rider is out now**

To find out more, please visit my Books page.

~~~

One-Stop Shops by Maree Anderson (for Writers Gone Wild)

eReader Daily News**

(Click here for my eReader Daily news page link) 

Super E-Books.com**

(Click here for my Super E-Books page links)

Stories of Romance**

Note: my author spotlight is scheduled for 25th Feb, so can’t give you a link yet.

1500 Authors**

(Here’s the link to the YA page that features one of my books)

(Here’s the link to the romance page that features one of my books)

Kindle Author

The Kindle 3 Books

Book Buzzed

The Kindle Book Review

Digital Book Today

Indie Reader

Kindle Finds

Kindle Spice

Indie Books List

Bargain Books for Your Nook

The Frugal eReader

Pixel Of Ink

~~~

There are heaps more, of course, and I’m still compiling a master list. But I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Maree

GETTING ALL LINKY WITH MAREE… AGAIN

Hi all,

Before I forget….

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Or,

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Or,

HAPPY [INSERT MEANINGFUL GREETING THAT COULDN'T POSSIBLY OFFEND ANYONE, HERE]!

On the personal front, you know how things were basically shite in Maree-land when I last posted? Well, I’m happy to report that DD’s operation went well, and she’s slowly but surely recovering. The surgeon saw her again today, and we’re all hopeful that the procedures have worked a treat and she’ll be back to playing hockey and doing karate and going to school, and just generally hanging out without feeling sick and nauseous and in varying degrees of pain all the time.

I can’t ask for a better Christmas present than that! (But damn, I’m sure gonna try my best to appreciate the heck out of the Kindle I bought for my DH to give me for Christmas *g*)

Anyhoo, I thought it was about time I shared some more of my favorite websites. Yes, my friends, it’s time for Maree to get all linky again.

***

First up is Chuck Wendig’s blog “terribleminds” – specifically this post:
25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection.

*Warning: Do not have drink in hand while reading. Especially do not risk actually drinking anything while reading.*

Here’s a sample of the delights ahead should you choose to click the aforementioned link:

4. Rejection always stings. It stings me, you, everybody. Nobody likes to be rejected. A writer who likes being rejected is a writer who is secretly a robot and must be smelted down into slag before he tries to kill us all because he hates our meat. Pain is instructive. And it’s not permanent. Not if you don’t let it be. Some writers savor misery like a hard candy endlessly sucked in the pocket of one’s cheek, but fuck that.

6. It’s not about you. It’s about the work. I mean, unless it is about you. I guess it could be personal. If you send a story off to an editor, and you once shat in that editor’s fishtank, well. That might be personal.

13. Objective rejections will take you to task for two primary things: one, you didn’t follow the submission guidelines. (Can I just say: always follow the goddamn submission guidelines? Even if the submission guidelines are like, “Each corner of the manuscript must be dabbed with the urine of an incontinent civet cat and the writer must write his name backwards for the magic to take hold,” you do that shit because you’re not a pretty pretty unicorn, you’re a horse like the rest of us, goddamnit.)

***

Second up: Joe Konrath’s “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing” – specifically, this post:
Konrath’s Resolutions for Writers 2012

He adds to the list every year. This one from 2008 resonated with me:

“I Will Feed My Addiction

Life is busy. There are always things you can and should be doing, and your writing career often comes second.

So make it come first.

Right now, you’re reading A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Not A Newbie’s Guide to Leading a Content and Balanced Life.

You want to get published and stay published? That means making writing a priority. That means making sacrifices. A sacrifice involves choosing one thing over another.

If you can’t devote the time, energy, and money it takes to pursue this career, go do something else.”

And this one from 2012:

5. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re a writer. You’re in this until the day you die. As long as you continue to write good books, you’ll find readers.

 

***

Another great blog to check out is Passive Guy’s: “The Passive Voice: Writers, Writing, Publishing, Disruptive Innovation and The Universe”

PG (Passive Guy) takes relevant chunks from a huge variety of blogs–anything from The Washington Post, to Amazon, to the mega-successful indie author team of Saffina Desforges, and posts them in one handy dandy place for you to peruse. He may or may not provide a commentary on those posts–and if he does volunteer an opinion, it’s always worth a read.

He provides links to the full blog posts, so you can check them out in their entirety if you like (i.e. if you have enough hours in the frickin’ day!)

Here’s an example: “How Not To Blog: 22 Things For New Bloggers To Avoid.”

For this post, PG selected five little gems of wisdom from the list of 22. (There are full explanations of why these are big, bad, no-nos for newbie bloggers, but I’ll just list the titles here):

1. Ignoring comments

4. Whining

5. White text on dark backgrounds

13. Acting like you’re a rock star from Mars

21. Letting blogging take over your life

And if you have a burning desire to read the full list and explanations, the link to Anne R. Allen’s blog post is provided.

I like PG’s method of posting snippets, because when I’m busy, I can scan the summary post and see immediately whether the full post will interest me and it’s worth clicking on the link to the full post.

For example, PG posted this one: “How much should an ebook cost?” The article was by Seth Godin and it began like this:

“This is the wrong question.

The right question is: How much will an ebook cost?

Because the answer isn’t up to one author or one publisher or even a price-fixing cartel. It’s up to the market, which is a far more complicated entity. There are no shoulds in the market, just reality.”

And although a few more paragraphs were quoted, that intro was enough for me to click through to The Domino Project, and read the full article by Mr. Godin.

***

Last on today’s list is Joel Friedlander’s “The Book Designer“.

Joel’s blog is a Mecca of excellent advice from anything from Getting Ready To Publish, Understanding Fonts & Typography, Self-Publishing Basics, EBooks & EReaders, to his weekly This Week in the Blogs summaries.

For those dipping their toes in the wonderful world of blogging or designing covers, here’s a good one:
Finding Photographs for a Book or Blog Gets Better, where he talks about a couple of little interface enhancements that have made shopping for royalty-free photos on stock photo sites a whole heap easier.

I also learn a lot from checking out his monthly e-Book Cover Design Awards. What I especially like about this site is that Joel will generally only comment on covers that he really likes, or feels could be improved with some practical advice. They’re not open to commenters, so that cover you’ve slaved over won’t be ripped to shreds by a bunch of people who don’t “get” the genre.

Here’s the link to his November e-Book Cover Design Awards & October eBook Cover Design Awards. (Pssst. If you scroll through October’s, you might see a couple of covers submitted by a Wild Writer *g*)

***

And last but not least, a word of wisdom from an unknown dog… who doesn’t seem to mind his owner doing weird-ass things to his face while someone takes a photo which goes viral:

Smile while you still have teeth :)

Hugs,
M

Just a quickie (uh, sorry about the pun) to let know that I’ve been interviewed by the Examiner.com as part of their romance novelist Q&A series.

Does this mean I’ve finally arrived??? Hah. Yeah. Riiiight. I wish *g*

I have to thank the talented Stephanie Giancola, who managed to cobble together a cohesive and interesting interview from all my ramblings. She’s awesome!

In other not quite so exciting news, I’ve decided it might be prudent to separate my adult romances from my YA, so I’ve taken the first step by setting up a Facebook page specifically for Freaks of Greenfield High. So now you can find me on multiple Facebook pages:

Personal profile

Author page

Freaks of Greenfield High page

Yep, I’m definitely gonna need a clone in the near future ;-)

And on a more personal note, my DD is headed to hospital for an exploratory op today. So if you have any cyber-hugs to spare, we’d be grateful recipients.

M

Here’s what she had to say about Freaks:

If you liked Terminator, you will love this YA book

Freaks of Greenfield High by Maree Anderson is a great YA cross between the Terminator movies and the Sarah Connor TV show. I devoured this book in two nights. It totally played out like a movie in my head. Anderson’s descriptions of cyborg Jay were amazing. I especially loved that Jay was a girl, trying to learn how to cope with new situations while learning more about humanity. I loved how Anderson added human angst to Jay who was trying to cope with blending in while playing being human. And Tyler and his twin sister had their own problems but friendships are the underlying theme in this book. It was fast paced, riveting, real teen language that I loved and I didn’t want it to end. I seriously hope Anderson will write a sequel featuring more cyborgs.

I don’t have a rating system but this YA book is a must read.

She may not have a rating system on her blog, but she gave Freaks 5 stars on Amazon–woot!

For me, that rating is doubly cool because Renee is a YA author, and is likely to be super-critical when she’s reading within the genre she writes… kind of like I am these days, when I’m reading paranormal romance. I sometimes have to slap myself upside the head and remind myself to stay in the “reader” zone and not go over to the dark side (AKA the hyper-critical author/editor zone)  *wry grin* It’s an author thing….

As y’all know, I read a heap of YA so I’ve just bought Renee’s “Off Leash” and it’s sitting on my iPhone, ready to read–can’t wait!

And don’t forget that for a limited time, Freaks Of Greenfield High is discounted to US$0.99c (or equivalent) at the following e-tailers:

| Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Diesel eBooks | iTunes US | iTunes UK |
| Amazon US |

BTW, Renee has also gotten together with a bunch of other very talented authors to create a group blog: YA Beyond… pushing the boundaries.

“YA Beyond is… Breaking Boundaries – talking about books – talking about school – talking about music – talking about love – talking about life!”

Along with Renee, on YA Beyond you’ll find Tawny Stokes, Ann Rose, Cat Kalen, and P.J. Sharon–tell your teens to check it out!

:-)

M

Anne McCaffrey: Gone Away, Gone Ahead

(Cross-posted from Writers Gone Wild)

Hi all,

Although I love the Dragonrider books, The Crystal Singer trilogy, and series that kicked off with The Rowan–among many others–my favorite Anne McCaffrey book still remains Restoree, which is incidentally the first novel she ever published, back in 1967.