Done & Dusted!

Hey everyone! Well, very good news...Hart Attack is finished. As in the first draft is done and now comes the hard part. Proofing, making changes and then sending it off to the editor. Anyway, I thought I would share a part of it with you but it's not from the beginning...thought I would leave you guys with a little flavor with this new paranormal romance I have created. Yes, it's got a very heavy urban fantasy feel too so be prepared...

Hart Attack is a full length novel at 89k words (it might end up longer -- up to 95k -- or shorter -- down to 85k) at the moment and I really do hope these characters grow on you.

In the scene I am sharing with you, one of the main character's has been kidnapped and this is her in full panic mode. Enjoy!

Part of Lena’s brain had gone into shutdown mode.

What could she remember she questioned herself angrily as she awoke in a black hole? What was she doing and how long had she been there?

For the first time since she could remember, she hated she denied her mother the right to teach her how to shift. Why would she want to become any kind of animal? She never understood how it would ever be able to help her but locked in the dark with nothing but her own screams for company was enough to change her mind.

She scraped against the walls and felt fingernails break but she didn’t give a damn. If she could just get out of here, Andreas would buy her anything she wanted.

Lena thought back on her sister’s smiling face with their bright amber-tinged brown eyes and gorgeous features. She had been angry with her because the way both Andreas and Sebastiaan were drooling over her like she was their own personal bitch in heat. She’d taken a couple of bathroom breaks and ran directly into Fitch.

Goddamn, it had been a long time since she’d seen him. Andreas had banned him from Thirst for the longest time but someone had let him in. No, not someone, he was with Kandace. They were doing Thirst in the unisex bathroom and she joined them.

How many lines had she done? No more than a few. She remembered laughing with them and then her head began to spin and she blacked out.

Did they have anything to do with this? Were they punishing her for Sebastiaan and his piss poor leadership abilities since she’d broken up with him? No, he didn’t give two shits about her; he only wanted that fucking kid because he or she would have been an heir he badly needed to display.

Her mind seemed to fracture again and she screamed again. “Please help me, I beg you…”

No one came to her rescue but what ever she was in—yes, it was the trunk of a vehicle—came to a stop. Her heart began to thump in her chest with an intensity she despised. Fueled by too much Thirst and Andreas’ own blood, she felt like she was on the verge of losing her mind.

Someone released the latch from inside the car and she threw it open. It was pitch black and it took her a moment to realize she was wearing a blindfold. She ripped it from her eyes, injuring her own flesh in the process with her jagged nails but plastic surgery could take care of that.

Without the blind fold, the situation wasn’t much better. She was in the middle of the bayou and with a moon three quarters full, plenty of weres would be out.

They didn’t need a full moon to shift but anytime nearing a full moon, they possessed much greater powers than when the moon was more subdued.

Lena didn’t give a damn, she struggled out of the trunk and fell on her ass into a thread-bare patch of grass. Her whole body ached but she got to her feet. She would never be able to run in the ridiculously high heels she wore so she tore them away viciously, cutting her ankles in the process but the pain barely registered.

       She tossed the heels and took off running.

The bayou was a scary place at night but she avoided puddles and anywhere near the water. It didn’t stop her from running into all sorts of bayou creatures but she was more afraid of the people who had kidnapped her than she was a few water moccasins and lizards.

How long had she been running? Not long enough but she stopped and tried to catch her breath while looking around.

She closed her eyes and tried to focus but all the alcohol she’d consumed made her head spin.

Lena opened her eyes and listened with the vampire blood coursing through her veins. The Thirst was interfering with her abilities and she now regretted she had done any lines of it at all.

“Where are you going, sweetie?” a southern voice inquired out loud.

She hid behind a tree but the voice seemed too close and she hated the tears which belied her emotions and began to run. She wiped them away and held her breath. If she could only discern what direction the voice was coming from then she’d know which direction to run.

Fuck it, she thought and took off running. If they wanted her then they would have to chase her with as much fervor as she had.

The sound of a wolf’s howl chilled her blood. They’d shifted so they could capture her.

She rounded a corner and faced a whole pack but only the leader turned human and walked toward her. He was nude as the day he was born with an erection which looked dangerously large and frightening. She began to back away but several wolves howled behind her and she knew she was surrounded.

“What the hell do you want from me? I don’t have anything!”

He walked toward her and revealed his face in the moonlight.

Shit! It was him.

“Fuck me, you scared me. What are you doing? Are you doing some kind of favor for Sebastiaan? I don’t think he would approve of your methods,” she murmured in a confident voice.

His blue-green eyes glared at her with that amber tint of a wolf’s. He could shift again any moment. “No, this isn’t a favor for him but it’s a good theory. Unfortunately, my co-conspirators dragged you out here for my benefit.”

I hope you enjoy the preview. The book's release date will be in either late July or early August, depending upon my editor and her summer schedule.

In the meantime, have a wonderful day and keep cool until I blog again... ;-)

Ch-Ch-Changes...

Who ever accused artists of being temperamental creatures and absolute train wrecks wasn't too wrong. This isn't so much a post I really wanted to write as what I am about to tell you is going to take the whole month of June before everything is the way it should be. Mind you, I am also busy writing and trading emails back and forth to my editor, chatting on Facebook (well, that goes out the window along with spending a choice amount of time on Kindleboards)...

Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen: I have decided to do a major name change in regards to The Vamp Saga books. I have been thinking about it for some time now as if any paranormal fan who has picked up a Sookie Stackhouse book already knows, the word "dead" is in every title. I felt like a copycat using the same vein and tacking on "death" or "dead" in every title but I did it anyway.

Then I am perusing a website of a fellow paranormal author and she has a new book which will be released in July. Guess what it's called? Come on, take a wild guess! Death Wish of course...

Now, the same name for different books isn't new but a lot of paranormal authors have gimicks if you would like to call them that. JR Ward has "lover" in every Black Dagger Brotherhood novel; my friend Shea MacLeod uses "kissed" in every one of her Morgan Bailey novels; Jeaniene Frost loves the word "grave" in her Cat and Bones vampire series and it works quite well if I may say so myself.

A fellow author and I were talking and although the title changes for the novels which have already been released will be small, and as follows:

Death Lair will renamed Immortal Lair; Death Wish will be renamed Mortal Death, Better off Dead will become Better off Immortal and Queen of the Undead will be renamed Queen of the Immortals.

What does this mean for you? Well, as soon as I have made the changes on Amazon, I will let KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) know so everyone who bought a copy from there can have an updated copy with the updated title. Nothing in the books will change, mind you, except the title.

I hope this makes the series seem more of a paranormal romance series as opposed to one about women sleuths and female detectives (my friend told me some of my current titles had "thriller" written all over them).

As I said before, the only change is the title and the covers will eventually reflect that but I won't change the novels on any of the e-book websites until I have heard back from my cover designers and can get an ETA as to when the covers can be changed.

In the meantime, I have changed the cover for The Omnibus Collection (the only one in my control) and here it is:

Yeah, I know. My cover making skills are subpar at best which is why I hire professionals. The only bad part about that scenario is you have no control of when changes are actually made.

I hope this doesn't turn into a major deal and hopefully it will be a relatively smooth transition. I will also put some info about it on the actual page for The Vamp Saga too.

Thanks again for your support and happy Tuesday to all. ;-)

Sorry!

Okay, I'll get this out of the way, I have been a very horrible blogger lately but will you forgive me if I told you I have been hard at work?

First of all, I am two thirds done with Hart Attack so I am very much on track with that novel. After comes the hard work: proofreading, making corrections and then sending it off to the editor but it should definitely be released by late July or early August!

The final cover will look like this:

Queen of the Undead? I'm finished proofreading and will just be doing some final polishing this weekend before I send it to my editor. That one is also on time and should be released late June or early July so that makes me very happy indeed.

That cover will look like this:

What's up next? Well, poor Apocalypse 2012 keeps getting pushed back but this paranormal muse won't leave me otherwise I would be working on it but it's getting kicked out of the way after the next two books on the agenda!

I will be starting to work on Dawn of Death: Book Four of The Vamp Saga after I finish Hart Attack.

After that comes Change of Hart: Book Two from The Hart Family Saga.

Somewhere while I am doing the above, I will be proofing Love Voodoo: Book I from DeGeneration for its Autumn release. Unless you like sexy, smoking hot times and a completely contemporary erotic romance without a speck of paranormal activity then this won't mean a bit to you as you probably won't purchase it unless you're a fanatic of mine. I am releasing it under my pseudonym, Elle Chardou.

Then I will start working on Apocalypse 2012. I should definitely be ready because there are incidents which are planned for DOD and CoH which will lead me into that whole military mode and a kick ass feeling of finally writing Apocalypse 2012.

So, what does that mean?

Well, books usually get released as they are written but Dawn of Death might come out in Autumn, followed by Apocalypse 2012 followed by Change of Hart. Even though Change of Hart would just be sitting on my laptop.

It really depends on how much I can get done but I promise Apocalypse 2012 will be released before 2013...otherwise the title is a bit off, don't you think?

In other news, I have revamped The Omnibus Collection for Death Lair - Death Wish. It is on sale at Amazon for $4.49 (when it gets out of the review stage that is). It is also has a new cover which looks like this:

So you can't miss the new cover and if it doesn't look like this then it's still the old version.
It will also be available at Barnes & Noble, All Romance and iBookstore.

Another totally cool announcement: all my books, including The Beautiful People series (come June 5th when my exclusive Select contract ends with Amazon) will now be available at All Romance along with Smashwords.

Well, except Beginnings: Book I (The Plague), which is now a Select exclusive. I will probably leave it an exclusive until Apocalypse 2012: Book II comes out to give it a nice push when it comes out.

Until then, keep reading all that great literature and I will try to write at least once a week but at the moment, it's either keep writing books or update my blog religiously. I know what most of you would rather I do and it's what I would rather do too. ;-)

Have a happy Memorial Day weekend to my followers in the States and to everyone else, I hope you have a lovely weekend with your friends and family. ;-)

New Cover reveal and Blog Tour!

I just wanted to announce my cover artist came through and the cover for Better Off Dead will be changing. This will be the new cover, at least on Barnes & Noble and Amazon starting tomorrow:

Cool, isn't it? Anyway, I am busy, busy, busy changing it for the paperback as well. I hope everyone enjoys the new cover.

Also, I am on a month-long blog tour through Innovative Book Tours and here are a list of all my stops! Come join me if you can. Thanks!

April 30^th   Minding Spot    (interview)

May 1^st       Lissette E. Manning  (review)

May 2^nd       Bibliophilia, Please  (interview)

May 3^rd       Red Headed Bookworm   (review)

May 4^th       Storm Goddess Book Reviews  (interview)

May 5^th      All Things Writing    (review)

May 11^th    Reader Girls (interview & review)

May 12^th  Book’s Reviewed by Bunny (review)

May 14^th  Doctorsnotes (interview)

                Where’s My Muse? (review)

May 15^th  Rea’s Reading and Reviews  (bio, blurb, excerpt )

May 16^th  Cocktails and Books (interview and review)

May 17^th LilyElement Book Reviews   (review and interview)

May 18^th  Ce-Ce`s Garden of Reviews (review)

May 19^th  Julie Bookaroo-ju (review)

Queen of the Undead is finished!

I am so happy to announce I have finally finished Queen of the Undead, Book III in The Vamp Saga! Yay! Break out the bubbly! Not...I still have to proofread it before I send it to my editor but if everything goes according to plan, it will be released before the end of June or early July 2012 at the latest. How cool is that? Three novels and a novella in a series released within the first year of the series.

Before I get the classic eye-rolls, the novel is what you expect from me and no, it isn't merely a 50k novella I am passing off as novel either. It is 95k (as of right now but I do add and subtract during the proofing process so it might end up as long as 100k or as short as 90k depending upon how happy Felicia gets in terms of cutting during the editing process...lol)

Don't get too excited gals and fellas as I will be taking a much needed hiatus from this series to focus on some of my other projects. Love Voodoo from DeGeneration should be released before the end of May. Also lined up for the summer/fall-autumn are Hart Attack: Book I in The Hart Family Saga and Apocalypse 2012: Book II from The Plague series. In the winter, I will be releasing The Making of a Star from The Pop Stars series. 

Then, I will get back to what y'all want me to...that is The Vamp Saga, of course, when I will begin writing the fourth book in the series: Dawn of Death. I fear that one might be a magnum opus and could be as long as 120 to 130k in word length as there is a lot going on and I am not sure whether or not I will be able to end it somewhere around my usual page length if I sense a cliffhanger in sight...

Okay, enough gabbing...here is a sneak peak (totally unedited though it has been proofed but I can't guarantee it is perfect) of Queen of the Undead: Book III.

Excerpt from Queen of the Undead

I sat through yet another exhaustive meeting and waited with expectation for it to be over. As Mikkel still had not returned from his “two week” excursion which had begun almost six months ago, Idallys had been filling in for him so we had a full Council of twenty.

I should have been looking for guidance as no doubt my father would gladly provide it for me but at the same time I didn’t know exactly what I needed. I was the Queen and I had to conduct these meetings with a sense of decorum and taste. My personal problems were my own and never were they to get in the way of real Council Business. I was to steel myself and overlook any of my own heartache.

Mikkel had begun to send me old fashioned, hand written notes in mid January and to that day, had not missed a week. I suppose these were to insure he was okay as they were definitely in his handwriting.

There were occasions I still worried about him and what had begun as a quick trip had turned into something else entirely.

“Your Majesty, do you have anything to add?” Armand inquired, snapping me out of my contemplative mood.

I sipped from my VA Neg before I questioned, “What were we talking about?”

From the corner of my eye, I could see Chiyoko and Siobhán look at one another before doing an eye roll.

Emmerik cleared his voice. “I was just reporting the latest figures, your Majesty. The virus is spreading and although it hasn’t reached Western Europe or North America, it is only a matter of time. Cases have already been reported in Central and South America just as cases have been reported as far west as Hungary.

“It is imperative I am given an unlimited budget and I need more staff to help find a cure as soon as possible. The Lycan People are definitely in danger of succumbing to this illness, which carries a ninety-five percent mortality rate with werewolves versus a twenty percent mortality rate with humans and less than a one percent mortality rate for Faeries, Demi-feys included.”

“Well, I’m grateful it was only supposition the Demi-feys would be harmed by this virus though I must say that we will do everything in our power from stopping the spread of the virus to the Lycan community. I’m assuming there are members of the Vampire Mercenary Squad with medical training?”

Armand brought up the figures on a laptop in front of him. “Yes. Approximately twenty-five percent are skilled in medicine and science.”

I stood which was a clear message the meeting was to be dismissed shortly. “Bring them here and Emmerik, I trust you can choose the cream of the crop. They will be at your disposal with full pay. This has to come to an end. The IVC will not be blackmailed by GenMods who only care about money and some deranged form of revenge Zahara has worked out in that head of hers.”

“Surely you would want to meet them?”

I stared from Emmerik to my father. “Yes, of course but first allow my father and I some private time first.”

***

It was still so amazing to me.

My father and I had spent over eighteen years apart and even when I knew of him, I had no idea we were related.

Regardless, we’d managed to repair a relationship in six months and were closer now than I’d ever been with the man I assumed was my father.

He was my confidant and regardless what issues I had, I always sought out his council first.

I had no illusions I was the perfect vampire Queen—I was probably one of the worst, bestowed my position not because of my beauty but merely because I was the first and therefore the most powerful. I would never say there was anyone else who would have made a better Queen than I as I knew of no woman but the point was, I felt like I was failing and it was not an emotion I was equipped to handle.

My mortal life had been no picnic and although many of my problems had been caused by me, I was often my own worst enemy by taking one mistake and making it that much worse. I wondered if this is what was going on when it came to my husband’s unexplained absence.

How long would people accept he was on a self-imposed sabbatical? When would the talk turn malicious and cruel; whisperings of me having him murdered or better yet, him tiring of me and he decided to leave me? It made no difference if he was gone one month or one hundred years, we were still married and therefore I could never promise myself to another.

It wasn’t the same kind of lose-lose situation humans found themselves in because I could sleep with as many men and women as I wanted to but I could never declare love for another and this was a definite problem, especially when I was in love with someone other than my husband.

Emmerik.

The torture it had been to see him gracing the halls of the château yet he was unavailable to me. I couldn’t dare sleep with him now that Mikkel was gone. It would seem like more of a betrayal than his loss already felt.

My father immediately sensed my anxiety as soon as he sat down next to me on the sofa in the Salon Bleu. The sitting room was aptly named because everything in the sitting room was various shades of blue. It matched my mood and had become one of my favorite rooms in the château because of the ambience and the soothing feeling I received there. I also felt closest to Mikkel in this room once I found out it had been Adrienne’s favorite room as well.

He slipped an arm around my shoulders and held me close. “My love, what is the matter? You seem very out of sorts and you were distracted the whole meeting. A Queen never shows her minions how she is feeling, not even us on the IVC. We aren’t your equals and therefore we should never be privy to your moods.”

I glared at him with fresh tears in my eyes and realized I should have never worn any shade in the white family today. “Papa, I’m so conflicted and I have been for the longest time now. I don’t understand and I feel so out of sorts. Who is my equal and with whom can I share my deepest darkest secrets?”

He passed me a black Hermès scarf and I wiped my eyes. “Unfortunately, the Queen has no equals and you aren’t any different. However, you can share your deepest fears with Emmerik—”

“Papa, no! I can’t…I can’t be around him; I can’t smile and pretend everything is okay between us when it is not. I love him…my God, I really do. I’m in love with him and for the first time, I can see that although I love Mikkel with all my heart my feelings for Emmerik surpass the emotions I feel for my own husband.”

I hope you all enjoyed the preview as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you! Feel free to leave a comment if you want to add your two cents and don't forget the second novel, Better Off Dead, is already available so grab a copy (though it isn't compulsory). ;-) Until next time, have a wonderful weekend and happy reading!