Chicks-n-Scratching

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Cursed with the sight and rumors of witchcraft, Rosalind’s only chance at an ordinary life is marriage to Lucien, Viscount Hastings. She doesn’t expect love, only security and children of her own. Determined to go through with the wedding, she allows nothing she encounters at the gloomy Castle St. Clare to dissuade her.

Recently returned from the Continent, Lucien has no time for the English mouse his family has arranged for him to marry—not when he’s plotting to avenge the murder of his beloved Francesca. He has no intention of bedding Rosalind, not even to sire an heir.

Though spurned by her bridegroom, Rosalind turns to him for protection when she is plagued by a series of mysterious accidents and haunted by terrifying visions. Forced to keep Rosalind close—and tempted into passionate kisses—Lucien soon finds himself in grave danger of falling in love with his own wife…

Purchase The Spurned Viscountess

Shelley Munro

Gambit by Kim Knox

Captain Chae Beyon is a hustler, a mercenary pilot, a wounded woman who prefers her men to be easily thrown aside.

Daned Traern is a first-caste Ladaian bound by tradition and DNA to protect his race. He’s willing to align himself with the hot space captain if she’ll transport him home in time to ensure the right candidate is crowned—and thus prevent a bloody war.

Disguised as Chae’s sex toy, Daned is erotically bound to her through living gold, alien tech designed to increase pleasure. When he frees himself, their passion only increases…but succumbing to temptation will bind them together—permanently.

But there’s more at stake than their needs. As Chae is dragged into a world of insane princes and sentient stones, hired killers hound them across the quadrant.

And then, as only her lousy luck would have it, Chae must choose between the good of the galaxy and her own heart…

It’s available from Carina Press here

I know I can’t.

What is it that I can’t believe? Well, I’m glad you asked. I can’t believe that it’s already September 13th. I know I’ve said it before – at least once a year around this time – but really, is it just me or are the years moving by at warp speed now? I always start off the year with the best of intentions. I’m going to finish this, this and this project, get them sent to pubs and work on this, this and this while I wait to hear.

Never freakin’ happens.

I might get this and this done…but never this, this and this. That would be asking too much while working full time and getting in the sleep required to function properly.

Regardless of my overwhelming sense of failure at yet another year going by with actually making it through even a tiny microspec of the books on my files I need to finish (I should probably state here that instead of finishing these old files, I find new and exciting plot bunnies that turn my head like a pile of bling to a starlet.) I get shiny object syndrome and can’t think of those other, older books until I look up at the calendar and realize I’m fucked…again.

New Year’s resolutions? It’s never too early to talk about them, especially when I know I’m going to break them anyhow. In regards to my writing goals, that is.

So sad.

I start out the year with real optimism that this year will be different. Only to come up on June and July to realize, it ain’t ever going to happen. By September I’ve resigned myself to thinking…”Well, maybe next year.” Yeah, right. Not.

Oh, well…

-Kate

Since I spoke on villains the other day, I thought I’d give a breif word on the rogue. You know those badder than bad hunky heroes who would rather leave a gal (or guy) bleeding than lift a finger to help…until his conscience gets the better of him.

The first rogue I ever fell in love with – Han Solo. There was just something about his scruffy-looking nurf herder appearance and the fact he was only in it for the cash that just made you want to say….”Hey, you selfish prick! Luke and Leia need your help against the evil Empire. And what better things have you got to do than to outrun Jabba?” – In the end, he chose friendship over money. Honor over selfishness.

FitzWilem D’Arcy from Pride and Prejudice is definately a rogue. He doesn’t even like Lizzy at first. “She’s not handsome enough to temp me,” says he. He’s rude, crude and declares he loves her against his character. I mean…what a jerk? He didn’t want to be her hero. He didn’t want anything to do with that family and yet to save the Bennetts from disgrace, “Make no mistake, I did it for you.” – Swoon – he comes through and saves the day. Damn, now I’m going to have to pull that movie out and watch it today. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Riddick – now there’s a character you hate to love. In Pitch Black you think he’s going to tear them apart when he gets out of his restraints, and yet he saves what people he can. In Chronicles of Riddick he saves as much of a civilization as he can from the Necomancers. Yeah, so what if his primary motive is revenge. He’s still a rogue and he still saves the day.

Ok. I have quite a few movies to watch now. Who are some of your favorite rogues?

-Kate

Top 13 reasons why you should own COMING CLEAN  from @CarinaPress

13- BBQ ribs and cornbread. Summer food for summer fun #ComingClean

12- It’s better than doing your own laundry #ComingClean

11- If one man is hot, two are hotter #ComingClean

10- boy parts touch girl parts, boy parts touch boy parts, lots of parts touch lots of parts #ComingClean

9- three words—BISEXUAL SHOWER BJ #ComingClean

8- Hot Latin dancing CLOTHED! Hot sheet dancing UNCLOTHED! #ComingClean

7- Sports analogies used to discuss buttsecks. Wanna know who plays catcher? #ComingClean

6- Rated everywhere 4 stars, 5 blue ribbons and TOP PICK! It’s scorching! #ComingClean

5- You’ll never guess where the SCREW ends up! #ComingClean

4- Vivi, Grant and Cade are a triangle in all ways. #ComingClean

3- It will make your heart sigh and your panties damp. #ComingClean

2- 3 people, 9 orgasms, 114 pages and only $2.99 after 25% off!  #ComingClean

1- Because married doesn’t mean ‘dead’, sometimes it means ‘more’. #ComingClean

Go get COMING CLEAN NOW… then buy batteries.

It has come to my attention recently that etiquette is a dying art. Manners are falling out of favor under the press of convenience and modernism.

This makes me insane.

Is it really so difficult to say please and thank you? Is it such an imposition to actually respond to an RSVP request? I’m not talking about handwritten thank you notes on personalized stationery or whether that fork is for seafood or spaetzle. No, I’m talking about basic courtesy.

The problem, as I see it, is that manners are the grease that helps the wheels of society slide along easily. Without that grease, society grinds along, but it’s painful and it keeps jamming and freezing up.

So, while I don’t intend to go all Emily Post on you, I do want to mention some small things that make life easier for everyone. Plus, I’m nearly completely convinced that as manners fall away, the tendency to see people as people (as opposed to obstacles) also degrades. As manners decline, so does the general “nice” quotient. And that’s just sad.

Say please and thank you. Sadly, when you do, you’ll likely get a look of shocked gratitude. Which should tell you how bad things are for manners in the real world. If someone does you the courtesy of sending you an invitation, the least you can do is pick up the phone and call to tell them yes or no. Open doors for people. Pick things up and hand them back to the person who dropped them. These small niceties make a big difference. And you might just find that your mood improves. I know it’ll improve mine.

I love villains. Not real life, honest to hell bad guys. No, I’m talking about the multi-layered forces of e-val who populate the pages of my books. Well, not just mine, but other peoples books, too.

Let’s face it, villains are more fun to write than the good guys. Lacking a moral compass or a conscious is very liberating when creating a character. I once wrote a female villain for a fantasy novel who was supposed to be a throw away character. The more I wrote of her and her devious personality, the more she wanted to stick around. She ended up in all four books of the series. (Alas, I never did find a publisher for it.) – But it did teach me a valuable lesson about villains: though she was only out for herself and what she wanted, her attitude changed when she had a child. Not that it made her a better person, but it shifted her focus from herself to her child. And something clicked into place.

Villains might be the source of angst or problems for protagonists, but they need to have one thing that gets to them. Their Achilles’ Heel so to speak. Something that makes them a little less evil and more human. For some reason that made me think of that credit card commerical that allowed its customers to create their own personalized card. One of the spots features an evil overlord making his own with kittens on it. Yes, that’s right. Soft, fluffy, sweet little baby kittens.

 I always think a villain with a more complete personality is more compelling than one who is just evil for evil’s sake. Where is the challenge in writing that? Where is the depth or completeness in that? It’s not. It’s completely lacking. That’s not to say that villains who keep deeper feelings close to their vests aren’t interesting. They can be, if there are hints there might be a backstory there somewhere.

Darth Vader comes to mind. In Star Wars IV: A New Hope, the moment he says that he hasn’t felt that way since the last time he was in the presence of his old master, you knew, here’s a villain that has a big backstory I really want to know about.

Author Gregory McGuire has made a career of taking the perspective of the villains from popular literature and fairytales and filling in the backstory. Wicked anyone? Or Confessions of an Ugly Step-sister.

It’s amazing how a little backstory can open up a whole new world and window into your villains.

-Kate

At church this week, we had a lovely young lady do a glorious solo for us. She’s been singing at our church for ages, and the associate pastor pointed out that she is now a rising senior at the Boston Conservatory. I nearly fell out of my chair, as I could have sworn we only sent her off to Boston last year. Where does the time go?

I have noticed that, as I get older, my sense of time is more shortened. By that I mean that the time seems to go faster. Do you remember when you were a kid and it seemed like eons until you could go to your friend’s party in two weeks? And summer seemed to last for EVER? Yeah, I remember that, too.

But somehow, some way, the time got away from me. Now the summer has flown past, and deadlines are on top of me that I thought were miles off. Things that seem to have happened yesterday happened months or years ago.

Any minute now, I’m going to start talking about the “good old days” and telling those kids to get off my lawn.

Too late. I already told them to get off my lawn. *sigh*

So I was watching CNN, and they had this little segment talking about what it means to be “rich.” The answers varied widely in terms of money, but the gist was the same: enough to do what I want to without having to work.

This got me thinking about the idea. I mean, when I was young, being a millionaire was a big deal. Now being a millionaire doesn’t get it done.

It begs the question, though. What do you mean by “rich” – do you mean simply able to pay your bills and have a bit of spending money and not worry about where you live? Or do you mean yachts and private jets and designer clothes? Here is where perception is definitely making a difference. It takes an order of magnitude more money to keep you in Chanel and Italian villas than it does to keep you in Target and Holiday Inn. But is Target and Holiday in rich, or is it just “comfortable”?

I don’t know, but I’d love to hear your opinions!

So I’ve taken up a new hobby – hanging out in the coffee shop/wine bar down the road from my daughter’s martial arts camp.

The camp is from noon to five Monday through Friday, and it’s about 20 minutes from the house, and the short version of that trip includes tolls to the tune of $1.20 going back home and $1.90 to the martial arts studio. So, if I decide to go home, it costs me, minimum, 40 minutes there and back and $3.10 in tolls.

GN (aka DH) got me a netbook. Did I mention that? Because GN is the awesomesauce for getting me the netbook. Now, instead, I can hang out in the coffee shop with a bagel and water for $2.13 and essentially no loss of time. HOORAY!

In fact, I’m in the coffee shop right now, munching my toasted bagel and drinking my water while I write this blog.

The biggest problem is that the coffee shop has awesome stuff. Sugar-sweetened sodas rather than corn syrup. Baked-fresh daily yummies (today it’s lime bars, strawberry shortcake, cherry tarts, and chocolate or pineapple scones). You can see where the temptation is pretty intense.

Still, I’m happy with it. I’ve gotten a good bit of writing done, and I’m just thrilled to play with my new toy!

So… do you lurk in your local coffee shop? If so, what’s cool about your coffee shop? If not, where do you hang?

Hello, my name is Kate and I’m addicted to Netflix.

Yes, I realize this is an odd sort of addiction, but as a movie junkie, I feel it’s my right to exploit the fact I can get unlimited movies per month/week/day at one low, low price.

If I sound like a commerical. I apologize. But darn it, I just love the fact that these little nuggets of fun come to my house and all I have to do is send them back to get more. Or if I’m so inclined I can stream instantly. How awesome is that? So my love of sci-fi and fantasy, and romantic comedies and foriegn films and movie adaptations of famous novels can all be satisfied at the touch of a few buttons. That’s just so cool.  Not only that, but it brings my husband and I together.

In the evenings, after he gets home from work and we are having our late dinner, we like to put in movies or old sitcoms and watch. We’re the type of people who will stop a movie to sit and discuss something about the film right then and there. More than once we’ve pushed pause because a topic has started a discussion that we just couldn’t wait to have. It’s how we communicate, connect and share.

One of my favorite sitcoms of all times was the old series, Barney Miller. Loved it as a kid and young teen. Lately we’ve been getting the seasons and laughing our asses off at the material. It’s really timeless. It’s odd how some of the topics, politics, budget cuts and corruption are still things that are going on today. The names might have changed, but the situations are the same. Several times Dave and I have looked at each other, shaken our heads and said, “sounds familiar, huh?” – And that’s just the subtext. The writing is so spot on and tight, anyone writing series comedy today should really study this show on craft. It’s just how it’s done. So good.

Then there are the movies.

It’s no secret my husband has a thing for Dame Judith Dench. He’ll watch anything with her in it, and so when I looked through movie adaptations of classic novels, I found a movie (mini-series) made for the BBC with her called Cranford.  Since it’s a Regency (maybe Victorian- not sure now) era story, he wasn’t too sure about it at first. Once he saw she starred in it, he was like…”Oh….” (This is kind of a sigh that one reserves for when they discover their favorite aunt is coming to visit and bringing presents.) – We sat down to watch the first disk (that’s one drawback to Netflix – they only send one disk at a time so you have to wait between episodes to see the entire series.) and it was such a sweet and endearing…and yes, sad movie that it instantly went down as one of our all time favorites. And to think, we would not have known about it had I not been browsing that particular sub-heading and found it.

Our queue is about 500 strong, and that number never seems to go down. Every time we get it down by a few, new movies come out or we’ll think to look for something else, and the number just goes up. I’m not the only one with this problem. I’ve never met anyone whose queue isn’t maxed out.

All I have to say is whoever came up with this particular way to distribute rental videos was bleeding brilliant. I only wish I had got in on their stock at the beginning.

What’s your odd and quirky, yet harmless addiction?

-Kate