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Category: My Books

The novels I’ve written and/or the characters in them.

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I love historical romance. The news around us is so very grim. Our economy has been down for so long that it keeps dragging us down with it.  So many people are unemployed, underemployed or working two or three jobs to survive. The worse today gets, the more tempting historical romance looks.  In trying times historical romance is an oasis from the desert of reality.  I get that. I really, really get that. 

But you know what I think too many people forget, overlook or don't realize? Contemporary romance done right provides the same kind of escape. It may provide an even better escape. Think about it.  We can see our world, our time in new and exciting ways by reading contemporaries.  Contemporaries remind us that times can get better, will get better.  They can even inspire us to change some things we're doing in order to make our reality a better place to live.

So, let's hear it for contemporary romance.  

...continue reading "Today’s A Pretty Quacking Place Too"

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Published on 2 Comments on Things Are People Too

In MaryAnneia people, places and things have personalities.  Sometimes they're happy, sometimes they're sad and sometimes they're just in a mood to piss me off.  Yes, Virginia, things have issues too. Or at least - my things do.

For example, take my office computer - please.  Nah, I guess I'll keep it.  In fact, some days, I'd fight you for it.  Others, I'd throw it across the parking lot and dance on its digital corpse.  I have a love/hate relationship with the thing.  In the morning, it doesn't want to wake up from its long nap. I don't either, so I sympathize. By the time she's up and perking, I'm mighty glad to have her help.  But she's a drama queen.  When I'm heads down on a deadline, focused on whatever words I'm writing at the time, most of my attention is not on the machine. And the machine doesn't like that. So she'll throw up a weird error or suddenly, for no apparent reason, Word, Outlook, or Practice Advantage will die.  I'll yell at her and Glenda, my co-worker in the next office, will chuckle and encourage me to teach the PC who is the boss.  (I pretend I am).

My car - a little red P.T. Cruiser - is my baby.  Like a baby, sometimes she gurgles and purrs and boogles right along. And sometimes she doesn't.  I often stroke her and encourage her. But sometimes I yell - like when I know the idiot in the other lane is trying to speed up to get in front of me. "Don't let the jackass in, P.T., I'll scream."

Don't get me started on my ice maker.  It exists to aggravate me.  It'll be churning right along and then, for no reason, it refuses to sweep out the ice cubes so that more water can pour in.  Or cubes get stuck half in and half out of the sweeper.  And there I'll be, with whatever kitchen implement I can grab, pouring or poking or prodding. All the while, I'll be inventing new vile names for the beast until my 14-year-old, Sam, yells in, "You tell it, Mom."

It hadn't occurred to me how much of MaryAnneia has crept into my books until I read a reader comment. 

...continue reading "Things Are People Too"

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I'll blog about this later but for now - a teaser.

My books present a world I've created. Whether its Regency England, the old West, Scotland, or today's America, if it's in my book it's that time period done my way. History is always the backdrop for the story, characters might say or do anything, the hero will fall bat-bug crazy in love and there will be a happy ending.

Are you bold enough to travel over the top with me? Check out my Complete List Of Books and pick up one (or all of 'em) and find out if you're game enough to drop your perception of reality and believe in an over-the-top kind of happily ever after.

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Recently, I ran across this interesting piece from Joy Online written by John Boakye of The Mirror. It asks whether the reader believes in love at first sight.  As a romance novelist, I find the question very intriguing.  The author of the piece, Mr. Boakye,  suggests that we express and experience love "based on our cultural background, age, sex, education and life experiences."

Mr. Boakye recounts his own experience of falling in love at first sight with the lady he later married.  He says he was driving along a road when he saw a tall, beautiful lady standing by the side.  It affected him so strongly that he drove into a ditch and amongst the people who came to help was the beautiful lady.  She said that she'd felt the same sensation when she first saw him.

The piece describes love at first sight as feeling that you've met "the most romantic person on earth" and you'll do anything and everything to capture his attention. You see the person as "flawless," are full of happiness and joy when they're around and will follow him anywhere.  This person came straight into your heart and stole it away.

The piece says that others are more inclined to accept the scientific explanation of the phenomenon. 

 According to scientists, when you see a person of the opposite sex, the brain stimulates a cocktail of chemicals like epinephrine into the nervous system. This gives you a pleasant outlook of life and makes you react romantically towards him or her.

The greater the stimulation, the greater your emotional feeling. People then react differently, depending on their age, sex and self control. What we call love at first sight is, therefore, nothing special because it could happen to anyone at any time.

The piece says that others don't believe in love at first sight and think the strong attraction to one special person is a "false sense of love because true love goes beneath the skin." 

I've written a lot about love, but generally more in the "fated soul mate" sense than in the first sight sense.  It's an interesting point to ponder -- Do you believe that love at first sight exists?

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Published on 2 Comments on Free Faerie Friday

It's a Free Faerie Friday.

That's right, my book A Faerie Fated Forever is still FREE on Amazon for the Kindle, on Barnes & Noble for the Nook, on Apple for the iPad (have no i-way to provide link), and on Smashwords formatted for nearly every device on the planet.

Grab it, read it and review it.  It's a Free Faerie Friday - get yours today!

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As I've mentioned before, my book, A Faerie Fated Forever, went free almost everywhere this week.  I say almost because the old saw about not being respected in your home must be true.  I own a Sony Reader but the Reader Store hasn't picked up any of my recent stuff - I reduced the price on The Forever Series Bundle,  I put out Duke of Eden,  and just recently I made Faerie free.  Peeps who shop at the Sony Reader Store - email the store and ask why they haven't picked up the changes!!!  

But I digressed. I tend to do that a lot.  Perhaps it's a hazard of being a writer.  Or perhaps it's just me. Anyway, Faerie is free at the Apple iBookstore, it's free at Barnes & Noble, and on Monday, Amazon (very graciously - thanks a billion, billion to the amazing folks on the Kindle Digital Publishing staff) matched the price.  I've been able to see the progress and the reviews on B&N and Amazon, but I can't see what's happening at the iBookstore - my current budget doesn't allow for an i anything. 

The reader reviews have been very positive for Faerie.  There are reviews that aren't as positive for some of the others. For example, A Sixth Sense of Forever is Boz's story and it's very polarizing.  It's a love it or hate it kind of thing, but that's okay.  I thought Boz stayed way too level-headed during Niall's story in Faerie and Colt's in Golden. Boz was due to have the cover ripped off his cool.  But in a weird way, the one (as I post this, but that could change any second) review up for Sixth Sense mentions the heroine turning into a dominatrix.  I swear I think it's helped sell the book this week. 

Because the truth  is - all reviews are important.

...continue reading "Reader Reviews Power The E-Book Revolution"

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Hi y'all.  Just popping in to let you know that my book, A Faerie Fated Forever, which has been free for a few days on B&N, Apple, KOBO, and Smashwords, just went FREE at Amazon.  Pick it up for your Kindle by clicking HERE.  

After you check out the view from over the top of love by reading Faerie, I hope you'll boogle by my author page on Amazon and check out some of my other books.  Two sequels to Faerie are out - A Golden Forever and A Sixth Sense of Forever. (I love both but I have a special place in my heart for Golden.)  Don't forget to pick up my other historicals, The Duke of Eden and Brotherly Love.   I've also got 2 contemporaries - Email Enticement and Griffin's Law - that take place at the intersection of love and the law.

Happy Reading!!

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The Fat Man here. Let me tell you something that's pretty awesome.

That's taking an idea, typing some things on your computer keyboard, moving and clicking your mouse around, turning that idea into a bunch of electrons and photons, then sending those electrons and photons to a place where those infinitesimal little particles (that originated from an even more immeasurable set of things) are transformed into a solid, tangible, molecular thing.

My fat hand holding ideas which have taken on a material form.

Behold such a thing. Mary Anne's latest work, The Duke of Eden, is now available in paperback. She and I (mostly she) finished up work on it a month or so ago. Her ideas became words, then became text, then became electronic signals and magnetic spots on a hard disk.

I listened to her ideas, found some collections of photons recorded by other nice people, took some ideas of my own and manipulated the photons into a form I found to be pleasing. I created magnetic spots on my hard disk from the photons, then sent an electron stream that was a copy of Mary Anne's magnetic spots and my magnetic spots over to CreateSpace. There, they decoded the electron stream, put ink and other chemicals on various thicknesses of paper as indicated by the stream, then cut the papers, glued them together, and sent us back their product, which was really our product in a solid, material form.

My fat hand holding incarnated thoughts, rear view.

That's pretty damned awesome in my opinion. I would say dare say it was verging on magic. All things considered, the 21st Century hasn't delivered everything that was promised to us a few decades ago, but I'm still impressed with what it has delivered. I guess I can wait on the flying cars and jet packs a little bit longer.

Now that the paperback is out and the e-book is available via a few other distribution channels, pick up our ideas incarnated today, mmkay? You'll be glad you did.

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Jessica Galbreath, fairy artist and founder of Fairy Day says:

"This holiday is for everyone who believes in the magic of fairytales. It is for those imaginative souls who dare to dream impossible dreams. It is for the children of the world, wide eyed and open to the magic that surrounds them. It is for adults too, who long to capture a bit of that magic they remember from thier own childhood."

If you want to capture some fairy magic, I suggest you pick up my novel - A Faerie Fated Forever or that you get the whole 3 book series - available in a bundle AT A BUY 2 GET 1 FREE PRICE - The Forever Series.

Everyone who reads romance must believe in fairytales so this is our day.  Today, we all get one of the magical sprites to ease our way and change our impossible dream into our inevitable reality.  Inhale the fairy dust and dance amidst the sparkles and watch your special fairy send you a wonderous wave of good fortune and magic joy.

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Hi there lovelies, it's the daddy on Daddy's Day. Mary Anne spent too much money on me, as usual. But that's not what this update is about.

I felt motivated to get something done on The Duke of Eden paperback cover. My wife chided me for working on Father's Day, but apparently she doesn't know that artistic muses work a lot like writing ones - you've got to pound it out while the muse is screaming in your ear, or else you might not hear from her in awhile.

Anyways, it took a lot of hard, hard work looking through dozens and dozens of nude and semi-nude pictures of redheaded temptresses, but I finally found a very naked one, which Mary Anne then forced me to crop until no naughty bits were visible and put on the back cover. So now there's something for the dudes as well as the honeys to look at on the book.

Keep watching the Duke images page for the new cover, and while you're ogling the Duke's new Eve I'll be formatting the novel for printing as a true-to-life solid molecular flingable paper book.

AOFM out. And Happy Father's Day!

UPDATE: Wait for the cover no longer. It's at the bottom of this page!