Happy Holidays!

As a child, I loved summer, of course.  There was no school.  I could sleep late and do whatever I wanted.  Fabulous!

While attending college, I loved the holidays.  During the semester breaks, I worked internships, so I didn't get to spend time with my family, and I was stuck in the "grown-up" world, so no real summer fun.

As an adult, I have grown to love the entire holiday season--October - April (my birthday is in April.)  I love everything from the food to the people to the movies and music.

One of my favorite songs this season, is CeeLo Green's remake of "Mary Did You Know."  It's beautiful!  I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and that you bring 2013 in with a bang!

An Early Gift from My Editor! And Salado at Christmas!

What more can I say than that????

Now that's what I call a CHRISTMAS present! Snow, wolf and Tom, and all.....

Where's the mistletoe? Don't need it!

Just one hot body to keep us warm.

He's coming!!! February 1, 2014 in time for Valentine's. Happy Merry Jolly Christmas, Early!

Thanks to Sourcebooks and their wonderful art department and Deb for sending him to me in time for the holidays!!!

What do you think? Are you ready for Tom?




I loved the old buildings in Salado decorated for Christmas. We walked all over and saw many of the homes/shops that are on the historical tour. Many of these were built in the 1860's. It seems a long time ago, until I think of visiting the Scottish castles!!!



Here are some more of the shops and their wooden walkways.



Inside one of the old buildings that once was a residence and now a shop I took a picture of the rock work and pretty mirrored chest, and caught myself in the mirror! I didn't realize I had. Debbie, poor thing, was my coat bearer while I took pictures. It looked like it would rain, but it never did, so we finally ditched the coats in the car. I kept apologizing to her for having to be the workhorse on the trip, and if I had wanted to hide the fact she was carrying our coats, I captured it in the picture. So no tall tales there...

I loved the stone work in the buildings, and in the mirror, you can also see how the glass door has a glass window above it. Many of the buildings had these. My friend kept saying, "Can you imagine dusting all this stuff?"

My mother used to say, "They aren't collectables. They're dustables."

But it's hard not to walk away with something cute from Salado. :)



The little guy in the middle who is playing his music? He came home for Christmas with me--my gift to me from Salado, my muse. :)



A dust collector? Surely not!

How about you? Can you resist collecting those collectables?


Terry
"Giving new meaning to the term alpha male where fantasy IS reality!"
www.terryspear.com

Nothing to say but Happy Day!

I hope it's a holiday where you are -- if it is, please celebrate it with friends and loved ones, because they truly are the gift we give ourselves.

If it isn't a holiday, please make one for yourself -- relax, have that extra special coffee, do a bit of shopping, spend some Me Time. You deserve it!

Here's to the new year and, if the Mayans are to be believed, the beginning of a new age of enlightenment. Heaven knows, we can use it!

Meet My Friend J. Morgan

By Paisley Kirkpatrick

It's me. J. Morgan. Yep, I'm here again. Paisley kindly asked me to come back for another dose of me. Between, me, you and that suspicious looking Christmas tree over there, I think she just wanted to get out of blogging this month. She said something about fruitcakes and oven humidity making her dizzy. I'm not buying it though. But, since one of those fruitcakes rested on a very large plate for all of five minutes before someone ate it, namely me, I'm back for another visit talking about my just released Immortally Damned.

With Christmas only a day or so away, I should be talking about my Christmas short, Claus…I love you. It would be easy to chit chat with you about a story that screams Christmas -- love. Like I said, real easy. But, I'm not. Why? Because, I have decided to shock you with a revelation so mind blowing Paisley will wish that oven humidity had made her pass out!

Caern from Immortally Damned is loosely based on me! Yes, that's right. I am really a failed priest. Bet you thought I was going to say vampire. Failed priest you say? Yes, at one time in my life I wanted to be a priest. Being raised Catholic, I'm sure a lot of boys in a Catholic run school have the same idea. I would have followed through with that holy vocation if not for one thing. No, not chastity. Wait, make that two things. The second one being puberty. The female of the species puberty, not mine, though it figures heavily in my change in life pursuits.

As I enter my forties full on, I've often wondered what would have become of me, if I had gone through with holy orders. Again, puberty keeps derailing those thoughts. Like Caern, I didn't and I have lived with the consequences ever since. I'm sure God didn't like it much, or breathed a sigh of relief. In fact it wasn't until I finished Immortally Damned that it dawned on me just how much of myself I'd pumped into my half vampire. I know that authors do it all the time, but this time I was really channeling the old noggin into the project. That's not saying that all of Caern is me. That'd be insane. Well, more insane than I normally am.

Still, when it comes to crafting characters you have to empathize with them. You absolutely need to crawl into their skins and come to know them, inside and out. Otherwise, you're just tossing meaningless works onto a screen. Saying that writing is cathartic is stating it mildly. Given half a chance, I'm pretty sure authors subconsciously reveal more of themselves than they'd do to an accredited therapist. It's up to you the readers to wade through the fiction to find a glimmer of fact. I firmly believe that if a writer has the power to fully draw you into a story, he or she has just invited you into their lives. Like I said, I doubt we realize we're doing it, but hey, it's cheaper than that visit to the psychiatrist.

You know, I probably shouldn't even finish the blog. You're calling the men in white coats right now aren't you? They're coming to take me away. Ha ha! Oops, I didn't mean to write that. So, before they get here, let me wish you a Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years. To distract you while I make a hasty retreat out the window over the kitchen sink, please enjoy the below excerpt. Have those men in white coats read as well. I run really really slow.

Amor Immorati

Book Two

Immortally Damned

Blurb:

Caern swore to never return to New Orleans, his death warrant making the choice easy. Well, easy until his past returns to smack him around. Now, he has to return to the one place where death isn't a possibility, it's a guarantee. And only a matter of time. Searching to find a murderer out to kill the grandchild he never thought to meet, he finds himself falling into a hell he just might not be able to crawl free of. His only hope lies in Detective Eliza Marrone. Falling for her isn't in the cards, but his heart tells him it might be the only thing he can't escape. Zombies, old lovers and psychopathic vampire clergy, yeah those are things he can deal with. True love on the other hand is the one thing he's always avoided. This time there's no way out. It might get him killed, or end up saving his wretched soul.

Excerpt:

"Yeah." Caern winced at the shattering of glass. "Let's go before they break through. I don't like the idea of facing them in this enclosed space."

"Me either," Eliza agreed. "If I'd known this day would end with a zombie apocalypse I'd have packed an extra clip or five."

"You aren't the only one." Caern thought his nine hour sadly inadequate for the job at hand. He hoped Raiz had thought to grab his bag. In all the rush, he'd forgotten all about it. "Eliza, take point. Steph and I will play cleanup. If it moans, shoot it. Don't think twice."

She set a round into the chamber. "Head shots, I presume."

"Sure, it might work. These aren't your movie zombies. Dupres controls them. Head shot might sever the connection, but if it keeps moving, go for the knees. A disabled zombie is just as good as dead one." He set his own round. "Bites won't turn you into one, but it'll give you crap amoxicillin won't touch. Think Ebola and leprosy all wrapped into one."

"Nice." Eliza bent in and kissed him on the tip of the nose. "Caern, you take me to the nicest places. By the way, that was for luck. You get me out of this alive, and I'll show you how lucky."

"Were you just flirting with me, Detective Marrone?" He wondered what type of lucky that might entail.

"If you have to ask, you're not old enough to find out." She pinched his cheek. "We better play nice before we make somebody upchuck."

"Meet you on the other side." He threaded his fingers through hers. "Don't be a hero. Things go FUBAR, you grab Deborah and fort up somewhere until it's safe."

"Same goes for you. Just because you're half vamp doesn't mean you're indestructible." She bent close and whispered. "Or irreplaceable. Don't make me regret not killing you when I had the chance."

Caern brushed his lips across her cheek. "I think that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard."

"Yeah, I'm a sweet talker." She pushed him back. "I'm through being mushy. Let's go kill something."

"As you wish, milady." Watching her walk away had to have been the hardest thing he'd ever done. Just knowing what they were about to jump into, it took every thing he had to stop himself from going caveman and shove her in the nearest broom closet and lock the door. The fire in her eye told him what would happen. She could handle herself. Like the rest of them, she was a warrior born.

That didn't keep his heart from skipping a beat, as she led them down the narrow hallway to the rear of the hotel. Each open doorway they came to sent another pang of fear racing through him. The shouts echoing behind them only made it worse. If he could have got his hands on Dupres, Caern would have gladly throttled the life out of the undead bastard. He settled for killing some of his pets. If anything happened to Eliza or Deborah, all bets were off. Caern would pile corpses around him and burn this whole city down around his rotting ass.

Available Now From Desert Breeze Publishing

http://stores.desertbreezepublishing.com/-strse-387/Amor-Immorati-Book-Two-cln-/Detail.bok

Also Available through Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Amor-Immorati-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B00AMI6O82/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355687558&sr=8-1&keywords=immortally+damned

Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/amor-immorati-book-two-j-morgan/1113940031?ean=2940015747089

and other fine online book sellers.

Where in the net is J. Morgan?

My Yahoo Newsletter

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jmorganslair/

My much forgotten Website

http://www.freewebs.com/jmorganslair/

Happy Holidays

 

Victorian Christmas Tree

 

 

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year

Continuing My Education

I have always been an avid reader. "Nose in a book" could have been my middle name. When the itch to write needed scratching, I thought a love of reading equalled the ability to write. It didn't take long to discover I had a lot to learn.

Fortunately I also like to take classes. I'd take them in person, but I don't live near a city or community college. I can't find a romance  critique partner I to meet in town for coffee. So online classes are a godsend. Through them I have learned about POV, characterization, plot development, and power-loading sentences.

I am taking an interesting class right now: food writing for historical novelists.  We just had our first homework assignment-- a first-hand account of a real-time food experience. I wrote 512 words about cooking and eating fried eggs and toast.  I had to compose details that showed:  Taste. Touch. Sound. Sight. Scent.

The next assignments will be trickier: incorporating them into my story in a way that "creates an important pause in the emotional arc."

Interesting things happen to me in the shower-- it's where I often get ah ha solutions to what happens next. So, to compose sensory details of taking a shower, I could describe how the water feels--its temperature, the spray, is it slippery soft or hard. The shower stall--walls smooth, shiny hard. How the water tastes; the shampoo tastes--and smells. How it looks and sounds on the shower curtain or door before we enter. Once we are inside, how the water and shampoo bubbles run off my body and down the walls, down the drain. The scent of the soap. The texture of a washrag. The squeakiness of my hair after it is fully rinsed.

Once I have these options, I would pick ones that mesh with the emotions of the scene. Is the heroine distraught over a lost love--the spray could feel like knife cuts.

Or an essential memory. What if my character as a young child was scrubbed harshly by a mother whose husband had just smacked her around?  What if she remembers playing happily with her younger brother in a tub--and now she'd just learned he drowned?  What if she is in the shower with her lover and he slips on the soap--something she has always feared could happen.

I am still learning to write deep POV, but it is becoming easier to  write evocative details. I can see that I can't just list five or six descriptions and create a mood in my setting. I need to use a few sensory details that link directly to the emotion in the scene.

More good stuff to learn.

Christmas in Florida

For many Christmas is synonym of snow, cold, a fire in the chimney; indoors decorated Christmas trees; evergreen wreaths and garlands; red ribbons to accent the Christmas look; twinkling lights decorating the doors and front yards; and a spicy hot punch; or hot chocolate to warm you up.
Yes that’s the Christmas I remember having when my children were growing, in school and in college.It was so cold outside, and so warm and cozy inside.

My present Christmas is so different. How do you celebrate Christmas in Florida? In church, nothing is changed, but all the rest is different. Our Christmas trees are often smaller. We decorate palm trees and take advantage of our clement weather. You can find us at the beach if the temperature is in the seventies.

My latest book, CHRISTMAS BABIES, is a heartwarming holiday story, set in South Florida.

Dedicated to her patients, the serious Dr. Madelyn Ramsay never had time for fun. An unexpected health problem jolts her into the realization that there’s more to life than just work. She longs to surrender to the magic of Christmas.

But can she handle the charming and secretive Dr. Nick Preston who carries his own package of disillusions?

Can she allow two newborn twins to worm their way into her heart?

CHRISTMAS BABIES is a bestseller at Amazon.

And the winner is... ME!

Today’s post is just before the biggest holiday on my calendar, which is Christmas and the week until New Years Day. This is a time I’ll spend with my family, and eat, drink, and be merry to my heart’s content. At least that’s the plan and most of the time we manage to enjoy ourselves. 

While I'm celebrating I’ll also try to finish up the book I worked on during NaNoWriMo, for which I wrote my required 50K words during the month of November, in spite of dancing Nutcracker for the nineteenth time and having family around for Thanksgiving.

So I did finish NaNoWriMo, hence my winning status. I also managed to get my short story, The Girl In The Box price-matched at Amazon as free... which is generating a lot of interest as people download it and then go off and purchase one or more of my other titles. So that makes me a winner as well.

My next goal is to get the NaNoWriMo project finished: Girl Unboxed. It is sort of a sequel to The Girl In The Box, meaning that it continues the story into the time just after the short story ends. When people kept saying the story was too short, they seemed to be talking about more than just the fact that it was 5000 words. They also meant they wanted to read more about Ammi and Ganth and how their life was going to work out. I'm working on the end scenes of the story now, and I think people will like it.

The goal is to have it up at Amazon by the middle of next month. I hope I make it because it sure seems like it would be nice to have a new book in January.

In the meantime I hope everyone has a happy holiday and will enter the new year as stress-free as possible.

Hugs,

Janet Miller/Cricket Starr

http://www.cricketstarr

WE MEET THE NICEST PEOPLE! by Rolynn Anderson

Many of you know that golf is a hobby of mine which means Palm Springs is a mecca for me.  Ah…the warmth, the beautiful courses backdropped by massive mountains.  In fact, now that I’ve updated my golf bag with a new driver and three wood, I’m really happy with my game.

But I golf alone, the rare wife whose husband is not interested in the sport.  I sign up as a single and I’m placed with strangers for the four to five hours it takes to conquer eighteen holes.  You guessed it, I’m usually playing with men.

I am always pleased with my blind-date golf partners.  They are gentlemen, supportive of my game and life-style (they’re enamored by the four months I live on our boat), and supremely interested in my life as a published author.  Most have never met a professional writer before, much less played golf with one.  By the nineteenth hole, I’m handing out my postcards and getting promises from my new friends to buy my books.  Frankly, it’s become a lot more fun to be a golfer and writer.

Now listen to this.  Last Wednesday, at Mission Hills, I played a round with two women from Long Beach.  Good golfers, exuberant, adventurous types.  It gets better.  They are retired LAPD.  Worked sex crimes and homicide.  (You remember I write suspense!)  Even better?  They’re working cold cases as consultants in their retirement; I’m writing about a 1932 murder in Petersburg, Alaska.  Are you sitting down?  They want to help me look at the case, offering to fly up to Alaska and walk the crime scene with me.  I got a follow-up e-mail that evening from them to underline their serious interest in helping me.

I say again.  I’m one lucky writer.  I meet the nicest people on the golf course! 

Remember, my action-packed SWOON, from the Funeral Planner Suspense Series is out now.  Here’s what Brenda Novak says about it along with a blurb. 

“Don't miss SWOON by Rolynn Anderson! If you like an interesting cast of characters, a heavy dose of mystery and a lot of fabulous surprises, you'll be happily turning pages late into the night.ˮ

~ Brenda Novak, NYT and USA Bestselling Author of WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES

****

Her dead clients won’t rest in peace.

When the dead tell tales, Jan Solvang’s first reaction is to RUN!  But then she gets caught up in their mysteries.

Jan’s a boutique funeral planner, new to risk, hired to bury a missing woman and memorialize an infamous man.  Yet when she digs for clues to write their eulogies, she disturbs family secrets and unmasks killers.

Roman Keller, hard-driving documentary writer, is in complete control of his life and his stories, until he falls for Jan, a woman who trusts her dog, her faint-dreams, and her instincts more than she trusts him.

Can they make the sacrifices necessary to cement their relationship or will the mayhem caused by the dead ruin their second chance at love?  

PURCHASE SITES:

Website: http://www.rolynnanderson.com

Kindle amzn.to/TH69yy

Print version Amazon bitly.com/SJrVAR

SMASHWORDS:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/252721

KOBO: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Swoon/book-giQxR7D1kkiXrmJBsPuFCQ/page1.html?s=NSYHa5BoZUy1thz6xRz2Dg&r=1

I don't like to read...

I had a totally different post planned for this week, but I've heard the words "I don't like to read" so many times, lately, that I had to take a minute and just say, "What?"

The holidays are such a great time to read.  So many great holiday specific books are available that I personally don't know where to begin.

Even if people don't want to read four hundred page books, there are great some great novellas or short stories. (Hint, hint!)

Some people that I love and truly admire frown when I mention some of the books I'm currently reading, not because of the books, but because they have no interest at all in reading.  My question to them is how do you escape?  They responses differ, but they tend to lean toward sleeping, or in the case of my male friends, something "manly" playing sports or riding motorcycles.

I play tennis--not well, but I play.  But, I'd still miss holding a book, or grabbing my Kindle.

I've tried to sneak books and magazines into the hands of people I love, but I guess that would be like them trying to get me on a motorcycle.  Sometimes I'll take the ride with them, but it's just not my thing.

But, they still can't stop me from stuffing their Christmas stockings with books...lots and lots of them!