Sami Lee's Blog, page 10

Cover Reveal

At last I have the go ahead to show off my beeewwwdiful cover for Unforgettable Summer. It’s absolutely gorgeous!

Don’t you think?

Sami

Motivation Monday

A great quote for low word count days, of which I had 14 the last fortnight: 

Happy writing

Sami

 

Motivation Monday — Creativity

Love this one:

Self belief is 80%* of the battle, folks.  

*All statistics in this article are invented for illustration purposes.

Sami

 

 

The Story Behind the Story — Slade

My special guest today is the wonderfully imaginitive and immensely talented Bianca D’arc. Bianca writes brilliant erotic paranormal books starring super sexy shifters. Today she’s going to talk about her latest work, Slade.

How did you come up with the idea for Slade?

Slade was a supporting character in the book that directly precedes this one, Tales of the Were: Rocky. He was just so intriguing as the story developed that I wanted to know more about him and decided to give him his own book. He’s started out as a mystery in Rocky and as his story developed, he just became such a cool character that I had to delve into that a bit more.

How long did it take you to write, from concept to completion?

Slade didn’t take long. Maybe 2-3 months. Sometimes that happens when a book just wants to get written. Sometimes it takes a lot longer. I can never really tell how things are going to go, but in general, most of my paranormal books tend to just pour out pretty quick. I love when that happens!

I see Slade is a follow up to Rocky. How many more books will there be in this series?

I’ve been planning a sub-series within the Tales of the Were that will focus on the five Redstone brothers – who are all cougar shapeshifters - that will start with the very next book, Grif. I actually started writing Grif’s book years ago and left it sort of half-finished as other projects became more important, but he’s always been in the back of my mind and I’ve finally gotten back to the point where I can finish his story and get it out there. I’ll be releasing his book in May. Then, after Grif, there are four more Redstone brothers: former soldier Steve, friend of vampires Magnus, jokester Robert, and Matt, who we’ve already met in my crossover book, Sweeter Than Wine. I’ll be releasing these books, one every few months, for the rest of 2013 and into 2014.

You’ve self published these books. Are you happy with that decision? What do you see as the advantages/disadvantages of self publishing?

Self publishing was a big experiment for me. At first, I was self publishing space opera romance that was very near and dear to my heart, but didn’t make much of a splash with readers (probably because sci fi romance is really a sub-sub-genre and is always sort of a hard sell to the average reader. But I love it, so I write it anyway. LOL) Putting Rocky at the end of 2012 changed everything. I finally understand why so many authors are loving self publishing and it’s made a believer out of me too! I write prolifically. Always have. So much so, that I’ve had to use several publishers at the same time in past years and have STILL had stories leftover. With self publishing, I can put out books whenever I want, which is incredibly freeing. And there’s no long wait from finish to publication.

Right now, that point is especially important because my other paranormal series, Brotherhood of Blood, which is related to Tales of the Were but follows different characters, has been waiting for a new instalment since last year. I wrote the follow-up book to Brotherhood of Blood: Wolf Hills last year (it’s called Wolf Quest) and it has been sitting on my editor’s desk, waiting it’s turn since August 2012. If I had self published that book, it would have already been out. Going through my publisher, the earliest it will come out is December 2013. I’m not a patient person, and the wait is really getting on my nerves. LOL

The covers for these books are awesome. Did you design them yourself?

My friend and professional cover artist, Valerie Tibbs of Tibbs Design has been doing all the covers for my self published books. She did the five space opera romance covers (King of Swords, King of Cups, King of Clubs, King of Stars, and End of the Line) as well as the covers for Rocky, Slade and Grif. And she’ll be doing the rest of the Redstone Clan books if I have anything to say about it! She does amazing art compositions and is super easy to work with, as well as being a great person and good friend.

Slade: The Blurb

The fate of all shifters rests on his broad shoulders, but all he can think of is her.

Slade is a mystery. A warrior and spy who serves two masters – those in the human world and the Lords of the Were. They’ve sent him to Nevada to track a brutal murderer before the existence of all shifters is revealed to a world not ready to know.

Kate is a priestess serving the Goddess and the large community of shifters that have gathered around the Redstone cougars. When their matriarch is murdered and the scene poluted by dark magics, she knows she must help the enigmatic man sent to track the killer.

Together, Slade and Kate find not one but two evil mages that they alone can neutralize. It’s a tricky situation because Slade finds it hard to keep his hands off his sexy new partner, the cougars are out for blood, and the killers have an even more sinister plan in mind.

Can Kate somehow keep her hands to herself when the most attractive man she’s ever met makes her want to throw caution to the wind? And can Slade do his job and save the situation when he’s finally found a woman who can make him purr?

You can find all the buy links and an excerpt on Bianca’s website, or you can head straight to Amazon.

The Story Behind the Story – Sand, Surf and Sunnie

Today my very special guest is my mate, colleague and fellow down under diva Rhian Cahill. Rhian is multi-published in contemporary erotic and more recently has moved into straight contemporary romance with her Escape Publishing releases. But what I wanted to know more about was her latest menage release, Sand, Surf and Sunnie (am I showing my dirty mind here?).

So heeeeere’s Rhian:

Where were you when the idea for Sand, Surf and Sunnie came into your head?

Umm…..I can’t remember. The only thing I’m certain of is I loved writing Bondi Beach Boys and wanted to write a sequel so Sunnie was born.

How long did it take you to write, from concept to submission?

This was actually contracted on proposal so it took over a year from when I typed the first word til I typed the last. But in reality it was probably only a month of actual ‘work’.

Tell us about the setting for the book? Is it set in a real location or a fictitious one?

Real, the eastern suburbs of Sydney and a tiny coastal town north of Sydney.

 Rand and Z—who’s your favourite?

That’s like asking me to pick my favourite child!

 You’ve written quite a few non-erotic MF stories lately. Any plans to write more menage books?

I don’t really ‘plan’ to write anything but I will admit to having at least three menage books in my wip folder.

Sounds intriguing . If you have an appetite for hot Aussie menage books you might just love Sand, Surf and Sunnie.

From one bad date to two hot lovers…

 Sunnie always thought she’d have the perfect normal life by now, but every guy she dates turns out to be a bigger dud than the last. It’s a shame her two best friends are off limits. Rand and Z are both perfect for her, but the three have been inseparable since childhood, and Sunnie would never be able to choose between them. And she couldn’t bear to lose the other.

 When Sunnie comes storming in after another bad date, Rand can’t stay silent. All he wants to do is offer comfort, but once he begins, his desire for Sunnie explodes to the surface. And after that, it just keeps getting hotter.

 Z knows the pact he and Rand made all those years ago to stay away from Sunnie has been broken. He also knows he’s not about to lose either of his best friends. So when Rand suggests the unthinkable, Z decides it might just be outrageous enough to work. But after being raised in a ménage home that ended badly, Sunnie’s not about to repeat her parents’ mistake. She wants a normal relationship, and a normal life…

You can find an excerpt and all the buy links here, or if you have a kindle you can go straight to amazon.

* Sand, Surf and Sunnie is the follow up to Bondi Beach Boys. Check it out here!

 Thanks Rhian!

The Story Behind the Story — Fish Out of Water

Today’s Story Behind the Story guest is Escape and Harper Collins author Ros Baxter, who is going to give us some background about her new digital release, Fish Out of Water. It sounds like a fascinating, fun read too!

Square pegs in round holes….

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a fondness for them. 

The girl at school who wore her goth get-up to the beach. 

That cabaret musician I dated in the nineties who worked as an actuary in his day job.

The ones who don’t quite fit in.

My mermaid, Rania, is the archetypal square peg.  Deputy sheriff of Dirtwater, a bone-dry frontier town, she’s also half-mermaid, her Mum hailing from an ancient race living in a secret kingdom at the deepest place on the ocean floor.  She’s cool with the human parts of herself – the gun, the guy, the good times.  But when a mysterious dead blonde lands on Main Street she has to go get wet for the first time in thirteen years.  And the vanilla merfolk have never seen a woman like her. 

So I guess that’s where Fish Out of Water began.  It’s my homage to square pegs, in all their glory.

I’d been toying with writing a fantasy book for a while.  One day I saw an ad for nicotine patches and Rania started speaking to me.  Her first words were:

Mermaids don’t wear nicotine patches, carry a hip flask or watch Dr Phil. Except me.

I wrote her story in weeks. And, with a few tweaks, Rania’s first words to me became the first line of my book.  The book itself took a little longer to come to fruition.  In the interim, I got caught up in a great tandem novel project with my sister Ali Ahearn (whom many of you know as Amy Andrews of Harlequin Mills and Boon).  Our novel Sister Pact attracted a two-book deal with Harper Collins and it took me a little while to get serious about selling my mermaid mystery.

Which leads to the other thing.

Rania’s story, like Rania herself, is a bit of a square peg.  Or perhaps more accurately a peg without a hole.  What is it?  Fantasy?  Yep. Murder-mystery? Check. Romance? Oh yeah, that too. I thought that kind of genre-busting box-ticking was fab!  God knows I had fun writing it.  But it did make the pitch a little tricky.  I had lots of conversations like this:

Editor:  Love the idea!  Love it. So, what is it?

Me: Right so…erh…you know, it’s kind of a cop-murder-mystery-gumshoe-fantasy-romance type thing.  You know.  About a mermaid (without a tail), who’s also a cop, and a Chosen One, and about to meet her maker.

The lovely Kate Cuthbert from Escape Publishing got it.  She liked square peg Rania and managed to find a hole just for her.

 Note to new writers:  It’s handy to get to know the genres and their rules.  As a good friend of mine likes to say: you’ve got to know the rules if you’re going to break them right.

Fish Out of Water: Blurb

It’s Stephanie Plum meets Splash!

Dirtwater’s straight-talking Deputy Sheriff has a lot on her plate: a nicotine addiction that’s a serious liability for a mermaid; a solider-of-fortune ex who’s hooked on her Mom’s brownies; a gorgeous, naked stranger in her shower; and a mysterious dead blonde with a fish tattoo on Main Street. 

Oh, and one other thing. 

She’s scheduled to die on her thirtieth birthday – in three weeks – unless she can ‘change the course of destiny and save the world entire’.

Fish Out of Water is an Escape Publishing April release. You can buy it at a host of retailers all accessed from their website.

You can email Ros at rosbaxterink@gmail.com or find her at www.facebook.com/RosBaxterInk, on twitter @RosBaxter, or www.rosbaxterink.com.

Thanks for being my guest today Ros .

Motivation Monday is Back!

I really miss doing my old Motivation Monday posts, so I’ve decided to reinstate them. Anyone who read my facebook post about what was inspiring me this past weekend will get why I made this special motivational meme:

The Story Behind the Story — Dark Embrace

I’m starting a new series of posts called The Story Behind the Story. I have a few guests lined up and these posts will go live on Fridays. This is me being organised. You never know, it might stick. The idea of these posts is for writers to share the journey their book traveled on its way to publication so we can all remember it’s not easy–for any of us, no matter how long we’ve been writing or how long we’ve been published, and that it’s worth the effort in the end.

For my first ever SBTS post, I’ve invited my good mate and kickass erotic/contemporary/paranormal/sci-fi romance author, Lexxie Couper. I knew some of the story behind her latest release, Dark Embrace, and I knew it was a long and angsty one. So I invited her to come along and tell you all about it.

Lexxie, Where were you when the idea for Dark Embrace first popped into your head?

 

In the shower. I remember very distinctly, because I was washing my hair and my eyes popped open (I was getting an idea, after all) and I got shampoo suds in them. 

How long did it take you to write, from concept to the first time you submitted it?

 

Oh wow, from the very first draft (which was woeful) to the final version I sent to my editor, about three years. I would put it aside often, determined to never look at it again, and then it would call to me and I’d attack it again. I’m really proud of the final version. There’s a lot of tears and sweat in it.

 

Did you receive any rejections or have to do major rewrites before the book was finally accepted?

 

A billion. The first version I submitted was rejected outright with a short note telling me how bad it was (I’m not kidding). A few months later, I attacked it again and started subbing it to agents. After numerous rejections (based on queries, not even asking for the opening chapters) I tossed it aside AGAIN and forgot about it. Then pulled it out and reworked it again. Two agents requested the full manuscript this time, both telling me they loved my writing but it wasn’t for them (one said it was too generic, the other said it was too erotic). So back in the “I’m never going to work on you again” file it went. Then I decided I was going to pitch it to an agent at the Sydney Australian Romance Readers Convention of 2011. I did that (I have a vague recollection of babbling like an idiot for the five minutes) and the full manuscript was requested. Can you say happy happy joy joy? I pulled it out of retirement and polished it up. The agent liked it, but suggested I add another 30,000 words to it. So I did that. Then she said it was too dark for her tastes and rejected it. Can you say “holy bummed writer, Batman”? Yeah, I was devastated.

 

But I truly loved this story with all my heart. I told my Samhain editor about it all and she asked me to send it to her. Twenty-four hours later, she sent me an email telling me she wanted to contract it.

 

To this day, I’m still grinning about it all :)

 

What’s your favourite scene in the book (if it’s not spoiling any surprises to tell)?

 

Hmmm….I think my favourite scene is where Inari, my succubus-demon assassin heroine is being harassed by some drunken Bachelor Party revelers and, just as she’s about to deal with them, the hero, a master vampire she absolutely despises even as she lusts after him completely, comes along to “rescue” her. How Ezryn, the vampire deals with the drunken men cracks me up. How Inari deals with Ezryn’s “help” is even better :)

 

Any plans to write more paranormal books (please please!)?

 

There’s two more books in the Principatus series, so yep, definitely plans. Plus I have two more books in my dragon shifter series, Fire Mate, to write, and another five in my erotic horror series, 7 Deadly Daemons. I love writing paranormals

Dark Embrace is book 2 in the Principatus series, book 1 is Dark Destiny (once named Death, the Vamp and his Brother). Check that one out here.

Blurb for Dark Embrace:

Book Two of the Principatus series

Should she kill him? Seduce him? Or both?

As an ex-succubus granted her soul by the Highest of Powers, Inari Chayse has spent the twenty years since her “rebirth” channeling her voracious sexual energy into kicking the asses of all malevolent paranormal beings.

Torn between the sex demon she was and the demon assassin she has become, she has no intention of complicating her life further. But when the vampire who pleasures her dreams walks into her paranormal strip club—and takes complete, humiliating command of her body—complicated doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Fifty years ago, Ezryn Navarr abdicated his trueborn throne to spare his people a bloody destruction. He never expected to find himself in a Sydney strip club, buried in the deliciously sensual body of the very divine assassin he’s been commanded to kill. The bigger surprise? Inari awakens something he thought long dead. His humanity.

As their tormented desires intertwine with a centuries-old battle of blood and power, redemption seems as unobtainable as love. The backlash will rock the entire vampire race, leading to their salvation…or their deaths.

Warning: Herein lie dark lusts, dark deeds, dark desires, no-holds-barred passion, an ass-kicking succubus and a vampire to make your blood burn…

You can read an excerpt of Dark Embrace on Lexxie’s website. It’s available NOW from Samhain, Barnes & Noble Amazon or your favourite e book retailer.

Braaaain… I Need my Braaaaain!

Any excuse to repost this pic

A while back I read a book by Nicholas Carr called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains (find it here http://www.nicholasgcarr.com/) . It was a fascinating and frankly frightening read. I talked about it at the time on my old blogspot site. I went back over there to find the previous entry… BTW what a nostalgic trip. Also guilt inducing, because it made me painfully aware that I update this blog a lot less often than I did that one.

I am going to do a bit more with this blog in the near future, but that’s a story for another day. Right now I’m trying to get back in touch with what the book The Shallows taught me about my brain. In a nutshell, it’s this:

People who read text studded with links comprehend less than those who read printed pages (did you visit the link to Nicholas Carr’s website or what?).
As media presentations get more complex and visually interesting, less cogent information is ingested by the very people these presentations are meant to engage.
Constant distractions from emails and other short message types has diminished our capacity to concentrate for long periods of time. Our brains are always searching for more stimulation, because we have trained them to expect distractions, to absorb shorter and shorter bursts of information (hello twitter) and as a result only contemplate this information on a shallow level.
And here’s the kicker for the struggling author. People who juggle many tasks are often LESS CREATIVE AND LESS PRODUCTIVE than those who stick to one thing at a time.

Yes you read that right. Less CREATIVE and less PRODUCTIVE, two of the very things I’m trying my hardest to be. I recall back in 2010 when I read the book thinking: I have to change my life. I have to change how I do things or I’m never going to write another book (this was back in my writer’s block days, when after two years of not finishing anything I began to dispair that I never would). Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows made me realise my connection to the Internet was frying my creativity. I disengaged from the Internet immediately, and went on to read Stephen King’s On Writing, which reminded me what creativity was and why I wanted to use mine. After that I got out a notebook and pen (the computer, with its blinking cursor and easy access to the world wide web, had become my enemy). I then wrote the first draft of an 80k novel—Erica’s Choice, which has become my biggest seller and most reviewed book. The hardest thing I ever wrote but the most satisfying because it was the hardest, and because I wrote it entirely from my subconscious, without Internet distractions.

So what’s all this leading up to? You guessed it, I’m going to unplug from the Internet as best I can for a while, because I’ve slipped back into old, bad habits. I’m limiting myself to set times to check and update social media. Haven’t worked out the exact timetable yet, but I have time limits for FB, Twitter, emails and blogging. If I had to set the a timer, I will. I have to find my writing happy place again.

And my brain.

Sami

Taking a Breath

I’ve had a very busy couple of weeks and I’m only now taking a breath and thinking about all that’s happened. The last time I posted was when Just One Taste first came out on 22 Feb on the Ellora’s Cave website. Since then some more has happened:

Just One Taste became availabe on Amazon. So if you have a KIndle you can now download it from there. I am proud of that book, the main reason being because I think I wrote a truly sexy beta hero, rather than the more popular alpha guy. I love me some David Genero, winemaker extraordinairre, and think he’s well worth the read.

It's not weird to take a photo of your computer

A Man Like Mike, my sweet romance, released on the 1st of March. It proved much more popular on iTunes than I ever imagined! (see left) Your eyes are not deceiving you… the book reached #1 on iTunes Australia’s top paid list. I’m still freaked out, in a totally good way. Had to take a screen shot because, let’s face it, the chances of that occurring again are pretty slim. No freakin 1. Yay!
I attended the Australian Romance Readers Convention in Brisbane from the 1st to the 3rd of March. It was so much fun catching up with all my writer buddies. I spoke at the New-To-You authors talk on Saturday, had to stand at a podium which I hadn’t expected. Made me somewhat nervous, but I’m told I didn’t babble like an idiot. There was also a well timed siren outside that helped me slip in a comment about my hot firemen in Erica’s Choice. You can’t buy promo like that .

The awards dinner was awesome fun and I even managed to be only mildly hungover for the erotica panel on Sunday. What a great audience we had! If you were in it, thanks so much for your support and participation. Best panel ever!

Queensland is still turning on the heavenly taps and I do not have a working dryer. I also had to return to the dayjob first thing Monday. So the rest of my time has been taken up with all that. Oh joy.
I’m going to write something one of these days. Really I am!

Love catching up with the Divas

Until next time,

Sami