Cate Masters's Blog, page 73

Casting Call: Tonight You Belong to Me

Tonight You Belong to me, my contemporary short released by Decadent as part of its very cool 1NS series, was inspired by the duet of Eddie Vedder and Cat Power on his Ukelele Songs CD. It's a sweet song full of yearning, and of course Eddie inspires me anytime I look at him. :)

The hero, Danny O'Malley, and the heroine, Jillian Jones, make a sweet duet both as a couple and onstage. They're crazy in love until a misunderstanding tears them apart. Danny has one last chance before Jilly quits Vegas for good. Madame Eve's 1Night Stand service.

When I was writing Tonight You Belong to Me, I saw in the deep brown soulful eyes of Danny O'Malley none other than Jake Gyllenhaal. I suppose Jake's role in The Prince of Persia helped inspire me, too. Strong and sensitive, with a weak spot for the woman he loves, Jake would be perfect as Danny. I'm not sure about his singing voice, but there's always overdubs!

Jilly's a sizzling, sexy, sassy Southern girl. As I wrote, I heard Reese Witherspoon's lilting voice in my head. From her role in Ring of Fire, I know she can sing. And she's gorgeous, but not in the helpless-little-girl way. She's feisty and stands up for herself. Reese is perfect as Jilly.

At first, I'd written Harry Connick, Jr. as the headlining Vegas act, and in my head, he's still in the story. Sorry, Harry, I know you love to act, but Bobby Benoit is now your generic name, which came about as a tangential mashup of Michael Buble and Tony Bennett. Don't ask me to explain how I got to Bobby Benoit.

SSS: Danny's effect on Jillian

Thanks so much for visiting! And thanks especially for your comments. I appreciate every one.

Here's another six from Tonight You Belong to Me, my 1NS story released on Friday from Decadent! Yay!


In two shakes of a lamb's tail, he stood a hair's breadth away, a rush of warmth sending his heat slamming into her, the air filled with his musky cologne and his need. Their bodies knew how to communicate too well, moving in tandem like some primal dance that always ended up with their clothes tangled up on the floor and their naked limbs tangled on the carpet. Or the table. Or the car. No easy feat in their cheap compact car, either. Somehow it only made their lovemaking sweeter, that was the hell of it.
Check out all the fantastic Six Sentence Sunday authors! Have a great week!

Follow me, follow you

Just a heads up... with the impending demise of Google Friend Connect, if you need another tool for followers, here's a new one: Linky followers. I just added a Linky follower option, at right. If you're feeling friendly. :)

Check it out at http://www.linkyfollowers.com/

If you follow me through Linky, let me know so I can follow you too.


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Release day for Tonight You Belong to Me!

Yay, my second 1NS story released today from Decadent Publishing! I love this series.

Like A Hard Day's Knight, Tonight You Belong to Me is also set in Las Vegas but is a contemporary romance. Jilly, the heroine, is a sassy Southern girl. Not unlike my late mother-in-law, Grace, raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and whose accent made every sentence sound more fun. As Mark Twain said, "Southerners talk music!"


Jilly's a musical girl in many ways. Come find out more at Decadent's 1NS blog.

Free today and tomorrow only!

Don't miss your chance to pick up this unique speculative fiction novel. Arlene Webb is making Splintered Energy free on Amazon, but get it fast! Today and tomorrow, it's free. While you're there, she'd also love some more tags and likes as well. Arlene's  unique voice brings this incredibly imaginative story to life.   Here's the blurb:
Waves of pure energy are quite happy hanging in the cosmos, traveling at the speed of light to brighten up the sky--until dawn breaks. Literally.

When sentient light fractures, it zaps into human bodies and becomes trapped. Without any memories to guide them, a handful of confused beings whose skin tones are now specific colors, struggle to understand humanity while it's quite clear they shouldn't be in this world. The few humans clued in to Earth's invasion don't flutter, but are drawn to their fiery fate with hearts wide open as they fight to survive.

California. A widower's twelve-year-old son is rather young to bring home a woman, especially a collapsed green beauty too frightened to open her eyes.
Arizona. A divorcee blinks hard, but the gorgeous red guy stepping in front of her car is still red. She serves to avoid hitting him and ends up in the ditch. When she comes around, she wonders which layer of hell she's fallen into.
Ohio. A teen also fears he's dealing with the demonic, but no matter how dangerous things become, he's determined to stand by a man with inhumanly blue eyes.

Splintered Energy is an Earth based sci-fi/suspense/romance novel and the first in a four book series. Book 2, The R Word, and book 3, House of Seven, are available. The final is scheduled for March-April 2012.   Here's the link again: http://www.amazon.com/Splintered-Energy-The-Colors-ebook/dp/B0055L2FHU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329848371&sr=1-1  Most of all, Arlene hopes anyone who does help by taking a copy of Splintered Energy for free, finds the time to read it and enjoys it as much as she did writing it.I know I did. :)

Win it before you can buy it!

Today and tomorrow only!

Visit the Decadent 1NS blog and answer this question:

If you could have someone sing you a love song, what would that song be and why? 

You could win an ebook of Tonight You Belong to Me, my very fun, very sexy 1NS story that will release on Friday.

Good luck!

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We'll always have Paris

The American Film Institute ranked Casablanca first on its list of 100 greatest love stories of all time.

So what do you think? Does "We'll always have Paris" make you sigh and swoon? Or does it make you say, "No, you idiot, don't let her get on that plane!"
It certainly made me wonder. The ending to Casablanca is bittersweet. Would she have regretted staying, somewhere down the line? Guess we'll never know, will we?
Casablanca's a great film, yes, but it made me wonder why they chose that as the most romantic film of all time. The notion of "the one that got away"? Or because they'd fallen in love and shared some incredibly romantic moments?
What defines romance for you? Do you have to have a Happy Ever After? Or is Happy For Now enough? Do you view movies differently than books in that regard?

SSS: Jillian's about to put Sin City in her rearview mirror

Thanks so much for visiting each week! And special thanks to those who comment.

I'm switching it up this week. Here's the opener to my  1NS story releasing Feb. 24, Tonight You Belong to Me, and a peek at who I imagined as Jillian: 

Nervous as a virgin in a prison rodeo, Jillian Jones tugged down her form-fitting silk sheath as she stepped into the Castillo Resort lounge.  She had enough problems without her dress riding up. She'd already had her heart chewed up and spit out by that two-timing Casanova, Danny O'Malley. Why she'd agreed to do one last favor for Karenna before hightailing it out of Sin City, she couldn't say. Yet something in her heart told her she wouldn't regret tonight. Maybe it would change her life.
Check out all the fantastic participants at Six Sentence Sunday. Have a great week!

Romance Blurb Fest at TBR this weekend

Romance authors, post your romance blurbs, along with title and buy link, at TBR this weekend!  Readers, get ready for your TBR list to expand.


And if anyone's in the central Pennsylvania area, I hope you'll pop over to the Midtown Scholar Bookstore between 2:00 and 5:00 today and say hi. :)

The. End.

I made a push last weekend to finally finish the second book in The Goddess Connection series, Dancing With the Devil. Writing time's hard won these days, or I might have finished before the end of last year. This story's been in my head for far too long, and it's a relief to finally have it down in story form. After much cutting and revising, it ended up at about 57k.

Not that it's the final version, of course. My crit partners have to review it, and I'll depend on their honest critiques to point out any flaws I've missed. But they're very good at that, so I have no worries there. :)

Here's a peek at the cover - what do you think?
While this is the second book in the series, it doesn't follow the same characters but instead follows this theme: Every woman should embrace her inner goddess. In each book, the heroine will be somehow connected to a goddess. Her lifelong quirks will become strengths once she finds her true place in the world, and accepts herself for who she really is.
The first book, The Magic of Lavender, related to the goddess Iris. In Dancing with the Devil, the heroine is connected to the goddess Persephone. Yep, wife of Hades. It made for some very interesting scenes in the Underworld, and even more interesting characters. Researching the mythology of such figures sets my imagination in motion, and unearthed some wonderful information about ancient dances. But that's for another post. :)Any goddesses that particularly interest you? That you'd like to see, say, as part of The Goddess Connection series?