Ginger Voight's Blog, page 18

July Newsletter: Book Updates, Public Appearances and @HalSparks - Oh My!

Hello, my lovelies. I hope your summer is going along well. I have just completed Book #22 (Chasing Thunder,) and am about 30K words away from finishing book #23 (The Leftover Club.) I learned a lot of things writing two books at the same time, and that was that I should probably never do that again. I'm a bit OCD when it comes to the creation process. Splitting my mania between two projects made both books take a whole lot longer to get from outline to completed project, which I found more frustrating than productive. Lesson learned!

The good news for all of you is that in August, you'll get not one but TWO new books from me, one of which starts a brand new series that I hope to complete by the end of the year.

Because who needs sleep?



The reason I am writing so much the rest of this year is because for the first six months of 2015, I'll be doing an unofficial tour across the country (and internationally.) Each month until June 2015, I'll be traveling to various book signings. I hope to add three more dates to the roster, including London. I'll update those finalized plans in the August newsletter.

Until then, here are my confirmed dates.

August 16, 2014 - Indie Author Event Houston Mashup, Houston, Texas.
January 16, 2015 - Indie Author Event Phoenix Mashup, Phoenix, Arizona.
February 7, 2015 - Deep in the Heart Author Event, Austin, Texas.
March 20, 2015 - Indie Author Event Detroit Mashup, Detroit, Michigan.
April 18, 2015 - UK date, finalizing details
May 1, 2015 - Hard Rock Author Event, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
June 13, 2015 - Indie Author Event Toronto Mashup, Toronto, Canada.

A little trailer to whet the appetite.



I've decided to make a commemorative copy of the Fullerton Family Saga available for people who make it to these events. It's a complete volume that includes three books in one, honoring our favorite Fullerton, Jonathan, on the cover.



If I released it, it would be a $29.99 value. I'm selling it at the book signings for $20. But even if you can't make it to one of the many places I'll be appearing, I'll be doing fun little giveaways here on the blog, starting in September. The Labor Day giveaway will be HUGE, so you definitely want to keep an eye out for it.

I'll give you a hint, it's another scavenger hunt... and the books I've been giving away like mad will play a VERY big part in earning the grand prize, which I can already tell you values over $100. So all the TBT blogs and those stories are going to be where I mine my questions.

The reason I'm telling you now is because today, July 11, I'm giving away FIVE books completely free. If you haven't secured your copies yet, be sure to do so now. But do it quick because the sale ends at midnight(ish) Pacific Standard Time.



If you're in Los Angeles, my pal Hal Sparks and his band Zero 1 are hosting a regular Monday gig at The Dragonfly in Hollywood. I've been to several of their shows and they really know how to rock, and they'll be hosting regular guests to turn your Mondays up to 11. Befriend them on Facebook to get on the $5 list.

And who knows? You may even see me there! Like say... this coming Monday. ;)



I see you shiver... with antci.........................................pation.



Finally, if you have any questions for me, head on over to Goodreads. Ask me anything!

That's it for this month, kids. See you in August!

#ThrowbackThursday The Birth of a Stalker (Plus HUGE Friday Promo Preview!)

I fell in love for the first time when I was six years old.



Picture it: Valley View Elementary school, Abilene, Texas, 1976. It was the first day of first grade. We were all seated in a circle and asked to spell different words in order to know which class we would advance to. This was back in the good ol' days when I could do no wrong. I was too busy chasing after "good girl" accolades so I overcompensated on everything. I wouldn't just read A book, I'd read five. I loved words and spelling and language arts from the very first moment I impressed someone for having the early skills to embrace them, and I chased straight As and gold stars like my life depended on it.

I never imagined how I'd feel at such a tender age when someone ELSE managed to impress ME. And that is what this young fellow did. For my purposes here, I'll call him Brad... mostly because this poor kid had his fill of me by the time we were twelve.

Brad was easily the smartest kid in the room. He could spell words I couldn't, which made him smarter than me, which made me take immediate notice. That, and he was a-freakin-dorable. He had dark hair, which may have sparked my preference for such, and he was as cute as a button. I'm sure my memory has tinkered a bit with the visual, but the way I remember it he had a floppy haircut and dark eyes, and I remember being a little starstruck when he took center stage.

Imagine my disappointment when the teacher decided he was SO smart that he was going to another class altogether, starting the very next day.

It was the first time I remember noticing someone of the opposite sex, and I was truly starry-eyed. I didn't get to really know him until the next year, when we finally became friends. And we were the best of friends. When he had his 8th birthday party, I was the only female in attendance. We lived close enough to walk to school together, and I remember distinctively singing the theme song to Spider-man as we made our way to school.



His dad was a lawyer, so he lived in a really nice house and got all the cool toys. In my mind, he was a rock star. By the time we reached third grade, I was completely smitten. This, of course, led to him being mercilessly teased by other classmates for having a "girlfriend," which, as you know, is schoolyard death when you're eight.

The tide turned one day at recess, when we were playing on the colorfully painted playground equipment. I had no interest in doing anything remotely athletic. Games like Duck, Duck, Goose and Dodgeball brought upon acute anxiety for the biggest kid in the class. (Not just weight-wise, but height as well.)



While other kids were swinging happily on the monkey bars, I parked my tuckus on an oversized tire, hyperventilating as I prayed we wouldn't play any games that required being picked for teams. This has never worked in my favor.

But somehow Brad still liked me enough to hang around me. And, one magical day on the playground, he gave me my very first kiss. Granted it was on the cheek and I'm fairly certain he was dared to do it, but for someone as completely infatuated as I was, it totally counted.

And of course, me being me, I couldn't leave it a sweet little childlike innocent memory.



When I went to school with Brad, I didn't really notice people making fun of me for my size. They laughed if I couldn't beat them to their seat in Duck, Duck, Goose, or run without being taken out at kickball, but I don't recall my size ever being a deal-breaker making friends or being included in any social circle. That came later, after my dad died in 1980, when the most positive, uplifting, encouraging voice in my ear was silenced forever. After that, all I heard was the bad stuff.

By fifth grade we had moved again to another town and I was in another school (my third by the grand ol' age of 11) and the kids at this new school found plenty to mock. I stepped into the role of outcast and I never made it out again. Thirty-some-odd years later, I see this as a good thing. Back then it sucked donkey balls. Brad ceased being a sweet memory and became a life raft tethering me to a happier time, and I navigated the choppy waters in my way to hold onto it... including his discomfort and disinterest.

I kept in touch with him throughout the next year or so, eventually funneling all my affection his direction, much to his chagrin. But I've always gone after what I want, completely convinced I was entitled to get it, even if it was the worst thing in the world for me. My big ol dreams and big ol mouth led to my downfall, and I lost one of the best friends I had as a kid. Letter after letter, phone call after phone call. I was determined to cast him in my Happily Ever After, since no one I met or liked after him wanted to fill the position.

Eventually he had to say "enough's enough" and I learned why they call first loves crushes.

In one of my upcoming books, The Leftover Club, I revisit this childlike crush in several key scenes lifted right from this star-crossed love affair. They are embellished for effect, of course, because fiction, unlike life, demands a HEA... or at least a HFN.

Unlike me, Roni knew when to say when.

Excerpt: The Leftover Club

May 12, 1979

There was a forgotten little playground about two blocks from where we lived in Fullerton. It didn’t belong to the city. Instead it was a sad little remnant behind an abandoned church with boarded windows and an overgrown field. None of the equipment really worked. The swing seats hung by one chain and the teeter totter was missing the plank, no doubt stolen by rebellious teens who used the abandoned lot to drink or smoke pot when playing hooky from the nearby high school. The tether ball pole stuck out of an old tire, but the ball was long gone. The only piece of equipment that hadn’t been destroyed by neglect and vandalism was the simple merry-go-round. It was painted in sections of red, yellow, blue and white, though all the colors were faded by the sun and the paint had begun to chip.

As sad as it looked, it was one of the happiest places on earth when I was nine years old.

Back in 1979, there was no cable TV for most kids, no home video games, smart phones or personal computers to entertain us. Instead we prowled our neighborhoods on our bikes, perused comic books and ate handfuls of candy we could buy for a dollar. All we really needed was some small patch of the Earth where we wouldn’t be disturbed. The haven that my best friend Dylan and I had found was in this quiet neighborhood with a dilapidated church that didn’t invite visitors.

It was perfect.

The older we got, the more unkind school was. As we aged out of the “ew” stage regarding the other gender, suddenly things like boyfriends and going steady and kissing and even s-e-x became a titillating topic of conversation for kids a stone’s throw from junior high. And once our classmates found out we were an unrelated boy and girl living under the same roof, all sorts of rumors started to spread, despite how passionately I denied it.

“Why do you care?” he asked one day in our special, private spot. “If it’s not true, it doesn’t matter.”

Because it wasn’t true was precisely why it mattered. As we got older, I started to have feelings for Dylan that were in no way sisterly. I knew if he ever found out about it, I would just die. The only way to hide it was deny such proclivities instantly and vehemently.

This, of course, made me a fun target.

So every day of fourth grade, we’d take the detour from the crowded schoolyard and stop at that church on our way home. There was a corner store just a block away from the playground, where we’d raid the candy aisle and buy a forbidden soda to share between the two of us. Our mothers would have had strokes if they had seen our bounty of sugary goodness, especially since I had never been able to drop my childhood pudge.

Dylan, however, had always been my partner in crime. He had nothing to say about my size, even though kids at school were starting to. To him, I was just Roni, the buddy he camped out with in the back yard and told scary stories to under a shared blanket with a flashlight. Others treated us like siblings. If he was invited anywhere, so was I, and vice versa. It was like we were connected at the hip. We went to matinees every Saturday, after we overdosed on morning TV that included Looney Tunes, Schoolhouse Rock, and Sid and Marty Krofft.

Saturdays were the worst for Dylan. His dad had weekend visitations, but usually flaked out at the last minute. I hated that sad look on his face, and insisted that we get on our bikes and go somewhere, anywhere, just to get out of the house. It was on one of these Saturdays that we ended up at that neglected playground with a bag full of candies and a bottle of orange soda to share. Within minutes we lay on our backs on that dusty merry-go-round amidst empty candy wrappers, staring up at the sky and using our feet to propel it in an endless circle.

We discussed our favorite show (The Incredible Hulk) and the music we had recently discovered (ELO.) We discovered a lot of music courtesy of his AM/FM handheld transistor radio that followed him everywhere he went, hanging by its strap from his handlebar. It now sat next to our heads on the merry-go-round, blasting America’s Top 40, and we sang along with all the songs we knew, with lyrics so far beyond our maturity level we didn’t even understand what we sang.

After I belted out a Donna Summer song with gusto, he handed me the soda to wet my whistle as a reward.

“You sing good,” he praised.

“Well,” I corrected.

“Whatever,” he dismissed.

I giggled as I sucked on sweet candy stick coated with colored sugar that was supposed to taste like fruit. I wanted to tell him I was sorry that his dad flaked out again, but I learned a long time ago that he didn’t like to talk about that kind of thing. Instead it was time for Operation: Distraction. “So what movie do you want to see?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really in the mood to see a movie.”

“Oh,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to see my dad,” he said.

I turned my head to look at him. That softly worded confession was unexpected. I saw a tear at the corner of his eye.

“Why doesn’t he want me, Roni?”

I turned over on my side and propped up on my elbow. I didn’t know what to say, or do.

He turned on his side to face me, mirroring my posture by propping up on his elbow. “Sometimes I think you’re the lucky one. Your dad didn’t leave you on purpose.”

“Still hurts,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“And your dad can change his mind someday. He can come back.”

His dark eyes were big and sad. “He won’t.”

I didn’t know what to do so I reached for his hand, just to let him know I’d always be there for him, no matter what. He smiled.

So did I.

He pulled himself up into a sitting position, hooking one leg around one of the poles. “It’s your turn. From last time,” he said. I laughed. Since we had been coming to this playground all year, we had to get creative with our games. We played truth or dare like most kids, but with this old merry-go-round, we came up with another game, “Truth, Dare or Puke.”

The object of the game was for the askee to sit in the middle of the creaky old merry-go-round while the asker spun it as fast as they could. While the askee was disoriented, the asker would level their challenge… to tell an embarrassing truth, to agree to an even more embarrassing dare, or to stumble off into the corner and toss his or her cookies.

Naturally the longer it took you to answer the question or respond to the dare, the more likely you were to puke. It ensured absolutely honesty and immediate compliance. I learned one of his most embarrassing moments in school involved laughing so hard milk came out of his nose. He learned that one of my most embarrassing moments including farting in church. He took on a dare act out Greased Lightning, and I got the dare to do a knock and run at the crabbiest neighbor’s house.

As we got older, our dares got a little naughtier. We tested out curse words and shoplifted candy and vandalized a newly laid section of sidewalk. During our last game, he dared me to show ‘mine’ if he showed me ‘his.’ The idea of being in any way naked in front of a boy was unthinkable. I tried to change for truth, but he was empowered by the one thing I refused to do and kept spinning me around the merry-go-round, laughing so hard I thought he might wet himself. Thankfully I finally puked and it was over, and even more thankfully we had already put a rule in place that we could never repeat a dare.

So I felt more confident as I climbed off the merry-go-round and started to spin him where he sat. After a few turns, I asked, “Truth, Dare or Puke?”

“Truth!” he said as he held onto the bar.

I thought for a moment, but then decided to go with an oldie but a goody. “Who’s your latest crush?”

I couldn’t wait to hear how he answered this oft repeated challenge between the two of us, as his answers had ranged anywhere from Judy Jetson to Miss Maloney, our fourth grade English teacher. He always answered honestly because he knew I never judged.

How could I, with my moony-eyed crushes over teen idols named Davy, Leif and Chachi?

I spun him even faster. “You’re gonna puke!” I warned with a big grin. “Better tell me who!”

“You!” he finally admitted.

I lost my footing and fell right on my face. I spit dirt from my mouth as I lifted up from the ground. He scooted to the edge and stalled the ride with his feet. “Are you okay?”

I nodded as I rose to my feet. I wore red shorts and a multi-colored stripped tank top, all of which had dirt all over it. He jumped off the merry-go-round to help me brush it off, but I backed up immediately. “I’ve got it,” I mumbled. I hopped up on the merry-go-round before he could say anything else. “My turn!” I declared as I took my place in the sacred circle.

He hooked his shoulder under one of the bars and started to spin me around. Once we were going pretty good, he said, “Truth, Dare or Puke?”

Fearing he might want to know who my crush was, or worse… if I had a crush on him, too, I had no choice but to opt for dare. I had to hold on tight as he spun me even more out of control. Then, surprisingly, he hopped up onto the merry-go-round and scooted to where I hunched in the middle. His eyes glittered as he said, “Kiss me.”

My mouth fell open. Was he serious? We had lived in the same house together for going on three years, living and interacting much like brother and sister. Now in one afternoon he told me he had a crush on me and he wanted to kiss me?

For a girl who barely got Valentine’s cards, this was all very confusing. I was growing dizzier by the second, and I suspected it had little to do with the child’s ride we were on.

As the merry-go-round still spun and Dylan still waited, I realized that I had two options. I could scramble off the merry-go-round and hopefully puke out of Dylan’s line of vision, or I could just kiss him.

So I leaned over and kissed his cheek, just like I did my mom or his mom, my aunt Daphne or my cousin Charles.

Dylan’s eyes were dark as I pulled away. As I lost myself in them, I knew he was none of those people. He wasn’t my cousin, or my brother, or even just my friend. He was now a boy. And not just any boy, he was the first boy in my life to admit he had a crush on me.

And I felt exactly the same.

It was a very significant moment.

Even though we were spinning, it felt as though time had slowed down to a crawl. When he leaned forward, I did too, until our lips met tentatively as the world spun around us. His lips felt warm and firm on mine. It felt so good that our passionate peck lingered, just like we had seen on movies and TV. We didn’t pull apart until the spinning wheel finally slowed to a stop.

“Ew, gross!” we heard a boy say, and we scooted apart instantly. A group of fifth grade boys who regularly made life miserable for us happened to be riding by the church at exactly the wrong moment. “You’re making out with your sister!” he said, as if that was the grossest thought ever.

There was only one thought worse: “Your fat sister!” the other boy said.

When I turned back to Dylan, I saw that he had flushed deep red. He scurried off the merry-go-round. “She’s not my sister!” he screamed back at our tormentors. He looked back at me, as if seeing me through brand new eyes. “And I didn’t kiss her!” He turned away and ran home.

****

I'm still working on The Leftover Club, aiming for a late-summer release. But in a way, I kind of want to hang onto it, so I can rearrange some of my memories into something a little less mortifying than writing no less than 522 love letters to a boy who made the sad miscalculation to kiss me on a dare.

We reconnected thanks to MySpace many years ago, and there didn't seem to be any hard feelings. He grew up to be successful and happy, with no residual scars or lingering PTSD. I found him again on Facebook, but I don't have the ovarian fortitude to "friend" him.

Sometimes a memory is better left a memory. If I need to rearrange it, that's what the books are for. ;)

Now... for the fun stuff... for anyone who missed the big #freebiefriday last week because of holiday festivities and a three-day weekend, I've decided to offer them AGAIN, along with two other standalone romances, one more erotic and one more paranormal. No matter what you're in the mood for (sexy sexy, New Adult angst or scary stuff) you can one-click FIVE of my books to meet every hankering.

You're welcome. :)



There won't be another giveaway like this until next month, so get your one-click fingers stretched and ready. This sale is for FRIDAY ONLY. Please check the prices before you purchase.

#ThrowBackThursday Groupie Confessions and MAJOR 4th of July Sale/Promotion.

For anyone who knows me even remotely, especially my work within some celebrity fan circles, you really don't have to wonder what prompted me to write the romantic, sexy, fantasy-filled backstage romp I affectionately and appropriately named "GROUPIE."
Photo evidence from the 1980s would suggest that I've been a Groupie for decades, as evidenced by the mandatory rock T-shirt to the bedroom walls covered in posters.


Truthfully, GROUPIE is a book that has been in the making since roughly 1979, when I first had my first celebrity crush. I was about nine years old when Cupid’s arrow hit from a console television set. That was when one of the local stations in Abilene, Texas fortuitously began playing reruns of The Monkees.

Of course, I didn’t understand the concept of a rerun back then. I wasn’t even convinced that singers weren’t actually showing up in the radio station to sing songs throughout the day. All I knew was that the guys in the band were cute and made me laugh.

One in particular looked especially young, with a baby face and deep brown eyes and an accent completely foreign to my West Texas ears.

I had fallen like a brick for Davy Jones.



Imagine my devastation when I learned that he was actually about twenty years older than I originally thought, and married on top of that. Needless to say, I was crushed.

Eventually I would move on thanks to a timely Christmas gift from my parents. My Bert & Ernie AM/FM radio allowed me the freedom to discover my own music. Because my nearest sibling was a decade older than I was, I spent most of my childhood as an “only child” – one that would have to come up with creative ways to pass the time, which we already covered with our first #TBT blogs.

So you all know now that by 1979, I had sold my soul to rock and roll.

One of my favorite songs that year was a tune called “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” by Journey. I loved the more primal beat, even though I was much too young to understand the overtones of the lyrics. It took me a good decade to understand the barrage of “nah nah nah nah nahs” at the end of the track were virtually the singer saying, “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah” to a cheating ex.

At the time I just loved the beat of the song and the pure vocal of the lead singer. I would belt it out with vigor every time it played on the radio.



A couple of years later I was staying up late waiting for my mom to come home from work, and much to my surprise (and delight) I found out Journey would perform said hit on a rerun of “The Midnight Special.” I perched in front of the TV in my jammies and waited with bated breath.

When I first laid eyes on the lead singer, I didn’t know quite what to think. He had long dark hair, something I wasn’t used to seeing around my military town. He had a prominent profile and a face full of character, an ethnicity I found exotic and strange. From the way he dressed to how he sang, I really didn’t know what to make of him. Then he went down into the first row of the crowd and sang directly to one of the girls, which tattooed itself immediately onto my 11-year-old brain and even eventually made its way into “Groupie.”

I still loved the song and couldn’t really get the lead singer out of my head, even though my initial response wasn’t the starry eyed infatuation I felt for Davy Jones.

I continued as a fan of the music mostly, but nothing could prepare me for that one summer night in 1983 when I would fall completely and hopelessly in love with a man I’d never met.

Back in the early 80s my mom was raising me as a single parent, and as such didn’t see much need for things like cable. I may have wanted my MTV like any other self-respecting teen of the decade, but I settled for Friday Night Videos.

When I saw that a Journey video for “Faithfully” was coming on, I remembered with a bit of a rush about the last time I had seen the band perform. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the lead singer’s hair was shorter and he now sported a mustache.

I never cared for mustaches for traumatic personal reasons, so I found the new look a bit jarring. Eventually he ditched the 'stache during the course of the video, and I found myself heave a sigh of relief that he looked more like the guy I remembered.

I listened as he sang about an undying, faithful love and after the second verse he turned to face the camera as he sang. A breeze lifted a tendril of his dark hair away from his face and his potent eyes stared deep into my soul as he sang, “I’m forever yours, faithfully.”



I was a goner. My heart fell down somewhere near my feet and I think for a brief second there I forgot to breathe. Forget getting struck by Cupid’s arrow – I had been leveled by a bolt of lightning. Within a week I had the Frontiers album in my hand and I showed my mom the man I knew I was going to marry.

These were big words for a thirteen year old. But I've always been a big dreamer.

Over the course of my teen years Steve Perry would come to define my ideal. I was kissing a lot of frogs in those days, so it was just easier to put all my hopelessly romantic fantasies onto a person safely at arm’s length.





He was a safe outlet to love until I met my first husband and fell in love “for real” when I was about 18.

But I can still feel my heart soar whenever I hear Steve sing, and I know down deep that this celebrity crush actually helped get me through some very painful and difficult years as an outcast, with nowhere to belong and no one to choose me.


I’m still a fan, although I’ve given up on the marrying part. (Those who know me did tease me about my second husband being a “Steve” though.)

Many years later I would meet another celebrity who would have the same sort of impact in a more significant way. It started rather innocently while watching VH1 in 2002, when I caught a series that featured various celebrities waxing nostalgic about the 1980s. Some of the celebrities I knew, but one in particular, the one that stood out the most, I had never seen before.

To my surprise, I found his comments were the funniest. It seemed like my best friend of 20-something years and my second husband were all rolled up into one cute, comedic package.



I found myself looking forward to comments from actor/comedian Hal Sparks the most, and over the course of the next few years (and several “I Love the” series) I became sort of what you would call a semi-fan.

I was pleasantly surprised when he showed up in Spider-man 2, and I never purposely sought out "Dude, Where's My Car" or "Queer as Folk." But it was undeniable... each time I saw him I liked him a little bit more. It took me a year or so to get on the computer and find information about him. At this time I was still fairly content to keep celebrities behind the velvet rope. In 1998 I had attempted to meet a couple of my teen idols and was treated very poorly by one of the members of a band I had loved throughout my adolescent years. This rejection was directly due to my larger size, and this individual made sure I knew that he wanted nothing to do with me because of it.

When my friend tried to get a picture of me and this person, he made sure he grabbed a random stranger passing by to put right in the middle of us so he wouldn’t have stand next to me.

Needless to say I was ready to keep all the celebrities I *really* liked under glass so I wouldn’t risk this type of painful rejection in the future. I never went to see Davy Jones in concert, I didn't stalk Steve Perry (much) and I was content just to catch Hal's appearances on random VH1 specials.

The more I read about Hal, however, the more I thought about going to one of his comedy shows. Everyone who had gone to see him had nothing but glowing comments about how wonderfully he treated his fans. Still, I was unsure and stayed mainly on the fringe of the fandom.

So I missed out on things like Hal’s Sparksvision, where about 80 of his fans convened on Los Angeles to enjoy a movie premiere, a comedy show and a chance to see his band play live.

I was way too gun-shy to even think about participating in such an event in September of 2004.

But a mere few months later I would get another big surprise. In November, just days before my birthday, I opened up my email inbox to find an email from Hal himself. Initially I thought it was an auto-reply to let me know I had successfully joined the mailing list for his website. But when I opened it, it read, “A little birdy, and by little birdy I mean that big birdy you’re married to, said that it was your birthday!” He wished me a happy birthday and a great year and I sat thunderstruck at my computer desk that this person I hadn’t even tried to meet could reach out to contact me, this (figuratively speaking) little nobody from small town Texas.

I would come later to learn that was just the kind of guy Hal was. Even at his Sparksvision event he would go seek out those fans too shy to meet him so he could connect with them in some way.

I met Hal for the first time eight months later, when I made sort of a pilgrimage to see one of his comedy shows in San Francisco. I was still nervous that I would be rejected, especially since Hal is a good looking guy who makes no bones about appreciating good looking women. This is an equation that has NEVER really worked out in my favor. So I even shied away from going up to meet him in between the two comedy shows because I thought just seeing him perform in person was enough to make me happy.

Eventually, thanks mostly to the two-drink minimum (times 2,) I was able to go up and meet him for the first time. When he looked at me I didn’t feel rejected, if anything I felt completely “seen” for the first time ever. He has these dark, soulful eyes that reach right down into your core and immediately put you at ease. I nervously teased that I had driven through a tornado to meet him (true story) and therefore I deserved a hug. He gave me one freely, and not one of those wimpy side hugs but a full body head-to-toe hug.

Then he pulled me close for a picture, where he smiled big as though he were happy to do it, and made sure to give me another hug before I left.


I was hooked from that moment on. He didn't just treat me well as a fan, he made me feel valued as a person. There is NO ONE I've ever seen that has this much consideration for his fans, who will stand in line for two hours straight and still be as genuine with the last of the group as he was with the first.



I've always been a PR machine for those people/things I like, so needless to say I've done my fair share of time in certain fandoms. I’ve seen quite a cast of characters come through, which has both been extremely gratifying and tremendously heartbreaking. I've learned that Like truly does attract Like, but not everyone who calls you friend has your best interests at heart.

Sometimes you're nothing more than a stepping stone to what they really want... and I figured out (quickly) who those people were as I've broken apart from the group and made a name for myself. The easy litmus test is if you're still my friend now, you were my true friend then, and I'm extraordinarily lucky to call several people my friend to this day, even when I'm a lot older and wiser about the other kind.

It was during the most painful and confusing times that I wrote the GROUPIE trilogy, working out a lot of my own disappointments and frustrations along the way. When I decided to write a story from the fan point of view of that fantasy relationship with her favorite rock star, there was a lot of fertile ground to toil.

I think this is a common fantasy that many of the women I’ve known have had a time or two. It was fascinating to write it from the perspective as the groupie who gets the star because I myself have never experienced this phenomenon, nor do I think I ever would even if I were single. The fantasy is a fantasy because real life can never creep in with all its disappointments and heartbreak, and I got sideswiped by a lot of that shrapnel just as an onlooker and - a time or two, an unwitting accomplice.

The groupie experience from what I’ve seen is quite similar to the experiences I’ve had as the “fat girl,” who had the good looking guy give her attention behind closed doors but never had the opportunity to be the gal on his arm, and it is that emotional integrity I brought to the book.

Essentially I took everything I’ve seen and learned and turned it up to “11,” both good and bad.

THE GROUPIE TRILOGY is not for everyone. I pull no punches when I explore the darker side of fame and obsession, excess and entitlement. I wanted to dig under the idea, "Be careful what you wish for." This isn't about bedding some hot rock star. This is about loving the inaccessible. You WILL want to throttle her. You WILL want to knee him in the groin. You WILL want to slap me with your Kindle. BUT... if you're up for it, the entire trilogy will be available on sale for the 4th of July at almost 50% off, dropping the price from $4.99 to $2.99 for one day only. (That's three books in one volume for about a buck a book. You're welcome.)

Not only that, but ALL THREE books in the spinoff series are my #FridayFreebies on July 4th as well. That means you could get caught up on 6 books in the Groupie universe for only $2.99, just in time for your three day weekend.

Who loves ya, baby?

A "Because It's Ass O'Clock In the Morning and I'm Still Up" Q&A

1. Truth or dare…and why?

Depends solely on who is issuing the question, mostly because I'm a cautious risk-taker. When it comes to offering embarrassing insight or risking humiliation, it'd depend on how much I trusted that person (or didn't.) The better question is would I even play Truth or Dare.

2. Do you believe in ghosts/supernatural things?

I believe that it would be supremely arrogant for us as a species to claim we know - definitively - one way or the other. I opt for, "It's possible." That said, I have a keen sixth sense and pick up emotional cues in different settings. Case in point, I went to a tourist spot near my hometown of Abilene called Buffalo Gap Historic Village and I definitely felt an overwhelming sense of impending doom as I was walking upstairs from the old courthouse to the second floor where prisoners were kept. Later came to find there was a trap door above the stairwell for the noose when they hung people. Do with that what you will.

3. Who is on your list…you know…the list…the one you get a free pass for?

I have a weakness for soulful eyes, a well-timed smirk and a wise-ass personality. On the top of this often revolving list:



But let's keep that between us, shall we?

4. What’s your favorite sound…and why?

The sound of a baby laughing. There's no sound sweeter.



5. Dogs or cats…and why?

Both!



6. What would you get arrested for…if you were to get arrested for something?

I think it's a safe bet that any arrest would be politically motivated, like a protest or civil disobedience.



7. Cake or pie?

Both!

8. What is your ideal weekend?

It probably involves cake, pie and any or all of the laminated list. Or a trip to Vegas. I'm flexible.

9.Favorite book and why?

The Blessing Stone by Barbara Wood, because it's very empowering to see the kinds of challenges women have overcome throughout history. Dense read, but like Clan of the Cave Bear, quite worth it.

10.Favorite comfort food and why?

Look at me. Like I can choose.

11.Android or Apple?

I have an iPhone, but my endorsement can be bought. *cough*hint hint*cough*

12.What kind of music do you listen to? Why do you like it?

I love most forms of music, really. My playlist is split between classic rock and disco and dance and pop and country and comedy. Music is my muse.

Currently playing on my headphones:



13.What color best describes you? Why do you think that?

Purple, because not everyone likes it, but it's too regal to give a shit.

14.Favorite T.V. show ever? Why?

Moonlighting, because Bruce Effin Willis, that's why.



15.One place you want to travel to before you die?

One? I can name a dozen. But we'll start with Scotland/Ireland, because I've traced my lineage back to the 1100s there, and it'd be super cool to see the land of my ancestors.

#TBT The Great Vampire Adventure of '85 (Thank you, Stephen King)

By the summer of 1985, I had a few notable obsessions. I was head over heels for Steve Perry of Journey...



I read every Bloom County comic strip I could to satisfy my endless Penguin Lust...



And I grew up reading a steady diet of Stephen King. This part you probably already knew.

But what you may NOT know is that when I was 15, I had a very brief run-in with vampires, courtesy of Stephen King's book SALEM'S LOT.

It was a typical West Texas summer. The days were long and generally hot and humid. I lived indoors by a fan (or my AC.) This really wasn't that different from any other season, as I've always been a bit of a homebody. I was an avid reader, inhaling books by the stack, and I had discovered Stephen King thanks to the movie CHRISTINE just the year before. I didn't get to finish the movie so I read the book, which ended up being one of my favorite SK books of all time. I loved the conversational tone of it, which featured multiple POVs. I loved the time frame of the late 70s when it was set. I loved the lead character, Dennis, who was a cool kid made even cooler by the fact he had a nerdy, outcast of a best friend.

I loved it so much, I became an immediate SK devotee. And as a new devotee, I had to read every single title I could get my greedy little paws on. The white-cover romance novels on my shelves were replaced by thick horror novels that I would inhale word for word. And going from romance to horror wasn't as much of a left-turn as you might think. I'm all about story, so I loved the human drama of these stories. (CARRIE was the outcast, coming to terms with being different. CHRISTINE was about friendship, and how far one would go to save their pal. PET SEMETARY was about love and loss and letting go.) Stephen King is a master storyteller and I knew I was in good hands.

I trusted him so much that I bought SALEM'S LOT and fully intended to read it all within that brutal summer. This was not an easy decision for me, especially after I freaked out watching the tepid TV movie. See, I'm not a fan of vampires. In fact, they scare me more than zombies, werewolves, ghosts and demons COMBINED. The reason is simple. Vampires are seductive. You WANT to get close to them even when you know it would spell your doom. They are alluring. Charming. Often handsome/beautiful. They are mysterious and compelling and they offer the promise of immortality. What could be more seductive than that?

Even the way they kill you has sexual overtones. They seduce you into an embrace so that they can penetrate you with their sharp fangs, sucking the life right out of you.

Being raised in a strict Southern Baptist household made this equally alluring and forbidden.

So it would be fair to say that I was freaked out by the book before I even cracked the cover.

Worse, I made it a habit to read right as I was going to bed at night. And, it being summer, I went to bed later than my mom. So if I was alone and scared and thinking too much about vampires, I only had my cat, Fluffy, to keep me company.



I'll be honest, it took me a while to get into the story. I was reluctant to read it, and it didn't make it any easier for me that the book read drier than the previous ones that I had enjoyed. But I stuck with it like a trooper, because that's what you do as a fan. You read every single book, you know every single story and you catch every single aside SK threw at you through his various works, referencing things only true fans would catch. (Which is what gave me the idea to do it for my books.)

Within about a week, I was invested... if you can call wearing a cross around your neck and sprinkling garlic salt on your windows "invested."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I was freaked the hell out. But I wouldn't quit reading. The gauntlet had been thrown and I was determined to live up to the challenge.

So this particular night, I read my requisite chapters late into the night. It was hot, but I had that window shut and locked up tight. I was using an overhead light, which was my first mistake. The switch for said light was wayyyyy across the room. With the light on, this distance was maybe about five or six feet. The minute you flipped that light off, however, it was a good mile, mile and a half.



I had made the mistake of moving my bed from the wall nearest the switch to the far wall right next to the windows.

This would be my second error of judgment.

Finally I mustered the courage to make that long, lonely trek across my pink shag carpeting to turn out the light. I don't even think it was fully dark by the time I took that running leap and dove under my heavy comforter. Sure it was heavier than one would need on a 80-degree night, but I felt fairly confident that it was the only bedding I had that was fang-proof. I covered myself head to toe, with just a little gap facing the fan so I could breathe.

(I still sleep this way, using a fortress of pillows now to cover my neck. Thank you EVER so much, SK.)

It took a few minutes, but I finally started to calm down. I could breathe easier, my heart rate returned to normal. Everything was fine.

Until...



Within minutes of my safe return to the bed, I heard a loud THUNK against my bedroom window. At that point I bolted upright in bed, a scream locked in my throat, certain that a horde of vampires had finally pinpointed my location. I was certain that if I turned toward the window, I'd see the white face of the undead staring at me, beckoning me to open the window and leap into that eternal abyss.

Worse, I was afraid I'd willingly do so.



Needless to say,I didn't look. Not no, but HELL NAH. There wasn't any way in this world or any other, in this life or any other, that I would turn my head toward that window. Nuh uh. No way. Ain't happenin'.

At least until I heard this pitiful meow coming from the outside.

What I had forgotten up until that point was that my cat, the aforementioned Fluffy, used my (normally open) bedroom window to get in and out of the house. Sadly, for the both of us, I had forgotten this little factoid once I started making my bedroom vampire-proof.

I let Fluffy in (quickly) and finished the rest of the book without incident.

Stephen King is a fucker, s'all I'm sayin'.

And it is in honor of Mr. King that I am offering my paranormal romance, chock full of vampires, as the #FridayFreebie for June 27, 2014.



I honesty never intended to write a book about vampires because they scare me so, but thanks to a late night conversation with my best friend, who suggested we were vampires in a past life because we seem to come to life between midnight and dawn, it sparked the idea that inspired MY IMMORTAL WHICH I wrote overnight, every night, for a month solid in 2004.

This time, however, I made sure all my cats were INDOORS before locking the windows.

So feel free to read it... if you dare. *Crosses, garlic, cats and comforters not included in this special offer.

#TBT The Barbie Years (And your #FridayFreebie preview)

In 1977 I got my first Barbie as a birthday gift.



It was one of two notable gifts, the other was my very own vinyl record.



This was my launchpad into storytelling in two very significant ways. First, it was the precursor to my radio years. Until 1979, I was using my sister's cast-off record player to play her old cast-off records.



For the first time I had something that belonged specifically to me. Granted it was Debby Boone, which I would later abandon for ABBA...



...but it should be clear by now that my life has been filled with interesting detours like that.

I spent the next few months pretending that my Superstar Barbie was performing her songs for sold-out crowds. I took over the big cabinet stereo in the living room, using those funky old 70s lamps as a spotlight, singing every note along with her, vicariously sharing the fame and the glory.

But she was a lonely superstar. This world, unlike my Fisher Price Little People universe, was unpopulated. In November of 1978, I got Ballerina Barbie...



And by Christmas a month later, when I was given yet another Barbie, some Barbie furniture and a radio, I was a girl ready to explore the possibilities.



Not because I wanted to tell stories necessarily. This was simply wonderful, glorious playtime. As a somewhat only child (several half-siblings, all of whom were adults by the time I was seven,) I learned early on to entertain myself. I read, of course, and I overdosed on cheesy TV. I was known to spend a Saturday or two pretending to be Jimmy's unscripted sister as he traipsed happily through Living Island....



... or slide onto my sofa just like I was hopping into the General Lee, as a yet-to-be-introduced Hazzard cousin.



I spun like Wonder Woman and ended each and every episode of The Incredible Hulk walking off into the distance, alone and forlorn.



All these stories excited me so much I wanted to take it a step further than what I was given. I loved the wonder of "What if." And I was known to explore this no matter what ended up in my hands. (Up to and including markers, but we'll talk about that later.)

Unlike my Little People collection, my Barbies were predominantly female until about 1980, when I got my first Ken.



I guess my mom thought it was inappropriate for me to play with a man doll. She probably feared girls that played with boy dolls ended up to be girls who wanted to play with men. And she might have been onto something, because I remember with great detail the very first day I had my Ken doll, when he and my Superstar Barbie shared their very first kiss.



The fun really began around 1981. After my dad's death, we ended up moving into a house with a divorcee and her two kids. One of which, the boy, left behind his 12-inch Superman "action figure" (read: doll) He was a lot more agile, given his legs, joints, hands and feet all moved. By the time I took possession of the discarded toy, he was already missing a hand. It made no difference to me, he was yet another male in the plastic population, which had been pretty scarce up till that point.

That, along with my newest acquisition...



...gave my growing Barbie Universe another couple with tons of stories to tell.

Again, thanks to the heavy influence of General Hospital to my burgeoning creative mind, the stories were quite scandalous. There were affairs and indiscretions, and I'll never forget the summer in '81 where my character, photographer Kevin Sherman (Malibu Ken playing a double role), abducted Jenny Gold (Golden Dreams Barbie) and held her captive on an island while she was pregnant with her husband Bobby's child. (One-handed Superman.)

And I had the patience of a saint. The early, drawn-out storytelling of classic soap operas trained me well in drawing out the angst. (This might explain a few things for those who read my books.) Superstar Barbie and Malibu Ken may have locked lips upon their first meeting, but every story after that took its time.

If any of my female characters became pregnant, I took nine months to tell that story. I would use Scotch tape and tissue paper to widen their middles in increments as we all waited for the blessed event.

By the mid-80s, I was living out my fantasies through my dolls. I had a Ginger doll, played by the darker haired, Barbie bestie PJ...



...who married her very own Steve Perry, played by the raven-haired Western Ken.



They got married in November of 1985. It was very romantic. You totally should have been there.

They had an uptown apartment, which was basically the bathroom linen closet. My mom was a saint to indulge all my silliness. But then again, she was a single parent who worked 60-70 hour weeks just to keep me in clothes, food and Barbie paraphernalia, which can be a very expensive hobby. I got the RV...



... but I never got the Barbie Dream House I wanted. Instead, I had to get creative. My pink shelves made for a fine mansion for my rich and fabulous characters.



In fact, one of the ways my bestie and I first bonded was over our shared Barbie toys. He had the plane, which made him just about the coolest person on the planet to me at the time.



We spent the better part of 1980 carting our cargo the three blocks in between our two houses, using everything we could get our hands on to tell exciting new stories. He had Sport n' Shave Ken, which gave me another (long-haired) option for my lonely gals.



My Marie Osmond doll took the brunt of our deliciously demented creativity, plunging to her death on a regular basis from the top of wall that divided my living room and dining room.



He always "got" me. My bestie played right. Steven suggested if we ever did it again, we could turn the Barbies into giant aliens attacking my Little People village, but none of my characters were magical or had any kind of super powers or abilities. When I used Little People figures, it was to make them into children for the Barbies. I wanted it hyper-real, just like my stories now. They were couples and families and singles, struggling to find their way in this world, with love and family and purpose. That was way more fun to me than using my one-handed Superman to fight crime.

And nothing was spared to create this new world for myself. If I couldn't afford the Mattel accessories, I'd simply make my own. Pillows were beds, and my old 1970s Easy Bake Oven equipped my gourmet kitchen.



No closet or cubbyhole was safe. This fantastic world was as infinite as my imagination. Best of all, no matter how crappy my "real life" world was, or how disappointed I was in boys that were not made of plastic (except maybe for their cold, black hearts,) I could go back to this world and create whatever reality I wanted.

The Barbie years lasted until roughly 1986/1987. As I got older and my life took on scandalous elements of its own, I would play with these dolls less and less. But it was always my soft place to fall when Real Life became too intense. That's what art is to me. It's the ability to take the bad things in life and make it interesting and bearable. It also opened my perspective by living through all sorts of characters. I lived through all characters, good and bad, so it gave me the opportunity to understand why people do what they do, especially when they fuck up.

There is no ground more fertile than that.

This is why I have no problem plumbing the depths of darker, grittier material. And that is why I'll tell anyone who needs a warning to read a book to steer clear of mine. I don't know where these characters are going to take me, and I like it that way.

Which brings us to our #FridayFreebie. Tomorrow (June 20, 2014) I'm offering my e-book, THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE, for free for your Kindle. When I sat down to tell this particular story, I planned on writing a straight romantica tale with lots of hot sex with a sexy alpha male. As always, I got way more than I bargained for. I knew what I wanted for my main characters, but instead my secondary characters, Lissette and Naomi, took me by surprise with their own story to tell. The only thing I could do was make it as beautiful and accessible as possible.

These characters, no matter what form they come in, come first to teach me something. All I can do is honor their stories, humbled that they chose me as their vessel to tell them.

Pick up your copy of THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE for FREE on June 20, 2014. Make sure to check the pricing first, the sale is only good for 24 hours.

#TBT: The Summer of '79

In 1979, we had moved (again) to a new neighborhood where I knew not a soul. I spent most of that summer, holed up in my room, enjoying a life-changing Christmas gift, my Bert & Ernie radio.



That was the summer I discovered my own music. It sounded nothing like the Hee-Haw 1970s Country/Western stuff my parents listened to. It was there I got introduced to Rod The Bod:



It was where I started to sing about Bad Girls...



I also learned how to rock...



I found Blondie...



And of course... it was where I first heard and loved Journey.



Every Saturday after cartoons were over...





And I had my fill of Sid and Marty Krofft...



And, of course, American Bandstand...



I would retire to my pink paradise of a bedroom, turn up America's Top 40 and lose myself with my toys. Over the course of my childhood, I had collected a few favorites. One was my Fisher-Price Little People house...



Along with the Fisher-Price Little People village...



And my McDonalds playset...



With these toys, I could create an entire world. And it was kinda the best thing ever.

Now, whether it was the fact that I was regularly watching General Hospital by 1979...



Or the sexy new rock-n-roll (devil's music) I was indulging, or the fact that I had been exposed to things well beyond my young years by the grand ol' age of nine, I had no real interest in telling fairy tales.

(Still don't.)

The stories that compelled me were the ones that colored outside the lines of my 1970s, conservative, religious, southern background. Instead... I wanted to mix things up a bit.

This girl....



...decided to tell stories that involved interracial relationships, teen runaways and *gasp* living in sin.

If you are familiar with my writing, this will come as NO surprise. If you're new to my writing, this serves as a broad warning of what you're in for.

During the summer of 1979, my pig-tailed redheaded LP ran away from her nice, Suburban home and family to live with her African-American boyfriend in the city. In telling this story, I sympathized with that teen character. She fell in love and wanted to live a life of her own, free from the shackles of her conservative family.

That, in a nutshell, is what THIS redheaded, pigtailed girl grew up to do.

This is how I look at the world. Even back then, I didn't care that the Willis' were a mixed-race couple. I didn't bat an eye when Jodie dated men on Soap.

To me, it wasn't odd or icky, it was just different.

And I find different fascinating.

In fact, the more people want to throw shade at things that are different, the more I want to play around with the "why." Why do we, as a society, decide that our expectations of how others should live supersede the happiness of an individual who is living exactly the way they want? It's the fence around anyone who dares to march to the beat of their own drum, and even at 9, I knew that was the kind of person I wanted to be.

So I've been rattling cages for a LONG, LONG time.

Nothing has thrilled me more in my life than fucking with expectations. If it is forbidden, for no other reason than a group of people has decided that it should be (i.e., it harms no one, just makes people who are different uncomfortable), then I want to splash around in those waters. And I kinda really don't care who I get wet in the process.



When talking with my BFF earlier this week, talking about these early stories that were there WAY before I even knew I had any kind of affinity to write them down, I immediately wanted to share this on the blog. The most common question I'm asked as an author is, "When did you decide to become a writer?"

The truth of the matter is I made no such decision. I was born a storyteller (and hell-raiser) and simply learned the skills that would best serve that inner calling.

Thanks to all of YOU I am privileged to do this for a living, which is mind-BOGGLING and quite humbling. That girl is a lot older now, and her entire existence is playing with mental toys to create fictional worlds that hopefully - if I'm doing my job right - will help people who are different have a voice, and people who are new to different learn that these things aren't really all that different after all.

Every story has the capacity to be beautiful. And everyone gets to define their happily ever after.

Thanks to all of you, I can spread this message on a much grander scale that I could have ever imagined way back in 1979.

As a token of my endless gratitude, I'm giving away books throughout the summer of 2014. Here's another preview for your #FridayFreebie. Tomorrow you can get a copy of my Rubenesque romance, "Love Plus One", FOR FREE through Amazon!



Make sure to wait until it's $0.00 before you buy, which should happen around midnight-2am PST, otherwise you will be charged full price for the book. If you want it free, double-check before you click.

See you next week, when we'll talk a bit about my scandalous Barbies. ;)

June Newsletter, featuring new releases and big sales!

Happy June, everyone! Summer is almost here, which means longer, hopefully lazy days filled with sunshine and lots and lots of books. If you've been waiting (patiently) for some new books from me, I have some exciting news! I finally have a release date for the first book in my next series, the Wyndryder Saga. Like the Fullerton Family Saga, it will be released in its entirety by the end of the year, with only a couple of months of waiting time in between each one.

And like the Fullerton Family Saga, I'm revisiting previous work I did as a much younger writer. I told this particular story in my very first completed novel way back in 1989/1990, so needless to say it's been a lot of fun to see what new things these old characters have to teach me. I've waited a long time to be "good enough" to tell their story, and they've all aged like a fine wine as they waited.

The first book in the new series is called CHASING THUNDER, so named in honor of my long-standing love for Steve Perry. I've always believed "Still They Ride" to be one of his finest vocal performances, and the song helped set the "biker" mood for the story. Since I knew I already wanted to use elements of weather to title the books in this series, it just fell into place.



***CHASING THUNDER***

"Along the gritty, crowded, noisy streets of Hollywood, there was an unexpected sound of hope for all the lost children scattered there. It was the sound of a roaring lion, the dramatic rumble of an approaching storm..."

In 2001, MJ Bennett's life was changed forever when she saw her beloved grandfather, the last of the Wyndryder MC, killed in cold blood. He left her when she was only 16 years old, but he had already trained her for a life following his footsteps, saving those too vulnerable to save themselves from the harsh L.A. streets. It was a dangerous and lonely life, one that she knew could never accommodate another person.

This was fine by MJ, who was much too scarred to let anyone close. His calling ultimately became her shield.

Ten years into her mission, this mercenary crosses paths with a runaway who needs to be kept close to be kept safe. MJ suspects this girl holds the missing clue to find the Hard Candy Killer, a suspect hell-bent on exterminating underage prostitutes in the cruelest ways possible. Since MJ is tasked with doing anything to save one more kid, one more life, one more girl, she is forced to turn to others to overcome her scariest adversary yet...

Herself.

Crusty old bikers, reluctant outlaws and lawmen join her fight, often against her will. And one by one, these old friends and new fill the missing pieces of the Wyndryder MC as it resurrects from the ashes to battle evil once more... for love, for family, and for justice.

"Chasing Thunder" is the first book in a thrilling new series by author Ginger Voight. Like her best-selling Fullerton Family Saga, the Wyndryder saga will bring readers back to the exciting backdrop in L.A., only this time she exposes the dark underbelly of teen homelessness, sex trafficking and outlaw justice.

***

As you can probably tell, this won't be a "Bad Boy Biker Saves Damsel in Distress" book. MJ Bennett is way more Michonne/Black Widow, prowling the streets of Hollywood on her OWN bike as she risks it all for what is right. But she's also terribly wounded and angry and even scared when it comes to matters of the heart. In many ways, she will be her own worst antagonist throughout the story.

Suffice it to say, it won't be an easy read. There will be sex and violence and ugly human behavior. Basically if you need a warning to read a book, this won't be the book for you. I'm digging in some wounds and leaving blood on the page. (As usual.)

I know what you're thinking. We have a badass biker chick, but are there bad boy bikers in this book?

Only the strongest of men can love a strong woman. And MJ is loved, whether she likes it or not. Meet "Snake."

***EXCERPT***

MJ Bennett was as mad as a wet hornet when they finally pulled to a stop in the high desert of San Bernadino County. She flew off the bike and turned on Snake in a rage. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she shouted.

“I was coming to your rescue,” he explained casually as he dismounted. “White knight,” he said, pointing to himself. “Noble steed,” he added, pointing to the bike.

“When did I ever ask you to save me?” she demanded.

“Darlin’, you were pole-dancing in a seedy strip club. That's not a cry for help. That's a blood-curdling scream.”

“I had it all under control,” she informed him coldly and he held up a hand.

“Oh, I could tell,” he replied. “Only the best dancers get dragged off to a back room somewhere.”

She didn’t have time for this. She pulled out her phone. Snake was quick to grab it. “Gonna call your new partner in crime?” he asked as he held her phone out of reach. “Or should I say new partner fighting crime? Since when do you work with cops, MJ?”

“Since never!” she hissed as she jumped for the phone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “’Bob’ from Scottsdale? Give me a fucking break. I nearly had to tie him down when that guy grabbed you. So who is he, MJ?” Snake demanded softly, his eyes angry and hurt.

“Are you serious?” she exclaimed. “That’s what this is about? You’re jealous?”

“Fuck you,” he said in a cold voice.

They had a brief staredown before she backed off. He was a bastard for forcing her hand like this. Time was of the essence now. She still had one very important thing to do and had to depend on a wiseass cop to do it. She'd cave a little, and make him pay later. “Fine. He’s a cop. But I only used him to get inside the building. I had the whole thing planned before he got there. I used him as a convenient tool, emphasis on tool, to execute the plan. Can I have my phone back now?”

The phone rang as he held it in his hands. He turned down the volume and then tossed it out of view in the darkened shadows around the bike.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said as she started to round the bike, but he grabbed her by both arms. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

“I know one thing I couldn’t have done,” he said. “I couldn’t have gone one more night without doing anything.”

She saw the holster inside his jacket. Her eyes widened. “Snake, no.” She tried to wrench away, but he pulled her back against his solid chest. He cupped her face in one hand, drawing her closer.

“Like I ever had a choice. Can’t you see what you do to me, MJ?”

Her eyes met his. “Can’t you see that if you ever got hurt…,” she couldn’t even finish the thought. She looked away so he tipped her chin with his thumb.

“Hurt?” he repeated. “I never know if you’re okay or if you need help. If you’re alive and well or dead somewhere in a ditch after pissing off the wrong person. You get hurt, you don’t tell me. You’re in danger, you take off and say nothing. It’s like having you and losing you all at the same time. And I never know which is which until you show up on my front door. You don’t think that hurts?”

She swallowed hard. She needed him every bit as much as she needed to protect him. She had been weak because she missed those big strong arms holding her together, and the familiar scruff of his beard against her face that made her feel at home no matter where they happened to be. When she felt unsure, she knew she could draw from his endless well of strength.

It was unfair, but he had never sent her away for good.

Maybe if he had they would both be better off.

But it was the last thing she wanted as he lifted her up against him. With a groan he carried her back to the bike. He sat astride while she straddled his hips.

His hands slipped into the open shirt she was wearing to slide behind her and cup her ass as he pressed her closer, grinding her down onto his lap. He captured her bottom lip tenderly in his teeth as he ended a kiss, and their eyes locked and held. “You break my heart, MJ,” he murmured as he pulled away. “And only you can put it together again.”

***



So mark your calendars for August 15, folks. #MJiscoming #ListenfortheThunder



SALES N' STUFF

As many of you know, the first book of my FIERCE trilogy has been offered for free as an Amazon exclusive. You can also get the follow-up books, UNSTOPPABLE and EPIC, free through Amazon Prime.

But even MORE epic is what will happen June 6, 2014.



This is a one-day sale, one complete series ALL FREE, for 24 hours. 1-click like the wind, y'all!

FUN DISCOVERIES

Fun for the Whole Family:

Recently I watched The Lego Movie, and I have to say it's one of the best that I've ever seen. It's so deeply layered you have to see it more than once to catch everything and the graphics are mind-blowing. These aren't just Lego people in a regular world. Everything is Lego, and yes... everything really IS awesome. It's funny, it has heart and it's fraught with the social commentary you all know that I love. HIGHLY recommend.

Fun for Naughty Boys and Girls (Adults Only):

For any reader who is more adventurous and likes things a little more graphic and direct, I've discovered a Tumblr that features a Brit with a sexy voice saying naughty, naughty things. Audiosexual takes storytelling to the next level, which of course I love. But what stood out to me about this particular artist is that he is focused on making fantasy accessible for everyone. He is a voice for positive body image no matter what body you're in, and that deserves praise. So if you're inclined, check it out. Keep in mind that this is definitely NC-17 rated content, so adults only, please.

That's it till next month! Keep being awesome. xoxo

GV

May Newsletter

Happy May everyone! I hope all the mothers, grandmothers, foster moms, aunts, sisters and mothering nurturers had a fabulous day yesterday, filled with lots of love, laughter and great books to read.

Like I told you in my April newsletter, there is some exciting news afoot regarding personal appearances, book signings, etc. I'm pleased to finally announce that I'm coming home to Texas this August! I'll be a part of the Indie Mashup Angels and Sinners Tour, beginning with the stop in Houston August 15th and 16th. For those who have read the books, Houston was the backdrop for The Undisciplined Bride, so things are bound to get HAWT. Here's a mouthwatering trailer to get your juices flowing.

I'm even MORE excited to announce that I will have some unreleased paperbacks ready to sell and sign at this event, including book #1 of my new biker series and a commemorative volume of my best-selling Fullerton Family Saga, featuring our favorite Fullerton male, Jonathan, on the cover.



Other towns I have booked, and will include details as they become available, are Phoenix, Detroit, Tulsa and Toronto. I am going to do my best to include a special guest for Tulsa if the fates align. I'll keep you posted.

If you'd like to see me anywhere else, please let me or any event organizers know, so we can make that happen!

I'm really excited (and scared) about the biker trilogy I'm working on. My screenwriting training is coming in handy as I craft this dangerous world and all the interesting inhabitants. While it is a biker book, I have no particular interest in writing a typical bad-boy biker romance with a good girl ingenue. When I'm done, I want every single character I bring to life to surprise the reader as something they may not have read before. There will definitely be a mix of genres going on, with two dual romance B-plots in addition to a thriller through-line. It will tackle the (sadly) very contemporary issue of sex trafficking, as our bikers set out to protect the most vulnerable among us who are seen as vulnerable prey to those who would do them harm.

While it was always meant to be a book, I've got the movie in mind. It will have romance and sex (even two, count 'em, TWO triangles,) but a typical romance novel, it ain't.

If you've read my books thus far, this will come as no surprise.

For this month's Take Three, we'll include three songs from the playlist:







And Take Three of my dream cast is our first, main triangle:







(These people get to act out my little stories in my head. God, I love my job.)

So that's all the news that's fit to print for May. See you in June when I'll have some hot excerpts to share!

"The Undisciplined Bride" - Re-release and Friday Free Read

Like I said in my April Newsletter, I am currently revising some previous work for an exclusive run on Amazon to offer you bigger savings and more opportunities to sample the work. Today, a newly expanded THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE goes on sale for a Friday Free Read.

I gotta say, this story took me by surprise in a number of ways. My goal was to write a story about two very powerful leads who volleyed control and domination back and forth in their game of seduction. I didn't want to go the traditional route with a hero who was a billionaire, so I made Mateo Bravo a working class cook. I didn't want a typical ingenue of a female, so I made Peyton Prescott the billionaire who was also a raging bitch who bowed down to nobody.

Both of these characters are unexpected powerhouses. In my mind, this made any subsequent submission even hotter.

As always is the case, my characters took me by surprise and gave me oh so much more than I was asking of them.

Mateo turned out about how I envisioned him, which was sexy as hell. This is a man who knows he's a man, and bows to no one. The way he dominates the woman who is literally his boss was one of the hotter dynamics that I have written. (The Boiling Water scene, in particular, is a favorite. And the Elevator scene... I just can't even TALK about it.)

Instead the women of THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE were the ones who had a thing or two to teach me.

I knew I was going to make Peyton a nasty little thing. She is a bridezilla on the warpath to make everyone pay if her desires are not executed exactly the way she thinks they should be. She's rich and entitled and has no qualms whatsoever going after anything she wants. Unlike my other books, Peyton is not a plus-sized heroine. I don't make too much issue of it because honestly, it wasn't that critical to the story. She had a host of flaws to challenge the traditional idea of feminine beauty, the biggest of which is that she thinks she is better than anyone else, including almost each and every man outside of her Daddy. This is no wilting flower or demure southern belle. She is, on many occasions, a capital-C-You-Next-Tuesday.

In writing her, however, I learned a lot about The Bitch Complex. I love to figure out what makes people tick, and motivates them to act the way that they do. Being a writer especially, we are tasked to introduce (and answer) a number of questions to keep our readers turning the page. The Peyton in my head could have easily been one-dimensional. She was spoiled and entitled, a true princess in her own mind.

But why? Therein lies the story.

As I pealed back layer after layer, I began to discover an interesting human being under all the nastiness. In fact, as each chapter passed I began to respect her in ways I didn't expect to. She was powerful and strong in the only way she had ever been allowed to be, and those qualities made her a pleasure (and inspiration) to write. She just needed the right environment in which to grow. Thanks to Mateo and me, she got one. Her evolution throughout the story was one I was proud to witness.

Another character who took me by surprise right from the start was Peyton's childhood friend, Lissette Goodreau. I had NO idea what her story would be when I sat down to write. She jumped headlong off the outline and demanded a love story of her own. She got one, though it is unconventional.

Because of Lissette, THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE isn't just a romance novel. It's also a social commentary about love and identity and how we each get to define our Happily Ever After for ourselves... or at least SHOULD. I take on some sociopolitical topics that can be controversial for some readers. If you want pure escapism, this may not be the book for you. In fact, none of my books may be the ones for you. I don't write a story unless I have something significant to say, and I'll pull any trigger required in order to say it.

In at least three books, that was done literally. (And I still have my biker series to go, which should really scare the crap out of anyone who has walked any of these other ledges with me.)

For me, THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE challenges the idea of happiness. How do we define it for ourselves? And what happens when it looks NOTHING like what thought it would? How far would you go to be happy? And how much would you allow society around you to limit your own personal journey?

And all this came out of deciding to give a snotty bridezilla what for and take her down a notch or two. This is how my brain works.

(And I wouldn't change a thing.)

For those who have read THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE before, the story hasn't been significantly changed aside from an expanded ending. I tied in the connection between the Prescotts in Houston and the Fullertons in California. (If you've read ENRAPTURED, then you know that Prescott Petroleum, the company Peyton's family runs, was tied directly into the scandal involving Troy DeHavilland and the horse ranch down in Mexico. Those references are now a lot easier to spot in the newly revised version, and Jace Riga even makes a surprise appearance.

That's right. I'm continuing to build that big universe where my books and stories are connected. I get SUCH a kick out of that, I can't even tell you. It is my hope to Stephen King most of my romances at least, just so I can spend time with my favorite characters again and again.

If you haven't yet read THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE, pick it up today for free. Keep an eye out for other promotions over the next 90 days, before I release it wide again for Barnes and Noble and iTunes.

To get you in the mood...