J. Kenner's Blog, page 82
July 12, 2013
Phoebe Matthews Tells Why Vampires Are (And Always Will Be) Popular
I’m thrilled to have Phoebe Matthews on my blog today discussing the enduring popularity of vampires!
One of the original vampires!
A ghost can’t manage a hug. Werewolves have that messy turning problem. The eating habits of ghouls are a turnoff. And as for zombies, dropping bits and pieces of themselves limits their shelf life. Oh sure, there are always the fairyland characters, but somehow they tend to maintain a didactic overtone of childhood tales.
For a character who can be both sexy and paranormal, it is hard to beat vampire protagonists. All a reader has to do is imagine a dream lover. An ideal. A makeover for a current flawed lover. This replacement won’t bother the real lover because, hey, unless the lover is a mindreader, he or she never knows what’s going on. Readers can simply find a perfect dream lover and enjoy an exciting romance in the privacy of their reading time. And if the novel is downloaded to an ereader, there isn’t even a visible cover to betray, with a sexy image, the subject matter.
Vampires today, including Ian Somerhalder as Damon in The Vampire Diaries!
Examples of imaginary vampire lovers? For smooth charm I nominate Henry in the Blood series by Tanya Huff, complete with courtly manners and a high rise condo. Henry supports himself by writing romance novels. As he has centuries of experience in lovemaking, his books are bestsellers, of course. Another romantic vampire is Harry Dresden’s sword wielding half-brother, Thomas, in the Dresden series by Jim Butcher. Thomas works as a hairdresser with a devoted clientele and could model for GQ except for that little self control problem. Like a rougher type? There is Charlaine Harris’s Bill in the Sookie Stackhouse novels. For sassy wickedness, remember Spike on the Buffy TV series?
Vampires can be part of packs or they can be loners, rulers or followers. Rachel Caine’s vampires control a college town where the students are human and you can imagine how well that works out. Some vampires are Regency heroines or smack dab in the center of the latest steam punk novel. They do everything from glitter charmingly in sunlight to self destruct in a burst of flame. Some are indestructible, some are extremely vulnerable. And as for taking the romantic lead, vampires can be as gorgeous as any reader or writer wants to believe them to be.
No wonder vampires continue to hold center stage in the fiction world. If one type becomes a bore, the next novel will introduce a new variety of vampire and there we all go, new fans of a new flavor and enjoying every minute. The secret to the neverending vampire popularity is flexibility.
The vampire in my Turning Vampire series is an incredibly innocent young woman with a sexy human boyfriend and not another vampire in sight to give her advice.
Many urban fantasy novels are dark, grim, serious. As none of my novels contain these elements, it seems appropriate to add the word “lite” to my site. Not “light” as in enlightening, “lite” as in beer, entertaining.
Skol!
– Phoebe
Phoebe Matthews currently writes three urban fantasy series: Mudflat Magic, Turning Vampire, and Sunspinners, all set in the Pacific Northwest where she lives. Her novels have been published by Avon, Holt, Putnam, Silhouette and others.
Vampire Career, the first novel in the Turning Vampire series published by Dark Quest, is available in ebook or print. The third novel in the series will be released in August.
Who’s your favorite vampire? Movie? Book?
July 11, 2013
99 cent CARPE DEMON for #kindle – grab it before the price goes up!
Or so Kate Connor discovers in Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom when she’s forced out of retirement when a demon crashes through her kitchen window — right when she’s trying to prep for an impromptu dinner party!
If you haven’t already got a copy, be sure and snag one before Amazon adjusts the price up!
Meet Kate in the series that shows “what would happen if Buffy got married and kept her past a secret. It’s a hoot.” New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series, Charlaine Harris.
And for both old and new fans, we now have a FIRM release schedule!!
Books 2 and 3 (California Demon: The Secret Life of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom and Demons Are Forever: Confessions of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom) are both already available for the Kindle and the Nook, and are coming soon to other etailers.
Books 4 and 5 (Deja Demon and Demon Ex Machina) will be available in August and September.
And, drumroll, the all new Book 6 – Pax Demonica – will be available in October! (It’s taken a while, I know, but when Pax first jumped onto the indie radar I didn’t have the rights back to books 1 to 5. Now that I do, I’ve had to get them ready and available before the newest book could go live!
I’m psyched! I hope you are, too!
In the meantime, grab a digital copy of Carpe Demon and tell your friends!
Who’s your Damien (from the Stark Trilogy, of course)?
Love this image from a Tweep, (MissChristy125), but it raises that eternal question: Who is Damien Stark?
I know a lot of folks think Matt Bomer, but if forced to choose someone other than the Damien who lives in my head, I think I still lean toward Ian Somerhalder. Though Henry Cavill is nice, too!
My top pic for Damien Stark
Then again, who cares! After all, it’s just a few more weeks until Complete Me (Stark Trilogy, book 3) comes out!
Pre-order your copy today!
July 10, 2013
Hump Day Books from Emma Jay, Vicki Hinze, Jessica Slade, Kathryn Shay, Maureen McGowan, Phoebe Matthews, Danelle Harmon, and Zoe York
Need a new book to spice up your week? Try one of these great titles!
All on the Line (A Blackwolf Hot Shots erotic novella)
Learn more at Emma’s website!
Duplicity
Special Low Price $2.99
Learn more at Vicki’s website!
Hotter On The Edge
Now 99¢!
Learn more at Hotter on the Edge
In Too Deep (Hidden Cove Series)
An interesting take on firefighters’ personal and professional lives FREE!
Learn more at Kathryn’s website!
Compliance (The Dust Chronicles)
Save on both the hardcover or kindle editions now!
Learn more at Maureen’s website!
Watch Dog? (Mudflat Magic)
New stories for fans of Guard Dog? and the Mudflat Magic series.
Learn more at Phoebe’s website!
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Four Irresistible Rogues (Four Complete Historical Romance Novels)
FOUR IRRISISTIBLE ROGUES is just 99 cents for a very short time only!
Learn more at Danelle’s website!
What Once Was Perfect (The Wardham Series)
First in a new small town series!
Learn more at Zoey’s website!
If you would like to submit a book to the Hump Day feature, click here!
[sign off]
July 9, 2013
9 Ways to Simplify Your Romance eBook Collection by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Love to read romance, but can’t get to the books you want? Tracy Cooper-Posey has just the solution!
Can’t Keep up? 9 Ways to Simplify Your Romance eBook Collection
If you have hundreds of books on your reader, but can’t find anything to read, then read on for ten tips to clearing out the clutter and catching up with all the great reads you forgot you had…
Pick an ebook format as your “primary” format.
Thanks to smartphones, tablets and the proliferating number of dedicated ereaders available, there’s a good chance you have more than one reading application on your devices: Kindle, Sony, FB Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, or even the proprietary application that was installed when you bought your device. There are dozens of applications, and each of them read only one or two different formats.
If you catch yourself scratching your head as you try to recall which reader has that book you just remembered you have, then you need to pick a reader and a format as your preferred ebook reading home.
Convert all your other books to your primary format so they’re all in one centralized reader.
Don’t uninstall your other reader programs. They are useful for reading books as soon as you buy them (if you can’t wait/can’t access your usual conversion process), and for opening books that have DRM protection, if you don’t strip your books (a contentious subject we won’t tackle today).
Centralize your books in one location.
Pull all your book files out of the directories of your other readers and dump them all in the library folder for your chosen reader. You can convert as you go. Most readers and applications will “discover” any new books placed in the right folder.
Some readers will not “find” the books, and the book has to be imported or side-loaded through the reader software, which is when an ebook management program comes in useful:
Keep most of your ebooks on your hard-drive/in the cloud, not in your reader.
Don’t use your primary reader as your organizing program, and don’t use it to keep all your books, all the time.
Readers and reading applications are very good for reading. They don’t organize, sort or classify as well as other programs or you can. Titles get lost and buried inside your reader.
Keep all your books in your central location on your hard drive or in the cloud (or both!), and only load your reader with a dozen or so books you intend to read in the next few days/weeks. When you’ve finished with those books, reload your reader with new books.
In this way you’ll never lose track of books you bought months ago.
Use special characters and numbers to keep directories pinned at the top.
If you’re maintaining and organizing your central library manually, then it is easy to keep favourites or TBR’s at the top of the folder. Use special characters and numbers to rename the folders holding your books or authors, and even the book files themselves to ensure the ones you don’t want to forget rise to the top of the pile.
For example, the characters !, ~, -, can be used in combination to “pin” folders and files at the top. So a folder called “Wyndham, John” or a file called “Midwich Cuckoos.pdf” can be renamed as “ ~ Wyndham, John ~ ” or “ ! Midwich Cuckoos.pdf” for them to float to the top. Combinations can be used, too: !~XXX~! or –xxx— or other combinations will all lift a file to the top, but they have their own hierarchy, so a file named –xxx– will list itself beneath a file named -xxx-.
Similarly, you can use numbers:
1. TBR bookname
2. TBR book name
3. TBR book name
will list, for example, all your chosen TBR books in the order you want to read them. Once you’re done with the book, you can strip the number and the “TBR” from the file name and the book will refile itself back on the shelf for you.
Calibre
Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) is arguably the best ebook management application out there. It is a “meta” program – it doesn’t care what devices or readers you use, or how many. It manages all your ebooks from everywhere. It sorts the files on in your central library automatically.
Depending on what plug-ins you install and how you set up your preferences, you can use Calibre to automatically import any new books every time it opens, and automatically convert those books to your preferred format, plus load them into your reader application’s directory, or send them to your preferred device.
It can also fetch all the meta-data that belongs to the book, raiding a dozen different sources for the information. You can hook up the book with its blurb and reviews (which many books are missing, so figuring out what older books are all about is a pain in the neck), ratings, ISBN numbers, publisher info, tags and more.
You can also bulk assign categories and tags to books, or assign individual tags to individual books – great for when Calibre imports a dozen at a time.
Calibre will also open any format book in its collection, but it’s not the prettiest reader app around. The reading function is best used for checking contents and title pages as you need to.
Calibre is not the only meta-ebook organizer around, so if you don’t like it, or don’t want to use it, try finding an alternative that suits your preferences. These über organizers take a lot of the pain out of managing your ebooks.
[PS: I do not have any financial interest in plugging Calibre. I just happen to think it rocks.]
Take full advantage of any tagging or categorizing functions
Almost every reader and reading application has some sort of sorting function – tags, categories, folders or subjects that can be assigned to each book and collections. Some of these sorting functions are crude at best – a good excuse to find a more reader-friendly program.
Use to the hilt whatever functionality is provided. Read the help guide or application manual and take the time to sort your books – you will thank yourself later. The first time you do this will take forever, if you’ve got a large collection, but after that, categorizing is a no-time, no-brainer task for each book you acquire.
Don’t think of tags and categories just as genre-sorting devices. You can use any tag. Some useful ones include:
Fiction/Non-fiction/Free title/Indie title/Publisher name/TBR (to be read)/Favourite/5-star favourite/Author name/Dud/sucks (if you really want to keep the book in your collection!)/Bookseller name
Delete unwanted books immediately
You’ve probably got dozens and dozens of books you’ve picked up on a whim. They were free, or cheap, or you went wild with a gift card and now you can’t remember why you thought buying that book was such a good idea. Two chapters (or two pages!) in, you’re wrinkling your nose and ready to shoot the author.
Delete these books from your reader or application immediately. Now. You’re still going to hate the book in a week’s time. Clear out your reader as you go. The book itself is not lost if your retailer keeps your books on their servers (usually), and/or you’re centralizing all your books on your hard drive.
Convert-Shelve-Categorize & Store as you purchase
As soon as you buy or acquire a new title, move it out of the reader application if it isn’t your default, and “process” the book for your reading preferences. Don’t wait or let new titles stack up or you’ll be back to square one.
Place the book in your central collection, converted to your preferred format, and with all the meta data included, including any categories or tags the book needs.
Use cloud storage to synchronize your reading devices.
If you’re using a reader that doesn’t automatically synchronize your books across devices, then you can do it yourself. Set up your reader’s preferences so that the main book folder for the reader is a directory of current book (not your central library) stored in the cloud.
Do this for every device and application you use, and then you only need copy the books you want to read to the folder sitting in the cloud, and your reading devices will all “receive” a copy of those books.
Happy reading!
Kiss Across Chains was released on July 1.
When dying becomes an act of love.
It is four years since Taylor and Brody almost lost Veris during the First Crusade. Now they know how to control time jumps, they have settled into a very nearly perfect, nearly human life, raising their daughter Marit.
When Brody defies Queen Tira to protect Marit, the three of them jump back three days in time to collect evidence the queen set up Brody for a drug bust in retribution. The jump sends them back to Brody’s personal nightmare: Fifth century Constantinople.
While Brody survives as a flogged slave, Taylor masquerades as the wife of an aristocrat and searches for Brody to release him. They must wait for Veris to find them before jumping home and Taylor watches each brutal chariot race, wondering if this will be Brody’s last. Brody once died in the Hippodrome and he is human this time, too….
Warning: This story features two super hot alpha vampire heroes, multiple sex scenes, including anal sex, MM sexual play, and MMF sex. Do not read this book if frank sexual language and sex scenes offend you.
The time-space continuum was restored to order at the end of this book. Promise.
This is the third book in the Kiss Across Time Series
Book 1: Kiss Across Time
Book 2: Kiss Across Swords
Book 3: Kiss Across Chains
I was so caught up in this book I was in tears … It was just heart wrenching. Cocktails and Books
Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes erotic vampire romances, hot romantic suspense, paranormal and urban fantasy romances. She has published over 50 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and Byzantine Heartbreak was a 2012 winner. She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.
She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.
Her website can be found at http://TracyCooperPosey.com
Catch up with Tracy at her website…Amazon…All Romance eBooks…Smashwords…Kobo…Facebook…Twitter.
Thanks for the great post Tracy! How do you organize your ebook library?
P.S. - If you enjoy romance with a magical twist, my award-winning THE CAT'S FANCY is currently on sale for only 99 cents! And it's also in the top 10 of several of the Kindle romance charts! Woot!
And as a cool bonus, it's the prequel to my fun series of superhero romances that began with the USA Today bestseller Aphrodite's Kiss!
I hope you check out The Cat's Fancy!
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
9 Ways to Simplify Your Romance eBook Collection by Tracy Cooper-Kelly
Love to read romance, but can’t get to the books you want? Tracy Cooper-Posey has just the solution!
Can’t Keep up? 9 Ways to Simplify Your Romance eBook Collection
If you have hundreds of books on your reader, but can’t find anything to read, then read on for ten tips to clearing out the clutter and catching up with all the great reads you forgot you had…
Pick an ebook format as your “primary” format.
Thanks to smartphones, tablets and the proliferating number of dedicated ereaders available, there’s a good chance you have more than one reading application on your devices: Kindle, Sony, FB Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, or even the proprietary application that was installed when you bought your device. There are dozens of applications, and each of them read only one or two different formats.
If you catch yourself scratching your head as you try to recall which reader has that book you just remembered you have, then you need to pick a reader and a format as your preferred ebook reading home.
Convert all your other books to your primary format so they’re all in one centralized reader.
Don’t uninstall your other reader programs. They are useful for reading books as soon as you buy them (if you can’t wait/can’t access your usual conversion process), and for opening books that have DRM protection, if you don’t strip your books (a contentious subject we won’t tackle today).
Centralize your books in one location.
Pull all your book files out of the directories of your other readers and dump them all in the library folder for your chosen reader. You can convert as you go. Most readers and applications will “discover” any new books placed in the right folder.
Some readers will not “find” the books, and the book has to be imported or side-loaded through the reader software, which is when an ebook management program comes in useful:
Keep most of your ebooks on your hard-drive/in the cloud, not in your reader.
Don’t use your primary reader as your organizing program, and don’t use it to keep all your books, all the time.
Readers and reading applications are very good for reading. They don’t organize, sort or classify as well as other programs or you can. Titles get lost and buried inside your reader.
Keep all your books in your central location on your hard drive or in the cloud (or both!), and only load your reader with a dozen or so books you intend to read in the next few days/weeks. When you’ve finished with those books, reload your reader with new books.
In this way you’ll never lose track of books you bought months ago.
Use special characters and numbers to keep directories pinned at the top.
If you’re maintaining and organizing your central library manually, then it is easy to keep favourites or TBR’s at the top of the folder. Use special characters and numbers to rename the folders holding your books or authors, and even the book files themselves to ensure the ones you don’t want to forget rise to the top of the pile.
For example, the characters !, ~, -, can be used in combination to “pin” folders and files at the top. So a folder called “Wyndham, John” or a file called “Midwich Cuckoos.pdf” can be renamed as “ ~ Wyndham, John ~ ” or “ ! Midwich Cuckoos.pdf” for them to float to the top. Combinations can be used, too: !~XXX~! or –xxx— or other combinations will all lift a file to the top, but they have their own hierarchy, so a file named –xxx– will list itself beneath a file named -xxx-.
Similarly, you can use numbers:
1. TBR bookname
2. TBR book name
3. TBR book name
will list, for example, all your chosen TBR books in the order you want to read them. Once you’re done with the book, you can strip the number and the “TBR” from the file name and the book will refile itself back on the shelf for you.
Calibre
Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) is arguably the best ebook management application out there. It is a “meta” program – it doesn’t care what devices or readers you use, or how many. It manages all your ebooks from everywhere. It sorts the files on in your central library automatically.
Depending on what plug-ins you install and how you set up your preferences, you can use Calibre to automatically import any new books every time it opens, and automatically convert those books to your preferred format, plus load them into your reader application’s directory, or send them to your preferred device.
It can also fetch all the meta-data that belongs to the book, raiding a dozen different sources for the information. You can hook up the book with its blurb and reviews (which many books are missing, so figuring out what older books are all about is a pain in the neck), ratings, ISBN numbers, publisher info, tags and more.
You can also bulk assign categories and tags to books, or assign individual tags to individual books – great for when Calibre imports a dozen at a time.
Calibre will also open any format book in its collection, but it’s not the prettiest reader app around. The reading function is best used for checking contents and title pages as you need to.
Calibre is not the only meta-ebook organizer around, so if you don’t like it, or don’t want to use it, try finding an alternative that suits your preferences. These über organizers take a lot of the pain out of managing your ebooks.
[PS: I do not have any financial interest in plugging Calibre. I just happen to think it rocks.]
Take full advantage of any tagging or categorizing functions
Almost every reader and reading application has some sort of sorting function – tags, categories, folders or subjects that can be assigned to each book and collections. Some of these sorting functions are crude at best – a good excuse to find a more reader-friendly program.
Use to the hilt whatever functionality is provided. Read the help guide or application manual and take the time to sort your books – you will thank yourself later. The first time you do this will take forever, if you’ve got a large collection, but after that, categorizing is a no-time, no-brainer task for each book you acquire.
Don’t think of tags and categories just as genre-sorting devices. You can use any tag. Some useful ones include:
Fiction/Non-fiction/Free title/Indie title/Publisher name/TBR (to be read)/Favourite/5-star favourite/Author name/Dud/sucks (if you really want to keep the book in your collection!)/Bookseller name
Delete unwanted books immediately
You’ve probably got dozens and dozens of books you’ve picked up on a whim. They were free, or cheap, or you went wild with a gift card and now you can’t remember why you thought buying that book was such a good idea. Two chapters (or two pages!) in, you’re wrinkling your nose and ready to shoot the author.
Delete these books from your reader or application immediately. Now. You’re still going to hate the book in a week’s time. Clear out your reader as you go. The book itself is not lost if your retailer keeps your books on their servers (usually), and/or you’re centralizing all your books on your hard drive.
Convert-Shelve-Categorize & Store as you purchase
As soon as you buy or acquire a new title, move it out of the reader application if it isn’t your default, and “process” the book for your reading preferences. Don’t wait or let new titles stack up or you’ll be back to square one.
Place the book in your central collection, converted to your preferred format, and with all the meta data included, including any categories or tags the book needs.
Use cloud storage to synchronize your reading devices.
If you’re using a reader that doesn’t automatically synchronize your books across devices, then you can do it yourself. Set up your reader’s preferences so that the main book folder for the reader is a directory of current book (not your central library) stored in the cloud.
Do this for every device and application you use, and then you only need copy the books you want to read to the folder sitting in the cloud, and your reading devices will all “receive” a copy of those books.
Happy reading!
Kiss Across Chains was released on July 1.
When dying becomes an act of love.
It is four years since Taylor and Brody almost lost Veris during the First Crusade. Now they know how to control time jumps, they have settled into a very nearly perfect, nearly human life, raising their daughter Marit.
When Brody defies Queen Tira to protect Marit, the three of them jump back three days in time to collect evidence the queen set up Brody for a drug bust in retribution. The jump sends them back to Brody’s personal nightmare: Fifth century Constantinople.
While Brody survives as a flogged slave, Taylor masquerades as the wife of an aristocrat and searches for Brody to release him. They must wait for Veris to find them before jumping home and Taylor watches each brutal chariot race, wondering if this will be Brody’s last. Brody once died in the Hippodrome and he is human this time, too….
Warning: This story features two super hot alpha vampire heroes, multiple sex scenes, including anal sex, MM sexual play, and MMF sex. Do not read this book if frank sexual language and sex scenes offend you.
The time-space continuum was restored to order at the end of this book. Promise.
This is the third book in the Kiss Across Time Series
Book 1: Kiss Across Time
Book 2: Kiss Across Swords
Book 3: Kiss Across Chains
I was so caught up in this book I was in tears … It was just heart wrenching. Cocktails and Books
Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes erotic vampire romances, hot romantic suspense, paranormal and urban fantasy romances. She has published over 50 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.
She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and Byzantine Heartbreak was a 2012 winner. She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.
She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.
Her website can be found at http://TracyCooperPosey.com
Catch up with Tracy at her website…Amazon…All Romance eBooks…Smashwords…Kobo…Facebook…Twitter.
Thanks for the great post Tracy! How do you organize your ebook library?
P.S. - If you enjoy romance with a magical twist, my award-winning THE CAT'S FANCY is currently on sale for only 99 cents! And it's also in the top 10 of several of the Kindle romance charts! Woot!
And as a cool bonus, it's the prequel to my fun series of superhero romances that began with the USA Today bestseller Aphrodite's Kiss!
I hope you check out The Cat's Fancy!
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
Reinventing yourself: Come meet all my “me’s” at the Girlfriends Book Club!
I’m guest blogging today at the Girlfriends Book Club, talking about Authorial Reinvention, a topic near and dear to my heart since I’m slightly schizo and seem to create a new persona whenever the urge hits (okay, slight exaggeration there…). Come on by and say hi!
July 8, 2013
For the Freedom of the Mustangs: D’Ann Lindun’s Novel and her Activism
The days of wild horses are dwindling because of the use of corrals. D’Ann Lindun joins me on the blog today to talk about her passion for mustangs and their wide open spaces!
They DO Shoot Horses
Have your passions changed through the years? Or have they stayed basically the same? I have been passionate about horses my entire life. I began riding when I was three years old and don’t see myself without a horse and riding, no matter how old I get. For a time, I belonged to a trail riding club with several members in their 70s and 80s. So I don’t think I’m completely unrealistic.
From the time I was small, I have always been enthralled with wild mustangs. I loved reading about them, imagining them galloping free across this great country their ancestors helped settle.
The first time I saw a wild horse, a mustang, was about ten years ago while on a trip to Arizona. I live close to a refuge here, but have never seen the wild horses that live on it. During that trip to Arizona, we first spotted the band of mares and colts among the towering saguaro and Cholla cactus of the Tonto National Forest. I was amazed animals could live in that rugged environment.
Unfortunately, the wild horses have not always been undisturbed. Depicted in the Marilyn Monroe film, The Misfits, the mustangs have been rounded up and sent to slaughter. Thanks to Velma Johnson or Wild Horse Annie, Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act was passed in 1971, prohibiting the round up and sale of mustangs on Federal land.
Unfortunately, this law isn’t upheld and nnowadays, the overabundance of horses are held in holding pens. Corrals. No freedom for the once wild and proud animals. Due to an overturn in the law, many will go to slaughter. To European and Asian dinner plates.
I am passionate that this does not happen.
So is my character Martin Castillo in Wild Horses. He’s willing to die to protect them. Are you that passionate about something? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Her family ranch outside of Payson, Arizona, is the last place Castaña Castillo thought she’d ever see again. But when her mustang activist brother goes missing, Castaña returns home to lead the search. Years of bad blood between local law enforcement and the Castillo men lead Castaña to believe the local cops won’t put out much effort to locate her brother. Especially since they think he murdered two federal wildlife agents.
Disgraced FBI agent Jake Breton needs to bring in Martin Castillo to redeem himself and resurrect his career. Falling in love with someone related to the suspect is the last thing he can afford to do. The last time he followed his heart, and not his head, it nearly cost him his life.
Danger, adventure, and death push Jake and Castaña together. Will they learn to trust each other and leave their pasts behind?
Falling in love with romance novels the summer before sixth grade, D’Ann Lindun never thought about writing one until many years later when she took a how-to class at her local college. She was hooked! She began writing and never looked back. Romance appeals to her because there’s just something so satisfying about writing a book guaranteed to have a happy ending. D’Ann’s particular favorites usually feature cowboys and the women who love them. This is probably because she draws inspiration from the area where she lives, Western Colorado, her husband of twenty-nine years and their daughter. Composites of their small farm, herd of horses, five Australian shepherds, a Queensland heeler, nine ducks and cats of every shape and color often show up in her stories!
She loves to hear from readers! You can contact her through Email, her Website, or Facebook.
Thanks to D’Ann for telling us about the condition of these great animals. Do you all have similar causes you are dedicated to?
P.S. - If you enjoy romance with a magical twist, my award-winning THE CAT'S FANCY is currently on sale for only 99 cents! And it's also in the top 10 of several of the Kindle romance charts! Woot!
And as a cool bonus, it's the prequel to my fun series of superhero romances that began with the USA Today bestseller Aphrodite's Kiss!
I hope you check out The Cat's Fancy!
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
July 6, 2013
Here’s a Stark Trilogy #StarkOnSaturday peek at Complete Me by J. Kenner (book 3)
Squee!!! We’re soooooo close now to the release of Complete Me, book 3 of the Stark Trilogy by me (J. Kenner!)!Just a few more #StarkOnSaturday posts until the release of Complete Me, book three in the Stark Trilogy that began with with Release Me, continued with Claim Me, and will conclude with Complete Me! )
(And thanks to my UK publisher, Eternal Romance, for the awesome graphic!)
I’ve been “steaming” at Disneyworld, so here’s a “steamy” excerpt!
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” he says as he brushes the pad of his thumb across my lips.
I open my mouth, drawing him in, then close my eyes and savor the taste of him. “Aren’t you the one who told me that pain and passion go hand in hand?” I murmur when I finally release him.
I watch as his eyes darken, then gasp as he pushes me back onto the narrow bed. Desire—hot and heavy—slams through me with such force and power it makes me dizzy. I need him—I need his hands upon my breasts and his body against mine. I need his tongue in my mouth and his cock deep inside me.
I need to feel the connection between us. I need to revel in it, to bathe in it.
I need to feel what I already know—that Damien is mine, and that I am and always will be his.
His hands are holding fast to my wrists, keeping my arms stretched above my head. He holds me tight, and I wince from the pain of my skin twisting in his grip, then cry out again when he violently kneads my breasts through my thin cotton shirt. “Do you like that?” he asks.
“Yes, oh god, yes.”
He lowers his mouth to my breast, suckling through my shirt before shoving it up, then tugging my breast free from my bra. He is straddling me at the hips, and I am breathing hard, unable to move as his hands hold me down and his mouth closes over my now bare breast. He draws the nipple in between his lips, sucking so intensely that I arch up, then cry out when he bites down, his teeth drawing tighter than the little silver rings.
He pulls away, tugging the nipple with him, and I arch up, wanting more—wanting that sensual bite, that seductive sting.
“Tell me what you need,” he demands.
“You,” I say. “I need you.”
“Goddammit, Nikki,” he growls, “that’s not what I mean. Tell me what you need.”
And that’s when I realize—of course he saw the flute. Of course he knew what I was thinking. Damien knows; hell, he always knows.
“I need you,” I repeat hoarsely. “That’s all I need. I wasn’t going to do it, I swear. I thought about it, but I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Oh, baby.” His mouth closes over mine, and he is kissing me, wild and hungry and with so much fervency I feel as though we will both get lost in it. His hands move over my body and I writhe under his touch, every sense firing. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I brought you there, and I’m so fucking sorry.”
“No,” I say. “It’s me. Only me. And you’re what keeps me strong. Oh, god, Damien, please,” I add, because I cannot have his hands on me and have this conversation at the same time. “Now, please, I need you now.”
And if you want more Damien and Nikki, why not pre-order Complete Me from Amazon or from Barnes and Noble! On-sale July 30!
And if you missed Release Me, you can snag your copy from your favorite retailers here:
Random House
Amazon (print)
Amazon (kindle)
Amazon United Kingdom
Barnes and Noble (print or Nook)
Books-A-Million
Kobo
iBooks
Indie BoundAnd, of course, you can get Book 2, Claim Me, from these great retailers:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-a-Million
Random House
your favorite independent bookseller
in the U.K. from Amazon
in the U.K. from Waterstones
in the U.K. from WH Smith
More soon,
XXOO
P.S. - If you enjoy romance with a magical twist, my award-winning THE CAT'S FANCY is currently on sale for only 99 cents! And it's also in the top 10 of several of the Kindle romance charts! Woot!
And as a cool bonus, it's the prequel to my fun series of superhero romances that began with the USA Today bestseller Aphrodite's Kiss!
I hope you check out The Cat's Fancy!
P.P.S. And why not scroll down and share the post? After all, sharing is sexy!
XXOO
--J.K.
July 5, 2013
Just some fun Disney pics!
Here are some of the pics from our trip! Tomorrow we’re hitting the wizarding world!
