R.A. Boyd's Blog

Chosen By An Alien: A SCI-FI Alien Romance Boxset

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Kira G.
Gracen Miller
Candace Sams
Cassidy K. O'Connor
V.T. Bonds and Leann Ryans
Terri A. Wilson
Chandra Trulove Fry
Sheri Lynn
Golduin Celestia
Christa Ann
Lynn Garcia Carmer
Carly Spade
Aria Starling
Mila Waters
Lenora Gonzales

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Hunted by Angels, the novel

Hello all!

So, I’ve got awesome news. I’ve known for a while but I wanted to wait until we got the kinks worked out. Hunted by Angels, the complete novel, is available on Kindle. All you awesome people who downloaded the original book get an update. That means you get the entire novel for free. I mean, you already bought it for .99 cents a looonng time ago but now you get to see what happens to Perry, Haines, and Samael. Newbies gotta pay $2.99.

Here’s what you do:

-Log into your account
-Hover over your name in the top right corner
-Scroll down to ‘Manage your Content and Devices’
-Pull up Hunted by Angels
-Click on the ‘Update Available’ link to the right of the title.

There you go! Read it in all of its 65k word glory and let me know what you think.

For those of you who haven't downloaded

Hunted by Angels go on over and check it out!



And this Fall Bound, the second novel in the Line of Lilith series, will be available. It’s already completed and is already going through its final edits. My betas are on it!

Free download?

I’ve been reading. I’ve also been buying way too many books that I will only be able to read if I start reading now and don’t stop until my time on this lovely planet is up. Add a few more years to that and then I should be able to finish all the books on my Kindle and Nook app. Not to mention the prints that I pick up when one walks by and grabs me by the eyes.

Here’s the kicker: I’ve come to realize that I don’t like to pay .99 cents for 40 pages worth of writing. Don’t get me wrong! There are tons of authors who are kicking butt and taking names with that strategy. Fist bump to you. High five to you!

It’s just not me. I stopped buying those books last year and then I realized something. I was one of those authors!!! I’m sorry. Accept my apology.

Hunted by Angels was .99 cents for about 45 pages. Finding Angels was .99 cents for 80 pages.

So here is my solution…

Hunted by Angels, the complete novel, is finished. I’m going to upload the entire book through the original HBA link on Kindle and Nook. That means that all of you wonderful people who have purchased Hunted by Angels already will be able to get an update. An update of the entire novel. For. Free.

For. Free.

‘Cause I love you guys. And ‘cause I’m a reader who understands that I can purchase an entire novel for .99 cents.
There it is. My big announcement. Hunted by Angels: the novel, will be available April 23, 2015. You’ll get to see what happened after ‘you know who’ was killed. You’ll get to see who the heck Perry really is. And you’ll get to see just how sinfully delicious Haines can be when he’s not being a bag of douche.
I can’t wait!! I hope you can’t either.

Thank you, Dean Winchester

It’s been a long time. A long, long, looonng time and I have no excuse. So I won’t give you one. I hit a skid mark a few months ago and I’ve finally managed to clean myself up. (Not a real skid mark, the metaphorical kind!) New job, tons of writing, an awesome daughter who makes life awesome, and I feel better. I feel lighter. It’s all good, y’all.

My mom gave me a good dose of get-your-shit-together, the kind of meds only a mom can give you, and it started me on a path that I’m happy to be on. I have a better job, Bound is finished and edited and almost ready to be formatted for eBooks, and I’ve almost finished HBA. I put my beloved, snarky, Perry-girl on hold for a while and finished a few projects that were demanding to be completed.

My muse, Cheyenne, has morphed into Dean Winchester and is puttin’ the pressure on me. After my mom gave me that great dose of ‘so what’ I came home, tried to ignore the computer, and realized she, by way of Dean, was standing behind me telling me to make it happen.

So, here it goes. Thank you, Mom/Cheyenne/Dean; your sense-making-talks and threats are greatly appreciated.

Me, myself and them!

I once read that a writer should only work on one thing at a time. If you have an idea for a book while you’re working on another piece, you should take notes and push it to the side. Up until a few days ago, I thought it was hogwash. I’ve worked on two different pieces of writing at the same time and never had any problems. That is until Haines reared his hunky head and wanted to be the Alpha in the bunch. He’s so selfish.

For those of you who are familiar with Haines from the Hunted by Angels novellas, you know he’s quite dominant and doesn’t like it when things aren’t going his way. Even when Perry tries to be her normal forceful self, he puts the kybosh on it. Haines is an incubus. He’s all broad shoulders and sexy and full kissable lips and tall and sexy. In my head, Haines reminds me of Idris Elba. Ohhh… Idris Elba. I love him. He’s so… Haines.

Moving on. Perry and Haines have been on the back-burner for a few weeks and I’ve been giving all my attention to Kayla and Patrick. These two are from my werewolf novel; the one I’m querying agents with. I love Patrick. He’s a go with the flow kind of guy who wants nothing more than to protect and please Kayla. Kayla is a take it as it comes kinda gal who rolls with the punches. So not like Perry and Haines. And they decided it was time to have a voice.

When I tried to go from one to the other I had to step away from the computer for a few minutes. I thought I’d lost my mojo! These two couples are so different. So awesome, but so different. I found that when I worked on the werewolves, my frame of mind was so lovey-dovey that when I tried to write Haines he came out wrong. He wasn’t my Haines. And I love Haines the way he is. Ohhh, Idris Elba.

So, now I’m a believer. Yes, I do think you can write two different pieces at the same time but when you have characters that are so diametrically different you need a minute to get your thoughts straight. I would never want to get my boys mixed up. They have their own personalities and to try to push them together makes them so less awesome. It’s almost like having a split personality, in a non-mentally unstable way. The part of me that can make Kayla and Patrick who they are can’t be present with that Perry-girl and Haines lady is here.

Now, what’s going to happen when Kayla and Patrick meet Perry and Haines? It’s so going to happen. But, I don’t think it’ll be as easy as I thought it would be.

Ohh, Idris Elba…

Terrible, terrible, sucky!

This past weekend a very, very bad thing happened. But first let me give you a little back story. You’ll know the big bad when you read it. It’s not going to pop out of nowhere. Your eyeballs will cringe when I type it. Here goes.

My husband bought me a laptop for my birthday earlier this year. Before a few weeks ago I only used it once a month. I would take it to our monthly critique meeting (Shout-out to my CCW!) The laptop had Windows 7 which ran a little slow. I’m convinced Windows 7 was designed for touch-screen computers and I do not have a touch-screen. I finally downloaded Windows 8.1 and now it runs smoothly and I use it every day. Happy Birthday to Me!

On Saturday, I say to myself, “Self, download all of your files onto this awesome computer so they will be readily available to edit.” I never did that on my old laptop. I’m a little paranoid about someone hacking and taking my work and blah, blah, whatever. Here I go, just copying and pasting and a little error message pops up. It pretty much says the file is wonky so I need to review it. I review it. I delete said stupid file. And then I see it. I see the horrible thing that just happened. Everything on my USB drive has been deleted. All 80+ files are gone. Save one entitled ‘Weres’.

My mouth is open and a little screeching noise is pouring out of my mouth. Thank the Lord my daughter was napping, or she would have seen mommy have a nervous break-down. I begin clicking and crying and looking and searching. They are gone. My files are f-ing gone. Years of hard work and awesome ideas are gone!
This pic right here is exactly what I looked like. With brown skin and glasses, but you get my drift. Horrified. I just needed you to know exactly how this went down. Pics included.










I go to Facebook and do an all call for help. Everyone tells me to ask Bran, someone I went to high school with. He is a computer wiz. He deserves a cookie. First, he asks me if I have an external hard drive. I do not. I use three USB drives which apparently makes me a dummy-head.

Lesson. Learned.

He tells me that we’ll talk Sunday or Monday so that he can get every single detail. In the mean time, Mrs. Nee-Nee sends me a link that her wife gave her. It’s a recovery link. Praise the Lord, it worked-- a little. I was able to recover most of the lost files and the ones that I couldn’t were on the other USB drive. Bad thing is, I updated the 'other' USB earlier this year so some of the stories that I’ve worked on are out of date.

But do you want to know a good thing? A great thing? The one file that I’ve been working my arse off on was the only file saved. The Only File Saved. I’m convinced that the finger of God was on that file and I praise Him for it. My attention has been on that file and everything else is saved with the US Copyright Office. Older versions. Something is better than nothing.

I haven’t written anything since Saturday. I’m a little afraid to work on it, afraid that another monkey-wrench will do something horrendous and delete my files before my external heard drive arrives. But that doesn’t work. It’s actually pretty bad. So tonight, I’m going to work on my work. Fearlessly.
Just thought I’d share this stuff with you. ‘Cause you just needed to know.

Boom.

Where Ideas Come From

So, I just had a weird dream and I thought I’d share some of it with you. My dreams are one of the ways I come up with ideas for short stories or novels. I won’t go into extreme detail about the dream but, here goes.

I’m standing in the door of a market watching a thirty-something, hard-body bag boy bag groceries. I’ve written him a love letter letting him know that I know he’s a werewolf but I love him anyway. Somehow, hard-body bag boy has the love letter in his possession and he is severely pissed-off. Is it because I love him? Is it because I know he’s a werewolf? Is it because I refer to him as hard-body bag boy?

No clue.

Anyway, I’m suddenly standing in front of a large, Victorian-style home and it belongs to me and my mother. In this dream, my mother happens to be a cherry-blonde white woman. Have you noticed I’m African-American?

Suddenly, Sam and Dean Winchester are there with me because they’ve heard that hard-body bag boy is out for my blood. So we start werewolf proofing the house.

The villain his there! Trying to get into the house and after all that proofing, he gets in! Me, Sam, Dean and my cherry-blonde mother are now in a room that is completely safe. By some crazy circumstance we have now gone into a singing, costume changing montage and let me just say that Sam Winchester, Jared Padelecki, looks good in nothing but the American flag (WTF!) posing like Mick Jagger and Dean Winchester, Jensen Ackles, looks good in…everything!

All of a sudden, Miley Cyrus comes crashing through our safe room on a freaking wrecking ball! Scares the bejesus out of everyone, including the insane, hard-body bag boy.

I woke up. Scared. Looking around the room.

And there you have it. Sounds stupid and I don’t know where it came from, but now I have an idea for a short story.

Betcha’ can’t wait to read it.

Just in case you were wondering, no I didn't have any alcohol before bed. But, I think I need a drink after the shenanigans that went down in my dream...

Getting It Done

Last weekend I attended the Hallowread in Ellicott City, Maryland. It was organized by Rachel Rawlings and it was awesome. HallowRead was a book convention for authors and fans of the Paranormal/Urban Fantasy, SteamPunk and Horror genres. There were tons of authors there. It. Was. Awesome!

CJ Ellisson, Laura Kaye, Rachel Rawlings, JD Brown, the list could go on and on. I also discovered some new authors whose work are now at the top of my ‘To Read’ list on my Kindle. This year was the first HallowRead and I can’t wait for next years convention.

Going there and being around such wonderful people has inspired me to submit my work. I started editing my work and set a goal to read at least 70 pages a week. Why 70? ‘Cause I should be able to fit in ten pages a night. And that’s only if my daughter cooperates. Even so, 70 pages a week is doable.

I asked CJ Ellisson about it and she pretty much told me to stop dragging ass and start submitting. So, that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll start submitting the end of next month and I have nothing but faith.

So, what now? You can download http://www.amazon.com/Hunted-Angels-R... for free today and then you can follow up with http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Angels-... And after you completely fall in love with Perry and Haines leave a comment and like me on facebook.

I was able to have dinner (yes dinner!) with a few of my favorite authors. The HallowRead was great.

Who are you Teaching?

Before I begin, let me say that I hope I don’t offend anyone. These are only my opinions.

This morning I heard a review of the new movie Percy Jackson’s Sea of Monsters. I loved the first one and plan on seeing the new one. I also happen to be a Christian who writers paranormal fiction about werewolves, ghosts and demons. The reviewer said yes, it is a family film but it will leave you scratching your head because it’s a movie about gods and demigods. In the cinematic adventure, per reviewer, Jesus was called ‘a god’. Not The Son of God or The Son of the Holy Trinity, so you may want to do some research before you go see the movie.

Let’s go a little deeper here. Growing up, my family and I didn’t go to church every Sunday or hold hands and bless our food at dinner time. My mother was and is a Christian and didn’t force the issue. We watched Tales from the Crypt every Sunday night. As I got older I did my own thing and found my way to Christianity. Growing up, I also knew that my mother was my biggest teacher. There was not a movie or television show that could tell me better than she could. I even fought my fears away using her words. If there was anything that frightened me, she told me that it wasn’t real and that if by chance it was real, she would kick the holy crap out of it if it came near me and my sister. I loved Greek and Roman mythology and knew it was just that. Mythology. I loved scary movies but I knew they were just movies.

People need to step up and stop blaming violent television shows or games or books (God forbid!) on why their kids have gone bat-sh*t crazy. But let’s face it, some people are really just bat-sh*t crazy and need serious help, tight jackets and padded rooms. Teach your children what’s what. Even teachers will tell you that they can teach our children but, it’s up to the parents to make it stick. I can go further into the teacher-child-parent relationship but I’m not going to. I have something else to talk about. But I digress. Parents and guardians need to teach their kids because someone stupid is always ready and willing to do the job.

Moving on. A representative from Abeapparels contacted me about putting some free reads on their page so they could broaden their audience to readers. Abeapparels sells men’s and women’s clothing. They work to uplift the community and send out a positive message. We had a laugh when I said, “I do write about supernatural creatures, and yes demons, but I’m not painting them in a negative light.” That does sound a bit off coming from a Christian, doesn’t it? He told me that they just don’t want to send out a mixed message to their customers and I completely agree. Mr. Patterson, aforementioned representative, told me as long as I wasn’t worshiping Satan or anything like that, we were cool.

I believe God gave me a gift. If I sound arrogant then I apologize, but it’s true. And I thank Him every day for it and I can’t wait for it to pay off. Figuratively and literally. I know it will.

And let me just add one more thing. Being who I am, I can’t safely say what does and does not exist. But I know what I’ll teach my daughter. She’ll know right from wrong and she’ll know that wrong comes with serious consequences. I have an open mind and have said in the past that I long for the day I hear the sound of the Tardis coming because the Doctor and I have loads of stuff to do together. Or maybe we’ve already done it but I can’t remember because it will fry my brain. (I love Donna Noble!) Or maybe Sam and Dean Winchester-like people will come and tell me to kick the bad wichamajig’s ass because I can totally do it. But that’s me. I’m not going to hold my breath on it. I love to create worlds where people can disappear in to and when they come up for air, they wish they could have stayed submerged a little longer.

And by-the-by, I am stoked that Fogull/McLovin’ is back in Kick-Ass 2. He kind of looks like Prince in the previews. Ohh! I’ll call him, the Artist Formally Known as McLovin’!

Energy Flows

I’m going to hit a few points here this evening. In the end, I’m pretty sure they will all add up and make perfect sense. But as of right now, these are three different subjects that have been on my mind all day long. For those of you who read my blog regularly, you know I have a tendency to rant but in the end, it usually (most of the time) makes for a good read.


So, here goes:


1. A coworker of mine told me that I had a four leaf clover in my arse. Why? Because every time I get a scratch-off from the liquor store near our job, I win. I usually win back whatever it is I spent but more than half of the time I win more than triple of what I paid. Let it be known that I do not buy the really expensive ones. The highest I’ve gone is spending ten dollars for one. And then I’ll win at least fifteen dollars back but mostly I win $30-50 dollars.


Energy goes where attention flows. When I buy a scratch-off I always say, “I always win when I buy these things.”


When I bought one today I told myself that I would win at least fifty dollars. The first little section I scratched off said that I had instantly won fifty dollars! Again: Energy goes where attention flows.


2. A buddy of mine, who happens to be the awesome writer Faye McCray from fayemccray.com, said on her blog yesterday that, “One thing is clear, I need to let go and trust in my divine purpose. Sometimes you have to relinquish control and dance with the wind... instead of fighting so hard to control which direction it blows.” I don’t know if she came up with this herself, but it sure does rock! And it sure is true.


Sometimes, even before I sit down to write, these are the destructive thoughts that flow through my mind: “I’m sleepy.” “I don’t think I have enough time to write.” “I have so much to do and I don’t even know where to start.” Blah, blah, blurg! I sabotage myself before I even get started! My attention is already on the fact that I’m working against the clock. Energy goes where attention flows.


3. A coworker of mine who runs themessybakerblog.com posted a recipe for Maple Pecan Granola. I told her I was thinking of making it but I was just too lazy to do it. She’s so awesome, she sells her products on her website. She even suggested I use gluten-free oats for my daughter who has a gluten allergy. Lazy took over and I asked her to make it for me. It was so deliciously awesome, three days after she gave me a pound of this tasty stuff, I was making more for me and my family. I’m actually eating a bowel of it right now. And there’s granola on the keyboard.


Jen is constantly looking for recipes and trying new things so that she can pass it along to her readers. One day, she’ll have a cookbook of her own and she is definitely on her way. Energy goes where attention flows.


And here goes the round-up ladies and gents! We can be our own worst enemy. I know I am. We writers find so many excuses as to why we can’t write right now or later on tonight. But if we spent as much time cheering ourselves on as we do breaking ourselves down, we’d be in our great moment! And this doesn’t just apply to writers. It’s everyone. We tell ourselves all of the reasons we can’t do something even when it comes so naturally to us. And what happens when you don’t do what makes you feel good? You feel like crap and that energy bounces around and makes other people think, “Hey, that person feels like crap. Let me back away slowly…” You don’t want people to feel that way about you. Well, maybe you do sometimes so that they’ll leave you the hell alone, but not always.


Be your biggest cheerleader. You know you’ve got it in you. Let it flow. Dance with the wind and be happy. Once you get your brain up to date, everything else will catch up.

Sidebar: What do you guys think about Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor? I will always love you, Matt Smith.