Shiloh Walker's Blog, page 170

Christmas contest…who wants books…

Or rather… who wants book money?  Everybody likes book money right?  Readers at least.

So here's your chance for $30 in book money, a gift certificate to Borders (if you're international, go ahead and enter…I've got a substitution in mind just in case.

How to enter?  Just tell me the one thing you'd wish for if you could have any Christmas wish you wanted.  Anything in the world.  Me?  I'd take my family on a trip to Ireland, Scotland and England.

And my normal yadda yadda rules…

Give away open across the globe, and reminder…if you enter, as per my disclaimer, that means you've read my disclaimer. O.o  So if you haven't, you might want to.

Standard, abbreviated run down…

don't post to twittersweeps or sweepstakes sites-if this happens, I reserve the right (and likely will) to end the contest without awarding the prize.  This annoys me.  These contests are for readers and visitors, not contest patrols.
it's your responsibility to check back and see if you've won-I don't notify the winner.
One entry per household
Open across the globe
You must enter via my blog, not goodreads, facebook, etc
For the rest… read the disclaimer .

Contest will run for about a week, with the winner to be posted to the blog about a week later.  If you aren't sure you'll remember to check back, you can always sign up to have my blog feed emailed to you!  It's that little box at the top left hand side of my blog.

If You Hear Her…

So… people want to know what this book is about.  Really.  Not just snippets.  I still don't have a blurb-I did, but it might changed a bit.  Soooo…how about this instead.

It's an excerpt that sort of gets right to the whole point of the story.

"Oh, God," Lena whispered. Her heart slammed against her ribcage as she reached for the phone by her bed.

There was another scream and she dropped the phone. Swearing, she crawled out of the bed, patting around on the floor. "Damn it, damn it, damn it." Icy, cold sweat dripped along her spine as she listened through the window.

Branches snapping in the night-dark trees. A ragged moan. Then all was silent.



Where's the fricking phone??

Making a sound halfway between a sob and a growl, she stuck her hand under him the bed and heaved out a sigh of relief as her fingers brushed plastic. Scuttling across the floor, she pressed her back to the wall and listened, phone clutched in her hand.

Nothing. She didn't hear anything…wait.

Quiet. Somebody quiet, now. Moving through the trees. If her room had been any farther away from the trees, if she had lived any closer to town…hell, if she'd had the radio playing, she never would have heard it. So, so quiet…

There was another short, sharp scream–one that ended all too abruptly.

With her heart racing, Lena dialed nine-one-one. Puck made a rough sound low in his throat and nosed her leg. She patted the space next to her and as he pressed his big, furry body against her leg, she wrapped an arm around him.

"Nine-one-one. What's your emergency?"

"I…I hear a woman screaming. She's screaming for help."

It only took minutes. Maybe ten. Logically, she knew not much time had passed before she heard the sirens, but it seemed like an eternity. Too long. Too much time.

She hadn't heard the woman again…what if it was too late?

Because I'm evil and keeping this series very close to my chest, I'm…

not answering questions about this series…(I'll answer release date stuff, that sort of thing)
but I'm not going into more detail on…what it's about, etc, etc, etc
because, well… I'm keeping it close to my chest.  I'm super excited over it and very nervous and um…
well, if you wanna know more, you'll just have to read the series when it comes out.

I'm so ready to say so long 2010…

2010 hasn't completely sucked.

On a personal level, my daughter started middle school and she's doing fine-in the honors program.  Son started tested into the accelerated program at school.  Baby bratlet is in preschool and loves it-not causing trouble as I feared.  The DH and I have been married for 14 years and I love him more every year that passes.  We had a couple of fun family trips, including being able to take the kids to Disney and this time, the youngest will remember it, so that's cool.  And I mustn't forget… I finally succeeded in losing the weight I've battled with for years-I'm not done, still need to lose 20 lbs, but I've lost 60, so yay!

On a professional level, I sold three more books to Berkley.  I started doing some nonfictional type stuff-short articles for the RWR, a publication put out for the RWA.  My Ballantine editor seems to be very excited about my romantic suspense stuff and I think she's looking forward to more books from me. My indie self publishing experiment went fairly well.  I can't say I made the 'thousands' some people seem to say selfpublished writers will make, but I'm doing okay with Beg Me.

But for every positive thing, it feels like there's been five painful bad things.

On a health front…I've had two surgeries this year.  I seem to having more trouble with my asthma than ever before.  I've had like three flares this year and even through running has improved my overall endurance, I still have nasty flares and it's driving me nuts.  I had a lovely skin infection earlier this year.  I suspect I've developed some new food allergies.  And sigh.  My hands/wrists are acting up again. (bite me…I hate carpal tunnel).  Daughter had to get glasses, son had to have oral surgery, baby bratlet has had several things, from multiple problems with strep, to ear infections to a lovely weird thing with a toe that just now cleared up.  A huge blessing, though, all of them overall, are healthy.  And my problems, even as aggravating as they are, they are manageable.  This year just seemed to be more hellish with everything.

On a professional front…I'm having some blah-ness.  I'm not hitting burnout exactly, although there are certain things that I'm just tired of and I'm cutting back on things.  Some things I'll discuss publicly, like social networking crap–the facebook page and goodreads, for one.  I've also gone through and cutback on the people I follow in twitter. I'll continue to do that in the coming days-it's nothing personal, but it's too time-consuming and I need to simplify things.  Desperately.  Other things revolve around decisions I've made recently and I won't discuss any of that, but I'm making some changes and it's all related to one very rough year and the fact that I can't keep doing as much as I do.  Simplify.  I must simplify.

And then there's the personal level.  I've never had a year where I've been hit like this.  Four friends have died.  Back in 2009, I lost a woman who was like a grandmother to me and I didn't think anything else could hit me (or our family) quite that hard.  But it goes to show that life can always hit you harder…and you can still get through it, because our family got through these losses.  Four friends.  One was more casual, but the others were deeply rooted in our lives, and for me, they'd been part of my life since childhood.  I'm still struggling to adjust and even though I've mostly accepted it and I'm letting myself grieve (finally), it's hit me hard and I know it's part of why I've been so down lately.  I'm short-tempered even on the best of days and there haven't been many strings of good days lately.

Thankfully, the good days are scattered between the hell days and they have gotten us through the rough spots.

But yes.  I'm ready to get 2010 over.  But… I want Christmas first.  I love Christmas.

Grimm # 5 Locked in Silence… Saturday Snippets

Dunno when this is going to be out-still haven't gotten any word back but here's an excerpt…

Scratch that-I wrote this blog sometime early this week-a few days later, was contacted by my editor at Samhain and offered contract.  So it will be out at Samhain.  Still don't know when.  Ebook only at first, print later…

He'd laid out the deal that night.

She'd accepted, still half-thinking he was out of his mind. Even though, somewhere inside, she knew he wasn't. Will was about as sane as they came. And tonight, she realized, it was time for her to make good on that deal he'd offered.

She hadn't thought she'd be so afraid. Her hands were sweating, she realized. The death she tasted in the air—it was hers. And they were close.

Succubae—more of them. Man, she hated their kind. They so loved this sort of place. Hot and ripe for the picking, after all. Full of the young, the restless and the horny. After that first initial rush, her heart rate settled down to something resembling normal and she leaned closer to the mirror, under the guise of examining her makeup.

The girls were still jabbering. Still giggling about dresses—somebody else's now. Feeling sort of disconnected, Vanya realized they had noticed her. Habit, forged in a lifetime where she'd been happier to fade into the background, had her wanting to hunch her shoulders and just mumble an apology, disappear. Instinct dictated she stay where she was.

Pride did the same thing. Pride also had her lifting her chin and meeting the gaze of the girls' in the mirror.

That was when they saw the scars. Eyes widened. Mouths dropped.

Over the past few years, Vanya had learned never to let anybody see a reaction off of her, not through a blush, a nervous smile or laughter. One girl—the girl with the transparent dress—met Vanya's gaze, then shifted her stare to the scars.

With a snicker, she jabbed her friend with an elbow and said in a pseudo-whisper, "Geez, hasn't she ever heard of plastic surgery?"

"Holy shit, Robbi, you didn't just say that!" One of the girls, her face stricken, looked at Vanya with wide eyes. "Girl, I am so sorry. She's drunk and she doesn't always think good when she's drunk. I'm sorry."

Turning around, Vanya lifted a brow. "Why? You didn't say it." Then she looked at Robbi, studied her face and wondered if this foolish kid would live through the night, if Vanya would have to be the one to kill her.

It bothered her. Life was precious—Vanya had seen too much death, her grandmother, both of her parents, her sister. Not to mention all the lives she'd ended in her quest to destroy the demonic before they destroyed more lives.

But whether it bothered her or not, Vanya wouldn't let it stop her. If the girl let one of those things inside her, though, Vanya would kill her. Robbi wasn't strong enough to fight it and Vanya would be damned if she let the little bimbo infect anybody.

She wasn't precognitive, although she did have a knack for knowing when somebody was about to die. No, she was just psychic but she understood the laws of karma.

Somehow, she had a feeling this chick here had caught the sights of a succubae. The door opened not even a heartbeat later.

As the punch of sex, slick power and sweet perfume flooded the air, Vanya reached up and absently touched the silver chain. It held the silver cross that had belonged to Irina.

Okay, big sis…I get a feeling this is it.



The succubae slid Vanya a look and sure enough, she caught a glimpse of something not quite human peering out from behind those mortal eyes. A typical, well adjusted human would look at her and just want to get the hell away.

Vanya wasn't surprised when several of the girls standing next to Robbi sidled away, putting some distance between themselves and the demon-possessed mortal.

"Score one for me," she whispered.

Of course, Robbi looked at the succubae with a cocked brow, a cocked hip, and a cocky smile.

Vanya sighed and glanced at the others.

"You all might want to leave," she said. Then she shifted her gaze to Robbi and smirked. "And you should go home and change—the dress doesn't make you look any sluttier than getting fucked on the hood of some guy's SmartCar, but sweetie, that color doesn't look good on you anyway."

Robbi went red, then white but Vanya didn't spare her another five seconds.

Looking past her, she stared at the succubae and debated her choices. If she really, really wanted to minimize human contact, she needed the succubae out of here. And maybe she could let Robbi live another day or two—who knows, she could always grow a brain cell or two.

With an internal sigh, she made a choice and sauntered toward the succubae.

She knew how to appeal to this kind of demon. After all, she'd been killing them on the sly for years. But always one on one, which required luring them away from the rest. And there was more than one demon in this club…Vanya could feel them.

With a silent prayer, she made her choice. She'd been told a few years ago, when the time was right, she wouldn't be alone.

Didn't seem like there would be a better time than now.

Oddly enough, she felt pretty damn alone.

The Friday 56… Seanan Maguire's A Local Habitation

She frowned. "It's a start," she said.

About the Friday 56

Grab the book nearest you. Right now
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

The Friday 56… Sean Maguire's A Local Habitation

She frowned. "It's a start," she said.

About the Friday 56

Grab the book nearest you. Right now
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Q for my writer friends…

I'm still on the fence about RWA Nationals this year, possibly in 2012, I don't know.  I want to go, but um… damn, it's expensive this year.  What I might to do instead is hit some smaller regional things instead.  I'm looking at the Spring Fling in Chicago in 2012.  Maybe something non-RWA, either science-ficiton/fantasy focused for my paranormal or thriller/mystery for my romantic suspense books.

But…I've never really hit a whole lot of conventions or conferences, especially compared to some of my writer friends.  I've done RWA once, RT two or three times, and I usually hit Lori Foster's event in June and Lora Leigh's RAW.  That's about it.

Sooooo… you got any suggestions or ideas?  What are they and where are they…any help would be appreciated!

Also… my next Writes & Wrongs post is up at Romantic Times, about Goodreads & Shelfari.

Winners, contests, prizes going out soon, I promise

Winner from the Maya Banks' Darkest Hour giveaway…

dannigv616@

who said:

I'm reading Renegade by Catherine Mann. I took a break from Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon, not sure if I'm up to all the abuse he's going to take in the first half. [image error]

Dannielle, I need you to email me…it's shilohwalker(at)gmail.com

Also, I know I've got some prizes that need to be emailed/mailed.  I'm running a few days behind-had to go in and help out due to unforeseen circumstances at my old day job and I'm just dragging in general from the ebil that has been 2010.

(Is 2010 over yet?)

I will be getting the prizes mailed out either the end of this week or earlier next, I promise.  Hopefully the end of this week, because I'd rather not be in the USPS next week.  Same applies for the GCs I still need to mail out…I promise, I haven't forgotten, I just had too much stuff fall into my lap at once.  Oh, how I long for that mythical full-time assistant…O.o

READING…

I spent most of the weekend feeling awful.  But the positive side?  It let me read.  I read three books.

I finished…(I got an ARC from Nalini...she's so good to put up with me.)

I started & finished by Sylvia Day…(this the first historical of hers I've read, and I loved it.)

Also started and still reading…(Only the second book by Seanan Maguire that I've read, but I really like it. Second in the series…get Rosemary & Rue first.)

The last is straight UF, but it's really good.

Okay…that's it.  What have you read lately, and my deadlines have kept me crazy…I don't even know what's due out soon.  What do I need to be looking for?

Also, are you a writer…wondering just how an agent picks a client?  Irene Goodman of the Irene Goodman Literary Agency is holding a live webinar through Writer's Digest…info here (Yes, Irene's my agent…she's awesome, but I'm partial to her)

*G* Yes… another BEG ME Update…and a question

;o)  You tired of them yet?

I received a nice review for BEG ME at The Romance Reviews… you can check it out here.

It's still not listed at Borders or the Sony store, sadness and sulk.

Now I've got a question.  How many people would be interested in seeing future indie projects listed at All Romance eBooks?  If there's not a lot of interest, I'm not going to mess with it, but if there is some interest, I'll look into it when I've got time-that might not be for a little while, but I did want to at least see if there's interest.