Instead of a Sample Sunday this is more of a Sample Teaser
I'm sure you've all seen me mention the Loopies before, a group of terrific romance authors who came together years ago when we all wrote for Dell. Back then we had the Author's Mansion, a website built like a big house with everyone assigned a room. We were all midlist at that time, and only the Queen of Historical Romance herself, Virginia Henley, had managed to hit the NYTimes list. But it was like a little bit of all of us made it because we all hooted and hollered and celebrated. Virginia actually climbed up onto the roof of her house and shouted it to the neighborhood, which we applauded but didn't imitate *snort*. If one of us had a success, we all shared in it. If one was down in the dumps, we were all there for support. If someone had no where else to vent, we all listened and invented new swear words.
When Dell imploded, we all went our various ways as far as publishers went, but the Loop Group remained steadfast. There were nine of us…myself, Virginia Henley, Jill Gregory, Jacquie D'Alessandro, Sherri Browning Erwin, Julie Ortolon, Julia London, Connie Brockway, and Kathleen Givens. We lost Kathleen, tragically, and far too early. She had a wonderfully dry wit and was always there with a supportive word, or a funny observation, or a sisterly smack upside the head. She has been dearly missed.
Unfazed by the Dell implosion most of remained on the USA Today lists and several more went on to climb roofs and shout about making the NYTimes.
About a year ago the eight of us were throfting mail back and forth discussing this brave new world of ebook self-publishing. Jules was the first to dip her toe in and test out the waters, and when she found them warm and welcoming, she dragged me in after her. Most of the other Loopies have followed, with the only straggler being Sherri, who had a huge print deadline to worry about, along with selling a house, buying a house, moving, etc etc. But a funny thing happened while we were discussing the pros and cons of self publishing. One of us…I can't even remember who…suggested that it would be fun if we all wrote a short story and put them together in an anthology. Oddly enough, none of us had thought of doing it before, mainly because of the incredible hassles involved in dealing with publishing houses (each wrote for a different publisher, so which one would we approach?) Add to that the fact we all wrote such different stuff, how could we tie it all together? Virginia, as mentioned, is the Queen and writes big lusty in-your-face romances filled with history, pomp, and ceremony not to mention steamy sex. Jill Gregory writes Western Romances with gunslingers and feisty little ladies, Jacquie D'Alessandro writes hot Regencies, Sherri Browning Erwin writes dark vampirical mash-ups like Jayne Slayer and Grave Expectations (creepy but cool), Julie Ortolon writes modern contemporary romances, and me…well…I like pirates and knights and sea battles and jousting matches.
Did the diversity stop us? Hell no. We just got a little more creative. We came up with a cool idea of having something travel through the centuries…in this case, a mirror pendant…which would let each of us write in the time period of our choice. Two of the Loopies had to drop out of the project due to time crunches, deadlines, and commitments elsewhere but the six of us diehards have come up with an anthology aptly titled, Masters of Seduction.
You'll notice no live links to it yet, because it doesn't go live until December 1st, ergo the the pithy and tantalizing title of todays blog. This is just a teaser. A peek, if you will, at the magnificent cover and…ta dah…digital step back.
We hope everyone finds this anthology as cool as we did while we were putting it together. We're already making rumblings about Masters of Temptation…
By the way, this is not just a first for me as far as being part of an anthology…it's also the very first time I have written a short story, or anything under a hundred thousand words…so be kind *g*
