Dominance: The Complete Box Set

Now available. No new content, but if you've been waiting to read the full series, here it is! It hasn't shown up on B&N yet, but hopefully it will appear there soon. "Dominance: The Complete Box Set" by Gem Frost on Ganxy

More on how billionaires live

Here is an impressive slide show displaying how the world's richest woman (Christy Walton, estimated net worth of $35.4 billion) lives. Her Wyoming estate is for sale, and it's quite lovely, though it doesn't strike me as the sort of place Dom might enjoy living. Gabe might love it, though.

I am alive!

I had my Remicade treatment today (which took up almost four hours of the day!), and came home feeling better. Whether that's all in my head or not I don't know. (Some of it might be the large amount of liquid they put into me-- there's no doubt I've been dehydrated.) The doctor confirmed I lost about eleven pounds over the past week and a half, which gives you an idea of how sick I've been. I expect to start feeling truly better in a day or two, whereupon I will return to working hard. First up is a quick glance over the Dominance series to make sure it's perfect before I hand it off to my formatter, and then I'll get back to poor neglected Wolf in the City and Pawned. As always, I thank you guys for your patience!

Also, I wanted to show everyone my spectacular "box set" cover for Dominance, done, of course, by Carol's Cover Design:

The road to hell

I had good intentions of getting back to full-tilt writing, but my Crohn's got in the way. I was a little late on the Remicade because I didn't want a three-hour appointment right at the end of summer, while I was trying to get the kids ready for school, and when I tried to make an appointment I was told I had to see the doctor, which led to a two-week delay. Alas for me, I became horribly ill and wound up lying on my back for most of the last week. I have been about as sick as I've ever been-- too sick to even want to type on the laptop. All I've done is lie there and catch up on Supernatural... not a bad way to spend time, really, except I desperately want to get back to writing. (I did get two hours of writing done one morning. Yay?)

Clearly I must never be late for getting my Remicade treatment again. Lesson learned, I guess. Anyway, I have my treatment on Wednesday and should feel pretty good by next week, or if I'm really lucky, the weekend. At that point, writing-with-a-vengeance will recommence. In the meantime, I'm getting together a "box set" (in Kindle format) of my m/m erotic romance Dominance (which requires work on the part of my cover artist and my formatter, but not much on my part). No new material, so nothing for those of you who've already read it, but in case you haven't read it yet, this might be a good time to do so:-). I hope to have it up by early next week.

Again, I thank you all for your patience and beg your pardon for my stupid misbehaving stomach!

A billionaire parody by Jody Wallace

My friend Jody has a funny parody of the billionaire romance genre out, here.

Still working!

I am continuing to work hard on my writing every day. I have a lot of Wolf in the City done (about 18,000 words, now aiming at 25K words), and am getting rolling on Pawned. I also started a short called Summer Sun today. I have a lot of books in progress now, and I'll be trying to keep working on all of them!

Back to work

Somehow I couldn't seem to get much writing done this summer. I don't know if I had too many kids underfoot, or if I was a little burned out, or what. But the kids went back to school today, and I will be writing every morning from now on. I started out well today, getting some editing and writing done on Wolf in the City and Flawless. I hope to do a little work on Pawned today too. I intend to get several books out this month. Thank you all for your patience!

Yachting, billionaire style

Here's an article on the world's newest superyacht, which is 590 feet long. Its price tag? $605 million (and maintenance can cost ten percent of that figure a year). It's owned by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi. I think even Dom might be envious!

Not much writing done

I apologize for not posting and publishing more, but it's been a crazy summer. The kids have been underfoot (and so has my dad!). We've been visiting local museums like the Virginia Aquarium, the Virginia Zoo and the Military Aviation Museum. We even got a new puppy:

So alas, not much writing has been done, but I have intentions of getting back to serious writing in August. I have about five books in various stages of completion, but the ones at the top of my priority list are Wolf in the City and Pawned.


I hope I'll get at least a couple books out in August. Thanks for your patience!

Strip-O-Gram, by Jody Wallace

My friend Jody Wallace has a sexy short now available on Amazon. Go check it out!

Checkmated is free, and a new cover

Checkmated (The Billionaire's Pawn, Book One) is now free on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Also, I am pleased to unveil the cover for the third book in the series, by Carol's Cover Designs:

Working!

5500 words of Wolf in the City are done, and I have a firm understanding of the characters and where the plot is headed. I am very pleased with how this one is going. I'm aiming at about 20K, but it may turn out a bit longer.

Pretty new cover

Here's a new and lovely cover by Dark Moon Graphics. This isn't one I bought to set aside-- I'm working on writing this right now. It will be an m/m erotic werewolf romance:

If you love something, set it free

I'm making Checkmated free in the hopes that it'll get more readers to try The Billionaire's Pawn series. You can find it free on ARe, Smashwords, and iTunes. Hopefully B&N and Amazon will lower the price soon.

Tangible, by Jody Wallace

The lovely and talented Jody Wallace has a new book out, Tangible. The cover is awesome, and the blurb sounds intriguing, too. You can buy it here.

Chuckatuck, Virginia

I went out for a drive with my dad today (he can no longer see to read or watch much television, but he can see well enough to admire the countryside), and we explored the far reaches of Suffolk, VA, where I live. As I've said before, Suffolk was once Nansemond County, a huge stretch of farmland studded with small towns. The small towns still exist as "communities" within Suffolk (and there's still plenty of farmland to be seen, too!).

In the Dominance series, I placed Gabe's home in "the sticks outside of Smithfield," but we were quite near to that area today (though Smithfield is in Isle of Wight county, just outside of Suffolk), and we came across a couple of small towns I wish I'd used as his home town. The first was Sandy Bottom (I love that-- I'll have to use that in some later book!) and the second was Chuckatuck. Its name derives from an Indian word, as many odd-sounding Virginia towns and rivers do, and it was the home town of Charlie Byrd, the jazz guitarist.

Despite being part of a moderate-sized city and a large metropolitan area (Hampton Roads), Chuckatuck still retains its small-town character. I thought "fish fry" sounded very small Southern town-like (the blurs aren't on the sign, but from dog noseprints on the window, which I didn't think to roll down-- clearly Windex is needed in a big way):

We have a large and modern library in our area of Suffolk, so I was a bit surprised to see this as I drove through:

Clearly the library has been there a long, long time, but it's not quite as outdated as it appears:

Gambit, finally up on Amazon

Gambit is finally up on Amazon, here.

Gambit and personal stuff

I'm waiting on Amazon, which still has Gambit "in review." It will likely be up later today. I just put it up on the new Nook Press-- the first book I've put up on B&N without using PubIt-- and have no idea if it will actually go through or not. I've heard mixed reviews about Nook Press. We shall see:-).

 In more personal news, my dad fell out of his wheelchair two days ago and scraped his arm rather badly (fortunately he didn't break anything), necessitating an emergency trip to the doctor. Yesterday he was nauseated, whether as a result of all this or from a bug I don't know. He seems better today, back to his regular annoying self *grins*. So hopefully I can get back to working on Getting It Up.

Gambit is up!

Between my formatter (daughter)'s exams, her moving out of her dorm room, and her sprained foot, it took a long time for her to get the formatting on this one done, and for that I apologize. But it's finally up on ARe and Smashwords, and should be available on Amazon sometime tomorrow. Thanks for your patience! Links are below.

"Gambit (The Billionaire's Pawn, #2)" by Meg Harris on Ganxy
Thanks to CarolCover'sDesigns for the great cover!

Still waiting

I gather from my last conversation with Formatter Girl that she's on her way home from college for Mother's Day weekend. It's a long drive, so the book won't be available till at least this evening. Still, it'll be nice to have her home:-).

Waiting on formatting

Gambit did not get done yesterday; the formatter (aka my daughter) is right in the middle of exams, and I'm guessing she just didn't have time. Hopefully it'll be up today or tomorrow.

Sending Gambit to be formatted today

With any luck it'll be up on ARe today or tomorrow, and everywhere else soonish. Once again I thank you all for your patience, and I will endeavor to have the next in the series up a whole lot faster! Here's the blurb:

"Gambit (The Billionaire's Pawn, #2)" by Meg Harris on Ganxy

Finishing up Gambit

You guys have been most patient, and I appreciate it. I finally have this one done, and I'll be polishing it up over the next few days. I like how it turned out-- I've discovered a new appreciation for alpha males lately. Griffin is an ass, but he's a sexy ass:-).

My sale ends today

Today is the last day for the Daylily Publishing sale.

Also, after tomorrow Supplicant will no longer be a freebie, so grab it for free while you still can!

Mastered by Desire has been nominated...

...for the 2013 eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards, in the Erotica category. 

Yet another cover I will get around to sometime

Yes, I know, I need to write more and buy less. (I should devote a month to writing short stories and use up a bunch. Maybe I'll do that this summer!) But I keep seeing premade covers that are so awesome I just can't pass them up. This one is by Go On Write:

Sale!

Daylily Publishing (that's me) is having a sale. Twenty books are 33-50% off, including a lot of Meg and Gem books. The sale runs from now through May 2.

Okay, now THIS is a penthouse

Fancy a 35,500-square-foot penthouse with a private pool, overlooking the French Riviera? Sure you do. Who wouldn't? It hasn't gone up for sale yet-- it isn't even completed yet-- but the eventual price is guesstimated at around $273 million... a figure that might strain even Dom's finances a bit.

Just a bit more Dominance

A couple of my most enthusiastic fans wanted a slightly more "fairytale ending" for Dom and Gabe, so I have promised to write a little bonus freebie along those lines at some point. I would also like to write a freebie with them making love on the Boss, because that never got accomplished in the series. These might be minor scenes that only get posted on my site, or they might wind up being 5000 word stories. I don't know yet. But I will try to get them done within the next month or so, along with Flawless.

And yet more on muscle cars!

Here's a great article on ten muscle cars and what they go for. The Boss I described in Dominance is in there, valued at about $220,000. Pretty eye candy at the link if you like that sort of thing! I just bet Dom has a 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona Hemi, too. It's valued at a mere $400,000...

A few notes on Illumination

Random notes on various elements that made their way into Illumination:

-My daughter drives a blue Volkswagen (a Rabbit). It is a super nice little car-- it handles well and has a peppy little engine. My dad gave it to us when he could no longer drive, and I wanted the VW for myself. Alas, because I have four kids I kept the minivan and the kid got the VW. Life is not always fair.

-I love Mountain Dew. They call me the Mountain Dew Lady at the local Arby's, because that's what I always order.

-I lived in Charlotte right out of college (Hurricane Hugo came through a month or so after I moved down there). At the time, Charlotte had a beautiful downtown, but it was mostly a finance center, which meant it was bustling on weekdays, but absolutely dead on weekends. There were no apartments to speak of downtown. Just as in Norfolk, though, downtown seems to have become a prestigious address lately. Here's a site showing some Charlotte penthouses. Spectacular, aren't they?

-The big chrome X is an actual piece of public art in Charlotte, though it's out on the street rather than in a building lobby. You can see it here. I always liked this one a lot, though like Gabriel, I'm not sure what its meaning is.

-I lived in Charlotte for years and never went to Carowinds ("the thrill capital of the Southeast"). No idea why, except that my husband and I were still young and childless then, and almost every long weekend or vacation we had, we trekked up to Virginia Beach to see our families. We made that six-hour drive up I-85 and US 58 (and got caught in traffic around Durham) more times than I can count!

-I love roller coasters. I don't ride them as much as I used to, because they mess with my middle-aged balance now, but I used to ride just about every one I came across. I never rode one till I was an adult, though. My husband introduced me to the Loch Ness Monster when I was twenty-one, and from there on I was a coaster addict.

-A couple of weeks ago, not long after I'd written the scene mentioning the two songs, "Carolina in My Mind" and "Ramblin' Man" popped up on my iTunes, one right after the other. I have around 800 songs on that particular playlist, so this was a rather startling coincidence. They're both really good songs. I used to listen to "Carolina in My Mind" a lot after I left Charlotte!

-Dom and I share a lot of musical tastes, from Schnittke to classic rock. I never played the violin; I played the cello. I was able to play some of the Bach unaccompanied suites fairly well, so I was decent, but never close to professional standard. I haven't played in a long time, sadly.

-I broke the rule about having only two dramatic personae in this one. Another character besides the boys uttered dialogue in Illumination-- the first time that's happened in the whole Dominance series. It bothered me, but I couldn't figure out a way to work around it.

-My family was originally from Smithfield. I never lived there myself, but the Victorian house my great-great-grandfather built still stands in the town. Smithfield is on the banks of the Pagan River, but the name doesn't appear to refer to religion, but rather to the Algonquin word for pecan.

-Dominance wound up around 85,000 words. Add the three Innocence stories, one of which isn't written yet, and the whole tale of Dom and Gabe will wind up around 100,000 words. That's the longest story I've written in quite a while, and I thank you guys for following me through it all!

I love you guys

Illumination is now #6 on the ARe bestseller list. Thanks to all who've bought it!

Also, I got this nice five-star review on B&N: "I absolutely love this series. Im sad this is the last book but will re read this series over and over! SAD to see it end but loved the ending."

Yay!

I was gone most of the day yesterday, and when I came home I found that ARe had featured Illumination in their "weekly ebook bargains" newsletter. This morning it's at #9 on the ARe bestseller list and a gay ebook bestseller. I'm very excited, and once again I thank you all for buying it!

Thanks!

Illumination is now available on Amazon and Smashwords too. Also, I woke up to a nice email from ARe telling me that Illumination was a bestseller there (#39 on the list this morning) and giving me this nice little graphic:

Thanks to you all for buying it!!!

Now on B&N

Illumination is now on B&N. It's not yet searchable, though, so follow the link!
 "Illumination (Dominance, Book 6)" by Gem Frost on Ganxy

Illumination is up on ARe!

I'm happy to say that Illumination is now up on ARe. I've run into a problem with Amazon tonight-- the site refuses to convert the file, so I'll have to try it again tomorrow. (ETA: I finally got it to work, so hopefully it'll be up tomorrow sometime.) I put it up on B&N but it won't show up till tomorrow sometime (if I'm lucky!). Still working on the Smashwords file. I will send out a newsletter once the book is widely available. In the meantime, if you really want to read it, grab it off ARe!

The final installment of the erotic m/m serial romance. Stephen Dominick is a sophisticated, world-famous billionaire. Gabriel Mason is a young, naive college student. Gabriel is still ticked off about the havoc Dom has wreaked on his life, but in an effort to rebuild their relationship, he invites Dom to get away from it all for a few days and take a road trip with him. Can the lights of a distant city help illuminate their feelings for one another?

Length: Novella, 22,000 words.

Warnings: Explicit m/m sex, blunt language, mild BDSM elements.

99 cents for a limited time.

Still trying

Alas, we ran into an issue with formatting on Smashwords. I'm trying to find another formatter to help me out, but it may not be possible to get one on short notice. I'm still hoping I can get the book up on ARe, Amazon and B&N tomorrow, but my formatter is understandably frustrated by the three hours she spent fruitlessly trying to format the book, and needs to take a break on it till tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted.

Helloooooo, muscle car

Today I stepped out of Panera's and found a muscle car that could have easily belonged to Stephen Dominick. It was a beautifully restored 1968 Camaro SS 350 (and I know it was a 1968 not because of my vast knowledge, but because the license plate helpfully labeled it 68 Camy), painted, I believe, Matador Red. I was rather horrified to see someone driving it instead of keeping it in a garage (I could have easily dribbled Mountain Dew on it by accident!), but when I got home and looked it up, it appears that the car is "only" worth $20,000... which still strikes me as a lot for a car that's almost as old as I am. There must have been a lot of them produced. Nevertheless, it was a stunning car, and when I hit it rich, I'm going to buy one:-).

Annoying minor details

Google is both a blessing and a curse. There's a line of throwaway dialogue in which Dom mentions that he's getting ready for a merger with another company. I originally had the name "CapCo" in there, but it's taken. I started trying to come up with other names, but that's not as easy as you'd think. Senesco? Taken. Jupiter Industries? Taken. Aardvark Industries? Taken. AardCo? Taken. No matter what silly name I come up with, it's already been used. Go figure.

Happy happy work work

Illumination is coming along beautifully. Editing is really my favorite part of the process. When I finish up a book, I almost always think, "God, this is total crap."  But when I start editing, I realize it really isn't that bad... it just needs a little fine-tuning to make it better. I've been editing quite literally since I got up this morning (with a brief break for lunch), and it really feels like it's flowing much more smoothly. I am much happier with it now!

Website updates

Did some updating of my Meg Harris and Gem Frost websites as I try to learn how to use Ganxy. I also prettied them up a bit and tried to streamline them, so they're easier to get around. I do still need to get up excerpts for most of my books... this is my last major project with regards to website design. But I think I'll wait on that till after I have my two serial installments finished!

Illumination is done, sort of

I finished up the "first draft" of Illumination today. I put "first draft" in quotes because I edit as I go, so the book is already in fair to middling shape. There is still a lot of work to be done on it, though. It wound up a bit over 19,000 words, but because I usually expand as I edit, it will probably wind up over 20,000. I will work at it hard the rest of the week and this weekend, and hopefully put it up on Monday.

I also wrote quite a bit on Gambit last night. That one's coming along well, too. I don't usually write heroes who are such total bastards, but I have to admit, I'm beginning to see the appeal of the alpha male. Between Griffin and Dom, I'm starting to develop a taste for alphas!

Illumination excerpt

Thanks to those of you who have been so hopefully emailing me-- I really do appreciate the encouragement! Here's excerpt #2 for Illumination.

Working, and new covers

Easter was predictably a wash as far as writing was concerned, and yesterday I spent four and a half hours in the doctor's office, getting my Remicade (and waiting around for the doctor to see me, which she never did). So yesterday was kind of a bomb as far as writing goes, too. But today I'm back at it. This morning I wrote a nice hot sex scene for Illumination, and I'll see what else I can fill out and edit this afternoon. I'm thinking about putting up excerpt #2, but haven't quite figured out what I want that excerpt to be yet.

In the meantime, I've gotten a couple of great new covers from ebookindiecovers. The first one is, of course, a replacement. I loved the original cover, but I'm not sure it was "paranormal-y" enough. I think this one is eyecatching and says "werewolf romance" quite clearly. The second one was a premade that caught my eye, and when I thought of the title I immediately thought of a short story to go with it. I intend to write that as soon as I've finished up Illumination and Gambit:

How ILLUMINATION is going

Illumination is now officially the longest book in the Dominance series. I refused to knock off work this morning till I'd passed 15,000 words. I have the structure all laid out, and most of the major scenes, but I have to go back and fill in. Ordinarily my writing habit is to write the story more or less from the beginning to the end, editing as I go along, and then edit and edit and edit some more. But with this one, I got a minor block on a love scene (a sex scene in a romance has to have an emotional component, or it isn't worth writing, and I couldn't figure out quite what I wanted the emotional facet of this one to be), so I skipped ahead, and then I found myself skipping still further ahead to the end.

So I have two or three more scenes to fill in, and a few other things to address that were raised elsewhere in the series, as well as a whole lot of editing. By the time I'm done filling in and editing, I'm reasonably certain it will be at least 20,000 words (but the price will still be $1.99-- it's not my readers' fault I'm wordy!). I'll keep whacking away at it, and hopefully I can get up another excerpt by tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!

My books are starting to go up on iTunes

I asked Smashwords last week why a long list of my books hadn't gone up on iTunes, and yesterday they told me they'd look into it. Today my books are starting to go up-- Touch Me and Teaching Dallas are up already. I'm grateful to Smash for getting the problem fixed, though I do wish they would have looked into it four weeks ago, when I first asked about it. But apparently their policy is "wait eight weeks before checking with iTunes." In any event, two of the missing titles are up already, and hopefully more will be forthcoming. Look for me there!

Charlotte, NC

A good deal of Illumination is set in Charlotte, NC (which is not actually the city in the background of the cover-- Charlotte's big, but it's not that big), mostly because I thought the boys could use a road trip together after everything they've been through. I chose Charlotte because as a young adult, I lived there. It was a nice city. Today, while surfing the web, I came across an article on The Fastest-Growing Big Cities in America, and there was Charlotte, at #5. There are over two million people in Charlotte's metro area now-- far bigger than when I was there. (The article says Charlotte has grown by almost 33% since 2000, and I left long before that.) There's a nice picture of the city's skyscrapers gleaming in the sunlight at the linked article.

Writing like a crazy person

I really got rolling on Illumination today, and wrote most of the day. (It helped that I didn't take Dad anywhere, though he was frankly kind of ticked off about it-- he believes I should take two hours out of the middle of every day and drive him around. He doesn't seem to understand that full-time writing needs to be, you know, full time.) I've managed to weave in small plot strands from both Angelic and Innocent, which makes me glad I wrote the prequels-- they really do help me understand and flesh out my characters better. I also got to the first sex scene... this story has a good deal of setup first, but once we get to the sex, I hope it'll be really hot. I had to stop in the middle of the sexytimes, which annoys me, but at least it's an interesting place to pick up again tomorrow!

Excerpts!

Read an excerpt of Illumination (Dominance, Book Six) here.

Read an excerpt of Gambit (The Billionaire's Pawn, Book Two) here.

Pretty new cover

Added to my excessive stock of pre-bought covers that I haven't yet written stories for (but will eventually!), here's a pretty by Cover Shot Creations:

Alas, some things are beyond my control

I came across the following very nice review of Teaching Dallas on Goodreads: Everything about this novella was perfect, except the cover. Neither of the cover models looked anything like either Dallas or Adrian. 

 First of all, thanks to the reviewer. "Perfect" is high praise, and gives me a big head that will last the rest of the afternoon:-). I will agree that the Dallas guy isn't quite as Dallas-y as I would have liked (though his cute grin did make me think of Dallas). I think the Adrian guy looks a lot like Adrian as I envisioned him (the cover artist changed his hair color a bit), but obviously the reader got a slightly different picture in his or her head, and that's fine.  I imagine that ten different readers reading a single book would have ten different pictures of the main characters in their heads.

But here's the problem. There is a really shocking lack of sexy m/m pictures on the stock photo sites (which is where I, and 99% of indie authors, get images, since most of us don't have handsome hunks hanging around for us to photograph). You can always go the route I used with the Dominance series, of using two separate guys and having a digital artist meld them together into one picture. Or you can do as I did in Innocence, and just use one guy. But if you want two guys lounging around in bed, your options are severely limited. I hope that some enterprising photographer will realize this gap and fill it, but for now, there's only so much one can do, and so many photos to choose from.

That being said, the best thing about being an indie is that I have control over my own covers. I can pick out the pictures and choose the artists I want to use. This means that my covers, even if not perfect, nevertheless make me a lot happier than most covers I've had through publishers. It's nice to have total control over the image I present to the world. It also means that if a cover sucks, it's my fault-- and I've re-covered quite a few books over the past three years because I wasn't happy with the original cover (most of the ones I've tossed were created by yours truly and have been replaced by more solid professional work). That's always an option, but for now, I'm happy with the Teaching Dallas cover. If I get a lot of feedback about it, though, I may eventually consider finding new stock photos.

Working hard on Illumination

I'm zooming along on Illumination now that I've turned my full attention to it. I have the first chapter almost polished enough to be put up as an excerpt for public consumption (I'm much further along in the story than that, but the first part has been the most heavily edited so far). I'd like to go over it a few more times today, so I'll put up the excerpt tomorrow. Again, I thank you all for your patience-- I'll try to make this story worth waiting for!

What a difference two weeks make

We dropped by Dad's former house today to see how it was coming along. This is how it looked before:

This is how it looks now:

You'd hardly know it was the same house. It has new siding, roofing and windows already, as well as painted brick and a nice new door, and the handicapped ramp has been removed. On the inside it has a new back door (apparently in the 1950s they didn't do back doors as much) with posts outside for a deck. The kitchen has been gutted and new cabinets are sitting in it, waiting to go in. The hardwood floors have been sanded and are awaiting staining. The walls have been patched, sanded and painted. And that's just all I noticed in the quick glimpse I got as I snuck in and out again.

House flippers work really fast!

Flawless (Innocence 3) cover

Copyright 2013 by the awesome Erin Lark.

Innocent is up...

Get it free on Smashwords and All Romance eBooks.

Also, Our First Christmas is now available for 99 cents on Barnes and Noble.

My thanks to my daughter, who's worked hard to get these books formatted!

Castaway's cover

I love Sara Fawkes' new cover from Anything He Wants 6: Castaway, here. I admit to having a preference for "element" covers (which focus on a single item, like the tie on Fifty Shades of Grey or the cufflinks on Bared to You) over clinch covers or wow-check-out-the-sexy-chest covers. Unfortunately, my own books generally seem to sell better with half-naked guys on the cover. But I still really like element covers, and this is a really nice one!

I actually agree with this review

Angelic was reviewed here by a blogger, who gave it two, uh, doohickeys. (I think they're spades.) Two stars, anyway. She liked my writing style, but added, "Gabriel was so beautiful, so pure, so perfect... that I expected some sort of a twist, that he had been sent to Dom's company to ferret out his secrets, anything to shatter his breathtaking flawlessness. But that didn't happen, and so the story just felt too... purple." 

This in a nutshell has been my problem with writing the Innocence series. I wrote it basically for people who'd already read Dominance. People, in other words, who already liked the characters and wanted to know how they got to this point. I also wrote it for myself, to get to the bottom of Dom's psyche, which I really needed to do before I could complete Shattered. Angelic is more of a character study of Dom and his perceptions of Gabriel (and those perceptions are not necessarily accurate) than it is a fully realized story. Gabriel's flawlessness is "shattered" (as the blogger so perceptively puts it!) in Shattered, but Angelic is merely setup for that eventual fall, as is the rest of Innocence.

So these are not really standalone books, but rather "bonus stories," and yes, by itself Angelic is not really much of a story-- the point in it was to show that Gabriel really was pure and innocent when he first met Dom, and the overarching point of Innocence is to show Gabriel's slow evolution into the man we meet in Dominance. The point is also to show us Dom's perceptions of Gabriel, which as I said above may be somewhat on the idealized side. But Innocence is not a very good standalone, which is one reason the installments are all free.

Unfortunately, by putting it up on various sites as a freebie, rather than just putting it up on my website as I originally intended, it's naturally the first book a lot of readers come across. I actually don't know if I'm helping myself or hurting myself by putting the Innocence books up as freebies on various sites, but having started, I guess I'll continue. I'll be working on formatting Innocent today and getting it up on ARe and Smashwords.

Innocent is completed

It wound up three chapters long and around 7600 words. Read it here. I will endeavor to get it formatted and up on sites this weekend (my poor daughter thinks she's coming home for spring break, but actually it's FORMATTING TIME!!! *laughs evilly*).

Sundowning

Dad keeps getting very cranky and hard to deal with late in the afternoon. He seems to go through an angry, you're-all-upset-with-me-for-no-reason, tantrumy phase every day at about the same time. I finally looked it up (yay Google!) and discovered this is a normal part of dementia called sundowning. Dad doesn't have severe dementia, but anyone his age is bound to have some degree of it. It's nice to know that it's not anything we're doing wrong; it's just something that's going to happen, and we'll have to learn to cope with it. It also seems that lighting his room better might help. He insists on turning off the overhead light; if I can convince him to keep it on, that may improve matters.

Our First Christmas

Our First Christmas, an m/m romance, is now available on All Romance eBooks and Smashwords for 99 cents.

Young billionaires

In my Dominance series, Stephen Dominick is a thirty-year-old billionaire, and of course it goes without saying that he's hot as hell. In Romancelandia, of course, there are gazillions of young, single, handsome billionaires brooding in their offices, just moping behind their desks while they wait for that special guy or gal to wander in and heal their emotional scars with a sweet smile and a few hot sexual encounters. In real life... yeahhhhh, not so much. It's no wonder most of us never stumble across these hot hunky billionaires, because there aren't actually that many of them. According to this Forbes article, there are only a few more than 1400 billionaires in the entire world, and a mere five of those are thirty or younger. Only twenty-three are forty or under, and only nine of those twenty-three are in the United States.

So your chances of running into a youthful, sensual, dominating billionaire who wants to bend you over the desk and have his wicked way with you when you apply for your next job? In Romancelandia, about one in ten (and maybe even better than that if you're sweet, innocent and a little on the clumsy side). In the real world... well, you probably have a much better chance of winning the lottery or of being struck by lightning. Thank God for romance novels!

INNOCENT, Chapter 2

I finally got the second chapter of Innocent up here. Scroll about halfway down the page to read the new material.

A few notes on Teaching Dallas

Glancing through Teaching Dallas today, I noticed a few things worthy of comment:

-There's no such college as Chesapeake State University. In Dominance, I had Gabriel attend a real Norfolk school, Old Dominion University, but since Teaching Dallas revolves around a professor dating a student, I felt it preferable from a legal point of view to use a made-up school name.

-Dallas lives in Whaleyville, Virginia. When most of Suffolk was Nansemond County, Whaleyville was a very small incorporated town. Now it's actually part of Suffolk, and is located in the southern part of the city, near the North Carolina border and close to the Dismal Swamp. It's still mostly farms and trees. There are a lot of great old farmhouses still standing throughout Suffolk, which were the inspiration for the Palmer farmhouse.

-So far no one seems to have noticed my tiny little Doctor Who reference. Adrian wears bow ties and tweed jackets to work, and early in the story I establish that it's because he thinks bow ties are cool.

-I'm planning a sequel called Teaching Adrian. It's a very rough idea in my head right now, but I'm thinking it'll be about Adrian's dismay when he has to teach a literature class on gay erotica, which he (with his highly focused interest in Shakespeare) has very little knowledge of. But Dallas will help him learn all about it!

Of Superbirds

While I was looking over Innocent, I saw I'd made a slight error in the first chapter. I'd originally made Dom's car a ragtop Road Runner, then changed it to a Superbird. I left the word "ragtop" in, however, but alas, the Superbird did not come in a ragtop form. Or so I thought. When I Googled it, I found that someone once modified a Superbird into a convertible, which looked like this. Still, I think a hardcore collector would want as close to the original as he could get. Also, once again he wouldn't actually be driving the thing, as it's worth $200K or so.

Wondering what a Superbird looks like? Here's a picture from Wikipedia showing a Superbird painted "Vitamin C":

Yes, it actually did come from the manufacturer with a decal of the Road Runner holding a helmet. Go figure.

INNOCENT excerpt

As promised, the first chapter of Innocent is up on my website. More tomorrow, I hope!

And that's a wrap on the house

Dad signed the closing papers for his house yesterday, and the other guy signed early this morning. When I drove over today to pick up the last of Dad's stuff, there was already a big-ass crane there, with a crew removing a good many of the trees:

The worst was a big pine tree in the back yard with huge branches overhanging the roof, but the entire back yard was really a jungle. (I looked at it on Google Maps the other day from above, and it looked like a rain forest. You could barely see the house!) The funny thing is that it was an empty field when my parents moved in-- but they planted a lot of trees, and trees can grow really, really big in a half century!

I feel a little sad seeing my childhood home going on to a different family, but it's going to be a nice little house once it's renovated (the buyer was bubbling over with enthusiasm as he showed me the siding and roofing he'd picked out-- he really enjoys making houses come back to life, and it shows). I'm mostly relieved all the selling and the moving is over. I never need make that drive again unless I want to. After making the drive at least twice a week for the past three years, I'm pretty tired of it!

Anyway, I'm finally coming to the point of this post. Yes, I did have a point! I wanted to have Innocent up today, but that's not going to happen. I'm going to dig in and finish it in the next couple of days, and then get Illumination finished too. There will be a long excerpt up for Innocent tomorrow, though. I promise!

That's an interesting nickname

I found my granddad's college yearbook from 1915 online today. The picture is blurry if you try to enlarge it to a decent size (I can get a reprint of the yearbook for a mere $99, but for the time being I think I'll pass on that), but they've kindly typed out the text. It says my granddad's nickname was... Honey-dipper. I don't really want to think about what that might have meant:-P.

What I want to accomplish this year

Books that (along with Dominance and The Billionaire's Pawn) I'm hoping to get to in the first half of 2013:

Books that, for obvious reasons, I'd like to write by summer:


Books I'm looking forward to writing and will work in as soon as I can: