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Monthly Archives: April 2012

Cover Of Free Fall. This guy is a demon.

Well. How often does the Risky Regencies have a picture of a demon? Not so often!

Free Fall, A My Immortals Series novella is available now on Kindle.
OMG REALLY???? 
 
Yes, Really. You should rush out and buy it now.

Buy Free Fall from Amazon or see below for another way to get this story.

OK, I’ll stop playing with fonts now. But it was fun. I kind of want to do that again.

About Free Fall

Attorney Lys Fensic has spent her life controlling a psychic power that kills. Her ability to lock herself down falls apart when her ex, a mage, sends enslaved demons to kill her. In a psychic free fall, she turns to tough guy Telos Khūnbish for help. But is he a mage as she’s always suspected or is he something far more dangerous?

Free Fall is set in the My Immortals series world where demons and magic-using humans called the magekind are not quite getting along. Most people have no idea they’re living in what amounts to a magical war-zone. Free Fall is based on the short story Future Tense but is considerably expanded and includes scenes that were censored from the short story. This novella is about 35,000 words (130 pages).

I should mention the censored stuff is way hot. Smoking hot. If you’re bothered by demon sex you should not read this story. Also, there are no Regency gowns. Sorry.

Review Copy Anyone?

In the meantime, anyone who agrees to post an HONEST review of Free Fall on Amazon should leave a comment on this post. I’ll send you a .MOBI version of the file.

An Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

11:40 AM. Lobby of 101 California Street, San Francisco, California
He was here. Telos Khūnbish had come. Relief nearly demolished her, it hit so powerfully. He was here, and now, improbably, she believed everything was going to be all right. Her life was irrevocably screwed, but she believed. She ignored the noise of the lobby and the man standing beside her. He was irrelevant. What a damn sad commentary it was that after nearly ten years in the city, Khūnbish was the closest thing she had to a friend. Maybe even a real friend, because he was here, and she believed she’d get through this.

Her heart kicked up a notch when she got a clear view of his black BMW turning onto Front Street. Now, of course, she wondered if she’d made a mistake involving him. She didn’t make a habit of asking for help. She wasn’t good with people. She wasn’t even sure she’d asked right. Seems she had.

The BMW was definitely looking to park. Good thing. In less than ten minutes the lunchtime rush would start, and she’d be in real trouble. Even now, there were too many people around.

“My ride’s here,” she said to Jack, the man standing beside her. She didn’t make eye contact because that would be dangerous. Instead she stared at his tie, but that turned out to be a mistake. The dark red silk looked like blood streaming down his chest. She focused on the shiny marble floor and the tips of his Oxfords. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Let me carry your things.” Jack reached for the moving box that contained the personal contents from her office. He knew Michael, and that meant she couldn’t trust him. Simple fact. She couldn’t trust anyone who knew Michael Ford.

“No.” She gripped the box tighter and looked at the street again, as if Khūnbish could help her from afar. The BMW was waiting for a van to pull away from the curb. Khūnbish had never met Michael. That was part of the reason she’d called him. That, and she didn’t know anyone else.

“Lys.” Jack was thirty-ish, good looking, and in line to make partner in the next two years. He did good suit. He was a competent lawyer and a decent litigator.

She faked a smile and looked at Jack without directly meeting his eyes. Over the years, she’d gotten good at faking contact normal people never thought twice about. She lifted the box an inch. “Hardly weighs a thing.”

Jack smoothed a hand down the river of blood that was his tie. She held her breath, half expecting his palm to come away smeared red. He reached for her moving box, and she jumped back, heart slamming against her chest. Either Jack didn’t get it, or he was in league with Michael and meant her harm. He kept moving toward her.

“Don’t.” The word came out sharp and loud. The security guard at the lobby reception area looked over. She was close to losing it. Way too close. Blocking shouldn’t be this hard for her, but the last several days had been…difficult. Not enough sleep. Not enough to eat. Too much caffeine. Far too much stress.

“Lys. Come on.” His tie vibrated at the edges of her vision. Blood red. A river of red. He reached for the box again. “I’m only trying to help out.”

She risked a look at his face. His smile was hesitant, a little irritated, but that would be normal if he really just wanted to help. Just a regular person trying to be nice. Part of her didn’t believe it. He knew Michael, and Michael had tried to kill her.

Question

If you got this far, YOU ARE AWESOME and I love YOU best of all. More than the rest of them.

If you could ask a demon any question ever, and there would be NO TRICKS, what would you ask?

News!

The UK Kindle edition of Not Wicked Enough is available on Amazon UK. If you are in the UK, Australia or New Zealand you can buy the Kindle version here and for less than the paper version!

It turns out I also have the UK/AUS/NZ rights to Scandal and Indiscreet. There are a few other countries where I have the rights so I’ll be adding those to the territories as well.

I need to get new covers made for Scandal and Indiscreet, so I imagine it will be a month or so before those are ready to put on sale. I believe I have final-copy digital files. Something to look forward to, eh?

Also, If you read German, the German edition of My Wicked Enemy is available for pre-order via Amazon.co.uk here. I think the German title is In the Arms of Demons but I don’t know.

 

The guy looks like the model in the photo I used for A Darker Crimson.

Contest!

My birthday is April 30th. I will be muffmurmbee years old! We need to celebrate. With books/gift card for books and stuff. Surprise stuff which I will surprise you with. You are at my mercy as to gifts.

To enter the contest leave a comment to this post by, say, Midnight Pacific on Monday April 30th, 2012. You should pay me a sincere compliment. You have to MEAN it. Or be really convincing. Also tell me what you’d like to get me for my birthday.

RULES:

You must be 18 or older to enter. Void where prohibited. Winner will be selected at random. You have to either leave me a contact in your email or else commit to checking back to see if you won. You’ll have two weeks to acknowledge your winning ways if you’re the winner, otherwise, I’ll select an alternate winner. International OK! Unless for some reasons it’s legally not.

First, let me preface this by saying I am sleep deprived because of a day job production database situation that kept me up and tense for about 10 hours Sunday afternoon through about 2:00am Monday. So the brain is a bit mushy.  Things came right in the end, but it was scary bad for a while.

Anyway.

It seems to be the case that when I buy books, physical reference books in particular, eventually, I run out of places to put them. My stacks are out of control. In fact, they no longer resemble stacks. Instead, they slid around like there’s a layer of jelly between them.

If I go higher, someone, probably me, is going to get hurt.

If I go wider, someone, probably me, is going to fall down in the attempt to find floor space for my feet.

So I have had to get mean.

Yes.

REALLY mean. Meaner than that Spartan cat.

I have begun to throw away books. Paper books. In my TBR. Book I bought and wanted to read. I loaned my copy of Wise Man’s Fear (a behemoth) to someone and told the loanee to take his time because when I do have time to read the book myself, I will buy it for Kindle. I just don’t do big books in paper anymore. Sorry.

Big Freaking Hardback Fantasy vs. iPad3?

The ipad3 wins. The iPad3 wins in just about every category actually.

The substructure beneath my TBR has begun to emerge.

My GOD!!!! There’s a floor here!!!!

I have found other things, too. Like, my copy of Thieves Kitchen, the Regency Underworld. I’ve been wondering where that went. People, there was a LOT of crime in the Regency.

Until such time as an eBook can adequately display the contents of some of the great, image-heavy reference books, I won’t be giving up my reference library. I suspect none of those reference books are making it to digital anytime soon.

Shame that, because eventually the presentation for books like that will be BETTER than paper.  (video, color, 3-D image rendering. — Imagine if your fashion book showed you a 360 of that gown and zoomed in on the details, or showed a person wearing it, not a mannequin but a person. THAT would be awesome. I can’t wait.)

My TBR I’m afraid, is physical toast. It’s going digital.

My Questions to You

  • How close are you to going nuclear with your physical TBR?
  • What’s in it?
  • What’s a book you’re dying to read but haven’t yet?
  • What’s the best book you’ve read lately?

Next week, Crime?

P.S. Whichever Risky was nice enough to put the cover of Not Wicked Enough in the right-hand column over there ——>
Thank you. That was really nice.

Please Welcome Brenda Novak to the Riskies!

Carolyn: I want to start out this post by telling all of you what an amazing, nice and wonderful person Brenda is. I’ve been reading her for years and have always enjoyed her books, as I’m sure is true for many of you. But it wasn’t until Brenda and I were roomies at Bouchercon a couple of years ago that I learned she’d started out writing historicals. Even two years ago, when we were at the San Francisco Bouchercon, self-publishing had only just begun to take off. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to track down her historical.
But now? Things are different, and readers and authors are the winners. Not only has she self-published that first historical, she’s released one that had never been published. Until now.
I’ll be giving away a boxed set of Brenda’s historicals to one commenter, so be sure to check the rules and comment!

Read on to find out more about Brenda’s writing, her current and upcoming projects and learn about how you can support her Diabetes Auction.

When I first started out, I wanted to write historicals. They were what I most enjoyed reading. I loved all of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s books (especially Come Love a Stranger), Gone With the Wind, Jane Eyre, Pride And Prejudice, Zemindar, Dear Amber, Rebecca and many others. But I soon learned that I’d set myself a difficult task. No only did I need to learn the craft of writing, I had to become familiar with the time period I’d chosen as a backdrop for my story (Victorian England). Today, the Internet would make such a goal far easier to obtain, but this was nearly twenty years ago. The Internet didn’t have the research materials it offers today. I remember waiting impatiently for my husband to come home from work so he could watch our four children (I now have five) while I hurried to the Sac State Library. There, I’d race the clock to find the information I needed before closing time—and spend a fortune trying to get those pages photocopied before the librarian turned out the lights.

I wrote my very first book, OF NOBLE BIRTH, under such circumstances. When I finished, it was 800 pages long, but I was so proud of reaching The End. Then I found Romance Writers of America, which I needed to be able to figure out how to market my manuscript, and learned that my beloved story wasn’t a romance so much as it was a historical with romantic elements (and as such would be much more difficult to sell). I also learned that it was far too long. So I spent several months crafting it into a true romance while trimming it to a svelte 430 pages and managed to sell it to HarperCollins. I was so over the moon when I receive The Call on August 26, 1998. I thought I had launched my career and was off and running. I had another historical finished and ready to go, and a third halfway complete.

But then Harper merged with Avon and let its romance editors and most of its romance authors go. My first book wasn’t even out yet (it debuted 11/99), and here I was, orphaned. Fortunately, I had also started writing some contemporary novels, which I was able to sell to Harlequin, who has purchased everything I’ve produced since (go Harlequin!). But in the back of my mind, I always wondered if the time I’d spent on the historicals (the second historical, in particular) would be wasted. My career had taken a different path—but would I ever get back to my first love?

The opportunity, when it came, was quite unexpected. With the advent of e-readers, I started hearing about authors who were acquiring the rights to their backlist and self-publishing those titles on Amazon. The rights to OF NOBLE BIRTH had just reverted to me, so I figured I’d do the same. Then I thought of that other manuscript that I had loved so much—HONOR BOUND—and realized that if I revised it and had it professionally edited, I could publish that, too.

New Contemporary Romance series!

OF NOBLE BIRTH hit Amazon in August. HONOR BOUND was published in November. It’s been so great to see these stories reach my fans at last. OF NOBLE BIRTH had been out of print for over a decade. And HONOR BOUND had never before been published. Together with the new series I’m writing for MIRA (a small town contemporary series sent in the fictional town of Whiskey Creek which will be out in the fall), these projects have kept me very busy. To make my life even more complicated, I’m writing a new suspense series, too. And I’m also working on another project. This one doesn’t include dreaming up stories but I’m definitely hoping it will have a happy ending.

Ten years ago, when my youngest son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I wanted to do some fundraising for research, to help him and everyone else in the same situation. I just didn’t how to go about it—or where I’d find the time. I had five kids at home and some very tight book deadlines (Ha! Sounds like now—except that some of the kids have moved out to go to college). Then I attended a silent auction at a local elementary school and realized that I could do a similar event on my Web site, where I could invite the people who visit me there to join with me.

So far, I’ve managed to raise $1.3 million, and the 2012 auction looks as if it might set a new annual record. This fundraiser is a shopper’s paradise with plenty of items to fit every budget, including trips & stays, one-of-a-kind jewelry, paintings, Native American jewelry donated by Mae Nunn, lunch with world famous author Diana Gabaldon (or Suzanne Brockmann!), and much, much more. And that’s not all. For those who are aspiring to become a novelist or to advance their writing career, there are AMAZING opportunities. Many of the most powerful agents and editors in the business have donated evaluations—some with the promise of a 24-hour response (which is unheard of in the publishing industry).

How does it all work? Just like eBay, except this auction is running at www.brendanovak.com. Visit that URL to register. The fun begins May 1st and runs throughout the month. When the bidding is over, you can pay with Paypal or credit card. In most instances the donor even picks up the shipping. And the person who places the highest number of bids over all, even if that person doesn’t win a single item, will receive a fabulous prize package including a brand new iMac, Your Name in My Next Book, and an autographed copy of WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES, Book 1 in my new Whiskey Creek series.

Check out the auction, and while you’re at my website, enter to win a romantic beach getaway to the Hilton in Destin, Florida!

What cool items have you won in past charity auctions? Do you prefer on-line shopping to brick & mortar shopping? Do you think this “wave of the future” will eventually overtake traditional fundraising?

Here’s to making a difference!

Brenda Novak

 

Carolyn again: I’ll start us off with my answers. I have won insanely cool stuff in previous diabetes auctions, and one of them actually, and I am NOT KIDDING, led to a making a friend and to a day or so of fame after a twitter typo that involved Barry Eisler.
I won lunch with author Barry Eisler. It happens he lives in Northern California, though I had to wait a bit since he was in Japan for a while, but when he came back to the States, he came the San Francisco Bay Area RWA chapter meeting and afterward, we had a wonderful and informative lunch. (I had chili. It was good.) We keep in touch to this day. In fact, we recently chatted on the phone about self-publishing and gender, and that was a really, really interesting conversation. If I hadn’t bid on that lunch, I would never have made his acquaintance and I’d be the poorer for it. I know Barry feels the same way, right Barry? (Yes, because he paid for lunch.)
Other items I’ve won include a hand carved wooden chess set, which I bid on as a gift for my son. It’s gorgeous! I’ve also bid on and won some beautiful crystal glasses and a whole series of hand-made Russian items, including an apron that is too lovely to wear.
Do NOT miss out on this auction. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s for a great cause.

Buy Brenda’s Books for Your Kindle

Honor Bound

Of Noble Birth

See a list of all of Brenda’s books on Amazon

Contest!!

I’ll be giving away a boxed set of Brenda’s historicals to a random commenter who answers one or all of Brenda’s questions.

Contest Rules

Must be 18 or older. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Leave your comment by midnight Pacific, April 27, 2012. You must either leave contact information in your comment or commit to checking back to see if you won. The winner will be notified by email (the format: blah AT blah DOT com is fine!). A new winner will be selected if there’s no reply from the winner after two weeks.

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