You knew I had to post pictures of this weekend's SnowMyGosh. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn't seen it. Depending on where you were in the Washington DC area, the snow stick measured between 18 and 32 inches of accumulation. The Squirrel Towers side of the hill collected around 24 inches.
I'm still stupefied. I've lived in this area most of my life, and I've never seen a winter to match. Not one, but two--TWO--record snowfalls, and the season's still promising more. We could get between another two and eight inches by mid-week.
What makes this all the more surreal: in late 2008 I visited a friend in Montana. I was enchanted by her town and awed by the vastness of the landscape, but we both agreed I couldn't handle the winter. So I flew home to Virginia.
How the heck did Montana sneak on the plane?
The view from the patio Saturday evening, as the snow finally ceased.  The front sidewalk Sunday afternoon. The sunlight on the snow is so bright the shadows are blue.
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 Cue the trumpet fanfare. Today marks the release of “Hoodoo Cupid”, my first contemporary romance, by Red Rose Publishing. “Hoodoo Cupid” tells the story of two ad agency pros—copywriter Maggie Scanlan and agency wunderkind Dan Constantine—who fall in love in an Emergency Room…with a little help from a certain voodoo doll.
In honor of the occasion, and because it’s Thursday, here are thirteen of my favorite lines from the story:
1. Forget the clichés about friends helping you move and friends helping you move bodies. Real friends sacrificed their lunch hour to help you exact proxy revenge outdoors on a day so brutally cold even the agency’s smokers refused to risk it.
2. “Now hurry up and push your pin in his heart so we can get back inside. My five-year plan doesn’t include freezing to death for the sake of you or your bad boy.”
3. “It’s not going to work. It never does. All it does is make me feel better. Take that, Daniel Curtiss Constantine.” Maggie finished hacking through the second leg and started to sob.
4. “Yeah, I can see how it’s a real attitude adjuster,” Germaine said dryly.
5. The universe had other plans. It planned to enjoy a big honking, snorting, coffee-through-the-nose-spewing belly laugh at Maggie’s expense. There, not a dozen yards in front of her, striding in the direction of her favorite takeout, was the bane of her professional life.
6. It never occurred to her to push him into traffic. He stepped off the curb all by himself.
7. “So this is what it takes,” Constantine gasped, “to get your attention.”
8. She expected the surroundings to diminish him. Instead she discovered the width of his shoulders owed nothing to padding. An uneasy mix of guilt and curiosity writhed inside her. Did his legs match the rest of him?
9. [His eyes] were a clear light gray, completely at odds with his Mediterranean complexion and the dark brown eyelashes that belonged in a mascara commercial. When those eyes focused on a person—the way they focused on her now—it was like being targeted by a pair of lasers.
10. His voice had a husky quality—a subtle roughness like vintage mohair upholstery, which inspired almost as much thigh wriggling and skirt palming among the agency power groupies as his eyes.
11. The only answers Maggie had were rude. She found a spot on the floor that looked like Kansas and wished for a tornado.
12. Worse, the movement called attention to his muscular, mostly naked legs. Inside her head she groaned. He’d be perfect if only he weren’t in advertising.
13. (The one my Texas friends like best.)
“Afghanistan?” she squeaked. “You were in the Army?”
“Three years, eight months, seventeen days, and just a little over three hours. Do you want it in minutes? C’mon, Maggie, give me a little credit. You didn’t think it took me seven years to graduate Yale, did you?” He laughed. “If I’d been that slow, the only way I could’ve made a living would’ve been to move to Texas and go into politics.”
Now you know you want to read the rest. Check it out at Red Rose Publishing and, maybe, take it home for Valentine’s Day.
Happy reading!
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That's right--me, the person who hates to chat--will be co-hosting the Red Rose Channel at Blog Talk Radio tomorrow, January 31, from 2-3 p.m. EST. Well, I might hate IM chat, but I do like to talk.
And I won't be the only one there. The featured guest will be Red Rose author Angela Kaye Austin. Angela is an author of inter-racial contemporary romance novels featuring strong African-American women whose love can't be bound by race, bank accounts, age, religion or gender. Her current novel, Love's Chance, tells the story of Sinclair Mosley, a woman on a mission to pay back her parents and save her family business. That mission takes her to Pennsylvania, where the locals don't exactly welcome her with open arms. But Chance O'Malley does. At the risk of losing everything that brought her to Pennsylvania, including her family's restaurant, Sinclair must decide if she's willing to take a chance on love.
My co-host will be one half of the Red Rose Channel's terrific twosome, Kali Willows. Franny is away on a well-deserved vacation, and she turned over the keys to the kingdom. Tune in or call in (917-889-3332), if only to see how I manage to make her sorry. ;-)
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Still deep in the writing cave, but I'll be emerging soon. Promise! (Be afraid. Be very afraid...) As a foretaste, today I posted the first tickle of promo for "Hoodoo Cupid", my February 4 release from Red Rose, at Beyond the Veil.
Tomorrow, if I figure out how to do it, I'll try to post a very low res version of one of the interior pages of Fantasy Art Templates. My promo copies arrived yesterday, and they are beautiful beyond belief. Even better, earlier tonight ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) crazywritergirl was looking for the name of a specific member of the angelic hosts--and it was in there, along with everything from pirates to giants to snake goddesses. Not only is it gorgeous, the book's a great reference too. Win!
Cheers and smiles,
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I finally, finally finished the draft of "Lord Bai and the Magic Pirate" I've owed to a certain kind editor for longer than I care to think about it. I'm late. She may no longer want the story. It may not meet her specs. (It's a little long.) But it's done, except for the mad twitching that always happens in the first 48 hours after I think I've finished a draft.
As usual, I'm looking for a few victims--er, volunteers to give me their thoughts before I send this baby out into the cold cruel world. *user beams hopeful puppy eyes at the crowd*
To help you make up your mind, LB & the MP, is a comic fantasy set in Nanjing in the early Ming Dynasty. It's a little under 11,000 words long. There's no romance, though Bai does manage to accost at least one well-paid courtesan, a shape-changing fox, several large dogs, and a lot of people who really ought to know better.
Just let me know.
Cheers and relieved smiles,
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For reasons beyond human ken, the good folks at Samhain Publishing thought I'd be the perfect person to open the next decade of the company blog. You can read the damage here. One thing you can be sure of, it fits right in with the Cartoon Network's New Year Looney Tunes marathon. Enjoy!
Wishing everyone the best of the New Year!
Cheers and cyber-confetti,
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amused
tired
sleepy
accomplished