Blood Feud Poetry

Afternoon all! Sadly, my guest today couldn't make it. Fortunately, I've been sitting on a rather hilarious bit of deathmatch poetry that a dear friend of mine wrote in honor of Kari Gregg's stomping-to-be at my hands in The Romance Review's 2010 Non-traditional Romance of the Year contest.

Before I move on to the poem . . . Some of you may know I'm a bit of a news junkie. I used to work in news, and I still read quite a bit of it (though I don't watch it so much anymore). Today I came across what is easily the funniest bit of legitimate news copy I've read all month, from TVNewser:

TMZ reports that [Chris] Brown threw a chair through his “GMA” dressing room window, and confronted a segment producer as he was leaving the building. He also ripped off his shirt for some reason before storming out.

(Ten bucks says someone's gonna wonder why they're getting referrals from an erotic romance blog :D)

And now, on to the rhymes, lovingly written by Caz Galloway.

The Romance Review awards are here
And things are getting tough,
Lovely Wicked smirks on one side
And Anchored: Belonging’s looking rough
Kari’s got a trailer and music with a beat,
But Rachel’s got a website with more than a little heat.

Lovely Wicked looks quite lovely like a visit to your Gran,
There’s a girl and there’s a boy and oh look, another man.
And there’s lovey and there’s dovey and it really makes you queasy,
For there’s nothing we hate more than a romance (and girl) that’s easy…

Whereas Anchored: Belonging, well we can’t say it’s nice,
Out of your darling sheltered hearts, it’s sure to cut a slice,
But there’s nekkidness and hotness and plenty of man-on-man,
I mean, just check out the cover, take a seat and take a fan…

It’s a tour de force of hotness (you’ll need more than one cold shower),
Not so much titillation as orgasm by the hour,
Nothing comes without a price (ask Daniel if you’re not sure)
But a mental scar or two ain’t too bad (it’s the whipping that’s most sore…)

So vote Lovely Wicked if you want some lukewarm longing,
But for heat enough to boil the kettle vote Anchored: Belonging,
Rachel’s the only girl who’s book can scratch your twisted itch,
Plus if you don’t vote for her, she’ll go and Cut. A. Bitch.


Thank you, Caz :D Now go forth, folks, and do as she says: VOTE ANCHORED! :D

Blood Feuds and Freelancing, Not Necessarily In that Order

Morning, my dearies! I've been a bad (and stomach-fluey) blogger this week, but I'm feeling better and hopefully right back into the swing of the Mon/Wed/Fri thing.

Since I missed a couple posts and have lots to share, let's break out the bullet points.

• The Rachel/Kari Blood Feud now has not only a website, but also a trailer. However, said trailer is about as fair and balanced as Fox News, so I suggest you stay away. Do not watch it. At all. Forget that I even mentioned it. Or linked to it. Or that it exists. Kari is mean. Boo. (Vote Anchored!)
  
• I'm writing a bazillion-part series (okay, more like five, I think) on Reena Jacobs's blog about the creative work that goes into self-publishing a book and how to go about evaluating and hiring folks to help you do things like developmental edit, copyedit, proofread, cover art, and interior layout. If you've ever thought about self-publishing your own work (or about hiring an editor to help you get something up to snuff for traditional publication), you'll want to check this out. If you have any questions about anything I've covered or not covered, feel free to leave them in the comments. Part I and Part II are already up. Part III comes out on Friday.
  
• In an effort to keep my ass in the chair long enough to get Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen turned in under deadline, I've taken to writing bits of it live in a public Google document. For those of you who've never used gdocs, there's basically a chat box down one quarter of the screen and a document editor taking up the other three quarters. I've been inviting people in as viewers, not collaborators, so you can only type in the chat box, but while you're there you can watch me writing Crescendo in real time; the words show up on the page as if you were standing over my shoulder watching the screen while I type. Sometimes everything comes out nice and smooth and it's really fun to watch; other times, there are long pauses while I look things up or try to figure out where to go next. Often, there are hilarious conversations going on in the chat box. If you'd like to join in on this, email me at metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll invite you into the document. (Keep in mind that you'll be jumping in in the middle of whatever scene I'm working on at the time; the prior material is not posted.)
  
• Side note: I accidentally worked some light BDSM into Crescendo. I was as pleasantly surprised by it as Rik and Ayden were.
  
• If you've ever wondered why ebooks are sometimes priced higher than their paper counterparts, or why novel-length ebooks are generally between $6 and $10 from small e-pubs even though they're not physical, I got into a long conversation about it this evening over on the Kindle Smut group on Goodreads. You do need to be a member of KS to read that, but it's an open group (anyone can join with a single mouse-click), and also an awesome group. I've met some amazing friends, readers, and authors over there, and encourage everyone to check it out whether they're interested in the ebook price discussion or not. If you've an aversion to joining Goodreads or KS for whatever reason and still want to know about ebook pricing, let me know and maybe I'll make a blog post out of it in the near future.

Okay, I think that's enough for today. Thanks for waiting me out, folks, and I'll see you in gdocs!

Happy Read an Ebook Week! Celebrate w/Discounts & a Blood Feud!

As many of you may know, the week of March 6 is Read an Ebook Week. If you click on that link, you can enter to win an ereader. Over here at Fantasy Unbound, I'm celebrating with discounts, a buy-one-get-one-free, and a blood feud.

First, the discounts. My gay erotic BDSM ebook, Sublime: Collected Shorts, is 25% off this week at Smashwords. Just use the coupon code RAE25 during checkout, and Sublime can be yours for only $2.24! The print version of Sublime is also on sale this week at Createspace. Enter coupon code F4U75SWA to purchase a lovely 6x9 trade paperback edition of Sublime for only $4.95!

And for this week only, if you purchase Counterpoint: Book I of Song of the Fallen in print or ebook directly from the publisher using THIS LINK, and then email the account name you used to purchase the book to metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com, I'll send you an ebook copy of Sublime for free. (You must use the link provided above, or I won't be able to see that you've purchased the book.) Already have a copy? No worries; I'm happy to gift it to the recipient of your choosing.


And Now the Blood Feud . . .


Those of you who follow me on Twitter probably already know that Kari Gregg's Lovely Wicked and my Anchored: Belonging Book One have both been nominated for the 2010 Non-traditional Erotic Romance Book of the Year over at The Romance Reviews. Rather than take this potential competition gracefully, as good friends might we wont to do, Kari and I have chosen to smash each other into tiny puddles of unidentifiable goo. (We do this with the utmost love, I assure you :-D) Our feud even has its own website.

So, in the ancient tradition of the Pandering Vote Whore (and the even more ancient tradition of the quasi-quasi-quasi-celebrity deathmatch), I implore you . . .

Click here to vote!

And if you'd like to show your support for me (or for that other chick who looks--and no doubt writes--like drunk-and-arrested Nick Nolte), you can download your own badge at KariSucksAndRachelIsAwesome.weebly.com.

That's all for today, my dears. I'll see you Wednesday for a lovely guest interview and free ebook giveaway with All Things Romantic Suspense author Jerri Drennen.

The Showdown Begins!

Yesterday, I made a post about the Grand Opening Celebration at the Romance Reviews. It's made of awesome, of course, and also of $2,000 in prizes for readers to win.

BUT, it's also made of opportunity for me to stomp my dear friend Kari Gregg into the bloodied ground, and really, who could pass up something like that?

To that end, dear readers, I need your help. If you click here, you'll see that part of the celebration is a Best Books of 2010 contest. Under the "Best Erotic Romance (Non-Traditional Lifestyle)" category, you'll see my amazing, wonderful, awe-inspiring, conversation-dominating Anchored: Belonging (click to vote or read the review). You'll also see Kari Gregg's too-oft paragraph-broken, oversexed, girl-cootie infested Lovely Wicked. You wouldn't want girl cooties to win, now would you? Of course you could vote for one of those other books in the category, but then you run the risk of Kari pulling out a victory. But if we all band together and vote, as a group, for Anchored, then we can rest assured that Ms. Contaminating Our Genre With Girly Bits won't be able to win.

Totally selfless, yeah? And if you're feeling like voting at all is just too much bother, well, let me share with you two things I told Kari a while back:

1. The Romance Reviews is an awesome place filled with tons of fun things, not just reviews. Starting an account there is easy and worth the trouble.

2. I. Will. Cut a bitch.

That is all :D

And on an entirely different note, I did a really fun interview today with Sarah Ballance, author of Run to You (of super-hot cover model fame, among other things). She asked some very interesting questions, and I think I talked her ear off. Also, I'm neck deep in Crescendo right now (along with a couple other projects that I'm hoping to kick out into the world soon), and I'm finding my free time for blogging is disappearing. So for now at least, I'm going to drop back to updating this blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with perhaps the occasional bit of news in between. Thanks so much to all of you for following so faithfully--I promise I'll try to make those three weekly posts well worth the visit.

Hugs to you all!

(Now go vote! [For Anchored, damn you!])