New Release, Woot! :D

And we're off! (A day early, even--horray for Riptide!) You can download it now at the Riptide site only (and at Amazon, B&N, ARe, etc. on Monday), and it still counts as a pre-release until 12 AM Monday morning, so it earns you an entry into Riptide's Free Books for a Year drawing, too :-)

Give me six months, and I'll give you the world.

Brandon McKinney has scraped and sacrificed for what little in life he’s ever had. Though it’s been fifteen years since he escaped his father’s abuse, the damage remains. Trust seems as far out of reach as his dream of becoming an architect, and though he’s come to accept being gay, he can’t deny the shame and confusion he feels at other urges—the deeply-repressed desire to submit.

Jonathan Watkins is a self-made Silicon Valley billionaire whose ex-wife took half his money and even more of his faith. Comfortable as a Dominant but wary of being hurt again, he resorts to anonymous pickups and occasional six-month contracts with subs seeking only a master, not a lover.

When a sizzling back-alley encounter cues Jonathan in to Brandon’s deep-seated submissive side, he makes the man an offer: Give me six months of your life, and I’ll open your eyes to a whole new world. Brandon doesn’t care about that; all he wants is the three million dollars Jonathan’s offering so he can buy the construction company he works for. But he soon learns that six months on his knees is no easy feat, and shame and pride may keep him from all he ever wanted—and all he never dreamed he had any right to have.

Join me and Cat Grant for exclusive excerpts, interviews, behind-the-scenes peeks, and—of course—prizes at the Power Play: Resistance Virtual Book Tour, April 9 through 18, 2012!

Spread the Love, Save 25% at Riptide, & Win a Nook!

Happy Valentines Day to you all! I've lots of love to spread today, and every time I look at where I am and what I'm doing and how much fun I'm having all because you amazing, wonderful, generous, enthusiastic readers out there, I just want to spread some more <3


So, three fun things going on today:


1) Today's the last day to enter my drawing for a classic Nook pre-loaded with all my titles. Rules are here :-)

2) If you leave a comment on this blog post sharing why you love to read romance, I will send you something fun. Might be swag, might be a free ebook, might be a shiny new paperback romance in need of a loving home.

3) Riptide Publishing is holding its first-ever sale today! For today only, until 11:59 PM EST, every title on the Riptide website is 25% off. No coupon codes needed, no limits, no restrictions. Even the pre-sale titles are on sale. And guess which title was just this evening made available for pre-sales? You guessed it!

Click to embiggen that bit of lovely, which is hitting the streets on April 9. Unless you pre-order, of course, in which case you'll get to download it on April 7. Nervous Author will be nervous until then ~_~

That's all for now, folks. I'm off to work on the second Power Play novel, but I promise to re-emerge from the writing cave to draw a winner for the Nook contest later this week.

Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies!

Win a Classic Nook Pre-Loaded with All My Books!

Greetings all! I'm still in head-down mode, working hard to finish the two Power Play books with Cat Grant and editing lots of fabulous 2012 releases for Riptide, which means it's been kind of quiet on the blogging front. But I'm grateful to you all every day for making it possible for me to do what I love, and since we're coming up on the more-or-less-official holiday of love, I wanted to do a little contest that encourages sharing love.

So first, the prize: I'll be giving away a classic Nook, pre-loaded with all my titles, on Valentine's Day.

How do you enter? Simple! All you have to do is leave a review on any one or more of my books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or All Romance Ebooks, then email me at metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject "Nook Review Contest" and the URL of your review or reviews. Each review earns you an entry into the contest, so yes, leaving the same review at all three stores will earn you three entries. (Please remember to be logged in at B&N when you leave your review so I know who to give credit!) If you've already reviewed a title, even if it was months ago, that counts too! Just email me the URL so I know to throw your name in the hat. You can find my Amazon titles here, my B&N titles here, and my ARe titles here.

Now for some fine print. The contest will close at midnight EST on February 14, and I'll do the drawing no later than February 18 (it may take a few days to collate and confirm all the entries). Free titles are excluded from the contest. Please respect the loving spirit of the contest and do not send me links to 1- or 2-star reviews. ARe does not allow you to leave reviews on titles you did not purchase there. Don't forget the subject line in your email or I may not see it. I will ship worldwide, so if your local Amazon shop is not Amazon.com, please feel free to leave a review on .uk or .de or .fr or the like, and those entries will count.

Thank you, and I love you all! :-)

Drop-dead Gorgeous New Cover Art!

Hello my lovelies! I have been sadly neglecting this little corner of the internets lately, and for that I apologize. But I assure you, it's because Fun Things Are Afoot. In other words, I've been writing. And writing, and writing, and writing. And also editing a lot, because, wow, the Little Publishing House That Could has taken off like a, well, runaway train, and it's full of happy readers and happy authors and just generally keeping all of us kind of insanely busy.

But the other thing that's been eating my time (and my brain) these days is--no, it's not zombies, Kari, shut up--a massive pair of contemporary BDSM novels I've been co-writing with the lovely Cat Grant, she of Once a Marine fame. The first book, Power Play: Resistance, clocks in at 90,000 words of crazy-hot vaguely dubconny nonstop kinkgasm, and is currently in edits for an anticipated Spring 2012 release (Aprilish, hopefully). The second book, Power Play: Awakening, is currently at 32,000 words and rising, just as kinktastic as Resistance, and also happens to feature a chapter-long cameo by Devon and Nicky of Master Class and SUBlime fame. We're aiming for a summer release for this one--the idea being not to keep you waiting more than a couple months between Book 1 and Book 2--so apologies in advance if things remain a little quiet on the blogging front.

Although, I will be back here in two days as part of a Friday the 13th Blog Hop where we'll be giving away a Kindle to one lucky commenter :D

Anyway, you're here for the Power Play: Resistance cover art. And boy is it a doozie. I think it may be my favorite yet. Of kind of anything ever, actually. It's beneath the jump. Don't forget to click to embiggen.

Release Day! Break and Enter :D

Afternoon, folks! It's been a busy winter round these parts--today is release day for my third new title in two months, Break and Enter. It's a fast-paced, funny, cyberpunk romp starring two rather manly men (an ex-Special Forces penetration tester and a paramedic) getting up to all sorts of mayhem and sexiness. It's also the first title I've co-written in this genre; I had the tremendous pleasure of creating this story with my dear friend, business partner, and Siamese brain twin, Aleks Voinov.

Our blurb and cover, let me show u it:

Ex-Green Beret Victor "Cyke" Kellermann is on the run for a crime he didn't--well, okay, did commit, but he didn’t realize it at the time. He’s a good guy, a “white hat” hacker for hire. He’s also more teched out than the Bionic Man, though his ailing ’ware creates as many problems as it solves.

His latest series of break-ins are proving…difficult. Sentinel Tech’s security is cutting-edge, and the cops are hounding his ass. He sees only one reason why his employer hasn’t called off the dogs: someone inside is stealing data for real and setting him up to take the fall.

Paramedic-cum-tech-phreak Bear keeps scooping an increasingly battered Cyke off the sidewalk, and each time, his fascination for the fugitive and his mysterious ’ware grows. So does the attraction that makes him reluctant to turn Cyke in. Every time they touch, barriers fall. Before long, they're both laid bare.

Cyke can handle losing blood, even losing consciousness. What he can’t afford is to lose his heart. Distractions like that get people killed—and if he succeeds in unlocking Sentinel Tech’s ugly secrets, he won’t be the only one in the line of fire.

Product Warnings

This book contains mechanical eyeballs, multimillion-dollar hand warmers, pushy mind probes, a man too stubborn to quit when he’s bleeding, an underpaid paramedic whose services are needed entirely too often, and circuit-scorching cybersex…without a computer.

It's a little bit of a departure for me--still gritty, but not dark at all, and the boys get their HEA. I hope you'll check it out. And since Samhain discounts all their new releases by 30% in their opening week, you can get this novella directly from them for just $2.45 this week! Click the link to read an excerpt and see if this one's for you :-)

/shameless plug :D

Happy holidays, my dears!

Back from Vacay with a New Book!

Greetings all! I'm home from a much-needed (but sadly working) vacation, and I even brought back with me a special souvenir head-cold. Knew I shouldn't have licked those poker chips . . .

On the plus side, the food was great, the weather was warm, the seas were . . . well, stormy, quite frankly, pretty much nonstop, but I do so love a very rocking boat when it isn't making me nauseous (which is about half the time), and the company was wonderful (I was traveling with my brand-spanking-new stepmother, who is as awesome as they come). And even though I had a big pile of edits to do for Riptide while I was away, doing them on a deck chair overlooking a tropical island is way better than my kitchen table.

So, I came home and I realized that I have a new book coming out in eight days--Break and Enter, co-written with Aleksandr Voinov and releasing from Samhain Publishing--and I haven't even begun to think about doing anything fun with it yet. I've been so busy with Riptide that I actually forgot. So, that underwear model on the cover? He's Major Victor "Cyke" Kellermann, and I have no idea what happened to his pants. I think Aleks and I will do a Find Cyke's Pants scavenger hunt and maybe give out a classic Nook I've had hanging around the house since the summer. Sound like fun?

Oh, and just a quick housekeeping note, as well: since Riptide Publishing has acquired Guiltless Pleasure Publishing, Counterpoint is now available for sale on the Riptide site, yay! Which means you can earn bonus bucks if you purchase it there (they'll be working soon, I promise :-p), and while none of the story's content has changed, it does have a shiny gorgeous new Riptide layout. Right now it's only available in PDF, but in about a week, it'll be available in Epub, Mobi, and HTML too, and all the copies on third-party sites like Amazon will switch over from the GPP layout to the RP layout.

And now, apropos of nothing, some eye candy of the kind you've all come to expect from me, beneath the jump. It involves cats and actor crushes and I think it's my new favorite thing ever.

Crescendo Release Day & Print Book Giveaway!

Howdy folks! Today's the big day--Crescendo's official release day! It's now available at Amazon, ARe, and other major retailers, as well as at Storm Moon Press, of course. And can I just say? Nervous and excited author is nervous and excited. A lot of people have been waiting for this book for almost fifteen months. I worked on this series for three years. I'm very anxious to see if readers find it the satisfying conclusion to the story that I did. One reviewer's posted so far, and it was a lovely review (thank you, M/M Good Book Reviews!), but I'll still be holding my breath for at least a couple weeks.

While I'm suffocating myself, I thought I'd also celebrate and say "Thank you" to all you amazing, wonderful, spectacular readers by giving away a print copy of Crescendo. They won't be out until December, but when they arrive, I'll sign one and put it in the mail to one lucky commenter on this post. I'll draw a winner next Friday.

Some other news as well. As you've probably noticed, it's been a bit quiet round these parts lately. Between Riptide and my own writing, I'm starting to have trouble keeping up with the blog. I still very much want this to be a place where people can come and enjoy themselves, and I'll update at least once a week, but the schedule's going to start getting a little less regular.

Also, did a ton of updates on my website today. Lots of new info for my two new releases (Crescendo and Master Class), and also some new bits on the upcoming works page, mostly about the Kinkapalooza novel I'm co-writing with Cat Grant. We only started putting words to paper less than two weeks ago, but Cat and I have already accidentally won NaNo :-p Almost 60,000 words in already, and no signs of the end yet. This book is gonna be a friggin' doorstop of kink. Very, very excited about it; it feels amazing to be writing again after taking so much time off to focus all my energy on Riptide.

Hmm, I think that's it for now. I'm at a couple different places today: you can read a nice excerpt from Crescendo and maybe win a copy of Counterpoint at Laura Kaye's blog, and I have a guest post at Naughty Boys in the Backseat on the only-half-immortal problem. (Trust me, it's a big problem :-p)

If you've already read Crescendo, do let me know what you think, even if you hated it. If you haven't, say hello anyway to get yourself entered in the giveaway. I'll ship anywhere in the world.

Hugs and love to you all--I'm feeling particularly bouncy today :D

New Book in the Works

Happy Friday, folks! I'm thrilled to say that after all the time-eating (but wonderful!) craziness of Crescendo edits and launching fifteen books at once for Riptide, I have actually begun to write again.

O. M. G. does that feel great.

Last week I escaped the power outages in Jersey by fleeing to Cat Grant's place in lovely Monterey, CA. (See: this:)

And Cat and I have been hashing out the plot of a Big Kinky Book for a while now--a sort of grudgingly willing total power exchange situation between a rich experienced Dom who no longer believes anyone will ever want him for anything but his money and a struggling construction worker whose submissive side is buried so deeply he may or may not actually be submissive . . . but for the right incentive, he's willing to find out.

Cat and I have banged out almost 25,000 words on this already--close to 100 pages!--and we're just getting getting started on act 2. Looks like this'll turn out to be a nice meaty novel, and I'm so excited by it, our boys won't even let me sleep at night. They just keep whispering in my ear, "Hey, how about trying this with us?" or "Wouldn't [insert deliciously pervy thing here] be naughty and fun?" And of course I can never say no to my boys.

I have to fly home in half a week, but here's hoping that by then, we'll have gotten out another 10K of pure pervy play. At the rate we're going, we might even have this thing finished by the end of the year. Very exciting all around, and oh holy crap does it feel amazing to finally be doing what I should be doing again: putting fingers to keyboard and abusing the fuck out of hot hot men ;-p

Book Review: Counterpunch, by Aleks Voinov. 5 of 5 Stars

Apologies for the unexpected silence this week. I was in one of those "Snowtober" areas where the kids got an unexpected week off from school because three quarters of the state had no power. My solution to this was to pick up and fly to California to visit dear friend and fellow M/M author Cat Grant. I'll be hanging here for a couple weeks to catch up on sleep post-Riptide launch and get started on a big kinky book we're co-writing.

In the meanwhile, I wanted to post a mini-review on Aleksandr Voinov's new novel, Counterpunch, which released today. Full disclosure: I was a beta, and it's also set in my sandbox (this story is written in the same world as Anchored and Where He Belongs). That said, Aleks wrote such a beautiful novel I'm downright jealous of how well he handled my sandbox; he built a much prettier castle than I ever did!
Here's the blurb:

Fight like a man, or die like a slave.

Brooklyn Marshall used to be a policeman in London, with a wife and a promising future ahead of him. Then he accidentally killed a rioter whose father was a Member of Parliament and had him convicted of murder. To ease the burden on the overcrowded prison system, Brooklyn was sold into slavery rather than incarcerated. Now, he's the "Mean Machine", a boxer on the slave prizefighting circuit, pummelling other slaves for the entertainment of freemen and being rented out for the sexual service of his wealthier fans.

When Nathaniel Bishop purchases Brooklyn's services for a night, it seems like any other assignation. But the pair form an unexpected bond that grows into something more. Brooklyn hesitates to call it "love"—such things do not exist between freemen and slaves—but when Nathaniel reveals that he wants to help get Brooklyn's conviction overturned, he dares to hope. Then, an accident in the ring sends Brooklyn on the run, jeopardizing everything he has worked so hard to achieve and sending him into the most important fight of all—the fight for freedom.

This is classic Voinov at his finest: dark, gritty, morally ambiguous, dangerous, violent, and sexy as hell. All that plus a genuine romance! If you are a fan of any of these things, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. When you're done with your first read, you'll want to read it again, and again, and again. Pure love.

The Joys of Remodeling

Over at casa Haimowitz, we're getting a new floor laid in the kitchen and downstairs hallway. The contractors started yesterday, and I've learned a few things since then.

Shiny-- er, splintery sub-floor.

1. Remodeling sucks.

2. The cat and dog also think remodeling sucks. Their whole world looks and smells different, and there are all these strange men in the house making a racket.

3. Remodeling sucks.

4. Did I mention the racket? I'm nocturnal--I tend to work til 5 or 6 in the morning and then sleep til 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Contractors? Don't. Here at 8am sharp, revving their power tools and banging things and making the dog bark. Expect some punch-drunk (and potentially cranky :-p) tweets from me over the next week or so.

5. Remodeling sucks.

6. Gods, what a mess! I have sawdust in places I can't discuss in polite company.

Let's play Identify the Animal Tracks! :-)

7. When's the last time you cleaned out your pantry or your hall closet? For me, I'm pretty sure that was when I moved in here eleven years ago. Ended up with three bags full of shoes and coats and gloves and scarves and such for Goodwill--things I hadn't worn in years. Also magically discovered some dried Indian food about five years past its expiration date. Hmm . . .

Contents of hall closet & pantry.

8. So in conclusion, remodeling sucks. But hey, there'll be a fresh coat of paint and a lovely new tile floor at the end of it all, and considering I'd actually worn holes in the laminate that used to be there by sitting in the same place every day to work for eleven years, I suppose it's worth the trouble in the end.

How about you? Any remodeling stories-slash-bitching you'd like to share? :-)

Crescendo Release Date Moved

Hi all. As I'd suspected on Monday, the Crescendo release date has been moved due to hurricane Irene. The next available slot in my publisher's schedule is November 18, so that's when Crescendo will be releasing. Folks who pre-order will still be able to download it two days early.

This mess? Is what it looked like yesterday just four miles from me.

Yeah, that's the National Guard not having any more luck than anyone else.

I don't usually get up on my soapbox, but if you live anywhere near any of the hard-hit areas and can donate blood to the Red Cross, it's desperately needed. If you're not (or are) in the area and want to help, you can donate funds to the Red Cross. Or text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10.

My home is far enough from any of the nearby rivers to have missed the serious flooding, but I did and do have a mess to clean up. The job is compounded by the fact that towns are completely isolated here--few to no roads open in and out, supermarkets closed, sketchy or no power (mine just went out for an hour while I was trying to make this blog post), bridges (and highways, oddly enough) washed away, etc. While I'm in the middle of all this, please don't worry if it takes me a few days to answer an email or if I drop off the radar completely. Like I said, power outages are still an issue, and I don't have a smartphone, so when it goes I lose my internet and can't get out to go find it somewhere else.

In the meanwhile, I hope you'll consider donating blood or money or both (er, but not blood money, kay?) to help the thousands of people who've lost everything this week and are still stuck in Red Cross shelters, waiting to go home. Also please consider shopping with Candlemark & Gleam, a lovely independent speculative fiction press who is donating 100% of the sale price of their ebooks to Vermont victims of Irene.

Irene Update, Crescendo News

Good morning, all! Those of you who frequent Fantasy Unbound know this to be a pretty relentlessly happy place, but I'm afraid I have some potentially bad news for fans of Crescendo today, and it's going to involve a little bit of explanation that veers toward the sort of thing I usually would rather not discuss, but since it affects anyone waiting for Crescendo, I think you deserve to know. (If you're short on time, scroll down to the bottom for the tl;dr version.)

Good news first about Irene, though. Actually, it's all pretty related, so . . .

Irene veered east at the last second, and the eye of the storm--and the most damaging winds--missed us. Miraculously, we kept power (excepting a long series of brownouts during landfall), despite hundreds of thousands of people all around us losing theirs. We have water damage, my whole house smells like a swamp,  the local river flooding is catastrophic and only getting worse (people in town have water up to the second floor of their homes, and the rivers won't even crest until tomorrow), and my dad still hasn't been allowed back to his house to inspect the damage (he lives about 100 feet from the beach), but we're all safe. (Give it a week; I suppose the mold might kill me? :-p) I hope everyone else was at least as fortunate.

Now, to explain what this has to do with Crescendo, I need to back up a few months.

Very late into the process of getting Crescendo ready, I learned my dear publisher, Guiltless Pleasure, was closing down due to a serious illness with the owner (she is well on the mend now, thank goodness). Storm Moon Press stepped in and offered to publish Crescendo on a ridiculously tight timeline, since the release date had been set a year back from Guiltless Pleasure and I very much wanted to stick to it if I could.

This meant that everything was crazy compressed, and there was much less time to focus on things like edits and production than anyone was entirely comfortable with. Neither myself nor my new publisher were willing to deliver anything less than the very best we were capable of, so we all started putting in long, intense hours to make it happen.

That meant every hour of every day was both precious and critical to hitting the release date. Fast-forward to Irene. I lost half a week preparing for the storm and the inevitable flooding, since this isn't the sort of thing we're generally ready for up in these parts. Stupid things like buying batteries for my flashlights could take hours and trips to several sold-out stores. All the furniture (and junk stored) in the basement needed to be moved. Good thing we did, as I was up all night helping my sump pump bail the basement out. The flooding's slowed but hasn't stopped, even though the rain has, because of the situation with the rivers. Now there's a big pile of cleanup to come, and more lost hours and days from my edits.

So, I'll be late turning these in to my publisher. Which in turn throws off my publisher's schedule, since mine is by no means the only book they're publishing this fall. This means they now have to scramble to work proofreading, layout, conversion, and galley proofing into an already packed schedule. This means there is a very good chance that Crescendo will miss its release date. I want to stress that this has nothing at all to do with Storm Moon Press, who has bent over backward at every point in the process to deliver the best book possible.

I'm trying to do the same, but it's looking like it's time to beg your understanding and patience in the event the book misses its scheduled release by a couple or few weeks. A lot hinges on how capable I am of making up for lost time in an already very full schedule, and of how much lost time I'll actually need to make up for--I won't really know the extent of the flood damage (or the consequent cleanup, which is already monstrous) until the waters crest and recede, and I may yet still lose power to said floodwaters at any point (and those who already have lost power have been told not to expect it back for over a week, nor can many evacuate to somewhere that does have power because the town has turned into an island). Just as much hinges on how how quickly the manuscript can be worked into my publisher's production schedule if/when I miss my due date. (I must stress again that this is entirely beyond their control.)

So, the tl;dr version? Weather sucks. Crescendo might be a few weeks late. Please don't kill me :-p

The Weirdness Continues

Happy Friday, all! Alas, it's looking like a bit of a mess round these parts, as the eye of Hurricane Irene is forecast to, well, glare really hard right over my head. (Is anyone else surprised that, between the very rare northeast hurricane and the even rarer northeast earthquake, that nobody's yet found a way to blame God's wrath on teh gays or portend End Times? Doesn't that usually happen right about now?)

Anyway, long story short, the disaster folks are telling us to expect power outages for days and possibly even weeks. Since I don't have time to front-load my blog, I'm afraid it will go without updates for as long as I'm stuck without power/internet. An even more unfortunate side effect may be the delay of the Crescendo release by a couple weeks, since I'm supposed to be wrapping up edits in the next couple weeks and can't do that if my battery's dead. If it looks like the power situation is truly ominous, I'll try to get out of town, but where I live literally becomes an island when there's flooding and odds are good the roads will be closed for a while.

Don't worry about me, though--I'll be perfectly safe in my (sadly flood-prone) basement, reading my Kindle by candlelight as the storm blows by. Until . . . well, whenever! :-)

Sex So Good the Earth Shoo-- Oh, Wait.

Yeah, so, that was a thing that happened, eh? My first earthquake ever. If you live in the affected area, was it your first as well? Did you know what it was when it happened? I . . . did not. I've had attacks of vertigo on rare occasion, so that was my first thought. My second, since I live about 10 minutes by air from Newark Airport, was that we were being buzzed by a plane. My third was that a plane had crashed. My fourth was a bomb. Friggin' earthquake in Central Jersey? Yeah, that was a distant fifth. And thank goodness it was nothing serious, because even after I figured it out, I was still just sitting at my computer, watching stuff on the walls rattle, totally baffled. Here, let me illustrate:

O_o

Then all my neighbors went outside to O_o at each other. After a few minutes, we decided that, yes, that did actually just happen.

And then . . . then pictures of the devastation started coming in from Washington:

via famousdc.com

So, er, yeah, everyone's fine round these parts, except perhaps for a little too much group excitement :-)

"The End" FTMFW. And Free Stuff. Horray!

I'm thrilled to announce that at roughly 4 o'clock this morning, I typed the final words on the first draft of Crescendo. No, they were not "The end." But they could have been, as Crescendo marks the end of the 215,000-word journey Ayden and Freyrik started in Counterpoint and just finished on my laptop last night.

Now there will be edits, of course. Lots and lots of edits. But for the next day or two, I'm giving myself a break. I've been laboring hard under deadline for months now, and I'm looking forward to doing nothing for the next couple days but sleeping and reading Charles/Erik X-Men slashfic :D

And celebrating, of course. But what's a party without gifts? So I've got one for you folks. Here it is. (Click to embiggen.)

You're looking at one shiny canvas Crescendo tote bag; a lined, magnetic-backed Crescendo note pad, some Crescendo sticky notes, and two large Crescendo 2012 calendar magnets (one with full front-and-back artwork, and one with fonting).

Next Friday, I will happily ship this to one lucky winner anywhere in the world. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment (with your email, please!) telling me which character in the Song of the Fallen series is your favorite and why. Are you an Ayden gal like me? A Rik gal like my Counterpoint editor? Or maybe you loved the ever-staid Alfred Lord Lini, or the Disney princess Ella, or even the White Witch Lady Kona. Whoever it was, whatever the reason, leave it in the comments and I'll draw one winner at random from among all entries that follow this simple rule.

If the competition is fierce or your answer is particularly inspired, I'll throw in some other goodies as well, both from some of my other titles and from Kari Gregg and Aleks Voinov. (Yes, the three of us are all so internet!married to each other that we give out each other's swag.)

Oh, and one more thing before I go. My ridiculously brilliant Counterpoint editor has started up a fun new writing prompt blog called Creative Writing Prompts to help feed and inspire the muse in us all. It's brand new, but some creative prompts are up already, so go check it out!

Crescendo Sneak Peek #3

My scheduled guest couldn't make it today, so I thought I'd share a bit of my WIP with you all. It's hitting the 70,000-word mark today and will hopefully be wrapped up nice and tidy by the end of the month (or my editor will make me scrub toilets, yikes!). I've basically been eating, sleeping. and breathing Crescendo these last several weeks, and I'm very excited about it lately. I hope you will be too :-)

Before I get to the excerpt, just a few quick bits of administrava:

• It's not too late to enter the drawing for a free print copy of Sublime. Just pop on over to my last blog entry and leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject of pricing, which I discussed in the entry. I'll draw a winner on Friday. If you're having trouble leaving a comment (some people have mentioned this), just drop me an email or contact me via my website comment form instead.
  
  
• Storm Moon Press has added one more awesome incentive to pre-order Where He Belongs: you'll get to download the book a full 48 hours before the official release date! Of course you'll still be entered in the drawing for all the cool prizes too, so go, order! It's only $1.99 :-)
  
  
• Counterpoint is at last for sale as a Barnes and Noble Nook book, horray!
  
  
• The Anchored trade paperback is currently on sale at Amazon for $12.75. I don't know how long that sale will last--the last one disappeared in less than a day--so if you're interested and have been waiting for the price to drop, now's the time.

And now what you came for, beneath the jump.

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!])

Interview Fun and a Shiny New Paperback!

Greetings all :-) As I mentioned a few days back, Sublime: Collected Shorts is now available in print at just $6.95. For those of you who found Createspace's shipping costs prohibitive, I'm pleased to announce that the Sublime trade paperback came available on Amazon this evening, where it's eligible for free shipping. In that regard, I'd like to turn the floor briefly over to Jay Sherman, who has a wise and important message for you all on my behalf ;-)

In other news, I'm being interviewed over at Leanne Dyck's blog today. And tomorrow as well, actually, as the interview went kind of long, so she's posting it over two days. Peek in on or after 9 AM pacific time to learn all about my sordid history as a game store owner and how that helped me become a writer.

And don't forget that tomorrow there'll be some writing prompt excitement with the one and only Indigo Skye, who'll be giving away one free copy of her upcoming release to an amateur writer among us. I'll be sweetening the pot by offering an editorial critique on one person's prompt-fic, of the kind I used to do for contracted authors when working editorial at Avalon Publishing.

Lastly, I've made a few updates to my website, RachelHaimowitz.com, in particular on the "About Me" and "Upcoming Works" pages. If you've ever wondered how I look in hippie facepaint (and surely that question keeps you all up at night), go on and check it out.