Guest Blog and Contest: A Bit of Advice, Just-Gotta-Say Style, with Laura Kaye

Greetings all!

Today's my birthday, and I'm celebrating by taking the day off from blogging. Fortunately, I've got a fun guest-blogger in to take my place, so let's all give a warm welcome to Laura Kaye!

Also, since it's my birthday, this definitely calls for presents. And by presents I mean the twelve free paperback books I got at Authors After Dark. Click the pic to embiggen and read all the titles.

Laura Kaye's sweetening the pot with a free ebook copy of her new story, Just Gotta Say. (Want to learn more? Check out this review.) Want to win? Just leave a comment. The ebook will go to one winner anywhere in the world, and the print books will go to another winner in the USA only (apologies, but shipping is hugely expensive outside the US). I'll draw for the paperbacks on Monday. Laura will draw for the ebook.

And now for Laura's guest post, beneath the jump.

Congratulations 2012 EPIC Finalists!

Every year, EPIC (the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) holds a major ebook award competition for the best of electronic publishing across a wide variety of genres. Their list of finalists just released, and I was absolutely delighted to see some familiar names on that shortlist.

So today, I'd like to offer a heartfelt congratulations to:

• My dear friend and Riptide First Wave author Cat Grant, who made the finals not once but twice in the Erotica category.
  
  
• Perennial laugh factory and Riptide First Wave author L.A. Witt, who also made the finals twice: once writing as L.A. Witt in the Contemporary Romance category, and once writing as Lauren Gallagher in the Erotica category.
  
  
• And the brilliantly talented artist Reese Dante (she of Riptide's Once a Marine cover) for eight (!!!) nominations for cover art across a number of categories.

Congratulations to all of you on your well-deserved recognition, and best of luck in the finals. We'll be rooting for you!

It Begins! (With Free Books!)

The Riptide pre-party at Amara's Place, I mean :-) The kickoff post is up, and it features yours truly discussing Andrea Speed's Pretty Monsters. Both Andrea and I will be popping in throughout the day, so come on over, say hi, and win a free backlist book from Andrea!

Be sure to stop in at the Place tomorrow, too, for a discussion of the brilliant up-and-comer Peter Hansen, and his book, First Watch. Then on Sunday, Aleksandr Voinov will be at the Place to discuss Master Class. There's a new prize every day, and two big prize packs at the end of the week, so don't miss out on all the fun and free stuff!

Tour Craziness Countdown!

In two days' time, I get to kick off the Riptide Publishing Grand Opening Celebration (well, technically this is a pre-celebration) at Amara's Place, where Aleks Voinov and I will be spending just over a week dishing out the skinny on our First Wave authors and why we bought their books. I hope you'll join us! There will of course be prizes--a Riptide author author sampler (read: heap of free ebooks) and a big box o' swag--and every post you comment on will earn you an entry into the end-of-year grand prize drawings for one of three awesome prizes: a Nook, a Kindle, and an iPad.

On October 1, the tour kicks off in earnest; our twelve First Wave authors will be making over 70 stops in October alone (and then just as many in November and December), and every single stop will feature unique content! Each stop will also feature a prize giveaway, and the same opportunity to enter into the grand prize drawings.

To that end, I updated my own personal schedule tonight. You can click that link to see everywhere I'll be, both for the Riptide blog tour (where I'll be talking about Riptide in general, my new BDSM novella Master Class, and writing at large) and the Crescendo blog tour. Lots of fun and prizes to be had, so I hope to see you all there!

Edited to add: Michael Fassbender kinda crying, after the jump, since people yelled at me for daring to make a post without him :-p

Monday Picspam & a Deal on Counterpoint

Yep, still crazy deadlines, which means more picspam for you :-) I'm doing a final sanity check on Aleks Voinov's absolutely FAN-FRIGGIN-TASTIC Belonging-verse novel Counterpunch tonight, and I'd forgotten between the spring and now just how much I loved it when he was writing it. Now that he's given it a good hard polish, it's even more amazing. (See for yourself--you can read an excerpt [and win a Kindle!] at the publisher's website.)

So, in celebration of that, I'm posting some hot hot boxers today a few non-copyrighted gifs and screencaps (other pictures likely belonged to someone and had no business being here in the first place, and have thus been deleted) beneath the jump.

Two quick notes before the picspam begins.

First, with the Crescendo release date looming close, my publishers have gotten together to offer both Counterpoint (the first book in the Song of the Fallen series) and Crescendo at 20% off when purchased directly through the publishers' websites. This is the cheapest it's ever been, so if you've been waiting to get it, now's a good time.

Second, OMG, the Riptide Publishing Grand Opening Celebration is just around the corner! See that shiny banner in my left sidebar? Click it! There's lots of exciting new stuff on the Riptide website and more to come, and our first stop on the party tour begins September 23 at Amara's Place with lots of fun and prizes and behind-the-scenes peeks at our first eight titles.

Okay, now picspam. And yep, I still managed to work in Fassavoy, and a bonus Til Schweiger! As always, click to embiggen.

The Writing Process (& Swag!) with Kari Gregg

Morning folks! Today I'm joined by the hilarious and brilliantly talented Kari Gregg, who's here to discuss her creative process with you all in typical Kari fashion. She's also got a brand new book out that's so damn hot it'll fog up your computer screen, so before I turn the floor over to her, let's have a peek, shall we?

After one mind-shattering night with a stranger at a local leather bar leaves him forever changed, Gabriel lives on the streets as a vagrant to elude the master who hunts him, but the were-shifter is a fierce, stubborn predator who reclaims him soon enough. Gabriel is carried away to the pack’s home territory where his instruction on what it means to be the pet of an alpha begins. Gabriel isn’t just any pet, though. He is the rarest among their kind: a human omega.  

Treasured? Or cursed?  

As Gabriel’s father, the Distinguished Gentleman from Pennsylvania and stalwart of the conservative party, pushes the considerable resources at his disposal to locate his missing son, Gabriel explores who and what he is under his master’s careful protection. Gabriel falls for the shifter who is lover and destroyer, owner and…friend?  

Publisher’s Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: BDSM theme and elements, and dubious consent.

Hot, right? Go buy it! Go on, I'll wait :-) And then come back and leave a comment for Kari, because she'll be sending one lucky commenter an I Omega notebook, note pad, and magnet, plus a little box of Godiva chocolate. I can't decide which is more drool-worthy--the chocolate, or a spiral notebook with that hot hot cover on it?

And now here's Kari, beneath the jump. 

Monday Picspam - Rope (NSFW)

Happy Monday, folks! (I know, I know, I shouldn't be this chipper on a Monday.) Everything's going along swimmingly; edits for Crescendo are on pace, and all the Riptide releases are making progress. Did you see all the new blurbs and cover art we've posted lately? There's some really lovely stuff there. Our web designer rolled out a test version of the web store this weekend too, which was mad exciting. Can't wait to share it with you all!

In the meanwhile, this busy bee has little time to blog, so I shall shower you with hoteness instead, nice and NSFW, beneath the jump. Today's theme is rope. (And somehow I've managed not to post a picture of Michael Fassbender; apologies in advance to fellow obsessives.) (Have removed some photos that probably belonged to folks. So you're left with, well, screencaps of Michael Fassbender. Surprise surprise ;-p) As always, click to embiggen.

Win a Kindle & More at the NOR Web Hunt

Hi guys! I'm participating this month in the Night Owl Reviews Full Moon Web Hunt, which runs until Halloween and is chock full of one of the biggest prize lists I've ever seen.

If you've never done a web hunt, basically what you do is go from sponsor site to sponsor site looking for a hunt graphic. You record the URL where you found the graphic, and when you've found enough of them, you submit your list of URLs to NOR, who enters you in the drawings for the many, many awesome prizes (including pretty much my whole backlist to five separate winners!).

It's a great way to find new authors and revisit old favorites, and five lucky winners will be taking home a heap of prizes so big it'll take them a year to get through it all. So check it out, have fun, and good luck!

And, just a quick plug for Riptide Publishing here :-) We'll be doing some scavenger hunts of our own in October, November, and December, and winners will pick up free Riptide books for a year, among other cool prizes. Be sure to check those out when our Grand Opening Celebration launches on October 1!

Film Festival Fun

This one's a quickie, folks. I'm still neck deep in Crescendo edits and the Riptide Publishing launch, but I found out today that thanks to the lovely Cat Grant, I'll actually be getting a teeny little mini-vacation in a little over a month: the two of us are taking a day trip into Manhattan to see Shame at the NY Film Festival!

I am dying of excitement about this, not so much for going to Manhattan (it's sort of right around the corner from me, and I lived there for a while so the sheen's worn off), but for getting to see the new Steve McQueen movie starring every last full-frontal inch of my favorite obsession. Despite the Oscar buzz already coming out of the Venice Film Festival for Shame, the contents of the movie (and the director's admirable unwillingness to sacrifice artistic vision for commercialism) make it unlikely it'll ever see US distribution outside the festival circuit.

Fortunately, we have tickets, so I get to spend one glorious day off from editing and writing and launching a business (which, admittedly, I am loving just about every second of) to stare at 90 minutes of this, a large portion of which I'm told involve no pants. (Click to embiggen. Trust me.)

Aw heck, one more because he's just so absurdly adorable. (And is it just me or does that totally look like a ligature mark on his wrist? Okay, yeah, it's probably just me, but a girl can dream, right?) The photo call at Venice, beneath the jump:

Crescendo Sneak Peek #6

It seems like all I've talked about the last week or so is the weather, so it's time for something fun, yeah? How about a little Crescendo excerpt? The entire first chapter is available on my website and at Storm Moon Press (where you can still pre-order at 20% off, yay!), so I thought I'd give you a peek of what comes immediately after.

First, a quick (*sigh*) weather-related update for those who've been asking: Floodwaters have mostly receded. Repairs are going well, though I think a new species of  hyper-intelligent mold in my basement has just discovered fire and the wheel. Irritatingly, utilities decided to shut off a bit over two days ago and have barely done much in the way of coming back on. Even the phone's been out. I'm sneaking on now in a rare moment of up-time and praying that everything stays on for good this time.

Now then, back to a nice fat 1500-word excerpt from Crescendo. Please note this may not match the version you see in the final text (in other words, this is still mid-edit, though it's certainly clean enough for public consumption.) All the, er, fun? Beneath the jump.