So... Vampires.

Blood Sight came out today.

Well, technically, it came out late last night, but by the time I got the email, I was already in bed and I didn't feel like limping back up two flights of stairs. (This crazy weather is killing me!)

Why vampires?

You know, the first rated R movie I ever saw was Lost Boys. One of the first horror novels I read was Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. (not the very first, that would be Amityville Horror, which started me on a long path of scary novels....)

My senior year of high school, I wrote a 10-page thesis paper on Vampires.

It's a bit of an obsession. And I've always thought vampires were way sexy... I remember harboring a huge crush on Chris Sarandon in Fright Night.

I might have based the sex scene at the end of Blood Sight off this imagery 

But, of course, we all know that Twilight's done a lot (both good and bad) for vampires in fiction. And I wanted to do something different. Thus was born Rachael, a sarcastic and hard-headed heroine who's not at all susceptible to the Vampire's unique powers of glamour and seduction...

I was over it. I would be over it. Sleeping with vampires was so last decade. It was a phase, and it was as gone and as dead as Marcus should have been back when Rome was the most fearsome civilization on the planet.

Anyway, this is the last of my publishing blitz for a while (altho I did get another acceptance in my inbox today! Yay!) The rest of my stories are shorts and none are due out for a while. Thanks for bearing with me while I dumped a ton of stuff on y'all all at once...

Blood Sight, Vamptasy Tour

So, in all the excitement about Whetting the Appetite coming out, I have been pushing off dealing with Blood Sight's release on Friday.

In advance of that, I've been doing a blog tour behind the scenes - I actually wrote the posts about a week or so ago, so I kinda... well, forgot that they started.

Yesterday...

I'm kinda telling little rambling stories about my life as a writer; where the urge came from and what I did with it...

Ragnarok Legacy (that's a cool blog title, I think, don't you?) hosted me yesterday

And today you can find me talking about my old high school English teacher on Alex Laybourne's blog... (as a note, Alex's zombie novel, Diaries of the Damned, is pretty fun...

I'll be around most of the week, and I'll get you links as they come available!

And then Friday is my release party, so if you haven't made with the clickie, you totally should.

(Among other prizes, Sean - my cover model - has signed several posters for the books, and I'll be giving those away... once they make the trip back here from Sacramento...)

I've been running full throttle for a while now, and I seem to have caught my husband's cold (not surprising). Starting April 1st, I'll be writing again full time - Howling Bitch ain't gonna write itself...

So, keep your eye on the ball, and I'll try not to fall down too often.

Early Release: Whetting the Appetite

We were expecting this tomorrow, but it showed up early....

Available now, Whetting the Appetite! (which you will be happy to learn, I've finally managed to spell correctly on the first try... swear to god, I don't know how I existed before spellcheck.)

To answer all the questions I'm sure you have:

- JMS Books, LLC has this book in all e-publishing formats, from kindles to nook to html to .pdf. 

- this book will be available on Amazon and at Barnes & Nobles next week. For the first week, it's exclusively available on JMS's site. 

- This book is ON SALE for this week only, 20% off. Once the book "goes live" on Amazon, it will no longer be on sale at JMS. 

- According to JMS's publishing contract, we have to sell a certain number of books before the book will go to a print copy. I would really, really like to see this happen; both because I like adding books to my dead tree shelf, and because really, this is a lovely, lovely cover. 

- this book is an extremely eclectic collection. Liz and I wrote it last year as an exercise in consistent writing habits. There's really almost nothing the stories have in common with each other, not genre, not sexual pairings, they're not even all erotica stories. Some of them are not love stories at all, although most of them are. 

- we are having a book release party tomorrow and we'd love to see you there.

Anthology Call

Originally, I was going to post this April 1st, but since it's up at the Coming Together website now, I thought I'd go ahead and give it to my fans and friends...

~ CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ~

Space, the final frontier... We thought we were alone in the universe... Cosmic forces beyond all comprehension... humans and aliens wrapped in 2,500,000 tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night... 

Erotica writer and geekess extraordinaire, Lynn Townsend, is looking for a new, erotic spin on science fiction. Called the "literature of ideas," science fiction deals with futuristic settings, alien life forms, advanced technology, space travel, and other innovations, and has been used for centuries to frame stories to explore identity, morality, social structure, and desire. What it means to be human, among aliens. What binds us together, and what keeps us apart.

The final book will contain the best of erotic science fiction, a wide range of characters, pairings, ideas, situations, and exploration, of both worlds and bodies. From the depths of the teams working to build a planet-saving device, to the trenches of alien warfare, to the forbidden longings for other sentient species, Coming Together: Among the Stars will take readers to the very edge of the universe and back.

Standard Port Rules apply:

No underage (aliens must be mature, regardless of how many solar rotations they have currently survived), no non-consensual scenes, no scat, incest, necrophilia (excepting space vampires or other undead), or bestiality (intelligent aliens/robots are exempted). Any pairings or groupings accepted and encouraged. Heat level, medium-warm to nuke my brain! Happily Ever After or Happy For Now not mandatory, but NO snuff. I'm looking for satisfying science fiction and incredible sex first and foremost.

Deadline for submissions is August 15, 2014. Send double-spaced, 12 point font (Times New Roman or Georgia) in .doc or .rtf format, 2,000 – 4,500 word stories to amongthestars@eroticanthology.com, with “ATTN: Coming Together, your pen-name, your story title” in the subject line. Poetry will also be considered. Indent the first line of each paragraph, do not add extra lines between paragraphs. US English grammar please (double quotes around dialog. If your story requires non-comprehensible speech, other punctuations may be acceptable, brackets, etc. Consistency is key.). Only submit your final, best version of the story; do not send multiple versions of the same story. Up to two stories will be considered from each author. Include your legal name (and pseudonym if applicable and be clear which one is which), mailing address, and up to 75 word bio. For this anthology, please include a line establishing your geek-cred. (For example: Lynn Townsend saw Star Wars for the first time when she was five years old and has been dreaming of the stars ever since.) You will be notified as to the status of your story by no later than September 30, 2014.

This is a charity anthology. Contributors will receive an ebook copy of the publication. Additional compensation in karma. International Still’s Disease Foundation will benefit from all proceeds. Still’s disease is a form of arthritis that is characterized by high spiking fevers and an evanescent salmon-colored rash. Still’s disease was first described in children, but it is now known to occur, much less commonly, in adults.

Blues, a Sneak Peek

I got this review today, which got me thinking...

When I originally started writing Roll as a novel, I had the first half of the book set up for Beau to deal with his issues, and the second half for Vin to deal with his. As I continued writing, it just wasn't working out the way I wanted; Vin's stuff kept getting shoved off to deal with Beau.

(In my opinion, Beau is the main protagonist in this story, where Vin is the protagonist in the 2nd novel)

By the time I got to a point where I felt Beau was stable enough to deal with Vin's issues, I was already at a full-length novel word count. And while 60,000 is a short novel, 120,000 words is a LONG freaking novel... especially for a romance, which even mainstream romances tend to cap out at about 80,000 words. 130k (ish) would be a 400+ page novel...

I'd wanted to include a sneak peek chapter - since Blues was already almost completely written (altho not edited) by the time Roll was published, but inquiries to my editor said that wasn't feasible. I suspect many things; 1) a lot of authors don't always write sequels, they mean to and don't get 'round to it. Or like Robert Asprin who originally promised 1 or 2 Myth books per year and then there were several years between one novel and the next.... 2) Blues could suck, and then my publisher would have to reject it, leaving readers going "where is it?" and 3) I could change my mind about chapter 1 in Blues and then it doesn't mesh up with the published novel. In any case, I agreed that we should not publish the sneak peek chapter with the novel.

But I have written the whole book - it's out to my beta readers, altho I've only gotten one selection of notes back thus far... (One of my beta readers had a death in the family, and another one recently got married, so real life and all that. THIS IS NOT a complaint. I'm not going to be able to work on those edits until after I finish writing Howling Bitch, so there's plenty of time. I promise!!) In fact, I've even written the first couple of chapters of book three, Classic and outlined more than half of it.

But, in case you want it, here it is... (UNEDITED WORK IS UNEDITED!) Keep in mind this chapter has some spoilers, so if you haven't read Roll yet, you might want to not mess with this, okay? okay.

Wordless Wednesday

I'm only wordless because I have nothing else to add to this. Except thank you, you all are wonderful, and... holy crow...

Cover This!

Reluctant oracle and consultant for the Paranormal Police, Rachel Kristoff, has problems, and the vampire at her front door is only the beginning. Threatened by supernatural foes, hampered by her malfunctioning clairvoyance, and betrayed by the only family she has left, Rachael is forced to rely on her former lover. For the sake of both of their souls, she will make the only choice left open to her: Depend on the vampire, or die.

Bound to the bloodline of the Oracles since the fall of the Roman Empire, accused of murder, and betrayed by his own vampire Childe, Marcus Valerius is a relic of past glories better left in a previous era. For centuries, he has protected the children of Delphi against all who would control the future for their own purposes. Now, saving the life of the only woman he has ever loved means destroying the Oracular abilities he's sworn to protect.

In a world of angels and demons, vampires and werewolves, foresight and past lives, what you cannot forsee just might kill you...


Released March 28th by Vamptasy...