So I asked Wizard, “Can you take some pictures of me signing books for my Brazil Publisher, Editora Charme?”

“Sure. What do you have in mind?”

So I showed him my corner office. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this.” Shhh…don’t tell Wizard but sometimes he’s makes things INTO A FREAKING PRODUCTION. But he does take really good pictures so I’m trying to get what I want with the least amount of work.

“Hmm. What do you have in mind?”

So I showed him and the picture turn out like this:

Boring and cluttered. Crap. “Uhh…” Is all I can say. I mean I look okay for me…but the whole setting looks bland, fake and like I might be in prison.

Wizard does the big man sigh. “Going to listen to me now? Let me make a little bit of a production out of this?”

I’m backed in a corner because once again, Wizard is right, damn it. But I smiled and did what he told me because I already embarrassed myself.

And this is what we ended up with after Wizard did his magic, and then Veronica at the publisher did hers:

The moral of this story is…I got the last word in right here:

Sure I look fairly serious but I was saying something so wildly inappropriate Wizard almost dropped his camera laughing. Thankfully he wasn’t running the video or he’d have some wicked blackmail material to hold over me forever!

So this weekend — work, cleaning and on Sunday all the kids and their awesome girls are coming out. Even better, they are bringing dinner! Wizard and the girls (and Middle Son was very instrumental in this too!) arranged all this while I was in NY for my birthday, and I’m so touched and thrilled. It’ll be a fun pool day with margaritas, carne asada tacos, fruit, snacks and all the people I love so much including Bailey Dog! Plus I’ll make a cake but it may be plain old chocolate which is fine with me. And on the cake, someone else would make it or buy it if I asked, but I truly don’t mind. It’s super easy.

Oh and today, Biker Witch (my sister) and I are meeting for lunch just to catch up on each other’s lives.

So what are you all doing?

I just realized yesterday that Exposing the Heiress comes out NEXT TUESDAY (August 4th)!! I don’t know where time is going! So crazy! There’s been some good advance reviews and excitement, which is super cool. Entangled’s marketing department is also excited — which is a good sign too. But I have to laugh as both Anna and I were caught a little by surprise yesterday when we realized the release is one week away. Fortunately, most of what we need to do is done…so yay for being prepared!

On the Wing Slayer Hunter Series–Blood Magic is at an editor for an in-depth proofreading, and Anna and I spent some serious time looking at hunk photos to figure out what I wanted for the new covers of all four of the original books BLOOD MAGIC, SOUL MAGIC, NIGHT MAGIC & SINFUL MAGIC. We finally settled on the pics and I sent all that to the cover artist.

And now I’m working on getting the NIGHT MAGIC (Phoenix’s book) in shape for the editor.

Confused? Yeah, so am I. All this is taking way too much time that I wish was spent writing, but it’ll be worth it to get all the books re-issued for readers. Then I can get to the book I’m dying to write!

But for our Wednesday Worthy, since Phoenix from NIGHT MAGIC is on my mind as I clean up the scanned file of his book, I decided to pull out the older pic we used for him a few years ago (but not for the new cover as this image has been used a lot on covers lately):

So what do you think? Is he worthy?

P.S. If you haven’t checked out the CAGED MAGIC blog tour, here’s the link.

I’m back from NY! And just barely functioning! I’m writing this Sunday night after flying all day, so I’m exhausted. I don’t have a great picture of my RITA dress, just a cell phone snap shot:

I had such a good time, and the whole experience was amazing. The winner of the RITA was Jill Shalvis for her book ONCE IN A MILLION. She gave a gracious and funny speech. Jill is always lovely and charming, and it was fun to watch her win!

I also spent some time with Silver James:

And she helped me with my current book, thanks Silver!

I had a little video of the view from my window of the skyscrapers and Times Square, but I’m just too tired to get it to upload correctly to my blog. But my friend, Marianne and I went walking on Times Square and stopped in shock. There are two women on Times Square wearing only thongs,body paint feathers in their hair. We had full frontal views but I was so stunned, it took me too long to get my phone out to get a good shot — this is all I have. Look close.

It was hilarious! But I missed you all! And thank you guys for being so supportive!

So how was your weekend?

My flight is at 6:25 am and I’m off to NY. But a couple days ago, Wizard said, “So do you have a back up RITA Dress?”

I was like…”WHAT?”

“You know, in case something happens?”

I’m in the kitchen, staring at him like he morphed into a demon and was eating all my chocolate. “What’s going to happen? Is this because you think I’m too fat for the dress?” Okay my voice may have pitched up to a tad hysterical. My thoughts were spinning with regret and worry. Plus I need to point out that this was right before CAGED MAGIC came out and I may have been a tad stressed.

He rolled his eyes. “I think you look hot in the dress. Calm down. I just mean, what if you spill wine on it? Or something random happens.”

Now I’m picturing the straps breaking and OMG A WARDROBE MALFUNCTION!

Wizard peered closely at me. “Are you okay?”

Is he freaking kidding me? I’m practically hyperventilating until I realized how ridiculous this is. It’s just a dress. So I snapped upright, pretended that I was walking up stairs to a stage, thanked everyone for the lovely award and added, “You all can see how graceful I am by the big red wine stain on my dress, any bets on if I make it down these stairs?” Then I grinned at Wizard. “And that’s how it’s done. If I were to win and if something happened to the dress.”

Wizard cracked up. “That’s my Witch.”

Seriously. I was freaking out over a dress. Life is way to short for that! Nothing will happen, but if it does, I’ll figure it out. Unless it’s a wardrobe malfunction…LOLOL!

I’ll try to check in on Friday and post a few conference pics if I have them (I forget to take pictures).

A quick reminder, you can follow the CAGED MAGIC blog tour here.

So while I’m gone, is this guy worthy enough to keep you all entertained?

Muscular man bodybuilder. Man posing on a black background, shows his muscles. Bodybuilding, posing, black background, muscles – the concept of bodybuilding. Article about bodybuilding.

The Wing Slayer Hunters are back! It’s here, release day for CAGED MAGIC! Assuming all the vendors released the book as promised, it should be live!

Linc Dillinger is one of those unexpected characters who walked into my mind at the beginning of the second book in the series, SOUL MAGIC, and refused to leave until he found and saved his witch. Nothing deterred him: Not when the original publisher dropping the series, not when the second publisher wanted the series but we couldn’t come to terms that worked for both of us, and not even when my youngest son was seriously injured and my life came to a screeching halt.

In the case of that last one — Linc totally approved by the way. He’s all about moms putting their kids first. Believe me on that.

But then, my oh-so-patient Linc got tired of waiting and he haunted me relentlessly, saddling me with an ugly case of insomnia until I wrote the book. I had to…or Linc was never ever going to leave me alone.

So yesterday, I asked Linc, “Dude are you nervous? I am, I want readers to love you.”

He shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you, Lyon?”

“What?”

“It wasn’t about that for me. It was about her, about Risa. She’s the reason I breathe.”

Well okay then. So the Magic is back and I hope you enjoy the book that Linc was absolutely determined to make happen.

Kindle / Amazon Print /  iBooks / B&N Nook / Google Play / Kobo

And if you want to follow the CAGED MAGIC BLOG TOUR (grand prize a $50.00 gift card, and two runner up prizes of $25.00 gift cards), you can click here or if the pretty little giveaway widget below works, click there. (Widgets sometimes work for me, other times they just laugh in my face and refuse to work).

So I’m boarding a plane obnoxiously early Wednesday morning for New York and I’m not sure exactly when I’ll post to the blog again, but I’ll try! I would like to mention that I am honored to have HER TEMPORARY HERO nominated for two award. First is the National Readers Choice Award give by the Oklahoma Chapter of RWA. This is a special award that is well-known and highly valued in author-circles because it really is about the readers. The second award is the RITA Award, a very prestigious award given out by Romance Writers of America. To be nominated for that takes my breath away.  It doesn’t matter if I win, just the nominations are cherished moments in my career.

But in my day-to-day life it’s all of you that I value. You guys are the reason that I keep writing, and hanging out here on the blog brings a smile to my face.

So how was your weekend?

It’s Friday and I am all kinds of happy!

While I wouldn’t say I’m caught up, I didn’t a ton of work this week to get on top of the blog tours (okay I’m laughing because Anna is doing two tons of work–whatever…we can’t all be Amazing Anna) but I feel like I can dive into next week with at least a chance of retaining some sanity.

So Wizard finished reading CAGED MAGIC days ago. He closed the book and said, “Forget the contemporary series you want to write, you have to write the next Wing Slayer Hunter book. Get on that.”

This is pretty dang funny since he’s been bugging me to write the contemporary series. Even funnier is when Wizard suddenly stops whatever he’s doing, grabs his head and yells. “Soul screams! I have soul screams!”  (Soul screams are in the book, and trust me when I say he’s not doing it right but his version is much funnier.) Or if I’m walking by him, he’ll turn his back to me and say, “Touch my wings.”

I try not to laugh but…yeah, we all know I cracked up and just encourage him.

And then on Wednesday, I was working away on some blog or interview, and Wizard comes into my office. “So Monday is the big day, huh?”

I frantically tried to think. I’m not leaving for New York until Wednesday so what did he mean? “Uh…Monday is my hair appointment?” That’s all I could think of.

He busted out laughing IN MY FACE.  “Release day for CAGED MAGIC? That ringing a bell?”

**Face Meet Palm**  I’ve been juggling so many things this week, I totally blanked.

Wizard walked out of my office laughing his ass off.

I’m excited and scared for Monday. I really can’t predict how this is going to go, but I know this, I kept my promise to the fans and that truly makes me happy. Now if only I could write faster!

This weekend I’m cleaning and tying up loose ends.  What are your weekend plans?

Bet you’re all thinking, “Jen’s got a big release on Monday, she’ll be promoting on the blog today.”

Um…nope. It’s Wednesday Worthy and who is our candidate? Do you want to see? Hmm??? (Nod yes, because trust me, you reaalllly do!) I borrowed him from the Romance at Random website and asked him real nice to come on over here and hang with us for the day. He obliged, although he looks a little tired. Be I don’t think you’ll mind…

So what do you think, is he worth of hanging out here with us for the day?