Hey! I so missed you all! Conference turned out to be fabulous. I’ll give you the book end photos:

First, Laura Wright and I hosted a small Cocktails with Laura and Jen (a FaceBook Event). Here’s a pic from that:

I’m not going to try to name everyone there, but Laura is at the head of the table, and I’m to her left. It was so much fun.

And for the end, the big awards night, here I am with Tessa Dare after she won the RITA for her book A KNIGHT TO SURRENDER (I’m on the left, and Tessa is on the right holding he well deserved RITA statue)

A few highlights:

–The Literacy Signing surprised me.  Many people came up to me and asked that I keep writing The Wing Slayer Hunters, which really touched me.  And I had an even bigger surprise, but that one I’m not talking about, LOL!

— The National Readers Choice Award ceremony/buffet Thursday morning. That was lovely! I was a double finalist, but did not win. Huge congrats to JD Tyler who won for PRIMAL LAW!!

–Lunch with Laura Wright, Elisabeth Naughton and Alexandra Ivy.  Smart, funny and super talented women!

–Friday I had lunch with Silver, and really enjoyed that. Then onto the Dialogue workshop with Laura Wright, Alexandra Ivy,  Darynda Jones, Elisabeth Naughton, Sylvia Day and myself.  The audience members were spectacular! They wrote out dialogue in five minutes and shared it with us. Silver rocked the house with her piece!

–Saturday I hit some great workshops and attended the glittery RITA/Golden Heart Awards in the evening.

I saw a ton of friends as well. Plus while I only got to a half dozen workshops, they were extremely beneficial.

Now I’m ready to work! I’m writing CAGE MAGIC while waiting for revisions on the Entangled book, and have a few other things in the air.

So…now lets talk about you all! What have you been doing?

I’m heading out to conference today, and finally excited to go.  I’m doing a dialogue workshop Friday at 2 pm with Laura Wright, Sylvia Day, Alexandra Ivy, Elisabeth Naughten and Darynda Jones.  I think it’s going to fun! My portion of the workshop is: Bromance Dialogue: Cracking the Guy Code.

I will be buying rights to more pictures, but right now, the one I have is one I bought to go on my Apodaca FB banner, but then we rejected it. Too young, and the flag in the background worried me. I didn’t want to come across as offensive. Because I’m writing about a security agency made up of former marines, I felt the flag deserves a big more respect than guy standing in front of it wearing a towel and dogtags.  (And FYI, when I buy rights, I use iStock or BigStock).

So what do you think? Did I make the right call cutting this guy?

I won’t be posting on Friday, so have a great weekend, and I should be back on Monday!

Good weekend! But tiring. I spent hours cleaning up the blog and FB. A lot of posts are gone, but those are the past anyway and we’re all about the future here, right?  I’m not going to get into a big discussion about the why of it, except to say this: I believe in doing the right thing

On Bailey News–I had this on my FB but it vanished. Here’s Bailey after getting into a box of donuts:

Bailey is fine now but he spent the night getting his stomach pumped.  He somehow jumped up and knocked the box of donuts off a table  (this is at Bailey’s house, not mine) and wolfed down four before he was caught. Unfortunately, two of them were chocolate.  Bailey’s fine, my sons’ wallets however, are suffering.

I’m feeling better and better.  It’s up and down, but that’s normal with what I have. Wizard keeps telling me that I can call him anytime and he’ll come get me at conference if I don’t feel well.  I rolled my eyes and said, “I’ll be fine. I can rest in my hotel room.”

“Well you do have a birthday coming up. A big one.” Okay he didn’t say a big one. He yelled out how old I’m going to be. And he laughed. Went on teasing me about getting old.

Then I tried on my gown for the Awards Ceremony at Conference and showed him.

He was working on the computer, looked up and froze. “Holy shit. Forget me picking you up, I”m coming with you.”

“But Wizard,”  I said innocently, “What are you worried about. You know I’m getting old now. No one will even notice this old gown on me…”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re screwing with me, aren’t you?”‘

I laughed and headed up with the stairs. “Every chance I get, Wizard, every chance I get.”

Yeah…I may be old but I still know how to get to Wizard

How was your weekend?

I know, it’s a Saturday, what am I doing posting?

This is just and FYI post

You may notice that yesterday’s post (with comments) and a bunch of other posts have vanished. I’m doing that on purpose. I’m cleaning out the blog.

I’ll tell you all the reason on Monday.

That’s the end of the FYI post.

Hope you’re all enjoying your weekend!

Hi All,

I’m still sick, so I’m not much fun. Since this is the Internet, I’m going to keep it vague.  I’ve got a virus that’s kicking my butt, however I will recover and be fine. It’s just going to take time and patience.

My doctor insisted I take “Sick Leave.” Fortunately, I turned in my book and am now taking it easy.  I plan to resume working a few hours a day Tuesday or Wednesday, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m not on the Internet much either.

However, I would absolutely love to hear about how YOUR weekend went. Truly, I want to know. Share, please!

I’m a bit under the weather. but I should be back on Monday.  Everyone have a great weekend!

Happy Monday!

So the heat has finally hit us in Southern California.  I managed to get myself slightly burned on Saturday hanging out at the pool. Which meant I had to stay inside on Sunday while Wizard was out there swimming. So. Not. Fair!

It was a really good weekend. While I was waiting for my beta reader to read the contemporary I worked on CAGE MAGIC. Damn, I love that book! I’m have more than a 100 pages (rough) and need much more,  but hopefully I’m going to be able to carve some time out to work on it around my contracted books.

Yesterday my awesome beta reader let me know she finished the book and thinks it’s working.  She actually said really nice things, and found a few spots for me to work on. I am so thrilled! I wrote Adam and Megan’s story fast, but I wrote the book *I* wanted to write, and that seems to work.  While the romance is front and center, I get to have other things going on too, some mystery, intrigue, betrayals and secrets. How could I not love that? I’ll finish that this week and send it to my lovely editor.

I’m trying to get back onto my workout schedule as well. I took a couple weeks off for BLB’s surgery, and to hit my deadlines, but now I must recommit.

Wizard and I had a great weekend together.  BLB was spending the weekend at his house, so we enjoyed the time.

But Wizard misses Bailey! He totally does. So while cooking breakfast together one morning, I was dancing around the kitchen  singing, “You liikkkeeee Bailey! Wizard likes Bailey!” until Wizard threatened to videotape me singing.

I stopped.  I can’t sing. I can’t dance. And I really don’t want a record of me trying!

But I might have hummed it a bit more.

So how was your weekend?