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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A Simple Pleasure: Interviewing Alexa Bourne


Today, I’m interviewing author and editor Alexa Bourne. She’s a fellow member of ARWA (the Austin chapter of Romance Writers of America) and also a part of the Digital Darlings group, an Austin-based support group for digital-first authors. So yes, I know firsthand of her awesomeness. Recently, I read Fractured Paradise, a cozy romantic suspense, and thoroughly enjoyed it. She also has a new book out, Simple Treasures.

Alexa, thanks for stopping by! Let’s get to it…
 
v  Do you, both as a freelance editor and as an author, see a trend within the romantic suspense genre? Well, I think there’s a trend to making the stories sexier. That’s from what I hear, not so much from my editing or writing.
v  How long did it take you to write Fractured Paradise? That’s a tricky question. I wrote the first draft back in 2003 to help me get over my British grandmother’s death. I liked the story, it helped me heal and then I put it away. I revised it in the beginning of this year- cut it down from a 200-page story, added more suspense- so I could submit it as an Honor Guard story to Decadent Publishing.
v  What actor and actress would play Aidan and Rachel in a movie? I actually don’t share this information with anyone. I always have actors in mind when I write, but I don’t share because what I think is sexy may not be what the reader would think is sexy. I’d rather the readers choose their own favorite actors for my book.
v  What advice would you give to someone experiencing writer’s block? Read. That’s how I ALWAYS get over my writer’s block. I force myself to put my work away, to take out someone else’s book and to FINISH at least one book before I allow myself to get back to work on my own. I can jot down notes, but I do not allow myself to write scenes until I’ve finished reading that book.
v  Your book was set outside the US. What inspired you to write Fractured Paradise? My mother grew up in the UK and we’ve visited quite a bit. I love everything about the UK and so I set my stories there to share with readers what I love. I hope I make my British relatives proud!
v  What’s next for you? Actually, my 3rd UK Honor Guard story released earlier this week! Yay! Merry Christmas to me! Simple Treasures is set in Edinburgh, Scotland during New Year’s. It’s a romantic suspense too. Other than that I’m working on a short story for a different project with Decadent Publishing. In 2013, I intend to write 3 more Honor Guard stories AND get back to my full length romantic suspense books too.
Wow, you'll be busy! Good luck and enjoy the holidays :)
  Thanks for having me, Carmen! Happy holidays to you and your readers!

Author Bio:

Alexa Bourne is a teacher by day and a romantic suspense writer by nights, weekends, and all school holidays. She also teaches online classes for writers throughout the year. She is thrilled to be writing for Decadent Publishing and to have the chance to share her love of Great Britain with readers everywhere.

When she's not concocting sinister plots and steamy love scenes or traveling and exploring new cultures, Alexa spends her time reading, watching brainless TV and thinking about exercising. She loves to interact with readers, so visit her web page, hang out at her blog, follow her on Twitter or drop her a note at Alexa@alexabourne.com!


Book Blurb:

Take-charge bodyguard Colin Munro believes working for the International Protective Network will be the perfect occupation for him. Unfortunately, his trial assignment is protecting a woman who has no intention of blindly following orders. Aye, he’ll bring the bonnie lass in line because there’s no way he’ll allow her to ruin his chance of securing his dream job.

Physically and emotionally scarred during her stint as a U.S. soldier, Joanna Grainger wants nothing more than to enjoy life. New Year's Eve in Edinburgh marks the beginning of her transformation. But when she witnesses a crime no one believes occurred, her plans come to a screeching halt. To make matters worse, her sexy but headstrong bodyguard has no compassion for her or the victim.

As danger hunts them during one of the busiest times of the year, Joanna must convince Colin she's a worthy partner. But first, can she convince herself?

Excerpt:

Joanna bolted upright. Darkness wrapped her in its hideous embrace. And silence reigned. Her heart raced. She flattened her hands on the mattress beneath her.

 

Mattress. Bed. Colin’s hotel room.

 

Rustling sounds came from the floor. The bedside lamp flickered on. Colin propped himself up, one knee bent and an arm dangling over it. He squinted against the brightness. “Are you all right?”

 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.” She brushed her fingers under her eyes.

 

“Don’t be daft, lass.”

 

“I had a bad dream.” She smoothed her hair back off her face. Moisture beaded at her temples.

 

“Here we call it a nightmare.” He smiled, and at once she relaxed her shoulders.

 

“Americans do, too.” After another deep breath, she said, “I’ll be all right.” Once her heart rate slowed to normal. With her forearm, she wiped perspiration from her forehead.

 

He stood, padded into the bathroom, and ran the faucet. When he returned, he sat beside her, tucked his finger under her chin, and pressed the cloth to her cheek. The cool moisture soothed her burning skin.

 

She reached up and covered his hand with hers. “I can do that.”

 

“I know.” He brushed her fingers away. “But you’ll not.”

 

After a few seconds, he moved the wet towel across her forehead and to her other cheek.

When he reached her neck, she sighed and closed her eyes for a few valuable seconds.

“Thank you.”

 

His gentle caress reminded her how much she’d missed simple comfort…from anyone.

 

“You’re welcome.” The cloth soon disappeared. “Now, will you tell me what you dreamed about?”

 

“Mark Rawlings. I dreamed I was back in the train car and he was bleeding out on the floor. The guy with him faded into the background, but I could see the man’s hands and lips moving. I couldn’t hear anything, though. Then somebody jabbed me with something, and my blood drained out of my body, but there was nothing I could do. The guy standing stayed in front of me. There was another voice, but the words were garbled.”

 

“Did you see anyone else?”

 

“No, but at the end I wasn’t paying attention. I was losing consciousness.” She tilted her head to one side and into her palm. “Colin, what am I going to do if we don’t find the professor’s attacker soon?”

 

We’ll take it one day at a time.” Strong, confident, able to leap tall buildings and all…even in the middle of the night.

 



Twitter: @AlexaBourne



 

Buy Links:




Friday, December 21, 2012

Aurelia B. Rowl dishes on Americanizing -- her vocabulary, that is!

Season's Greetings, folks!

Today the talented Aurelia B. Rowl is here with us.  

Aurelia, take it away...



The sun was blazing down, and the crystal blue water in the swimming pool glistened and sparkled as the sound of my children’s laughter rang out. Yes, I wrote a large chunk of Christmas Is Cancelled whilst on a family holiday, staying in a gorgeous villa in Majorca along with my husband’s family.

It was great.

But not exactly conducive to writing a winter story, complete with snowy hills and Christmas carols. I then finished the story during the Summer – if you can call what we had here in the UK “Summer”, it was more of a damp squib – but nevertheless, the story turned out fine.

Editing was positively painless; just a few run-on sentences, repeated words/phrases, some simultaneous actions and, the one I had to look up (hooray for the internet)… the occasional misplaced modifier. The actual content wasn’t touched and I took a great deal of pride from the fact my first ever completed manuscript wasn’t ripped to shreds.

But can you guess what I did stumble over during the edits? Especially the pre-edits stage?

I’ll give you a clue… I am British. My publisher is Canadian. My editor is American.

You think writing a book in English would be easy, wouldn’t you, what with being English and living in England? Think again…

My first task was the change the default dictionary in MS Word from UK English to US English. That took care of changing a lot of my ‘s’ to ‘z’, for example: recognising became recognizing, psychoanalyse became psychoanalyze. Okay, cool. Got that. It also removed some extraneous double ‘l’ words, for example: travelled became traveled, revelled became reveled… And, of course, my ‘re’ endings became ‘er’, for example: centre became center.

Then came the trickier ones: manoeuvre became maneuver, prised became pried, kerb became curb, grey became gray, and hob had to be removed altogether to be replaced by stove. I even lost some of my ‘st’ endings, like whilst, and amongst. At least there weren’t any bonnets to convert to hoods, or boots to convert to trunks. Yet a surprising number of words were simply lost in translation, very strange, and I found myself wondering when English to English had become so tricky?

Does that mean I now write in US English all the time, like several British authors have taken to doing? Heck no, I’d never get anything finished. It would be akin to peeling my fingernails off to consciously spell words ‘incorrectly’, and I doubt I could train myself, even if I wanted to. And how bad would I feel when my young son brought his spellings home from school, and I made him get some wrong because I was still in US mode?

Uh-uh! No, thank you. Did you feel the tremor when I shuddered? I shall continue to write in my home language. If a manuscript gets picked up by another US/Canadian publisher, I’ll worry about translating it – ha!! – then, and not before. I may even get a British publisher next time and would only have to change it all back again, after taking twice the length of time to write it in American to begin with. And you can be sure my self-published titles will be published in UK English, even if I have to include a glossary at the back.

I know I can’t be the only one, and it would be interesting to see how other British authors get around the writing in US English conundrum. Do you write in ‘American’ as you go, or do you translate after? And if you’re an American (or Canadian) reader, what UK English words trip you up and make you scratch your head, or fire up trusty Google?


About Christmas is Cancelled…

 
Matilda 'Tilly' Carter didn't think her day could get any worse, but even Christmas had just been cancelled.

The one girl Dean Watson has sworn never to have—never even expected to see again—just flared back into his life and into his home—his sanctuary—like she belonged there. Christmas would certainly be more bearable with Tilly around though…

As the chinks in Dean's armor appear, Tilly seizes the chance to win her knight once and for all. She's not about to take no for answer—not this time—but Dean must resist, even as his heart rebels and temptation threatens to undermine his resolve.

Win or lose? Love or honor? Which will Dean choose? Assuming he gets a choice…

 
Excerpt

 

Tears welled in her eyes, clouding her vision. She turned and wandered blindly toward the exit as the first tear escaped, forging a track down her cheek for the rest to follow. Tilly took in a lungful of air and then another. Having made a spectacle of herself once already, she really didn't want to be the cause of yet another scene.

 

The crowds swarmed around her, with students and family members heading home for the holidays only adding to the usual rush-hour melee of commuters. They jostled past, threatening to swallow her whole, as they rushed en mass in the opposite direction, using their briefcases and suitcases as a battering ram.

 

It was suffocating. She had to get out of there. Breaking into a run, broken heel or not, she raced through the doors and out into the biting December chill. Her waterlogged eyes struggled to adjust to the dark, dreary sky after the bright station lights, but she didn't dare slow down, desperate to escape the throng of festivities and merriment.

 

Carol singers assembled outside burst into a jovial rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," full of joy and happiness. Didn't they know Christmas had just been cancelled?

 

"Ooof!" Tilly smacked her shin against the edge of a low bench, too dark to see as she tried to dodge the growing audience. She ended up sprawled across the bench, dropping the handle of her suitcase with a loud clatter.

 

At least the pain shooting down her leg gave her an excuse to be crying. Unfortunately, it meant she had to stop running too. Not good. Whenever things got too tough, too intimate, or too confrontational, you could rely on her to make a run for it. Running away was what she did best...

 

A tall figure loomed in the edge of her vision, something vaguely familiar about the man's loping gait. In an effort to see him more clearly, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, then cringed inwardly at the black streaks now etched all over them. Great. She could add impersonating a panda to her day from hell as well then.

 

The mascara stung her eyes, rendering her unable to focus properly. She blinked furiously as the man strode past her, talking into a mobile phone in a deep voice that resonated throughout her body and made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. A surge of adrenaline rushed to her legs, numbing the pain as her subconscious told her to run. Now!

 

The cloaked figure stopped mid-stride as if he'd heard her gasp. "Mike, I've gotta go," he barked into the phone, hanging up instantly. He backtracked until he was standing right in front of her, his tone changing from a growl to one of surprise. "Basmati?"

 

Great. She hadn't heard the nickname for years—nine years, four months and...sixteen days, to be exact—and even then, only one person had ever actually used it. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, shaking her head from side to side. No. No way. There was absolutely no way this could be happening to her. Not now. Not today of all days... Talk about kicking a girl when she was down.

 
Buy links:
 
Breathless Press
Amazon
Amazon UK
All Romance Books
Bookstrand



Barnes & Noble – coming soon

iTunes – coming soon



About Aurelia…

 
Aurelia B Rowl is a contemporary romance author but you can also find her masquerading as Allie A Burrow, her raunchier alter-ego.

 
She lives on the edge of the Peak District in the UK with her very understanding husband and their two fantastic children aged 5 and 3, along with their mad rescue mutt who doesn’t mind being used as a sounding post and source of inspiration. They are all used to her getting too caught up with her latest writing project... or five!... and she is guiltily counting down the months until she has both kids at school full-time.  

 
To find out more about Aurelia, or to check out what projects she's working on right now, you can visit her website www.aureliabrowl.com

 

You can also find her hanging out on:

 









Sunday, December 9, 2012

Great News!


Hi, folks!
How are you all doing? I realize it’s been a while. November was a crazy month; I lost Nano, sadly. I started with 15,000 words in a couple of days, and I was all fired up. I was the one who convinced everyone to do it, and I gloated. I was the one who, in October, kept talking about Nano.
Well, you can’t have it all, right? I had a few setbacks that completely threw me off.

But I have good news to share—at least about the good things that happened. I sold my sexy contemporary novella, Heating Up Hawaii, to Breathless Press! I’m really excited, as I’ve always read a lot of authors from BP and absolutely love their covers.

I’m so happy that my feisty PR heroine Penny and the hot, mysterious French-Italian hero Luc have found a home. I don’t have a release date yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

I got my first royalty check, and also a very nice note from the founder of Entangled, Liz Pelletier. It’s amazing to know that A Vengeful Affair is still selling strong and that people are adding it to their Goodreads Want to Read list and leaving reviews. The positive feedback has been really mind blowing. 

I have one book under consideration at Entangled at the moment, and I am working on a new proposal. I never thought I’d say this, but in a way, between published and contracted and WIPs, I have four books altogether. Kind of awesome—especially as this time last year, all I had was a dream.

 Now please let me know what you’ve been up to… ;)
Until later,
Carmen :)

Friday, December 7, 2012

Megan D. Martin on her RELEASE & a GIVEAWAY!


Greeting, folks! To get your mind off Christmas shopping, the fabulous Megan D. Martin is here with us to blog about her road to publication.

Megan, take it away... ;)

Hi Carmen! Thanks for having me. I am happy to announce that today is the release day of my debut novella, Forbidden Angel!

To commemorate this special day I’m going to tell about my journey to becoming a published author. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. When I was younger I quickly found writing to be that special something that I was good at, though when I talked about becoming published, most people rolled their eyes; always acting like it was a very far-fetched idea. There were times that I also embraced thoughts like these. It’s a known fact that one doesn’t make it in this industry without a series of slaps from a critique partner or an inbox full of rejection letters. I didn’t let it get me down though and as it turns out, I ended up getting the contract from Breathless at a time when I wasn’t actually searching for a publisher. Breathless Press offered an opportunity to send in one page of your ms to be edited. If the editor was intrigued with the story they could ask to see the entire work. I sent in Forbidden Angel on a lark and ended up landing the contract. I was very pleased and more excited than you know.

Overall, the journey of writing Forbidden Angel, going through the editing process, and being published has been a wonderful experience, one I hope to repeat many times. It was proof to me, that hard work will always (eventually) yield positive results. Every rejection is just another chance to improve before sending it out again—a chance to become a better writer.  

Forbidden Angel
Timeless-Historical Romance


Blurb:

When captured by the Nazi's, Sarah finds herself in a concentration camp that not only brings her closer to death...but closer to love.

Sarah Brenner, a young Jewish woman, is terrified when she finds herself in the heat of a railcar bound for a work camp in Nazi Germany. For years she, along with her mother and sister, had hidden from the SS, but no one could hide forever. Her hatred for those who have enslaved them is ever-growing, especially when they arrive and she encounters the shockingly handsome Nazi doctor who can’t seem to keep his eyes—or hands—off her.

Aurel Rothstein is not your everyday concentration camp physician. The endless prisoners and lack of care he's allowed to give have made him numb to the work he so coveted. It isn’t until he comes face to face with a beautiful prisoner that his heart becomes involved with his job—a forbidden and fatal move to any Nazi.

When a vile soldier takes direct interest in Sarah, she will be forced to make a choice that will change her life forever: ignore the pull toward the handsome doctor or give in to the forbidden passion he awakens with only a look. Either way they both risk everything...

Excerpt:

The doctor was kissing her. She was kissing him back. Sarah had been afraid when he'd carried her to his office. The word "experimentation" terrified her, but he did nothing of the sort. He'd actually fed her and given her some water. He even made her something to take back to her family. He was being so kind, and when his gaze smoldered and he said something about inspecting her body, she'd easily melted for him.

 

There was something wrong with her. She shouldn't be feeling this way, but the moment his rough hands caressed her achy back, she was lost to her nerve endings. Never before had she felt such desire from the mere brush of fingertips against her skin. The pain in her back immediately ceased, and all she could feel was pleasure.

 

His kiss was soft and tentative at first, as if he was afraid he'd scare her away, but she kissed him back and reveled in the groan of defeat he gave. He ran his hands deliciously over her hardened nipples, teasing them, tracing where his mouth had kissed just moments before.

 

He's a bad person, her mind kept trying to tell her, but she ignored the warning. Something about this man just felt so right.

 

"What's your name, angel?" he asked as he broke away from her lips. Did he just call her angel? She pondered this pet name for a moment before he leaned in and nipped her neck.

 

"Mmm, I'm no angel." She truly wasn't. She was selfish just like any other person.

 

"Yes, you are, angel. Your name?"

 

"Sarah," she murmured as he traced his tongue along her sensitive collarbone. Never in her life had anything felt this good. She'd been with one man before they stopped going into public. She didn't dislike the sexual acts she explored with him, but they felt like nothing compared to this.

 

"If I am an angel, then so are you." Sarah temporarily forgot his actions outside of this room, the other things he did. Only an angel could bring forth sensations this exquisite.

 

"No, that I am not." His voice rumbled like a hurricane.

 

"Okay, a dark angel then, but still an angel."

 

About the Author

Megan D. Martin is a content editor at Breathless Press, and loves her job more than a normal person should. She was born and raised in a small Texas town, where she still resides with her delightfully rotten son. She enjoys decorating her home with strange things that do not match, playing her old school Nintendo Entertainment System, and buying fish for her many fish tanks. Forbidden Angel is her debut novella. To learn more about Megan and her writing check her out on these social networking sites:


 

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