Two videos with clips from the show (first and second seasons) to whet your appetite. There is some language in the first one, so if that’s not your thing, skip to the second!

And don’t miss Robyn and Kim’s posts below!

To start off, I know I’ve been absent around here lately, and I apologize to everyone for not checking in more often. But I swear I have an excuse. I’m down to the last week and a half before the deadline on my next book, and I’ve been pretty much burning the candle at both ends. In fact, I think I’ve finally reached that point where the days start to blur together and you glance in the mirror and wonder when it was that you last ate, brushed your teeth, took a shower, etc. Okay, it’s not quite that bad. But it’s close.

In any case, I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still alive. At least, as far as my frazzled mind can tell. And I have a bit of news: The last book in the Daventry Sisters series now has a new title. Her Wicked Guardian is now Seduced by Sin, and it will be on shelves in April 2008. Now, if I can just get the darn thing done, it will be party time.

Also, before I sign out once again, I wanted to remind everyone to check out my favorite show, Supernatural, tonight at 9:00 on the CW. Yes, I know I sound like a television promo, but this is an awesome show that really deserves to have a huge following. It’s the last new episode before we go into reruns again, so it’s a good time to get hooked. And after some further surfing around, I’ve found an interesting interview with writer Sera Gamble at Eclipse Magazine that you might want to check out if you are a fan. Gamble is my favorite of the SN writers and has written quite a few of my favorite episodes. She also has a really funny blog and has written some erotic fiction, though I can’t say I’ve read any of it. Not only does this interview let you in on some of the inside info for tonight’s episode, but you also get a bit of a glimpse into what life as a television writer is like, so it may be of interest to the writers among us. Enjoy. And don’t forget to scroll down and check out Robyn’s post below.

The other day I was looking in the mirror and guess what I found? A gray hair! My first one, right above my right ear. I was so excited, I tried to take a picture but it didn’t work. Before this new foray into aging, I have previously noticed a difference in my skin – something in the texture. That change I’m not so excited about, but the gray hair and wrinkles, bring em on! While I’ve been thinking about getting older I’ve been reminiscing about when I was growing up. So step back with me and let’s take a walk through the 80′s.

First and foremost, the music. The 1980′s offered a new sound a new style to music and was the beginning for some of our biggest stars (Madonna and Michael Jackson – yes, he was around before then, but really hit mega stardom in the 80′s). Because my siblings are much older than me, I cut my teeth on the great classic rock bands and that crossed over into my teenage years. Like most kids from the time I loved the one-hit-wonder dance songs and I admit it, I was a hair band fan. Two of my very favorite bands though (and I still totally love them!) was Air Supply and REO Speedwagon. Man, no one writes love songs like they did back then. Talk about power ballads.

The make-up. My highschool boyfriend used to tell me, “your eyes look like a rainbow” – that would be because I wore pink and blue eyeshadow, blue eyeliner and electric blue mascara. It was in style and we’ll pretend it worked.

The hair. There are really not enough words for me to tell you about my huge mall hair. I have big hair naturally, comes from the curls, but get a curling iron or rollers in it and it explodes. I really have the perfect hair to be a disco diva, too bad, we don’t need those anymore. Hey, remember that episode of Friends where they all went to Bermuda and Monica’s hair kept getting bigger and bigger – that’s me at the beach. Anywho, back to my 80′s hair. My bangs practically needed their own zipcode they were so big and the big poof out by my ears. I just have no excuse.

The movies. Didn’t they just have the best movies in the 80′s? John Hughes was a movie god. All the brat-pack movies. Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo’s Fire – my favorite was Some Kind of Wonderful – which incidently has the best movie kiss EVER!

So I’ll take my gray hair and getting old, but only if I can still rock out to Air Supply and wear blue eyeshadow every now and then. How about you? What are your favorites from your teenage years?

March seems to be the time for Jaunty authors to fall in love. I wonder if it has to do with Porcupine mating season? Anyway, I digress. Like Shana and Robyn, I also got married in the month of March, but unlike those newbies, I am celebrating 10 years of marital bliss today.

Yes, I did marry when I was a wee baby (20 years old, as was my sweetie). El Guapo and I met in high school. Well, techincally we were in a First Communion class together in 2nd grade (and we have photographic proof on our mantle), but we really got to know each other in high school. One of my first memories of him was when I was sitting in our high school debate class before school, crying because my beloved Grandpa was dying. EG came in and saw me and talked to me a minute and then went to get our teacher. It was a nice thing to do since most boys of 14 would have gone screaming the other direction if they saw a girl they didn’t know crying.

We didn’t start dating until our Senior year and didn’t get serious until college, when he was in Seattle and I was in Boise, ID. Ultimately I came to him and we were married a year later in a place called “The Enchanted Chapel” (which was neither enchanted, nor a chapel and we even had our doubts about legality later, but God knows we tried).

The fact is that I am married to my best friend. I know people say that kind of stuff all the time, but it’s true. He is the only person I can say anything to and know it’s perfectly safe. He’s the only person I like hanging around with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We share a lot of the same tastes in music, movies and books (we even read books aloud together).

I think that’s what I build in romance, too. I like building relationships between my hero and heroine that are partnerships. I like feeling like after I leave them with their happy ending that they’ll be able to weather any storms that come their way. That they’ll find ways to laugh together and work together and even fight with their love intact. To me, that’s the most realistic part of a romance to me. Because if you find that in real life, you’ve found a real treasure.

Happy Anniversary, EG. Thanks for ten years of all the laughing and working and everything else. And here’s to 110 more (at minimum).

I thought I’d share the cover of my July release, A Warrior’s Taking, which is the first book of my paranormal series. It features Brogan MacLochlainn, a Druzai sorcerer-warrior who must leave his “enchanted” land and his own time to go in search of an object of power. It is one of two blood stones, the only things that will ensure that he and his brother can vanquish an evil sorceress who is intent on destroying the Druzai, and enslaving the non-magical people of the earth.

Brogan isn’t exactly Scottish, but he’s got Celtic roots, and his brogue leads the English heroine, Sarah Granger, to believe he’s Scottish. He can’t tell Sarah who he is or where he’s from, so he lets her continue to believe he’s Scottish. He can’t use magic while he’s out of his own time and place, or else he might draw the evil sorceress and her minions to him. He only wants to find the magical stone that’s hidden on Sarah’s land, and go back home.

But the search is more complicated than Brogan anticipated. And Sarah and her young charges – two little girls – are in a difficult situation. They are about to be evicted from the estate owned by the girls’ father who was killed in battle against Napoleon’s army in Spain. They have no money and nowhere to go. Brogan, who thought he wanted nothing to do with the plain, unmagical people of 1813 England, realizes he can’t leave things alone. And he discovers that his people, the Druzai, are not necessarily superior in every way. The Tuath, or plain people, have many skills lacking by the Druzai, and the more time Brogan spends with Sarah, the more he appreciates them.

It was a challenge, but a lot of fun to develop the Druzai culture and Brogan’s special powers – powers that he can’t use while he’s away from his enchanted isle. I came up with a few strange and magical creatures, too, and I’m busy working them into the second book which is about Brogan’s brother, Merrick MacLachlainn. Since Merrick has the task of finding the second magical blood stone, it was also a challenge to come up with a plot that’s completely different from the storyline in A Warrior’s Taking.

But I’ll tell you about that in another post.

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those people who, when I heard about a new Gallup Poll, wonder why I wasn’t called. I like to be asked my opinion on politicians, or toothpaste, or high heels. You ever see those people in the mall with clipboards? They’re trying very hard to recruit people to come and take their little surveys. Well, I approach them.

So if you like surveys as much as I do. And if you like romance novels as much as I do, I have something you’re really going to love.

Click here to check out this awesome romance novel survey .

I told you about our trials with Mokie. Now that the weather is improving in terms of temperatures, I’m not so worried about where he’s spending his days. And my husband asked the neighbor not to let him into her house any more, so good ole Mokie is more apt to come running home when I call him. Here are my next two guys. This is the back of my house, and that’s Lou on the peak of the circular roof, with Bob just below him on the table.

Looks pretty bleak out there, doesn’t it? But it was about 45 degrees when I took this shot. Here it is closer – maybe you can see Lou and Bob better in this one.

Lou has the run of the second floor and the roof. He came home with my daughter from college, and has been here ever since (yeah – I know!). We would love to have him join the rest of the gang downstairs and outside, but he’s afraid of the other animals in the household. Our dogs are accustomed to having cats around, but I will admit – if one of the cats makes a sudden move, the dogs are after him. They just can’t help it – they’re hunters! So we put a cat door in one of the upstairs windows and Lou has all those levels of roofs to run and play on to his heart’s content.

By the way, that’s my office on the second floor. It’s the room on the right, with the door.

Cherie Japp! Congrats to you. Just e-mail me with your choice of which of my first three books you would like to receive and your snail mail addy and I will get your prize sent out to you within the next few weeks. And if you enjoy the show once you’ve finished watching your copy of the season one DVD, please do spread the word. Apparently the numbers did tick up for Thursday night’s episode, and I’d like to think that I contributed to that. Of course, it probably had more to do with BSG’s Tricia Helfer.

In case you would like to learn a little bit more about the show, I found this fun interview with Jared Padalecki at the TV Guide website. It will give you a bit of insight into SN as well as a taste of what’s coming up. (For those who watch the show and don’t like spoilers, be prepared. There may be a few!) And don’t forget to scroll down to check out both Cindy and Shana’s Saturday posts!

This week on a writer’s loop I’m doing an online Q&A on time management. I thought some of you might be interested and might have some questions and or suggestions of your own. Even though this is geared to writers, it could apply to any passion you have that you have to make time for.

When I was trying to sell that first book, I knew that in order to sell a book, I had to have a product to sell. In order to get those books written I had to:

1) Prioritize free time- this means seriously looking at time wasters and what can be eliminated from your life and your schedule. For example: I used to like to golf. It takes too much time. It had to go. I used to meet friends for lunch on Saturday. It took too much time. Now I meet them either during the work day or right after work.

2) Set goals- when will that book be finished? Six months? Okay, how many pages per week do you need to write to make that happen?

3) Find good critique partners. Meeting weekly and having “new” pages for critique is a mini-goal I set and meet every week.

4) Hone your craft. I attended three national conferences as an unpublished author and various regional ones. As the rejections kept coming in, I took comfort in what a NYT Bestselling author told me….that you can teach someone the mechanics of writing (which is what I was learning at the conferences) but you can’t teach someone to have imagination. I had the imagination…I just needed to become a better writer.

5) Figure out the writing schedule that works for you and then guard that time. For some people that’s early morning. For others it’s at night. My friends and family know that I write all my new pages on Saturday and edit those pages the rest of the week. Unless it’s truly a special occasion, any invitation that takes place on Saturday is declined. By giving in to another person’s demands to change you schedule “just this one time” you are telling them that your writing isn’t important to you.

6) Make use of unexpected free time. I writes all my new pages (20 per week) in longhand, then I key the pages in and print them off. I admit sometimes, er most of the time, these pages are pretty awful. But as Nora Roberts once said “You can’t edit a blank page,” and I now have something to work on for the rest of the week. I put the pages in my portfolio and take them with me everywhere. Meeting a friend for lunch and they’re late….no worries…pull out the pages and start revising. Doctor, Dentist, (you fill in the blank) appointment running late….no worries…pull out the pages and start revising. But you HAVE to take them with you because you never know when these opportunities will present themselves.

7) Multi-task. I revise while watching my favorite television programs. Some people have this ability …I did her best studying in front of the television while in college…but if you can’t and there are certain programs you love, tape them so you don’t have to waste time with commercials.

Realize that writing fast does not mean poor quality and conversely, writing slow does not mean good quality. I believe staying with a story and moving it forward helps keep that story in the forefront of you mind. Go too slow and you might have to remind yourself what it’s about. Success breeds success. You start getting the pages written, you can see an end in sight and that in itself can be motivating.

What about you? Got a time saving tip you’d like to share?

In Houston we have a very short Spring. In fact, it was Spring last week, and it’s almost summer already. I know that a few of you live where it’s still winter. I thought you might like to see what’s waiting for you as soon as it warms up!

Gerber daisies planted in a flower box in my back yard.

The azaleas are just blooming like crazy. They’re so bright that I don’t even think this picture does them justice.

Bright neon pink!

So has Spring sprung where you are or are you still in the midst of winter?