We’ve been online since the days of Windows3.1 — a long time. I’ve said before, I love information. I’m an information hound. That being the case, the internet was made for me. Just about any thought I have can be tracked down online. What a wonderful resource for a writer. Need a word in another language? –got it. Need names of foreign currency? — yep. Need a term for Victorian imbecile? You bet your oik you’ll find it. You can find bits of just about everything.
Having gone the route of Inter-Library Loan in the years before the wide world web, I’m happy I don’t have to wait to feed my desire to know. My writing doesn’t have to wait either. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like holding a book in your hands. The internet doesn’t rid us of the need for libraries, no, not by any stretch. In my experience as an info hound, librarians are just as important now as ever. Someone has to keep track. Knowledge has expanded exponentially.
But there’s a problem with that, namely, the internet is HUGE. How can you possibly find all the treasures out there waiting to explore? There’s a terrific tool to surf the web with, and it’ll help you dig deeper. I’ll warn you if you have a penchant for surfing now, you’ll need to go into it with your eyes wide open. It’s called StumbleUpon, and it hooked me within three stumbles.
The StumbleUpon tool is a free download easily programmable to your interests. One of my mine is Ancient History. StumbleUpon will scour the internet for sites dealing with that topic. I like crafts, even more craft sites will pop up when I click the stumble button. I’m interested in words, meteorology, science, and religions of the world. I don’t have to wade through a bunch of nothing to find the gems of research. I can like what I like and give the ol’ thumbs down to the pages I don’t. Likes get stored in your account to revisit again and become recommended likes for the StumbleUpon community to share. Unlikes disappear into obscurity and won’t return to your personally programed searches. It’s a very nice tool.StumbleUpon
Hey folks at StumbleUpon, this is a celebrity endorsement. I’m a small fish in a big pond, but hey how about it? lol
So, I’m testing a theory. My blog stats show that since I “liked” my blog on StumbleUpon, I get a lot of people stumbling upon me here. In my ongoing attempt to be that shiny needle at the top of the haystack, I spent a few days making blogs and bloggetts..and Liking them on StumbleUpon. I have this one, my main blog with my domain name. I have another on Blogspot.com that I use just slightly less than this one. The others are static pages for others to stumble upon, and I have nearly a dozen author pages and placeholders around the web. Stop and check them out. Some where tricky, some were simple. I’m giving them a two month test. The following links are just some of the places I haunt — some old and some new. If you know of others, please tell me about them in comments. Thanks!
Thinking about Pinterest today. Spring is knocking on my door, winter is coming to a close, my house is full of visual clues that say stop writing it’s time for spring cleaning!! Friends and family know the Annual Purge is essential to me and they’ll laughingly get out of my way. Even my husband’s colleagues ask if I’m spring cleaning yet. It’s the stuff of legends. For two or three weeks my world stops and every nook and cranny, every drawer, every cabinet, and corner are cleaned. This is my renewal. This is how I find myself each year.
It all started with bad news about twenty-two years ago. I won’t go into that, but it was just plain sad. So sad I wanted to pull a blanket up over my head and sleep, sleep it all away. My soul mate/best friend/husband saw something I hadn’t. I define myself, in part, by my home. My home has always been an eclectic, eccentric canvas and my style, interests, and collections are the blobs of color upon my palette. Up until the sadness hit, we’d only been in this house a few years. We lived with white blah walls waiting on One Of These Days when time and money agreed to change things. He sat beside me, and said, “I want you to redecorate the entire house from top to bottom. I want you to find yourself again.”
There was no grand swapping out of furniture and appliances, no tearing up carpet or laying down new tile. But I painted murals and filled the house with color. I organized and rid myself of the weight of things no longer pertinent to our lives. Then I decorated with all the little things that make a home interesting. And within days, the anchor of sadness pressing me into my mattress had lifted. He was right. I found myself again.
I have been doing this annual event every year since. It’s gone from several truck loads of donations to Goodwill to a few bags in the car and it will last until the holidays come rolling around. Then ever so slowly, one item at a time will creep into my life. I don’t know why I’ll have a dozen wine corks in the requisite junk drawer (every kitchen seems to have such a drawer), but they’ll have to go. Six dead batteries? Yeah they go to. Single socks? You’re outta here. Where did all these paperclips come from? Ratty potholders? Out the door. Cob webs and spiders? You’re out too.
Ok, now what does all that have to do with Pinterest?
Pinterest is a place to organize. I’ve been online for so many years that I’ve naturally collected favorite sites. I’ve come across many interesting places worth visiting again (like this blog). Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board — a pin board if you will. On it I’ve created smaller boards to pin my interests on. Nearly all come with a link that will take me back to those sites I wanted to keep track of. And Pinterest is booming. I’d read recently that Pinterest is the new popular social media and grows more so by the day.
Before I looked at Pinterest as being useful to me, I’d often stumble upon it in random internet searches. It was all about wedding cakes and shoes and stuff I wasn’t remotely interested in. What’s more, it never made sense to me at the time. What was this place with all the mishmash of unrelated items on one page??
Last May I came across an article talking about Pinterest as a media marketing tool. I took a serious look at the site after reading that. Authors spend a good deal of time marketing their books and themselves. The publishing world is a giant haystack and authors are small needles that need to be found so anything pushing those sparkly needles into the light is a good thing.
I made an account and filled it with categories, aka boards, and started pinning things of interest. Only then did I get it — pin things of interest — pin + interest = Pinterest! I devoted an entire month, hours of time, to build a pin board that was both interesting and large enough that people would want to follow me. I had things I wanted to share — amazing pictures, history, science, recipes, crafts, and my books. Through Pinterest I have access to well over 100,000 people each day. If 80% are there looking to shop, and a % are book lovers, and another % of them read romance, that means that’s a bunch of people who’ll find me who might not have found me any other way.
I came upon this recently and it’s a part of a much larger infographic that can be seen here. I recommend seeing the whole thing. As I deal with books, my own specifically, I found number 7 very interesting. http://www.socialized.me/pinterest-marketing/
Today I’ve added a bunch of pins to my Rose Anderson Romance Author board. They’re all the places I’ve been over the last few months – interviews and guest blogs, newspaper articles, youtube videos, assorted links, etc. I invite you to follow me. I have over 20,000 pins. From crafts to social conscience, I’m one interesting cookie if I do say so myself.
It’s the last day of the Swept Away Valentine Blog Hop!Follow this link for one more chance to meet over 140 authors and have a chance to win the prizes given away on each of their blogs. As always, be sure to leave your email address when you leave comments.
My prize is anauthorgraphed copy of my most recent release The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo – a tale about an ancient Native American shaman who finds love in the modern world. Here’s the true root of the story at USA Today — The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo
About Rose: I love words and choose them as carefully as an artist might choose a color. My active imagination compels me to write everything from children’s stories to historical fiction. As a persnickety leisure reader I especially enjoy novels that feel like they were written just for me. It’s hard to explain, but if you’ve ever read one of those, then you know what I mean. I tend to sneak symbolism and metaphor into my writing and always write in layers. You might say it’s a game I play with myself. It’s really a kick to have readers email to say they’ve found something or to ask if I meant what they think I meant when they read a portion and their brain goes, hey wait a minute… I want people to feel the story was written just for them and these hidden insights are my gift to my readers.
What does an immortal Native American shaman do when the grave he’s sworn to watch over for all eternity disappears under urban development? His purpose of guarding his wife’s burial mound is gone, Ashkewheteasu seeks to end his immortal existence. In his despair, Ash assumes the form of a wolf and steps in front of a moving car and into the life of Dr. Olivia “Livie” Rosalini. The veterinarian saves the animal’s life, and in the process saves the man within. Livie has no idea the wolfish dog she’s taken into her home and grows to love is a magical being seeking to win her heart as a man. While Ash is learning a new world filled with new love, friendship, and happiness, an old menace makes plans to steal it all away; just as he had 3000 years before.
Loving Leonardo the new 2012 CataNetwork Sensual Reads Reviewer’s Choice Winner in Historical Romance! An unusual bisexual, polyamorous, Victorian love story with a touch of reader-interactive art history Peek inside Loving Leonardo on Amazon
Bound by limits dictated by society, Art Historian Nicolas Halstead lived a guarded life until a tempest in the form of Elenora Schwaab blew into his world. At first Nicolas can’t decide if the audacious American is simply mad or plotting blackmail for not only does she declare knowledge of his homosexuality, she offers him a marriage proposal.
After Ellie tells him of a previously unknown work of Leonardo da Vinci, a book of erotic love poems and sketches dedicated to the artist’s long-time lover Salai, Nicolas joins her in a race to save the book from destruction. Along the way they encounter Historian Luca Franco and discover a comfortable compatibility that comes to redefine their long-held notions of love. The trio embarks on an adventure of sensual discovery, intrigue, and danger. Little do they know Leonardo da Vinci’s book is far more than meets the eye.
Dreamscape A haunting, a murder, a mystery, a reader’s puzzle, and a love story that transcends time. Peek inside Dreamscape on Amazon Unable to deny his own translucence, Dr. Jason Bowen determines his lack of physical substance could only mean one thing — he’s a ghost. Murdered more than a century before, Jason haunts his house and ponders the treachery that took his life. When Lanie O’Keefe arrives with plans to renovate her newly purchased Victorian mansion, Jason learns, ghost or not, he’s still very much a man. Jason soon discovers he can travel through Lanie’s dreams and finds himself reliving the days before his murder with Lanie by his side. It took one hundred and twenty years for love to find them, but there’s that insurmountable little matter of Jason being dead.
Hermes Online ACataNetwork Sensual Reads Reviewer’s Choice Winner 2011 – Contemporary Romance! A woman finds her lost confidence in a very unlikely place Peek inside Hermes Online on Amazon Imagine if you will a story begun in the halls of Mount Olympus long before this modern tale was conceived. It was a time when the god Hermes flew on his winged sandals and carried messages from the gods to the mortals below. And between that time and this, couriers became postmen and handwritten letters became bytes. It is said the gods still speak to those who listen… Left bruised and brokenhearted after a cruel breakup, Vivienne Bennet finds herself mired in a world of self-doubt. To her surprise, she receives an email that challenges her to rediscover the sensual woman she once was. Together Vivienne and the enigmatic man known only as S embark upon the world of anonymous Internet communication where suggestive emails lead to erotic chat, where cybering leads to Skype, and C2C sends both into the arms of a love they’d believed lost forever.
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~ And Coming Soon ~
Loving Leonardo – The Quest
and The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo Book 2 – Eluwilussit
It’s day three of the Swept Away Valentine Blog Hop!Follow this link to over 140 authors and the prizes given away on each of their blogs. As always, be sure to leave your email address when you leave comments.
My prize is anauthorgraphed copy of my most recent release The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo – a tale about an ancient Native American shaman who finds love in the modern world.
So what better to sweep you away than love at first sight?
Here’s a bit from Loving Leonardo the new 2012 CataNetwork Sensual Reads Reviewer’s Choice Winner in Historical Romance. It’s an unusual bisexual, polyamorous, Victorian love story with a touch of reader-interactive art history. After hopping with all of us, hop on over to Amazon and take a peek inside: Loving Leonardo
I sat Ellie and pulled a chair for Mrs. Ormont as she waited for her husband. A moment later, Colonel Ormont brought the historian to our table and made introductions. Luca Franco, late of Florence, was a Professor of Antiquities returning from London. I found the Italian quite the attractive fellow, impeccably dressed as he was. When in the presence of true beauty, my mind often imagines the person unclothed as the artists of the ages might have seen him. Sitting at my table was a statue carved in marble by Gian Lorenzo Bernini; an artist known for his remarkable ability to capture the essence of a narrative moment. And I found Luca Franco to be exactly that — a moment indelibly captured in time — a moment of meeting the mind could revisit in its entirety.
From every angle, he was beautifully made: black-haired, of medium build, and physically fit. He possessed a warm hue to his skin, his lineage no doubt stamped centuries past by the darker Moors or Turks. In startling contrast, and quite handsomely framed by black lashes, he had striking eyes the color one might see in a shadow falling across snow — not quite sky blue nor exactly steel gray, but a blending of the two in gradated rings.
I rose to shake his hand and felt the unmistakable current of compatibility. If this man weren’t forward in his mutual attraction, it was there nonetheless. I watched him bow over the ladies’ hands and found it curious that he lingered over Ellie’s fingers a tad longer. It made me smile. I had the distinct impression I was in the presence of a fellow dual-nature like myself.
Ah Cupid, you busy little fellow.Today begins the Swept Away Valentine Blog Hop! Follow this link to over 140 authors and the prizes given away on each of their blogs. As always, be sure to leave your email address when you leave comments.
My prize is an authorgraphed copy of my most recent release The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo – a tale about an ancient Native American shaman who finds love in the modern world. You’ll find the trailer further down in this post.
So let’s talk Cupid.
Depending on which mythology you ascribe to, this pudgy little deity is the immortal son of Venus (Aphrodite) and Mars (Ares) – an allegorical blending of love and war. Because he was the uniting power of love and therefore the bringer of order and harmony to the universe, some mythic tales make him a fundamental contributor in the formation of the world. A little known detail that gets overlooked as the lover’s holiday approaches: Cupid carries two arrows in his quiver – one of love and another of hate.
To the Orphic and Greek philosophers, he was the son of Nyx (Night) and Boreas the North Wind – the first complete manifestation of Divinity. In other depictions, Cupid is considered a primordial god – an old one who came before Zeus and even before Zeus’ grandparents Gaia and Uranus. From the very beginning, even before the fabric of the universe was woven, Cupid personified love.
As his Roman counterpart Eros, he was known far and wide as the god of passionate love, and fertility cults, among other things, rose in his honor. Some tales even have him with multiple heads, four eyes and various animal attributes. In other mythic versions, Cupid is blindfolded, and only the truest hearts will draw his blindly shot arrows. I had no idea Cupid was such a multifaceted little amorino.
When I met the love of my life, it was literally love at first sight for us both. I wasn’t looking, he wasn’t looking. It was fate. The arrow struck us both and it was totally unexpected. I write that love in my romances. I can see Cupid in my mind’s eye… his arrow notched on his bow. He’s tucked behind a tree or rock, poised to let his charmed arrow fly at just the right moment. When it hits, it’s totally unanticipated. It’s fate. Sometimes love is like that. Sometimes love waits in unexpected places.
Well that’s it on the blog hops for a while. I’ve been tallying the stats to see how blog hopping works for authors and will post that soon.
What a crazy, stress-filled, and oddly long week it’s been! Honestly, I can’t remember such a week that seemingly went on forever. I started out with an erroneously suspended blog and frantic hours trying to figure out why and get things up and running again before my USA Today debut. I had the blog hop coming mid-week too. This Blog Has Been Suspended just looks plain bad!
Thankfully the Happiness people (yes that is their title) at WordPress fixed their error and the blog got back up. Then blog hop fell into place. (Authors, I can’t say enough about doing all your blog posts at once as drafts and just posting as you go). The USA Today article was very well received. My fingers are crossed that this builds momentum. The nice thing is, it’s there forever. It’s even in the new Library at Alexandria! How cool is that?
I got my flu shot and felt like hell for two days, then my arthritis went nuts in my left hand and right ankle Thursday. (It’s an RA thing) Predictably, the household stuff I see to every day followed suit. Stress does that sometimes. *sigh* But today is a new day and the start of a new week. I beat the 1000+ email monster living in my email’s inbox back to a reasonable proportions this past weekend, so for the time being I have some semblance of control there. I’m glad I did! I found two guest appearances I’m scheduled for in the next few days. About that business of keeping track of things like guest posts and interviews. I found a terrific tool. It’s an organizer that you can load with your dates online, then send yourself an email copy or print it out to have on hand. So much more useful than the sticky notes I had plastered all over my desktop! It’s free but has upgrade options you pay for. For now the free version works fine for me.
After an icky few days, I’m feeling pretty good this morning so I expect a productive week. *knock on wood* My Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo comes out in paperback today. I think I’ll clean house to celebrate. lol Maybe I’ll dance while I work…no one’s here to see.
Speaking of…
Cute huh? I guarantee I’m not that flexible. You might have to watch this directly on youtube because of the song it’s playing. Still, the short jaunt is worth the smile.
Coming soon — some nice reviews and where I’ve been around town. If you’d like to learn more about my books, thoughts, future projects, and things I’ve found to navigate the author’s world, pour yourself a spot of tea and dig into my blog. You’re sure to find something useful or entertaining things.
It’s day 3 of the Something New, Something Naughty Blog Hop.One lucky winner will receive the grand prize of a $60 gift certificate to EdenFantasys (adult store) and two other winners will receive a $25 gift certificates to their choice of the following book sites:Amazon, All Romance eBooks, Barnes & Noble, or Total-E-Bound
All the participants are offering prizes. For this hop, I’m offering an ebook copy of my latest –
book 1 of The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo.
Scroll back to my previous post to see the book trailer, or go to Amazon.com for a peek inside the book..or do both! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFFFESI
My post can still be found in the Life section of the USA Today in the Happy Ever After Blog. There I explain how I came to write The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo — a story inspired by the urban legend of the Wisconsin wolf man. Here’s the link for a quick peek:
So as mentioned before, this is a themed Hop. Post something naughty and/or new. The newest thing in my life has been the USA Today article. But for naughty, I consulted Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com to gain some insight on the word. I love words and often haunt dictionaries and encyclopedias looking for new ones. What I found was Naughty is a pretty impressive word as far as the thesaurus was concerned. I’m offering several shades of naughty from my books. Yesterday wasunorthodox naughty, the day before playful naughty, and today is evil naughty (yes, the thesaurus says evil is a synonym of naughty).
Today I’d like to introduce an evil naughty snippet from my Contemporary/Victorian ghost story Dreamscape. But first, here’s the book trailer –
In this scene, Lanie O’Keefe examines the derelict mansion she’s bought. Jason Bowen (deceased) watches the woman who’s moved into his house and remembers the treacherous wife responsible for his death more than 100 years before.
He’d watched the pair as they walked around the grounds with pens and paper in hand presumably making notes for repairs. While assessing the pavers that lined his walkway, she looked up at his window curiously as if seeking something. Jason frowned. Did she see him standing there? How odd. He could only be seen when he wanted to. And he did not yet wish to be seen.
After the man had driven away in his automobile, the woman retrieved her bags from another smaller vehicle. He watched her coming up the walkway only to take another glance his way. She was smiling.
Hmm.
Below, the front door opened and closed, so he headed there, curious about the woman who at this very moment was moving into his house. He was grateful for two things, the first being he’d no longer be alone with only an occasional mouse for company. The second, this young woman bore no resemblance to his beautiful, black-hearted wife.
He thought about her from time to time, his duplicitous wife Cathy, her lover Richard Mason, and his sister Bertha, his murderers. He spent many a night listening to their congratulatory recounting of how they’d set him up, duping him into marrying a woman who from the onset had a lover in the wings. Like the Masons, Cathy too was born and raised in the south at the time of reconstruction and was reared on tales of the glory days. Their sole purpose from the onset in taking his life was so she would inherit all.
When they met she had been such a sweet and shy little beauty, the shyness he later learned to be false. When she comforted him over the untimely death of his father, he’d been surprised by how quickly he fell head over heels for her. Though she’d never voiced it while he was alive, he was well aware of her desire to live in the affluent manner in which her parents and grandparents had lived before the war took it all away. To that end, seeking to win her timid heart and encourage the comfort that would eventually lead his wife into his bed, he gave into Cathy’s every whim. No more than two months had passed before he was compelled to offer her marriage. No more than four before he found himself dead with his spirit walking the halls.
He played the details of their courtship over and over in his mind, for what else did he have to occupy his thoughts? Cathy Ames had accepted his proposal eagerly, despite her less-than-enthusiastic response to his advances. These always met with a cool reserve he erroneously mistook for maidenly shyness. But Cathy didn’t possess a shy bone in her body. No, far from it. He’d seen them together in bed, his wife and his murderer. Seen for himself the eager way she spread her legs, the way she clutched his body to hers and treated him to a carnal knowledge that obviously developed from years of knowing. Not only did it shock his senses to see his shy wife play whore and play it well, it sickened him. What a fool he’d been. Because of that he kept to the only room they never visited—the cupola at the top of the house—and decades passed there with little concern, because time ceased to have meaning for the dead. Yes, they continued on with their merry lives, raised their foul brood, and got away with murder.
But all that changed with the last of them. Margaret, the great-granddaughter of his wife, and her accomplice had never married, and like the living, aged over time. He never minded Margaret Mason. How could he when she was as lonely as he? He appeared to her from time to time when the loneliness got the best of both of them. When she grew old, and became the last of Richard Mason’s miserable line, he eventually told her the truth of her great-grandparents’ treachery. The night she died in her sleep she called him to her side and told him she arranged her estate to his benefit as best she could. It was the least she could do after the wrong her family had done him.
Standing invisible on the stairway, he looked over his new house guest. What a pretty creature with her tight curves, porcelain skin, and lustrous raven hair. More than one hundred years had passed since a beautiful woman walked these halls, for Richard Mason sired unfortunate-looking souls who passed on their regrettable looks to each generation, including poor Margaret. Blood will out. Evil definitely had a way of marking the man’s legacy as surely as Cane himself had been marked.
Following her into the kitchen, he watched her rummage for pots. She filled them at the tap then heated the water on the stove. He leaned against the wall appraising her. In all the years of his life, and certainly all the years after, this had to be the most beautiful woman he’d laid eyes on. She wore tight clothing, far tighter than he recalled women’s clothing to be when he saw them on Margaret’s television device. In fact her blue trousers fit her like a glove. These declared her legs to be slender and shapely and her bottom delectably rounded. Her breasts sat high and firm, and he found himself imagining what she looked like unclothed. The thought surprised him. He certainly harbored no such notion when the Mason horde lived here.
Hmm. In this fair company, he found himself still very much a man, despite being a dead one.
Fun fact:On the outside, Dreamscape, with its haunted house and gentleman ghost, is a story set between two time periods. But on the inside, it’s actually much more than that. This unlikely love story is also a murder, a suspense, a mystery, a time travel (via dreams) and if all that wasn’t enough, it’s also an Easter egg hunt for readers. Easter eggs, in this sense, are intentionally hidden messages. I tried to make them as visible as I could and in such number that readers would say to themselves, Was that intentional? It must mean something!
Why did I write a secondary story running parallel to the ghost story? Growing up, I was a huge fan of author Agatha Christie’s work. Many of her books were filled with arrows pointing at clues. Some of these were veiled, some intentionally hidden in plain sight, and all pointed to the truth even if details around them said otherwise. I remember my delight the first time I discovered a clue left out in the open for the reader to trip over. With that moment of discovery in mind, I wrote Dreamscape to tickle the imagination while turning expectations on their ends. Tomorrow I’ll share another shade of naughty from Hermes Online.
It’s the second week of a new year and I’m still hopping! Thanks for stopping by my blog for day 1 of the Something New, Something Naughty Blog Hop. Authors Jennifer Wright and Lizabet Sarai have put this together and opened it to a handful of authors. Including me! Thanks Jen and Lizabet. One lucky winner will receive the grand prize of a $60 gift certificate to EdenFantasys (adult store) and two other winners will receive a $25 gift certificates to their choice of the following book sites:Amazon, All Romance eBooks, Barnes & Noble, or Total-E-Bound
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To participate in this themed hop, I’m supposed to talk about new (as in new year) or naughty. Or even a combination of the two! New is self explanatory, but what is naughty exactly? Dictionary.com says several things about the word, everything from not eating your vegetables naughty, to mischief naughty, to vulgar naughty. The sister site Thesaurus.com offers a lot more from A to Z – well almost to Z. I found Aberrant to Wicked and a crazy amount of nuanced meanings in between. There are shades of naughty!
So, armed with a load of naughty variants, I’ve decided to offer several shades of naughty in my writings. I’m also offering insights into new things I’m up to in 2013.
As far as new goes, today I have a post in the Life section of the USA Today in the Happy Ever After Blog. There I explain how I came to write The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo — a story inspired by the urban legend of the Wisconsin wolf man. Here’s the link for a quick peek:
And…
Here’s a “playful” naughty snippet from book 1 of The Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo. I won’t go into what happened prior to this scene, but Olivia still doesn’t know the wolfish dog she’s petting on her bed is a 3000 year old immortal native American shaman. She thinks he’s simply the dog she hit with her car — a dog whose severe injuries miraculously healed in a matter of days…
…they found her brother Jack already there with her car. To Olivia’s surprise her brother was trying to get the wolf-cross to chase a stick. The dog wasn’t having any of it.
“Hey look at you! Nice lump you’ve got there, Sis.” Jack smiled and hugged her.
Olivia gave the dog a cursory once-over. He looked fit as a fiddle. Turning to her brother she said, “Yeah, I do. Though it’s better than yesterday. Thanks for bringing my car home. Where’d you find my dog?”
“Your dog?”
“Mine, temporarily. We haven’t found his owner yet.”
“He was waiting at the door. Does he have a name?”
“I’m sure he does, but I don’t know it.”
Jack petted the wolf-cross’s big head. “I’ll take him, if no one comes for him. He’s a good dog. Aren’t you, big fella?”
Ash’s eyes never left Livie. She looked well, beautiful in fact, despite the bandage she wore. He wagged his tail and lolled his long pink tongue. He’d lived the equivalent of sixty lives of men and not once in all that time did he think of anyone but his wife. In the past few days he’d been thinking of this woman almost to the exclusion of all else. He found it curious.
She looked at him, not knowing what to think. The fact of the matter was he’d been seriously injured just four days before. The compound fracture alone should have taken weeks to heal, yet here he was with no sign whatsoever that the jagged leg bone had pushed through the skin and necessitated surgery. Somehow he managed to chew off his bandages and run away the first chance he got. Just thinking about it made her head throb. That’s all she remembered. The dog ran off and she drove after him. She must have driven off the road and hit her head. Maybe a deer ran in front of the car.
Her family saw Olivia fed, settled in bed, and set up with a stack of garden magazines.
Her father asked. “What else can I get for you, Pumpkin?”
She smiled at him. “Would you mind opening the window a crack? After that stuffy hospital room, I need some air.”
“Sure.” Appraising the old ill-fitting panes, he added, “I’ll come by next week and we’ll see about putting up some insulation. This old house is too drafty and winter is coming.” When her mother came in with a large glass of water and a new bottle of Extra Strength Tylenol, Olivia knew they must have sent Jack to the store. It was confirmed when her mother said, “Take these if your head starts hurting. Be sure you drink enough. Your brother picked up juice and popsicles, too.”
Jack said from the doorway, “Yeah, prune juice, and all green ones.”
Olivia laughed, then winced. When they were kids, the green popsicles were everybody’s least favorite choice. Needless to say, that was often all that was left.
Her brother patted the furry animal beside the bed. “Your dog never leaves your side, does he? I bought him a can of dog food but he wasn’t hungry. He wouldn’t even eat a piece of cheese.”
Olivia looked at the wolf-cross sitting there, watching like he fully understood their conversation. “He’s kind of picky. After I nap, I’ll make something for both of us.”
Not the sort to take “no” for an answer, all three tried valiantly once more to convince her she’d be better off at home. They even offered to take the dog, too. She thanked them, kissed them goodbye, and sent them on their way by assuring them all she was going to do was sleep. Alone now, Olivia patted the bed beside her. “Come up here, big guy.”
Ash leapt onto the bed and lay beside her. He stared at her expectantly.
The small movement bringing that painful ache to life in her temple, she pressed a knuckle into her throbbing eye socket. “God, my head. Listen, I have no idea how I got this lump on my head, but no more running away. Understand me?” His tail thumped the bed.
Olivia rubbed his ears and patted him and smiled when he rolled over on his back. Her fingers gently combed through the thick fur to the pink skin underneath. No sign of his recent stitches. She felt his foreleg from shoulder to toes. No swelling. She moved it carefully with one hand while pressing her palm flat where the bone had been broken. No grinding bone on bone. For all intents and purposes, this dog had never been in an accident nor had surgery. It defied logic. She absently rubbed his belly, her mind on every implausible detail since she’d run him over.
Ash closed his eyes to Livie’s caress. Her hand swept up and down from his neck to just below his navel and he found his soul awakening to it. His body stirred too.
This was a very happy male dog. It was impossible not to notice, with the telltale evidence making an appearance. Olivia leveled a look at him. “You will not lick yourself on my bed, buster.”
Ash rolled side to side, his tail wagging and teeth bared. Livie laughed, and it made him pause. He’d heard her laugh when she talked with Jenni, but he hadn’t heard her laugh like this, and never for him alone. The sound was merry and genuine and it made him happy. To his surprise, he wanted more. He craved her touch. He craved her. He nuzzled his nose under her hand. Touch me Livie.
“How did you heal so quickly? This just doesn’t make sense.”
Ash knew she spoke more to herself than to him but listening to her eased him. Heal? Yes, that’s what’s was happening. He felt the flutter in his chest and knew it for what it was. His heart was healing. He’d loved his wife with his heart’s every beat. He’d loved their precious child with his every breath. He always would. But because of this gentle, caring woman, he felt his shriveled heart expand for the first time since that monster stole his family from him.
After a while her hand stopped its gentle caress and Ash knew she had fallen asleep. Listening to Livie’s regular breathing, he crawled up beside her and laid his heavy head across her chest. He closed his eyes and let her heartbeat lull him.
Was it so? Did he have room to love another? He needed to seek the Manitou. He must know if this were meant to be. But more than that, he needed to visit Aiyanna in his dreams again. A short time later he dreamed his life, dreamed of falling in love, dreamed of every memory of his wife he owned. Then of his own doing, he took his dreams to the very last day they shared…
fun huh?
Tomorrow I’ll share a different shade of naughty from another book.
I harbor a lifelong love of learning, but I didn’t enjoy school. In fact, I could count on three fingers those times I was actually inspired by a teacher. I say that because I can only remember three.
The twinkle of a notion that I could write stories appeared long ago, and it all started in school with a J.R.R. Tolkien book in my high school English class. We were to read The Hobbit and then write a short story in Tolkien’s style. It was the very first time a class assignment was more than a regurgitation of rote facts and dates. It was also the first time I put imagination to pen. I wrote about an emerald-scaled dragon waiting for her egg to hatch. I’d been inspired so I really got into it. It’s amazing what a little inspiration can do for creativity.
The next day, the teacher held me back after class to praise my story one on one. She asked if she could keep it or have a copy. Of course I said yes to her keeping it. In the days before Xerox, I wasn’t about to write it all out again! She left me with this thought. “You’re good enough to be published one day.” I shelved that idea for fourteen years before I took her compliment to heart. And with disappointment, I tabled it again as an impossible undertaking when manuscripts sent didn’t get a nibble. That was nineteen years ago. All told this trip has taken 38 years. I’m glad I tried again and was successful, but wish I’d started sooner. It’s not for the reason you might think.
I’ve long determined there aren’t enough hours in the day to accomplish the often overwhelming pile of things authors have to do to establish a solid footing in the publishing world. Years ago, the only thing an author needed to do was write a book and send the manuscript to a publisher. If they accepted it, the publisher did all the work and that included promoting.
It’s not enough now to simply write the book. You have to put on hats! Of course you must wear the writer’s hat, but there’s also the publicist’s trunk full of hats to wear — the blogger hat, social media hat, and the webmaster hat. Then we have the personal assistant’s hat and all the smaller hats that go with it. If you self-publish, there’s far more than one publisher’s hat to wear! There are days when i feel buried under hats. lol
The publishing world is the vertical slope. To make a success in his business is metaphorically like climbing K2. It’s not impossible, but boy it’s not easy with that column of hats balanced on your head!
To recap: More than 200 authors are taking part in five days of fun and prizes. Visit the participating blogs and leave a comment and your contact email on that day’s post. Be sure to visit every blog on the list and comment each day to increase your chances of winning the grand prize: a $100 Gift Card to EdenFantasys.com (an adult toy store), and a 10-book bundle of ebooks.
Don’t have a Kindle but still want those ebook prizes? Get a free Kindle for PC download and read ebooks on your computer. Free Kindle for PC download
You could walk away from the Hop with a lot of prizes. Every author is offering additional prizes on their blogs. Mine is an ebook copy of Loving Leonardo –An unusual polyamorous, bi, Victorian love story with a touch of interactive art history. This part one in a two-book story. Loving Leonardo — The Quest comes out sometime late January or early February.
~~~~~oOo~~~~~
I’d like to introduce another book — Hermes Online — my very first novel, and a CataNetwork Sensual Reads Reviewer’s Choice Award Winner of 2011 To take a peek inside the book, go to Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Hermes-Online/B004W8E8HM
Here’s the blurb:
Imagine if you will a story begun in the halls of Mount Olympus long before this modern tale was conceived. It was a time when the god Hermes flew on his winged sandals and carried messages from the gods to the mortals below. And between that time and this, couriers became postmen and handwritten letters became bytes. It is said the gods still speak to those who listen… Left bruised and brokenhearted after a cruel breakup, Vivienne Bennet finds herself mired in a world of self-doubt. To her surprise, she receives an email that challenges her to rediscover the sensual woman she once was. Together Vivienne and the enigmatic man known only as S embark upon the world of anonymous Internet communication where suggestive emails lead to erotic chat, where cybersex leads to Skype, and C2C sends both into the arms of a love they’d believed lost forever.
::Fun Fact:: When I came up with the name for this novel, the only thought I had in mind was the Greek myth of Hermes delivering messages from the gods. Flash forward to today, and emails magically appear in our inbox. Add to that the fact my character Vivienne went to Greece as a student and I was quite pleased with my unusual title. Notice I said was. The title has been a source of a few chuckles along the way. First off, just about everywhere I’ve guest blogged about this book, the host tells me they’ve had a tremendous amount of hits on their blog for that day. That’s nice. I’m also signed up for Google Alerts , and that tells me when my title is mentioned on the internet. In theory that should work. To date I’ve never received notice of this book being anywhere. But I do get a DAILY notice of who’s selling Hermes handbags, purses, and clutches online! lol I suspect the uncharacteristically high volume of hits on all those blogs might have been from people hunting down handbags. Every once in a while, a perplexed reader will wonder where the Greek gods are in the story.
FYI: The gods are there, but it’s not their tale.
::My Favorite Quote by Vivienne’s Penpal::
Allow me to pay homage to the goddess you are. Let me begin at your little feet. Feel me lightly kiss, and yes, you will feel me bite ever so slightly, for the need to devour you is great. Reply lover. I await. S
>>>>oOo<<<<
Excerpt. Can you *feel* a written kiss?
I closed the Word document and absently twirled my hair, lost in thought. There was so much of me in there, even the decorations in Jonathan’s house said much about me. The fact that Lily looks identical to me was rather Freudian too, come to think. I laughed out loud at the thought. It’s funny how our subconscious mind tells us what’s what sometimes. The subconscious mind intuits what the conscious mind misses at first glance. Yes, the phone sex story was a whim, and who would have thought six years later, it would help me find my way back to myself? I wished in that moment my pen pal stood right here so I could say thank you. I’d thank him for lighting the match that eventually relit the candle of my self-confidence. I’d kiss him for real.
I pressed my fingers to my lips, imagining this curious and compelling green-eyed, chestnut-haired, large-handed, well-endowed man kissing me. And unbelievably, my panties got soaking wet. I flexed my fingers and crafted a scene from the sizzling phantom fire playing over my lips.
Having experienced amazing kisses in my life added just enough realism to the blend of movie kisses. I told the screen, “So, you want a kiss, eh? Then what will you think of this?”
S,
There is so much more to kissing for the first time than meets the eye. The would-be lovers laugh and smile and delight in each other’s company. They talk, getting to know each other, trying to find the choicest morsels of their life and personality to share. They might hold hands for hours as they wander here and there. And when they sit side by side, perhaps on a bench at a museum, they’ll look in feigned interest at the passersby, glance again and again at the exhibit, but not really seeing it. First, one will turn inward, the movement slight, barely noticeable. And then with no clear knowledge of doing so, the one will magically mirror the other. Their knees may touch, and one set of clasped hands might rest innocently upon a knee. And then a noise, a temporary distraction, might take their attention for a second, and both heads will turn to the sound, inadvertently closer now than before. When one turns back, their faces will be mere inches apart. Their eyes, green and gray, will hold each other’s gazes, darting from one sparkling pupil to the other. They might unfocus to drink in the entire face for a second, perhaps lingering on the person’s smile before meeting the gaze once more, a gaze noticeably warmer than a moment ago.
One face may turn a little, and in mirrored image, the other follows, only slightly tipped in the opposite direction. And the eyes ask the silent question as two thoughts become superimposed — May I kiss you? Will you kiss me? The answer is subtle, missed by nearly everyone passing by, everyone save the smiling elder couple holding gnarled hands and assisted by their canes. Perhaps they, too, once shared a kiss sitting there, or plan to again later. But locked in their own world, they don’t notice the elder pair walk by.
They are aware now only of each other, aware of little things, the flush on her cheeks, the gleam in his eye, the color of her moist lips, the imperceptible flare of his nostrils as he subconsciously reminds his body to breathe. They touch now. The kiss is at first soft, the lips asking permission for the firmness they crave. Another kiss grants this and another and another as faces turn to fit around chins and cheeks and noses. And then loose and pliable, those lips part now to make way for tentative tongues. These too begin their searching, gently at first then becoming bolder as they instinctively react to the warmth of each other’s mouths and thrust as hands cup cheeks and arms wind around shoulders, drawing each other ever inward into the private space that shuts the waking world out and lets the dream begin.
V
Little did I realize when I began this kissing scene that I would abandon the amalgamated movie kisses. I stopped and read those words, my words, my kiss. That kiss had been real, as had the love behind it. My eyes filled with tears, but I sent it on. Feeling alone, I rose from my chair and walked away.
But there’s a problem with that, namely, the internet is HUGE. How can you possibly find all the treasures out there waiting to explore? There’s a terrific tool to surf the web with, and it’ll help you dig deeper. I’ll warn you if you have a penchant for surfing now, you’ll need to go into it with your eyes wide open. It’s called StumbleUpon, and it hooked me within three stumbles. 
