The door to The Summer Love In is open! You’ll find free reads, 1st chapters, this & thats. Then come back on the 14th to chat live with the authors. There’ll be contests, give-aways, free eBooks, and a $25 gift certificate to one lucky guest. With everything that’s planned, I promise this will be one heck of a fun day because these authors are a fun crowd.

You’ll have to temporarily sign up on yahoo groups here: http://groups.yahoo.com then search for SummerLove-In in the search box. It’s free and will disappear after our fun. This other link might take you right there as it is the direct address, but I haven’t tried to sign out of my account and try visiting the Summer Love-In yahoo group as any guest might. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SummerLove-In However you go, you will have to sign in first so you can see all the goodies we have waiting for you. 🙂

Sounds fun doesn’t it? I’ve never been to one of these media gatherings before let alone participated in one. I mentioned  to someone yesterday how this is like when my dog gets excited about something and my daughter’s little dog gets excited because the big dog is but she really doesn’t know what’s going on. I’m excited and can’t wait to see how this unfolds all week as people stop by and then return for the big day next Thursday. Creating this event has taken a crazy amount of precise effort and the lion’s share of it on one set of shoulders. Michele Hart – lady, you are a dynamo! And Missy Martine’s generous gift $25 certificate prize and her jaw-dropping publicity connections gave us an up-front ad spot on the widely popular Author Island site for two days. I have learned so much from these two women over the past few months. My parents must have been smiling down on me the day I stumbled into this author’s group. The authors are all amazingly intelligent, generous, and all around wonderful souls. One day I hope to meet them all face to face.

So needless to say…what an astoundingly busy week!! Some things had to step aside while other work got done. I really hate seeing my blog neglected. More on the blog later…

From the moment I sat down and put my goals on paper last summer, I was determined to become an author. I’ve been writing for years – large and small stories across genres, newsletters, official documents, and magazine articles. Exactly one year ago this week I was a writer. A year later I am an author.

I can’t say enough about putting your goals on paper. The dream that began as compiled external stimuli plied my brain and fired the synapses. Changing form, this force was then sent by electrical impulse along the nerves that ran outward from my spine branching from the center cord like limbs on a tree. These electrically charged nerves send impulses that directed my muscles. These contracted to hold a pen that hovered with potential energy until the words were found. More electrical impulses coursed through my body as thought energy formed into written words. Armed with this knowledge and zapped to attention by current, my muscles worked my fingers and wrote down the goal. All the while the concert of my bodily functions played on in the background making sure both muscle and brain had enough fuel and oxygen to facilitate the remarkable electrical device that is my body.

Electrical device?

Yes, a remarkable machine but more than that. The whole of me is a dream facilitator. Along the way, the initial electrical energy of thought dramatically changed form. It rode the interstate of my central nervous system, changed form again as it animated my muscles, then changed form again as I moved the pen. And what occurred was not just writing down a thought. No, it was more than that. It was the First Law of Thermodynamics in play. Energy only changes form, it never disappears. There was no way the dream couldn’t be realized. The energy was in play because I released it on the world.

I treated that dream like a career before the career even started. It’s my job. I do this seven days a week and five of these are full eight, sometimes twelve, hour days with necessary breaks in between. The weekends will occasionally afford me some time to get a thought out but for the most part they belong to my family. Some days the words flow and worlds build and before I know it I’ve completed another book. Other days the words trickle and I use the time to organize thoughts and fulfill obligations. I’d be lying if I said things didn’t suffer for my art. From the bored expression on my dog’s precious face, to chores that mount whether I’m engaged elsewhere or not, my days are crammed tight with tasks that must get done regardless if my bad guy is in the middle of some diabolical plot or my lovers are amorously engaged. That’s ok. I’m a mom. My kids are grown but I still remember what it was like to juggle it all when I worked in and outside the home.

That being the case I normally take what comes in the average day to day. Every once in a while the Universe conspires to drop a truck load of irons in my fire. The irons dropped this past Tuesday. Holy cow did they ever. With a bang too.

My new novel Dreamscape, came for its final edits and after a good deal of angst on my part during the first round, the second round was painless. The book is looking really good — I’d buy it! Two editors having a go at it has tightened it up considerably and forced me to defend the plot by making me write clearer for the reader. (What can I say? I write like I think. Instead of walk a mile in my shoes, I’d say live a minute in my skull! LOL) Anyway…I have to return it with my final approval before the week is out. Dreamscape hits the ether as an eBook on July 19^th! Here’s a peek:

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.

Lanie O’Keefe has loved the old Bowen Mansion since she was a little girl and often dreamed the house was hers. Today the realtor gave her the key. When Lanie arrives with plans to renovate her newly purchased Victorian mansion, Jason discovers ghost or not, he’s still very much a man.

Despite its derelict condition and ridiculous haunted house reputation, Lanie couldn’t be happier with her new home. But then she has no idea a spirit follows her every move throughout the day and shares her captivating warmth at night.

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 what of that insurmountable matter of Jason being dead?

🙂  How does that work?

Jinger Heaston did an amazing cover for Dreamscape. I sent her an email thanking her the other day and she told me she was so happy with it that she was saving it to enter in some contest at the end of the year. She made the characters exact to what I had in mind. It’s perfect – the house, the lettering, the translucent form of Dr. Jason Bowen hovering over the sleeping Lanie. I have a feeling this cover will win for her. I hope it does.

Nice huh?

A random question went around the larger author’s group not too long ago. Does the cover make a difference when you buy a book? You know, I think it does. I must admit Fabio’s younger days as a cover model did catch my eye. Not so much because it was Fabio (not my type) but that his face was on every character imaginable. I saw him as a pirate, a Viking, a decked-out gentleman of several eras, a highwayman, a ship’s captain, a Native American warrior, and probably a dozen more iterations. The thing is, aside from the books being written by my favorite authors, that fascination of seeing his face painted on all those muscle-bound bodies made me pick up many a book just to confirm it was him I was seeing again. A few of them I bought. As far as I’ve been able to tell, Jinger deals mainly with photos. You don’t see those detailed hand-painted romance covers any more but I’m seeing more and more CG (computer graphics) Along those lines, a talented new friend is gearing up to launch her cover art business. If you’re self publishing and looking for cover art, she really creates cool sultry CG images. She also does backgrounds, banners, and headers for blogs and webpages too. Take a peek.
http://fictionalbookshelfdigitaldesigns.blogspot.com

So I mentioned above that this has been a week with lots to do. I’ve written so many things in the past four days that last night I actually continued to write in my sleep. No kidding. I was dream writing and the funny thing is the same extra got-to-do tasks of life were all around me! You’d think I’d dream up a maid, cook, housekeeper or private secretary or something.  Sheesh.

As participants in the Summer Love-In, we were asked to come up with introductions for ourselves yesterday – a little glad to meet you I’m Rose Anderson, blurb. Yahoo threw a curve ball last night and turned up with word or character/space limits. We all had to trim considerably but it wasn’t that bad at all. I’m so wordy that you could technically cut out half and still get something readable. lol The point of my intro was made even in the trimmed down version so I’m happy. The more precise and yahoo-condensed version is going out today. I think the author intros are all wonderful and coming to know these people over the past months, they fit them perfectly. Here’s the original intro to me (Trimmed ad posting not shown):

Have you ever fallen so deeply in love with the characters in a romance novel that thoughts of them linger long after the last page is turned? Have you ever been so completely immersed in a love scene that you’d swear you’ve just been kissed or more? Meet Rose Anderson’s strong, confident heroines and be seduced by compelling heroes you’ll wish were there beside you. Come see how their lives intertwine and through their stories discover love profound. From her current novel Hermes Online and soon-to-be released Dreamscape, to the passionate stories that follow, this new author will sweep you away on a sensual tide of memorable story-telling. http://calliopeswritingtablet.com

With my blog address on it, you can be sure I’ll be posting more over the next few days…lots going on. I’ve several reviews coming, a new book release coming, an author interview coming, the Summer Love-In day long extravaganza, and a youtube book trailer coming. And those are just what I can remember after one cup of coffee! I’d better go refuel. I do believe I’m missing a few things.

Oops I’m not done! This just came in and I wanted to post it: