Month: February 2016

One of the two novels I’m working on right now takes places mostly in San Francisco. Since I was in the city over the weekend, I took a few location shots.

 This is Market Street. The characters in the book live not far from there, and a small but important scene takes place on this street.

 

 

 

 These are photos of the Ferry Building, one of my favorite places in the city. Inside the building are numerous shops–most of them gourmet food places–and restaurants. Outside is the ferry terminal and a gorgeous view of the Bay Bridge. My characters visit this building several times.

 That’s the back of the Ferry Building.

 And the final scene in the book takes place behind the Ferry Building, on this bench. My characters don’t shop at Nordstrom’s first, though.

I spent the weekend in San Francisco with some friends. Mostly we ate. But we visited some really fun places. Picture-heavy post!

We ate: That’s sarde in saor, a dish you may remember mentioned in Venetian Masks. Yum!

We stayed at the Drake hotel, where Sir Francis himself hovers over the bar and I found a chair I like:

We had drinks at a bar called Novela:

We saw a horse in a roof and a shirtless guy in a hotel. Also waved at the couple making out just inside their hotel window, but I don’t think you can see them in this photo:

 

We had a wonderful drag queen brunch:

 

Tomorrow I’ll post location photos from one of my WIPs.

 

I’m going to begin with a question: Are you planning to attend RT in Vegas in April? You can answer the poll here or comment on this post:

Why am I asking? Well, I’ll be there. I’d love to see some of you. And I’d love to give you some special swag, but that means it would help if I knew how many of you to expect.

I have a bunch of other travel lined up. This weekend, I’m off to San Francisco with some friends. I think most of our plans involve eating–including a drag queen brunch on Sunday. Two days after I get back, it’s Orlando for a week. Last time I got to fly first class, but this year I am stuck in the cheap seats. After I return from Florida, we’re doing a family drive to SoCal for spring break. Then it’s time for Vegas and RT. And in early June, we’ll be heading to Vancouver, BC and Portland, Oregon.

Do you know how much packing this will involve? I hate packing.

But in between the travel, I’m putting the finishing touches on one novel so I can submit it, and Venona Keyes and I are completing another one. I’ve got a novella and a short ready to submit, plus two novels already in edits. So I should have plenty for you to read soon!

Do you have travel plans?

It’s one of those times when everything is happening all at once. Bear with me. We’ll do a list because lists make things look more manageable.

• For this weekend only, Good Bones, Astounding!, and The Tin Box are 99 cents each at Dreamspinner. That includes the Italian Good Bones and the German Tin Box. http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/
• 
• Ein Wolf in der Küche (Good Bones in German) is now available!
• 
• I’m still Author of the Month at My Fiction Nook. This week there are more excerpts, another giveaway, and 6 facts about me.
• My younger daughter turns 13 today. I now have two teenage girls in the house. Give me strength. To celebrate, we’re going to a performance of Sweeney Todd tonight. Meat pies for dinner!
• Tomorrow I’m taking the 16-year-old to see Deadpool.
• I’m still working on two novels: the one I’m co-writing with Venona Keyes is at 41K, and the slave novel is at 49K. I’m getting there!
• I’m also doing first round edits on the second edition of Flux, which DSP Publications will release in August. Stasis comes out in May and Equipoise in November.
• I have upcoming trips to San Francisco (drag queen brunch!) and Orlando. Then RT in in Vegas in April. I need to make swag decisions.

 

Gee, that’s enough for now, isn’t it?

 

 

If you’ve looked at my Upcoming Releases page, you know I have a lot of things in the works. New stories, rereleases, audiobooks, translations…. Two of those new things release today!

Senza parole is Speechless in Italian. And Dreamspinner has sweetened the pot by also releasing L’ingaggio (The Gig) in Italian–and that one’s free!

 

Last night, I was trying to explain to my husband how busy I am. February, I said, is going crazy busy. But March will be my head’s falling off busy, so I guess I should enjoy the relative lull.

I’m writing two novels right now, which is unusual for me; I usually limit myself to one WIP at a time. But the lovely Venona Keyes and I are co-writing a contemporary, and I’m also writing a very dark slave novel on my own. Both are past the halfway point–hooray! And meanwhile, Love Can’t Conquer is in edits (due out in June or July), I have some translations and audiobooks due out shortly, and several other things are in the works.

So of course I gave myself a new project. I have three fantasy novellas that I wrote for the Goodreads M/M Romance group’s annual event. You can download all of them for free (click on Free reads for the links), or you can buy The Sacrifice anthology (in print or Kindle) and get all three, plus several shorts–and my royalties all go to Doctors Without Borders.

Here’s the new part. I’m putting each of the three novellas up individually on Amazon. You can buy them for 99 cents each, if you like, and I’ll donate my royalties to DWB. But the real reason I’m doing it is so I can list them with ACX and try to get audiobooks produced of each of them. I’ll keep you updated on the progress of this project. In the meantime, you can see Treasure here. The other two will go up soon.

Oh, one more thing! I’m author of the month over at My Fiction Nook! I have weekly posts with prizes and other goodies. Come check it out!

So that’s my life right now. How’s yours?