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What a weekend. Issues with a switch on the network at my office cause problems for my co-workers which translated to problems for me at home as I tried to get on the network and tried to soothe the callers. The rain screwed up my plans to go flying down the freeway for an hour so my mechanic can check the car’s computer. My grocery order arrived quickly and early and I got my shampoo, but not my conditioner. My phone (a T-Mobile Dash) has started having charging issues. Because of the rain, I didn’t go down to the beach to watch the morons who decided to Surf the Tsunami. (We love looking at those dorks but I wasn’t going to the beach in the rain.) Bah. There were other things that went wrong, but I’m getting tired of how long the list is so I’ll just quit now.

If I give you a list of what went right, I think you’ll see that for every moment I went, “Oh, eff me” I had something that countered it. Almost anyway. My friend Faith sent me flowers! You can see them in my Flickr account.  My friend Trinity sent me two bottles of Vampire wine and non-wine drinkers me and Rott actually liked it! The Swiss Sherbet I’ve been trying to order (it’s orange sherbet with dark chocolate chunks and the store is always out!) finally had some in stock! Author James Buchanan had a table at Escapade Con over the weekend and gave out some Love Me Dead bookmarks to help promo the MLR anthology I’m in. You can see them on the table HERE. And last but not least, Cobblestone offered me a contract for Insolence.   As frustrated as I was over some things, I guess other stuff balanced it out and balance does happen to be one of those things that we all look for and strive for in our lives.

Now, that I’m on an even keel, I’m hitting Word hard over the next week and planning to give Unbreak Me to my editor by this time next week. Then it’s back to Common Ground which got off track and got me in trouble. I don’t like it when I can’t deliver as promised.  These characters have been hard on me and I’m realizing that the tough stories may need more structure than what I give them from this point forward. I’ve got two more WIPs I need to power up on as soon as Common Ground goes to Mary later in March and I’m sure I’ll have edits soon for Where There’s Smoke and Insolence. This is going to be just as busy a year as last year. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I mean, I don’t wanna burn out, yanno.

To help keep me in balance and not burning out, I need a very hunky Marcus today. I know there’s a half naked woman in the photo but it’s a sexy shot anyway.

If you get a chance check out the new template I put up for Karenna Colcroft. I love it when I can do virtually a whole new site for someone in less than an hour. I was stoked.  Now, if I could just figure out what I want to do with LexValentine.com. I want it revamped, but I’m not yet sure what I want. I’ve got to finish Winterheart.com too and I’ve got a tentative plan for this blog as well. And no, the skyline with the bats (aka Batty theme) is NOT going away. You’re stuck with my bats. LOL

Have yourselves a great Monday!

Um, yeah. I don’t do the vote begging thing very well. “Vote for meeeeee!”  I’m the type of person who will tell everyone there is a voting opportunity, but leave it at that. I’ll post it here, post it to the Yahoo groups I belong to on the appointed promo days, and pretty much leave it at that. The voting thing eats at me because it’s just not logical.

Let me backtrack for a second here and tell you what’s going on. Love Romances Cafe, a book review site, announced their nominees for the Best of 2009. Fire Season has been nominated for Best Shape Shifter Novel. I am, of course, honored. I posted excerpts and promo’d a little at LRC’s showcase day on their group yesterday. But voting starts today so I’m pretty sure the Yahoo groups are inundated with authors pimping for votes. *sigh*

To me this process is not logical. It’s backward. Of course, as much as I love Elisa Rolle, I thought the Rainbow Awards were a little backward too. (Although to give Elisa her due, she tried really, really hard to make it as agenda free as possible and I commend her for even taking on the project.) Here’s the deal. With the Rainbow Awards, Elisa allowed everyone to nominate books and vote on them. Then she took the popular vote winners to a panel of judges. I liked this… except that the judges then got to add to the list with books they thought belonged there. That didn’t feel right to me. I just wanted to yell, “Either or, people! Either or!” With the judges adding books to the list on top of the popular voting, it just felt like there were more chances for people to push an agenda.

With LRC’s nominees, I think (and don’t quote me here cause I didn’t ask) the LRC staff looked at the reviews they’d given that year and chose their nominees from that list. Now, they are asking the public to vote on them to choose the winner. And, as you can tell, I’m not so crazy about that process either. And don’t even get me started on Preditors and Editors! A well respected site letting people nominate themselves and vote as much as they want based on email and IP addresses. Puleeze. What a joke. I can’t for the life of me understand why they would do that. In my eyes, it simply tarnishes their reputation.

I guess I just feel that there needs to be a clear selection process for nominees and then a clear judging process based on criteria. Not this popular voting crap. I won’t win jack no matter how good my book is because I don’t “pimp the vote.” Yeah, sure Fire Season did get the popular vote win at Rainbow Awards, but I wonder if then it made the judges leery of it. Cause yanno, I might have been had I been in their shoes.

To me, you need a selection committee to choose nominees. (In a review site’s case, this would be people who make the selection from the top reviews of the year.) Then you need a group of judges (not the same people as the selection committee) to make their choices based on a set of criteria. Of course, I suppose I’m living in a rose colored glasses world to hope that things would be done in such a logical manner in all these awards. And I don’t mean to sound ungrateful either. I just like things to be fair and when you can’t bring yourself to pimp for votes, things become really unfair.

At any rate, Fire Season is nominated for Best Shape Shifter Book of 2009. If you would like to vote for it, and/or happen to think it IS the best shape shifter book you read in 2009, I invite you to send in a vote. Here is the information:

Voting begins FEBRUARY 15th and ends FEBRUARY 22nd.

To vote: Send an email to dawn_roberto AT yahoo DOT com with “LRC’s “BEST OF 2009″ Awards” in subject. If this is not in the subject it will not be counted.

All entries must be received by 2/23/2010. Any entries received after that will NOT be counted and automatically deleted.

To vote for Fire Season just state in the body of your email “Fire Season – Best Shape Shifter.”

In other news, Flirty Author Bitches is back up and running with a line-up of Monday-Friday blogging with some of the hottest authors and aspiring authors out there! Today’s blogger is my friend Regina Carlysle. Please stop by and show her a little belated Valentine’s love and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a prize.

I’ve submitted Insolence to Cobblestone so now it’s a wait and see thing. Still waiting on edits for Where There’s Smoke. The AWH contest for Rekindled ends today. AND, I need to power on with the reluctant Common Ground. I thought the addition of Weylyn to this story would make it easier, but it started turning into the Weylyn show because Marius and Sair have… issues. *sigh* I’ll be spending lots of quality time with them today.

Now, my Marcus for today is a little bit of yummy that I seriously need on this holiday Monday.

If you’ve been by Winterheart Dot Com lately, you’ll have noticed that there’s some sawdust from construction. I still don’t have all the graphics up nor have I figured out the stupid thumbnail script yet. I will. I just need some time. I have plans to revamp this blog too but the header will stay so don’t worry that you won’t recognize it one day. LOL

Have yourselves a simply wonderful President’s Day Monday! MUAH!

Later this week, on the 7th, I’ll be over at Cindy Jacks’s blog talking about love.  It’s February, so people tend to wanna talk about those tender emotions.  I write about them all the time because my books and stories always have a happy ending.  I’m the kind of person who has to have a HEA (happily ever after.) Or some sort of happy ending at any rate. I don’t want to read about the angst without having it all work itself out, handing the hero and heroine a reward.

In real life, things don’t always work out that way. In my life, the angst has always outweighed the HEA. I think some of us are meant to have to struggle. Very little in my life has come easy, ergo I learned to appreciate the hard won victories.  Things mean more to me if I have to work for it. I tend to hang on to people as long as I can, try to work out issues, try to give them what they need and want, try to keep and nurture the love I have. But sometimes, no matter how hard you work, love still slips away. I’ve lost a lot of people in my life so I prize the ones I have right now. I know that our hearts seem to be the regenerative type, and if we lose someone today, later on we’ll find someone else to love. Still, I’d rather not have go through that again. I just want this HEA to work itself out NOW.

Someone I’ve known and loved since I was 17 years old (I’m not sure I should tell you how many years that is… but it’s more than thirty LOL) did a nice thing this week. He told the readers of his blog about me and sent them here. I think most of his audience are mommy bloggers, which I’m so not. After all, Motley (Nikki) is twenty now and I don’t think she ever called me Mommy anyway. *wink*

Anyway, David told people about me in a little post that exposes some of the framework upon which my heart sits. It felt strangely timely to read his words about my past and feel the connection to my present. You should click THIS and hop on over to see what he said. He was probably my first real love, first real lover, odd as that may seem since he’s decidedly gay. But back then we were just kids, beginning to work our way out of the teens, learning about emotions and sex and a host of other stuff we just really had no clue about. The piece of my heart that David owns is just one of those things about love that we can’t exactly quantify. It just IS.

I must need a sweet, sexy Marcus today. Something to make my old heart pound.  I used to think about my Bar characters a lot more than I do now and thinking about my signature character Alexandria and her mate Alaric always meant that I had that image of Marcus in my head. I miss Lex so I think maybe I need to a write a post about her. After all, she lets me use her name on my books, the least I could do is visit her once in awhile, eh? So here’s my Marcus for today, all sexy and smokey-eyed.

Don’t forget to come by Cindy’s on February 7th to see what I have to say about that thing called Love.  Also, don’t forget that Marty and I have a new release filled with spooky stories. You can pick up Weirdly 3 at Wild Child Publishing.

One last thing… go give my pal Tess some love. Her book Latin Rhythm is scheduled for release on the 4th but the buy link is live NOW. Her cover is probably the best cover I’ve ever done.

Wishing you all a very wonderful Monday!

Thanks to Mina Carter who has no problems asking for what she wants, I have a new cover by the most sought after cover artist around. The buzz is that if you have an Anne Cain cover your sales will soar. I don’t know how true that is, but I’m about to find out. My latest contract with Liquid Silver Books has garnered me a cover I completely adore. And I stand in awe of this artist’s talent.  I can’t even describe how hot this cover is so I’m just gonna post it and let you all drool.

My Marcus for today seems nearly eclipsed by the beauty of that cover. Except that in my book, nothing ever eclipses Marcus.

If you want to see some vintage photos of me head on over to Facebook and look up one of my oldest friends, Kim Williams-Potts. Kim is Motley’s godmother and she posted some photos of me taken right after Nikki was born. Now, that is really back in the day stuff!

It’s a rainy week ahead here in SoCal so I’m gonna try to stay dry and warm. Hopefully, all of you do too! Happy Monday!

I love this guy. He is always there with a kind word. He’s the most supportive of friends. He’s smart and funny and makes you wish he wasn’t married. *wink* Now, he has something happening that he’s always longed for… to be a published fiction author. Marty’s first fiction release is due out January 26!

Last year, I inherited at project at Wild Child Publishing.  An editor left and the project fell to me in terms of finding authors and stories for it.  I wasn’t quite sure how to go about that. After all, I don’t usually hang with authors who write horror.

Weirdly III is an invite only anthology of horror stories. It’s full of twisted paranormal stories in the Twilight Zone genre. Finding freaky stuff to suit the book was just… freaky.

It became a labor of love, however, as I grew to enjoy the creepy stories that landed one by one in my Inbox. As I went along, counting word counts with an eye toward having 70K so the book would have a shot at coming out in print eventually, it dawned on me that I knew writers outside of the world of romance and erotic romance.

So I sent Marty an email and asked him if he was interested. And he was. Now, months after this book suffered many a set back, it’s ready for publication and there is Marty’s name on the cover. Oh, my name’s there too, but I’m not nearly as excited about that as I am to see Marty there!

I really loved Marty’s twisted story about a singer who wishes he could be in more than one place at one time. It was exciting and creepy at the same time and Marty did a great job learning how to write for a publisher. (No head hopping! *wink*)

On January 26, take a run over to Banal Leakage and congratulate Marty on his release day. Then head on over to Wild Child Publishing and buy yourself a copy of Weirdly III. You will not be sorry you did!

I’m late, I know. I promised New Year’s Eve and it’s New Year’s morning. Still, I do have something for you to show you that my life is not all bloggy goodness. It’s a bunch of numbers. The numbers represent what I did as an author in the last year.

They are an interesting lot these numbers. They are the reason I often don’t blog more than once a week. They are the reason I sometimes have more money in my pocket. They are the reason I’m actually kinda sorta managing to send Motley (Nikki) to art college.

I’m going to post the link to a blog post that talks about the numbers. I’m not going to talk about them in quite the same way here in this post. The link I’m giving you really explains the numbers and talks a little about how much promotion I had to do to sell all the books I’ve sold, gives you an idea of the number of books I’ve sold, and talks a little about how much money I’ve made. It is an interesting post if you want see whether all the time I spent was worth it or if you’re interested in being an author yourself.

So here’s the post: A Year in the Life.

And here’s the numbers:

Submissions: 17

Contracts: 17

Releases: 15

Print books: 3

Rejections: 3

Revise and Resubmits: 2

Anthologies: 3

Short Stories: 8

Novellas: 6

Novels: 2

Bestsellers: 4

Publishers: 8

Radio Interviews: 3

Feature Author Spot: 1

Interviews: 13

Guest Blog Posts: 15

Two things happened after I posted this on the 30th.  On New Year’s Eve, I discovered that Christmas Catch hit All Romance eBooks’ main top ten bestseller list. It was the ninth biggest seller over the past three days.  Making that list is a big thing.  This morning, it’s moved up to number eight. Definitely WOOT worthy.

The other thing that happened hit me in a way that touched on every facet of who I am. Not just Lex Valentine the author but Winter the person.  One of the most respected review sites posted a list for 2009. Now, back in September they posted a list, compiled by recommendations from the readership of the site, of the all time best gay books. Fire Season was on it and I was stoked. The list posted yesterday was the owner’s own top ten best of 2009 list.

Now, Wave is well known in the reviewing community and in the GLBT writing world. It’s almost as if you’re golden if Wave likes your book. When Wave reviewed Fire Season earlier in the year, you could tell she really liked it. But then she posted her list yesterday and I discovered she REALLY LOVED Fire Season. My book was number nine on her list.

I got really excited seeing that. Then I looked at the list of her honorable mentions and this huge sense of awe came over me. Some of the best and biggest names in GLBT romance fiction were on that list of honorable mentions. And she liked Fire Season more.  I can’t remember when I’ve been more awestruck.  My little dragon book beat out Victor J. Banis,  Z.A. Maxfield,  James Buchanan, and my publisher Laura Baumbach? I could barely believe it.

As an author, my chest puffed out. Egads, what an accomplishment to close out the year! As a person, it brought tears to my eyes.  Recognition is important to all humans. I’ve not really received much recognition for anything in my life. After ten and a half years at my company I got the Employee of the Quarter award in December. One of my co-workers was amazed that I’ve never won this award before. In fact, she was shocked I’ve never won the Employee of the Year. Her shock actually meant a lot more to me than actually winning an award. It meant that someone recognized how much I do there. Then to make this top ten list… What a way to close out 2009.

Being recognized for what I do means a lot to me. It makes those numbers truly mean something. It acknowledges the sacrifices I’ve made.  It helps gives me a sense of worth. And even though I’m broke and in debt this New Year’s Day, I still feel a bit bright and sparkly from the recognition with my achievements sitting out there for the world to see and some of my longest held personal goals finally met.

It’s a new year and because of the recognition I’ve received, my outlook is more positive than it’s been in years. Instead of wondering how I’ll ever be able to match or top what I did in 2009, my thoughts flow along a positive line that hums with energy. How big can I dream? How much can I accomplish this year? And where the hell is my coffee? I need to get started!

Wishing you and yours a happy, productive, and prosperous New Year.

I’m blinded by the spotlight once more.  I’ve been on radio shows before. Shows that were hosted by my friends. I wasn’t that nervous. I love those people (Hilly, Jester, Karl, Fab, Turnbaby, Kyra) and being on their shows was easy. Awhile back I did ARe’s What’s Hot in Romance. It was a quick bit because I wasn’t the only author on. The hostess made it easy and my familiarity with how it works kept my nerves at bay.

Tonight, I’m back in the spotlight on Phoebe Jordan’s Talk About My Favorite Authors Blog Talk Radio show.  That’s a full 90 minutes of ME. Yikes! Scary stuff. Especially without Jester propping me up asking me amusing and inciteful questions. I’m also one of those dorks who can’t type and talk on the phone. (No bluetooth headset either. Had one, hated it, gave it to Rott who loves it.) That means my chatroom participation is about nil. Maybe I’ll ask Motley to show me again how to do speakerphone on this phone. (I know, I’m supposed to be techie. But I only use my phone as a hand held phone, sometimes as a camera, and to get and send email. I don’t do anything else with it.)

At any rate, I would love to have you all stop by with questions about Ride the Lightning. I’m sure someone is going to ask about the real Dave and Vahid and how much the characters are like the real men. (They aren’t alike other than a loose physical description and one or two personality quirks.) This is a Thursday night though so I’m a little worried that the audience will be small and I’ll run out of things to talk about or have a shortage of questions. I’m getting my nerves now. Tonight, I’ll prolly be fine. LOL

If you get the chance, please do come by Blog Talk Radio for Phoebe Jordan’s show. It’s on from 9 PM to 10:30 PM EST (8PM to 9:30PM CST / 6PM to 7:30PM PST.) Come and ask me any question you like! (Even about Throbbing Vampire Cock!) I’m an open book, pun intended!