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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!

No, I haven’t really been writing. A little here and there, but not full on writing. Yes, I have been busy. What could be taking up so much of my time? Apparently, it’s a lot of this stuff:

http://www.reginacarlysle.com

Oh, and some of this:

http://winterheart.com/testsite

With a side order of this:

http://authorsalacart.com/tess

And some luscious…

http://authorsalacart.com/testsite

Oh, there’s a few more too, but you get the picture I’m sure. I’m trying to get all these sites up and running so that I can relax and finish two stories and then move on the new projects I’ve been laying out for 2010.Every day though I awake to a new request for a quote on a site. Huh. Now that I’m busy writing, I get offers all the time to make trailers and websites for pay. When I needed to do them for pay and had time to do them, I couldn’t drum up any sales. Go figure.

Now, that I’ve shown you why I’m yawning so much, I’ll pass on a Marcus and head on outta here.

This is such a nice photo and it’s really big too if you click on it. Yummy.

Hope you enjoyed the pretty websites. Have a great Monday!

I’ve had so much time off lately with the holidays falling as they did that I’m not very motivated to go to work. And the truth of the matter is that I’m not very motivated with a lot of things right now. I’m kinda in a BLECH mood. Here’s some of the things I’ve been doing. I think it will explain best.

I took down rottnroll.com so I could move it to new hosting. Cancelled the old hosting last night then didn’t bother to put in the nameservers to get rottnroll.com back up. Instead, Rott and I watched Taken. (Good flick BTW.)

I started to put the final scenes in a book for Cobblestone, stopped to make lunch, and then decided clean up my hard drive instead of write.

I discovered some of my books had earned silver stars at All Romance eBooks. I thought about putting the award banner on the book pages on my website and ended up chatting on IM to my publisher instead.

I went to the horse racing sim and set train for weeks for some of my horses. I pondered entering the ones that need to be entered in races for this week then decided to chat in their chatroom instead. (It was a funny chat too.)

So I procrastinated and dicked around. I did some stuff but not really the stuff I shoulda been doing. I was kinda BLECH. I think it’s a holiday hangover. (BTW Rott and I saw The Hangover on New Year’s Day. Very funny movie!) I even stood in the kitchen intending to make stroganoff for dinner on Saturday night and as soon as Rott said, “Want me to go get something?” I sent him to Burger King. Ahh, fries. Yum.

Speaking of YUM, here’s today’s Marcus.

This picture is in honor of the fact that I started Common Ground, book 5 of the Tales series. The prologue is Weylyn and his mate having sex out in the open in the Scottish highlands. They meet a female werewolf who’s been watching them get it on. She turns out to be the heroine of the story.  Chapter One starts off just bad. The hero is masturbating. LMAO Not sure where I got these crazed ideas from, but I think they are gonna work! Now, I just gotta ditch the BLECH and get to work on this stuff.

Have a great BLECH-free Monday and Happy New Year!

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.

Gah. My head hurts. Yes, I’m sick. Tonsilitis I’m sure. I’ve had it umpteen times in my life so I sorta know it. Fever = massive headache. So, I’m gonna drop a Marcus on you, promise to come back and post by New Year’s Eve, and go back to bed.

After all these years, he’s still cover material. Yum!

Hope your Christmas was all you hoped it would be!

Today, I have a Tuesday Tune and then I’m gonna get all personal on you.

When people ask me what my favorite Christmas song is, I usually offer up the old carols. The songs I sang in accapella choir. The Boar’s Head Carol, the Coventry Carol, the Holly & the Ivy, Carol of the Bells… you know the stuff. The very old non-commercial stuff. I could tell you all about the Coventry Carol and Lady Godiva and some other stuff, but MEH. No one cares anymore. Everyone likes modern music. Madonna doing Santa Baby. That Mariah Carey song. Aaron Neville.

Don’t get me wrong. I like some of ‘em too. Bing Crosby and David Bowie doing the Little Drummer Boy. But the truth of the matter is that in some ways I am a child of the 80’s still. The band that rose to such huge prominence and to this day retains as much respect for their politics as their music holds a place in my heart with their Christmas song.

Last year, I cried for hours. I just wanted Rott. I was so lonely without him. I was worried about him too up in the Sierras in the cold. I wanted things to be like they used to be. Of course, stupid me was thinking back several years instead of just one or two years. Our first Christmas together in Huntington Beach.  The year we were homeless and he brought a tree to the motel on Christmas Eve. I missed just holding him and having him hold me. Last year felt so much like my first Christmas without my parents that I got a little drunk. Couldn’t take the pain.

This year he’s home and all the joy and love that I thought would be there isn’t. It’s been replaced by wariness, caution, fear, trust issues, and a host of the most painful emotions I’ve ever experienced. I’m beset with loss and the man is right there. Things may not be hopeless but at the moment my limboland is painful and painfully barren. I’m not alone like last year, but the loss of so many of my hopes has left me feeling raw and even more lonely than I was last year.

I laughed at myself a few days ago about getting what you wish for. All I could wish for last year was to have him home with me where I knew he was safe and where I could show him that I loved him. This year… I know he’s safe at least. And when he smiles, I can see it. And I know that all this churning emotion at least tells me that I am still alive inside this shell.

And even if we can’t yet cross the chasm between us, and may never be able to, I have those places I can go to in my heart where I can still feel the heat of those memories we made together.  In my mind, Christmas will always be about that night we struggled to decorate a tree that filled a little room and how we laid together in the dark, holding hands, listening to midnight mass on the TV as the lights blinked on that dried out tree.

Sometimes, the best Christmas’s are the ones in your heart.