No, I haven’t weaned myself. But to save money, I have stopped going to Starbucks every morning for my triple mocha, and have been downing tons of Diet Pepsi instead.
And I’ve lost about five pounds*.
…maybe I should also take up smoking? I know I should be drinking, because that is the writerly thing to do, but I’d just get sleepy. Would rum & Diet Pepsi cancel each other out?
*although there might be other factors, like fasting from sunrise to sundown for the past month**
**which I do not recommend to anyone who will be at a book signing when they should be eating***
***but will also partially explain the dorkery that will probably soon show up on Ciara’s blog****
****unless she managed to edit it all so that I look somewhat coherent*****
*****although I doubt there’s a video-editing program in the world that could manage that
I have to say, though — I absolutely LOVED these guys.
***GOO ALERT!***
(If you’re wondering what these are but don’t want to play them, they are scenes from the 80’s barbarian-fest, BEASTMASTER. I hearted Marc Singer like crazy.)
(Also, this is all katiebabs and Twitter’s fault.)
A few weeks ago, I mentioned Sasha White’sMY PREROGATIVE because a) I’ve loved Sasha’s work in the past, and b) that cover is just fantastic. Even if I hadn’t already known her name, I’d have grabbed it off the shelf.
She does what she likes…and what she likes is absolutely wicked.
Kelsey Howard is happy with the single life. She has great friends, a fun job tending bar, and a nice apartment. Not to mention the freedom to enjoy a few wild sex games with strangers—the riskier the better. But what she’s really looking for in the darkness is love.
Then Kelsey realizes she’s got an annonymous stranger watching her every move—and every move she makes is arousing them both. In fact, not only is she not scared, she thinks she may have finally found her soul mate. Especially when she meets the mischievous mystery man in the flesh. That’s when the fun and games really start, and Kelsey realizes just how far she’s prepared to go for love.
Here’s are four(!) excerpts from the first four chapters: ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR. (This is erotic romance, ladies. Just so you know going in, the contents at the other end of these links are explicit.)
And here’s what a few readers have said:
MyPrerogative is an extremely sexy story with multi-layered characters that I absolutely adored. It is loosely connected to several of Ms. White’s previous books, but is definitely solid enough to stand on its own (though, I will surely be checking out those other titles! *g*). If you like your romance scorching, this one’s for you!
Harlan is not a stalker. He’s not obsessed with Kelsey and Kelsey is more than capable enough of taking care of herself. I really like how he was the one that wanted to get serious. Kelsey was more gunshy and Harlan recognized that so he tailored his courtship to Kelsey’s needs. He gave Kelsey want she needed - space and super hot sex - and in the end, Kelsey was willing to take a chance on him.
The incredible emotion and self-discovery in this book is worth any discomfort you may feel at raw and edgy sex…While Kelsey has relationship issues with several people in her life, so much so that readers may begin to wonder if all of the pieces will ever fall into place for her, the ending is amazingly satisfying and quite frankly, it left me breathless.
I was a bit surprised that a reviewer didn’t finish My Prerogative because it was too “womans fiction-y” (taken from Sasha White’s blog post). I didn’t find it to be so. Sasha White does have a tendency to dig deep into the psyche’s of her female characters - and I guess I can see that this tendency combined with the fact that Kelsey and Harlan don’t actually meet until almost mid-way through the book might make the book seem non-romance-y. However, I found the relationship between Kelsey and Harlan to be quite romantic. Harlan put time, effort and thought into trying to break through Kelsey’s barriers.
So, you want? Then you’re in luck! Sasha was kind enough to offer two copies of her book to my blog readers (but this one is limited to the US/Canada) — to be entered, just leave a comment under this post, telling me:
If you could just stand up, and be free to do anything you wanted this instant, what would it be?
Is that a familiar phrase to everyone? If I say a heroine cracks the lug nuts on a wheel, is it generally understood that she’s loosening them (without removing them) before she jacks up the car?
(Am asking because when I put the term in Google, it shows up as the first link on a DIY: Change Your Tire page, but fewer of the other pages than I would have expected use “crack” in the same sense.)
Thank you so much to everyone who entered! There were some creepy, disturbing, and hilarious suggestions. And thanks to the magic of random.org, we have the comment numbers for the two winners!
#9 — Wendy, who said,
A creepy power would be making people die by puking just by looking at them. Can you imagine that?? One second you’re sitting there, you caught someone staring you at you and bam! next thing you know you’re puking your guts out, literally! without being able to stop. And since it’s kinda hard to live without your insides, you die in a bloody, bile way.
:-D And the next was …
#54 — Lisa F, who said,
I always thought the creepiest superpower is the abilty to inflict pain. Any kind of pain. That you would be able to look at someone and decide that you want them to feel the pain of being stabbed, shot, or beaten or whatever pain you would want to inflict on that person and there is nothing that they could do to stop it because it is on taking place in their mind. I would think a person would slowly go insane from that. That one always creeps me out.
Congratulations, Wendy and Lisa! I’ll be e-mailing you right away.
You know, the TSTL ones who always forget their cell phones or let the battery die when a serial killer is after them. Apparently, there’s a link between cell phone usage and decreasing sperm quality … so that explains how, after the killer has been caught and the couple firmly ensconced in their HEA epilogue, the heretofore-infertile heroine suddenly becomes pregnant: when the hero realized that she wasn’t dead — just her battery — and then he took her in a fit of relieved lust, his weakling little swimmers become Michael Phelps.
Oh! and this is a reminder that I’ll be at Powell’s in Beaverton tomorrow night — Friday at 7pm. And, since I’ll probably be starving by the time it’s done, McMenamin’s afterward. If you can stand the look of their fries (I always go for the tots there) anyone who wants to is more than welcome to join me.
ETA: I originally wrote “hitherto-infertile,” then wondered if I’d chosen the wrong word, and thought, oh yes, it’s heretofore! So I published the post, then went to go look it up to make ultra-certain I’d chosen the right one … but they are both right.
The problem with living on the west coast is that when you set a story on the east coast, you kind of forget that you can drive across four or more states in the same amount of time it takes to get from the Oregon coast to the Idaho state line.
And so it doesn’t really take very long to drive from Manhattan to North Carolina. And so, I must adjust a time frame and/or the setting.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned 
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Thank you so much to everyone who entered! There were some creepy, disturbing, and hilarious suggestions. And thanks to the magic of random.org, we have the comment numbers for the two winners!