Jaci Burton’s Muse

I love summer and hate every other season. Summer means flip flops and heat and everything I love. The other seasons mean cold weather. Period.

However, the tail end of summer and the bringing on of fall means ….football! Biker Dude and I are rather rabid Oklahoma Sooners college football fans, so the fall season brings the start of football season, and I’m jazzed. OU played their first two games already (and won). Other than needing some major tweaking to their special teams and defense, they’re looking awesome. We’re keeping our fingers crossed. Are you a football fan, college or pro?

And of course, we’re also big NASCAR fans, and the race for the chase is on, and this is an exciting time of year. The field is set and the race is on. Did your favorite make the field? (if you’re not a race fan, you of course have no idea what I’m talking about, so ignore this paragraph ).

My granddaughter’s first soccer game was Saturday. Nothing like watching a bunch of 5 year olds bunched up over the ball. Adorable. My son coaches the team and he’s so serious about it all, really works hard with the girls (this is his second season with the same girls). I think I find that more amusing than anything since I remember HIM being 5 when he started soccer. *sigh*…how time flies.

Did anyone catch the premier of TRUEBLOOD last night on HBO? It’s based on Charlaine Harris’s southern vampire series. I admit to not having read this series, but I liked the first show. Very atmospheric and mysterious and love love love the characters. They also did two preview shows before hand and I was thrilled to see them interview Charlaine Harris and L.A. Banks. Being a romance author, any time another romance author is profiled, especially on television, I get so excited. It’s almost like I’m up there with them and it gives our entire genre a boost.

So today I’m digging deeper into revisions for TAKEN BY SIN. I’ll be at this awhile….

What’s on your to do list for the week?

Note: Special shout out to my friend, author Shannon Stacey, whose husband is having major surgery this morning. Do think about her and say a prayer or light a candle or think special thoughts if you wouldn’t mind.

Berkley sent me my first look copy of RIDING TEMPTATION! It’s so pretty! I stroked the cover, held it close, flipped through the pages! I so can’t wait for y’all to see this book. Only a month to go before release. (Oct 7th!!!!)

Here’s the front

Here’s the back

(You have to forgive us authors. We get awfully excited when we get to hold our books in our hands for the very first time. This is my…uh…40 somethingth book, though not all of those are in print. Still, the feeling is still as awesome as the first one.)

I also received an incredible 4 1/2 Star review for RIDING TEMPTATION from Romantic Times Bookreviews Magazine’s October issue. Keitha Hart said:

The second novel in the Wild Riders series is a sexy, fast-action thrill ride! Every interaction between the central charactes is infused with passion and sexual tension…With its well-developed characters and entralling plot, readers will be drawn into the romantic and suspenseful storyline.

Thank you Keitha!

You can read all about my Wild Riders series here, including excerpts and links to buy. RIDING TEMPTATION is the second book in the series but stands alone. Though really, you should read RIDING WILD which is out now and available everywhere. Really.

Gustav made his way here to Oklahoma last night. It’s dark here this morning with wind and rain. We get some pretty badass storms all the time here in Oklahoma anyway, so this is just another one.

I’m at the office with Biker Dude today (and will be again tomorrow) helping him out with a few things. We used to work together all the time until my work got too busy that I couldn’t help him out with his work. So it’s nice to hang out with him again. I think. Hey, at least I can cuss at the boss.

So confession time: I watched the new 90210 last night. I freely admit I was a dedicated viewer of the old Beverly Hills 90210 in the 90’s. I loved Kelly and Dylan and Brandon and Donna and Steve and Andrea and Brenda and the whole gang. I watched it with my boys, who were teens back then. Loved it.

I semi enjoyed the new series last night. Though I thought it was kind of overloaded with plot, almost like a massive info dump in the first chapter of a book. Too much too soon, like they tried to shove an entire season’s worth of stuff in the first two hours. But some of the characters are interesting and there’s room for growth, so I’ll keep watching for now to see what happens. Besides, Kelly and Brenda are on there, and I really liked seeing some of my old favorites.

Did anyone else watch it?

The Labor Day Weekend is over. Put the pool toys and BBQ away. It’s time to go back to work.

Of course I worked yesterday anyway.Biker Dude had to go to work yesterday, so I figured since I had the house to myself, I might as well start tackling those revisions. I went through and did the line edits, so today it’s content time. This is going to be a big project, so I’ll be at it for awhile. Fun. (Not really).

Sometime tonight or tomorrow Gustav will be making his way up toward us, bringing high winds and rain. Of course here in Oklahoma, high winds and rain are pretty normal for storms. I just find it fascinating that a hurricane makes its way this far from the water. 

The cough is going well. My ribs and back hurt. Bleh.

So is anyone going to be productive this week? My to do list will consist of revisions, revisions and revisions. What’s on yours?

That pretty much sums up what I’ve been doing over the holiday weekend.

Who gets sick in August? Not me. Well, not usually. If I get sick (which is rare), it’s in the winter. Not in August. It’s freakin’ summer. I don’t get sick in the summer. Dammit.

Hacking up a lung over the holiday weekend is not my idea of a good time.

Hope y’all are having a good weekend.

Nyquil is my friend

Doesn’t this look like an awesome book? Check it out!

RAZOR GIRL by Marianne Mancusi

Molly Anderson is not your average twenty-one-year-old. It’s been six years since she and her family escaped into a bunker, led by her conspiracy theorist father and his foreknowledge of a plot to bring about the apocalypse. But her father’s precautions didn’t stop there. Molly is now built to survive.
Yes, Ian Anderson’s favorite book gave him ideas on how to “improve” his daughter. Molly is faster, stronger, and her ocular implants and razor-tipped nails set her apart. Apart, when—venturing alone out of the bunker and into a plague ravaged, monster-ridden wilderness—what Molly needs most is togetherness. Chase Griffin, a friend from her past, is her best bet. But while he and others have miraculously survived, the kind boy has become a tormented man. Together, these remnants of humanity must struggle toward trusting each other and journey to the one place Molly’s father believed all civilization would be reborn: the Magic Kingdom, where everyone knows it’s a small world after all.

ABOUT MARIANNE MANCUSI

When it comes to writing, award winning author Marianne Mancusi likes to play the field. From time travel comedies to kick butt speculative fiction romances to a Buffy’esque vampire series for teens, she’s published eleven books in three years, in a myriad of genres and styles.

In addition to writing, Marianne is a multiple Emmy award winning television producer, currently working for the nationally syndicated women’s lifestyle show Better TV. A Boston native and graduate of Boston University ’s College of Communications , she currently lives on Manhattan ’s Upper West Side . (But has NOT become a Yankees fan!) In her spare time, Marianne enjoys clubbing, cosplay, cheesy horror movies (especially those featuring zombies!), her dog Molly, and videogames.

REVIEWS

“Opens with danger and will grab your interest immediately. Stellar!”
–Huntress Reviews

“An increasingly intense, suspenseful edge-of-the-seat thrilling ride…stunning, cutting edge romance.”
–Merrimon Book Reviews

"Non-stop thrill ride from page one! Marianne Mancusi spins an eerily marvelous tale in her book RAZOR GIRL."
–Simply Romance Reviews

"Mancusi doesn¹t hesitate to take chances and innovate!"
–Romantic Times

"Marianne Mancusi has returned with an edgy all-new tale, Razor Girl, filled with fast-paced action and a heroine strong enough to mold her own destiny."
–SF Scope

Website: http://www.mariannemancusi.com

UNRAVELED has been cleaned up, prettified and turned into my editor. One project off the desk!

Now onto TAKEN BY SIN. I received the revisions from my editor, so now I need to dive in and tackle this project. It’s major, so this may take awhile.

And I’m sick. *glares at whoever threw germs my way*.  I so don’t have time to be sick. I didn’t pencil a cold into my schedule.

But, hopefully I’ll have some good news to share soon.

The Writeminded blog, talking about guns and defending your own and killin’ and stuff.

No really, I am. Come see me and weigh in with your opinion!

Separated from her son and forced to create a neural implant that will mean the effective enslavement of her psychically gifted race, Ashaya Aleine is the perfect Psy–cool, calm, emotionless…at least on the surface. Inside, she’s fighting a desperate battle to save her son and escape the vicious cold of the PsyNet. Yet when escape comes, it leads not to safety, but to the lethal danger of a sniper’s embrace.

DarkRiver sniper Dorian Christensen lost his sister to a Psy killer. Though he lacks the changeling ability to shift into animal form, his leopard lives within. And that leopard’s rage at the brutal loss is a clawing darkness that hungers for vengeance. Falling for a Psy has never been on Dorian’s agenda. But charged with protecting Ashaya and her son, he discovers that passion has a way of changing the rules…

This is the 6th book in Nalini’s Psy/Changeling series. And…um…wow. If you haven’t picked up and started reading this series yet, you’ve missed some of the best writing this millennium. Every book gets better, draws you deeper into this world, makes you fall more and more in love with these characters.

Every time I read one of these books, I proclaim it my favorite. HOSTAGE TO PLEASURE is no different. I was in the middle of a writing frenzy last week, needing to finish a book in a week, and yet I still found myself taking breaks to devour chapter after chapter of Nalini’s wonderful, incredible world, unable to put her book down so I could go back to writing my own book. (I really have to stop reading excellent books like this while I’m writing. )

The thing I loved most about this book is the inherent flaws in both the characters makeup. Dorian is a changeling who is unable to shift, and yet instead of thinking himself a failure, he makes himself better at everything else, a super cat stuck in human form, an amazing, sensual creature with heightened senses, a sentinel who stands at the right hand of the pack leader, sworn to defend, to kill.

Ashaya is an imperfect psy who feels, who loves her son when Psy who exhibit emotions are damned. And yet this makes her stronger, able to slip beyond the Psy’s defenses in order to save those she cares for. It gives her an understanding of the people who rescue her, and propels her right into the arms of the man who guards her, the man who should hate her, but can’t.

Their story gripped me from the first page and wouldn’t let me go. Nalini weaves a tale of a man who lost everything, yet still remained strong, who should have hated the woman whose species took the one thing he loved, but learned to look beyond that to the women inside the Psy, and taught the woman grappling with the terror of emotions that letting go with him would give her the freedom she was afraid she’d never have.

I loved this book.

Excerpt here on Nalini’s website

You can preorder the book here at Amazon. It releases next week so it’ll be available everywhere.

Done! done done done!

My novella is finished (UNRAVELED, releasing from Samhain Publishing in December). I started last Monday and finished today. 30K in a week! Woo to the hooo!

My tendonitis is killing me, but by God that book is done!

I would show you the end of book happy dance, but I don’t have a webcam. Really, for a wicked cool end of book happy dance, go see Lauren Dane’s blog, then think of me doing it. Lauren rocks it like nobody’s business.

So how come I can write a 30K novella in a week, but I can’t write a 100K single title in a month?

One of those life mysteries I just can’t fathom, I guess.

Anyway, another project ticked off the to do list.

Now to go wrap my arm.