Hippo Birdy To Me

Saturday, November 18th was my birthday. It was a good day. I got to have breakfast out with a friend AND dinner out with the one I love. I also got some fantastic presents, the best of which was a long, hot bath alone (without Mason.)

I always love to read the Star Tribune's yearly horoscope on my birtday. Here's what mine said about me:
"Your birthday today: You approach this year with great imagination and wonder. Therefore what occurs is much larger than is usually expected of thought possible. Figure out exactly what's needed to make a deal work and you'll pull it off in January. Love is lavished on you, and you go into the new year feeling whole. Aquarius and Virgo are your allies."

So what do you think it really means? Another book contract? Fame? Fortune? Or...?

The Question of Beginnings

[Cross-posted from Fur, Fey & Fangs.]

Tall, Dark & Dead actually starts with a two sentence question and answer:

“What’s the best way to keep Vatican witch hunters off your scent? Dress to kill.”

Dead Sexy also begins with a question:

“Who knew there were so many dead things in Madison, Wisconsin?”

The book I’m working on right now (tentatively called Bloody Charming) begins with:

“I was on my bicycle five miles out of town and thinking about what it might be like to settle down, really settle down with a vampire, like forever, when I saw the gray wolf on the side of the road.”

...which is clearly not as snappy as the other two, and may explain a bit why I’m still struggling with this sucker. I’ve started Bloody Charming three times now and can’t quite get things into focus. I’ve decided, in fact, to abandon perfection for the moment in order to keep moving forward.

I agonize over first lines. I’m convinced that they’re critical in hooking (hoodwinking?) your reader into buying your book. I know that when I’m thinking about book buying I often judge a book first by its cover, its back copy, and then by the first page or so of the author’s writing. Given that usually only one of those is in the author’s complete control, I figure I need to make my first page a real grabber.

How do you buy a book? How important is that first page (if you even read it)?

Astro Alert - Mercury Direct, Uranus Direct, Jupiter Enters Sagittarius

An update from astrology.com:

Enough review -- take action! As Mercury turns direct in Scorpio on November 17, it's time to incorporate everything you've learned during this Mercury retrograde period, which began October 28. Hopefully, you’ve done your research and are ready to forge ahead. Independent Uranus turns direct on November 19, bringing change and a desire to be totally true to yourself. Just what is that magical mixture that makes you unique? As you are contemplating that, Jupiter enters philosophical and travel-oriented Sagittarius on November 23 for the first time in 12 years. A new course must be mapped out -- are you ready?

Cute Mason Pictures

Here are a few cute pictures of Mason(and Shawn) at the Rockford Barnes & Noble. These pictures were taken by our friends Besty and Warren Urbik. Isn't Mason just darling?

Big Box Store Dilemma

I desperately want to unequivocally support local, independent bookstores. Certainly, I go out of my way to spend time and money at Uncle Hugo’s, which is not only independent and bricks and mortar, but is also one of a vanishing breed – the science fiction and fantasy specialty store. I also try to push customers their way. For a long time they were the only store in the nation that sold new copies of the out-of-print books by other me.

Uncle Hugo’s is a writer’s dream. They’ve always ordered a lot of my books, hand sold them to customers with similar interests, they rarely send back “returns,” and they’re generally warmly disposed when I call begging for signing time when a new book’s release date rolls around. They’ve supported me despite a career change, and has always had a very broad definition of what constitutes SF/F and has always carried a number of paranormal romantic titles.

For their sake, I would wish all big box bookstores to be swallowed by the monster from the deep (or at least suffer tragic, mortally wounding sales.)

But...

Then I go to somewhere like Rockford, Illinois, and have a fantastic signing at a --gasp-- Barnes & Noble, and suddenly I don’t know how to feel about all this.

I don’t think I sold particularly extraordinarily at Rockford. I probably sold a half dozen books (possibly a few more), but there was a surprising amount of foot traffic considering that this store was a stand-alone building in a big box store oasis that had more parking lots than trees. Because there were people wandering around, I was able to sell a few books based on my aggressive business acumen (which is to say I harassed someone into buying a copy of TD&D). I also handed out a fist-full of postcards advertising the next book, telling potential customers that the postcards were FREE, and if they decided they wanted the book after all, they could always come back and pick up a copy I’d signed. Hopefully, that sort low-pressure of approach will move even more books. Who knows? More to the point, B&N had ordered a fair number of TD&D and not only had signs all over the store announcing my presence, but they also had one of their friendlier staff walking around showing off copies of my books and telling people they had a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to meet a real, live romance author.

Plus, they bought me coffee.

It’s hard to hate people who buy you coffee.

I will never, ever abandon my local, independent bookstores, but there are certain advantages to these large box bookstores. You might find this counterintuitive, but I have had a lot easier time booking signings at remote venues by contacting big boxes. Once, when Shawn and I knew we were going to be traveling to Phoenix, Arizona, I tried like the devil to get any independent bookstore to give me a signing. I called several months in advance, but got bumpkin for a response. The most famous independent bookstore in Phoenix, Tattered Cover, explained to me that I could have a signing, IF I was willing to pay them. “Book signings, you understand,” the manager sniffed, “don’t net us any profit. If you want to rent space from us, you can. Fifty bucks an hour.”

I blanched. No way was I going to rent out a space in a book store that also promised absolutely no support in terms of publicity – It wasn’t even clear they’d order books for me. So, I gave up on the independents. I went on-line and searched for a B&N with a science fiction reading group. By chance, there was one in the Phoenix area, I called them and talked to their community relations person and had a signing scheduled by the end of a ten minute phone call.

That Phoenix signing was a big seller. I sold over sixteen books AND I met the reviewer who reviewed Other Me’s first novel for Romantic Times. The trip was a humongerous success.

And they bought me coffee.

Did I mention the free caffeine?

What do you think? Big box = evil? Or?

The Personal and The Political

In honor of Tuesday’s elections the moderator of Fur, Fey & Fangs asked the contributing authors to consider the political system their metahumans employ in their novels (ie the hierarchy of a wolfpack, coven, or murder of vampires). I can’t really answer this question because I don’t actually think there are a lot of vampires in existence in my universe.

I really struggled with this particular issue – that is, what’s the deal with vampires? How do they survive preying on humans without being discovered? Or should I go with the scenario made popular by Laurel K. Hamliton’s Anita Blake series, where vampires have become citizens in their own right and are subject to governmental rules and regulations like normal people.

I decided I couldn’t think of a unique enough reason that vampires would be part of the known world, so rather than risk blatantly ripping off Hamilton (or any of the other myriad of vampire writers who have chosen this route) I’d keep them in the magical closet, as it were.

That left me with the issue of how is that no one has discovered their existence? Even though the article I posted about the mathematical improbability of vampires has been negated by my devoted and mathematically-inclined readers, there is always the issue that if you had a murder (sorry, but I like that so much better than “coven”) of twenty or thirty vampires all living in a town the size of Madison, Wisconsin your food source would run out pretty quickly, I’d think. Or, at the very least, the local cops would start wondering about the quantities of exsanguinated bodies piling up in the county morgue.

I solved the first problem by giving my vampires the ability to stay alive without having to kill their victims.

For the rest, I figured that I had to limit the number of vampires. I’ve never specified the exact number of vampires in the world, but Garnet has met only a few. Two is considered one too many for Madison.

The ghouls know about vampires, of course. (Ghouls are volunteer donors to the vampires.) I’ve never really explained how it is that Sebastian and the others recruit them without giving away their true identity, but I’ve always figured vampires did use a bit of “glamour”/Thrall/cult of personality to keep the whole thing a kind of open secret in that particular subclass of people.

So my novels politics are local and personal, I guess.

Serendipitous Self-Promotion

Yesterday Shawn, Mason and I made a foray into the Valpo Barnes & Noble. Shawn has actually been looking for a fantasy novel by C. E. Murphy called Urban Shaman and Mason is easily amused by the Thomas the Tank Engine books and toys they have in the children’s section.

I, meanwhile, like to go to scout.

I snoot around to check the bookshelves see who of my friends in on the shelves and in what qualities. Then, I check to see if they have any copies of *my* books. When I don’t find my books, I usually don’t bother to make a fuss. I mean, I know how I would feel if some irate author came up to me while I was just doing my barely above minimum-wage job shelving books in a box chain store demanding to know why thousands of copies of her precious, important novel is not displayed prominently. I would think she was a diva. I’d roll my eyes, make nice, and put her name on my mental list of people not to go out of my way to help in the future.

Anyway, I’d found a couple of copies of WebMage by Kelly McCullough and a copy of Barth Anderson’s Patron Saint of Plagues. No Tall, Dark & Dead. I shrugged and went back to play with Mason. Shawn came up to me and told me she couldn’t remember the author of Urban Shaman and wondered if I’d be willing to ask someone if they had it. Shawn is shy and I’m not. We tend to do a lot of our division of labor based on this fact. So I was happy to ask after the book.

The clerk said that they had a copy of Urban Shaman and, on a lark, I decided to ask after Tall, Dark & Dead. Turns out the reason I didn’t see it on the shelf was because someone on staff was reading it in the break room. She told me she could fetch me that copy. I stopped her and sheepishly admitted that I was the author. I told her that if someone was actually READING it, I didn’t want her to take it from them.

She showed me where to find the other book, we chatted about various other books that we liked. She up-sold me on the sequel, and we parted ways.

Mason had found a book on bugs in the children’s section so we hung out for a few moments decided if he liked it enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. While we dithered, the clerk came up to me and asked me if I’d be wiling to sign their copy of Tall, Dark & Dead. I happily obliged, and she told me that she’s “stolen” it from the staffer who was reading it decided to buy it for herself. She also informed me that she already placed an order for another copy.

I was honored. Thrilled, even. And, I’d made a sale. All self-promotion should be so easy.

It’s All About Me, Even When it Isn’t

Another reader on Amazon.com complained that the characters in TDD have no morals.

I continue to be baffled by this criticism because, as I’ve said many times on this blog, the central theme of that novel is a question of morality. I suppose your average reader can’t relate to a heroine who has killed (or, depending on how culpable you believe Garnet was when she released Lilith, “allowed to die”) several people. For all intents and purposes, though, you could certainly consider Garnet a fairly active accomplice to murder.

I still believe she’s a moral person, however. She killed out of self-defense, a defense, I might add, which works for many juries in this country. She was also vastly out-numbered and out-gunned. Had it not been for her willingness to unleash Lilith, Garnet would have died that night. A point that I thought that I made abundantly clear throughout the novel.

She also is wracked by guilt. Yes, she can sleep at night and even joke about it, perhaps, (partly because she’s the queen of denial) but she’s also never been entirely convinced that what she did was the right thing, even though it saved her life. Garnet also unleashed something dark within herself and struggles throughout the novel to make peace with that. (Lilith is, in essence, a big, fat metaphor for the human capacity to do harm – and maybe even take pleasure from it. But my point is not to glorify that, but to expose it.)

Maybe people don’t like that darkness. Or maybe I failed on some level for these readers, and my intentions are not all there in the pages of the book, despite my best efforts.

It’s interesting to me that this particular reader also thinks that Garnet slept with Parrish, which she most certainly does NOT. They get close – partly because Garnet is feeling a pang for something familiar and Sebastian has just revealed his darker side, which she initially revolts against. Garnet kisses on Parrish, she wants him, they get naked, but then things stop.

The stopping is kind of the important bit.

Isn’t it?

Or am I to assume then that the readers who find Garnet and company immoral are the careless readers?

This may all boil down to the cover art. While I love it, and I think it helped sell books, there is a bit of a disconnect – my book isn’t nearly as light and airy as the cover suggests. (Ironically, I’d proposed an even lighter book, but the editor who bought it said he wanted it darker with more sex and violence.) So, anyway, maybe the readers who can’t connect to Garnet were expecting her to be something else despite the bloody, murderous image in the prologue (which perhaps a careless reader might skip?) and all the references to the Dark part in dark goddess Lilith.

I don’t know the answer, but, what I do know is that I should never read my Amazon.com reviews. They make me crazy and, like right now, stop me from writing. I know I can’t please everyone, but part of me tends to take this kind of criticism personally. I feel like the comments are directed at me, rather than at the reader’s experience of my book.

I suppose the reviewer in question would just say I was being self-important.

Beginning at the Beginning is a Stupid Thing To Do

I’m finally sitting down to start Bloody Charming, the third in the Garnet Lacey vampire chick-lit series, and I’m stymied. I can’t seem to figure out where this story starts.

The funny thing is that I have an outline that details the plot from beginning, middle, and end, so it’s not like I don’t have a handle on the story itself. I had, in point of fact, begun at the beginning, which is to say, sometime before the action starts. I’d had Garnet on a boring little bicycle ride home interrupted by the sudden appearance of a wolf. Cool though that image was, I realized that what followed was a lot of meandering as Garnet went though her day, essentially being happy.

Not cool.

So tonight, I restarted the novel at the first gathering of Garnet’s potential coven. I’m much happier with that because there’s action… though I realize the conflict is still not center stage. I’m going to have to rework that in revisions, because I’m also throwing a lot of new people at the reader all within the first ten pages. I think that I can make that onslaught of names work if there’s a core story for the reader to follow – which is going to be Garnet dealing with Blythe, the sexy comparative religions major, who is hitting on Sebastian.

It amazes me how bloody difficult writing is. I’ve been teaching writing for years now and I have any number of sort of “pat” phrases that I tell my students over and over. One of them is that they need to start their story at the moment of conflict. Start, I tell my students, with a problem statement, not unlike the thesis of a paper -- so that your reader knows what the hypothesis is going to be, what answers they should be looking for. State the novel’s core conflict in the first sentence (or thereabouts.)

Yet, when it comes time for ME to sit down and write, I flake. I get distracted by the pretty, by the fun.

Now I have to pay the price. I’m going to have to take my own advice.

How annoying is that?

Because It COULD Happen

(Cross posted to Fangs, Fur & Fey)

On of the questions asked of authors on the Fangs, Fur & Fey list was: "Why do you write urban fantasy?"

I have to first start by saying that I’m a huge fan of urban fantasy. I read a lot of it as a teen/young adult (which was some time ago now), probably for me the most memorable of which was Emma Bull’s WAR FOR THE OAKS. I still read a lot of it, in fact.

This is going to sound extremely fannish/Mary Sue, but what I love about urban fantasy, is that, well, that it could happen... to me.

When I was a kid, I loved to play pretend. I had the kind of overactive imagination that sent me into Hixon Forest every day of summer vacation with a wooden sword and a couple of willing friends. I’d still be there, except at some point it became somewhat socially inappropriate for me to tell people to call me “Zurg, Amazon Queen of Venus.” (Except maybe in the bedroom, but that’s another story.)

Urban Fantasy is an invitation to play again. Because the settings are contemporary, I can imagine that that unwashed looking guy talking to himself two seats in front of me on the city bus is, in fact, a werewolf. That’s the sort of stuff I like to play with in my own novels (and in the enjoyment of other people’s)... the taking of real things and added a supernatural or paranormal spin on them. I mean, what if all the guys/gals who talk to themselves are, in point of fact, talking to something real? What if those plastic bags blown around by the wind are messengers to some kind of new breed of urban faerie? My friend Kelly McCullough based a whole universe in an as-yet-unsold fey book called THE URBANA on that idea.

It makes walking to work more interesting, you know?

As If You Needed One More Blog To Read...

I was just invited to join a new LiveJournal community that might be of interest of readers of Tall, Dark & Dead. It’s a collection of paranormal romance writers called fangs_fur_fey/

British Cover

Here's the British cover for Tall, Dark and Dead. (Yes, they realize they mispelled my name. It's being fixed.) Outside of that, I think it's awesome.

Astro Alert:Mercury Retrograde, Neptune Direct, Jupiter Square Saturn

Your up-to-date astrological information here!

This from Astrology.com

"Are you thinking of making some lifestyle changes? The Jupiter square Saturn on October 25 is the perfect excuse to cut back on any excesses and to assess the areas of life where you are overcommitted. And with Neptune ending its retrograde -- a phase that began last May -- when it turns direct on October 29, you are tuned into your hopes, wishes and dreams. Now is the time to incorporate these ideals more deeply into your life."
"But wait! That rascal Mercury turns retrograde on October 28, a period that will last until November 17, so it will be essential to do a thorough review of your plans before making any life-altering decisions. Start reviewing old contacts, ideas and plans. What have you accomplished? Are you stuck in a rut? Though communication snafus and misunderstandings abound during any Mercury retrograde period, it's also an ideal time to analyze, evaluate and effect real change."

Math Disproves the Vampire

World Science has an article that shows that vampires can't exist, mathematically speaking. Check it out: Math vs. Vampires: Vampires Lose".

Garnet and Sebastian Short Story News

As you know, a short story I wrote featuring our very own Garnet Lacey and Sebastian von Traumm will be coming out in an anthology edited by Charaline Harris. I just got new and improved information about its release date. See the note below:

I just wanted to catch you up on the status for MANY BLOODY RETURNS. Ginjer Buchanan at Ace has read the manuscript and loves it. (That is a quote!) And though I'd thought it would be a paperback release, the book will be a September 2007 HARDCOVER release.

Cool Yule!

Lizard Man of... My Hometown?

Now I’m reading Hunting the American Werewolf by Linda Godfrey and Mason has wanted to look at all the monster pictures. While flipping through the book, we came across a reference to my hometown. Apparently, in 1994, there was a sighting of a lizard creature sulking near the water front of the Black River near the Hardee’s of Clinton Avenue Bridge. What’s amazing to me is that this BLOCKS from the house I grew up in and where my parents still live.

According to Linda Godfrey the author of Hunting the American Werewolf, it all started when a man and his teenage son went walking with their dog and the dog slipped its leashed. They started hunting for the pooch, when “Suddenly, a movement near a tree caught their attention and they trained the flashlight in that direction, hoping to find the runaway hound. Instead, they were astonished to find themselves looking at a creature standing on two legs in front of a tree, something taller than a man and covered with mud-colored scales. Its eyes were yellow and slitted....”

Then she goes on to talk about all the mysterious drownings that happen near LaCrosse. Except, most of those drownings, while tragic, aren’t terribly mysterious. They tend to involve college kids who go bar-hopping – LaCrosse’s main bar street, Third Street, is as you might guess, a mere three blocks from the Mississippi – and wind up in the river. She makes a number of connections to the Mississippi and various Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) legends of monster snakes that drag unfortunate victims to watery graves, which would be a fine stretch, except the sighting of this lizard man was on the Black River. I know, because that’s the public beach I grew up swimming in every summer for nearly seventeen years.

Clearly, I have a lot of paranormal leanings, and I honestly believe that LaCrosse is a very magic town. A Menominee legends says that where three rivers cross there will never be a tornado. Despite the fact that the Midwest is plagued with tornados, LaCrosse (which is the junction of the LaCrosse, the Black, and the Mississippi rivers) has never been hit by one. There are gorgeous, wild Bluffs surrounding the town and undeveloped marsh land that cuts the city into the north and south sides. I could see how a magic creature could feel at home in LaCrosse and could, in fact, stay fairly undetected for a while.

But, I’m not buying this one.

I think the fact that Godfrey admits that she gets this story second hand and the fact that it happened in a place that I’m so intimately familiar with really stretches credibility for me. I will say that when I was growing up (70s and early 80s), the shoreline of the Black River was left undeveloped. I used to roam past the beach barriers and hike for miles through willow and weeds… and it was spooky. But, after I left, there was an attempt, I guess, to gentrify the area and the city clear-cut of all that wilderness. You’d think if there were a selkie or a lizard man living there, someone would have seen evidence of it, when the area was much more wild.

Wouldn’t you?

Marry Me, You Vamp!

From the Vampire Vixen’s chat list, J.C. Wilder (once again) had something interesting and provocative to say, “I heard Virginia Henley speak many years ago and she made the statement, ‘Women would love to sleep with my men but they'd be crazy to marry them.’ - I feel that way about the vamp. They're dark, deadly and ultimately sexy but one would have to be crazy to truly trifle with one.”

Yeah.

That’s part of what irks me when readers of TD&D complain that my vampire character is morally reprehensible. I want to say, “Well, Duh. He’s a vampire. He EATS people.”

I totally understand the appeal of the romantic, tragic vampire. I think, however, it’s easy for post-Buffy fans to forget that the traditional vampire is a killer. He can have remorse, but he still needs to kill to survive. Most vampires aren’t like Angel. They may not be soulless (depending, of course, on the author’s rules regarding such things) but neither are they without sin. (You may say Angel had his Angelus, but I’d counter that in many respects those were two completely different people – one entirely possessed by a demon and the other burdened with a soul. I liked both, though Angel was more interesting to me because he was more self-aware and introspective.)

Anyway, it’s in the sinner that I find interesting literary ground. This question of can a killer be a “good” person interests and excites me. When I sat down and conjured up Garnet, I wanted this question to be central to her personality, too.

I love romantic comedies, and I always knew that I wanted TD&D to have some light-hearted, if not downright humorous moments. However, I didn’t really want a silly, vacuous heroine. I wanted someone who would be equal in strength (ala Garnet’s magic and Lilith, who, if unleashed could eat the vampire for breakfast) AND in emotional depth (she has her secrets and her darker side, too.)

Would I really want to marry Sebastian? No, not particularly. He’s a decent enough sort, a day-walker, and filthy rich… but he still drinks blood and he’d need a source for that blood and it couldn’t be me – not forever, anyway. Plus, I’m not sure a vampire would ever be able to settle down and lead a truly normal life. There is, after all, no statute of limitations on murder...

Market Killer Strikes Again?

Ever since Other me wrote cyberpunk into the ground, I've been joking that now that I've transformed into Tate Hallaway I'll do the same for the whole vampire chick-lit craze.

Guess what's being reported on Vampire Vixens' yahoo group?

"In the publishing world trends come and go like the hems of dresses. According to a lot of publishers I'm hearing, 'We're not interested in vamps, we're all bought up' of the sales are 'slipping'. This is just my opinion but, if the sales are slipping its because of the NY 'rush' to fill the shelves with vampires. This has happened with every 'trend' and the quality begins to slip as they make that mad dash to catch the trend.
What do you think, are vampires dead?" (from J.C. Wilder)

Sounds like I may have done it again. Any requests for the genre or sub-genre I should wipe out next? Inspirational romances? Space opera?

Sigh.

The Black Dog of Père LaChaise

I’ve been reading The Beast of Bray Road, and there is a section in the book about supernatural black dogs, who guard certain graves.

Shawn and I have long been cemetery aficionados – to the point of having photographs hanging in our house of striking or interesting headstones. For me, cemeteries have always been peaceful, contemplative places. When I was a teenager, I used to bicycle out to the pauper’s cemetery on Campbell Road and sit in the shade of the oak tree just to be alone with my own thoughts. When Shawn and I lived on Girard Avenue in Uptown in Minneapolis, we spent a lot of time strolling the grounds of Lakewood Cemetery. I almost never find cemeteries to be spooky or creepy –with two notable exceptions.

The first was our trip to London when we visited Kensel Green. The problem with Kensel Green, despite the fact that it was WAY OUT (we had to take not just the tube, but the train) and we arrived at dusk (generally a creepy time of day), but also that it is as old as the more famous Highgate, but unlike it, it has remained open. Highgate, which is much larger, is filled. Once filled, they closed. Not so Kensel Green. Along one wall, we stumbled across moved or removed headstones. Plus, Kensel Green is old enough that when above ground crypts are in disrepair, there is a certain… shall we say, smell, which was made stronger by the classic London drizzling rain.

Eeeeeeewwwww.

We searched for Charles Babbage, who is supposedly buried there, found Christopher Wren instead, and then left in a hurry.

The next year, in 1995, my parents, Shawn and I traveled to Paris. Shawn and I took with us a great guide book we found called Permanent Parisians: An Illustrated Guide to the Cemeteries of Paris. Despite our Kensel Green experience, we had a lot of fun roaming the cemeteries of the London area. Plus, Paris has one of the most famous cemeteries in the world, Pere LaChaise, where many, many famous people are buried: Heloise and Abelard, Moliere, Balzac, Oscar Wilde, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stien, Proust, and, of course, Jim Morrison (of the “Doors” fame). The cemetery covers acres of land and has gravel roads (complete with street signs) intersecting it. It’s a gigantic necropolis. We were in heaven!

We got lost somewhere after finding Balzac and were paused on the road, consulting our map. That’s when I saw it. The black dog. It was running towards us, through the headstones, barking fiercely. Given how many cats run wild in the cemetery, the thought of a supernatural being never crossed my mind. Our only thought was: run, run away fast. We ran, keeping the dog in our peripheral vision. We crossed the next intersection and it was gone. I hesitate to use the word disappeared because, despite writing about the paranormal, I tend toward the rational. But, it was gone. “That was weird,” we said, and then we went on with our trek.

Only later did I hear about the legend of the black dog. Then, I started to wonder – had we seen one?

To this day, I don’t know.

Web update

I've updated my web page to include the art for DEAD sexy, the back cover blurb, and most importantly a link to an excerpt of the first chapter of the newest Garnet Lacey book!

Enjoy!