Questions? You have questions? I have answers!

A couple of months ago, I sent out a newsletter that included an FAQ. I thought I would update and post this here. 

Frequently Asked Questions:

Your books have many connecting characters. What order would you recommend we read them in?

Small Town Siren (Texas Sirens #1), features Abby Moore, Jack Barnes, and Sam Fleetwood

Siren in the City (Texas Sirens #2), features Abby Moore, Jack Barnes, and Sam Fleetwood

Away From Me, features Gabrielle Sullivan and Callum Reed

Siren Enslaved (Texas Sirens #3), features Danielle Bay, Julian Lodge, and Finn Taylor

Siren Beloved (Texas Sirens #4), features Lexi Moore, Aidan O’Malley, and Lucas Cameron

Playing the Field, features Tess Proffit, Curt Goff, Mike Cabrerra, Marcus Grant, Randy Hall, and Kevin Best

Three to Ride (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #1), features Rachel Swift, Max Harper, and Rye Harper

Two to Love (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #2), features Callie Sheppard, Nate Wright, and Zane Hollister

One to Keep (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #3), features Jennifer Waters and Stefan Talbot

Siren in Waiting (Texas Sirens #5), features Bethany, Trev McNamara, and Bo O’Malley

Lost in Bliss (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #4), features Laura Niles, Cam Briggs, and Rafe Kincaid

Found in Bliss (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #5), features Holly Lang, Alexei Markov, and Caleb Burke

Pure Bliss (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #6) features Hope McLean, James Glen, and Noah Bennett

Siren in Bloom (Texas Sirens #6) features Shelley Hughes, Leo Meyer, and Wolf Meyer

Chasing Bliss (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #7) features Jesse McCann, Gemma Wells and Cade Sinclair

Siren Unleashed (Texas Sirens #7) features Ben and Chase Dawson and Natalie Buchanan

Once Upon a Time in Bliss (Nights in Bliss, Colorado #8) features Henry Flanders and Nell Finn

Which characters are connected across series?

Texas Sirens’ Julian, Jack, and Sam make a brief appearance in Two to Love.

Bliss, Colorado’s Wolf Meyer and Texas Sirens’ Leo Meyer are brothers, and Cassidy, Mel’s girlfriend in the Bliss series, is their mother. Wolf will be joining Leo at The Club for Siren in Bloom.

Bethany, Trev, and Bo moved from Deer Run, Texas to Bliss, Colorado at the end of Siren in Waiting. Trev is James’s new partner in the Circle G Ranch. Jack Barnes is involved with the Circle G as well.

Gabrielle and Callum from Away From Me are now in business with Danielle, Julian, and Finn. Gaby now runs Dani’s spa in Willow Fork and she and Callum live there with their two kids.

Curt, the star quarterback from Playing the Field, makes an appearance at the beginning of Siren in Waiting.

Finn, from Siren Enslaved, acts as Jennifer Waters attorney when she gets into some trouble at the beginning of One to Keep.

Logan Green leaves Bliss, Colorado at the end of Found in Bliss to spend some time at The Club in Dallas, TX. He appears in Siren in Bloom and Siren Unleashed.

Vampire versions of Stefan Talbot and Julian Lodge appear in Beast: A Faery Story. The town of Bliss appears in Beauty: A Faery Story.

Will ________________ get their own book?

I have books planned for several characters. Here’s a little preview:

Once Upon a Time in Bliss – this is Nell and Henry’s novella – a little prequel

Back in Bliss – Logan Green, Georgia Dawson and Seth Stark

Siren Reborn – Cole Roberts, Kitten Taylor and MasonScott

Eventually I mean to write books about:

Bliss- Lucy/Michael/Ty, Sawyer and Naomi and a player to be named later

Sirens- I’m introducing the whole Dawson family – Win, Marc and Drew

Bliss – I think I might have to revisit Caleb’s brothers and expect a book where Nell and Henry are the secondary characters who are forced to deal with Henry’s past.

How soon after a book is released on Bookstrand will it be released on other websites such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble?

My books are available exclusively on Bookstrand for approximately four weeks after they are released. I’ll let you know through Facebook, Twitter, and my website as soon as they are available.

How soon after a book is released is it available in print?

Print books usually become available about three months after the eBook is released.

Siren Unleashed pre-sale & What's up with those bodies?

Siren Unleashed is up for pre-sale at Bookstrand! It's coming out on October 26th. For those of you who prefer to wait for Amazon, it should be sometime around November 27th. Here's the link!

http://www.bookstrand.com/siren-unleashed

Now for something a little different. I tend to only blog about my work, but this blog is a little different. It's mine and only mine and I really, honestly think there are about like eight of you reading it so I'm going to start blogging about anything I find interesting.

So it's almost Halloween and this is the time of year my thoughts turn to all things scary. I adore horror films. Not the serial killer kind because I am way, way too paranoid to handle that. I firmly believe that serial killers are probably everywhere and yes, I carry pepper spray and a bear horn with me when I go for a walk because I fear my dog will just lick the serial killer to death.

No serial killers for me. But ghosts and zombies - oh, yes. This particular Halloween I've been focusing on zombies and post-Apocolytic thrillers and I've come up with some questions. I'm addicted to Walking Dead and I started watching this BBC show called Survivors. Like many post-Apocolptic movies and books these two both have the requisite scene where the survivors have to wade through a massive traffic jam and all the dead bodies in cars. Most of these films start with a virus that blazes through the population.

So wait. Isn't there something wrong with this scenario?

When I get sick my first thought isn't hey, I'm going to go get in my car and drive around until I die. I get in bed when I have a head cold, much less a flu that sets out to kill me. I don't think - hey, if I just drive around and around until I hit a whole bunch of other cars, everything will be all right. And everyone in the cars is like dressed and shit. I get the deadliest flu in the history of mankind and I'm not going down in a business suit. Hell no. This girl is going out in a comfy pair of PJ pants, a tank top and no bra. I mean, I'll be all gross and dead so I don't really care that my boobs sag.


It makes me wonder if the Black Plague was different than we imagine. Maybe what really happened was massive wagon jams. I can see the poor survivors trying to get around a gnarled mess of donkey carts and carriages with well dressed corpses still holding on to their parchments and tapestries because everyone knows that when your lungs are collapsing, it's important to finish up that tapestry of St. George.

Not that any of this will make me stop watching. Oh, no. It just proves that the scariest thing in the world isn't a plague or zombies.

It's traffic.

Yes, I can buy that.

Cover Reveal and Tuesday Tease

I thought I would start a little Tuesday tradition around here. Every Tuesday I'll post a little snippet of my current work in progress - either the book I'm currently writing or the one in edit or who knows maybe just hints and secrets about what's coming up. This Tuesday is particularly fun because I got the cover for Siren Unleashed, Texas Sirens 7 yesterday. I'm really excited about Ben and Chase Dawson's story. It's a big book in the Bliss world, too, because it features Logan Green in his last Texas Sirens appearance. He'll be headed back to Bliss in his next book.

Here's the blurb:

Twin detectives Ben and Chase Dawson have been sent to investigate an unusual murder at a resort owned by Julian Lodge. Julian wants them to protect the prime suspect, a young submissive who was the last person to see the victim alive. The job seems simple until Ben and Chase discover that the beautiful submissive they both desire has a dark past.

Natalie Buchanan came to the Willow Fork Tranquility Spa seeking sanctuary after escaping the clutches of a twisted sadist. Working as a massage therapist at the resort has given her a chance to heal as well as access to the spa’s secret dungeon. But when one of her regular clients ends up dead on her table, Natalie fears that the monster she once escaped has come back to claim her.

As Natalie rediscovers the beauty of BDSM with her twin Masters, all three will be forced to confront her past. 

And an excerpt. This particular excerpt highlights Chase Dawson's skill as an interrogator:

Natalie turned, wanting to keep hold of the sweet dream she’d been having. She’d been riding Ben, his cock sliding deep inside, but this time, instead of Chase’s sarcasm interrupting them, she felt him at her back, gently pressing her down. His hands played with the cheeks of her ass, trying to make a place for himself. Twins. She was caught between them and there was no jealousy now, just an overwhelming drive to pleasure. 

And she wanted to give. Her need to submit roared back, and in the haze of the dream she didn’t need her armor. They wouldn't hurt her. They’d been sent to protect her. It was good and right to submit to them. Her guardian angels, one grumpy and the other so sweet he took her breath away. 

The gorgeous grump was behind her now, his cock pressing against her asshole.

“Take me. Please, Sir.” She could ask him for this. She needed to be filled with them, trapped, with no way out, but this time the cage of their arms would lead her to heaven.

Nat opened her eyes with a smile on her face. 

And then she sat up and screamed. 

Chase, because there was no way that sarcastic grin belonged to Ben, merely propped his head in his hand and patted the bed beside him. “Don’t freak out on me, sweetness. Rest. It’s too early for recriminations.”

“It’s also too early for all that…god, Dawson, where the hell are your clothes?” 

He was just laying there, his gorgeous body in a centerfold-like pose. “You’re wearing my shirt. I didn’t have anything else.”

“Bullshit. And I’m not wearing your underwear.”

He winked her way. “I’m not that big into underwear. I feel better with my junk free to move around. It helps me concentrate. Tell me about Stanley.”

“You’re kidding. You want to interrogate me while you’re naked and I’m wearing nothing but a shirt?” And she should have known he didn’t wear underwear. He’d taken hers the night before. 

And god he was heart-meltingly handsome. 

He sighed a little. “Sweetness, we need to get this shit out of the way. The quicker I make sure you don’t go to jail, the quicker we can get to the good stuff. Although I’m perfectly willing to do all that good stuff while I’m investigating. Seriously, it might actually help. I often do some of my best thinking while fucking. I’m a multitasker.”

She closed her eyes, trying to figure out exactly how she felt about the situation. Just days before she would have told anyone that she would be fighting and running out the door, but she felt safe with him. He hadn’t done anything she hadn’t asked him to do except fight with her to keep her safe. Even then he’d sacrificed. And his brother wasn’t any different. They were flip sides of the same gorgeous, completely fucked-up coin. And yes, she admitted, the fucked-up part intrigued her. She peered down at him, taking in everything. Yep. They were totally and completely twins right down to that monster dick that kind of made her mouth water.

“How can you think like that? All your blood has to be in your…you know.”

He grinned, looking younger than he had before. His face was always layered with a worldly, almost pained sophistication, but now he looked lighter. “Don’t mind him. He does this every morning. He’s used to being patient and lying in wait for his prey. Now, tell me about Stanley, gorgeous girl. Did he try to get into your panties?”

She rolled her eyes. “Why does everyone ask that?”

“I ask it because I would try. I even made it easier on myself by getting rid of your panties. All I have to do is get under that T-shirt. Now answer my question.”

She frowned. “It’s hard to take you seriously.”

His hand came out, pushing her hair back. “Try. Tell me about Stanley.”

“Fine. He was a client. He came on to me once. The first time he made an appointment with me, I sat down and took all his information. And he asked me about happy endings.” She remembered that she pretty much wanted to punch the asshole. It hadn’t been so long since she’d been cleared for work. They’d needed to make sure she wouldn’t kill anyone. She’d totally thought about killing Stanley. 

“Why didn’t you walk out?” Chase was looking at her boobs. Sure, they were covered, but he was looking at the place where her boobs would be. And her nipples hardened. Because she was a freak. 

“He was the third client who’d asked about it. I told him if he touched me I would take his balls off, and he nodded and said he understood.” He’d been a creep, but he’d tipped well. “Look, Dawson, massage therapy was all I knew. I went to college, but I didn’t come out of it with a degree I could use.”

He smiled slightly, his big hand reaching for hers. He touched the middle finger of her right hand where it was well callused. “Arts?”

Years she’d spent with a paintbrush in her hand only to learn no one gave a damn that she could mimic the moderns. “Yep. Four years of undergrad work and I was ready for a job in the fast-food industry. So I went to massage therapist school. My mom suggested it. My dad was friends with the man who ran the school.”

“You mentioned your parents were in the lifestyle.” Chase had the sweetest smile on his face. God, he was gorgeous. 

“My mom was Dad’s sub. Was? Still is. They’re very active. Mom still gets her ass whipped in all kinds of classes. Mom and Dad founded their club in San Antonio. They still have a munch every third Saturday.” She hated to think about how close her tragedy had come to breaking them. 

Chase traced a hand across her cheek. “It must have hurt them terribly when they learned what happened to you.”

She nodded, but didn’t move away. “Yes.”

“Natalie, sweetness, you understand that what happened to you wasn’t BDSM, right? It was assault. It was rape. I’ve heard the term nonconsensual BDSM and it’s flat-out dumb. It’s an oxymoron. There’s no such thing as nonconsensual BDSM. Nonconsensual BDSM is a crime. BDSM is a choice. It’s like telling someone they had nonconsensual sex. Baby, there’s sex and then there’s rape.”

She knew the difference intellectually. Emotionally was a whole new challenge.

The door opened and Ben walked in. He didn’t seem to have his brother’s problems with underwear. He was in a pair of boxers that hung low on his perfectly muscled hips and showed off that shouldn’t-be-allowed-in-real-life eight-pack of his. He rolled in a tray that promised all manner of breakfast delights. He stopped, his jaw dropping open just a bit.

“Dude, seriously? Where the fuck are your pants?”

Chase rolled on to his back, his cock thrusting up. God, Ben had sort of looked like that last night when she rode him to her first orgasm in years. Of course she’d thought he was Chase. So in a way she’d already slept with Chase. In her head at least. And she’d totally slept with Ben. 

God, what would it be like if this little domestic scene was real? She had a choice. She could run and they probably wouldn’t stop her. She could get dressed, and the next time she saw them everything would be back on a professional footing and she could go right back to her comfortable shell. 

Except her shell had cracked all to hell last night, and she kind of liked the freedom. Old Nat would have reveled in this. Old Nat would be joking and laughing and holding it all in as a crazy experience she could remember in her golden years. 

That Nat was dead, but she didn’t have to retreat into her shell again. 

****

So that's all for today. Hope you enjoyed it. Siren Unleashed is coming out on Siren Bookstrand October 26th!

On Saturday, August 18^th, I delivered the luncheon keynote speech at Siren Publishing’s first ever Romance Convention. Several people have asked me for a copy of the speech, so I’m including it in full here. Thank you to David and Diana for a wonderful weekend. I enjoyed meeting my fellow Siren authors and all the fans who attended the convention and book signing.

~~~

I feel so bad for all of you since I’ve never delivered a keynote speech. You get to be my guinea pigs. I’ve sat through many, so I promise to make this brief because I know this is totally cutting into cheesecake time. First off, I would like to thank Diana for inviting me to speak. Siren Publishing gave me a voice so it feels right and proper that this is my first speech of this type. I wouldn’t exist without Siren, so my deepest thanks go to Diana and David. I think we all are grateful for having this amazing company that accepts our voices, our unique characters, and stories.

I actually Googled the words “keynote speech” in preparation for today. You’re lucky that when I asked the computer masters how long a keynote speech should be and it told me forty minutes, I was like–what? That is not going to happen. I’m going to be quick and hopefully make a little sense. Yeah. I’m not so sure about that last part, but I’m going to give it a go.

I thought I would talk a little today about a question I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves. We might ask it a whole lot. What is our place in the publishing world?

Publishing has rapidly evolved in the last several years. Unlike music and movies, publishing remained the same for hundreds of years. After the printing press was invented, centuries went by before publishing was forced to truly change. The advent of the e-reader and the dominance of Amazon have opened new paths to a career that for hundreds of years had only one. Writers today can sometimes feel like they’re on the Mayflower, pioneers in a new, spectacular and uncertain world. For those of us who choose to not take a traditional route, the path can be a difficult one, and I’m not talking in strictly professional terms. There can be a personal cost to following our dreams. Especially in this room, we understand the stigma of writing genre fiction. I can go down the list of all the ways we get marginalized. We write fiction. We write genre fiction. We write women’s fiction. We write romance. We write erotic romance. And then—holy crap—I write it about two guys and a girl or three guys and a girl, and they all like to get tied up and spanked.

Yeah, there’s not a lot of respect out there waiting to be given to us. If you joined up hoping to get constant reaffirmation of your talent, you’re in the wrong place. We writers rapidly discover that a deep belief in our worth is required to survive. Sometimes this feels like a thankless job. Like there is no real place in the world waiting for us. I’ve struggled with this for my whole career. I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m sure most of us thought we would make it big and we would only need to write one book a year and then lounge around in our mansions. And we rapidly discovered that the publishing game is a long game and we must make up the rules.

How do we judge success? How do we know when we’ve made it? Is it when we finish our first novel or when we publish it? Are we successful when we get a review declaring our book the best ever? Or is true success getting the ones that rip us apart and still sitting back down to tell another story? Do we need the New York Times to validate our voices? Or do we simply need to know that our words are important to someone.

I’m going to get totally clichéd on you now. But there’s a reason things become cliché, because they are so true. Robert Frost wrote a poem. You all were probably forced to read it, even memorize it in high school. The Road Not Taken. It’s about anyone who was born or who chose to be different. It’s about anyone who takes the path not marked and delineated by those who walked before it, the path without road signs and maps dedicated to it. The final lines are the most important to what we’re talking about this day.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.

I remember reading that poem in high school and thinking it was full of such excitement. The road less travelled by could only mean adventure. Years and experience have given Frost’s words texture and layers they didn’t have for me before. There’s a reason one is less travelled. This road we’re on is hard. Our job is to put our souls on a piece of paper and hope that someone, somewhere connects with it. We don’t get nice little progress reports. We get torn apart on Goodreads for all the world to see, those bits and pieces of our souls placed under a microscope and judged based on whatever today’s criteria is for proper writing. We knock on New York’s doors and most of us never even get the courtesy of an answer. It’s the nature of the business. Always has been. The people who get published are the ones who will reach the widest possible base of readers. The rest are relegated to trying over and over again to find something the gatekeepers will deem worthy of allowing through.

But then the e-revolution occurred and now the choices are plentiful, the roads diverged and widely varied. It can make a writer’s head spin. Traditional press. Small press. E-first. Self-published. Where is your place? Where does your voice belong? What is the importance of the erotic romance writer?

A lot of people will answer that last question for you. They’ll tell you that you don’t have a place or marginalize you as cheap-thrills fiction. They don’t have to read you to know who you are. Some of you have lost family and friends over what you write. Some of you hide this piece of your soul from everyone, your writing the only outreach for something fundamental inside. And some of you will stand up and not allow your words to be pushed aside and shoved to the bottom of the heap, taking the pain so that those writers who come after us have an easier way. These struggles are exactly what connect us to our audiences. Being brave enough to travel this road can be the very thing that pushes our stories over the top to do the most important thing they can—to connect us to the greater world. For every time someone pushes you down, for every writer in some group who asks you to leave because what you write isn’t really romance, remember this. There is someone out there who needs to hear your story. There is someone who feels alone, who believes no one understands them until they find a story they can sink into and discover a character who lives and breathes their existences. This is the true power of fiction, and every reader deserves a story that becomes comfort food. The dark voices grow so much quieter when one person writes to you or walks up to you at a conference and says, “thank you.” Your book made me laugh when I was going through a divorce. I saw myself as your heroine. Or in my case, that moment when I realized my voice could be important was when a woman walked up to me at a signing and told me my books got her through chemotherapy.

No matter what anyone tells you, your voice is meaningful and important. Take your work seriously because someone out there needs to read it. Take stock of yourself as an author before you sit down to read reviews. Find that core of yourself that is unchanged, unmoved by criticism because it is built on faith, faith in your words and your stories. Faith in yourself. Faith in each other.

We are writers. We don’t have to be friends, but we do understand each other. The women and men around you are the ones who know what this path is like. They know what it means to struggle to place words on a page that move with purpose. They are the ones who have stood at that great gate that once allowed few voices to pass and left the rest out.

They are the ones who tore that gate down. When the publishing world barred the road, this is the generation that got out a jackhammer and plowed a new one.

So that is the answer. Where is our place in publishing today? It is a blank page waiting for our stories to be written on it. You are the gatekeeper, the architect of your dreams and your career. You are the arbiter of your success. Build your dreams as high as you can. Put your words out in the world and know that someone somewhere is grateful. For all those who would look down on romance, I would say that there is enough evidence that the world is a gritty, perilous place. Sometimes we need to be reminded that it is rich and beautiful and that love exists when we reach for it.

Take this time to be around those who understand, to refresh yourself so Monday you can go out and do what this generation of writers was born to do—change publishing forever. That is our place in this world.

Thank you all for listening.

~~~