At Home with Pamela Clare

Just for fun

2009-07-17T15:38:00.003-06:00

My parents and my nephew Finnegan at Delicate Arch in Canyonlands

I love the American West. Those of us who are lucky enough to call it home know that the beauty of the place, the extremes of weather and variety of landscapes make every day an experience filled with beauty. This is from Canyonlands, Utah, not far from my parents' home in Southwest Colorado. I'm posting it just 'cuz it's pretty.

I'm working on Chapter 29 of Naked Edge today, hoping to finish it tonight so I can write the last chapter (let's hope it's the last!) tomorrow and the epilogue on Sunday.

Thank you all so much for your touching words and prayers for Connie and her family. She made a difference in people's lives while she was here, and, really, that's the best thing any of us can do.

Have a glorious day!

Naked Edge update

2009-07-15T07:09:00.004-06:00

A photo taken somewhere on the dinetah — Navajoland — where Kat from Naked Edge was born. I think the real Kat may have taken this photo, actually...

So I realize it's been a while since I posted. I thought I'd give you a quick update.

Since my last post:

I have had a week's vacation, during which I wrote 18 to 20 hours a day and got to Chapter 28 of Naked Edge. That puts me within screaming distance of the end. I'm halfway through 28 now, and I hope to finish it tonight. So that leaves Chapters 29 and 30, plus the epilogue... and then I'm done!

I'm back at work, but I'm still pushing hard to finish, which means I'm still getting only about five hours of sleep a night. That's okay, because I just want to finish!

Also, my family's dear friend Connie, whom I mentioned several posts back and whom I tried to celebrate by including her as a character in Unlawful Contact, passed away. She died must faster than anyone imagined. Her funeral is today. I appreciate your prayers for her, and I'm just glad she's no longer suffering. I was able to visit her in hospice, which was a moving experience, but also very sad.

Connie with my sister back in the early ’70s. The two of them shared a birthday. I have no idea who anyone else is in this photo. This is the house we lived in from the time I was 9 till I was about 12.

She will be sorely missed by her family, friends and all the women she helped through her church. She was very involved in assisting abused women and in helping women through Christian ministry. I'm not big on religion, but she's one of a small number of people who truly walked their talk. If there is such a thing as Heaven, she's there now.

My thoughts are now with her husband, John (who was "Pastor John" in Unlawful Contact) and with her children, who've been my friends since I was 2 years old.

Work is, of course, very busy, and I'm really not up for it now. Between Connie's death and the writing the climax of Naked Edge, I'm feeling pretty emotional and just want to write and sleep and isolate myself.

Speaking of work, I'm very late getting ready for it. I just wanted to give you all an update. I hope to finish Naked Edge by the end of this coming weekend.

The home stretch

2009-07-02T01:38:00.006-06:00

I'm off from work through July 13, during which time I am going to be working mercilessly on Naked Edge, with the goal of finishing it by July 15, at which time I must start another project. I tried putting up a countdown clock here for fun's sake, but I couldn't get it to work.

So rather than leaving you with a countdown clock to stare at for the next two weeks, I thought I'd share a video of some of the most amazing powder skiing I've ever seen. Remember, I grew up in Colorado. Skiing lessons were part of PE in junior high. So when I say this is fantastic skiing, believe me, I know what I'm talking about.

I have no idea who these guys are, but they ski like powder demons. Why is this relevant? After all, it's July! True, true! BUT, Gabe Rossiter, the hero in Naked Edge is a mountain parks ranger and loves to ski. Not only does he love to ski, but he's amazing at it. None other than Julian Darcangelo says that Gabe is hell on skis. And now that you've got this video to watch, you can see what that means. These guys ski deep powder, taking face shots all the way, and they ski a couple of cliffs. (In ski lingo, "face shots" means having the power fly into your face. Outside of skiing, it's a porn term, and you can figure out for yourself what it means.)

In his younger years, Gabe chased powder. That is to say, he traveled wherever the powder was deep and the skiing was good. A lot of young guys live that way here, mostly sleeping in cars or vans and driving anywhere in the Rockies where the snow is dumping.

If you want to catch some of Gabe's other activities, you can search YouTube for heliskiing. He and Marc Hunter out of necessity go heliskiing, something I have actually done. I went heliskiing with a group of friends near Telluride. Heliskiing is where they fly you into the wilderness to some crazy high ridge in the mountains and drop you off in the snow and you ski down the mountain in deep powder. I suck at telemark skiing, so I kind of fall down the mountain while wearing skis. But, hey, I still went heliskiing, right?

After watching all of this snowy activity, hopefully you'll feel cooled off and refreshed.

I'm five chapters and an epilogue away from finishing Naked Edge. I'll check in if I can. If I'm focused on the story and can't come back to the real world, then you won't see me for a while. But do enjoy that crazy ripping in this video. I watch in awe.

And if I don't see you all again before Saturday, have a wonderful, safe Fourth of July!

AAR Favorite Books by Favorite Authors results

2009-06-23T18:45:00.007-06:00

The results of All About Romance's Favorite Books by Favorite Authors poll are up, and I was surprised.

Here's the order in which you, my readers, put them:

1. Hard Evidence
2, Unlawful Contact
3, Ride the Fire
4. Untamed
5. Surrender
6. Extreme Exposure
7. Sweet Release
8. Carnal Gift

I'm not surprised by the last one, but I am surprised that Hard Evidence placed first, ahead of Unlawful Contact and Surrender. I'm also surprised that Untamed placed ahead of Surrender.

On Amazon, Surrender has by far the most reviews — 47 — and most are very positive. (Believe it or not, my mother and I don't post reviews for my books, and I don't know most of the people who do.) Unlawful Contact comes in just behind Surrender with 30 reviews, most of them five-star.

Hard Evidence, by contrast, took some serious knocks from reviewers, who found Tessa to be an irritant and TSTL. (To which I've always wanted to say, "I'm an investigative reporter and I've done some of those things. Am I TSTL?") Of course, Julian is pretty popular with all of you. No doubt about that.

And speaking of Julian, someone sent me this photo today to cheer me up, and I thought immediately of Dark Angel...

You should check out the Faves by Faves page at AAR because it has a pretty substantial list of authors whose books readers have ranked according to which they liked most. It's a great way to get acquainted with a new author and reassure yourself that you're not starting with her worst book.

I fully expected Surrender and Ride the Fire to be at the top, along with Unlawful Contact, with Untamed coming in at No. 4, perhaps.

And thanks to all of you who took the time to vote!

I told Lee Brewer, AAR's publisher liason and pollster, that I feel like a real romance novelist now that I'm included on the Faves by Faves page. She very generously replied that having a single book published makes a person an author.

So what do you think? Did the vote go the way you expected? How would you change it if you didn't. I know what Kristie J will say...

More Flowers/Naked Edge update

2009-06-20T09:48:00.004-06:00

What it's like right now in Colorado's high country

I thought these photos were kind of fun and wanted to share them with you. A couple weekends ago, I went for a drive in the mountains with my younger son, Benjamin, and his girlfriend, Lucy. We drove along Trail Ridge Road to give Lucy a view of the real Rocky Mountains. She'd never seen mountains like this before. And although it was technically late spring, up there it was still winter. We got caught in a bit of a snow storm, which made me nervous. Anyone who has driven on Trail Ridge Road will understand why.

We drove Lucy to an overlook where she'd be able to see where I almost died — but the clouds were so thick and the snow falling so heavily that the entire mountain range was obscured. D'oh!

A look at the snowpack along the Continental Divide

The photo above shows where ploughs cut through the snow to clear the road. Just to give you some perspective, my son is six feet tall.

Meanwhile, down at 5,000 feet elevation, my garden is in high bloom. It's so lovely I could sit out there all day.

Here's a glimpse of our King Arthur giant delphinium, which just popped. It's so majestic. I tried to get a close-up so you could see the details inside the blossoms.

Click on photos to enlarge for more detail

This is a shot of the middle bed in my front yard rose garden. You can see the King Arthur delphinium in the background. Anne Bolyne and Heritage are the pink roses toward the front. Beside them is lavender, which is just starting to bloom. There's penstemon, a Rocky Mountain wildflower, and purple coneflower, which hasn't yet bloomed.

Update on Naked Edge: I saw that they've moved the release date till March 2010. The book is due on July 15. If I can make that deadline, there's still a chance the book might be bumped to April or May. Hopefully not. So I might not post again after this until the book is done. I really need to focus every word my brain can conjure on the story.

I am taking vacation from the newspaper in the beginning of July and can't wait! I'll spend the time writing and sleeping and sniffing roses.

Bite me

2009-06-17T07:24:00.003-06:00

My brother ran into this fellow while hiking this weekend. He always sees rattlesnakes. I've never seen a single one, not even when I was volunteering for Boulder Mountain Parks and patrolling trails for 12 hours every weekend. Then again, I've seen a mountain lion up close — very close — and a mama bear with three cubs, and he hasn't. So...

We had another special edition at the paper, this one devoted to green living, and it took far more time than anyone had imagined. For the past two weeks, I've been working, eating and sleeping — and that's about it. Thank goodness this is sort of the last one for a while. Okay, okay, we have another for the Fourth of July, but that's nothing like these others.

These past two weeks have also been extremely unusual in that every single day we've had torrential downpours — sometimes two or three times a day. Even stranger, we've had tornadoes almost every day. I grew up here being told that "we don't have tornadoes here because we're too close to the mountains." Well, someone needs to tell that to the eight tornadoes that have touched down around here in the past two weeks. Obviously, they didn't get the memo.

We had our first tornado in 1996 — two on the same day, actually. I watched one of them touch down, utterly fascinated. They were pretty small. A friend of mine from Alabama just laughed at them and called them "cute." Then we didn't have another till last year when that enormous mile-wide twister touched down in Windsor. That's the tornado that wrecked my roof. It also killed someone. And now eight this year.

I hope to be back in the writing swing this weekend. Naked Edge is due in New York on July 15. I can't miss that deadline. So that means I might be taking an Internet break. The pub date has been bumped back to March '10, and I expect it might hit April '10 before long...

I have eight chapters plus and epilogue to write.

I hope everyone is well.

A lazy June Sunday among the flowers

2009-06-07T11:23:00.006-06:00

Actually, it's not such a lazy day. I'm writing my behind off. I finished Chapter 21 yesterday and am one-third through Chapter 22 of Naked Edge. That means I'm more than 67 percent done with the book. I must be done by July 15. And that's a lot of writing...

I want to get back to book piracy for just a quick moment, but not yet because I'd rather talk about...

Flowers!

My garden isn't in high bloom. Not yet. That will happen within the next 10 days or so. But here's what I found outside this morning...

Red Yarrow. The bunnies like to nibble this. I love how the color contrasts with all the green foliage around it. It's self-seeding, so it spreads on its own. This patch grew from one bedding plant we put in a few years ago.

Louise Odier is a Bourbon rose that was bred in 1851. It has a beautiful, rich old-rose smell. It's one that Benjy wanted to plant when he was younger, so it's kind of "his" rose bush, along with Hot Cocoa, which hasn't bloomed yet.

This is Golden Wings, a beautiful yellow rose with only a handful of petals on each blossom. It has a fresh rose scent and can be grown as a climbing rose. It's our only yellow rose, because someone (i.e., me) is stuck on pink. What can I say?

Stef, here are the peonies in full bloom. They're quite eye-catching!

This is Anne Bolyne, an Old English rose. It's scent is so fantastic and amazing that I almost get high off it. I planted lavender around it (that's lavender just below the bloom), so that I can smell both. Together. At the same time. Both scents are beautiful. Together, they're unbelievable!

Here is a view of my massive sage plant in full bloom. That's about the size of a queen-sized bed, actually. Right now, it sounds like the plant is buzzing. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. There are zillions of bees on those tiny blossoms.

Here's red yarrow bumping up against a bud on our Abraham Darby bush, which produces fully cupped, enormous flowers, also with a lovely Old English rose scent. I love it when the various flowers overlap. The colors, the scents, the foliage all make it a very sensual experience.

Thanks for indulging me. I hope you enjoy the photographs.

Prayers needed — and a cool poll

2009-06-02T20:00:00.005-06:00

I more or less grew up here...

Most of us have people in our lives who at one time or another make a big difference. John and Connie are two such people in my life. They're my parents' ages. They met my parents because my father and John worked together at Rocky Flats, the former nuclear trigger plant south of Boulder.

I was 2 years old when John and my father met and our two families became friends. They had two girls, too, and their daughters were the same ages as me and my younger sister — that is to say, 2 and newborn.

As time went on, my parents had a boy. And they had a boy. Then my parents had another boy, and they had another boy. Same ages. Kind of funny, really. Naturally, this only made for a closer bond.

They lived up in the mountains, and I can say that the happiest days I had as a young child were spent at their house, running around like a wild child in the mountains. We played outside until it was dark, then slept on their upstairs deck out under the stars. It was kind of like camping, because we were in the mountains, except that we were also at home.

I spent countless nights at their house. I couldn't even begin to guess how many. Every Sunday morning included an enormous pancake breakfast with eggs and sausage and French toast. Everything you could want for breakfast. They always held hands and said grace. And I always went to Sunday school with Debbie.

I grew up to take a different spiritual path, but John and Connie have always represented to me what "real" Christians should be. If you've already realized who they are, you win the prize.

When It came time to name the pastor and his wife who take Megan into their home in Unlawful Contact, the choice was easy for me. I named them John and Connie — Pastor John and his wife Connie — as a tribute to the two people whose home had been such a haven for me. A couple months ago, I had dinner with them and with Debbie and her three boys and got to tell them about the book. I guarantee you they would never read one of my stories, but they're the most genuine people you could ever hope to meet.

Sadly, John is struggling with lung cancer, and Connie, who a few years back had to deal with breast cancer, is now facing colon cancer. It would mean a lot to me if those of you who pray could include them in your prayers. They're wonderful, wonderful people, and they've been such a blessing in my life.

Thank you!

On a completely unrelated topic, All About Romance is hosting their Favorite Books by Favorite Authors poll. It's not a competition between authors. Authors are competing only with themselves. I've been chosen to be featured as one of the authors this time around — ! — so AAR wants to hear from my readers as to what books of mine are their favorites. Just go to to All About Romance and fill out the form. There are 13 authors listed, and you can sound off on as many authors' books as you choose.

I'm interested to see the results. Somehow I think Surrender and Unlawful Contact and Ride the Fire will be toward the top of the your favorites. But I could be wrong.

If you have time, pop by. AAR uses the list to provide readers with a guide or resource for when they want to decide which books to start with for a new-to-them author.

OK, almost done with Chapter 21 and counting...

Oh! I almost forgot!

When I got home from work yesterday, there was a box waiting for me. Inside the box, I found a beautiful engraved marble pen stand (is that what you call them?) announcing to my surprise that I am Colorado Romance Writer's Author of the Year. I was floored! The conference was at the beginning of May, and I wasn't able to attend because I'd just broken my foot. So I missed getting the award. They apparently decided to surprise me — and mailed it.

So that's pretty exciting!

A stroll through my garden

2009-05-31T12:56:00.006-06:00

We're getting to the time of year where the "What's blooming now?" feature on the left column here won't be enough to show you what's happening in my flower garden. I'm a lover of flowers, particularly the flowers I've chosen to grow in my garden — antique English roses, Rocky Mountain wildflowers, irises, lavender, delphiniums and so on. Because I'm such an "olfactory" person — I have a very sensitive nose — everything must have a smell. And when it's all in bloom, the scents mix together in the sunlight and I get drunk just standing on my own porch sniffing.

I took a quick stroll this morning and snapped some photos of what's blooming right this very second.

Stef, the peonies above are dedicated to you. They're such a lovely rich, red color, which is a perfect contrast to their deep green foliage. They just started blooming yesterday.

White iris is one of my very favorite scents. I could stand there all day with my nose in the blossoms, huffing like an addict. When Benjy was little he saw these from a very boyish point of view as the dust and light and fire from an explosion. (Hey, I'm not a boy. Don't ask me.) He started calling them "flak explosions" when he was about eight or nine. So that's what we still call them. LOL! Nice explosion, huh?

Sage is sacred to Native people here, and I grow a ton of it. White sage is really what I wish I grew, because it's the preferred form of sage for smudging and praying, but I love these tiny purple blossoms. This plant is perhaps five feet across and six feet long. It stands about two feet high. And when it's in full bloom, it seems to buzz from all the bees.

The dry climate and heat are great for growing California poppies. I love the rich orange color of these tiny flowers. They're just starting to pop, and they'll bloom all summer, though they get rather leggy by August.

Penstemon is a Rocky Mountain wildflower. It has slowly been spreading through one part of the garden, and I'm encouraging it. You can see the park-like green of my lawn in the background. It won't stay that way. It's too hot and dry here in the summer. Also, I think you can catch just a glimpse of the first Stelle del Oro daylily to bloom this year in the background.

Near the street I have irises of mixed colors behind a very tiny, dainty flower called Snow in Summer, which somehow defies the direct sun to bloom most of the summer. I just love it.

The first rose to bloom this year is Blanc Double de Couvert, a lovely scented rose with a bright white double blossom. It survived this past winter, which combined unusual extremes of heat and cold and dryness, better than the other roses, which all died back to the ground. Our climbing rose, which was 12 feet tall and last year must have had a thousand white roses on it also died back to the ground. Lamentation! It's only about two feet tall and has maybe forty buds right now.

I'm now more than two-thirds done with Naked Edge and hope to have another chapter done before I go to bed tonight. That puts me on target for finishing by mid-July and hopefully holding on to an early 2010 pub date.

Have a lovely spring day, everyone!

Unlawful Contact is a Daphne du Maurier finalist!

2009-05-28T18:55:00.005-06:00

I just got the news that Unlawful Contact, the third book in the I-Team series, is a Daphne du Maurier finalist! I'm really thrilled about this because I love the characters and the story and am happy the judges did, too. Also, it means that I'm three for three with the I-Team series. I've only written three romantic suspense novels, and they've all been finalists in the Daphne's single-title category. Of course, it would be really cool if this one wins. Still, the competition is always top-notch, so it's great just being a finalist.

This reminds me that I've promised some of you a certain scene involving Marc, his memories of Sophie and his right hand prior to his escape from prison — if you know what I mean. (And I think you do.) I will get to it, but it has to wait until Gabe's story is written.

Ah, Marc...

To celebrate, how about an excerpt? Hmm... Which scene? I can't remember which ones I've posted and which ones I haven't. But this is one of my favorites. I remember writing it and how long some of the emotional sequences took to get right. If you haven't read the book, there are probably spoilers here, but what the heck?

From Unlawful Contact:

“Easy, Sophie. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Sophie heard a man’s voice, felt hands move over her, tugging off her bra, unzipping her skirt, ripping off her panties. A spark of panic ignited in her belly, moved sluggishly to her brain. She tried to push the hands away, but couldn’t seem to move. “N-no!”

“That’s right, sweetheart. Get angry. I’d love nothing more right now than for you to wake up and hit me.”

But she couldn’t hit him. She couldn’t even open her eyes.

Then strong arms surrounded her, precious heat enfolding her, soothing her, chasing away her shivers. And she drifted.

Sometime later—she couldn’t say how much later—gentle fingers tested the pulse at her throat, pushed back the hair from her face, brushed over a sore spot on her cheek. Then she felt her head being lifted. A cup nudged her lips.

“Come on, sweetheart. Drink. That’s it.” The man’s voice was deep, comforting, somehow familiar.

Coffee.

Warmth slid down her throat to her stomach, spread through her belly and into her limbs, rousing her, driving the terrible cold away, bringing her slowly back to herself.

The crackling of a fire. The scent of wood smoke. The soft warmth of skin against skin. An arm around her waist. The steady thrum of a heartbeat.

She opened her eyes, found her face pressed into a bare chest.

A man’s bare chest.

Her heartbeat picked up as she tried to remember, her mind strangely fogged.

Had she met someone? Had she gone home with someone last night? Had she been so drunk that she’d forgotten? She’d never done that before—ever. That was Holly’s M.O.

But here she was. And here he was.

They lay as close together as a man and woman could without having sex, her head resting on the hard mound of his bicep, one of her legs tucked intimately between his, her breasts squashed against his ribcage. As close as she was, she couldn’t see much of him. But she could feel all of him—the coarse hair on his hard thighs, the prodding outline of his testicles and penis, the ripped muscles of his chest and abdomen.

She was in bed with Adonis, and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here.

She drew her head back to get a better view of him. The firelight revealed some kind of tattoo on his right arm, which lay possessively around her waist. She tried to make out what it was—an eagle?—but most of it was concealed by a dark band of duct tape and something that looked like—

Dried blood.

Her memories flooded back, riding on a surge of fear.

It was him.

Marc Hunter.

The man who’d held a gun to her head. The man who had kidnapped her. The man who’d… Oh, God! Had he raped her?

“No!” She pushed, kicked, tried to shove him away.

“Calm down, Soph—!” He gave a grunt, then a growl, then rolled her beneath him, the length of his naked body holding her motionless on the mattress, his hands pinning her arms above her head. “Oh, Christ!”

Some part of her registered the pain in his voice, but she was too afraid, too panicked, too damned angry to care. “Get off—!”

“Not till you promise to keep your knees away from my balls!” He groaned through gritted teeth. “Damn, woman, you’re hard on the manberries!”

It took a moment for him to catch his breath.

Then he raised his head and scowled down at her. “Listen to me, sprite! I’m sure this is confusing as hell, but it’s not what you think. Nothing violent or X-rated happened. You were hypothermic, and I spent the past few hours trying to keep you alive. We’re in a sleeping bag together to preserve body heat.”

But Sophie barely heard him.

Only one person had ever called her that.

She stared up at him, almost too stunned to breathe. But even as she tried to deny it, she knew it was true, recognition dawning in a bittersweet rush.

She drew in a shaky breath, then let it go. “Hunt?”

The scowl on his face softened to a frown. “So you don’t recognize me till I’m lying naked on top of you? I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Through the havoc of her feelings, she tried to explain. “Y-you called me ‘sprite.’”

His dark brows drew together. “I did?”

“Yeah.” The word came out a whisper.

For a moment, they lay there in silence, skin to skin, the weight of his body pressing down on her, their gazes locked. At an emotional edge, she forgot all the big things—like the fact he’d held a gun to her head—her mind catching only the details.

The rapid beat of his heart against hers. The rasp of his chest hair. The hard ridges of his abdomen against her belly. The heat of his skin. The strength of his grasp. The dark length of his lashes. The unreadable emotion in his eyes.

Slowly, he released her wrists, his hands shifting until they pressed palm to palm with hers, his gaze never leaving hers.

Somehow her fingers twined with his, locked.

Then he groaned—and kissed her.

It was a deep kiss, full and scorching, his lips pressing hot against hers, his tongue probing the recesses of her mouth with skilled strokes, his body moving against hers in a slow grind as if he were kissing her with every fiber of his being.

A bolt of heat ricocheted through her, unexpected and overwhelming, making her shudder. Unable to think, she arched against him, her tongue seeking his, her body driven by raw instinct. And for a moment she was lost in him—in the male feel of him, in the intensity of his kiss, in the erotic pressure of his erection against her hip.

Then she caught it—the coppery scent of blood.

His blood.

Reality crashed in on her like an avalanche.

Drop the steel and back off, or I’ll blow her the fuck away!

She was kissing a cold-blooded killer, the man who’d held a loaded gun to her head, the man who’d almost gotten her killed.
In a heartbeat, the fire inside her became fury. She wrenched her head to the side, tried to twist away. “N-no! Stop!”

“God, Sophie!” He sounded breathless, his voice strained. “Jesus!”

“Don’t touch—!”

He clamped a hand over her mouth, glared down at her. “Believe it or not, I didn’t mean for that to happen any more than you did! Now, I’m going to unzip the sleeping bag and get out, and you’re going to leave my nuts intact, got it?”

# # #

Her body trembling, Sophie pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her, struggling to come to grips with all that had happened and watching as Hunt, still naked as a Greek statue, fed his prison garb to the fire, one piece at a time.

Marc Hunter was Hunt.

Strange to think she’d never known his real name. She’d thought Hunt was his real name. She’d never heard anyone call him anything but Hunt, not even teachers. She hadn’t known he had a younger sister, either. So much for teenage intimacy.

She ought to have recognized him at the prison. True, he had a beard and much longer hair, and he was taller now, more muscular, his rangy frame filled out. But those green eyes, those lips, those high cheekbones were the same. In retrospect, it seemed so clear. Hadn’t she had a strange feeling about him? God, she felt stupid!

But then prison was the last place she’d expected to see him. All these years she’d imagined Hunt serving his time in the Army, going to college, and setting out for the stars, a wife and three kids at home. Instead, he’d been rotting in a prison cell.

The teenager who’d secretly wanted to be an astronaut—the young man who’d taken her virginity and given her the most romantic night of her life—had grown up to become a cold-blooded killer.

The pain of it cut through her like a razor, her anguish made sharper because he’d clearly known who she was from the beginning—and he’d put a loaded gun to her head anyway.

Drop the steel and back off, or I’ll blow her the fuck away!

She swallowed, forced down the rush of emotions that welled up in her chest, unwilling to let him see how much he’d hurt her.
And if he’d also saved her life?

She’d been unconscious for part of the time, but she remembered enough—hands tearing away her wet clothing; a voice urging her to wake up, to open her eyes, to drink; strong arms holding her close, enfolding her in warmth.

Easy, Sophie. I’m not going to hurt you.

Could an act of compassion make up for cruelty?

She didn’t know.

She raised a hand to her mouth, pressed her fingers against her tingling lips. Why had she let him kiss her like that? Why had she kissed him back? And how could his kiss have affected her so much after all he’d done?

It was shock, Alton.

Or nostalgia. Or exhaustion. Or adrenaline.

She came up with a quick list of excuses, none of which appeased her conscience. All she knew for certain was that she’d never felt anything like the surge of emotion that had taken her the moment she’d realized who he really was—relief and joy and grief and anger twined so tightly that she hadn’t been able to tell them apart.

At least she knew he wouldn’t rape or kill her.

He stood, watching the fire burn, his hair hanging between his shoulder blades, the muscles of his back narrowing to his waist, his butt tight and round. How’d he’d stayed in that kind of shape during six years in a nine-by-nine cell was beyond her. But there was no doubt in her mind how he’d managed to pull so many strings from behind bars. He positively exuded dominance. He gave off a vibe that said, quite distinctly, “Don’t fuck with me.”

But, clearly, someone had tried. A thick scar at least six inches long curved down the left side of his back. She didn’t have to be a doctor to know it had been made with a crude and vicious weapon and that he’d come close to being killed.

He bent down and reached for the stolen backpack, giving her a brief glimpse of the body part she’d supposedly abused, scattering her thoughts.

She looked quickly away, found herself gazing around a one-room cabin. Log walls. A pine table and chairs that matched the bed. A chest of drawers. Antlers above the fireplace. One shuttered window. One door, it’s lock broken, a chair tucked beneath the knob to keep it from swinging open. He must have kicked it in when he’d brought her indoors. Had he carried her inside? He must have. She had no memory of arriving here.

“If you’re thinking of running, you’d best think again.” His voice startled the silence. He turned toward her, still naked, and tore into what looked like a package of long underwear. “We’re miles from anywhere, and the snowpack is almost six feet deep. You’ll exhaust yourself post-holing and will probably be dead before you reach the main road.”

She forced herself to look at his face, not the heavy planes of his chest or the silver scar near the dark circle of his right nipple or the shifting tattoos on his biceps or his six-pack or the trail of dark hair that led to…

Her mouth went dry.

And he wasn’t even hard.

Something clenched deep in her belly to think that that had once been inside her.

She jerked her gaze back to his face, hoped he hadn’t noticed, and was relieved to see he was looking down at the long johns in his hands. She swallowed—hard. “I want my clothes.”

“Forget it. They’re soaked.” He stepped into the bottoms, pulled them up, tucking himself inside, the stretchy material seeming to accentuate, rather than hide, his penis. Then he ducked down and grabbed something else from the backpack. “But if you’re done staring at my crotch, you can put these on.”

Sophie felt her cheeks burn—and got a face full of long underwear.

Pink long underwear.

“Hope you like the color.” He turned his back to her, picked up a piece of firewood, and dropped it onto the blaze. “Got it on sale.”

The difficulty of writing sex

2009-05-22T21:20:00.006-06:00

This image was purchased, not stolen.

Back to our regularly scheduled program... Kind of.

I want to thank each and every one of you who posted below. I'm sorry I didn't answer individually. This week was another special edition, and my son's girlfriend came to visit, so between getting 100+ pages to press, I was running to the airport and sending off copyright infringement notices. Still, I read and appreciate all of your posts. It means the world to me that you understand and care. I adore you!!!

Thanks to those of you who took up the topic on your blogs, as well. At the very least, people who see those posts might think twice before giving in to the temptation of downloading.

Illegal downloading is the topic of this week's poll! Yes, there's a new poll. I can't see who answered or how — it's completely anonymous — so you can confess and be absolved. It's merely for curiosity's sake that I put it up, not to scold anyone. I think we've all done something at one point or another, perhaps not realizing what we were doing constituted a copyright violation.

Enough of that for now.

Foot update: I hate having a broken foot. I need to go back for more x-rays, but I haven't made the time yet. I've been going without the cast on occasion, which last Sunday night resulted in my waking up in abject agony. I believe I almost screamed in fact. I woke up shouting, "Oh, my God!" And it wasn't in the good, orgasmic sense, either.

Speaking of SEX...

Last weekend I wrote a different sort of sex scene. It's an act I've not included in my books before. Aha, you say! She's finally writing anal sex! Um... no. I'll let you guess what it was. (The excerpt is below.) The thing that was fun about it was that it was new for me and therefore an interesting challenge to write.

Despite what Cosmo tries to tell us, there really is nothing new under the sun when it comes to men and women getting it on. I see their covers with teases like: "The 10 newest sexual positions! Cosmo tells you how!" Well, those 10 positions are probably in the Kama Sutra, if nowhere else, and we all know how: Get into a funky position and then do what you always do — insert Tab A into Slot B and let the spirit move you.

This image was also purchased. With money. That I earned.

The point is that writing interesting, compelling sex isn't easy. I think it's the hardest component of a story. Any time I come to a sex scene, I know it's going to be a tough bit of writing and I'm going to want to pull my hair out. How many ways can you describe a tongue inside another person's mouth? How many ways are there to describe an orgasm? How many ways can you describe the sounds a person makes when they're sexually aroused or climaxing or sexually contented?

The more books I write, the harder it is. I keep meaning to create an Excel spreadsheet to use to organize the adjectives, verbs and other descriptive terms I use so that I don't repeat myself. We all know that some books get that way — it's the author's 15th novel and every love scene is starting to sound the same. I so desperately don't want that to happen to my books, though it probably already has!

Of course, the key is to have each sex scene develop from the characters' own unique personalities. So Nicholas and Bethie have their slow, healing progression from "don't touch me" to "No Man But Me." And Julian all but assaults Tessa on his bedroom floor, believing, until he faces his past, that he is the kind of man who could do that kind of thing. And Marc just wants everything he can get after years of deprivation (provided it's Sophie), especially a mouthful of the taste he's missed while in prison. And so on...

But even so, there are only so many ways to describe it. Most difficult of all, there are only so many words you can use to name the organs involved. I refuse to use things like "sheath" or "velvet center" in contemporaries (and even historicals). But if you use "p-ssy" or "c-nt," you're going to irk your readers. So what does that leave you with? "He thrust his cock into her wet heat." Been there, written that, probably have the T-shirt.

It's a conundrum.

So let's talk about this: repetitive love scenes and ridiculous language. Where do you draw the line with language, and how do you deal with sex scenes in an author's work when they start to feel canned? Those of you who are writers, please share with me your patented secrets for dealing with this conundrum.

And to all my American readers: Have a good Memorial Day. Prayers and thoughts for our veterans and those who've been injured or lost their lives fighting for their country.

If you steal books, you suck

2009-05-20T15:02:00.007-06:00

We interrupt this fun discussion about sex scenes because I'm really ticked off.

How many of you think authors are millionaires? Please raise your hands.

The truth is that few novelists are millionaires. Most juggle the demands of a job — full-time or maybe part-time — while writing books. They depend on the extra money they receive from their books to pay bills and save up money for their kids' college or maybe their own retirement. I pay bills and some college tuition.

Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to make a decent living off writing novels these days, not because no one is reading books, but rather because so many people are stealing books.

Here's a news flash for those who are slow on the uptake: IF YOU DOWNLOAD BOOKS OFF THE INTERNET WITHOUT PAYING FOR THEM, YOU ARE STEALING.

I wrote about this last winter when another author brought a particular file-sharing site to my attention. The sight had thousands of romance novels on it, all of them pirated. I emailed the person who had shared illegal versions of my books and explained to her that what she was doing was illegal. I suggested she come to my modest three-bedroom home and steal directly from me. That would be more honest than doing it from a distance. She claimed to be mortified, and the files disappeared.

Now there are several additional sites sharing copies of my books. The only electronic format for my books at this point is Kindle, so anyone who has any other version (who didn't receive it from me) is a thief.

Right now a site called Demonoid.com is offering my historicals, while another site is offering everything I've ever written. My publishers have written to these people, but, although many of the users are here, one of the sites is located in Singapore.

Reading through the posts on the Singapore site, astatalk.com, it was obvious to me that the women who were downloading these files thought they were "sticking it to the millionaires" in the publishing industry. Also, they're doing what they can to hide their footprints, limiting membership and encouraging members to "hide their links."

Demonoid.com is obviously a "members-only" site that you can join if you're invited by someone who's already a member. That must be their way of protecting themselves from scrutiny for the illegal content they provide. What's even more sickening is that they are making money through advertising by providing my books illegally to others.

In reality, they're not sticking it to millionaires; they're sticking it to me. Every book they steal is a book I don't get paid for. Every book they steal is a book I don't get credit for, thus making it seem to my publishers that there's less interest in my novels than there truly is. While I spend every free moment I have trying to turn out novels that people will enjoy, they take advantage of that work for the petty gain of a handful of dollars.

Although publishers are trying to go after the supply side, I guess it's up to writers and other (honest) readers to go after the demand side by letting our readers and friends know that stealing books is wrong and shouldn't be tolerated.

Here's the bottom line: You don't have a right to any author's work unless you pay for it. If you don't like that, watch more TV. If you don't pay for books, you hurt the very industry that produces them for you and the authors who work their butts off trying to share stories with you.

As of this moment, both sites still contain illegal links to my books, including a copy of Ride the Fire that was scanned in page by page.

It really, really pisses me off.

I welcome ideas on how to deal with these two sites and how to address the issue of stealing books in general. It's an issue I might take up as an investigative reporter. I'd just love to land on the doorsteps of the people who posted my work on these sites. It could be really amusing. Maybe I can walk in their front doors, go to their refrigerators and steal food from them, which is what they're doing to me.

I know none of my FOPs and no one who regularly posts here are among the readers who are stealing books. You all rock. And I would appreciate whatever anyone can do to raise awareness about the harm that is done to authors when people steal. Perhaps then fewer people will participate in this organized theft.

I know people actively search for these file-sharing sites because my blog keeps a record of the word searches that bring people here. "Free Pamela Clare downloads" is a frequent search term, as is (perversely) "prison strip search." (There's always at least one person who logs on here every week to read the account of my being strip searched in jail. Do they wank? I don't want to know.)

Hopefully, karma will sneak a little virus in to each of the illegal downloads on these sites, destroying the computers of anyone who steals romance novels or any other kind of literature.

UPDATE:

Just as I was decided I needed to mellow out, I got an email from another author who gave me a link to this site: http://www.4shared.com/. There are eight of my novels, some the Spanish translations, that are available for free download. I've already notified the site that this represents copyright infringement.

One of the people who posted the books has a Blogger site on which she declares (in Spanish) that her blog is dedicated to the belief that books should be free to everyone. She offers information as to where people can download the books she reviews for free.

Let me get this straight: Authors work their butts off to write good books, relying on sales from those books to eat. But she thinks books should be available for free, as if that's some kind of activist stance. But who is going to reward authors and help them put food on the table if their books are distributed for free? Should farmers' vegetables be available for free to anyone who runs into their fields to harvest them? Should clothing on the racks in stores be distributed for free to anyone who wants it? How about cars? Should there be free cars for everyone?

I'm going to report this blogger to Blogger/Google, but I'm not sure what they'll do, given that she isn't actually providing the books from her blog.

Thanks to everyone who has posted for your support. You rock. I've met so many wonderful people through writing, and you're each such a blessing in my life. The people who steal books are a small but growing group. It seems a new site is being brought to my attention every single day now.

Favorite sex scenes

2009-05-19T13:55:00.003-06:00

A while back — it seems like eons ago — I posted a poll asking you all to tell me what your favorite sex scenes are from my novels. Fun idea, only it seems I didn't do it right.

Because the poll function doesn't allow you to enter words, I had to make a list from which you could choose. In making that list, I attempted to put what I thought (from a reader point of view) were the best scenes from each book. But I left out the waterfall scene with Morgan and Amalie, and I left out an entire story — Will and Lissy's story, "Heaven Can't Wait."

As a result, some of you let me know that you couldn't vote because your favorite scene wasn't listed.

Here are the results as they stand:

Alec & Cassie: The shackle scene — 0 (0 percent)
Jamie & Bríghid: Tied up in the forest — 1 (3 percent)
Bethie & Nicholas: "No man but me" — 6 (21 percent)
Iain and Annie: The shaving scene — 6 (21 percent)
Morgan & Amalie: The "wolf" scene — 0 (0 percent)
Kara & Reece: The "menage" with Mr. Jiggle Stick — 0 (0 percent)
Tessa & Julian: The shower scene — 4 (14 percent)
Sophie & Marc: The Jag shag — 9 (32 percent)
None of the above. I have a different favorite — 2 (7 percent)

The Jag Shag won, but with only 32 percent of the vote. That was followed by the "No Man But Me" scene from Ride the Fire, a favorite of mine, and the shaving scene from Surrender. After that came Tessa and Julian's shower scene, and then Jamie and Bríghid's forest scene.

I was surprised that Alec and Cassie's shackle scene got no votes and that Kara and Reece and Mr. Jiggle Stick similarly got no votes. But, hey, what do I know? The wolf scene from Untamed also received no votes, but for some reason that doesn't surprise me.

So here's the question: If you could choose and weren't limited to the choices I made, what would it be?

And, most importantly, why???????

Naked Edge Excerpt

2009-05-15T16:15:00.007-06:00

My new mattress

Busy, busy week in newspaper land. Looks like I'm revving up for a big investigation. Can't say more about it than I think I'm going to enjoy this one. I love making life difficult for people who've worked hard to be jerks.

The big news at home this week is that I bought a new bed. I've been sleeping on the same box springs and mattress since I was five months pregnant with Benjy — that's 20 years ago — and even though it was top-of-the-line in its day, it hasn't been comfortable for several years. The price made me sweat bullets, but then I thought of what it would be like to sleep and I handed that credit card right over.

How's that for edge-of-your-seat excitement. A new bed! Woohoo!

Other news:

Lilac attack

My lilacs are so lovely I can't stand them. Benjy and I planted the bushes a few years ago. At the time, they were not taller than my knee. But now they're up to my chin and dripping with beautiful, scenterrific blossoms. My garden is starting to take off — Benjy is outside right now in the last phase of weeding the front beds — so the "What's Blooming Now?" feature on the left panel here isn't going to be enough to keep you up to date.

Lily of the valley

Lilacs, hardy geranium and lilly of the valley are all in bloom right now. The geranium will bloom all summer. The other two are fleeting but sweet.

Hardy geranium

My Russian sage bush seems to have bit the dust. It's a huge bush and well-suited to dry climates. But we had such a bitter cold snap early in the winter, followed by no moisture till late March. I think that was too much. Fortunately, though other plants suffered, it appears to be the only casualty.

My climbing rose died back to the ground after three years of growth making it more than 10 feet tall. And all of the rose bushes except for the Blanc Double du Coubert died back to the ground. All of the canes are D-E-A-D dead. Fortunately, they're all sending up new canes, or I'd be rolling on my lawn and wailing. I love roses so much!

The tulips are either gone or past their prime, and asiatic lilies are pushing their way up.

Okay, now that I've bored you into oblivion with the minutiae of my garden, I thought I'd share a humorous but (hopefully) still sexy excerpt from Naked Edge.

This is from Chapter 19, which I haven't quite finished yet. So it's hot off my finger tips:

-----------

Feeling replete and contented, Gabe cradled Kat’s head against his shoulder, watching through half-closed eyes as she trailed a fingertip through the pool of ejaculate on his belly. She dabbed at it, made little circles in it, rubbed it into his skin like lotion, her actions somehow both innocent and amusing.

“So this makes a baby.” There was a note of awe in her voice.

“Not like this.” He reached for the box of tissues on his nightstand. “Mostly, it just makes a mess.”

# # #

Five minutes later, Gabe sat at the table in his boxer briefs, watching as Kat, wearing that same old T-shirt of his she’d worn this morning, made them a dinner of buffalo steaks, roasted potatoes and salad. Where she came by this sudden burst of energy when he could barely think and would rather be dozing in his bed with her still in his arms was beyond him. He supposed it was one of the great mysteries of life — how having a good orgasm knocked a man out, but re-energized a woman and left her ravenous.

Maybe it was an evolutionary thing that had enabled women to fatten up for pregnancy and produce healthier offspring back in the day when life was hard and food scarce. He could kind of see that. A cave woman has sex with a cave man, and while he’s lying on the mammoth skin in a post-coital stupor, she raids his cave for leftovers. Still, Gabe supposed human males had it easy. If he were a male black widow or praying mantis, Kat would be munching on him right now, not carrot sticks.

Not that he and Kat had mated. Not that they’d actually had sex. They’d done nothing more than get each other off like a couple of high school kids. And yet it had satisfied him in a way that three years of hard-core fucking hadn’t. Later, when his brain was working again, this would probably scare the shit out of him. Which was why he didn’t want to think about it now.

He watched Kat sprinkle salt and pepper on the rib eyes. Then she bent down to slide them in the oven to broil, and his gaze shifted to the curve of her ass and her cute lavender panties. And some of his daze lifted.

She shut the oven, then stood and turned to him, half-eaten carrot stick in hand. “Do you like onions in your salad?”

Despite what had happened today, she seemed relaxed, almost happy, the ordeal she’d been through temporarily forgotten. Some macho part of him found this more than a little gratifying. Distracted by the sweetness of her face, he barely heard himself answer. “Uh-huh.”

It was a good thing she hadn’t just asked him if he liked rat turds in his salad.

You’re in over your head, buddy!

Yeah, he was. But at the moment that didn’t seem so bad.

How slow can you go?

2009-05-06T15:13:00.007-06:00

If the person we're talking about is I, the answer is quite slow, indeed. Not by choice. Not because I want to be the slowest writer on the face of the Earth. Not because I don't care that there are readers who want Kat's story now and Connor's story now and Lord William's story now and Joseph's story now. And what about Ruaidhrí and Emma Rose??? Won't I write about them, too???

Yes, I get your e-mails, and I, too, want these stories to be written. I want to lavish you with prose that inspires you and characters that delight you and make you fall in love. Here's the catch:

I'm very, very picky, and I'm very, very busy.

I'm very picky because I don't ever want to put a book in your hands that disappoints you. A fool's hope, perhaps, as I know that has happened. Still, I make it my goal to write books that satisfy with no loose ends forgotten, no chance for heightened emotion overlooked.

I'm very busy because I'm a single mom with a day job. If I could find a corporate sponsor to enable to sit at home and write all day every day, I would gladly wear their T-shirt and paint their logo on my house. Sadly, no one has offered yet, which leaves me in my current situation.

The image at top was taken back when I started Naked Edge. You'll notice that in those days, writers were made to be content with quill and parchment — vellum, mostly.

Time passed, and the quill fell into disuse. Some fellow in Germany came up with the idea of moveable type. (Imagine that!) And my entire manuscript — all 20 pages that were written by then — was printed onto paper using wooden block letters like these.

And still I toiled and labored and worked, hoping to bring you all the best possible story I could, listening to my characters when I ought to have been sleeping, looking at the most intimate details of their hearts and minds, foregoing fun and dates and food and personal hygiene to focus my energy on Kat and Gabe's story.

The seasons progressed, springs and winters without number, and then God created the typewriter. I'm not certain it actually was God — I wasn't looking at the time — but when I saw it, I saw that it was good. It enabled writers to type into the wee hours of the night in their own homes, where they could be have as writers behave — wearing pajamas, drinking too much coffee in the morning and too much wine at night, having conversations with non-existent people, and behaving strangely.

Then, of course, there were "word processors," and now I own a laptop. Yes, a Mac.

The point is that I have been writing this novel for a very long time, and you all have been very patient. I am making progress, and I am working very hard on it. I will be taking time out to see Star Trek because I must, but that's the only real break I'm giving myself. So I am sorry the publication date has been bumped back to February 2010. I hope to turn it in on time so the date doesn't need to be pushed back once more.

I promise to write as fast as I can!

Support the free press — hug a journalist

2009-05-03T11:42:00.005-06:00

The Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial honors journalists who've died while trying to expose the truth.

Today, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day, an international day intended to draw attention to the eroding freedom of the press worldwide and to the important work journalists do, sometimes at great cost to themselves. Some are harassed and threatened. Some are imprisoned. Some experience violence. And some are killed.

Those of you who've followed the I-Team series, which is in part based on my own work as an investigative journalist, understand by now that being a reporter can be dangerous. I jokingly tell people that I went in to journalism not understanding that it was a contact sport. It's a joke, and yet it's kind of not funny.

When I wrote Extreme Exposure, I dedicated the book to the 1,400 or so journalists who'd died in the line of duty. The number of slain journalists is now at least 1,913.

Far too often these days when we think of "media," we think of mainstream media that doesn't do its job, or we think of paparazzi-type reportage that involves chasing people and invading their lives to bring the public news that doesn't matter. Rarely do people think of those reporters who toil away, day in and day out, doing the hard work of muckraking — digging and researching in order to protect our freedom by acting as a watchdog on government and those in power.

In my own tiny way, I've tried to fight the good fight. I have friends who still fight the good fight, some of whom you may have seen on TV or heard on the radio, telling about injustices they've exposed. All the investigative reporters I know have, at times, been threatened. I've had two stalkers, one of whom threatened to kill me with an AK-47 and who sent me letters detailing where I went and what I said to the cashier at the gas station, etc. If it's like that for us here in the U.S., imagine what it's like in other countries.

So today while enjoying your beautiful spring Sunday, take a second to remember reporters around the world, some of whom are languishing in prison cells for the crime of telling the truth.

And, Michael, congrats for making it onto Colorado Public Radio with the program about PTSD and soldiers at Fort Carson. You rock.

Coming soon: I-Team hero interviews and more Naked Edge excerpts!

Remember the Diggers

2009-04-25T13:25:00.004-06:00

Thinking of all my Australian and New Zealand friends and readers on ANZAC Day!

For my American readers who don't know what ANZAC Day is, it's a day that honors the soldiers from Australia and New Zealand who died specifically at Galipoli in Turkey in World War I — I believe it was close to or more than 10,000 men — but more generally those who've served and died for their countries.

I'd love to hear more about it, so my dear Aussie and Kiwi friends, feel free to tell us how you spent the day (which for you has mostly passed) and what the day means to you.

How I Broke My Foot and Other Lies

2009-04-17T08:53:00.006-06:00

So, I went for a long walk on a rocky trail wearing the wrong shoes and managed to give myself a stress fracture in my heel bone up near the arch. This is such an undignified way to give one's self an injury that my staff at the paper and I started spreading blatant lies at work, telling everyone I got drunk and was injured in the mosh pit at a concert or that we'd all gotten drunk and the entertainment editor had run over my foot with a borrowed car or that one of my staff and I had gotten into a fight at a bar and she'd shoved me and I'd fallen over with my foot hooked beneath the table.

The great thing is that people are believing them. I'm not a great liar — I once tried to make the entertainment editor think I was firing him instead of promoting him, just to amuse myself, but failed because I cracked up laughing — but I'm managing to keep a straight face when I fib to the ad sales guys and production staff.

Went for a walk? How pathetic!

OK, granted I walk really hard and fast. I used to do long-distance running and could clip off six-minute miles. Not many women can do that who don't run semi-professionally. I've had stress fractures in my feet from doing that, but not my heel.

I've gotten behind on everything — blogging, e-mail, visiting other folks' blogs — because from Tuesday night on I was in pretty bad pain. I went to the doc on Wednesday because when you can't sleep and can't walk due to pain in your foot you need to go to the doctor. She x-rayed my foot then fixed me up with a handy removable cast. It's like a big boot — no doubt very sexy.

I haven't gotten behind in writing, however, because I was already behind. I actually spent my time waiting for my x-ray outlining the next chapter in Naked Edge. So I'm ready to coffee up and sit here with my foot elevating writing.

We've had a mix of rain and snow for the past 24 hours. Last night it was raining so hard I could hear it on my roof. This may seem like nothing to those of you who live in places where rain is routine. When we get a hard rainstorm in Colorado, people stand at their windows and watch because it's not all that common. We have more ghost rain — rain that evaporates before it hits the ground — than rain.

About my most recent poll: It's been a while since I updated the poll but I'll do that today. My most recent poll was about Lord William Wentworth, the anti-hero of the MacKinnon's Rangers series. Some of you hate him. Some of you like him. Some don't know what to think. I know this from reading your e-mails. So I wondered how people would feel about Lord William getting his own happily-ever-after. The results? Most of you — 64 percent — like the idea, while 32 percent don't like Lord William enough to see him as a hero and feel you could tolerate him getting an HEA if it were a secondary plot in the story. One respondent didn't think William deserves an HEA at all.

I do intend to write a story for him, but I assure those of you who feel he isn't heroic enough that he will pay for the wrongs he has done. Yes, he will be made to suffer. In the end, he will pay such a high price that even the MacKinnon brothers will find it in their hearts to forgi'e him.

O.C.D. — An update on my Obsessive Cullen Disorder. I have read all of the books. I liked the first best, the second second best and so on. I liked the fourth book least. I won't discuss the stories here because I don't want to give the plot away to anyone who hasn't read them yet. I am just so relieved to have that out of my system! By the time I finished the fourth book, I was ready to be done. Overall, I'd probably give the series a 4 out of 5 stars. The last time I enjoyed reading so many pages about the same characters was in the midst of the Harry Potter books (which I loved).

Have a great weekend, everyone! And please wear the right shoes for whatever activity you're undertaking!

Naked Edge — Here's the cover!

2009-04-09T11:53:00.006-06:00

Look at what I just got from my editor at Berkley — the cover for Naked Edge! The colors are showing up a bit funky here, but it's actually a kind of purple. I absolutely love it and think it fits the story — and the series — very well. It's important that it fit the feel of the other books, I think.

What do you think???????????

I am on Chapter 17 out of 30 now — that's more than half-way done. Most of the really hard work — characterization, research, etc. — are done, so I hope that the second half will move much more quickly than the first half. I may be going longer and longer between blog posts as I finish the book because I desperately need to catch up. So please forgive me if these posts sit for a long time!

I'm dying to hear your thoughts.

Also, here's an image I found that would also be great for casting Kat and Gabe — it's Nathan Kamp and some preternaturally beautiful woman.

Have a great day, everyone! It's almost Friday!

Obsessive Cullen Disorder

2009-04-04T09:44:00.004-06:00

About three things I am absolutely positive.

First, I don't read paranormal romance, particularly romances that feature vampires.

Second, there's a part of me — and this part is totally dominant — that would never touch a romance that didn't contain sex.

And third, I am unconditionally and irrevocably obsessed with the TWILIGHT series.

Quick! I need an intervention!

I really don't know what to say about this, except that's how it is. It started one winter night when I was really feeling down and needed to see a movie. Nothing was playing — as always seems to be the case; Hollywood sucks when it comes to making movies I want to watch — so I decided to see Twilight. I knew nothing about it except that it was a sexless vampire YA romance, and those three words — "sexless," "YA" and "vampire" — indicated I would hate it.

And I loved it! WTF??? I assure you, no one was more surprised than I.

Last night, I was up till 3:30 AM reading New Moon, the second book in the trilogy. My sister sent me an email at about 3 AM reminding me that I won't keep my fans happy by reading Stephanie Meyer's books. But these books are like crack cocaine. One hit, and I can't get enough.

Those of you who love this series, what is it about the books and the movie (besides Rob Pattinson) that makes us love it so much? For those of you who've read it and can't abide it, what turns you off?

And will you all still be my friends now that you know how I've spent the past two days? D'oh!

The "cast" of the I-Team — final results

2009-04-03T10:14:00.008-06:00

I must have ADD, because I suddenly found myself wanting to move on from this topic. Therefore I spent some time one evening "casting" the rest of the rolls. I used your votes to cast the heroes, then just kind of went out and did the rest. I hope you like the results!

Reece and Kara

Julian and Tessa

Marc and Sophie

Tom Trent or Chief Irving -- I have a very concrete image of both men in my mind and I had a hard time finding anyone who came close. However, this suggestion (made by Bo? I can't remembeR) is a good one.

This is exactly how I think of Matt, plus I love Paul Bettany! He's a fantastic actor and fits Matt to a "T."

Jennifer Connelly (by coincidence Paul Bettany's wife) would be the perfect Natalie.

Natasha Kaye Johnson is a real Navajo actress and journalist. She'd be a great Kat with contact lenses. I'm not sure who she's with in this photo, but the grannie here is very much typical of the wonderful grannies one finds in Navajoland.

I-Team Casting Couch — the heroes

2009-03-30T19:09:00.006-06:00

Moving right along — we have a production schedule to which we must adhere, after all — I think a couple of heroes are ready to be cast. But I need your vote.

For Julian Darcangelo, its down to fellow Italian, Raffaello Balzo. I love his eyes, which have Julian's coloring.

Or Eduardo Verastugui. I love his intensity and can see him playing someone known on the street as "Dark Angel."

For Reece Sheridan, a late-comer, Jason Lewis, who pretty much fits the description of Reece all around. No voting here. I'm just going to call this one.

And for Marc, either Henry Cavill

or Brazilian model Daniel Bueno.

So cast your votes, and we'll move on to the heroines. And thanks to all of you for the luscious photos you've been emailing me!

I-Team Casting Couch — continued

2009-03-29T14:07:00.004-06:00

Let's pick up where we left off, shall we? We were perusing hot men for taking the roles of the heros in the I-Team series in our little game of I-Team Casting Couch.

Rita suggested Eduardo Verastegui for Julian. I told her that my tongue got stuck to my computer screen when I opened her email and saw his photos.

So here he is, both above an below. What do you all think?

Rita suggested Johnny Messner (below) for Marc Hunter.

He has the eagle tattoo already, doesn't he? Any thoughts?

Last night it dawned on me that Henry Cavill, the actor who plays Charles Brandon on the Tudors, might make a great Reece or a Marc Hunter. Brad Pitt was suggested for Reece as well. We all know who Brad is, so I haven't posted a photo of him.

Bo has made a ton of suggestions, not only for heroes but also for heroines. (WTG, Bo!) I'll try to get to those soon. I must eat lunch and then write a bit!

I-Team Casting Couch — Updated

2009-03-27T18:07:00.007-06:00

I am home again! We got about 18 inches of snow total. I spent last night in a hotel, then got up and had to unbury my car for the second time. I went in to the office for while even thought it's my day off — it's our busies time of the year — and then drove home on a slushy highway. It's really warm today, so the sidewalks that have been shoveled and the roads that would plowed are all but dry. Where they weren't plowed -- well, some fun, rutty driving. (I actually do find that fun.)

So, thanks to Sue Z, I have a new game I want to play with you all. I'm calling it "I-Team Casting Couch." Let me explain.

Let's imagine that the I-Team series was made into an ongoing TV series where every week featured a new I-Team adventure with the characters from my books. Each book would probably play out over a period of weeks, and there were be overlapping story lines and probably lots of stuff that was never in the books at all. (Hey, it's Hollywood, right?)

Now, let's imagine that you are the casting director. It's your job to find actors for all the roles. Here's who you need to cast:

Sen. Reece Sheridan
Kara McMillan
Lily McMillan
Connor McMillan
Tom Trent
Joaquin Ramirez
Syd Wilson
Holly Bradshaw
Tessa Novak
Kat James
Sophie Alton
Matt Harker
Natalie Benoit
Julian Darcangelo
Marc Hunter
Megan Rawlings
Lissy Charteris
Will Frasier
Chief Irving

Then there are a host of very secondary characters: the bad guys from the books, Alexi Burien, miscellaneous senators, Syko & Gang, the good and bad cops at Denver PD, assorted prison guards and shower hawks, Mr. & Mrs. Rawlings, Mrs. Charteris, & etc.

Clearly, the most important roles to cast are the leads I've listed. For the sake of simplicity, we'll leave Gabe Rossiter, the hero from Naked Edge, out because his story isn't out yet. That still leaves a lot of roles to cast.

So your assignment, should you opt to play, is to find stars for the roles of these characters. We don't need big names; we need talent — and people who match the descriptions of the characters and have their intensity. We can use contact lenses for eye color, if necessary, and we can dye people's hair if we must. But let's get as close as we can.

In your posts, list the people you'd cast. You don't have to cast everyone to make suggestions. If you've found the perfect Julian, you can just post him. We'll keep working on it till we get it right. There will be prizes along the way — book plates, book marks, signed I-Team books.

Let's see what we end up with!

UPDATE...

Okay, we have some suggestions coming in:

Clive Owen as Julian Darcangelo.

Nathan Kamp as Marc Hunter

Italian hottie Raffaello Balzo as Julian Darcangelo

Antonio Banderas as Julian Darcangelo. (I had always kind of envisioned him as Joaquin.)

Collin Farrell as Marc Hunter.

These ideas are from Sue Z, Evil Libby and moi. They should help get you started.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

Ah, what a stressful job -- having to stare at handsome guys. Casting TV shows sure is hard work! ;-)