Ro made an awesome trailer for AD. It's so cool that after I saw it, I wanted to buy the book :)



Off to Amazon now...

An interesting thing I've discovered about myself: when I do a contest, I can never just pick one winner ;)

I'm now happy to report that the winners of the After Dark contest are:

Sara

Nadja

Sylwia

I haven't gotten hold of any print copies but when I do I'll do another contest. In the meantime, here's a snippet from AD:

The rain slipped past the edges of Andrew Sutter's black umbrella, driving cold slivers into his fingers. Frowning, he drew his umbrella lower.

The movement cut his world in half. The Oak Hill Memorial Park graveyard disappeared, taking with it the trembling sequoias, oaks, and rows of gray stones. It was just him, the midnight silver casket before him, and the lower halves of his fellow mourners.

The subtle dismemberment sent a thread of uneasiness through Andrew. It was just a trick of his sight. They were fine.

Flesh is so fragile, Andrew.

( ... )

It's out!



Andrew Sutter buried a few secrets alongside his brother Tyler that day; the disappearance of his first love, the possibility that he almost lost his current lover, Devon Forsythe.

Like his secrets, Tyler won’t stay buried.

After fighting off Tyler, Andrew inadvertently wakens his own magical abilities. Now able to see magic in the world around him, he discovers that his lover has a few secrets of his own.

AD is chock full of awesome. In fact it's 35% more awesome than the previous version, for it's been re-written, re-edited, and expanded an additional 35k :)

In honor of the new release, I'll be starting a contest. People have until Monday morning to to e-mail me at l_prieto @ sbcglobal.net to enter to win an e-book. As soon as I get my hands on a few copies of the print copy, I'll add it as well :)

I considered continuing the great saga of my last month, fighting first one cold and then another, but I thought I'd cut it short with the highlights:

* thanks to the two colds, I lost twenty-two pounds (let's hear it for being unable to keep anything down! ;)

* on Friday, After Dark is coming out (on the surface, this may not seem like it has anything to do with the cold, but the proofs came while I was recovering from my last cold. I was so happy they came then and not when I was feverish the day before).

I'm very excited about AD. I LOVE how it came out. I'm thinking this will call for a contest, beginning on Friday and lasting until Monday. I'll give away a couple e-books and a print copy :)

So, when we last left off, I'd just finished up the AD edits and was returning to the revision. Things were going well for a couple hours when I had to go to the bathroom and discovered that I'd finally gotten the UTI I always wanted.

It was a bit annoying but not terrible. There was pain and I had to go to the bathroom every two hours but, considering what happened the last time I felt pain in that area, I would much rather do that than find out I needed some other organ taken out (Jen: do you still have your tonsils?).

Jen and I got some antibiotics, a ton of cranberry juice, and went home.

The bathroom thing played hell with my sleep but by Wednesday I'd figured out a nap, revise, nap cycle. I was still happy with AM. The story was good, I was in the zone, and the infection was getting better.

Then Jen came home.

Over her day, she'd come down with a bug. She had enough energy to cough violently, say hi, and then drop into bed. She wouldn't wake up again until noon the next day.

Like magic, her cold was gone when she woke. I was relieved; it'd been pretty scary how long she'd slept. Jen assured me the cold itself hadn't been awful, just this tidal wave of exhaustion that wiped her out of existence for a few hours. She was fine now. One more day of work and then she'd go attack our tax forms like she was the cold and it was an innocent front end engineer.

With Jen's cold behind us, I went into Friday feeling pretty perky. I was still in a little pain and ony getting two hours of sleep at a time was tiring but it was going to end. By Monday, I'd really dig into AM.

Then I started feeling tired.

I stayed at my laptop, trying to focus on AM. The tired feeling just grew. After an hour, I decided to call it off for then and take a nap.

Two hours later, I woke and made my pilgrimage to the bathroom. I was still feeling tired but I didn't think I was coming down with Jen's cold. Jen had coughed horribly. My sinuses felt fine.

I returned to bed. I knew I hadn't slept well that week. I was just tired.

Except when I woke up two hours later, the exhaustion felt worse.

I struggled to get out of bed. My reluctance to think of this as anything more than tiredness died. This was Jen's cold.

The thought made me unhappy. The infection hadn't gone away yet and now this?

It took me a couple minutes to escape the bed. When I finally did, I went to the bathroom. I reminded myself that, as startling as Jen's cold had been in its intensity, it'd ended quickly. All I needed to do was sleep.

I returned to bed and went to sleep.

Two hours later, I woke up. I was exhausted. I had to go to the bathroom. And I felt hot. Very, very hot.

After I escaped the bed, I dug around for the thermometer and then went to the bathroom. By the time I was out, the results were in: my temp was 101.

I slumped on the bed. My previous theory that this was going to be just like Jen's cold was gone. I was infected with two things that had warring wants. It was the perfect storm.

The AD edits are now in the hands of my awesome editor :)

I feel both happy and sheepish. Nothing BIG, just a bunch of little things that I'm glad she caught (I spelled Devon's name with an i in a few places. Ugh. There are some things that spell check just won't catch. Heck, there are things I don't catch. Thank the FSM for editors and beta readers).

So far, the edits are going pretty well. Some light tweaks, nothing bad.

Except...

In every story, there are certain words/phrases I overuse. For DD, it was ethereal. In WiB, lovely. So far, for AD, I seem to have been very fond of using shhh and mmmm. One pops up (heh) in sex scenes, the other in thought.

It just takes a little thought to fix these edits. It does make me wonder what my favorite word will be for AM, though. Will there be several hmmm, to continue the theme, or something new?

I can't wait until I finish AM (and AT) and find out :)

The edits are in the house.

Woo-hoo! And argh!

*climbs walls*

What if my editor thinks it's awful? What if she thinks it's brilliant?

Okay, okay. Time to plan. First I need to download the file. Then I'll need to stock up for a weekend of fun. I'll need lots of coffee and soda water. Are there a lot of mark ups? I may need sushi to comfort me. Are there very few mark ups? Then I'll need sushi to assure me that if there's any subtle mistakes, we'll find them. Maybe some chocolate will help.

The file's downloaded now. Time to look...

Drum roll, please :)

The DD winners (for I can never just have one) are:

Anastasia

Emilia

Congrats!

Disliking Math Says You Are Expressive

You are an expressive, passionate, and spontaneous person. For you, math is way too cold a subject. You dislike how black and white it is. While some people have extreme passion for math, that would take far more work than you're willing to put in. What you're into changes like the wind, and you could never be forced to choose one thing. You have to be free to follow what you love.

When I was in college, I flunked Finite Math twice (I even had an AWESOME teacher who programmed formulas into my graphing calculator for me and told me he'd give me full credit for late homework). After the second time, I gave up and took Math for Non-Math Majors, where I got a C.

Tbh, I didn't find Finite dull; I found it incredibly interesting. I just couldn't do probabilities to save my life, er, grade. When I found this quiz, though, it made me laugh. Ah, math. One day I'll quit you.