This one is going to go on until May 31 so you know it’s a good one.
To enter all you have to do is leave a comment …. well it’s not THAT easy … leave a comment explaining WHY you should win. At the end my beta readers and I will chose the best comment and you will win.
What am I going to win? You say, well I’m glad you asked … the Grand prize winner will get ……. well maybe I’m not ready to tell you. Continue reading
I’m baaaack and still book two is unfinished guh – I really intended to do some writing on the plane to and from Los Angeles, but I upgraded my seat and I got free movies so I umm got suckered into watching Love and Other Drugs and Gnomeo & Juliet (don’t judge me) on the way to LA and Tron: Legacy (again no judging) and Unstoppable on the way home – of all the movies I have to admit I enjoyed them all.
I travelled on Virgin America – what a nice plane (even before the upgrade LOL). Friendly staff and a nice plane – I highly recommend it – I wish they flew to NYC, they’d be my new go-to airline.
Soooo … I got to LA and upon exiting the airport my first impression was “Holy Crap!” It was colder than I expected – yes I got there during a cold snap LOL.
We got to the Westin Bonaventure hotel early Wednesday and I will admit that the hotel was gorgeous, our room had a view of the Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory in the distance. Umm that’s about all the good I will say, the hotel was an older one so the rooms were smaller than at some of the new Westins (and with 5 of us in 1 room it was really crowded – thank goodness I love my roomies) the food inside the hotel was OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive – I had a quesedilla for lunch … JUST 1 and it was $16 … the hotel was in the middle of the financial district which meant that everything closed down after 5 and was closed on the weekend. I won’t even talk about the drinks in the bars, oy! Luckily we found a rite-aid that sold liquor and we brought it back to the room LOL 🙂
I finally got to meet my publisher and some of the other LSB authors, what a fantastic bunch (although I got lost going to the spotlight and was late – hotel was pretty but confusing and I have the worst sense of direction) I have to say I found a good house (whoot)
I was also lucky enough to be a part of a Circle of Seven mixer where I gave away a basket of Dark Moon Rising stuff including a teeshirt, some temp tats, trading cards and a free copy of the book 🙂 and I feel like a twit because I didn’t get the name of the reader who won *duh* but I have her email LOL. I also had a reader approach me after the party and she bought my book via her phone right there – so I want to say thank you again to her, it was one of the bigger highlights of the con. for me.
The signing was a lot of fun. I sat next to author Cat Johnson – who writes about bull riders (my kind of guys) and she chatted with me. She explained that I probably wouldn’t get any sales (I didn’t) but it was good to give out promo & chat up potential readers – which I did :). I arrived at the signing early and I will admit to getting choked up seeing my name plate on the table. It’s really a cool feeling and I’m a sap 🙂
At the Saturday book fair I got to be a fan – I had several authors sign my nook 🙂 and I jumped up and down when I saw my trailer play on the big screen. Sat. night we also went to Griffith Observatory (where part of Rebel Without a Cause was filmed) and we got to see Saturn and the moon through telescopes. It was fun, but cold.
The other highlight of my trip happened Sunday. I was bummed that two of my friends left for home, but I found out that the GLAAD Media Awards were going to be held at the hotel that night. My other friend found out tickets were $450 each, and that was waaay out of our price range. So she suggested we try to volunteer, after all rumor had it that Colin Firth would be there. So we walked into the volunteer room and offered ourselves up. They were more than happy to take us and handed us tees, we were IN. We manned one of the silent auction tables and got to see a LOT of familiar faces, some I immediately recognized and some I knew but couldn’t remember how. It was loads of fun and we probably wouldn’t have seen half the celebrities we had if we’d gone out sight seeing :). BTW Colin Firth was not there … but Colin Farrell was 🙂
This is just a taste of what my week was like, I hadn’t even touched on the parties OR the Mr. Romance Contestants or the other celebrities I got to meet (ahhhh!). As always RT is amazing fun, but also exhausting. And I can’t wait to do it again in Chicago next year!
Until Next Time!
It’s April 1 and no this isn’t an April Fool’s joke it’s time to pick the winner of my first ever contest and the lucky person who wins the $10 gift certificate is …….
Still waiting? ………
Ha!
It’s BETH PRICE!
Congratulations, Beth, I hope you enjoy your winnings 🙂
My next contest will run SIX WEEKS and is a BIG ONE….. More details after I get back from the Romantic Times Convention 🙂
Until Next Time!
Also known as the sequel to Dark Moon Rising.
Holy cow, never has a writing project taken so long to finish – well if you don’t count a certain fan-fiction story I started writing 3 years ago LOL.
As soon as DMR was contracted I started plotting book 2 (yeah I know I probably should have started waaaaay before that, but I wasn’t sure the first one would ever see the light of day and I was tweaking a contemporary I had written) and I had a death in my family so writing was put on hiatus. I knew I wanted to start it soon after that though and decided that the kick in the pants I needed was NaNoWriMo. If I could get 50k words in 30 days I could coast over the holidays in finishing it and have it ready for submission by February at the latest … yeah the road to good intentions is paved with … stuff …
As I hit my stride in week 2 of NaNoWriMo my dad was rushed to the hospital. A week or so in dealing with his issues put the kabosh on my writing, he was released just before Thanksgiving, and I couldn’t get back on track no matter how hard I tried. So then the holidays come and go and I start writing again and I hit a pretty good clip then … my dad goes back into the hospital. Do you hear the screech of the brakes … yup.
Another pause.
Finally I start writing again and I can see the end is near, I am about a week of good writing away from the end … insert brakes sound here
My cats get fleas …
Now I don’t usually consider myself squeamish, but the thought of fleas jumping around not only on my cats, but on my furniture and in my carpeting has gotten me so worked up I can’t sit and write because my cats enjoy sitting next to me or on me … so here I am still about 3 or 4 chapters from the end and we’re almost in APRIL *headdesk*
Never fear though I am working through my anxiety and slowly getting back to the writing. I will be travelling cross country in a week and if I don’t finish it by then I will DEFINITELY finish it on the way. Wish me luck!
Until Next Time
Well…. sort of 🙂
Today I received my trading cards and I am SO happy with the way they came out that I am going to give a set to one lucky commenter.
That’s right you can have a set before ANYONE else. All you have to do is drop a comment! See isn’t that easy? Winner will be chosen tomorrow at 9AM EST 🙂
And if you haven’t entered the other contest you have two more weeks!
Until Next Time,
Because I forgot about Teasing Tuesday – what can I say I am definitely gearing up for the Romantic Times convention and focused on getting my promotional stuff together. I am also focused on getting Beneath the Blood Moon done!
At this point I know I am at the beginning of the end of the book. Everything I’ve laid out from the beginning is starting to come to a head. Now to put it all in motion and resolve it. With any luck I’ll have this done just before the end of the month and with MORE luck I can have it edited and ready to submit either right before RT or first thing upon my return. Continue reading
Or Hell depending on how I choose to look at it. Now that March is upon us, I have to buckle down and decide what I was going to do as promo for the Romantic Times Convention in beautiful Los Angeles.
I’ll be signing Dark Moon Rising so I knew I had to have some cover flats done so I can have something to sign and since it’s an ebook they need something to put the download sticker on once bought as well. So that was easy, the hard part was deciding what else to have. I knew I wanted to do some sort of small basket for a reader appreciation mixer that Circle of Seven is doing (and another place I shall be) but what to put inside it? I finally decided on a teeshirt (have you seen my cafe press store yet? The link is under library 🙂 ) and a mousepad.
And it’s Tuesday so of course I should tease you … but today’s tease comes in the form of … a contest!
Eh who knows what I will call this, but I got to thinking yesterday that every now and then I will blog about something that I have found helpful in writing. Whether it be a blog, a book or a site.
Everything I will post about is something I have either purchased or it was given to me. If it’s something I heard about but haven’t tried I will make sure to put that out there as well.
So today’s product is …*drumroll* … The Writer’s Brainstorming Kit!
Okay so after the holiday yesterday I am a day behind and didn’t realize it was Tuesday until I opened the blog to make a post so I’m winging it.
First, I wanted to post a helpful link to a wonderful blog, it’s targeted to authors, but I think anyone who has to do some kind of creative writing would benefit from it. It’s called The Bookshelf Muse. I’ve also listed them in my links area.
Okay so now on to the tease, it’s short LOL
Amanda Jayde 