We have a winner

Of course the news today is the winner of the Soul Stone Contest. Since Tarris' story features an opal the winner of our contest will receive a rainbow opal pendant and matching earrings. A winner was drawn randomly from the entrants with the correct answers. The correct answers were:

True Love: Who is the true mate and love of each of the men below?
Mark Ursine's heroine is _Sarah__
Luke Ursine's heroine is __Anna___
Tarris Ursine's heroine is __Callista___

Our winner is...Beth R.

Beth, I'll be emailing you to confirm your address and as soon as the mail starts running after the holiday I'll send your prize along.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter.

Enjoy tomorrow everyone. And pop over to the blogs on the left and check them out.

Contest Reminder and Getting Personal

Contest First!

In celebration of the release of Soul Stone, which features an opal in a pivotal role. Because of that I'm giving away a rainbow opal heart shaped pendant and matching earrings. This is a delicate piece set in silver. The earrings are the same as the pendant, pictured here.

How to win: Soul Stone is the final book in the lives of the Ursine brothers. So to win this final prize, you will need to tell me something about them. Copy the list below into an email and complete it. Send it to jae@jacquelineroth.com I'll pick a winner from the correct answers on Wednesday, November 26th.

True Love: Who is the true mate and love of each of the men below?

Mark Ursine's heroine is ________
Luke Ursine's heroine is ________
Tarris Ursine's heroine is ________

You can find hints to the answers--okay, you can find the answers--by checking out the blurbs and excerpts for the three books in this series at Elyssa's website.

Being heard/show your support:

The new sites for Ellora's Cave and Cerridwen Press are up. The new site lets you leave reviews on the books you've read. So what are you waiting for? Head on over and look for something new while posting reviews of the books you really loved from those publishers.

Getting Personal

We are still on baby watch around here. The doctor's visit this morning confirmed that everything is fine and that Smudgie has dropped down into the pelvis, but the midwife says we are probably looking at about two more weeks. *Sigh* To say that we are getting antsy is an understatement. We are ready in every way we can be ready. Our house looks like a Baby's R Us exploded.

The only thing we lack, and it's because we can't find one, is a good bookshelf unit to go in bedroom. Smudgie's books, toys and stuff already are piled on the floor and he needs more storage space. We've been joking that we may have to give up the master bedroom to him.

But everything is fine. I have some thank you's I have to send out.

To Barb and Sean: Thanks, you send him clothes from England and now he'll expect European fashions all the time. *grin* The "cheeky monkey" shirt was perfect.

To Steve: Thank you so much for the high chair, but dude? A single, straight male who remembers to buy his friend a baby shower gift? You better hide that man-card cause they're coming to get it. (And yes, I'm almost done with my eMuse stuff. I won't let you down.)

To Robert, Debbie, Bev and Leslie: Thank you so much. The baby shower was the greatest. A chocolate fountain? A great cake? All the dips and goodies people could want? What more could I ask for. I'm grateful for friends like you.

To my work family: I don't remember the last time I was so overwhelmed that I actually cried. I know we're not a conventional family and folks have turned their noses up at us in the past. But the people I work with are the best. You've always been there and I'm truely grateful.

Okay folks. Enough mushy stuff.

I threw a major hissy fit at the local WalMart a few days ago. I had gotten tires put on my car on a Sunday. That following Monday afternoon one of said new tires was almost flat. I put air in it and took it to the nearest WalMart (not the one that had sold me the tires). They looked at it, couldn't find a problem and aired it up to the right pressure. By Wednesday it was low again. And again on Friday. On Saturday I took it back to the WalMart that installed the tires and told them the problem. They proceded to inform me that because I hadn't bought the special warrantee that they would have to charge me to check the tires and change them if there was a problem.

I threw a sedate tantrum. What do you mean you are charging me to check and fix the defective tires that you sold me? It's not like I went into the store room and picked them out myself and said..."I want these." You put them on, you sold them to me in good faith, what you gave me was defective and now you want me to pay to fix your mistake and the manufacturer's screw up? I don't really think that is going to happen! The disgruntled salesgirl (and yes I do mean to say girl and I mean it nastily because she prissed around on her heels and didn't want to touch the tires to check and see if she could see any damage before she wrote up the ticket) got the manager and I unloaded on him too when he tried the same shpeel. No way I'm paying because you sold me a defective product. Are you people insane?

Needless to say they did it my way. It probably had something to do with me mentioning that this was exactly the sort of thing that the local news channel liked to cover on their consumer watch program.

Enough of me rambling. Head on over to see Kelly Marstad, Sandra Cox and Jenny Beans. Jenny is a friend of mine who is a brilliant author. You will know her by her pen name, Llewellyn McEllis one day. Also check on Anny Cook, maybe she's back from her vacation.

Soul Stone Contest and Release

Today is a double birthday. It's mine and it's Tarris'. Tarris is the hero of the novel Soul Stone, that releases today from Ellora's Cave. Soul Stone is the final book of the Jewels of Ursus trilogy that began with Mating Stone and Lovers' Stone.

Blurb:

Soul Stone
by Elyssa Edwards

He is physical perfection. He is sex personified. He is an incubus. All his life Tarris has followed the rules that would keep him from transforming into the dark soulless predator who fed on the sexual energies of women, draining them to madness or to death. But now that he can no longer feed in a safe and controlled way, he faces a choice: hunt or starve. Callista is quiet and reserved. Her restrained exterior hides an astonishing passion and vivid imagination that has captured him. Who knew that a creature that had no soul could love a woman so deeply? Tarris must now find a way to control the change he feels coming and defeat the hunter who pursues him, obsessed with possessing Callista and destroying the incubus.

Excerpt:

Rule 1. Never feed alone.
Rule 2. Never touch unless you are invited to by the female.
Rule 3. Never penetrate a woman in the place reserved for her mate.
Rule 4. Never allow the act to bring you to orgasm.
Rule 5. Never, never must you hunt.

The rules had been created to keep him contained. To keep Tarris fed and happy while stopping him from crossing the line that could make him want more than he could be allowed to have.

Sitting in his chair he watched the flames flicker. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the small oblong stone. It looked like an opal but over one third of its surface was black and dull. He rubbed at it seeking the strange sense of comfort it had always brought him. Tonight it didn’t work. Despite the fire, a chill passed through him. The rules. How he hated the rules. How he needed the rules. He’d only broken one and only once. He’d allowed sweet Sarah to pleasure him in a dream the three had shared before their mating. It had been a mistake. Now he knew what he was missing. And he wanted more.

Worse, he could no longer feed off his lovers. Both Weres were mated. No one had realized at the time that it would stop their ability to share their pleasure with him. But it had. He could enter their dreams but in their dreams the men would push him away. He’d learned this the moment Mark mated with Sarah. The animal within him refused to allow him near his mate. In the waking world Mark had been devastated. In the land of dreams he could not stop himself from turning on Tarris like an enemy. Tarris had not approached Luke. The younger twin had always been the more sexually assertive, the more likely to react to his instincts. He was certain Luke’s reaction would be even stronger than Mark’s.

Tarris closed his eyes. He tried to remember a time when he was satisfied with the lot he’d been given, satisfied with the role of puppeteer, satisfied to orchestrate the pleasures of others and to drink in their joy and satisfaction. It seemed so long ago.

He’d not actively decided to break the rules. He’d let them terminate him before he’d turn into one of the dark ones. He may not have a soul but one thing living in the Ursine house had given him had been honor. He knew the clean and lighter side of living. He’d not become a monster.

He let his mind drift. He told himself he wasn’t doing it. He was only reaching out. He’d been able to take the edge off the past couple of weeks this way. A voyeur watching a young couple, feeling the energies radiate between two soon to be lovers in a club. A siphon, draining off some of the raw sexual arousal of those he watched from the world of shadows. It wouldn’t sustain him he knew. The only true food was passion in dreams. But maybe by doing this he could hold off the madness, hold off the day when his own Weres would be forced to destroy him. Or hold out until he found another way.

He felt the touch of the sleeper and backed away. He wasn’t a predator. He wasn’t supposed to enter alone. But the power of the mind reached out to him as if it had sensed him. It called to him, inviting him in. The hunger raged inside him as he fought it. The moment he turned to the dreamer, the moment he let himself be pulled to the cavalcade of images that passed through the sleeping mind he was lost.

He stood in the doorway of the modest bedroom. The sleeper on the bed was a woman. Her red hair was twisted around her face, strands of it sticking to the damp forehead. The shirt of the men’s flannel pajamas that she wore stretched tight across her breasts. Not exactly the seductress. Not precisely the femme fatale. She looked more like a schoolmarm or a librarian. One leg had kicked itself free of the blankets and he noticed she even wore socks to bed. It was early October. No, Red here didn’t look like the kind of woman who embraced her sexuality.

Tarris stepped into the room and moved closer to the bed. The woman was moaning slightly and twisting her head. Her fists clenched tight. She fascinated him. She seemed so restricted—closed off so tightly against her own body but the power of the imagination, the dreams that flowed through her had called to him across the distance that had separated them. He could feel the incredible strength of her mind.

The rules repeated in his head.
He hadn’t hunted her, he told himself. She had called him to her.
He would not let her please him.
He would not penetrate her.
He would not touch unless she reached for him first.

He would not— Tarris stood watching her, torn as his hunger battled with his conditioning. The emotions, the colors of her mind were so powerful he shook with need. Her soul was laying itself bare for him just as if he’d been a fully mature incubus. He saw all of who she was, all her secrets, dreams and desires. And he loved each and every one.

So yes. Yes, he would. He would feed alone.

He stretched out beside her on the bed and brushed the hair from her face. Her body went slack. He pulled her to him and rested her head on his shoulder. Stroking her face he pressed his cheek to her and closed his eyes.

Contest!

In celebration of the release of Soul Stone, which features an opal in a pivotal role. Because of that I'm giving away a rainbow opal heart shaped pendant and matching earrings. This is a delicate piece set in silver. The earrings are the same as the pendant, pictured here.

How to win: Soul Stone is the final book in the lives of the Ursine brothers. So to win this final prize, you will need to tell me something about them. Copy the list below into an email and complete it. Send it to jae@jacquelineroth.com I'll pick a winner from the correct answers on Wednesday, November 26th.

True Love: Who is the true mate and love of each of the men below?

Mark Ursine's heroine is ________

Luke Ursine's heroine is ________

Tarris Ursine's heroine is ________

You can find hints to the answers... okay, you can find the answers by checking out the blurbs and excerpts for the three books in this series at Elyssa's website.

Oh, and Kelly, you won the draw for the copy of Lovers' Stone so drop me a line and tell me what format you'd like your copy in.

Have a great day folks.

A Big Thank You.

Happy Veterans’ Day and thank you to all the service men and women, past and present, who have served our country with such devotion and distinction. Your sacrifice, the days and nights that stretched into months and years that you gave up to defend our country and to provide a more safe and secure night’s sleep for those of us at home, will never be taken for granted by most of us. But there is a way that those of us who are not serving can step up and show our support and gratitude.

I come from a family that takes its service seriously. My Great-great-Uncle, a recent immigrant from Hungary, served in the Army in WWI. He died on the fields of France. My great grand father was also an army man, serving in WWI. My grandfather was Navy. He was a tail gunner and a cook on board his ship. He also spent a terrifying period of time in a Japanese prison camp in the Pacific after serving in the Philippines. I’m told my father had a less than stellar, and very brief, career in the Army. My step-father was a member of the K9 Corps in the Air Force and served protecting bases in North Dakota among other things.

I’m asking you all to join me in saying thank you to our service men and women. An Atlanta radio station is orchestrating a way of expressing our gratitude for a second year in a row. Last year Q100 managed to collect over 350,000 hand written letters of thank you. That means every service man or woman serving overseas received a personal letter of thank you from someone they didn’t know on Thanksgiving 2007. This year the station and its morning show crew (The Bert Show) are undertaking an even larger task. This year they want to collect 1 million messages of thanks for our troops.

The how is simple. They have established a website where in only a few seconds (literally) you can enter your name and type a short message of thank you or good wishes to the troops. Imagine being a GI and being able to scroll through thousands of messages of support on those lonely holidays. To know that you are not forgotten.

After the New Year, the thank yous won’t stop. The site is set up to scroll one message every 30 seconds for a whole year. Any time of the day or night, a service man or woman can log in and see messages of support.

So consider going to www.bigthankyouproject.com and spending a few seconds to add your message of thanks. (You can leave as many as you like.) Share the site with your friends and family as well. One million signatures is a lot and it will take a lot of effort, but leaving a message takes only a moment.

Oh, and come back by tomorrow to see the pre-release contest that will kick off the one week count down to Soul Stone’s release.

Better Late Than Never

I was recently bemoaning fact that I'd not thought to run a contest in conjunction with the release of my first Ellora's Cave novella, Mating Stone. Well, it was pointed out to me that it isn't too late, especially since I wanted to do similar contests for the upcoming July release as well.

So, here it is, the new contest for Mating Stone, just in time for the release of my Quickie, Seeing Me. Seeing Me is about two people who see past the hype to who the other really is.

Now the Contest:

The hero of Mating Stone, Mark Ursine is a Were-Bear as is his twin brother Luke the hero of the upcoming July release, Lovers’ Stone. The Ursines present their lady loves with stones rather than engagement rings. For Mark and Sarah it’s an amethyst. So to win the 17” freshwater pearl and amethyst necklace here’s what you need to do. Write a brief answer to the following question and send it to ElyssaWrites@aol.com with “Mating Stone Contest” in the subject line. I’ll pick the best response as the winner, and two honorable mentions to receive smaller prizes. The winning entries will appear in my blog on April 13th.

In Mating Stone, Mark falls in love with Sarah. Sarah, a young human woman who has no idea that Were’s even exist beyond novels and movies. Strictly fictional. As a human woman, how do you react when Mr. Yummy tells you he’s the one with claws and may just leave fur on the sheets? So tell me: What type of Were is Mr. Wonderful and how does he break it to you?

A Little Tough Love

I really hate when someone begins a sentence with the words “I don’t mean to make anyone angry…” Yes you do. You just don’t want them angry at you. So I won’t begin this little bit of tough love by apologizing for it in advance.

This may seem an odd thing to be irritated by, and I wasn’t at first, but the more I thought about it the more ridiculous it became. I was shopping Sunday afternoon for a Christmas gift for my mother. Like me, my mother is a plus-size woman. I was in one of my favorite clothing shops, Catherine’s. I love Catherine’s. The clothing there is from designers who are truly designing for us big girls and not just little people’s clothes cut bigger. Let’s face it, no matter how cute that tight belly shirt and the low rider jeans are on a young miss, once you crest a size 16 you should probably rethink it. But the clothes in this store are elegant and classy and if you watch the sales, affordable.

However…

While shopping I noticed a rack of clothing marked with sizes 4-12. I was completely befuddled and wondered if they were expanding or if there had been a mistake in ordering. Surely 4-12 was not now considered plus-size. As I pulled a pair of size 12 jeans from the rack to examine them I realized these were not size 12. An examination of the sign on the rack revealed that these jeans were “right sized”.

What is “right sized”? Well according to the signs it is a way of resizing plus-size clothing. That size 12 had a 56” waist. That means it was the US size equivalent of a 34W. These were plus-sized clothes that had labels declaring them in single and lower double digit sizes.

Right sizing? Hell no. It’s vanity and some serious self-deluding. Let’s face it ladies, those of us buying that right sized size 12 haven’t seen a size 12 in a very, very long time. Do you really think you’re fooling someone with the size 12 label?

I look at it this way. This is my body. It requires only minimal maintenance from time to time and nothing on it is broken. It ain’t the prettiest model on the showroom floor but it gets me where I’m going. The most important part of this being that it is mine. I’m a size 34W. Would I like to be a size 12? You bet your backside I would. Is that going to happen because someone changes the label in my jeans? No. It will happen when I have the self-discipline and motivation to take care of the issue. (And a bit of help for the PCOD wouldn’t hurt.)

So let’s reboard the reality train. Stop being so worried about the messages you are getting from society about your body that you start trying to fool yourself. It won’t work. You always know when you’re lying.


Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners.
The prizes –
1st prize--6 books
2nd prize--4 books
3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.

Participating Authors and books:

Anny Cook Winter Hearts
Sandra Cox Boji Stones
Bronwyn Green Ronan’s Grail
Heather Hiestand Cards Never Lie
Barbara Huffert Deal of a Lifetime
Amarinda Jones Mad About Mirabelle
Kelly Kirch Time for Love
Cindy Spencer Pape Cowboy’s Christmas Bride
Brynn Paulin Fallen
Jacquéline Roth Access Denied
KZ Snow Mrs. Claws
Lacey Thorn Earth Moves

It’s Christmas decorating time again.

I sat at the local diner on Saturday watching all the cars drive by with their Christmas trees tied to the roof of their cars. SUVs, pick up trucks and even a few compacts with the tree sticking out in the front and back whizzed passed carrying home that little piece of holiday tradition. I began to feel absolutely nostalgic for all of about 30 seconds.

Christmas tree time of year was not necessarily a happy time in my house. It inevitably degenerated into a time of arguing, throwing things and some rather unholiday-like words being shouted. Putting up the tree was a family experience, by golly and we all had to be there to “help”. Now that usually meant watching my parents lose all patience with the tree, throw it at least once and declare that this year there would be no tree. All before they got the stand on. This seems to have been the most difficult part; putting on the stand while keeping the tree straight. I don’t think I will ever forget the year my step-father actually wired the tree to the wall to get it to stand up. This after a long time of yelling and attempting to cut the bottom off so that it would be level. I’m not exaggerating here. He literally wired the tree into the wall so it would stand up.

And outdoor displays. Oh, but they are wonderful things. My parents take their outdoor decorating seriously. Colored lights festoon the white fence that outlines the yard. All evergreen plants are covered with lights and the windows outlined with sparkling blips of color. A couple of years ago they added the ultimate in outdoor Christmas décor. Inflatable “things”. Yes, my parents’ house is that house with the giant, inflatable, illuminated snowman brandishing his candy cane like a holly jolly Norman Bates wielding his knife. No matter how we older kids laugh and sing loudly about “the tackiest house in the neighborhood,” my parents turn a deaf ear and the display grows year after year.

The only other member of my family to be infected by the “decorating” bug is my younger brother. My brother is an interesting creature during non-festive occasions, but at Christmas his uniqueness shines. His house is outlined in lights. This is not a good thing. A couple of years ago my brother literally (I’m not joking) stapled himself to the roof of his house while putting up twinkle lights.

No, it’s not an installment of National Lampoon’s Christmas, my brother really did staple himself to the roof with a staple gun. The really funny part? He stayed up there. In the cold. Freezing. Waiting for someone to help him. All he had to do was pull his arm free, but he didn’t want to rip his shirt. So he sat there on the roof, stapled to it for over an hour until his wife came out to see what was taking so long.

It’s just one of those little things he will never live down, like the time he accidentally threw his cordless phone into the bonfire. Or the time he crawled into my mother’s dryer and almost got the ride of his life. Or how he used to cover his eyes with his hands while standing in plain sight, sure that if he couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see him. I’m not sure he understands the flaw in this concept to this day.

Me? Did I catch the decorating bug? Actually yes, but my dear SO keeps me contained by making me promise before we enter the store that I must not buy the light up grazing reindeer whose head bobs up and down no matter how cute I think it is.

So today we put up our indoor decorations. Lighted holly leaves in the window and our Christmas tree. Straight out of the box. As much as I love the smell and idea of a “real” tree, I like the hives that breakout all over my body a whole lot less.

Next weekend? Outdoors! The boxes of twinkle-lights are ready. Just don’t tell the SO about the light up polar bear I have hidden in the garage.

And speaking of Christmas pretties:

Do you want to win some fantastic holiday reading? If so come celebrate the Twelve days of Romance with 12 authors from Ellora's Cave, Wild Rose Press, Total-E-Bound and Cerridwen Press. Each day beginning December 8th and running through December 19th one of the twelve authors will tell what their "True love gave to them" on either their blog or website.

Collect all twelve answers and e-mail them to anny@annycook.com with 12 days of Romance in the subject line to win some great books. There will be three lucky winners. The prizes –

1st prize--6 books

2nd prize--4 books

3rd prize--2 books

All books and prize winners will be drawn randomly.