VE Day – Victory in Europe Day – marks the end of the European hostilities of World War II.  The Japanese would take another three months to surrender.

While there are huge numbers of monuments dedicated to ensuring we never forget the wars and battles we have fought, it seems odd that we don’t celebrate the positives that emerge from those wars.  VE Day was a victory, yes, but it also signalled a homecoming for millions of soldiers, resistence fighters, and guerilla soldiers tucked away in forests, hills and mountains across Europe and into Asia.  Surely, that has to be the most positive outcome of any war?

Yet VE Day is not a national holiday anywhere.  Nor is VJ or VP day in the Pacific and the Americas.

It’s been proven by research and experimentation that humans tend to gravitate toward what the mind focuses upon.  Also, the mind doesn’t register negatives.  So, for instance, if you keep repeating to yourself over and over again “Don’t forget the milk, don’t forget the milk, don’t forget the milk…” your mind won’t register the negative don’t at all.  And it will do exactly what you’re telling it to do:  Forget the milk.

In the same way, a mind immersed in information that is nearly 100% about wars and battles, will tend to lean towards violence as a solution, and that is what the mind is focused upon.

So if our culture continually celebrates and remembers wars, battles, the death of great leaders, assassinations, bombings, and more, instead of births and birthdays, victory days, the anniversaries of great achievements — what are we as a society missing out on?

Food for thought…

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Today, 198 years ago, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of France and was shipped off to the island of Elba off the coast of France.  In fact, he managed to escape less than a year later, and went on to reclaim power and lead one of the most infamous battles in history:  The Battle of Waterloo.

But his incarceration on Elba sparked off at least two writers’ imaginations.  One of them was Alexandre Dumas, who in 1844 published The Count of Monte Cristo, and the inciting incident for the entire novel was based on the hapless hero, Edmond, accepting a letter from Napoleon when they were forced to land on Elba to find medical aid for their captain, and promising to deliver it to a stranger.  Edmond’s life utterly changes from there.

The book is a terrifying 800 pages long, but in the 19th century it was an instant hit and is considered a classic these days.

It was made into a movie in 2002 starring Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce and Richard Harris…and the movie rocks.  They’ve managed to compress 800 pages of florid 19th century prose down into taut romantic suspense — and it is romantic.  Caviezel makes your knees weak in the later half of the movie as his fifteen year plan for vengeance gets closer to fruition and is nearly derailed by…well, I won’t spoil it except to say that the movie pays careful attention to plot, emotions, character and romance.  It’s fabulous.  If you can scare up a copy, watch it.  It’s worth it.  If you’ve seen it already, do you agree?

The other writer who was inspired by Bonaparte’s incarcaration was Frank Darabont, the writer/director of The Shawshank Redemption- although his inspiration was indirect, via Dumas.  There is a moment in the movie when the prisoners are unpacking donated library books:

HEYWOOD
Treasure Island. Robert Louis…

ANDY
(jotting)
…Stevenson. Next?

RED
I got here an auto repair manual,
and a book on soap carving.

ANDY
Trade skills and hobbies, those go
under educational. Stack right
behind you.

HEYWOOD

The Count of Monte Crisco…

FLOYD
Cristo, you dumbshit.

HEYWOOD
…by Alexandree Dumb-ass.

ANDY
Dumas. You boys’ll like that one.
It’s about a prison break.

Floyd tries to take the book. Heywood yanks it back. I saw it first. Red shoots Andy a look.

RED
Maybe that should go under
educational too.

___________________________________

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As I’m quietly and steadily working my way through Blood Stone, and the weekend started out with an empty email in-tray, and nothing moving on Facebook or anywhere else, I thought this was going to be one of those bulletins where I would have nothing to report, except for progress.

But Sunday, which is usually the day when everything on the Internet falls quieter than the grave, suddenly got busy.

And, I’ve had a small flurry of reader emails with questions about future books that I thought I would answer here, as well as the private answers I gave, in case others were wondering the same thing.

__

Bannockburn Binding was nominated for Book Of The Year 2011 by The Romance Reader.  It just manages to scrape in for this honour because it was released on December 13 last year, so it was a great surprise — especially as the book is indie-published.  A nice hats-off.

Now, though, the winner is selected by reader votes.  I’m always reluctant to trawl for reader votes.  There’s so many polls and reader-vote elections out there, and in my category alone there are about twenty books, each with their individual author possibly hounding readers for votes!  So…I’m not begging you to vote.  However, if you have read Bannockburn Binding and really feel you would like to vote for it, you can click here, then scroll down to the erotic paranormal category (about half-way down the page).  Bannockburn Binding is the second book is the category.

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The Royal Talisman received a very nice 4 Star review from Love Romance Passion.

The review itself was short on detail about why the reviewer liked the book so much, but she did like the special features a lot, which was nice.  She also gave Dar Albert, the cover artist, a lovely thumbs up, too.

___

From the mailbox:

A reader was anxiously asking if there will be any more books after Byzantine Heartbreak, and another reader/reviewer wants to see Brenden’s story…and what are the release dates.

Yes, there will most definitely be more books in the series.  At this point in time I can’t say how many more, but this is not a simple trilogy, by any means.  I consider the series to be open-ended with ambitious, complex story-lines and character arcs.

Look at the cover montage for the series.  There’s two way to do that:  Place each book cover for the series side by side to build up the montage that way.  Or “cheat” and jump to the series information page to see the full montage spread in one view.  Apart from being awed by Dar Albert’s artistic talents, you’ll also notice there’s a lot of room for a lot more covers on that montage.  I planned it that way. :)

Release Dates

As for release dates…well, that’s one of the joys — and pitfalls — of indie publishing.  The advantages, especially to you the reader, is that I can release these books as fast as I can write and edit them, plus or minus a week or two for formatting and for Dar Albert to build covers (and she’s very fast).   The down side is that it does take time to edit, format and upload to all the various retail sites, and those sites won’t hold or delay a release, nor will they guarantee exactly how long it takes to build a sales page for a book.  So there is no way to predict, for example, the exact date and time a book will appear on the Amazon site, even though I know exactly when I upload it to Amazon.  That part of it is out of my control.  The same applies for all the retail sites — Barnes & Noble, etc.

Therefore, all I can say in regard to a release date for future books in the series is that they will be as soon as I’ve written the books — and I’m a pretty fast writer — and that your best best is to either sign up for my newsletter or sign up for the email version of my RSS feed, so it is delivered to your email in-box.  That way, you’ll get an alert about the release of any books, and won’t miss out.

___

I’ve updated the Recommended MMF Romances list.

I’ve added some more titles, and I rearranged the list into sub-genre groups.

___

A reader asked what happened to the Kiss Across Time series, and Kiss Across Chains, the third book in that series, which up and disappeared.

The Time-Crossed Love series was first released under the Teal Ceagh pen name with Ellora’s Cave.  It’s one of my favourite series of all time, and I love and adore Brody and Veris and their extreme alpha-male outlook on life and time.  I was never so happy as I was when I was prompted into writing Kiss Across Swords by readers and reviewers who belly-ached politely asked for more about their histories and…well, just more of them.

I have the third book of the series, Kiss Across Chains, half-written, and ideas for six more in the series.  Like Beloved Bloody Time, this is not going to be a simple trilogy.

But, the first two books of the series remain with Ellora’s Cave for now.  I am working to have the rights returned to me, but until I do, I won’t release the third book in the series.  To do so would only further cement the first two books where they currently sit, and there are things I want to do with the first two books before I release the third (including issue them with uniform covers, expand the first book to make it a longer book, and more.)

So for now, this series must wait in the wings.

___

“I wish I could join a board or something and review your books, they are that great.”

There’s two parts to this:  Reviews and discussion boards.

Reviews. 

There are any number of places you can leave a reader review about my books, if you feel moved to do so.  I encourage you like crazy to do this.

As more and more indie authors start publishing more and more books, one of the few ways readers will be able to figure out which are the good books and which are the duds are through other readers’ reviews — and there will be more and more duds:  It’s part of the price we pay for the flood of cheap, great and really interesting reads on the market.

Your review doesn’t have to be perfect prose.  Just a paragraph or two of simple, clear English saying what you thought about the book, and why you did (or didn’t) enjoy it — what made it work for you?  Keep it impersonal (no attacks on the author themselves), and rate the book, and you’re done.

The absolute best place to leave your review is Amazon.  Even if you didn’t buy your book there.  That’s because huge numbers of people research about what book they want to buy next on Amazon, and then they sometimes buy the book elsewhere because they want a different format, or can buy it cheaper elsewhere, or for other reasons.  But they’ll research on Amazon first, because the information about individual books is so thorough and complete.

So you’ll be doing me all sorts of favours by leaving your review about my book on Amazon.

Discussion Boards

Amazon to the rescue again.  Did you know that every single book on Amazon has its own unique discussion board?

If you scroll down to where the general discussion boards start, way down the bottom of the book’s page, just above those board subject lines, there is a live link to the book’s discussion page.  Most of the time (well, all of the time, for my books!  LOL!) the discussion is empty.  But if you want to start a discussion group for a book (anyone’s book), or join it, you’ll find the link to the book’s discussion group right there.  Click on it, and dive in.

__

The biggest news of the weekend, and the last to arrive in my in-box, was the brand new cover for Delly’s Last Night.  The cover, another Dar Albert spectacular, is mind-blowing.  I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to double-click on the covers here on the site, and look at them when they’re at full size or better.  It’s worth it.  Then you really get to appreciate the full stunning detail.  They’re mind-bogglingly beautiful.  And the amazing thing is, Dar builds these covers from scratch.  She creates them out of nothing.  She doesn’t use stock photos except in the background sometimes, when I insist on historical accuracy, or well-known buildings.

Check out the cover for Delly’s Last Night, and click on it to see it at full size.

I stayed up late on Sunday night and formatted the book for release, so now you can buy it, too.  :)

________________________________

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3. Working Notes – December 12, 2011 I’m one of those writers who doesn’t believe in writer’s block.  I don’t think it exists as an independent condition.  If a writer can’t bring...
4. Working Notes – Byzantine Heartbreak is Underway. Yeah! It’s been a weird week. For a start, it’s been very cold. Like, 35 degrees Celsius below zero cold. That’s negative 31 in Farenheit for...
5. Working Notes – December 26, 2011 My best wishes to everyone who celebrated Christmas Day yesterday, and for everyone who got the day off from work, I hope you made the...

The book tour for Bannockburn Binding has finished, and all the posts have been loaded up on the site as articles, for your reading pleasure.  I’ve also linked them to the Beloved Bloody Time series page, and each of the books, if appropriate.

Would You Wait Six Years For A Kiss?

Why Time Travel Romances Wouldn’t Work Outside Romance Novels

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Vampires In The Future – Natural Space Travellers?

Don’t Like Apple? Switch to DOS and Become a Vampire

What Would You Do To Gain Your Own Psi Talent?

An Innocent Burn With A Bloody History

Time travel as tourism…where would you go?

___________________

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A few weeks ago I was bellyaching about how I had produced books so fast that I had missed out on updating you on two books, between working note installments.  Poor me, life is a bitch, huh?

Guess what?  Done it again.  Well, sort of.  :)

Last working notes, I got to roll in ecstasy because I was smack in the middle of writing Byzantine Heartbreak — which was proving to be a lot longer than I had planned.

Well, I finished that, in a marathon of writing over the long weekend last weekend, which for me was a four-day weekend because of an earned day-off from the day job.  Plus, Mark was away on a wrestling road trip for three of those days, so for three days I did nothing but write.  And sleep a little.  And stop to eat when I thought of it.

Not only did I get the 400-hundred pager finished (first draft), but I also finished two other books.

Yup.

Oh, I didn’t write them from scratch!  I’m not that prolific, although I wish I were!

Here’s the details:

Delly’s Last Night

Was Thief In the Night.  I got rights back for this late last year, and one of the things that several reviewers and readers had mentioned from the original edition was that the book was simply too short.  There had been wistful regrets that the history between Delly and Neil wasn’t shown.  So over the weekend I re-wrote what was a short story, including the backstory of Delly and Neil’s original romance in Golden during the Olympic trials, and modernized the story, tweaked the language, etc.

The story is still novella length, so it can only be released electronically.  I can’t stretch it enough to justify a print edition just on its own, but I have plans for an anthology of all my own stories later in the year within which it will be included.  But now, with the re-write, Delly’s Last Night is now thirty-three percent longer than it was originally.

The story is ready to go.  I’m just waiting for a sales cheque, royalty cheque or bonus money to land so I can pay Dar Albert to build one of her beautiful covers to go with it — that’s all that is stopping me from releasing the story right now.  I’m looking forward to this story actually having a decent cover at last, too.

An Inconvenient Lover

This book was Eyes of a Stranger, and it was the first book I published.  I spent part of my weekend revising, tweaking and updating the story and prepping it for release, as Eyes was removed from circulation last year, also.  An Inconvenient Lover will also be released as my own Author’s Edition, and one of the nice things about this edition is that finally, this story will reach paperback.  It only took thirteen years.

Like Delly’s Last Night, this book is also ready to be released.  I’m just waiting for the money to pay Dar to do the cover — and I can’t wait to see what she does with this cover, either.

Blood Stone

I didn’t start Blood Stone on the weekend, but this is the next book on my list of things to do.  I actually started the book last year, and now I have to pick up the traces and get the buggy moving again.  Given how popular Blood Knot is –  glowing reviews and two Book-of-the-Year nominations — I actually moved Blood Stone up on the list.  I was going to write the third in the Beloved Bloody Time series first.  But I’ll do that one after I’ve finished Blood Stone, instead.

So Blood Stone is the book I’m currently in the midst of writing — except I’m not actually at the point of writing it yet.  I’m still revising my plot and character notes and rebuilding parts of the plot to tighten it and make it squeal, which in some of the best fun you can actually have when writing fiction.  It involves anticipating the effect you’ll have on the reader’s emotional pulse…and their actual pulse.  Your pulse.  If I do it right I can orchestrate an opera of emotions inside your heart and brain and body as you read the book…and maybe reduce you to tears, laughter and sighs.  All while sitting (possibly) on the other side of the globe, and months away in time.

It’s the closest thing to magic in the real world.

__________________________

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3. Working Notes – Byzantine Heartbreak is Underway. Yeah! It’s been a weird week. For a start, it’s been very cold. Like, 35 degrees Celsius below zero cold. That’s negative 31 in Farenheit for...
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Byzantine Heartbreak

I feel like I’ve been writing this book forever, but in actual fact, I started straight after I launched Lucifer’s Lover, which was …wow, only January 15, 2012.

Considering Byzantine Heartbreak is a whopping 100,000 words, and 368 pages in the print version (the spine calculated out at .918″ thick!) that’s — actually, it’s shocking even me.

I ate, lived and breathed the lives and loves of Càel, Nia and Ryan for the month it took me to write the book, and I loved writing it.  It was one of those books that caught fire and enveloped my head.  Not all books are a joy to write.  Some fight to be written.  Others spew out onto the page, anxious to have their story told.  Byzantine Heartbreak fought with me for about two chapters, then suddenly, the spell was cast, the door was open, and I was in their heads and living in their world and it was fun!

If you’ve ever wondered why indie authors are drawn to indie publishing, then this book is a testament to “why”.  It was written, edited, built and released in forty days.  Legacy publishers would take six months just to decide if they want to publish the book, then another two years to get it on the shelf.  You’re already able to buy and enjoy the tale.  In the time the legacy publishers would have taken to bring the book out, I could write and release another six or ten more in the series — and still publish other series as well.

Byzantine Heartbreak is the second book in the Beloved Bloody Time series.  I’ve just built the series page — you should have a look, there’s a very cool montage that my favourite cover artist in the whole world, Dar Albert, has built, that shows the 23rd century.

Enjoy.

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2. Working Notes – The Book That Wouldn’t Be Short It’s only now I’ve recalled a pithy little line I included in the special features for The Royal Talisman: “I have also been accused of...
3. Working Notes – December 26, 2011 My best wishes to everyone who celebrated Christmas Day yesterday, and for everyone who got the day off from work, I hope you made the...
4. Byzantine Heartbreak ~ Details ~ ~ Outline ~ ~ Reviews ~ ~ Excerpt ~ ~ Also of Interest ~ - • =»‡«= • — • =»‡«= •...
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Stop #8 and final stop of the Bannockburn Binding book tour.

Today I’m at Bitten By Paranormal Romance.  And yes, I’m still talking about history.  But I’m also talking about vampires, time travel, tourism and some really cool vacation spots.

Swing by for an excerpt that hasn’t been seen anywhere else and drop a line saying hello.

This is your last chance to win a copy of Blood Knot, too!

____________

Bannockburn Binding - Tracy

Blood Knot by Tracy Cooper-Posey

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Quick update. My contemporary romance, Lucifer’s Lover, just hit print.  It looks gorgeous!  Especially with that cover.  And it’s a long novel, so it’s a pretty hefty tome, too.  You can pick up a copy directly from Createspace right now, or wait a few days for the print page to populate over at Amazon.

And The Royal Talisman, my erotic historical romantic suspense, has popped up at Barnes & Noble.com for all you Nook readers.  Although, as usual, no sign of a blurb, excerpt or author information, despite faithfully filing all that guff when I uploaded…  So I’m directing you to the book’s page here, first, then you can click through to B&N…

 _________________

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My erotic historical romantic suspense, The Royal Talisman, has just been uploaded to the Apple Store and on to Kobo today. Barnes & Noble and Sony are still holding out, but I’ll report when they’ve stocked it.

Have a great weekend!

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Forgive me for the size of the cover, which is taking over the post here.  I really wanted you to get a good chance of checking out the hero’s eyes.  They’re something else, aren’t they?

If you’re reading this post on a handheld, or via email, or through a media that has crunched the cover image down to matchbox size, I encourage you to follow the link back to the original post on my site and have a good look at the details of this cover when it’s blown up to full size.  It’s absolutely stunning how much Dar Albert, the designer, gets into it.

I told her my hero’s eyes were catch-your-breath blue.  Boy, did she deliver!

And also check out the embroidering detail on the heroine, Bian’s, sleeves.  Dar creates all this herself.

Anyway, in case the subject line didn’t tip you off, I spent all day yesterday chained to my desk, plus I think I ended up nailing Dar to her desk for most of her Saturday, too, finalizing the cover, while I got The Royal Talisman formatted and released.

Ta-dah!  It is now officially available.

You can get The Royal Talisman in Kindle, ePub, RTF, LRF (Sony), PDB (Palm, from Smashwords), Plain Text,  PDF, Palm DOC/iSolo (From All Romance Ebooks), Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket (.prc), Rocket.

And with a small bonus.

The Royal Talisman used to be Masquerade’s Mate.  I have spent the last few weeks editing and adding scenes and wordage (there’s a much longer explanation about this inside the book).  I added so much, in fact, that The Royal Talisman is no longer a novella.  It’s it’s a short book that can be printed in its own volume.

So as this is my “Author’s Edition” I could add all the special features into the stand alone print edition.

Life is good.

I’ll add the blurb and an excerpt below that isn’t from the book’s page.

Enjoy.

_____________

It is 1884 and France is at war with China.  Stuart Sutherland-Bruce returns to England after a posting in China as a member of the English diplomatic corps.  He meets the astonishingly beautiful Bian, an exotic woman who turns his life upside down with the power of his desire for her.  As she continues to astonish him at every turn with the unexpectedness of her life and her responses to him, he falls deeply in love with her.

But Bian did not wander into Stuart’s life accidentally.  She has orders to become intimate with him and prove he has been giving English secrets to the Chinese.  Yet as she works her spell on Stuart, she learns he does not seem to be the traitor her British superiors assure her he is.

Bian is caught in a trap:  If she reveals to Stuart her real — and shocking — identity, she will lose the man she loves.  If she honours Stuart’s highest values and does her duty, then Stuart will be tried for espionage and hanged.

__

An Excerpt From: THE ROYAL TALISMAN
Copyright © TRACY COOPER-POSEY, 2012
All Rights Reserved

Patrick’s butler returned with a morning gown and other essentials, which allowed Bian to appear in public once more. Dressed in a dark purple velvet suit, which offered some protection against the damp wind gusting along the streets, Bian climbed into her carriage and snuggled under the lap robe. She gave directions for Madame Evamy’s on Bond Street, with a sigh. It was the only establishment she knew. Madam Evamy would have to provide the props she needed to verify her sudden urge to replenish her wardrobe.

Bond Street was as busy as usual. The damp air rising from the Thames and whistling down the street had not discouraged business in the slightest.

Bian’s driver dropped the steps for her and handed her out, along with a caution in his rough accent, “Wotch it, Miss Bian. I couldn’t get no closer and the gutters are a right mess.”

She took a long step on to the footpath and looked up.

Stuart was there.

Bian smothered her gasp of shock with her gloved hand, staring up at him. He towered over her, large in his dark overcoat. His hair was ruffled and his chin unshaved. He looked like he had gone for a month without sleep.

“Dear lord! Stuart! Where did you come from? You startled me.”

His hands were pushed deep into his pockets. “Who are you?” he asked. His voice was as rough as his chin. “Why can I not stop thinking of you?”

She looked around for observers. Her driver stood with the carriage door open, watching with a wary eye. “It’s all right,” she assured him, for he looked like he wanted to leap to her defence. It wouldn’t be the first time he had wielded his blackjack for her and she knew the damage he could inflict. “I know this man.”

“Ye sure, miss? ’e don’t look all that good t’me.”

“I’m sure. But wait a moment.” She turned back to Stuart. “Where have you been, to look as you do?” Genuine concern pushed the question from her. He looked like he had been to hell and back.

“Following you,” he rasped. “I needed to know…needed to…” He stepped closer to her and cupped her cheek with a hand that trembled. “God, who are you? I’ve not slept since that night—”

It was more than she wanted her driver to hear. She glanced over her shoulder but the driver was staring at the passing traffic, apparently stone deaf.

“Come,” she told Stuart, tugging at his sleeve. “Come with me.” She climbed back into her carriage and gestured for him to board, too. She knew there was a risk she would be seen in a carriage alone with a man but didn’t care. The raw emotion pouring from him was making her own heart sing with joy and her insides roil with need. It didn’t matter that this man had betrayed his country. That she was here in London to find proof of his deeds that would survive cross examination in court became a distant fact she could barely bother acknowledging, when before it had driven her every action.

She could only feel the pleasure of being with him, even as dishevelled as he was. His ragged, exhausted, driven state sent a shiver of excitement through her. She had brought him to this.

She settled back into her corner of the bench and spoke quietly to her driver, who stood patiently at the door. “The townhouse.”

“No,” Stuart said sharply, as he sat beside her. He gave the driver an address that she recognized.

“Your house?” she said. “My reputation would not withstand the impact if I were seen entering it without a chaperone.”

“I suspect your reputation has survived far more than a peccadillo of this magnitude,” Stuart said, with a piercing glance at her.

She bit her lip, then nodded to her driver, who tugged at his hat brim and shut the door.

________

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