If you’ve only read a couple of the original Sherlock Holmes stories before, or only watched the two movies with Robert Downey Jnr., you’re probably wondering how on earth Sherlock Holmes could end up in one of my Pulse Pause posts.

I’ve actually been waiting impatiently to write this post for about three weeks now, although in fact, I could have written it anywhere in the last fifteen years.  But what has changed in the last three weeks is that now I have back-up confirmation.  Proof, if you will, that Sherlock is not the dry, academic, intellectual and boring character that most obsessed romantics like me steer clear of.

No, he’s driven, passionate and highly emotional.  He just doesn’t want to be.  He doesn’t like emotions.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After scrupulously avoiding the BBC’s Sherlock for weeks because of what I considered to be various infractions, I finally caved about a month ago, and reluctantly gave it a go.  For a full run down on the crater the series made in my life and the fallout that ensued, click here.

A Scandal In Belgravia is the first episode in the second season, and up until that point the series had completely captured my attention.  Scandal made me a fan.  I haven’t been a fan of a series, movie or actor for a long, long time.  When you consider that “fan” is derived from the word “fanatic”…well, I don’t like to call myself a fan of anything unless I really mean it.

There are dozens of reasons why the episode…well, movie, really — it’s 90 minutes long — makes any romance reader’s heart stutter to a stop.  Some of them are hard to enumerate without laying down dreadful spoilers.  I’ll tread carefully, because I want to encourage you like crazy to go get a copy of both seasons and watch them for yourself.  The end of the second season will leave you weeping, I absolutely guarantee it.

But, back to Scandal and its pulse-pausing moments. The episode is loosely based upon the original short story by Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia”, which also featured Irene Adler getting the better of Sherlock Holmes, the only female antagonist ever to do so.

The most interesting aspect of the episode is that this is a romance that was not consummated, yet the sexual tension was thick enough to float croutons.  For example, when Sherlock cracked a near impossible code inside five seconds, Irene looks up at him:

IRENE (intensely): I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice.

(The two of them stare at each other for a long moment before Sherlock speaks again.)

SHERLOCK (with his eyes still locked on Irene’s): John, please can you check those flight schedules; see if I’m right?

JOHN (vaguely, overcome by all the sex in the air): Uh-huh. I’m on it, yeah.

(Clearing his throat, he starts to type on his laptop. Sherlock and Irene continue to stare at each other.)

SHERLOCK: I’ve never begged for mercy in my life.

IRENE (emphatically): Twice.

Surprisingly it isn’t an issue that there is no consummation to the romance – well, there’s no sex, anyway.  In many respects the romance is fully formed and completed — but again, I can’t get specific.  For these characters and this story it works.  It’s fitting.  You’re not left feeling dissatisfied in any way, because actions speak much, much louder than any words or endless amounts of sex could.  I’ve written before about Sherlock’s reticence when it comes to dealing with love, and inconvenient emotions that get in the way of his work.

In a very old post of mine where I was talking about Sherlock Holmes as a highly emotional man I wrote:

“But actions speak louder than words.  Holmes does not ever speak of what lies in his heart, but what he does to protect and finally, to revenge Elizabeth, shouts to the rooftops what he is incapable of saying aloud.”

Sherlock Holmes Had A Secret Lover?

In Scandal, too, Sherlock says it all by what he does.  But the creators of Sherlock have admitted that they, too, drew on The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes for some of their inspiration for the character of this new Sherlock, just as I did for mine, so the coincidence isn’t quite the surprise it might be.

In Scandal, the romance is all played out in their heads…and their hearts.  This is very much a heart-breaking episode, with shocking twists and turns that even took me by surprise and I am nobody’s fool when it comes to plotting out a story, and with my expertise on all things Sherlock, I should have seen some of them.  But the emotions in the story got me and I ended up just watching the episode as a viewer, my mind not working ahead of the writer — a very rare and unusual treat for me.

This is the episode when Sherlock comes face to face with love and has to deal with it.  He tries to keep it at a distance and it doesn’t work.   Of course, Irene is not a good woman, so in the end, Sherlock’s intellect is what saves the day, but the damage has been done.  His heart has been lost, and the tie to Irene Adler — “The Woman” — is in place.

Unfortunately, I have to talk in generalities to avoid spoilers.

But here’s a glimpse of some moments that don’t give everything away, altogether.

Sherlock’s first glimpse of Irene, in person, is when she walks into her lounge room wearing nothing but high heels and a smile.  Dr. Watson asks her to cover up, and Sherlock says it’s because Watson doesn’t know where to look.  Irene replies it’s because Watson knows exactly where to look, but she doesn’t know about Sherlock…

In the next few minutes, he learns from her where she is hiding photographs she is apparently using to blackmail the royal family – they’re in a safe in the same room they’re standing in, hidden behind a painting.  Sherlock studies the number pad for the safe’s lock and Irene laughs and says she’s already given him the code.

That’s when the CIA bust in and demand that Sherlock open the safe or they will shoot Dr. Watson.  Sherlock protests that he doesn’t know the combination.  The CIA insists they listened to Adler tell him she had given him the code, so open the goddam safe, or Dr. Watson dies.

And Sherlock glances at Irene, who looks downwards…

Sherlock turns and punches in 32-24-34 and the safe opens, only to kill the CIA operative with a booby-trapped gun.  When the fuss is over Irene smiles at Sherlock and compliments him.  “Thank you. You were very observant.  I’m flattered.”

The safe’s opening combination were her measurements.

—

The most heart-rending moments — the ones that really stop your pulse — come with the biggest plot spoilers, so unfortunately, I can’t relay them here.  (The fact that there’s so little I can relate without giving away the plot shows exactly how tightly written the show is – brownie points to the producers and writers.)

If you’ve seen Scandal, then you can nod along with me:

1. Sherlock and Watson yelling at Mycroft for swearing at Mrs. Hudson
2. Christmas at Baker Street — the entire scene.  Wow!
3. At the morgue — even better.
4. Battersea Power Station.  The whole scene.  (Martin Freeman is brilliant and so deserved his BAFTA award!)
5. Mrs. Hudson’s rescue.
6. …and after.
7. Cracking the code.
8. “Will you have dinner with me?”
9. Flight 007.
10. The showdown – “I am _ _ _ _ locked.”
11. “Run!”

Of course, this is all gibberish if you haven’t see Scandal.  But I know there are a few Sherlock fans that read this blog, and I’m hoping if you’re not a fan yet, you might give this new show a try…it’s worth it!

___________________________________

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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I’ve made a habit of directing a lot of people over to the Goodreads recommendation lists over the years, and it’s always mildly annoyed me that the lists are subjective and voter driven, and I’m not on them.  [What? I'm not allowed to have an ego? :) ]  I wasn’t annoyed enough to go vote myself onto the lists, which I could do as I’m a member of Goodreads.   I suspected there were a few authors who had voted themselves on that way, because when you read through the list, there are places where one author’s books are all listed together in one chunk, one after another.  Dead give away.

But, no matter.

I thought, rather than making readers take that extra step over to Goodreads, and then over to Amazon, I’d start building my own list of recommended MMF romance titles here on the site.

Oh, idiot me!

Approximately six hours later…

I’ve just got through the first list on Goodreads.  Ugh.  I always knew my list would be a permanent, living document that would take consistent updating, but I didn’t think it would take so much effort just to build in the first place.  So I’m going to put up the list I have for now, and keep plugging away at it in spare moments over the next few weeks.

The reason it is taking so long is because I’m not simply siphoning off the list of titles from the Goodreads lists over to mine.  Just reading through the recommendation lists made my antennae twitch enough that I started vetting the list as I built mine.  Good thing, too.  Some of the titles on the list aren’t MMF romances at all.  Some only have MMF scenes incidental to the main romance — so I left them off the list, too.

It also puzzled me that books with ratings barely above two stars were making it onto the list.  But if anyone can add a book to the list, then there’s no quality control.  So I put a quality control on mine.  Only books with aggregate four or five star ratings were listed.  And that means that if they had a 3.75 star rating on Goodreads, but a 5 star rating on Amazon, they made the list, because the aggregate rating would be 4.375 stars.

Books that were listed on Goodreads, but were not for sales on Amazon I didn’t list.

If I couldn’t find an indication of MMF activity in the descriptions, categories or tags, I erred on the side of caution, and left the book off my list.

If the book only had one five star rating on Amazon, that looked like it was from a friend or might otherwise be a set-up job, and it had sucky ratings on Goodreads, I also left it off the list, even if it did scape into the 4-5 star ratings.

At all times, I kept in mind if readers would be happy about being guided to buying this book.  If I thought you’d get snarky about shelling out for the book and then being disappointed, I left it off the list.  If I find out later my assessment is wrong, I can always add the book back in.

Oh yes, and in the interests of full disclosure, I have added Amazon Associate links for all the book titles.  But don’t think this is a big money grab for me.  I use Associate links all over my site, and most months I don’t make enough to buy a cup of coffee from all the links combined.  The point of the links is not to make me rich.  :)

So, have a cruise through the titles and see what you think.  Of course, it’s not complete.  The list I was working from leaned heavily into BDSM and contemporaries, and didn’t seem to have anything from the last twelve months on it.  I have some catching up to do.

Recommendations gratefully received.

Recommended MMF Titles

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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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This post is part of a series.

Part 1: Damn Good Romances
Part II: Romantic Tension
Part III: Romantic Conflict
Part IV: Emotional Intensity
Part V: Heart-Stopping Moments
Part VI: Uncertainty of Outcome
Part VII: Moment of Ultimate Vulnerability
Part VIII: Happy Ever After…For Now

_____________

Emotional Intensity

When I first started writing romance novels, I was still living in Australia.  Everyone writing romance back then seemed to be reading Harlequin Romance and Harlequin Presents books.  We knew them as Mills & Boon novels.  The big sweeping historical romance novels that most American readers grew up reading were unavailable to us.  So when we started writing, we naturally turned to Mills & Boon as the market we wanted to break in to.  It was also a very lucrative market.  There were dozens of authors making very good money indeed writing four books a year for M&B, and many of them were Australian and New Zealand authors.

Back then, Mills & Boon in London had a standard rejection letter which was notorious in writing circles, and universally dreaded by writers just starting to market their work.

The body of the letter — all of it — ran:

“We have considered your novel Wuthering Heights, and although it is well written, we feel it lacks the extra degree of emotional punch for which we look.”

Trying to crack this “emotional intensity” code was the subject of endless working sessions where manuscripts were critiqued to death in search of the answer.

The telling thing about this rejection letter is that it is standard — in other words, it serves to explain the majority of rejections.  This means the majority of manuscripts received do not have enough emotional intensity.

It’s a good demonstration of how important this element is to a romance novel.

Emotional intensity isn’t a single element you can put your finger on, and say “there it is.”  It’s a by-product of a dozen different elements in a romance novel all working together seamlessly, to build up the emotional tension to a fever pitch, then mercilessly holding it there until the endThe bigger elements that contribute to the emotional intensity include:

• The characters
• The plot
• The romantic conflict

To some degree, the setting can also contribute.  Historical romances, for instance, can add to the reader’s sense of emotional intensity, if they’re historical lovers, and the author has done a good job of description and scene setting.  Paranormals, with atmospheric settings, can work the same way.

But settings can also kill off the positive romantic emotional tension, if they’re the wrong sort.  That’s why romantic suspense authors are possibly the most underrated authors in the genre.  They’re constantly juggling hard, gritty storylines against the need to keep the romantic storyline tension wound up tight.  It can be an enormous challenge.

But you will know when the emotional intensity is creeping upwards, because whenever a scene shifts away from the hero(es) and heroine and their problems, and you are mildly annoyed, because you just want to get back to them and see what happens next — that’s emotional intensity at work.

That’s when a romance novel starts to become “unput-downable.”

Next: Heart Stopping Moments

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2. Damn Good Romances III – Romantic Conflict This post is part of a series. Part 1: Damn Good Romances Part II: Romantic Tension Part III: Romantic Conflict Part IV: Emotional Intensity Part...
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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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4. The Royal Talisman ~ Details ~ ~ Outline ~ ~ Reviews ~ ~ Excerpt ~ ~ Also of Interest ~ - • =»‡«= • — • =»‡«= •...
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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.

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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.

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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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When it comes time to write these posts, my habit is to open up my reading software on my cellphone — Kindle, the ePub reader, Acrobat, etc — and find what it was that I’ve been reading lately, and report on that.

Which puts me in an interesting position this month.

First up, I’ve been working my way through Time to Write, a how-to by Kelly L. Stone, which is really a compilation of time saving tips from other authors.  I’m  always interested in learning how to write faster, or find more time for writing, so this book was of interest.  So far, I’ve learned nothing new.  I’m hopeful, though…

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I have been reading one book book — a print book. Fast Fit by Sandra Betzina, a sewing classic.  (My other obsession – one I don’t get nearly enough time for.)  If there is a reason print books will hang around, it’s because of books like this one, which wouldn’t translate well to ebook with the state of current technology.  I could only read this on a big screen tablet, in PDF, right now.  It’s super graphics heavy.

But the book IS making me wish I could offload some of my writing time and get back to the sewing machine.  I don’t have any upcoming reader conventions to give me that excuse anymore…

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And my confession is also the third book I found open on my cellphone.

I gave a copy of Fatal Wild Child to a co-worker for Christmas, and she started reading it before the holiday break.  One morning she came steaming into work and confronted me at my desk, her hands on her hips, accusing me of ruining her sleep the previous night.

“I just got to the part where they’re in the room for the night.  All that incredible tension in the restaurant and then she goes and does…that!”  She shook her head.  “And now I have to wait until my lunchbreak to find out what happens next!”

I blinked a few times in surprise.  I was pleased, of course.  What writer wouldn’t be?  The news that I had deprived someone of sleep because of my writing is very hard to take.

What surprised me was the bit-that-came-next, after the restaurant.  I had forgotten about that bit of that scene.  During that day I kept trying to rememer the sequence of events and scenes in the book.  I think you can guess what happened next.  I gave up and loaded the book onto my cellphone and read it, to remind myself of the details of the story.

Yes, I do read my own stories every now and again.  But I like to read them when they’re so cold they’re frozen:  When I don’t remember who said what, and what comes next.  Oh, I always remember the big sweeping movements of the story, but not the little things.  The small moments.  Bits of dialogue.  Pulse pause moments I managed to squeeze in.   When it’s been long enough for me to forget those things, then I stand a chance of being at least a little bit surprised and pleased, just like any other reader.

Reading Fatal Wild Child was a nice escape for a couple of hours, and a refresher.  I had, indeed, forgotten some of the moments I’d got in there.

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As a Christmas gift to my readers, I’m deeply discounting my two indie titles between now and Christmas Day.

By using the two coupon codes listed below, you can get 50% off and pay only $1.50 for each title at Smashwords, but only for the next three days, so hurry!

Blood Knot, my erotic MMF urban fantasy vampire romance, now only $1.50 in all the popular formats, at Smashwords, if you use the coupon code WL27A when you purchase your copy.

And Fatal Wild Child, my romantic suspense featuring black ops hero Seth O’Connor and set in the Canadian Rockies at Christmas time is a perfect tales for sitting next to the tree and sipping eggnog and reading.  Use coupon code EX78W when you buy your copy at Smashwords.

And have a great holiday season, everyone!

Cheers,

Tracy

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A quick follow-up to my announcement the other day about book title rights that have been returned to me, and therefore won’t be available for sale — just for a short while! — while I repackage and beef them up and put them back out there.

Several other books have been returned to me and I’ve taken the “for sale” sign off their pages:

Black Heart
Red Leopard
Solstice Surrender
Masquerade’s Mate
Dangerous Beauty
Forbidden

If you’re interested in obtaining a copy of the new edition of any of these titles (I’ll be releasing in e-book and print for the novel-sized titles), sign up for my newsletter, so that you get a notice of the release of the new edition, or subscribe to my RSS feed via your favourite Newsreader or via Email, to catch any announcement I make on the blog.

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