Celebrating the Eclipse!

To celebrate the Lunar and Solar Eclipses this week MOONLIT ENCOUNTERS is on sale for 99 cents.

Available now from 

AMAZON  and SMASHWORDS

That's EIGHT STORIES for 99 cents! Bargain!

A Valentine's Day Special!

You know it's really weird how some years the media makes a bigger deal out of this than others. I swear today here in Sydney I hear and saw at least double the normal stories and competitions for Valentine's Day, or as my son calls it...rip off the bloke day ! LOL

There is a lot of confusion and contention surrounding the origins of St Valentine's Day. Some say the original St Valentine was a priest who was jailed for secretly marrying couples when marriage was illegal...he was apparently beheaded. Yuck!

However, the roots of St. Valentine's Day lie in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia, which was celebrated on Feb. 15. For 800 years the Romans had dedicated this day to the god Lupercus. On Lupercalia, a young man would draw the name of a young woman in a lottery and would then keep the woman as a sexual companion for the year.

Pope Gelasius I was, understandably, less than thrilled with this custom. So he changed the lottery to have both young men and women draw the names of saints whom they would then emulate for the year (a change that no doubt disappointed a few young men). Instead of Lupercus, the patron of the feast became Valentine.

For Roman men, the day continued to be an occasion to seek the affections of women, and it became a tradition to give out handwritten messages of admiration that included Valentine's name. This was probably the real story...but hey, I think that Festival of Lupercalia sounds kinda fun don't you?

So back to what we think it is all about...spending time with someone you love...letting that special someone know how much they mean to you..all good things! So Enjoy the day and may many St. Valentine's Blessings be upon you!

I got a Happy Valentine's Kiss this morning and will be having champagne tonight! Tell us what you did or are going to do to celebrate!

AND to add to the fun - MOONLIT ENCOUNTERS is on special for 99 cents to celebrate Valentines Day! That a bargain! It's EIGHT stories! Click HERE to buy it!

The Big Day has arrived! Moonlit Encounters is now live!

This has been a  long time in the making, but we are proud to announce that MOONLIT ENCOUNTERS is finally released.  My story "Sun Woman meets Moon Man" is a cute contemporary romance.  I love Sam and Melanie :-)

Whoo hoo!

Here are the details: 

Title and author:  Moonlit Encounters by Various Authors (Jennifer Brassel, Kitty Bucholtz, Shannon Curtis, Coleen Kwan, Maggie Mitchell (me), Shannon Peters, Paula Roe and Deborah Tait)
Publication date: 20 Dec 2012
Publisher: TWC Press
Format: eBook (all formats)

Words: 97,444 

Blurb: 
A diverse collection of short romantic fiction from eight different authors, from different genres, for all readers.
A Victorian woman must chose between family loyalty and a chance at love...
With a little help from a sexy neighbour, a nurse must find strength in vulnerability...
A medieval warrior struggles with his duty when a healer captivates him...
Convincing a cynical workaholic to take time to smell the roses is more challenging than this talented empath could imagine...
A curious voyeur discovers getting involved can be dangerous...
Her family's happiness is at risk unless this widow puts her trust in a stranger...
An independent ranger learns that wolves come in all guises, and secrets can be deadly...
Jilted in a foreign country, a woman struggles with trust and a second chance at happiness...

Here are our links: 

Website: http://www.twcpress.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/twcpress 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twcpress?ref=ts&fref=ts
Blog: http://twcpress.wordpress.com

AMAZON: http://www.amazon.com/Moonlit-Encounters-ebook/dp/B00ANR89BW

SMASHWORDS: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/264089 

Go check it out!  For a limited time it's only 99 cents!  A bargain for such a long book!

I'm excited! Are you?

Just a quick note to let you know the sekrit writing project story will be released soon!

My story is a contemporary romance featuring a girl who's given up on men, and her hot neighbour who wants to change her mind. When they are locked on the roof for the night she has to face her fear of heights as well as relationships, but her neighbour knows just how to distract her.

The anthology features eight stories by eight authors (including yours truly) and will be published by TWC.  If you head over to Facebook and like our page, that would be fantastic! Don't forget to add the page to your interests list as well - that way you can see our posts!

Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/twcpress

Don't you just love the logo?

Watch this space! I'll post a teaser very soon :-)

Versatile BLOGGER awards

Mohadoha nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award. How cool is that?

To accept, I state seven random facts about myself and tag fifteen other bloggers. A great way to get to know more about me and for you to meet other bloggers I’m a big fan of.

Here goes:

1. I was once a contestant on "It's Academic", which is a quiz show for schools. My team won through two rounds, but we lost the final, darn it!
2. Even though reading has always been my passion, when I was at school, English was my worst subject!
3. I've lived in 3 different states of Australia
4. I'm completely in love with the movie "Moonstruck"
5. When I was pregnant I had a craving for sauerkraut. (Ew...)
6. I can't roll my tongue (apparently it's genetic LOL)

7. But I can do the "Live long and prosper" Vulcan sign!

And the fifteen bloggers I'm nominating:

Paula Roe  Keziah Hill  Shannon Curtis Word Trix  Karen Rose Smith  Krystal Shannon Taryn Raye Heaven O'Shea Hesperia Loves Books Tina Glasneck Patricia Zick Kate Kelly Janna Shay Juliet Madison   Victoria Adams

So what 7 things don't we know about you? Don't forget to check out everyone else's blogs!

My week in writing...19 Aug 2012

Hi folks

I'm checking in to let you know how my week went, but also to keep myself on track. I'd love it if you're a writer and leave your progress in the comments, but if you don't want to do that, that's okay too.

It's been a tough week watching all my friends trot off to the Romance Writers of Australia conference on the beautiful Gold Coast.  My writers group buddies Paula Roe, Shannon Curtis and Keziah Hill sent me lots of tweets about what was happening, but it was so hard! I was missing out!   But I'm going to get to the next one for sure. It's in Fremantle in Western Australia next August and I've already put the dates in the diary. I'm planning my trip already :-)

And what would top off next year's conference for me? Why a few book sales for this version of me of course! So that's why I spent the weekend with a concerted effort to get the writing back on track.

I have a story finished that I'm doing some heavy duty editing on. It won an Honorable Mention a few years ago in the Stroke of Midnight contest with the RWA Passionate Ink group, but I haven't sold it yet. I decided it still needed some work and that's what I've been doing this weekend. I am about half way through and I hope to have it ready for a beta read by the end of this coming week. So fingers crossed for me that it happens :-) After that, a few more fine tunes and I'll be submitting it. Whoo hoo!

The other project I worked on this week was a story for my other persona. I added about 2k words so that's not so shabby. I hope to finish this one asap as my publisher would love it!

Did I tell you that I subbed a romantic suspense novel of mine?? Go ME!   Now the nail biting wait continues.  I've been good - no obsessive checking of emails :-) We'll see.

So that's how I went. How did you go?

My weekend in writing...

Happy weekend folks. I hope you're getting to all those jobs you want to achieve this weekend. I know I'm doing pretty well myself so far, so fingers crossed the momentum continues.

Goals for this weekend:
1. Finish editing short story for TWC anthology - check!
2. Finish revising RS and submit to publisher - check!
3. Work on novella for my other persona - not yet but hopeful!

I suppose I should tell you a little bit about numbers 1 & 2 :-)

The short story is for an anthology with my writers group - we're forming a co-operative to publish our own work. There are 9 of us, and several are published already, so we're all helping out with content editing, line editing and formatting. It's almost ready to go so watch this space!  My story is a contemporary romance and it's set in Sydney. That's all I can tell you for now. You'll have to be patient :-)

The romantic suspense is a novel I wrote some time back, had it published briefly with a now defunct publisher, so I revised it and updated it and I've sent it off to a new publisher. Hopefully they'll like the partial and ask for the full - but geez Louise it's so long since I sent in a submission to a new publisher, I am so nervous!  I'm trying hard not to second guess what they will say, plus making sure I don't re read what I wrote because there's nothing I can do to change it now!  Talk about scary!

So that's my weekend in writing - how's yours going?