Category Archives: Darn Good Television

#Crossing #Giveaway and Interpretive Dance

May 11, 2013 11:42 am ⋅ 56 Comments ⋅

Crossing is live! To celebrate the release of my first New Adult Contemporary Romance with a helluva twist, I thought I’d do a Dani and Liam themed giveaway. Also, don’t miss the chance to see me embarrass myself! More info after the rafflecopter dealio.

Crossing_CVR_MED

Praise for Crossing:
“Beautiful. Heart wrenching. A true tale of love. It’ll make you laugh, cry, and have you running out to buy a tube of red lipstick.” RaShelle Workman, bestselling author of the Blood and Snow series

“I’ve never read a novel that made me run the gambit of so many emotions. This is a New Adult novel that can’t be missed!” Magan Vernon, International bestselling author of The Only Exception

“I found CROSSING a very emotional, romantic, sexy, super funny book. I love all the characters. Thank you for letting me read it, Stacey, and trusting me and the world with this wonderful story of yours.” Angela Carlie, author of Dream Smashers

Description:

He stole her lipstick…and her heart.

Twenty-year-old Dani Walker can’t believe her luck when she’s paired up with the gorgeous Liam Garrett as her Acting I scene partner – or when he ends up in her bed. Being a Plain Jane with a mouth on her hasn’t exactly served Dani well in the guy department. In fact, she’s had nothing but one night stands. Still, she lets go of her insecurities and falls for Liam, despite feeling like he’s holding something back.

When Dani finally discovers Liam’s secret, she must learn the true meaning of accepting the ones we love for who they are, or risk losing the best thing that’s ever happened to her.

BONUS MATERIAL: Excerpt of TOUCHING MELODY by RaShelle Workman

Purchase an e-book: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, iTunes

Paperback coming soon!

Make-up plays a big part in Crossing and has always been one of my favorite things. I collect (hoard) eye shadow like a crazy person. Ooh, pretty colors! Sephora has all the things and $100 can get you quite a bit of the beautiful. (Open to US and Canadian residents only. I wanted to do an international giveaway, but the Sephora shipping charges would be lamesauce, yo.)

 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now for the interpretive dance shenanigans: If I sell 1,000 copies of Crossing by 5 pm PST on Friday the 17th, I’ll post a YouTube video of my Total Eclipse of the Heart interpretive dance routine. Previously, this routine has only been performed at holiday parties and Girls Beach Weekend. And after a few adult beverages. I am not an awesome dancer, but I got heart, folks. That’s all I’m gonna say. :)

Posted in: Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, Giveaway, Indelibles, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, New Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , ,

Happy Easter, Paperback Action, and #ROW80

April 8, 2012 8:20 am ⋅ 1 Comment ⋅

Good morning and Happy Easter!  I’ve got a crapton of eggs to devil, so I’ll get right to it. :)

The Zellie paperbacks have new inside and outside designs. (The story is the same – no matter how many people complain, the park bench scene stands. lol)

All of the books now have the blue sparkly e-book covers and I finally figured out how to make the page numbers start on the first page of the actual book instead of the literal first page. The covers are just starting to show up on Amazon and will probably take a while to show up everywhere else – they might, in fact, never show up on Barnes and Noble, as they still have the First Edition covers up.  We’re on the Third Edition here, people, catch up!

(I’m too lazy to make the files small enough to download here, but if you’d like to seem them they are up here. Robin Ludwig is AWESOME!!)

At any rate, if you’ve been waiting around for me to change the paperback covers to look like the e-book covers, I’ve done it. Please help spread the word.

ROW80: I’ve had a pretty good first week. After a bit of a timer malfunction on Monday – my Focus Booster timer disappeared from my screen, but kept going off randomly for a couple of hours and scaring the crap out of me – I downloaded a proper Pomodairo timer and that’s worked out better.

Monday – Wednesday I wrote each day, although I didn’t make it the full two hours. I averaged about an hour. I’m still keeping the goal at two hours, but not beating myself up if I don’t make it there.

Thursday and Friday I didn’t get any writing in at all because I was working on reformatting the paperback interiors. I didn’t expect that it would take me that long, but I format for paperback maybe twice a year, so I forget things from one instance to another.

Saturday I got four and a half hours of writing in. In addition to timing myself, I’m also trying to write without editing as I go. Ouch. It hurts. :) I wanted to attempt to finish the first draft of Unfavorable last night, but I was literally writing nonsense by the end of it and decided to go clean some Parenthood off the DVR instead. I’ve got nearly 5K for the week and that’s great for me. I’m hoping to do the same this week, or even 10 K and get Unfavorable done.

I am dying to work on Found.

Oh, Sexy New Ideas.

 

 

Posted in: Darn good television, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Happy Thanksgiving and #ROW80

November 23, 2011 8:31 am ⋅ 10 Comments ⋅

This year my family decided to do something different for Thanksgiving and get out of town. I’m headed to Mt. Hood in a couple of hours to enjoy a few days of eating and sledding and snowball fights.

Here’s where we’re staying:

Yes, that’s the Timberline Lodge – the hotel from The Shining. I fully expect my sister to wake me at least once by wiggling her finger in my face and saying “redrumredrumredrum.”

Our plan for Thanksgiving is to eat ourselves silly and then take the kids out to play in the snow.  We don’t get much  in the valley, and when we do it’s usually covered in a sheet of ice, so my kids have never been sledding before!

Wish me luck, I’m going to be the one driving and I haven’t ever put chains on my tires.  Actually, I haven’t driven in much snow at all since I was a teenager…why did I volunteer for this job again? :)

Enjoy the holiday, American types, and do yourself a favor and sleep in on Friday.  The 500 pack of socks for 10 cents will still be there later in the day.

Row80 update: I barfed up a whopping 3,279 words on a new pen name short story on Monday. I’m using barf in the best sense of the word – I’d been thinking about the story for a while now and wasn’t in the mood to work on my DBC story, so I thought I’d just get the beginning written.  It took off from there!  I probably would’ve stayed up late and written more, but my husband wanted me to watch How I Met Your Mother with him and my eyes were burning something fierce. I added another 400 words yesterday and have left off in an awesome spot so that I’ll be rarin’ to go on it  when I get back from the mountain.

I also completely reorganized all of my files and finally got the epub version of most of my stories up on All Romance.  A fairly productive beginning to the week that I will now completely ruin by being a sloth for three days.  Yippee!!

Have a good one, y’all.

Posted in: Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In the Mood

November 19, 2011 9:25 am ⋅ 3 Comments ⋅

Some days, I don’t want to write.

I know I should try to, that’s part of the reason I join anthologies like Death by Chocolate or writing challenges like ROW80, to have people hold me accountable, to get my butt in the chair day after day and put some words down.
But, some days, I’m just not in the mood.  On those occasions, here’s what I do to get myself motivated or to, at the very least, keep my head in the game.

 
1. Music – Dissent, the 5th Day of Sacrifice story, is stuck at about 1,200 words right now. I haven’t worked on it in weeks because I’ve been writing my anthology story and because I don’t know what I want to happen next.  This is a story I need to have out by the first of the year, so yesterday in order to get my brain thinking about it, I listened to my DoS playlist in the car while I was driving everyone to work and school.  It’s amazing how music can get you in the right frame of mind when you associate it with writing a similar story or a previous story in this case.  I had Halo and Bleeding Love on repeat all day. Just thinking about my characters in a video montage sort of way (does anyone else do that or am I a weirdo?) I jump started my enthusiasm for the series and came up with ideas for the end of the scene I’ve been stalled on.

 
2. Sexy New Ideas notebook – Again, I may be a weirdo, but I never have more new ideas for other stories than when I’m trying to complete the one I’m supposed to be focused on. I combat this by keeping an Idea Notebook.  If I can get the idea down on paper, my mind can let it go.  It’s like a promise to myself that I will come back to it later. Of course, there are always more ideas than there is time to write them, but I’ve also found that sometimes the ideas can be combined together – genre mixing at its finest!

 
3. More than one project – I’ve tried only working on one story at a time. It’s not my style.  I find that if I have multiple projects to work on – I usually have 3-4 going at once – and can add a new paragraph to one that is not my main focus, that it does two things: Like with the SNI’s I can get nagging conversations, scenes and descriptions out of my head and it gives me a confidence boost.  Nothing makes me feel better about myself than writing does, so it stands to reason that if I’m feeling crappy and distracted with my main WIP, getting some words down on something else I’m working on makes me feel like I’ve done something, made some progress in my own little world.

 
4. Read/watch TV – Sometimes when I’m supposed to be writing, doing either of these things can feel decadent and like I’m wasting time.  Really, though, they can help – if you stay on genre. I have a particularly hard time writing action/fight scenes – with the Zellie books, I often turned to reading the Vampire Academy books and to watching teen shows like Roswell, The Nine Lives of Chloe King and Kyle XY – books and TV shows that are aimed at the same audience as the Zellie books are and contain both a paranormal romance aspect and a lot of action.  With the DoS stories, I can’t tell you how much Supernatural and Nikita have helped me come up with ideas for both characters and new ways to write fights.  So, yes, I’m being entertained and slacking off a bit, but I’m also consciously  studying the ways other writers do what I’m trying to do.

 
What sort of things do you do to get in the mood to write?

This blog is cross-posted on the Death by Chocolate blog and the PacNWYA blog.

Posted in: Blogs, Darn good television, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Happy Friday!

October 28, 2011 10:24 pm ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

What started out as a kind of bummer day has really turned itself around!

I got edits and beta comments back on my pen name short story today and I think I’ll publish it tomorrow. Yay!

The Cardinals won the World Series. Yay!

I carved two most excellent jack-o-lanterns this evening. Yay!

AND Glimpse went free on Amazon! Double Yay!  If you all could help spread the word it would be much appreciated.  I have no idea how long this is going to last, but I’ve already “sold” as many books this evening as I did in the last week.

I doff my cap to the power of FREE. (Please tell me I’m not the only one watching 2 Broke Girls.)

Have a swell weekend, y’all.

Posted in: Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Doughnut overload and #ROW80

October 9, 2011 8:48 pm ⋅ 7 Comments ⋅

It’s only been since Wednesday that I last blogged, but it feels like it’s been weeks!  Since Wednesday, I’ve made a Rain Boots Required stop at West Linn Public library and spent two long days at the Wordstock festival in Portland.

Dudes and dudettes, so much has happened!

The tour stop in West Linn was fabulous.  We had another great turn out and this time our audience was filled with actual young adults.  They asked great questions – about writing and publishing and technique.  Watch out, y’all, the next crop of writers are gonna be some savvy upstarts!!

Thanks so much to Elaine, the Teen librarian at WLPL. She made us feel so welcome and she is such a dedicated and awesome librarian.  The kids of West Linn are lucky to have her and her bosses on their side.  The teen section of their library is a place that I know I would’ve loved to spend time in as a YA because I’m now having fantasies about escaping to there as an adult.

My apologies to Lisa Nowak and Laura Elliott for my less than stellar AV skillz.  I think we can all agree I shouldn’t be in charge of taping the talks anymore!! :)

Saturday and Sunday were spent at Wordstock from 10-6.  We had VooDoo Doughnuts at our table and let me tell y’all, doughnuts are the great equalizer.  We talked (and talked and talked and talked) to so many people who might not have stopped by our booth if it wasn’t for those crazy doughnuts.

I shared a booth with authors Angela Carlie and Laura Elliott. Lisa Nowak was at another booth, but she popped over frequently to hang out.  We had such a blast!

Since I had to register the booth name before we had even named our author tour and I wasn’t sure who exactly was going to share it with me, I named it Pacific Northwest YA Authors.  Good name, right?

Plenty of folks thought so.  In fact, a lot of people thought we were an organization and wanted to join.  At first, we laughed about it and told them we just needed a name for our booth, then, well it occurred to us that maybe we were an organization of sorts.  More of a group, but we had authors wanting to join and librarians and teachers wanting us to come give talks at their schools.

Never one to turn down an opportunity…

I give you Pacific Northwest YA Authors.

The website and e-mail address were created on Saturday night when I couldn’t sleep but for thinkin’.  Today, we signed up four schools/libraries to give talks at and collected over 20 e-mail addresses from people who want to receive our newsletter.

There’s just a welcome post up there right now, but by the end of this week I should have all of our Abouts, videos, reference links, contact info., guidelines for joining, etc. up.

Another awesome thing that happened at Wordstock besides networking our asses off, was that Lisa Nowak noticed the Trends in Publishing panel was the most well attended one of the whole event.  And you know what?  The panelists talked about self-publishing, but didn’t have a ton of experience with it.  So, Lisa and I tracked down the incoming director of Wordstock and pitched her a self-publishing panel for next year.  She seemed into it and said we were the first people to pitch her a panel for the following year.  Who knows what will come of it, but I can’t stress enough that it never hurts to ask for what you want!

ROW80 update:  If you’ve stuck around, I have good thangs to share about this too! (Seriously, I had three doughnuts today and am soooo high on the sugar!!)  I talked about my decent word count for Tuesday on Wednesday.  Yay!  On Thursday, I fired up my new Final Draft software.

Guys, I’m in love.  Yes, I actually heart software.

Although my ultimate dream would’ve been to pick a TV format and then copy and paste what I’d already written directly into it, what I got was pretty close.  I selected the script format that they use on Grey’s Anatomy and copy and pasted line by line what I’d written so far.  Voila!  Formatted script.  So easy to use.  I spent the last hour of my writing time creating new stuff for the script.  It’s such a fun project because I get to rewrite my book without having to actually rewrite my book.  Writing new dialogue for the Rosedell gang made me absolutely ecstatic.  There’s a new conversation between Avery and his best friend Jason that had me laughing my butt off.  It’s fun to be back in Zellie’s world in a new way.

Okay, I’m off to work on the PacNWYA website before my sugar crash commences.  Peace out.

Posted in: Blogs, Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, good neighbors, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last #ROW80 post for Round Three

September 22, 2011 5:46 pm ⋅ 8 Comments ⋅

This round of Row80 has been crazy!  Because my life is crazy!  I’m writing this at 5 in the evening due to the fact that I spent a good chunk of the day making dips and sauces for a party I’m helping to cater on Saturday night.  Why, on the last week of ROW80, on the first week my son is back to school, on the 80th week (it seems) of going to the doctor twice a week, did I agree to cater a party?

Because I like to cook almost as much as I like to write.

I go on and on and complain a good portion of the time about how busy I am and how I’m never going to finish anything, but the truth is, I always manage to fit the important stuff in.  ROW80 has helped me realize that.

I thought this round had been a bit of a fail for me until I sat down and went over my original goals.  I wanted to finish Takeover and get started on the next DoS story.  I wanted to figure out how the DoS series ends.  Done, done and done. Almost. :)

Takeover goes to the beta readers tomorrow and will be published by the end of next week.  The next two stories are simmering in my head.  I actually know what’s going to happen for once!

A little further into this round, I added two more goals.  I wanted to write the TV pilot for Glimpse.  I’m halfway there! The last goal I had was to try to write a story all the way through without stopping to edit.  I did all right with this one.  There were some days where I just couldn’t resist going back and fixing things that were bugging me.  I think that’s okay.  It’s progress.  I had the idea that after the story was finished, I’d go through and identify three things in each scene that could be expanded on.  This trick worked out sooooo well.

If your writing is sparse, like mine, and you have a hard time getting to the word count you want a piece to be, you should totally try this.  I added roughly 3,500 words to Takeover in ONE day using this method.  I swear, the words just fell out of my head when I knew exactly what I needed to expand on.  I mean, stupid stuff like, “describe how this character looks and what they’re wearing.”  Dude, need to know kind of stuff that added paragraphs to the whole story.

Some of you might think that’s a huge duh, but I just never stop to describe what people look like half the time.  I mention it once in the span of one sentence and then never again. (I’m still/always learning, okay?)

I’ve got big plans for the little vacation between rounds. (What?  She’s making goals for between the rounds now?) My website is getting an overhaul.  I’m going to be adding glossaries for both DoS and the Zellie books.  I write stories with a bazillion characters and hate to recap.  This is my solution.  They’ll be available on my website and on Smashwords.  There will be the publishing of Takeover.  I want to write a couple more pages on the TV pilot.  I’ve got to prepare my talk for the Rain Boots Required YA Author tour I’m doing in October.  And, the opening scene for the first Ben book has been written in my head for over a week.  I am so stoked for it and need to get it down on computer.

Oy vey. Thanks for reading this ramble.  Ha!  I’ll be back with even more crazetacular goals for the next round.  Be prepared for more bitching and moaning and then for me to be like, “Dude.  I totally did it.”

Posted in: Blogs, Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cover reveal and #ROW80

September 18, 2011 3:58 pm ⋅ 11 Comments ⋅

Quick update today, I’ve finally found a chunk of time to work on editing Takeover.  I’ve secured beta readers for it for the end of next week and have purchased a cover!

I’d never bought cover art before, I’m related to a bunch of artists, so it was a new experience.  My husband is usually involved in the DoS covers in some way, whether he takes the photos for the cover or makes the actual cover.  I’d already asked him to make the Rain Boot Required flyer for me this week and didn’t want to tear him away from his own work.  It seemed like a good time to try something new.

The cover for Takeover was designed by Christine from Flip City Covers and I think she did an awesome job.

That’s Meagan (a werewolf) standing there in the field.  Some crazy stuff is about to go down, y’all.

And now for some randomocity:  Did anyone else cry at the end of Vampire Diaries this week?  I got caught up.  Ha!  Also, The Secret Circle was awesome, I thought.  It was enough like the books for me to enjoy it, but I also liked the updates.  I was the same age as the characters when the book came out and what seemed dangerous then, is kinda not now!  They’ve upped the action, for sure.

My time chunk is slipping away!  Check you guys later.

 

Posted in: Blogs, Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Progress, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , ,

Invasion! and #ROW80

July 31, 2011 11:50 am ⋅ 6 Comments ⋅

The Benefiels are under attack!

Our garage and my husband’s office have been invaded by fleas.  We’re talking an infestation of Angela’s Ashes proportions.  Ick.

For most of my adult life, I’ve had at least two dogs and three cats.  We’re now down to one dog and two cats…and about a gazillion fleas.

My cats are old. Vampire old. And we have a hard time getting them to come inside in the summer.  The have kitty dementia and forget that the garage is where their food is, so we have to hunt them down every evening and put them in there.  In the past when we’ve tried feeding them outside, we’ve ended up with some pissy raccoons at our backdoor munching away at the cat food and hissing at me when I tried to shoo them away. Raccoons scare the bejeebus out of me.  Also, possums.

So, I was dutifully putting the cats in the garage every evening.  But they stopped eating and kept trying to escape.  We couldn’t figure out why.

Then my husband and I started noticing that when we’d go out to the garage we were being bitten by something.

Like I said, I’ve always had a bunch of pets, so I’m used to some level of flea-ness in the summer, but this was ridiculous.  Now, stepping into the garage to get a soda from the beer fridge had become a stealthy operation.

Just how quickly could we open the door to the garage, lean out into the garage, open the fridge door and grab a beverage?  I’ve come up with sparkling water when I was going after a Diet Coke more than once.

When the fleas started screwing with my Diet Coke consumption, it was WAR.

I began feeding the cats outside again, b.b. gun at the ready in case any raccoons try to trespass on my land and take what’s mine. Never mind I’ve not shot the thing.  How do you keep all the b.b’s from falling out? Whatever.  It’s about intimidation.  The raccoons don’t know I don’t know how to load the gun properly. Or that I have night blindness and will have better luck aiming at the kids ladybug sandbox than a moving target.

Enough about the damned raccoons.

Back to the fleas.  The pets have been liberally doused in Frontline.  We bought a gigantic aerosol can of Sentry Flea and Flea egg killer.  It came in pump spray, but I went with aerosol, because I’m not effing around here, people. This is no time to be a hippie!!

Last night we dropped the kids off at my parents and sprayed the house.  We used the whole can.

And we waited.

After the foggy chemical mist settled, my husband bravely ventured into the garage for a  life-sustaining Dr. Pepper.  He emerged from the garage triumphant.

“There seem to be less fleas on my socks.”

Huzzah!  The was much celebration in the form of TV and movie watching.  I caught the second half of Tess of the D’Ubervilles on Masterpiece Classic and the hubs watched Source Code, which he claims to have figured out in the first five minutes.

Cha.

ROW80 update: I managed to squeeze in another 300 words on Takeover on Thursday. I’m becoming annoyed that it’s not going  faster, so I’m upping my time working on it to two hours a day on Monday and Tuesday.  I’d like for it to be in the 6k range by the end of this week.

The Goodreads giveaway of two copies of the Zellie Wells trilogy has ended.  1,199 people signed up for it, so that was cool.  Congratulations to Denise Zaky and Michelle Fecko.

There will be more giveaways of the trilogy, so if you still want to win one, keep your eyes out for that.

I have some other exciting news to share, but I’ll save that for another day when I can make it the focus of a blog post and not just tacked onto the end of this randomness. :)

Happy reading and writing and may you be safe from the evils of fleas.

 

 

 

Posted in: Bad neighbors, Darn good television, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Mid-week #ROW80 check-in

July 27, 2011 7:58 am ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

Quick check-in today: 500-ish words (over, not under) on Takeover on Monday. Two and a half more scenes on the Glimpse pilot yesterday.  Monday and Tuesday seem to be the days I have the most time to fit writing in. I’m aiming for more work on Takeover today.  Thursday, Friday and Saturday are non-stop busy!  Oh, crazy summertime.

Today’s the last day to sign up to win one of two paperback copies of the Zellie Wells trilogy on Goodreads.

Book you should move to the top of your TBR pile: Darkness in the Blood by Vicki Keire.  Don’t be dumb like me, read it sooner than later. :)

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed Glow.  It doesn’t look so sad and lonely anymore.

Posted in: Darn good television, E-books, Fiction, indie authors, indie readers, Kindle, Reviews, ROW80, Self-publishing, Writers, Writing, YAY YA, Young Adult ⋅ Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,