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Wild Child by Shelley Munro
By AR Fun
February 4th, 2010
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Congratulations to Eva S. for winning a copy of this book!
About the Book
Seize the day…
Zoë Underwood loved Matt Cantrell from the moment her mother married his father. She definitely thinks of him as more than a big brother and even though he moved away from home the moment their parents got married, her feelings for him have grown stronger, bigger. More. No one presses her buttons like the tall, dark and gorgeous Matt. If only he can get over the eight-year age difference.
Now, Zoë is determined to snare her man. She wants one thing—Matt’s love. It’s time for her to make a move, stir things up a little and take a chance on love.
By Shelley Munro
· All Romance eBooks
· February 2010
· ISBN: 28DOH02022010
order Wild Child
Valentine’s Day Overhaul
By Joanne Rock
February 3rd, 2010
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Recent comments from: · Karen T.
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Maybe you’ll think this sounds crazy coming from a romance author. But I’m not sure how I feel about Valentine’s Day.
I like the candy hearts, and I’m always hopeful there’s a dinner out in the works. But overall, Valentine’s Day feels a smidge manufactured to me. (Oddly, I posted elsewhere about how Christmas was all in how you look at it, and came away feeling like it was not over-commercialized because I didn’t let it be.) In researching this- my reasons for feeling shoved into romance on February 14th– I went to the History Channel’s website. I was reminded that Valentine’s Day is named for a martyred saint with no connection to romance. (Not to take away from his sainthood… I’m sure he – or any of the martyred saints named Valentine, of which there seem to be two or three—was a great guy.) But who made the jump between the martyr and the romantic holiday? The ties between love and sacrifice feel a little suffocating.
I think Valentine’s Day is another victim of our culture cross-wiring Romance and romance. I’ve made the case elsewhere the Romantic poets weren’t talking about undying love so much as deep, passionate feeling. In this way, there is an element of Romance in Romeo and Juliet. It’s all about big, sweeping emotion. But I don’t look to Juliet for model heroine in my happily-ever-after vision of romance, that’s for sure. Anyway, I wonder if somewhere along the line St. Valentine and his sacrifice/passionate commitment to his faith was called Romantic in the old-school sense of that word?
Whatever happened in the cross-wiring of meaning to give us a Valentine’s Day that equates with romantic love, let’s set that aside for now and look at what we have for a Valentine Day icon. The winged Cupid is usually a child and—again with the violence theme—he comes bearing weaponry. If we’re going to have a half-naked icon to inspire romance, why not Hugh Jackman or the yummy Gilles Marini of Brothers and Sisters fame?
Seriously, I think Valentine’s Day is an awfully concocted holiday. We’ve turned it into something we wanted to have as a culture—a day to celebrate love. And that’s cool. But as long as the generations before us pinned meaning on the holiday that wasn’t there to start with, why don’t we do the same?
Let’s say we’re going to come up with a new Valentine’s Day icon. We could come up with a flower more original than the over-taxed rose.  Georgia O’Keefe, for example, knew about sexiness in a flower. I vote we use something more like this. Or, if we’re looking for something wildly romantic, how about a couple?
What do you think? If we had it to do over again, what images do you think would be right for Valentine’s Day—what says “romance” in the sense that has to do with falling in love—as far as you’re concerned? I’ll give away a copy of any book from my backlist to a random poster… your choice!
Manhunting by Joanne Rock
By AR Fun
February 2nd, 2010
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Congratulations to Karen B. for winning a copy of this book!
About the Book
Watch out, guys! These ladies mean business…
The Takedown by Joanne Rock
Luke Owens has been trying to avoid the sensual
allure of Tori Halsey, his best friend’s little sister, all his life. But all bets are off when she decides to take him down and have her way with him!
By Joanne Rock
· Harlequin Blaze
· February 2010
· ISBN: 0373795238
order at Amazon.com
order at Barnes&Noble.com
Read an excerpt after the break!
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Road Trip New Zealand Style
By Shelley Munro
February 1st, 2010
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This is the tale of our recent road trip…
 I haven’t done the trip from Auckland to Wellington for a long time. Yes, I was excited about the prospect of a trip South. We picked up the van we had to drive to Wellington the night before. It’s a little van with vinyl seats and not much leg room. Mr. Munro complained the van didn’t like going fast. He had trouble coaxing it past 100km per hour, which is our speed limit. After little sleep (we had a phone call at 2.00am – highly uncivilized if you ask me!!) we hit the road at six-thirty.
It turned out that the van wasn’t too bad for leg space and a towel stopped the problem of sticking to the vinyl seats. The van loved going up hills, which was a bonus, but on the down side it also loved to guzzle gas. We had to stop three times to refill during the eight hour drive.
The weather was beautiful, without a cloud in the sky. The iPod worked well and we drove with the windows down and the music blaring – well as much as Mr. Munro lets the music blare. He’s a fuddy-duddy that way!
We stopped at Lake Taupo, which is the biggest lake in New Zealand, and supposedly the site of the largest volcanic reaction the world has ever seen. You’ve probably heard me mention Taupo before. I like it very much and have some wonderful memories of family holidays spent there as a teenager. I pointed out the street where my mother received a parking ticket and where we went to the movies. The lake was flat calm and the trio of mountains were visible across the water. That’s unusual so we took photos.
We drove down the Desert Road and managed to take some great shots of the mountains. The Desert Road is mostly tussock, but parts of it are very sandy. During winter this stretch of road is often closed due to snow and ice. The NZ army do a lot of their training here before troops are sent overseas. The terrain is certainly challenging, and while it’s very pretty, I wouldn’t want to be there in the middle of winter.
The rest of the drive was through farm land before we hit the coast and the sea. The pohutukawa trees seem to flower later down here. The trees were ablaze with scarlet flowers. Pohutukawa flowers always remind me of Christmas. We drove into the central city of Wellington and found our serviced apartment without any problem. It’s very central – just a brief walk away from most of the tourist spots. We can even see a sliver of the waterfront from our balcony.
I’ve done a lot of travelling, and I think a person would have to go a long way to see better scenery. New Zealand really is a pretty country, not that I’m biased or anything.
Do you enjoy road trips? When and where did you take your last road trip?
Shelley Munro lives in New Zealand and writes contemporary and paranormal romance for Ellora’s Cave and Samhain Publishing. Her latest release is Wild Child, a contemporary romance. Wild Child is part of All Romance eBooks 28 Days of Heart programe with all the proceeds going to the American Heart Association.
Combining Work and Play
By Delilah Devlin
January 29th, 2010
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Have I mentioned how much I love my job?
Besides the obvious reasons (jammies and sweats wardrobe, clock in when I want), there’s plenty to love—but it did take a while for me to figure out where to find the fun.
For a person who currently lives her most exciting adventures in her head, I had to reconnect with the person I used to be—the ex-Army action girl who liked to get in the middle of things. Hitting middle years means I’m not looking for the purely physical challenges anymore. But I can amuse myself.
I love field trips. Whether it’s scrouring a graveyard for interesting views into other people’s lives and deaths or walking down a deserted railroad track searching for ghost lights, I do have a fascination with the process of death. I interviewed a mortician about what happens after a body arrives at the funeral home and learned some interesting things that made it into the pages of Frannie ‘n’ the Private Dick. I attended a Roller Derby match, took pictures and interviewed players and refs. I travelled to Memphis and had a private tour of the city from John the Trolleyman. I meet some of the most interesting, ordinary people.
I discovered what I like to do in the way of “getting out there” to touch readers. Some folks hate blogging. I love it. The words I write into a posting every morning serve as my “morning pages” or journal. And I have fun with it too. You can find me posting pictures of my travels, the mushrooms in my backyard, the readers I meet at signing events…
I love live chats. I “talk” better, am wittier with my fingers, than I am in person. And while I live a hermit’s life when I’m deep in a book, which is most of the time, live chats make me feel connected to the rest of the world. I’ve met new friends there.
However, all that stuff isn’t the actual work of being a writer. It’s what we do to draw attention to the work. Slogging through a book to make a deadline can be grueling, but I’ve found what keeps me excited. I have to write short stories. When I stare 400 pages of manuscript in the face, it’s hard to picture the end. I take short breaks from the major work and write something short, 2500 to 6000 words. It’s a way to get to an end of something quickly, to get that temporary high from having accomplished something. Selling those short works gives another boost of self-esteem.
 Perhaps the most fun I’ve had lately is sharing the plotting of a story with my readers. I decided to write a novella, one chapter at a time, and seek their input all along the way. They tell me what ingredients they want to see—they chose the setting, the heroes’ occupations, the heroine’s. They choose plot turning points at the end of every chapter. And they write me in between installments to tell me they think that Mason should do this or that, or to speculate over what the big mystery of Bayou Noir really is. I’m loving it. And what does it cost me? A few hours every couple of months.
If you have a taste for the naughty stuff, check it out. I’m running a contest on my blog to entice readers to come vote for what happens next. You can see what readers have helped me create so far.
Happiness is a Warm Family
By Kathleen OReilly
January 27th, 2010
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I’m writing this while visiting my parents and sis in Texas, and it’s warm breezes and sunny days, and a far, far cry from a chilly wind in New York. My sister moved into a new house, and we’ve been helping her get set up (she’s been a professional renter before now), bringout furniture out of the attic (house is about 3 times the size of her old apartment), and searching out bees wax to ease the window creaks.
When I was a kid, my family was never the cool family. I remember admiring the Bluebird pack leader who could stand on her hand. My Mom wasn’t nearly that talented. I remember looking at everybody’s fancy cars (we drove an old gold station wagon for seriously, what must have been a gazillion years), and thinking how cushy leather seats were when compared to vinyl. When you’re a kid, your family is merely who you’re stuck with, rather than who you choose to spend time.
But this time, I didn’t schedule a lot of visits with friends, I didn’t plan to go shopping (although I’m taking Sis to Ikea tomorrow), nor did I bring a lot of books to read. Instead, I’ve been hanging at the hood. Watching cable news with my Dad. Reading the paper with my Mom. Sitting and watching the new puppy (did I mention my Sis got a new puppy to go with the new house?). And I realize that I’m very happy I don’t have the cool family, or that my Mom never could stand on her head. We tell a lot of jokes about the old Oldsmobile station wagon, and yes, I make fun of my parents some, but they make me fun of me, too, so I think we’re all even, and I realize how good it is to be home.
It’s not the fanciest, not the prettiest, not the cleanest, or the quietest, but no matter how far away I live, truly, there’s no place like home.
Coming Soon: Win Books on Tuesdays and Thursdays!
By AR Fun
January 25th, 2010
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Recent comments from: · april strength
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We’re thrilled to announce that starting in February, we will do spotlights on our authors’ books on Tuesdays and Thursdays right here on the blog. One randomly drawn blog reader who leaves a comment will win a copy of the book featured.
So make sure you stop by often for your chance to win!
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