HOW DO YOU BUY BOOKS?

Some of us actually like change. Others, not so much. I have to admit that I’m excited about the publishing industry and how we buy our books and as an author, where we sell our books. We have so many choices available these days, it’s hard not to get excited.

I took a trip to Memphis last month and listened to a book on CD and didn't get bored on the drive at all. When I’m working out on the elliptical, I can read a book on my iPhone or on my Kindle, turning pages with a flick of my finger. A good book will keep me on that elliptical longer than no book at all. Before ebooks, I chip-clipped the pages of my paperback novels to keep them open while I read and worked out. It was a pain and annoying to turn the page. I love reading from both my iPhone and my Kindle and the application knows to sync the pages so that if I’ve read farther on my iPhone than my Kindle on the same book, it will catch me up.

Heaven, I tell you. And if I want the old-fashioned comfort of holding a paperback in my hand, I can still get one from the bookstore or a department store.

My very first Harlequin Nocturne Cravings is out this month and it's only available by e-book. I'm okay with that. It's a great read and would be good incentive to me to climb onto my elliptical and read, read, read. It's fast-paced and exciting. The kind of book you don't want to put down. Perfect!

How do you like your books? 

HOT DEMON NIGHTS

Rookie cop Katya Danske didn't ask to become a member of Manhattan's Paranormal Investigative Team or to be partnered with a sexy-as-hell demon. Then a zombie literally drops into her lap and she's recruited to help Blaise Michaels battle an impending zombie outbreak.

Blaise is as exasperating as he is arousing, but while Katya's head tells her she should keep her distance, her body wants something else entirely. Forced to work closely together, their investigation takes them into the darkest shadows of the Manhattan underworld and makes their attraction impossible to deny. But with the zombie threat rising, their hot nights together may be their last...

Elle James aka Myla Jackson spent twenty years livin' and lovin' in South Texas, ranching horses, cattle, goats, ostriches and emus. A former IT professional, Elle is proud to be writing full-time, penning intrigues, historical and contemporary westerns and paranormal adventures that keep her readers on the edge of their seats. She has 29 novels or novellas with Harlequin, one self-published novel under pen name Elle James, 36 books or novellas with other publishers including Samhain, Elloras' Cave.

Visit ELLE JAMES at www.ellejames.com   

aka MYLA JACKSON at www.mylajackson.com

Suspense Rocks!

Last year at the Romance Writers of American Conference, I was asked to submit an idea for the Harlequin Nocturne Cravings line and I think, “Yeah, okay. I can do this.” Make it hot. Check. I can write hot. I do a lot of that under my alter-ego pen name Myla Jackson. No problem. Give us paranormal creatures. Check. Again, I’ve written paranormal. My first Intrigue had a werewolf villain and I’ve written more paranormals under my Myla pseudonym. I've got this.

And the rest is up to me. So what do I do? I add a mystery and suspense. After all these years of writing Harlequin Intrigues, I find it difficult NOT to write without a little mystery and suspense in it. Maybe it’s the adrenaline junky in me. I like it when my fingers fly across the keyboard when I’m writing. I’m hoping my readers’ eyes are flying through the pages as the suspense carries them along like a runaway freight train.

Given all that, this month my first Nocturne Cravings 

HOT DEMON NIGHTS 

is available. I got a kick-ass heroine and a sexy demon teaming up to bring down the source of the latest string of zombies.  

Come out and play in these HOT DEMON NIGHTS.

Rookie cop Katya Danske didn't ask to become a member of Manhattan's Paranormal Investigative Team or to be partnered with a sexy-as-hell demon. Then a zombie literally drops into her lap and she's recruited to help Blaise Michaels battle an impending zombie outbreak.

Blaise is as exasperating as he is arousing, but while Katya's head tells her she should keep her distance, her body wants something else entirely. Forced to work closely together, their investigation takes them into the darkest shadows of the Manhattan underworld and makes their attraction impossible to deny. But with the zombie threat rising, their hot nights together may be their last...

Elle James aka Myla Jackson spent twenty years livin' and lovin' in South Texas, ranching horses, cattle, goats, ostriches and emus. A former IT professional, Elle is proud to be writing full-time, penning intrigues, historical and contemporary westerns and paranormal adventures that keep her readers on the edge of their seats. She has 29 novels or novellas with Harlequin, one self-published novel under pen name Elle James, 36 books or novellas with other publishers including Samhain, Elloras' Cave.

Visit Elle James at www.ellejames.com  and Myla Jackson at www.mylajackson.com

My Exciting Life

Over the years, I’ve made a point of seeking out danger. Partly so I can write about the emotions of my Intrigue heroes and heroines when they’re in a tight spot. And partly to try out perils that may end up in my books.

About four years ago I ended up in the passenger seat of a two-person glider, being towed into the air by a small, single-engine plane. FYI, the passenger seat is in the front. The guy who’s steering the glider is in the back. These babies are smaller than a World War II fighter, and there’s no engine. The little plane took us four thousand feet into the air. Then the pilot asks me to turn the lever that cuts us loose. I did, and we glided free in the sky above Santa Ynez, California, then over the former Reagan ranch. The worst part was being dragged along behind that little plane. Every time it tipped to the left or right, we also tipped, and I held onto the sides of the cockpit with white knuckles. But once we were on our own, it was like floating on a cloud. Or it would have been, if there had been any clouds in that perfectly blue sky.

At the other research extreme, about twelve years ago, I went down to the edge of the Atlantic shelf in a submarine, off the coast of Grand Cayman Island. It was a small sub, but unlike on the tiny glider, there were 29 other passengers lined up at seats along the hull, each with a viewing window. Before we dove, each of us was handed a kind of mask. The pilot told us that it was a “rebreather.” He went on to say, “If we get stuck for any reason, you can breathe through this thing for up to four hours.” Oh great, I thought. If I get stuck in this tin can with 29 other passengers, I’ll go stark raving mad and forget how to breathe at all.

When I go out on a research trip, I don’t always know how I’m going to use the experience in a book. Or if I will. I haven’t glided any heroes or heroines into enemy territory yet, but my submarine mission was perfect for my August Intrigue, MORE THAN A MAN. Only I made it ten times worse for my hero, Noah Fielding. As the book opens, Noah’s been stuck in a small, experimental sub off Grand Cayman. (Big coincidence, right?) The mother ship has hauled the sub up, and everybody except Noah is dead. The cops think he lived because he hogged the oxygen. The real reason Noah survives is that he was born 700 years ago in a little English village. He doesn’t know why he’s lived so long. But dying millionaire Jarred Bainbridge reads about the incident and is determined to capture Noah and discover his secret.

I love to use my research in my books. If I’ve “been there,” the experience is all the more real when I write about it.

Do you like to travel? What are some of your most memorable experiences? I’ll be sending a copy of my RT Top Pick Intrigue, CHRISTMAS SPIRIT, to one reader who posts responses.

Rebecca

Would You Believe?

When I saw the cover of MORE THAN A MAN, my August Intrigue, I did a double take. The great-looking guy on the cover is the spitting image of my son. Did the art department find a picture of him? Or is it just an accident? The skin tone’s off. My son’s got more olive coloration. And his hair is shorter. But that’s HIM. And if he ever sees this post, he’ll probably come after me with an ax for telling you about my reaction to the cover. I know he doesn’t see himself as the hero of a romance novel. (He once did a sarcastic review of one of my books for a literature class he was taking at the University of Maryland, where he pointed out that the brand of car my heroine drove changed in the middle of the book.)

On the other hand, he’s obviously a danger junky. He’s a State Department Foreign Service Officer, and his assignments are mostly in places I don’t want to visit, like Albania and Kazakhstan. The exception was a posting to Moscow a few years ago. Right now he’s in Afghanistan, on a Provincial Reconstruction Team. And he’s volunteered to stay another year, this time at Kandahar Air Base. Where I can worry about him some more.

He’s due to come home for a brief vacation in–wait for it–July, right around RWA. But his home base is DC, so I hope to see him during the conference. Maybe I can even persuade him to stop in at the Marriott so everybody can compare him to the MORE THAN A MAN cover. If I break away from the conference for a few hours, you’ll know it was to have some time with him. I’d love to rent a beach house for a week while he’s here and get the family together. But I don’t know if it’s going to happen, since he hasn’t answered my questions about when exactly he’ll be in town. How’s that for a cliff-hanger?

Rebecca