I had a little trouble getting the tagline for Ashes of the Day (available now!) cleared by The Powers That Be. For some reason, whoever’s in charge of such thing kept suggesting new tagline ideas and I kept writing back insisting that the tagline I’d come up with said exactly what I wanted it to say.  Only blood can break your heart.

Now, on the surface, that might not seem to make a whole lot of sense. After all,  there are a lot of things that can cause a broken heart, right? The people you care about,  they sure can break your heart. The struggle for survival—that can do it too. And, in this book, my characters get to deal with all of that. Loss of love. Loss of life. The day-to-day struggle to keep going when all you really want to do is lay down and die.

So why would I stand behind such a sweeping statement? Well, I’ve never claimed to be a woman of few words, so let me elaborate on that. See, in the world of vampires (or at least, in the world of my vampires) blood is…well, pretty much everything. Blood is family. Blood is sustenance. It’s what very often spells the difference between sickness and health, between life and death. Blood is nurturing and addictive; it’s an absolute necessity. But, on occasion, it can also kill you.

In this book (the fourth in the series) I introduce the concept of a Blood Plague—an incurable, man-made disease that led to madness and death and came close to wiping out the entire vampire population back in the middle ages. In order to defeat the disease, and stave off extinction, any vampire found to be infected was killed. It sounds ruthless, I know, but I think of it as the vampire equivalent of Old Yeller or The Yearling—only on a very, very wide scale. It was necessary. It was justified. And, in the end, it was merciful. But, all the same, if something like that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what will.

So. Only blood can break your heart. Yep, as a tagline, that still works for me.

http://store.samhainpublishing.com/ashes-of-the-day-p-7402.html

Children of Night, Book 4

New Year’s Eve, 1999. The world is braced for Y2K, but that’s not the only ticking time bomb in Conrad’s life. Damian wouldn’t be the first vampire to find a way to die, but Conrad is determined he will not be one of them.

 Present day. Damian struggles to trust that fate could possibly be kind enough to give him a love as perfect as Conrad’s. Conrad balances on the keen edge of his own fear that one more slip of his formidable control could drive his lover away—permanently.

Julie learns the hard way it’s not just interspecies relationships that seldom work out. Even between vampires, love is not a smooth course.

Meanwhile, intrigue and conflict within the nest continue to grow, fueled in no small part by Georgia’s slipping hold on a deadly secret. Marc works to consolidate his position as leader of the ferals—and discovers that being a walking anomaly has certain advantages. Including some that are totally unexpected.

Product Warnings

Contains more love triangles, more power struggles, more tears and teeth gnashing, and even more graphic scenes of manlove between moody, domestically inclined vampires than in previous editions. Definitely not recommended for anyone suffering from ALSSD (Auld Lang Syne Sensitivity Disorder) or with aversions to ballrooms, evening clothes, sarcasm, or close-quarter stiletto combat.

Write what you fear.

If a subject doesn’t scare you, it’ going to be hard to give that little jolt of terror to your readers. Lucky for us, everyone fears something. Us horror folks have to dig down deep into our depraved psyches and root around for things we’d feel were best left to the recesses. Those fears don’t have to necessarily be of ghosts or monsters or spiders or apocalyptic events, though they are all great starting points.

I’m talking about the things that can put you in a panic attack spiral just by thinking about them. This is the real stuff, the emotional ooze from which all great stories arise. If you’re a parent, you naturally fear something bad happening to your child. Or maybe you have social anxiety. Does your stomach bunch into a knot when you cross a bridge, feeling that almost imperceptible bounce when you’re caught in traffic in the center of the span and the structure begins to sway? We’re talking dry mouth, heart palpitations, sweaty palms, the whole horrid deal.

So, what do I personally fear?

My wife dying. She’s had more medical issues than American Idol has had judges. I know that sounds flippant, but after 20+ years, you develop a keen sense of gallows humor. Death is always leering at us from around the corner. Waking to face another day makes you stronger, but it also chips away at you, creating a path for the fear to creep in.

I find that fear insinuating itself into my work, most times without my knowing it. My current novel, Sinister Entity, and story, The Graveyard Speaks, both star Jessica Backman, a girl who lost her mother when she was young. What happens to a family who has lost the glue that holds them together? In my first Samhain novel, Forest of Shadows, Jessica’s father was crippled with anxiety after the loss of his wife and her mother. Jessica, now older, overcompensates and likes to think she’s afraid of nothing. If only it was that easy.

In my book Evil Eternal, the mortal made immortal, Father Michael, sold his soul to God after the horrific murder of his wife. I just completed a novel that will be out next summer, and in it, a character is scarred for 30 years after his fiancé commited suicide.

My fear informs my writing. It’s a mirror that dares me not to flinch. When I do, and write it down, I hope my readers will as well. That is where true horror lives.
What do you fear?

All those sub-genres (flavors) Paranormal, Romantic Suspense, Historical, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comedy Cowboys, Vampires, Shapeshifters, Demons, Red Hots, Time Travel, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, Gay, Post Apocalyptic, and more, sometimes it feels like when I was five-years-old and my mother took me to that huge ice-cream parlor on our trip from New Zealand to LA!

So are you the girl who always chooses one particular favorite, or do you change it up and choose across the range? Myself I’ve pretty much tried them all! But I do keep going back to my current favorite flavors, paranormal and romantic suspense. I also write at a very high heat level so I buy a lot of Red Hots too. Yum!

Now something else I thought was interesting happened last year when Samhain Publishing performed some statistical analysis on which sub-genres were its best sellers in romance. The company was delighted to find that rather than having one sub-genre dominate at Samhain, instead multiple different romance sub-genres had sold very well in 2012.
Samhain’s top five titles for the year 2012 were a contemporary, a romantic suspense, a western, a paranormal, and a military romance. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2012/12/prweb10254264.htm

Now my husband owns and operates an ice-cream van, for a living, so I hope you won’t mind me extending the metaphor a little further. When it comes to writing romance I’m again overwhelmed by all the flavors, and I have story ideas in my head, for every sub-genre.
But my first and currently only Samhain title Wicked Wonderland is an erotic, paranormal, red hot holiday, MMF ménage romance with BD/SM elements!

Can I call that a sundae with all the toppings?

And my WIP (work in progress in writer speak) includes shape shifters as well.
It’s so hard to stick to one flavor! Happy ice-cream licking, and happy reading everyone!

But I didn’t even know I had such a strong preference until about 10 years ago. My hubby and I were planning a trip with another couple and she really wanted to see the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, so we planned a trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. At the last minute, the other couple had to cancel, but hubby and I went anyway. We climbed the lighthouse and that was pretty cool, but the minute we stepped onto the beach in Rodanthe…I was struck with a yearning on a gut level, so strong it brought tears to my eyes. As a writer I should be able to put into words the way I felt, but there are no words to explain why I, a person with poor swimming skills at best, could feel the primal pull of the ocean. The sound of the waves breaking over the sand. The scent of the ocean breeze. The darting of the sandpipers skirting the waves. It calls to me on a deep level.

So that’s where I am right now. On the Outer Banks. I’m sitting at our campsite within sight and sound of the ocean just on the other side of the dunes. We’ve been walking the beach every morning and wish I could start every morning that way. Maybe if I sell a few million copies of my books, I could get a little beach cottage somewhere and I could indulge in my desire for the beach more than once a year.

So what about you? The beach? Or the mountains?

Natasha

www.natashamoore.com

He or she doesn’t get to speak unless I know exactly who is talking.

Luckily, they usually make it clear from word one. In my Retro Romance time travel re-releases, I still remember meeting Shannon and John, and Alex and Cassie. Everyone had the good grace to shout out their name right away. Oddly enough, I never thought I’d use the name John for a hero, but for John Cutler, it was kismet. Such a strong, no-frills, no-nonsense guy. Definitely a “John.”

And even though Alex was the hero of the sequel (TIME WEAVER), he showed up toward the end of the first book (TIMELESS), and introduced himself to the heroine when she was half-conscious in a hospital bed, so that one was easy. He called himself Alexander BlackKnife in that scene, but seriously, I knew he was an Alex all the way.

It’s not always that easy, and when I have problems with names, I turn to my trusty supply of baby name books. Dog-eared and marked up with a variety of pens, these three paperbacks have so much nostalgic value at this point, I’d bring them with me if my house was threatened by disaster, even if the authorities limited me to one carload.

So why am I discussing this in connection with my time travel books? If you’ve read TIMELESS, you know the answer. It’s Kahnawakee – the chief of the Susquehannocks. True, he’s not the hero of either tale, romance-wise, but he’s a pivotal character (and hot as a man can be). And I had to get his name just right, because he wasn’t just a legend in his own time, he was a source of inspiration to me the moment I met him.

For once, my baby-naming books failed me, but by chance – when I was studying an old map of the area where the stories take place –there he was, daring me to discover him. And I have to admit, in addition to being a powerful secondary character, he was a hero to me. Married, so not really a hero in the traditional sense…

Oh who am I kidding? It was love at first sight. And since I scribbled his name on the inside covers of my baby-name books, as I often do when a name has special significance, he’s part of my life, real and fictional, forever.

Kate

Party plans had been in the works for months. Flowers had been ordered, a delicious menu selected (we went with a chicken nugget party platter) and the beautiful frosting-flowered cake ready to be picked up. Now all we had to do was keep the guest of honor in the dark for a few more hours.

And she wasn’t making it easy. Samantha Smith, Samhain’s marketing coordinator, is getting married in a little over a week, and we wanted to have a surprise shower to celebrate her big day. You’d think she’d be distracted by the looming wedding date, but no such luck. When she arrived for work, she immediately noticed the glass door to the conference room (which was now decorated) had been covered with orange tiger-striped fabric left over from RT.

Our brilliant method of keeping the decorations under wraps.

“What’s that about?” she asked.

“Uh, it’s Jungle Thursday!” we said.

“Huh?”

After some quick thinking, we explained there’d be painting going on in there later. Luckily, she didn’t take the time to question why covering the glass in fabric was an appropriate response to some wall touchups.

The next speed bump wasn’t so easy to cross. Mostly because it involved a really loud guy.

“SAM SMITH?” the flower deliveryman who wandered into the office area said about forty-seven times, within earshot of Sam’s desk. “THESE ARE FOR SAM SMITH. SAM SMITH SAM SMITH SAM SMITH?”

If this book publishing thing doesn’t work out, we can always become a florist.

We whisked the flowers away and made a run for it, but not before Sam saw a blur of white in the flower guy’s hands and thought she heard someone say her name. Panicking, we told her the hidden flowers were for Donna and they were a surprise thankyouverymuch. We grabbed one of the least-dead potted plants—in a white pot—stuck an old, stained yellow bow in it, topped it with a ceramic frog and presented it as a brand-new delivery. Sam, needless to say, now suspected something fishy might be going on.

But the time for the shower was fast approaching; she just needed to be distracted for a little while longer. This time, we were prepared—we’d decided that a meeting, just before noon, would be a good way to keep her at her desk while the last-minute preparations were done.

“Well, time to get some stuff done,” we said nonchalantly at about 11:45. “Don’t you have a meeting?”

“Uh, no?” Sam said.

Turns out the meeting had been scheduled for the wrong time.

Once that was sorted out and Sam was safely occupied, it occurred to us that we should probably rush before something else went wrong. The food was delivered and set out, the flowers were dragged out of their hiding spot and smuggled into the conference room and, most importantly, Sam’s fiancé arrived to share the party with us. Exhausted by the upheavals and keeping track of all the pre-party lies, we staggered into the room for the last-minute wait.

The actual flowers, designed to look like Sam’s dog, Penny. We guess these are a LITTLE better than the frog plant.

But it was all worth it to see the look on Sam’s face when she walked in and saw what we’d put together for her. Either she’s an excellent actor and can blush on cue or we actually did manage to surprise her, against all odds.

Food and drink were had, presents were opened and frosting roses were jealously claimed. All in all, it was a very successful wedding shower, if we do say so ourselves. But we don’t think we’ll be attempting another surprise party any time soon.

I will be one of the featured authors at the Frederick Book Festival this Saturday in Frederick, MD at the Fairgrounds. If you are in the vicinity, please stop by and say hello.

I love random thoughts. The strangest thing can spark an idea. If you have any random thoughts today, I’d love to hear about them.

It was a random thought that gave me the first spark for my contemporary romance, “Million Dollar Mistake,” which is now out from Samhain Publishing in digital format and will be out in print 9/13. MDM is the first book in my new series, Million Dollar Men.

I was looking at a tabloid magazine, and realized that I didn’t have the slightest idea who some of the women were who were on the covers. I’m talking about the people who are famous for no reason, the reality participants, or Paris Hilton’s, the Snooki’s, the number of other women who are there, but haven’t really accomplished anything I considered substantial, except hog their fifteen minutes of fame.

Then I thought, what if I have a tabloid bad girl, who is bored and accepts an offer to go away for the weekend with a man, and then realized this type of tabloid lifestyle is no longer what she wants. She wants to be loved for herself, not because it would be a good headline. That was the idea that sparked Million Dollar Mistake

When the book starts, Raven Rutledge is the ultimate tabloid bad girl. Nicholas Demetrious is the very distant family connection who has always been the one designated to get her out of trouble, while trying to avoid falling into trouble with her. After all, a bad girl is just as appealing as a bad boy when she looks and acts like Raven. Raven is impulsive, wild to a fault, and secretly hoping someone will stop her before she destroys herself. Nicholas on the other hand is cool and controlled, except when it comes to Raven. He’s forced to rescue Raven from her most recent disaster, because her presence is messing up a very lucrative business deal. Taking care of the family business and the family fortune is his job, and he takes his job very seriously. It’s not the noblest reason for his actions, but, when you consider he’s always been halfway in love with Raven, it’s understandable.

Anyway, the two of them spar, seduce and use their wit to bring the situation to a fun romantic conclusion. AND, I forgot to tell you; this book actually offers two romantic stories in one. Did I mention there is another couple involved when they are all snowed in by a blizzard in the Adirondacks? If not, well I hope you’ll all want to find out more about it by yourselves.

I’m will be running a giveaway contest for the print edition of Million Dollar Mistake, with terrific prizes. Sign up: www.meglacey.com to sign up. To find out what else I’m up to visit Facebook: www.facebook.com/meglaceybooks.

Meg