Alison Kent's Blah Blog

Get ready to burn…

Rafe Hathaway has a problem. He’s irresistibly drawn to two different women…and they both happen to live in the same body. Should he choose brave, sexy Paula, who’s fighting impossible odds to hang on to her very existence… or sultry Isidora who offers immortal life?

Post a comment here if you’d like to be entered to win a copy of GOTHIC HEAT from Portia Da Costa. Winner will be drawn, Sunday night, June 1, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.ish CDT. (Authors interested in having their books advertised, click here.)

You’ve seen it on Wheel of Fortune, right? The before and after answers? Like “risky business degree?” Yesterday it was even a category on Jeopardy (the one daytime show I’m finding myself tuning into) involving Broadway themes – with some very creative answers. Like “A Chorus Line of scrimmage” and “Sunday in the Park with George Orwell.”

Today we’re going to play before and after with book titles for the chance to win two faboo prizes! Whoo-hoo! In case you don’t know it from either game show, here’s how it works. You pick (in this case) one book title to start with, then pick a second – the first word of which must be the last word of the other. For example:

• FIRE IN THE BLOOD BROTHERS (Fire in the Blood by Kelley St. John and Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts)
• DANGEROUS TO TOUCH THE DARK (Dangerous to Touch by Jill Sorenson and Touch the Dark by Karen Chance)
• HAVE MERCY STREET (Have Mercy by Jo Leigh and Mercy Street by Mariah Stewart)

When you comment, do so just like that. The two titles together, then the names of the two books and the authors following. Note: You canNOT use the word “THE” as the connecting word between the two titles. Not that a book would have “the” as the last word in it’s title, but you get my drift. I want more effort than that.

And what faboo prizes will you be playing for? So glad you asked. The first is a copy of AT RISK, because this box of my author copies is just sitting here taking up space and the books are begging to be put in the hands of readers.

The second book is a copy of BRIEFLY YOURS by Madison Martin.

Ava Parker, shy, intelligent, and much more attractive than she realizes, works in the not-so-exciting world of underwear fashion design for “mature ladies”.

But is Ava actually sleeping with the underwear design enemy?

I’ll draw a winner on Tuesday, June 3, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.ish, CDT. Have fun! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

. . . on drawing a winner from the marriage of convenience brainstorming post. Using Random.org . . . the winner is Suzie! Suzie, send me your mailing info and I’ll pop the book into the mail.

Since I mentioned designing websites yesterday, I thought I’d point you to my newest one just launched, Kathleen O’Reilly. I don’t take on new sites much anymore. Kathleen’s was one for which I’d done the original design a LONG time ago, and she and the husband both updated it as needed, but she wanted a new look and this one turned out pretty good.

Many authors are wanting content management sites these days, usually in a WordPress platform. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the time to learn WP well enough to take on such sites – unless the husband is around to do that part of the coding. I can update in WP easily enough (though it can be aggravating), but have always relied on him to translate what I do in html into php. Unfortunately, he’s no longer around to do my every bidding.

You see, the husband, a geologist by degree and at heart, is back to work in his own field after many years away. (Yes, the evol oil biz is veddy veddy good to us, sorry!) The downtown Houston office in this video is where he’s spending a lot of his time, the two men in the video ones he’s working for/with/alongside. The fields shown here are about 15 miles west of where we live (which is about 25 west of Houston), but we only have to drive about 5 to see similar sites of cattle, round bales, and pump jacks. He’s working on different jobs than what’s you’ll see here, recently doing seismic blah geo-jargon blah for a company drilling in South America. So, yes. For the first time since my twenty – something kids were toddlers, *I* am the stay-at-home spouse, though I do have a full-time job with the writing, and another (the web work) that keeps me busy the rest of the time!

. . . I’m terrible about updating my own. Except for my blog, obviously. I was bemoaning this to my design partner this weekend after spending about three hours on updates. She said, “Yeah, this is why people pay us.” True, that. Updates of my own stuff just seem so time-consuming. Like I could be reading or writing instead. Alas, updates are what bring readers here, so I’m happy to report that I managed to do the following:

• The splash page has a new rotating image featuring the summer books
• The new release page features the summer books with links to the original pages, also all updated
• New pages have been added for IN DANGER and DEEP TROUBLE; all the info for AT RISK is found on THE BANE AFFAIR page
• New pages with brand new excerpts have been added for KISS & TELL and MAXIMUM EXPOSURE
• I will be running three month-long contests this summer to celebrate the June, July, and August releases of AT RISK, IN DANGER, and DEEP TROUBLE. The link is on the New & More page, but it won’t be live until June 1st.

Speaking of websites, I’ve been comparing notes with a few author friends, and we’ve all noticed that contest entries and traffic has been down across the board. Judging by my own web surfing of late, this doesn’t surprise me at all. I have a very small handful of blogs I read daily, and an even smaller handful of those are reader or author blogs. If one of those bloggers mentions something happening at another site, I’ll pop over and take a look, but I find that I’m not going out and seeking out industry info on my own. I’ve heard conjecture that the economy is just taking its toll and people no longer have the spare time they once did, their minds and thoughts elsewhere.

What about you guys? Are your web habits changing? If so, any idea why?

. . . is beginning to produce. I haven’t said much about it recently, but since my hand has only now stopped burning, I thought I would today. More on the hand in a moment. This year for the first time the husband did six containers of sweet onions.

They didn’t get very large due to the nature of growing the bulbs in containers, but they turned out SO yummy! As did the peppers, which are getting to be a very decent size.

About my hand burning . . . Sunday night while the husband was at work (a post that will be coming soon) I baked half a Freschetta Brick Oven pizza. It was the 5 Italian cheese variety, so I used our cheapo kitchen mandolin to slice up some garden onions and garden peppers to add to it (along with feta cheese because what’s pizza without feta cheese).

I pulled the seeds and veins from the pepper by hand, loaded up the pizza, then washed up with soap immediately. Three times. Fourteen hours later, my skin was still feeling the sting of the pepper fire, oy! We’ve sliced up the peppers into salads, and I used them recently in King Ranch Chicken, but this was the first time my skin reacted this way.

Read the rest of this entry »

. . . of HOTTER AFTER MIDNIGHT is: Crystal B (chosen at random by asking The Perfessor to pick a number) Crystal – send me your mailing info and I’ll forward it to Cynthia. Congratulations!

. . . on the shelves at Wal-Mart. (Sorry about the glare from the crappy camera on the cell phone. I would’ve shopped prepared with the digital had I thought the book would be there when the husband and I hit the store for groceries and assorted miscellany Friday night.)

I gotta say, seeing my first mass market paperback on the shelf was tres cool (even with the poor guy’s face stickered; hey, at least it wasn’t my name). Yes, I had a previous mm reissue, but it was an anthology. And, yes, I see my category books on the shelf with every release. But AT RISK, though a reissue, is my first single author mass market. I was SO excited to find it there, woot!

. . . for a chance to win a copy of AT RISK. (Yes, I’m going to shamelessly bribe you with my author copies to help me jump start an idea, heh.)

In this day and age, as in 2008 not 1808 or 1608, give me a reason that a couple would enter into a marriage of convenience. Anything you can think of. I just started to give some examples, but x’d them out because I know what I’ve thought of; I want to hear what you can think of. The more creative the better, and, yes. It’s possible I will use something you offer as a jumping off point for a story idea I have. So if you’d rather not be a party to my jumping off, don’t play!!

I’ll draw a random name from all the comments I get and that person will receive a copy of AT RISK. Cut off is Wednesday, May 28, 2008, 8:00 p.m.ish CDT.

In her sexy and suspenseful new novel, Cynthia Eden introduces readers to a seductive world where powerful night creatures ignite dark, dangerous hungers…

But in the shadows, the Night Butcher waits…eager to spill Emily’s blood and taste her terror. And he’ll use any means to destroy her, including the one person she has grown to trust…

Post a comment here if you’d like to be entered to win a copy of HOTTER AFTER MIDNIGHT from Cynthia Eden. Winner will be drawn, Sunday night, May 25, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.ish CDT. (Authors interested in having their books advertised, click here.)