Help me decide...

I thought I would throw it out to the masses. I can't decide which I like better, or which set of pics I like better... so, want to help?

Let me know which design you like best by commenting below. 

#1:

OR

#2:


I bought the pics so I can mix and match, etc. Thanks for playing along!

Six Sentence Sunday- 4/29

Six Sentence Sunday is a great way for an author to tantalize in a very short piece from their work. I haven't been really good about doing them, but thought this week I needed to give you two. Maggie's Abduction has been out for a little over a week, and Half in Love releases in a couple of weeks, around May 10th. I received the cover art on Friday and love it!

Maggie's Abduction is a sci-fi, erotic romance about a woman, Maggie, who is... you guessed it, abducted. She's taken from Earth and given to an alien male as a distraction, a play thing. His race believes that females are submissive in and out of bed. She has to learn quickly how to behave appropriately. She does find herself being punished publicly for speaking out of turn. Here are the six sentences for Maggie:

Available NOW from Siren BookStrand

Maggie squeaked as her world tumbled. She realized that Raharan had flipped her over and she lay on her stomach on the edge of the table. Shock stilled her limbs for a moment while she processed what he had said. He was going to take her in front of his males, right here in the cafeteria, as her punishment for some boundary she had unknowingly overstepped. She was naked and being held down by the male that claimed her,. He was stronger, bigger, and at the moment angered beyond reason. 



Half in Love is a paranormal story about a shifter female, Willimena, who is partially changed as a teenager. Willie is a loner, straddling two worlds because of her shifter and vamp natures. Neither group wants her, and most often try to kill her if they find her. One night she stumbles across a male vampire who seems to be incapacitated. She so wants to run, but finds she is drawn to him. Here are the six sentences for Willie:

Available May 10th from Siren BookStrand

Liquid lust flowed through her body, pooling in the apex of her thighs. Her pussy clenched and heated. With the first draw of blood from the puncture wound at her neck, she felt a climax build. With the second slow suckling against her skin, her orgasm exploded. A moan escaped her lips as she melted against his body. She shivered when his tongue swiped over the punctures, sealing them.

Sensual Saturday Sentences- Maggie's Abduction

Maggie's Abduction is a Sci-Fi erotic romance. Maggie is kidnapped from Earth and given to an alien male as a play thing, a distraction, to keep him compliant. They are both prisoners on a ship bound for a life of hard labor, but what they find together is love and friendship.

Available now at Siren BookStrand

 

This snippet is when Maggie and Raharan first meet, or the first time she finds herself in his bed. She had just been kidnapped, tortured and drugged by another group of aliens. She wakes to find herself tied to a cot with a dark stranger growling at her. She's not really all that happy about her circumstances. You get a sense of Raharan's dominating personality in this tasty little treat. Enjoy!

 “Wake now.” A male voice entered the darkness and dragged Maggie from the comfort of unawareness. She struggled to place the voice, but reality stormed into her thoughts quickly. The metallic taste, dry mouth, and lack of memory quickly brought her from the black oblivion of unconsciousness with an eerie sense of déjà vu. She had been on a cold table, being tortured. Terror spiked fast and hard through her body.

 She opened her eyes, expecting the same sterile room, but found herself in a darkened metal cell. She was on her back on a bed of some sort, or at least a cloth pad that cushioned her body. With a quick glance, she noted that she was still naked but was covered with a coarse white sheet from breasts to mid thigh. Relief flowed through her. She wasn’t dead, hadn’t been maimed, and was probably okay. The drug-induced fog hadn’t fully lifted from her mind, but she didn’t feel any pain or discomfort anywhere. Maggie tried to roll, hoping to get a look at the rest of the cell. Her movements were halted by soft cloth straps around her wrists, tethering her to the corners of the bed. She pulled on the restraints, finding them stretchy and unbreakable. Shit. Now she was restrained to a bed? Would the nightmare never end?

 “Stop, now.” A gravelly voice pulled Maggie from her thoughts. She whipped her head around and stared across the cell at a large male standing in the corner farthest from the bed. The lights in the cell didn’t illuminate his face, but from the look of him, he was one of the largest men she had ever seen. His shoulders were easily twice as wide as hers. She guessed he stood close to seven feet tall if the height of the ceiling was the same as the first cell she had occupied.

 “Who are you?” Her voice was reedy and weak. She struggled to move on the bed to face him, but the ties wouldn’t allow her to roll. She pulled at them, testing their strength.

 “You must stop struggling against the restraints,” he growled.

 Maggie stared at his shadow for a moment, and when he didn’t speak again or move, she shifted her gaze to the fabric binding her to the bed. She pushed both arms up as far as she could to slacken the cloth, working her wrists in the cloth cuffs. If she could just get it loosened a little more—

 Large hands wrapped around her waist and pulled her down the bedding until her arms were stretched completely above her head. She squeaked at the sudden movement. She tried to struggle against the grip but was quickly pressed into the mattress by a very large and very heavy male body. She stilled immediately, fear drying her mouth.

 “You must stop struggling. I’m fighting my instincts enough as it is, but if you continue to struggle, you will force me to lose control.” He growled again, vibrating her chest where it met his. She was caught be a pair of golden feline eyes as he stared down at her. Their faces were mere inches apart. She gasped when the realization hit her that he wasn’t human. His face was humanoid, but wider and squarer than a typical male’s face. His eyes were widely set and deep in his face. His nose was wide and flat like that of a big cat. He had a full head of golden tan hair that was very similar to a lion mane. Thick lips clamped tight enough to whiten stress lines around them. Her body tensed, ready to battle the male laying on top of her. He squinted at her and rumbled deep in his chest. “Little human, you must listen to me. Your fear smells sweet and enticing. If you want me to behave myself and not take you this moment, you must calm and stop moving.”

Thanks for reading. Have a great Saturday!

Cover reveal- Half in Love

I love getting cover art! I think perhaps I love it more than getting anything else in the publishing plan. You can wait for everything else to come and it definitely is exciting, but NOTHING hits you harder than opening the email that contains the new covers for your book. So, without further ado here is my newest cover reveal!

Half in Love will be my next release, scheduled for May 10th. 

You know you want to read the blurb. This is a paranormal book that takes the ideas of vampires and shifters and melds them together into one cohesive, sexy, steaming love story. Wilimena, our heroine, wanted nothing more than a few minutes watching the waters of Lake Erie after a long workday. What she ended up with was a drugged male vampire and an itch to be a Good Samaritan. When her inner kitty starts sniffing around at the male she’s helping she knows Fate’s evil sense of humor was in full swing. Being a shifter-vampire hybrid was hard enough, but having a male vampire as her fated mate was just too much. Nickola, the vampire she assists, finds her breathtaking and does all he can to push Fate’s agenda. Stephen is the male vampire Nickola is investigating for the Council. He takes aim at the couple, intent on pulling Nick to his side or killing him. Between Stephen’s scheming and the Council’s interest in Willie can they survive the chaos long enough to test the depths of their passions?



I loved writing this story! The characters are fabulous and Willie is just a kick-ass female!

Thirteen Awesome Things from the Last Week

It's been one of those weeks that I will remember for the rest of my life. There's been excitement, nervousness, anticipation, and a whole host of other emotions. I wanted to share the top thirteen "things" that made my week not only wonderful but absolutely memorable.

1. My debut book released from Siren BookStrand
2. I sold my first book to a real person someplace in this world
3. I received my first ever book review, and it was good... 4 of 5
4. My first fanmail arrived via email
5. I celebrated my birthday
6. I connected with some of my favorite authors
7. My husband bought me a present for said birthday
8. I started planning a blog hop that now contains over 20 participants
9. My oldest daughter made me a b-day cake
10. My debut book released from Siren BookStrand (Oh, gotcha... I knows its a duplicate, but honestly I could fill each line with that statement!)
11. I got addicted to Twitter
12. My hubby made a wonderful dinner to celebrate my book and b-day
13. My debut book released! LOL

Thank you to everyone that has helped with comments, suggestions, blog spots, retweets, Facebook friending, etc. Without all of you most of the above wouldn't have happened.

Here's to another fabulous week, although another like this last one will make working the day job hard! LOL

Birthday Contest Winner!

Thank you to everyone that participated. I have a TON of new friends on Facebook and Twitter. I also have some awesome new followers of my blog.

Drum roll please.... the winner of the $10 StrandBucks or Amazon GC for the Birthday Giveaway is....

Sorel W. (@Sorelw11)

I've already contacted the winner via Twitter

Thanks, again, to everyone that participated!   

Interview with Donna Cooper- Trouble on Sugar Creek

Welcome my guest, Donna Cooper, the debut author from Siren. Her first release, Trouble on Sugar Creek, released yesterday!

If you like romantic suspense this book should be on your virtual book shelf.

Tell me about your new, and debut, release.

Trouble on Sugar Creek is about a rural farm girl named Zane Larson. She finds out that not all strange things happen in large cities when she discovers a body planted in a suitcase on her farm. She falls in love with FBI Agent Tim Casey, the investigator of the crime. At first, she thinks he is a rotten apple, but as time goes on, she comes to realize that he is worth saving.
Determination and courage are among the things that Tim sees in Zane that make her uniquely different. When she refuses to give in to threats and scare tactics, and sticks by her principles, Tim knows she is the gal for him. He has some determination of his own, and knows he is in love the first moment he sees her. Will Tim take a bride before he can solve the case?

What makes a great hero?

He has to be fun loving and of course he needs to be as handsome, but not as in a rock star handsome. He needs to have his ducks in a row and know what he wants. I like a man who treats everyone right and the heroine like a person, you know as in princess. LOL. Call me old fashioned but I cannot stand a smart mouthed hero who thinks that he is better than everyone else is. 

Aren’t all women alike in that we want to know that our lover is our hero? I’d say we all want a man who knows who he is and what he wants.

  

What item, or items, is absolutely necessary to your writing mojo?

How can you have mojo without coffee? Is there anything else?   

What’s the strangest (neatest, coolest, etc.) thing you’ve ever done?

Okay, here goes! I danced in the middle of the highway with a younger – much younger man. It might sound crazy and it was, but I was so happy that I had to do something. Looking back on it, I can’t remember if I thought he was worth keeping or if he was just a honey to hug.

Okay, okay, I fess up! There’s more to this story, I can’t remember what made me so happy, seems like it was that I was finally free of some major problems and that my divorce was final.    

 What are you currently working on, or what’s on the horizon?

I am working on a manuscript now that I am going to submit (to somebody, somewhere) in the next two or three weeks. It is also a contemporary, romantic suspense book. The problem is that I have had so many distractions lately that I can’t seem to find the time to finish editing it.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I do web pages (write code) for a county web site and do genealogy. I also have been studying DNA for the last few weeks and have lost myself in the massive amount of material that I have been learning about and figuring out how to decipher.    

How can you fans find you on the net?

You will find me on A PASSION FOR WRITING, a blog, and my Face Book page. I am on Twitter, too.

Blog: http://thedonnacooper.blogspot.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/donnac58

Face Book: http://www.facebook.com/donnac58

Author Friends - Face Book: http://www.facebook.com/groups/158668737566184/

Author Bio:

Donna Cooper says that she remembers that her grandmother was a natural storyteller, and that she created fascinating bedtime stories for her when she was a child. Her grandmother's fictional characters took her into the land of make-believe, places that she will never forget. Her fabricated tales gave Donna a passion for storytelling and taught her that first, one must be a storyteller before becoming a writer.

It was not until after Donna's children went away to college that she was able to study writing professionally. She attended the University of Arkansas and studied in private classes as well as at North Arkansas Community College. While attending the community college, she and a creative writing instructor wrote a romance novel. When the rejection letter came, Donna saw the effort as a failure, but the instructor saw the value in it. She rewrote the story and sold it. From that day forward, Donna had a dream to repeat the performance with a story of her own—one that would be publishable.

Then divorce came and that knocked the romance out of her heart. It was several years later before she could read a romance novel, must less consider writing one. The creative juices were not there anymore, and since she had to make a living, she became an insurance agent. She traveled rural Arkansas and sold health and life insurance to farm families. During those days, she allowed her emotions to heal, but never stopped thinking about writing.

Then about twenty years ago, she met and fell in love with a man who thought she should have been a writer. It is odd that he could see the storyteller in her, even when she couldn't see it herself. He reminded her often that she could probably write and publish a novel. Finally, one day while wintering in sunny California, she opened her laptop and started pecking out words. It was then, that she created the novel Trouble on Sugar Creek. The setting she chose was a place that she still thinks of as home, Barry County, Missouri.

The manuscript sold to Siren-BookStrand Publishing. This was her first novel and her first attempt to re-enter the world of storytelling. Publishing wasn't something that was foreign to her, because back during her days in college, Donna published in a few poetry magazines, and later in several historical non-fiction books, and at least thirty fiction short stories during the late 70's and early 80's. Presently, she writes daily, because she is the administrator and coordinator of the Barry County MOGenWeb site. She enjoys writing historical data and code for web pages, but she says that's very different from storytelling.

Donna likes writing fiction, especially classical romance stories. She enjoys telling the story of emotional and sexual love, the kind that a woman holds in her heart. She works hard at what she does and hopes that what she writes isn't too spicy for her friends and family to enjoy reading. Her stories range from the happily-ever-after romance to the naughty side of the romantic world. She likes a variety of characters and writes tales about people from different occupations with varying lifestyles.

Thank you so much for spending time with me, Donna.