Sunday, November 20, 2011

Special Guest: Amber Kell

Woo hoo!  I'm very pleased to welcome here a special guest and super talented author, Amber Kell!  All this month, Amber has been celebrating her November Birthday Extravaganza by stopping by authors' blogs and sharing part of an ongoing story, and I couldn't be more thrilled to have her fantastic work appear on my blog!  For the full details of her Extravaganza, please check out Amber's blog HERE.

Welcome and happy birthday, Amber!  It's such a pleasure to have you here!




Stanley followed Fenris home. His place still stank and the idea of a bed with Fenris in it, definitely a worthy lure. It turned out that Fenris’ family actually owned the building and the others lived there as part of a pack agreement.

“Though if you don’t want them there we can kick them out. It should be the alpha’s home now,” Fenris said with an earnest expression.

Stanley didn’t feel completely comfortable throwing people out of their home. “I don’t want to toss them out. I mean how long have they lived with you?”

“Too long.” Fenris rolled his eyes. “But Sandy is a kick ass cook and even though Paul is a bit of a tool, he knows his stuff about security.”

“Well as it’s your house and I’m your mate do you want them out of there?”

Fenris shrugged. “Packs usually live in groups but it isn’t that large of a place. How about we look around for other lodgings everyone can move into. Our last Alpha liked his privacy, which probably should’ve sent warning bells to everyone. I’m sure we can find a nice building to purchase.”

“Is it just us? I mean the four of us?” Stanley didn’t know why four people needed an entire building but then he didn’t know much about pack politics.

Laughing Fenris opened the door to his apartment. “No, there are twenty of us. We thought it best to wait a bit before introducing the others. You were a little overwhelmed with meeting the three of us.”

“Twenty? I’m responsible for twenty people.” Stanley couldn’t even take care of a goldfish as proven by the demise of goldy one through thirty. How could he possibly oversee the care and protection of twenty people?

Fenris kissed him on the cheek. “You don’t have to watch over us. Well, except me. They all have jobs and some even have families of their own. Your job is to look strong and studly.”

“And kick the ass of any alpha who threatens us,” Paul interjected.

Sandy nodded from her spot, curled up on a loveseat with a gossip magazine. “Defending the territory, acting as an advisor and watching out for our finances are all alpha tasks.”

“And you already punched Sebastian so you have one job down,” Fenris offered.

Sandy dropped her magazine. “You punched Sebastian? What did he do?”

“He bled on the floor,” Fenris announced with glee.


Sandy and Paul stared at him at him intently as if he’d grown another head. The look became so prolonged he almost checked to see if he had. “He peed on my stuff!” Stanley protested.

Paul laughed. “Trying to bring you to heel was he?”

“Apparently my father promised me to him.”

Sandy nibbled her lower lip. “He might try to retaliate. It’s best we get the pack moved into a secure building. The better to shore up our defenses.”

“You’ll have to quit your job,” Paul told him.

“What? Why?” Stanley asked.

“Dude, you’ve got a family to take care of. What is Fenris going to do with his pretty self all day while you’re crunching numbers?”

Good thing Paul had fast reflexes. Stanley didn’t even see the book before Paul ducked to the side to avoid it impacting with his skull.

Fenris turned to him. “He’s right, Stanley, I hope you weren’t in love with your job. Most alphas can’t keep up with their responsibilities and a regular job too. Being an alpha is a full time occupation.”

Stanley thought of his little office with its dying ficus and buzzing lights. “I really like my job but I don’t mind leaving the company. It sounds like I’ll still be doing accounting, except for the pack instead of a company.”

“That’s the spirit,” Paul said. “Just think of it as a really physical accounting job where you might need to shift into a wolf and battle to the death.” He turned to Sandy. “I give him a month.”

A loud thud echoed in the air as Paul tumbled to the floor.

Stanley turned a shocked gaze to his mate.

Fenris shrugged. “I guess he forgot to duck.”

Thursday, November 17, 2011

NATURAL INSTINCTS Nominated for Best Book 2011!

Hey again, everyone!  I know I just posted an update on my writing and reviews, but I wanted to do a seperate post for this because I'm beyond excited about it.  I got word that my first vampire novel, NATURAL INSTINCTS, has been nominated at The Romance Reviews for Best GLBT Paranormal - Vampire book of 2011!  Woo hoo!

This is such an honor and I couldn't be happier!  Now that it's been nominated, people can vote for it to win.  If you'd like to vote, here's the link: http://www.theromancereviews.com/bookvote.php. You have to scroll down to the GLBT Vampire category to find it, but it's going up against some wonderful authors, so please, vote for the book you truly enjoyed most.  I'm just thrilled to have been nominated!  Also, there are so many incredible authors and books in these awards, I'm sure you can find lots of your favorite stories and authors, and probably even some new ones for your TBR!

My thanks and gratitude to The Romance Reviews and to those who nominated NATURAL INSTINCTS.  I'm truly flattered and very appreciative.

And now, I'm off to happy dance :D

    
                                                                                                               

New Reviews and a Writing Update

Hey, everyone!  I know I've been very absent lately...yes, and I know this has been a trend. Funny thing is, just this week, I reduced my hours the EDJ (Evil Day Job, yeah, I work outside the home in addition to writing), and even though I didn't drop my hours down by much, one would think this should mean I'd have more time for being online and writing.  But that hasn't been the case.  I've used the extra time to be with my child, my horses and other pets, and trying to keep up with the things that need done around my house.

But you guys don't want to be bored with the mundane details of my life.  I was just trying to make excuses for not being around ;-)  So on to the good stuff!  We'll start off with the reviews.  I'm very happy to say that ENDURING INSTINCTS and BLACK HEART DOWN have both gotten great reviews lately.  Yay!  There are a few from different review sites, so I'll post the links for anyone who'd like to check them out.

http://www.darkdivasreviews.com/?p=6688 - 4.5 out of 5 for ENDURING INSTINCTS.  Thank you, Lasha!

http://literarynymphsreviewsonly.blogspot.com/2011/10/enduring-instincts.html?zx=1d234d54253a669e - 5 out of 5 for ENDURING INSTINCTS.  Thank you, Chocolate Minx!

http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/2011/11/11/enduring-instincts/ 4 out of 5 for ENDURING INSTINCTS.  Thank you, Raine!

http://glbt.theromancereviews.com/viewbooksreview.php?bookid=3791 5 out of 5 for BLACK HEART DOWN.  Thank you, DH! (By the way, guys, DH Starr is an amazing author himself!)

Hooray!  Just posting those made me happy all over again!  And now, on to writing news!

So, I'll start first with what my next release is going to be, and that is a short story titled BEAUTIFUL HARMONY.  My publisher, MLR Press, is going to be holding a holiday event where starting in November, they're going to release a short story each day all through the holidays and going into the New Year. When I heard about it, I was pondering on writing something for it, and then two of my guys from one of my previous novels rushed forward with wanting to continue their story.  And who were these two, you ask?  Why, none other than Kyler Christenson and Robbie Russo from BLACK HEART DOWN. And so, they will be starring in BEAUTIFUL HARMONY, a 10k word short story that will release December 25th.

For my next novel release and when that will be, well, to be honest, I'm not sure.  I've been thinking it would be the next musician themed story, HEARTSTRINGS, featuring my classical violinist and kilt wearing rockers.  But then I was thinking possibly the third vampire story, of which I'm in the process of writing now.  So I'm a little torn between the two, though I'm still slightly leaning toward HEARTSTRINGS, followed by Instincts Series #3. Those two will be 2012 releases.  For what will come after them...again I'm not sure, but I'm thinking it may be Conquest's Brad Delfini's story.

And that's currently what's been going on in my world.  I do apologize for not having definites on future novels, but I wanted to try to give as much of an update as I could to what I've been working on, and let you guys know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth :-)

Thank you, so very much, everyone, for your patience with me not being around as much and for all your support.  I couldn't be an author without all of you!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Halloween Blog Hop Winner! Correction. Make that WinnerS!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen!  I know I said I was only going to pick one winner, but I've played my own Halloween trick and I've picked three!  You guys get the treats, and I got to play the trick.  Ha!  Have I mentioned how much I enjoy this holiday?

With how the winners were selected, I took the names of everyone who entered and placed them in a randomizer, so that way the unbiased tech gods were picking the names. And those winners are:

Violetlavender
Eva (Eva's Flowers)
Beatrice

If you sent me your email address or if you posted it, you'll be hearing from me soon. If you didn't send me your email address or post it in your original comment, please email me at s.j.frost3@gmail.com so I can get you the book of your choice.

Congratulations to all the winners! And thank you, so very, very much to everyone who entered. Your support and kind words means all the world to me. I'll continue to do the absolute best I'm capable of with each and every book for all of you.

And, just a little head's up for everyone who enjoyed this Halloween Blog Hop, there's going to be another one for Christmas, organized again by Drea Becraft. And yeah, I'll be taking part :-)  Authors, there's still room for you to take part, too! If you'd like to participate, just get in touch with Drea. Here's the link to the blog that just went live for it, and you can see a list of authors who are already signed up to participate: http://thspot.wordpress.com/event-page/

Congratulations again to my winners!  And many thanks once more to all of you!  I hope everyone had a spooktacular Halloween!