This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Nina Pierce

This week's winner is Kytaira!!! Thanks to everyone who stopped by to keep Nina company!

Nina Pierce grew up in a house of readers. So falling in love with books was only natural. In her teen years she found her mother's romance books and became forever hooked on the journey of finding one's true love. Now, if you throw in a dead body and some mayhem, Nina is in reader nirvana.

A few years ago, reading about love wasn't enough. She is now driven to write stories of alpha-males with a chink in their armor and the kick-ass women who fall in love with them. And true to what she loves, more often than not, you'll find some suspense thread running through her plots, hopefully with enough twists to keep her readers turning the pages, staying up late, and burning dinner.

A native of Maine, Nina lives in what she affectionately calls "the great white North". She is fortunate to have married her high school sweetheart and true love twenty-five years ago. They share their lives with three grown children and a menagerie of pets.

Visit Website *** Visit Myspace *** Visit Blog

Welcome to the Tiki Hut Nina!

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Out of the Realm of Normalcy

by Nina Pierce

I’ll admit it. I love science fiction. I always have. When my peers were reading Judy Blume I was engrossed in the stories by Anne McCaffrey (Pern Series) and Madeline L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time). I watched Star Trek with rapt fascination. My imagination soared with the idea of aliens and prickled with the thought of ghosts living in our attic. I hated to think of monsters under my bed, but couldn’t keep myself from watching Frankenstein movies. (I know … I’m totally aging myself here … just pretend you’re not thinking I’m ancient. *wink*) I still enjoy the fantasy. The idea that the world is bigger than my senses can detect. And from the surge of paranormal books being devoured by the reading public … I don’t think I’m alone.

So what is it? What is the allure with everything paranormal? Did this recent flood start again with the Harry Potter craze and move into Twilight or has something always fascinated us about this fantasy world? A place in our imagination where vampires stalk the night and succubi invade our dreams and everything fanciful comes to life.

For me, it’s the stretching of my imagination, the possibility that there’s another dimension that exists around me. Losing myself in a story about a band of werewolf rebels fighting unseen dark forces or a faery realm where wars are fought and babies are borne, well, it just makes me sigh. Now add a love story, a broken heart, a mended relationship and I am in reader nirvana.

This has now carried over to my writing. Paranormal stories give me the opportunity to let my muse play in a world of make believe … to fantasize what it would be like to be saved by a vampire just as I’m about to be mugged on my way home from work … or meet a lion shifter on the plains of Africa … or discover that an alien species is attracted to human females. Oh, the places I can go! And I’ve just dipped my toe in the endless sea of possibilities!

My latest release Shadows of Fire in the Hearts Afire-May anthology (Liquid Silver Books May 2009) is about a military faction of vampires known as RISEN. Their job is to seek out and eliminate rogue vampires who choose not to live complacently with humans. Reese Colton is assigned to a fire station in Northern California with his partner in hopes of discovering why humans and vampires are being burned in mysterious fires. Of course the vampire he’s falling in love with appears to be wrapped up in the crimes and Reese has no idea whether to follow the clues or his heart. The book was a blast to write. The possibilities that opened to me were just plain fun to explore. I hadn’t expected the twists and turns and quite frankly … hated to leave that world. (Pssst … between you and me … I’m thinking I may go back there some day.)

My latest project is a wolf/cougar shifter series that will include at least three books. For those of you familiar with Blue Moon Rising in the Furry, Fluffy & Wild anthology (Liquid Silver Books Sept 2008), I am using the polymorphic shifter premise of Jayda Kynslan and her heart throb of a wolf shifter, Cole Takoda, to create this erotic suspense series. I just love playing in a world unlike my own.

So what is it that fascinates you about these creatures? Or are you one to avoid the paranormal craze? I’m very curious.

Visit Nina Pierce on the web at http://www.ninapierce.com/ or follow her regular blog http://www.ninapierce.com/romanceblog. She’s also found her way to twitter and would love to have you follow her very chatty posts http://www.twitter.com/ninapierce.

This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Jean Hart Stewart

This week's winner was Flchen1!!! Congrats! You get a free download of your choice from Jean's backlist. Please email me at AuthorIsland at yahoo.com with your email address so Jean can get with you as to which of her books you'd like. And thanks to all who stopped by to visit with Jean and keep her company!

Jean Hart Stewart feels she's very much a Californian although she was born in Ohio. California has been home for a good many years. Life changed drastically for her when she was six and her father died incredibly from an errant golf ball. A dishonest insurance agent forced her sheltered mother to seek work, and she became a teacher. Her hours required Jean to be alone in the house in the afternoon, and since she was forbidden to leave till her mother got home, she became an avid reader. The local library supplied most of the books and she developed early her two of main interests, Jane Austen and King Arthur.

Reading is still one of her favorite activities, although she sometimes has to push it aside to make room for her enduring love of writing. Her journalism degree was used infrequently until recently. Marriage and raising two children pleasantly got in the way. After twenty years of being a real estate broker and with the kids raised she finally could devote her time to writing, her first love.

Jean's enchantment with the lore and legends of Druids and, therefore, delving into their history led to fascinating research that inspired her popular Garland of Druids Series for Cerridwen Press.

Few things in her life have been so satisfying, especially when all her books have a happy ending. Wonderful to make happen. It only gets more interesting when a secondary character demands his very own book. Who would want to deny him? Not Jean!

Visit Jean's Website *** Visit Jean at Myspace

Welcome to the Tiki Hut Jean!

Magic Musings by Jean Hart Stewart

Wiritng has been my first love since I was a child. I put in quite a few years as a real estate agent after marrying the man of my dreams (he still is, incidentally) While I enjoyed working at the time I finally reached the point where I knew I had to quit and just write. Have an eight book series called Garland of Druids from Cerridwen Press, which can be bought on line from them and several other e-book sources. They are all coming out in print now, two at a time, at Amazon, B & N, Borders, etc. Titles so far are Druid Desires and Druid Duet. The entire series is (in order) Druids’ Daughter, My Darling Druid, Song of a Druid Princess, Kiss of a Druid Bard, Druid Redeemed, Druid Triumphant, Druid Disdained, and Druid in Flight. Each is a stand alone book, so dive in at any title that appeals to you. Excerpts are on my website, http://www.jeanhartstewart.com/.

I’m very excited about a new series about a family of mages. Go ahead and look up the word, or I’ll give you a hint. Merlin was a mage. This series has just been named, Song of the Mages, and the first, Damien’s Destiny, was just released! The first four are written and in line to come out. Try out Damien, he’s a doll of a hunk.




Jean Hart Stewart's New Release Kicks Off Her New Song Of Mages Series
Book One in Jean Hart Stewart's new Song of Mages Series.

Damien is a mage, inheriting from Merlin the potential for enchantment and wizardry. When he rescues Toria from drowning herself, Damien knows she claims a special place in his heart. He will need all his abilities to help Toria overcome her fear of being touched by any man after she was raped by her guardian. He hides her in a school for girls until she is of age, and then brings her to Tregaron, his home as Earl of Sinclair.

Toria's lecherous guardian, Baron Heath, continues to stalk her. Damien must summon all his capabilities to protect her. As he tries to safeguard her life, the battle to conquer her fear of men looms ever more difficult. Damien refuses to influence her thinking with his extraordinary powers. Will he be able to triumph, save her from the wicked baron and finally claim Toria as his destiny?

Buy the Book *** Read the Excerpt

Win - read the excerpt for Jean's new release DAMIEN'S DESTINY and tell Jean what you think and your name goes in the hat to win a free download of one of her books! A winner will be chosen from all those who leave a message today.

This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Cheryl Dragon

The winner of a free download of one of Cheryl Dragon's books is Marcy! Marcy, email me at AuthorIsland at yahoo.com with your contact information so Cheryl can get with you about which of her books you'd like to try out!

Thanks to everyone for stopping by to keep Cheryl company at the Tiki Hut!

A lover of unusual things, Cheryl Dragon enjoys writing unique stories with sinfully hot erotic romance or suspenseful mainstream paranormals. Never at a loss for ideas, there are plenty of stories in her brain waiting to be written. Her two favorites book settings are Las Vegas and New Orleans...where anything can happen!

Cheryl lives in the Chicagoland area with her deaf albino cat. By day she crunches & analyzes numbers as an Assistant Controller for a division of a large international conglomerate which leaves the creative juices free for her erotic romance and paranormal suspense novels.

Visit Website *** Visit Myspace *** Visit Blog

Welcome to the Tiki Hut, Cheryl!

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Escape for Summer….One way or another!

Some days I wish I had become a teacher. Some profession where I get the summers off. But no such luck here. Day job, writing, and life continue year round.

We all need to escape reality for a little while. Some of us can go on vacation. I went on a mini-working vacation in early June to the Lori Foster Weekend. Not a big vacation but affordable and fun. I got to see my writer friends and my slave labor promoters (like DeNita!).

Another way I personally escape is TV. I love my shows…like The Closer, Leverage, The Office, Family Guy, and more. I blog about the new stuff or a great rerun weely at my new blog: http://cheryldragon.blogspot.com/ You’ll also find info on my releases as they come out so there is a little promo there as well.

My other way of escaping is writing and I’ve got a lot of stuff coming out this summer. Ménage, m/m, paranormal, and all of it really really HOT!

Cheryl Dragon Summer Releases for your Escape Pleasure!!

May: Her Boyfriend’s Boyfriend
Available Now in Ebook at Loose Id
Link: http://www.loose-id.com/prod-Her_Boyfriend_s_Boyfriend-938.aspx

Excerpt Link: http://www.loose-id.com/CDHBBex.aspx

Genre: Ménage
Blurb:

Cassie has found the man of her dreams. Neil’s rich and smart and hotter than hell! He's perfect. Except for one small thing. Their sex life is cooling off and he’s not talking. It's not her, she's almost sure, and she's not giving up. She's determined to get to the bottom of it. And fix it.

What Cassie doesn't know is that Neil used to have a boyfriend. Lou. They used to pick up women together, have sex with them, enjoy them, but they never found one they wanted to keep. Then Lou moved on. Neil tried. He tried to go straight for Cassie and for his career, but he never stopped loving Lou and without that man in his bed, he's never going to have everything he needs, no matter how much he loves Cassie.

Once Cassie starts digging around, the truth can't be denied. And neither can the chemistry between Cassie and Lou. Is she the one they needed all along? Cassie's never had two men before. Not even just in bed. The idea of a ménage life scares her a little, honestly. But now that she knows how to please her boyfriend, she's not letting him go. Even if it means learning to love her boyfriend's boyfriend.

June:
Out of Body Sexy
Paranormal Rubenesque Erotic Romance
Available: Now at Ellora’s Cave
Length: Quickie
Link: http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-7331-50-out-of-body-sex.aspx
Excerpt Link: http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-7331-50-out-of-body-sex.aspx

Blurb:

Plus-size psychic Kim Vennon doesn’t know how to get sexy Matt Rayne but she can’t resist using her skills to get close. Going out of her body is freeing and she can play with his hard, sexy form anonymously. But it goes farther than planned. When he calls her name, she flees to her body but Matt follows, determined to get the full experience and no more games. Matt has wanted the voluptuous woman but fate kept them apart. Now he’s going to have his way with her, in and out of their bodies.



Psychic Rebels
Available TODAY at Loose Id
Link: http://www.loose-id.com/prod-Psychic_Rebels-965.aspx
Excerpt Link: http://cheryldragon.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-release-psychic-rebels.html

Blurb:

On again off again lovers Colin and Dennis, a psychic and a healer, know they are meant to be together, but the world is against them. They have the power to destroy evil before it happens, if only they can survive their lust for each other.

I also have two more releases coming out in August…keep an eye on my blog or my website for that info. Of course it’ll be on Author Island as well.

Let the Tiki gods sweep you away for summer fun! Enjoy and mix some margaritas to keep cool and check out my current contest up at Author Island to win some goodies!

Cheryl Dragon

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A chance to win - one winner will be drawn tomorrow morning from all those leaving comments for Cheryl today to win a free download of one of Cheryl's books - good luck!

This Tuesday and Wednesday At The Tiki Hut - Marie Treanor

The winner of a free download from Marie's backlist is ANNE - please email me at AuthorIsland at yahoo.com with your contact information, so Marie can find out which of her books you'd like to try!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to keep Marie company at the Tiki Hut!


This week's guest is Marie Treanor. Marie was born and bred in Scotland, but for some years moved around the UK working and studying. Now she's back home and happily married with three young children.

Having grown bored with city life, her family lives in a picturesque village by the sea where, instead of working for a living, Marie is lucky enough to be able to enjoy herself writing stories of romance and fantasy.

She draws the inspiration for her books mainly from the people around her and from Scotland's rich history and culture - with, of course, large helpings of fun and imagination!

Visit Website *** Visit Myspace *** Visit Blog *** Get Newsletter

**A CHANCE TO WIN** One person from all who leave Marie a comment will win a free download from Marie's backlist (anything except her two new releases).

Welcome Marie!

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Putting the gothic in Gothic Dragon


This week, I’ve been celebrating two releases: my quirky but passionate ghost story, Requiem for Rab, and, perhaps even more excitingly, my first print release at Samhain Publishing - Gothic Dragon.

Finally seeing this book in print, and holding it in my awed little hands, got me thinking about why I wrote that particular story at that particular time.

I couldn't remember :)

Well, the old memory's not what it was! I did recall getting up at five every morning during one summer and dementedly writing until the kids woke up, so I knew I was desperate to write it.

Then I re-read the blurb, and Samhain's humorous warning which says:

"As well as explicit and delicious sex, this book contains the secret of ultimate escapism which could be highly dangerous in the wrong hands. The reader experiments at her/his own risk."

And the metaphorical light bulb snapped on in my head. Escapism!

Admittedly most of my reading and writing is to achieve and provide escapism, but Gothic Dragon is all about it. Probably because I wrote it during a difficult phase of my life. Nothing very tragic, just frustrating - the bankruptcy of one of my publishers which effectively froze several of my books in legal limbo.

So books and escapism were on my mind...

Perhaps I should say at this point that Gothic Dragon is about a young, bored woman who falls into the pages of a book and lives among the characters in this Renaissance-like world which was created by a nineteenth century gothic romance writer. And naturally, my heroine falls in love with the sexy villain of the piece. (Well, who wouldn't? Have you seen his picture on the cover?)

Gothic Dragon has lots of the elements that made gothic romances so popular, particularly with women, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: a dangerous medieval setting, foreign location, sorcery, an insane and brooding villain and a Byronic hero (who are, in my story the same man!) And my helpless heroine, flung into this terrifying world with no control over her life.

Of course, my modern-day heroine learns to control as much as she can. She chooses to re-enter the world of the book and she discovers the truth behind its existence. She takes control of her "real" life, in which she has been passively drifting, and makes her own choice as to where and with whom to spend her life. Early gothic heroines didn't usually have such luxuries.

It's a little bit of a paradox that gothic romances were written largely to provide escapism for educated, middle class women trapped in the inferior role society had prescribed for them. They had very little control over their own destinies and were largely restricted to looking after home and children. Through gothic literature, they could identify with the heroine and be swept away to wildly exciting worlds of terror and romance. It must have been liberating and exhilarating. And yet, to be socially acceptable and therefore popular, the heroines of these books had to behave impeccably and keep their social place under the superiority of men. Which is where our readers started out!

So the heroines of these romances didn't cry out for independence or recognition as the intellectual equal of men. In fact, they were often stupid, and any hankerings after romance were shown to be a Bad Thing leading to disaster. Supernatural happenings were explained rationally, and the heroines found happiness by conforming. Like the readers.

But the excitement remained. And gothic novels retained huge popularity for decades, from Walpole's "original" and critically condemned "Castle of Otranto" published in 1764, through Anne Radcliffe's more "acceptable" creations and all the immitations which followed her. These ideas burgeoned in romantic poetry, including some by Keats and Coleridge, and even in architecture where it became fashionable to build neo-gothic piles with fake medieval ruins in the grounds.

Even when its popularity faded, the genre lingered on in other, changing forms, like the still much loved Bronte novels, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, HP Lovecraft... I grew up devouring the gothic novels of Daphne du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Mary Stewart and others, which come from similar roots. I loved the dark, brooding heroes with their mysterious and/or tragic pasts, and the whole delicious atmosphere of danger.

Gothic Dragon is my humble tribute to all of these great authors, and if you read it, I hope it gives you all the escape you want :)

Just be careful what you do with your books. And be doubly careful what you imagine...


Gothic Dragon by Marie Treanor is now available in print from Samhain Publishing: http://www.mybookstoreandmore.com/shop/product.da/p-gothic-dragon .

It is also still available in ebook formats: http://www.mybookstoreandmore.com/shop/product.da/gothic-dragon.

This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Sandy Lender

This week's winner is Jerry B - Jerry gets an autographed copy of WHAT CHOICES WE MADE!!! Congrats! Please send me your full name and address to AuthorIsland at Yahoo.com and Sandy will get you out your prize!

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the Tiki Hut to keep Sandy company!


Today's guest at the Tiki Hut is fantasy romance author Sandy Lender.

Sandy Lender began writing stories as soon as she learned to string words together on the page. As a child she entertained the folks in her great grandmother's apartment building in Southern Illinois with tales of squeaky spiders and mice picking berries, and then won awards with writing projects as she moved through the elementary and high school systems in the St. Louis area. It was apparent that a career in journalism was her calling, and she found herself proofreading, editing, and (finally) writing for trade publications after she graduated from Truman State University in Missouri. Those publications may have honed her skills in editing and writing about cattle husbandry, road construction, community management, and zealous forms of religious oppression, as well as developing her skills in public relations and marketing, but her desire to write fiction stayed with her throughout the career-building day jobs.

From her early memories of junior high, Sandy harbored the story of Amanda Chariss and the struggles of the continent of Onweald. It wasn't until the year 2000 that Sandy sat down at the computer and started typing out the words that would form her first fantasy novel, Choices Meant for Gods. By June of 2003 she had the creation that no literary agent had any interest in. But Sandy is pro-active and doesn't give up easily. She got Publisher Bob Gelinas to show interest in the story in January 2006, and the dream has since become reality.

Sandy now writes in Southwest Florida where her love of sea turtles and all things related to the Gulf waters keeps her imagination growing. Her epic fantasy novel Choices Meant for Gods is now available as is her recent release What Choices We Made. She shares a home with a demanding but lovable sun conure, a 19-year-old water turtle who dances to the songs in her extensive Duran Duran collection, and a muse who often misplaces the key to the shackles at the computer desk. You can get information about grammar and writing from her 15-year-journalism and PR career at her main blog Today The Dragon Wins.

Leave Sandy a comment or question today and get your name in the hat for an autographed copy of WHAT CHOICES WE MADE.

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Sneaky Writers
By Sandy Lender

Terry Brooks says of writers in his book SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS: “Much of what happens around us goes into a storage bin in our minds for future consideration and possible use in a book down the line. What we observe is as important to us in determining what we write as what we know.”

You’ve got to watch out for writers. We’re sneaky. We use everyday stuff that you might not think is intriguing and turn it into a plot device or bit of dialogue. That’s right—if it happens in front of us, it’s fair game. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the presence of a non-fiction memoir-writer or a sci-fi/fantasy geek like me who makes up worlds that you could never envision a simple grocery store conversation ending up in. Oh, yes. Imagine my poor mom’s surprise to learn that a certain embarrassing moment from the early ’80s ended up in print in my latest release, WHAT CHOICES WE MADE.

Here’s how it happened. I was probably 12 or 13. Innocent. Naïve. We were in the check-out lane at the grocery store and I stared mindlessly at the tabloids. The headline on one about discussing a sensitive topic with your teens struck me as odd, so I turned to Mom at the other end of the buggy and asked, loudly, “Mom, what’s virginity?” Of course I mispronounced it. Long “I” on the “jine.” Virjinety.

Some people around us snickered, hiding their faces from my blushing mother. She leaned forward and said, lowly, “I’ll tell you in the car.”

Okay.

Years later, that recalled scene struck me as funny, and I knew the young, precocious version of Amanda Chariss, the heroine in the CHOICES MEANT FOR GODS trilogy, had to pull some such stunt on her wizard guardian Hrazon. (I figured Hrazon would forgive me for it.) But the scene would have to be a flashback because my lovely Chariss is 20 years old when we meet her in CHOICES MEANT FOR GODS. She knows what virginity is. And that’s not really the right word to embarrass Hrazon with. I needed something else. Something less contrived, perhaps. So I wrote a scene from their travels laced with a little danger due to Chariss’s age and the condition of Onweald’s social system, but it just didn’t fit in the novel. There wasn’t a place to put it. Yet it was so charming that I wasn’t content to delete and forget it. I wanted to share it with the readers who had fallen in love with Chariss. I pulled it into a short story called “Joveran Border Crossing” for WHAT CHOICES WE MADE.

That’s how an embarrassing moment for my mom ended up in print in a fantasy story more than two decades later. Seems so easy, doesn’t it? These situations happen daily for writers. We see something that may seem ordinary or mundane to everybody else, but it’s story fodder for us. When you see one of us whip out a notepad and start scribbling like mad, you know something’s going in the storage bin for a future book.

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Here's a trailer for Sandy's latest WHAT CHOICES WE MADE

This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Jean Hart Stewart

This Tuesday we welcome historical and fantasy romance author Jean Hart Stewart.

Jean Hart Stewart feels she's very much a Californian although she was born in Ohio. California has been home for a good many years. Life changed drastically for her when she was six and her father died incredibly from an errant golf ball. A dishonest insurance agent forced her sheltered mother to seek work, and she became a teacher. Her hours required Jean to be alone in the house in the afternoon, and since she was forbidden to leave till her mother got home, she became an avid reader. The local library supplied most of the books and she developed early her two of main interests, Jane Austen and King Arthur.

Reading is still one of her favorite activities, although she sometimes has to push it aside to make room for her enduring love of writing. Her journalism degree was used infrequently until recently. Marriage and raising two children pleasantly got in the way. After twenty years of being a real estate broker and with the kids raised she finally could devote her time to writing, her first love.

Jean's enchantment with the lore and legends of Druids and, therefore, delving into their history led to fascinating research that inspired her popular Garland of Druids Series for Cerridwen Press and her upcoming series about Mages that kicks off with her June 22nd release DAMIEN'S DESTINY.

Few things in her life have been so satisfying, especially when all her books have a happy ending. Wonderful to make happen. It only gets more interesting when a secondary character demands his very own book. Who would want to deny him? Not Jean!

Welcome to the Tiki Hut Jean and thanks for your article on How to Make a Reader.

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How to make a reader?????

I’ve been obsessed lately with wondering why some children turn into avid readers and some never learn to like that is one of my life’s greatest joys. It’s not intelligence, as I was blessed with two bright kids, one how now reads much deeper subjects that I can even tackle. (He’s a mathematician, way over my head!) The other child never even would sit still to listen to me read. She’s just as smart, although not a mathematician. So it’s not a matter of reading to them, which you often hear, as I did with both. Or tried!

I polled some good friends, but found little consensus. One, a child development teacher, found what worked for her four children was limiting TV and reading to them extensively. Been there, done that. She’s raised four bright successful adults who are all readers. Another, mother of five, states it’s exposure to books and following up any clue if they seem to like a certain book or author. Very good points, and with today’s libraries so well stocked fairly easy if a child gets a fix on a certain author. Her daughter fell in love with the Nancy Drew series, which my granddaughter did last year. A third friend has one reader and one non-reader like me, both bright but simply with different inclinations. She’s thinks it’s like so many other traits. A parent gets what he’s dealt.

I’ve mentioned in various biographies and chat talks how my father’s early death forced my mother back to teaching and how I wasn’t allowed out of the house until she came home. I was six years old. With no TV and lots of library books I became a compulsive reader. I’ll fixate on cereal boxes if nothing else is handy. Incidentally, some of their blurbs are pretty funny, although they may not mean to be.

Certainly if you don’t do anything as a parent, let the TV be unlimited, don’t provide them with books, and don’t read to them you cut down the chances. Yet I think some children simply can’t be stopped from becoming readers. They’ll find books on their own no matter what.

Conclusion? Draw your own. I’m baffled!!!

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Learn more about Jean and her fabulous books about Druids and Mages at JeanHartStewart.com .

Here's a video taste of her upcoming June 22nd release DAMIEN'S DESTINY.

This Tuesday At The Tiki Hut - Renee Reeves

Today's special guest at the Tiki Hut is Renee Reeves.

Renee Reeves was born in Stuttgart, Germany but raised in the US. On her mother's side, she is Irish and English and on her father's side, she is German and Irish. Ever since she was a little girl she has loved to read. Her mother, always supportive, made it a point to take her to the library as often as she wished and to get her to each and every school book fair. She would come home with bags of books and would gobble them up in only a few days. She would sit against her pony’s stomach when she was lying down in the pasture and read a book while her pony napped.

Reading, along with horses, was and still is one of the great loves in her life and that love turned into a desire to write. Renee is now married and her husband told her if she wanted to write a book then do it. So she did and is now a published author.

Her first book, NIGHT ANGEL, was just recently released. It is a contemporary about an ex-con, Nick Evanoff, who has turned his life around and now owns a horse sanctuary. He meets Morgan, an abused widow, who has moved to Montana for seclusion and things go from there....;) Renee is now working on 2 paranormals.

Be Renee's friend over on Myspace and check out the first three chapters of NIGHT ANGEL at Black Velvet Seductions.

Leave Renee a comment today and your name goes in the hat for a copy of NIGHT ANGEL!

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Motivation…Finding it and keeping it.

By Renee Reeves


I don’t know about anyone else but I can find story motivation just about anywhere. A walk out to the barn can spark scenes and images galore. A day trip can immerse me in my own imaginative world, or motivation can hit me when I’m doing nothing more than sitting in a chair gazing out of the window. Most of the time that motivation comes from me wondering, ‘what would I like to be doing now if I were someone else?’

A day trip to a SC church ruin (yes, I know Night Angel is set in Montana!) and staring at a boring hotel wall was how the characters in Night Angel came about. The scene in Night Angel when Nick first sees Morgan is very quiet and peaceful—straight from the SC church ruins. But after that scene I wondered, ‘what now? Now that he’s seen her and wants her, what should their story be?’ I decided both Nick and Morgan just had to have extremely traumatic and horrific previous lives in order to fit together and it took me a while to decide on what those lives should be.

So, finding motivation is simple for me, but keeping it is another matter entirely. I am one of those highly emotional people. My emotions dictate how I am going to feel every single day and right now my emotions are in an uproar because my mother is fighting advanced cervical cancer. Being her fulltime caregiver is physically and emotionally exhausting, not to mention extremely stressful, and really leaves no time for me to manage those characters and scenes bouncing around in my head. At times I am even too tired, or, if I really want to be honest, too depressed to get on the computer and type. During those times I find the storylines in my head to be an annoyance because I know I have to get them out and on paper, or the computer, before they disappear…and, at times, the motivation to do that is NOT there. But, if I ignore them and do nothing I give nasty ole guilt the ability to worm it’s way into me because I know I am wasting not only time, but also talent, scenes, imagery, and what may be a story and characters that some reader out there might really love.

So, how do I handle difficult writing/motivation times like those? I guess I can say at times I get mad and take it out on my characters, putting forth my own depth of emotions in their fictional lives. At times it works and at other times I read over what I wrote and think, ‘ugh…what in the world was I doing to them? They don’t deserve this!’ I also try to use writing as an escape and handle it little by little, maybe one word or one line at a time, and eventually, for a short period of time, I am able to lose myself in the lives of my characters, or at least use them for an emotional outlet.

So, my question to readers is, how do you handle stress or lack of motivation in your own life?