The fabulous Jaci Burton blogged Wild Wild West. Yeeha! She liked it! Coming Aug. 7 which is not very far away now. You can still pre-order yours! Just click on the cover in the sidebar.

Once upon a time, there was the Killer Frog Contest and with it came the much-coveted Froggie award. When I stumbled across this, I of course nearly died laughing. Killer Frogs! Imagine them, lurking in the night, in search of human blood! I had to write a poem about killer frogs. The Killer Frog Contest is no more, but the poem lives on…

Rustlings and stirrings of the night
Begin beneath the sickle moon
Shrouded by a funereal cloud
To cast a decayed and dissolute light;

Beneath the sickle moon they stir
They call to one another
One dirges in full-throated voice
Then pauses for the answer;

Calling to one another, they sing
Of fecund swamps and dark, dank bogs
Of sweet, corrupt slime and malevolent murk
And putrescent amphibious yearning;

Of fecund swamps and dark, dank bogs
Croon the voices of the night
Beneath the shrouded sickle moon
The throbbing cant of the waiting frogs.

Ride the Monday poetry train here.

Hope everybody’s having a good weekend with Harry.

I don’t have to tell you that Kelley Armstrong rocks, do I? I loved this book. She writes like an arrow flying towards its target and you know it’s going to hit dead center. This is a fast-paced and action-filled tale with fascinating characters it’s easy to become invested in and care about. And I found it fascinating that Armstrong was able to reveal so much about Jack from Nadia’s first person point of view, when he hid so much and said so little. Nice trick.

I loved how the character of Nadia Stafford unfolded, how questions were raised and answered throughout the book, enough revealed to explain but never bogging down in backstory, using the tension from the unanswered questions to keep the pages turning in search of revelations. I love how it ended with another question; will Jack and Nadia go to the pyramids in the next book? Will they be able to ask and answer some of the important questions still unspoken between them? Of course I will be getting my paws on the next book the first instant I possibly can to find out.

That Damned Book, aka Fallen, finally has an official name! St. Martin’s #3 is Wicked Hot. My editor was the one who came up with the name that got chosen, and while I still think Beelzebabe is hysterical and I’m sad it’s not the final title choice, we’re going to try to work it into the back cover copy.

Or at the very least, a tagline: Hell has a problem. Beelzebabe is the solution.

Edana is one fun heroine, and she really is Wicked Hot. Hooray! We have title!

1. Attend an opera at the Sydney opera house.
2. Paint wildflowers in Greece.
3. Tour Italy.
4. Eat my way through France. Croissants! Brie!
5. Visit Loch Ness in Scotland. I just know I will see Nessie.
6. Write 100 books. (I’m making progress on this one)
7. Cruise the Alaskan inside passage.
8. Hike Waimea Canyon and the Na Pali Coast trail on the island of Kauai.
9. Visit Taos, New Mexico.
10. Learn Salsa dancing.
11. Do a voice for a cartoon or video game character.
12. Meet Stephen King.
13. Hit the NYT bestseller list.

What’s on your life list?

Dangerous Games is a winner in the first annual Fantasm Awards for excellence in speculative romance. (Speculative fiction is a broad term that includes science fiction, fantasy, and horror) As a lover of genre-blending romance, this is the kind of award that makes me go “squee”!

Dangerous Games is my favorite kind of story to write and I’m delighted to see it continuing to get so much attention and recognition. And to think it all started with the image of a man on a motorcycle and a woman with a broken-down car on a desert highway, and no clue what the story was about. Glad I wrote it down to find out who they were, why they were there, and what happened next.