New Release From a Pal

She’s got the man—and the wedding—of her dreams. If only love were part of the fantasy.

Heather Tindall is temping as a personal assistant until her dream job as an event planner comes along. Worse, her new boss has a penchant of running off new assistants before lunch. Heather’s not about to let her spotless employment record be ruined by a real estate mogul with an attitude problem, no matter how well he fills out a suit.

At first Curtis can’t believe the nerve of the woman who refuses his order to leave. Six months into their working relationship, her dedication still manages to surprise him. But her best efforts to protect his personal life can’t keep the press from seeing him as anything more than a playboy. Then it dawns on him that the perfect solution is right under his appointment book—Heather.
Swept off her kitten heels, Heather can’t help but accept the proposal of the man with whom she’s fallen in love. She hopes that in time he’ll come to feel something for her.

Curtis is determined not to feel anything, for anyone, ever. He’ll do anything Heather wants—but he’s not going to fall in love with her.

Except that will never do for a girl with a Cinderella Complex…

Read An Excerpt Online

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I've been tagged

Well, I was tagged by Cynthia Hamer so I have to come up with 5 Unimportant things about me. Perhaps I should say, I need to narrow the list to 5. Either way…

1. I prefer decaf Lipton tea to Salada even though Salada is cheaper.

2. My passport photo was taken nearly 4 years ago and still looks nothing like me.

3. I'm madly in love with Dong-Kun Jang from the movie Tae Guk Gi, but I have yet to see the movie. (I will stare at any commercial I spot him in despite not understanding a word.)

4. I have a large collection of Chinese Winnie The Pooh gum ball machine toys.

5. I can write letters upside down, but not numbers.

Now I have to go find people to tag. I'll be back.

Play nicely, now.

This week there has been a thread running on the Romance Divas forum about the ethics of blogging. I guess I'm really naive, but it never occurred to me to use my blog to attack someone. Either that or I am truly a preschool teacher at heart. Everybody plays nice.

My college background was in English Lit. In those classes I was taught never to assume the author was saying something based on a text. Would you say Dickens promoted misers because he created the character Scrooge (as well as several other misers) or that Swift advocated eating babies because he wrote an essay suggesting it as a solution to the Irish potato famine? Should you claim that Author Jane Doe should give up writing and get back to the kitchen because you hated her last book? Or because you hated all her books? There are lots of authors I can't stand or whose writing gives me the willies. Do I therefore, courtesy of this blog, have the right to call down curses on their heads?

Of course not. Just because I don't like it or think it's bad doesn't make me the final answer. I can't stand Korean food. I mean really, there's dishes I wouldn't feed my dog (if I had one and if there wasn't dog in it. They still eat dogs in Korea.) There's one dish here we refer to as "wet dog stewed in old mop water" based on the smell. However, my total abhorrence means nothing to the millions of Koreans who can't eat a meal without kimchi.

So those authors I don't like, chances are they can find thousands if not millions of fans who think I'm off my rocker. And what does it get me to attack someone? It raises my blood pressure and it might hurt the feelings of someone I don't know, but could have been friends with. Why bother? There's so many fish in the sea, why not focus on what you like?

Now everybody, play nicely.

Lunar New Year

I'm currently in Korea and Lunar New Year is a big holiday. So big that they gave us 5 days off (including the weekend.) The first year I was here for Lunar New Year I asked my head teacher why all the kids were turning up with new hair cuts. She said that over Lunar New Year it's traditional to make changes. New hair cuts, moving house, new clothes. It's also traditional to finish and clean out things. (The poor garbage men.)

So over this Lunar New Year holiday I edited Three Alarm Tenant and sent it off to a friend who volunteered to critique it. I need to cut about 12,000 words out to fit into Harlequin's word limits, but that's do able. And since it's new year again, I can make resolutions again. This year, my focus will be submitting. Thanks to the workshop I did in January on business, I have a whole bunch of e-publishers I can submit to and a whole bunch more of groups I where I can find out information. Gosh, it's nice having another go at the New Year.

Building a Tough Hide!

Well, I got a really horrible review this week. Really horrible and from Publisher's Weekly no less. Once I started breathing again, I did what I usually do in the face of criticism. First, I sent messages out to the world telling everyone that I got a bad review. Advertising is advertising. At the very least I figured I would get sympathy. At best I might get some more votes. Then I picked over the review for points. A bad review can be more helpful than a good review as far as improving your craft. If you spend all your time being wounded, you'll never learn anything. While I was looking for points, I also tried to put the review in perspective. I recently read a review of a movie that I loved, but the reviewer hated. It seemed to me that the review had made up his mind about the film before he hit play. I feel the same thing happened to my entry. Publisher's Weekly accused me of having a trite plot and vanilla characters. I was wrote a category romance so, yes, the story is going to follow a predictable arc. And the characters are a little vanilla too. It's something I'm working on. Then I reaped the benefits of my first step where all my pals sent condolences and defended me, which actually helps with the perspective thing.

When I took riding lessons, I was told you need to fall off seven times before you can consider yourself a real rider. I wonder how many bad reviews you have to get before you can consider yourself a real writer.