Stop the Year, I Want to Get Out!

So my first thought upon reading Angela Campbell's excellent post yesterday was, "OMG, yes! I am soooo over 2016!"

Any way you look at it, it's been a not-so-great year. And I know I'm not alone in thinking so. In fact, I ran across THIS POST just the other night. So, whaddaya say? Can we all just agree to cancel the next six months and celebrate the new year now? I'll start.

The best way to celebrate is with presents--am I right?  And since it occurs to me that I've written at least eight books that are set at least partially during the New Year season, why not give away some of them? Of course, not all of those books are paranormal, and in a lot of them, the New Year is barely mentioned in passing. So I've narrowed things down to three titles in which New Year's celebrations feature pretty heavily--in one way or the other.  Those books are Now Comes the Night (Children of Night book three), Ashes of the Day (Children of Night book four) and Finders Keepers--which is a stand alone story. Descriptions of all three books are posted below. I'll be picking two winners: one will receive digital copies of the two Children of Night stories, the other will receive a digital copy of Finders Keepers. Just comment below and let me know which one(s) you want. Happy New Year! and Good Luck!

Oh, and one more giveaway. There's a free erotic short story on my own blog that's set on New Year's Eve. I'm thinking of expanding it into a longer book, and once I start working on it, the freebie will be gone. So get it now, if you're interested. It's called: The Start of Something Wonderful

Home is where the heart bleeds.

Children of the Night, Book 3

Growing up, vampire-born twins Julie and Marc Fischer were taught one simple fact of life: you can choose your food, but not your family. Six months after moving to San Francisco, though, the new challenges and choices each are facing are a Gordian knot of complicated.

Marc must decide whether to stay with Conrad and Damian, the only family he’s ever known, or embrace his destiny and the unexpected family—the ferals—that comes along with it. Meanwhile, Julie is forced to deal with the unpleasant realization that the man she loves isn’t necessarily the man who’s best for her.

For Conrad and Damian, the holiday season is stirring up bittersweet memories, and neither can keep from revisiting past passion and pain.

Faced with new mysteries to solve, new alliances to forge, new secrets to keep, and old relationships to rebuild, it’s no wonder the Fischer-Quintano vampires long for the good old days—when food was food and family was all that mattered.

Warning: If you’ve previously suffered from Disco Fever, this book could precipitate a relapse. Extreme care is recommended for anyone with a pronounced weakness for mistletoe, fang play, pretty young men of either species or extremely dangerous alpha-male vampire single dads. May contain trace amounts of polyester.

Only blood can break your heart.

Children of Night, Book 4

New Year’s Eve, 1999. The world is braced for Y2K, but that’s not the only ticking time bomb in Conrad’s life. Damian wouldn’t be the first vampire to find a way to die, but Conrad is determined he will not be one of them.

Present day. Damian struggles to trust that fate could possibly be kind enough to give him a love as perfect as Conrad’s. Conrad balances on the keen edge of his own fear that one more slip of his formidable control could drive his lover away—permanently.

Julie learns the hard way it’s not just interspecies relationships that seldom work out. Even between vampires, love is not a smooth course.

Meanwhile, intrigue and conflict within the nest continue to grow, fueled in no small part by Georgia’s slipping hold on a deadly secret. Marc works to consolidate his position as leader of the ferals—and discovers that being a walking anomaly has certain advantages. Including some that are totally unexpected.

Warning: Contains more love triangles, more power struggles, more tears and teeth gnashing, and even more graphic scenes of manlove between moody, domestically inclined vampires than in previous editions. Definitely not recommended for anyone suffering from ALSSD (Auld Lang Syne Sensitivity Disorder) or with aversions to ballrooms, evening clothes, sarcasm, or close-quarter stiletto combat.

Sometimes finding what you want is the easy part.

Caleb is a bionic soldier with little-to-no memory of his past. He's seeking the truth about himself and those missing memories.

Aldo's an undercover cop who just might have the answers to Caleb's questions. But if Caleb's the man Aldo thinks he is, how can he let him get away a second time?

Then there's Sally; she's an ER physician who used to be married to Aldo's late partner, Davis. Sally's not dealing with widowhood very well. In fact, it's getting harder, every day, just to find a reason to keep getting out of bed. If the truth about the men's shared past comes to light, she could lose them both. Along with her last, best reason to go on living.

This holiday season, chance will bring them together and give them an opportunity to help one another find what they each want most. But every gift comes with a price. And keeping what they've found once they've found it? Yeah, that's gonna be the hard part.

Genre: Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Space Opera, Menage & Polyamory

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End of Year Blues

These are the sort of end of year blues I like: blue skies, blue ocean, endless freedom. I love that in Australia the year begins and ends in summer.

May the hurts of 2012 heal fast

& the joys of 2013 last forever.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year the Ancient Egyptian Way!

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year and is now settling back into everyday life, like I’m doing.

Since my book Priestess of the Nile comes out from Carina this month, I started thinking about the New Year in Ancient Egypt. If we were living in the land where my story takes place, we’d actually be celebrating somewhere in July, pegged to the rising waters of the Nile and inundation of the fields to start the planting. Making it hard to do adequate planning, the Nile can begin flooding anywhere within a roughly 80 day time frame.

Egypt was nothing if not organized, with a structure going all the way down from Pharaoh to local authorities, with armies of scribes keeping track of everything in neat lines of hieroglyphics. This eighty day window didn’t work for them. Can’t have Pharaoh on standby waiting for the river to rise!

Lacking instant communications the Egyptians had to have a system that would allow everyone in the country to know the moment the New Year had begun, so all could be in sync with Pharaoh.

The solution they found was grounded in science and mythology, like so many ancient cultures. The star Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. A quirk of its heliacal rising – the moment when it first becomes briefly visible above the eastern horizon just before sunrise, after a period of time when it had not been visible - makes it a perfect marker to anchor the calculations of the ancient New Year. Each day the star rises further and further in the sky until it disappears again, only to reappear a year later.

Sirius or Sepdet as the Egyptians called it, was a trustworthy predictor of the Nile flood season. The first new moon after Sepdet reappeared in the sky was the first day of the New Year. Even if the Nile hadn't begun to rise, that day was also deemed to be the official start of the flood.

The Egyptians believed the Nile flooded each year as Isis, Queen of the Great Ones (who appears in my novella) wept over the death of her husband Osiris. The bright star was said to be the goddess herself. Not to worry, Osiris rose from the dead with help – some legends credit the hero of my story, Sobek the Crocodile God, with assisting Isis in saving her husband. Osiris was considered the source of all life, including the vegetation that would grow after the Nile flooded with his wife’s tears, spreading rich black mud on the waiting fields.

This post isn’t long enough to go into the intricacies of the Egyptian calendar but there were five days of feasting and observances at the end of each year. The beer flowed freely according to some accounts I’ve read! New Year’s Day was the Opening of the Year and on Day 15 special offerings were made to ensure a good flood. Given the 80 day variation in the start of the flood, this Day 15 observance was pretty sure to fall during the actual rising of the Nile, thus making Pharaoh appear all knowing as he should be.

And their year would be off to a good start, life going smoothly!

What one thing are you hoping to see go differently in your New Year?

Ritual Magic

Today is the day we down aspirin, wash the leftover mascara from the corners of our eyes and swear to ourselves and the list we posted on the mirror, "This year will be different."

Resolutions come in two flavors: Outcome and process. Outcome-oriented resolutions are the ones fitness gurus (like my alter ego) are fondest of: Specific, measureable, goals set to a timeline and a plan.

Process-oriented resolutions are harder to define but ultimately more satisfying. These are the "lifestyle changes" I lecture about when I'm wearing yoga pants and a name tag. These are also the first promises to ourselves we break.

Last year, for example, I swore (and claimed in public) that I would send one handwritten note, letter or card each day of the year. To those of you with January 6 birthdays, I hope you enjoyed your mail. The January 7 folks, however, were left hanging.

This year, being a fan of the power of language and names, I'm not making any process-oriented resolutions. Instead, I'm going to establish rituals. Rituals have a magic about them, an inherit higher power that will back up my will. They are much sexier than "good habits" (which is what nuns wear). They are more fun than goals. They involve nice-smelling candles, more often than not.

Let's see how it will pan out?
1. I will practice a daily sweat cleanse (which sounds better than exercise, doesn't it?)
2. I will create a protective circle between debt and my family (lighting candles while I cut up the credit cards, of course).
3. I will channel the denizens of Stewardsville and record their doings in the rest of my series (word-count, schmerd-count. Wouldn't you rather write this way instead?)

I'm bringing a little linguistic magic into my life in 2012. Howzabout you?