It's not Thanksgiving for me this weekend and I have to say I'm envious because I have to go to work today and Friday. But it's always good to think about what we're thankful for, and I know I have so much, especially in times like this when so many are struggling. I'm thankful for my day job that pays the bills and lets us do things we like to do. I'm thankful for the generous vacation time I have, and every other Friday off, when I can write. I'm thankful that even though my kids are teenagers they are good kids and make me proud. I'm thankful I have a partner who loves me and who is my best friend and supports me no matter what. I'm thankful for the writing success I've had (even though I want more!) and for the awesome writer friends I've made on-line that make writing so much less lonely.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

This week I read Pleasure and Purpose by Megan Hart, one of my favourite authors. This book is actually three stories and it's very different from other books I've read by her. I enjoyed reading her writing from the male POV, which I'm not sure she has done in any of her other books I've read. I also enjoyed the world she created, though I'm not sure what or where it is! The stories were each beautiful and different, with wounded heroes and handmaidens to help them find solace. Each of the handmaiden has a different background, each suited to the man she is sent to, and in the end the handmaidens find what they need, too. I loved it.

Tonight I start a new book: No Matter What by Erin Nicholson.

And I have so many other wonderful books queued up to read, by some of my favourite authors - Maya Banks, Lacey Alexander and I even get a sneak peek at a new Samhain book that's not even released yet...I just need more time!

My Samhain editor, the fabulous Tera, is having a contest at her blog right now. All her authors have chipped in and bought a Kindle which we're giving away loaded up with some great books! To enter, go on over to her blog - leave a comment AND send Tera the answer to the question at the end of the post. Today's my day there, but the more you enter, the more chances to win!

EditorTera's blog

Ally stared back at him, then nodded jerkily.
“I left because of you and Carter,” he said harshly, his tanned cheekbones darkening. “I left because I walked in on you and Carter about to have sex in your dorm room. Because the next day Carter told me you and he were suddenly more than friends. And I couldn’t stand staying and watching the two of you together.”
She gaped at him, her mind whirling. What could he possibly mean by that? She swallowed nervously, licked her dry lips, and stared searchingly into the depths of his eyes.
“We didn’t have sex that night.” God, why did she say that?
“You didn’t?”
She shook her head. “What are you saying, Jack?”
“Too damn much.” He closed his eyes.
Her insides quivered. “Are you saying you were ...jealous?”
Silence. She sucked in a breath. Then ...“Yeah.”
“There’s different kinds of jealous,” she said slowly, felt his fingers tighten on hers.
He gave a low groan. “I was jealous of Carter, Ally. I was starting to have feelings for you, too...I didn’t want to leave you and it was messing me up. Then Carter tells me you two are going out. I could not face that. I just couldn’t. I know it was chicken shit, but I just couldn’t stay around and watch you two together. So I left.”
Ally’s breath caught in her throat and her heart tumbled into a rapid rhythm. “You had feelings for me...like what?”
“Like this.” And he yanked her up against him and kissed her.
She felt the tension vibrating in his body, their clasped hands crushed between them as his hard, hot mouth covered hers. Her head spun and her other hand came up to clutch his big shoulder. She wriggled her hand out of his and wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back, opening her mouth under his, letting his tongue fill her mouth.
Hot liquid settled low in her belly, an empty ache that needed to be filled, and she pressed herself closer. She was still aroused from their earlier kiss.
Her breasts compressed against his hard chest and he slid a hand around to her low back, to rest on the curve of her butt, pulling her into him. She rubbed herself against the hard evidence of his arousal, making him groan.
They broke the kiss and stared at each other with hot, questioning eyes, then Ally closed her eyes and they were kissing again. Jack pressed closer, one big thigh moving between her legs, and she arched into him, head falling back. He kissed her throat, sucked gently, and she trembled with desire and pleasure.
Then he released her and stepped back. He stared at her with wild eyes, chest heaving and she, too, sucked in air.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a raspy voice. He wiped his mouth. “I should not have done that.”
Not again! How could he keep doing this to her, getting her all excited and then pulling the plug. “But you said you had feelings for me...”
“It was five years ago. Things have changed.”
She pressed her fingers to her mouth to stop her swollen lips from trembling, still watching him.
“I just got carried away,” he continued.
“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with us...doing that?”
“It’s Carter.” He paused. “He’s still my friend.”
“I know, but…he doesn’t need to ever know about this.”
“Does that make it okay? Would you have felt that way about him cheating on you? It was okay as long as you didn’t know about it?”
“It’s not the same thing.” She frowned. “It’s not the same thing at all. We’re not cheating on Carter.”
“It’s still a kind of betrayal,” he said, looking like someone was pulling out his fingernails. “It’s how I felt when I found you two together.”
“It’s different,” she insisted.
His eyebrows slanted down, and the corners of his mouth dipped. “How did Carter take it when you broke up?”
Not well. Carter had been furious and it had been ugly. She could never understand why he wanted to stay together when he also apparently wanted to screw every girl he met. But she didn’t want to tell Jack that because it would just prove his point.
“It was a long time ago,” she muttered.
“He could probably handle seeing you with someone else,” Jack continued. “But not with me.”
“I can’t believe you would consider Carter’s feelings over mine.” She just stared at him, blinked a few times, then pulled her hand free of his. She turned and left the room, went up to her room. There, she sank onto the bed. This was getting to be a regular thing, sitting there frustrated, confused, aroused, because of Jack.
She couldn’t get over the idea that Jack had had feelings for her in college. She recalled her own confused emotions at that time, that peculiar longing she’d had and how she’d been so depressed about Jack leaving. Was it because she’d been falling in love with him too?
It wasn’t that crazy. Except he’d disappeared. She stood up and strode determinedly to the door of her room. She was going to tell him that.
Then she leaned her forehead on the door, hand on the knob. Could she handle any more rejection from Jack? This was the second time he’d pulled back. He’d had feelings for her five years ago, but maybe things had changed, like he’d said.
She turned around and paced back to her bed, sat again, her mind whirling with mixed emotions. She still didn’t understand what his misplaced loyalty to Carter was all about. Carter didn’t give a shit who she was with now, she was sure, and probably didn’t care who Jack was with either.

Extreme Close Up Chapter 21

The announcement by Harlequin of their new Harlequin Horizons imprint this week sent shock waves throughout the publishing industry that likely registered on the Richter Scale. My initial gut reaction hasn’t changed much after reading a lot of the chat about this in various loops and forums, but I’ve given it some thought, looking to the future.

Apparently Harlequin is not the first publisher to move to an agreement like this with self-publishing companies. As a business decision, I can totally understand why Harlequin would do this. Malle Vallik commented on Smart Bitches that the reason they’ve done this is to offer authors other avenues to get published. Nothing wrong with that. They’re charging a fee, and there may be a market for this service that will make them money. Tons of money (based on the fees on their website). Especially if every author they reject is directed to Horizons.

On the surface, if that’s all it is, I say, fine, let them run their business (buyer beware). I can understand Harlequin authors who are upset by this, although Ms Vallik assured them there will be no association between the two imprints and readers will not confuse Horizons books with traditional Harlequin imprints.

We know the publishing industry is struggling with their outdated and cumbersome business model, especially in this economic climate. The advent of digital publishing has highlighted some of those inefficiencies and change has started to occur. I don’t know enough about the publishing business to be able to suggest solutions to their problems, but I can’t help but wonder if publishers are seeing this kind of venture into vanity publishing as a solution.

In an economic climate that is requiring all businesses to look for efficiencies, this definitely works. Editors/editorial assistants read through piles of queries, rejecting most of them or asking for a few partials to read, then read through piles of partials and reject most of them or ask for a few full manuscripts, read through all of those, passing some up to senior editors but rejecting most of them, then senior editors read them and reject them, with all the back and forth correspondence that happens, or in the case of those they accept, the publishers then spends considerable time editing, designing covers, printing, promoting, etc etc. Harlequin still does all their business by snail mail! That boggles the mind in this day and age! No wonder it takes a year to hear back from them.

In this new model, the author pays for all these costs. It also saves them all the time (and editorial salaries and benefits) of reading through slush piles. They can see which self-published stories do well, and pick those ones up with no risk and little cost.

Malle Vallik also stated: “…if anyone is wondering if this changes anything with Harlequin’s usual editorial processes, the answer is no. We remain committed to reading and acquiring manuscripts from aspiring authors. It’s new voices that set new directions for the future.”

Call me cynical but if I was an editorial assistant or less senior editor at Harlequin, I’d be worried about my job. Looking to the future, I can envision Harlequin reducing editorial staff and picking up fewer books from slush pile submissions, and relying more on the Horizons line to provide their next releases. And it makes me wonder if other publishers will do the same.

Publishers are already reducing editorial staff and are apparently reluctant to take on anything that isn’t “big”. They’re afraid to take risks with new authors, and rumour has it they’re even hesitant to take on proven mid-list authors. This is a way for them to reduce their risk. Let’s face it, every book they decide to publish is a guess. Editors are using their best judgment, but it’s subjective and they’re just guessing. Mistakes are made, and it goes both ways – authors who get huge advances that never get earned out; manuscripts that are rejected and go on to become bestsellers with other publishers; books that you read and say, “how the heck did this get published?” and books with few expectations that go on to sell big numbers. This kind of model would take the guesswork out of it, take the risk out of it, and save publishers a ton of money on one side of the business, while making them money on the other side.

Let’s say one day this becomes the normal new publishing model, where authors who have the money pay get their book published and out there, perhaps connected to a particular publishing house that may or may not decide to offer a contract on that book if it does well. If we’re all playing on that level playing field, I suppose it could work. You would think that the books that are good stories and well-written would in fact rise to the top and sell more – thereby attracting the attention of the publishers. Which in fact is a more accurate way of deciding which books to spend money on publishing and promoting than say, a query letter.

But my goodness, how many sales do vanity-published authors make? My understanding is, the numbers are very low. How do you get your vanity-pubbed book into bookstores to sell, without the backing of a publisher? Most bookstores won’t even consider it. Once again, someone with enough money and knowledge to run a good promotion campaign will come out ahead on this one.

Authors already spend money now to write. I spend money on Internet service, workshops, reference books, membership to various professional associations, my own website and promotion, paper, printer ink, postage. Maybe that extra money will just become another cost of doing business for a writer. I’m not saying I like it, or that it’s right or wrong. Things that have been generally accepted business practices in the past aren’t necessarily the “right” way, and I’m thinking of traditional advances. Most people are now recognizing there are other ways to pay authors.

But in that model, only writers with money would get published. That’s a bit discouraging, isn’t it? What about all the great voices and talents and people with something to say, who may not have that kind of money to spend? What about other artists? Sure, painters have to buy brushes and paints and canvases – do they pay galleries to have exhibitions or sell their work? (I really have no idea, not being that kind of artist). Do musicians pay recording studios to produce their album? (Recognizing that many musicians can now record their own music and put out CD’s and MPs independent of big record labels – kind of like self-publishing, hmm?)

In this kind of model, publishers potentially could make more money from rejecting authors than by actually publishing their books and selling them. That just doesn’t feel right and doesn’t bode well for the quality of the work being put out there. And if that was all there was to choose from – unedited, self-published books - what does that do to the quality of our literary experiences?

If this in fact becomes the new model, how would that affect other stakeholders? What happens to agents? If anyone can pay to have her book published, she doesn’t need an agent. If the publisher decides to offer a contract, the author may need an agent to negotiate terms. Or maybe not. Maybe publishers would move to standard boiler-plate contracts like many digital publisher currently do. In which case, why would anyone need an agent? Or could there be a dual model, where some pursue the vanity publishing avenue and others try to get that contract through an agent as they do now?

What about existing digital publishers? They have built an apparently successful business model based on no large advances and higher royalty percentages. Would they be motivated to move to a similar system, whereby authors pay to be published and associated with their name?

Somehow, in the digital-only world, this doesn’t sound so appealing. Vanity publishers have traditionally focused on print books; if you want to publish a digital book, apparently it’s quite easy these days through various venues (Lulu, Smashwords, even Amazon). So it’s unlikely that digital publishers could make money offering this service. And digital publishers are probably pretty lean already in terms of their business processes. Editors work from home, most of them have “day jobs” as well as their editing work, business is conducted electronically and the publishers aren’t paying for office space, computers, equipment, supplies and the salaries of editors to sit in those offices all day reading the slush pile.

I don't have answers, only a lot of questions, and I don’t know if this is where the publishing industry is going. I have to admit I find it a frightening prospect as both an author and a reader. I think everyone will be watching this venture with great interest.

Today I'm blogging about some of the things I learned about coffee while researching SEXPRESSO NIGHT ( now available from Ellora's Cave) over at Nine Naughty Novelists - come on by!

WHAT I'M READING WEDNESDAY...

I finished The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes. She is one of my favourite authors, but this wasn't my favourite book. Lots of characters and I didn't connect with all of them. It took a while to figure out what was going on - okay it took the whole book, and at the end I felt a little let down. There was one hint (that I caught anyway, maybe others whizzed by me) about it and that wasn't even much. At first, I noticed that the days were going backwards, yet the events weren't. I said that to my husband, and my daughter (aka Miss Smartypants) overheard and said, "It's a countdown". Duh. Of course it's a countdown! Then I got all excited about what we were counting down to. All the characters are moving toward the same one point in time, one day, and I did like the ending for some of them but much of it felt very deus ex machina - I mean, come on? A chunk of ice falling out of the sky? Still, a very entertaining Marian read.

Just started Pleasure and Purpose by Megan Hart, another favourite author!

My second Ellora's Cave book is out today!


After a disastrous D/s relationship nearly destroyed her, Danya swears she’ll never go back to that lifestyle. She tries to deny the dark hunger rising inside her, a craving to be pushed, taken to the edge, until the night she ends up at Karma Coffee for Sexpresso Night. There she discovers how sensual and sexy coffee can be--and how sensual and sexy barista Carter Jarvis is. Carter senses gorgeous Danya wants to let go of control with a man. When they end up back at his place ‘for coffee’ she submits to him so beautifully he knows she’s meant to be his. Carter seems perfect for her–not wishy-washy, but not a sadistic pervert–until he shows her his BDSM playroom.

As always I'm giving away a copy to one of my newsletter subscribers, so if you're not a member, join up now and leave a comment for a chance to win!

Click to join KellyJamiesonnewsletter

Here's the trailer:

Veiled Secrets Reviews gave Irish Sex Fairy 4 Dragons



“You won't want to miss this book. It's got charm, humor, love and really good sex… a very good story with twists and turns throughout it, amongst the loving.”


http://www.veiledsecretsreviews.com/IrishSexFairy.html

So if you're a regular visitor to this blog, you probably noticed the change a week or two back - it matches my new website, which is up and running now, and it's so beautiful! I just want to sit and stare at that splash page. Big thanks to Tina Pavlik at Pysche Designs for all her patient help with my lack of tech knowledge!

www.kellyjamieson.com

Why should she care that Jack had found her scrapbook about him? He was her friend. Wasn’t it natural she’d be interested in and proud of what he was doing? Maybe it was a bit much, which perhaps was the embarrassing part.
“I found this.” He looked up at her, his blue eyes full of questions.
“I hadn’t heard from you.” She could hardly speak through her tight throat. “When I came across something you’d done, I kept it.”
“I see that,” he said slowly, turning another page. “This is basically my whole career in here.”
He looked up at her again, and her glance skittered away from his.
He got up off the floor, unfolding his long legs in their faded denim, the scrapbook in his hands.
“You want to tell me why you collected all this stuff about me?” he asked softly.
Her mouth went dry. “Um...it’s no big deal. I was relieved when I saw your name in Newsday, I started keeping an eye out for more of your work.” She gathered the sides of the ridiculous fluffy robe together over her chest.
“Relieved?” One straight brow eyebrow lifted.
Shit. “Well, yes.” She blew out a long breath. “Yes, okay? Relieved. I thought maybe you were dead.”
He frowned.
“Then when I found out where you were, I was even more worried. It’s so dangerous, Jack,” she told him earnestly. “Every time a journalist or a photographer got injured or killed, I worried about you.” She’d thought about him a lot more than that. Damn it.
If it hadn’t been for that crazy, hot kiss earlier, she’d be fine telling him so much more...about how much she’d missed him, how hurt she’d been that he’d left like that, how she worried about him all the time. She’d tell him how much she’d wanted him there to talk to and comfort her like nobody else ever could when she’d been crushed and betrayed by Carter.
But she couldn’t say all those things, because there was still that arc of tension between them, that edge they were both balancing tenuously on.
“You were worried about me?” he murmured, moving closer to her. She backed up, clutching the robe. Her damp hair dripped water and a drop ran down between her breasts. She was surprised it didn’t sizzle, she felt so hot.
“Well, yes. Of course.”
“That’s nice, Ally. At least I know you cared.”
She swallowed. “You were my friend, Jack.”
His brow lifted again. “I was your friend?”
She frowned and put a hand out to stop him from coming closer. She wanted him closer, so, so much, but she was not going to embarrass herself again. “I mean, you are my friend. Of course, you are. Even though you didn’t contact me the whole time you were gone. I know, I know, you and Carter e-mailed all the time.” Christ, she was babbling like a baby but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. “And even if Carter didn’t bother to tell me about it, and it’s true that you did e-mail him, it doesn’t really matter. The fact is, you never contacted me.” She jabbed a finger into his hard chest. “We were friends, even before you and Carter were friends. You should have e-mailed me. And you should have told me why you left like that so I didn’t have to hear stupid rumors about you.”
His eyes narrowed and he put up a hand to clasp the one she’d poked him with, keeping her from continuing to jab at him. His warm, lean fingers closed around hers and held them between them, pressed against his chest. “What rumors?”
She sighed. Hell. “Carter told me he’d heard a rumor that the reason you’d left in such a hurry was because you’d gotten another girl pregnant.”
“Whaaat!” Jack’s face was comical, his mouth open, eyebrows up near his hairlie .
She nodded, frowning. “I knew it wasn’t true.” She looked up at him through her lashes, practically begging him to deny it categorically even though she’d never believed it.
“Hell, no, of course it’s not true!” He ran his other hand through his thick, sun streaked hair. “Jesus Christ. Who the hell would start that rumor?” He laughed shortly. “I barely even dated in college, and believe me, when I had sex, I used protection. I learned my lesson the goddamn hard way.”
Um. She’d known how much he had dated. After all, they’d been best friends. But she was disturbed to hear him talk about having sex. She frowned. She wanted so badly to ask who he’d had sex with, but that was a stupid question, none of her business and she was probably better off not knowing.
“I know,” she said. “I told Carter that couldn’t be true.”
“He believed it?” Jack asked incredulously.
She shook her head rapidly. “No, no. Of course not.” She bit her lip. “Although he did say it kind of made sense because you’d done that before.”
There was silence for three heartbeats.
“Fuck him!” Jack burst out. His fingers tightened painfully on her hand. “I may have gotten a girl pregnant, but I never abandoned her!”
“I know, I know,” she soothed him, surprised this conversation had gotten him so riled up. She put her other hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “It doesn’t matter, Jack. I knew it wasn’t true, and Carter did too. And I don’t know who would have started such a crazy rumor, but I don’t think anybody else would have believed it either.”
Jack stared down at her, his blue eyes stormy and flashing. “You want to know the real reason I left?”

Extreme Close Up Chapter 20

Got the contract in the inbox yesterday, so I'm ready to announce it!

I sold another story to Ellora's Cave (my third, yay!). It's called Rigger (okay it's supposed to be The Rigger, but EC doesn't like "the" in the title, which I totally understand).

So, Rigger is a story about a...well, a rigger! For those who don't know, a rigger is someone who ties women up for the aesthetics of it. The art. Alek is a photographer who's into Shibari bondage as an art form, but also, yes as something erotic and sexual. He needs a model to complete the photography book he's doing on Shibari, and asks his best friend Shaela. She completely disapproves of Alek's lifestyle, but when she's tied up and floating away to a different place, she discovers parts of herself she didn't know existed. And when their relationship moves from friends to sex and then to love, Alek learns things about himself he's been trying to hide from too.

...it sent fire streaking through her senses.
His fingers tightened on her head then twisted in her hair, and she gasped against his mouth. He drew back and looked down at her searchingly. She held his gaze, her body throbbing against his.
When he tugged again, his gaze focused intently on hers, a barrage of sparks shot from her scalp over her entire body. His eyes, already espresso-dark, went black as he watched her and he groaned. “You like that.”
She didn’t want to answer. It was crazy to enjoy having her scalp tugged on, but pleasure torched her body at the rough touch. He kissed her, tongue sliding into her mouth again and again. She strained against him, up on her toes, and when he sharply drew on her hair again, pulling her head far back, she moaned. His mouth slid over her jaw with a tiny nip, then to her throat and the pulse that beat there, and he gently sucked on her flesh.
Every nerve ending in her body jumped and danced. She ached between her legs, a ferocious hunger she hadn’t felt for a long, long time. Her breasts swelled, her nipples tingled, and when Carter’s other hand slid down to the curve of her ass and brought her up even harder against him, another low noise tore from her throat.

Sexpresso Night
Available November 17, 2009 from Ellora's Cave www.jasminejade.com

I'm in the process of getting a new website, professionally designed (the blog is already changed so you can already see how the new website is going to look (beautiful!) However I'm also changing hosts and for a few days my website is unavailable. This HAD to happen right when the Nine Naughty Novelists are starting our scavenger hunt - so I'm sorry to everyone who tries to go to my website and it's not there! You can find the answer to my question here and rest assured if you send in an entry without my question answered, you won't be disqualified.

The timing sucks but I'm going to be so excited to have my pretty new site!

I finished Strip Search by Shayla Black aka Shelley Bradley. I really enjoyed this story though I did want to give Mark a smack at one point but then every good hero needs a little smack once in a while when he's being a stubborn male!

I had all these great books loaded on my Sony reader and then by chance I happened upon a new release by my FAVOURITE AUTHOR Marian Keyes. So sorry everyone else, she moved to the top of the list with The Brightest Star in the Sky. I've started it and can't quite figure it out, many characters, though I do notice we are moving backward through time...tomorrow is a day off for Remembrance Day and maybe I'll get more reading done! (Should be writing, but...)

The Naughty Nine have launched our new blog and to help celebrate we're having a scavenger hunt starting today!

Jack sat there, feeling like a fucking idiot. How could he have done that?
Not minutes after his friend had left, he’d kissed his ex-girlfriend. What a low life scum he was.
He leaned back and covered his face with his hands. Ah, man. He should never have come here. Of course, he’d thought they were still together when he’d arrived. But as soon as he’d found out they weren’t, he shouldn’t have agreed to stay with Ally.
Not only were his feelings for Ally still alive and well...he’d fallen in love with her all over again. With the woman she’d become. Not a pacifist, conflict-avoiding, see-the-best-in-everyone young girl, but a woman – strong, assertive, who could bring out the best in people but who could also see their flaws.
He let out a long groan. Fuck.
He stared up at the ceiling.
He’d leave. Tomorrow. He’d call Carter and see if he could stay with him. It was for the best, despite the tension still simmering between them.
He stood and wandered around the room, until he stopped in front of the book shelves where he’d found Ally’s photo albums. He pulled out another one, this one full of Ally’s family pictures. Photos of her as a little girl coaxed a grin out of him. He slid that one back and pulled out another album, a newer one. Only it wasn’t a photo album, it was a scrapbook. He opened it up, flipped a couple of pages...
Holy shit.
He flipped another page. And another.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up and saw Ally in the door, clutching that fuzzy pink robe at her throat, staring at the album he held.

* * *

Four years earlier

“Carter! Look at this!”
Ally found Carter in the bedroom, tying his silk tie around his neck.
“What?” He frowned. “I’m trying to get ready.”
She thrust the news magazine in front of him, stabbed a finger at a photo credit. “It’s Jack! Jack’s photo!”
This was evidence that he was alive! “He’s in Iraq!” Then, “Oh, my God. He’s in Iraq.”
Carter glanced at the photograph, then back into the mirror. “I guess that’s what he wanted to do.”
Ally sank down onto the bed, the full skirt of her black party dress spreading around her. She studied the photograph. It was a powerful image of a street, deserted and littered with various articles - military-looking debris, a shoe, a child’s toy. The street had clearly been a residential area, the houses now bombed shells. Dramatic lighting and the starkness of the image made her imagine her own street, her own home, looking like that. She shook her head in dismay for the people who lived there. “Wow,” she breathed. “Oh, God, I hope he’s okay.” She glanced through the article. “Carter, why do you think he took off like that? And we’ve never heard from him. It’s been nine months.”
Carter shrugged, adjusted the knot of his tie. “I really don’t know. I did hear rumors, after he left, but I know they weren’t true.”
Ally frowned. “What kind of rumors?”
“Nothing,” he said dismissively. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes, I’ve been ready for ten minutes,” she told him. “I was waiting for you.”
“No you weren’t. You were still in the bathroom a minute ago.”
She held back a sigh but didn’t bother to contradict him.
“I don’t want to be late for the party,” he added.
“No one gets there right on time. You’re supposed to be fashionably late.”
“Glenn hates tardiness.”
“Glenn hates tardiness,” she mouthed exaggeratedly behind his back. She hated the way Carter sucked up to his boss. She sighed. “He’s not going to fire you or demote you if you’re late.”
He turned to her and smiled. “How do I look?”
“You look very handsome and professional.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
As she followed him down the stairs, she persisted with her question about Jack. “What were the rumors you heard about Jack?”
He gave a heavy sigh. “If you must know, I heard he got another girl pregnant. That’s why he took off.”
Ally gasped. “That can’t be true! He wasn’t even going out with anyone!”
“That you know of.” He held the door for her as they left their home. “I think he was. Don’t know what the big secret was.” He shrugged. “I don’t believe he would take off and leave a girl hanging like that. But then again, it was the second time it happened. He got lucky the first time.”
Ally looked incredulously at Carter. “You think he was lucky?”
“Sure. If Brittany had had that baby, his whole life would have been ruined.”
Ally wasn’t sure if she totally agreed with that. Yeah, Jack’s life would have been different, but eventually she knew he would have done something great, even if he’d had to work for years at the Garden City Sun. It wasn’t worth arguing with Carter, though. You couldn’t win an argument with him.
They arrived at the party at Carter’s boss’s opulent home, and Carter immediately started fawning over Glenn and his gorgeous, much younger wife. Trophy wife. Shame washed over Ally. Glenn Chipman was clearly in love with his wife, Jillian, despite their age difference. She could tell by the way he watched her as she talked, how he touched her possessively. Ally just hated to see Carter being so sycophantic. He was smart and talented, he didn’t need to kiss his boss’s ass like that to get ahead, and he especially did not need to flatter his boss’s wife with those ingratiating compliments that almost made Ally gag. But Carter’s career and this job at a successful, prestigious law firm were so important to him.
Thoughts and questions about Jack distracted her the entire evening, and the next day, when Carter had gone out, she went on the Internet and Googled Jack. She found lots of stuff – he’d been busy! Damn, why hadn’t she thought of doing this sooner?
She clipped the magazine article she’d found the day before and printed some stuff she found online, carefully pasting them into a scrapbook she’d found. Jack may not want to keep in touch with them, but at least she could follow his career and know he was okay. Somehow, though, she knew Carter would think she was crazy, and she kept the scrapbook carefully tucked away with her own books, only working on it when Carter wasn’t around.
* * *

“What are you doing?” Ally asked.
Jack was sitting on the floor in front of her bookcase, long denim-clad legs stretched out in front of him. He glanced up at her words. “I...uh...”
Her cheeks burned as she spied the scrapbook. Oh shit.

Extreme Close Up Chapter 19

The Naughty Nine are live at our new blog!

Last week and this week we're introducing ourselves by answering nine naughty questions. November 9 we're having a launch party at the Samhain Cafe with lots of book giveaways (7-9:00 EST) but if you can't make the party, we're also having a scavenger hunt at our blog that week for a great naughty prize!

First of all I have to have a small rant. WTF HAPPENED TO MY SONY READER? I turned it on yesterday and it took a moment, saying "formatting". Then when I went into a book I recently read, ALL THE BOOKMARKS WERE GONE! I haven't looked at every book on it, but randomly checking some - NO BOOKMARKS!!! All my favorite passages - gone! Well, they're still there, but in an ereader it's not as easy as flipping through paper pages to find them. Grrrr. Not. Happy.

Anyhoo.

I finished Songbird by Maya Banks. 'Nough said about that one last week.

Now reading Strip Search by Shayla Black/Shelley Bradley. I enjoy the metaphors and other rhetorical devices she comes up with! And the story's hot, too. This story is about a secondary character in Bound and Determined - Kerry's brother Mark. I love a little check-in on characters I've gotten to know in previous books!

And in the continuing ed department :-) I'm reading Screenplay - The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field. Nah, I don't want to write a screenplay, just thought I could learn something about plotting. And I have!

Got some great reads downloaded on my reader for this week!

Here's the trailer

Halloween is over and it is November. We had quite a few kids come last night, though not as many as I thought since it was Saturday and the weather was nice. Our kids are older now, so they were out doing their own thing, but my husband and I still carved a pumpkin (only one this year, usually we do three or four), put on our costumes and decorated the yard. We have a cauldron with a small fog machine in it and a hidden speaker playing scary music, blinking eyes up in the trees and a ghost that travels back and forth across the yard wailing. Lots of kids love it so even though our kids aren't around any more we still have to do it.