Muse Interrupted – Page 56 – She interrupts me. I interrupt her. Elle A. Muse is unfortunately not amused…

Spotlight on Kate St. James

Happy Book Release Day to Kate St. James!

I’m talking about various authors and books this week, so thought I’d start off with my buddy, my pal, my lifelong friend, Kate St. James. (Okay, so I’ve only known her 1/4 of my life, but it doesn’t sound as good). (All right, 1/5th of my life). (Maybe 1/6th). (Seriously, a few years). (At least 5). (Since 2007).

Kate’s first single title erotic romance, A LITTLE WILD, comes out today from Samhain Publishing, where it’s available in various digital formats. It’s also available in Kindle and Nook.

Here’s the blurb:

She wants a piece of his rock. He needs her, rock steady, in his heart.

Tess Sheridan won’t let anything stop her from making partner at a prestigious law firm, especially her notoriously soft heart. The result? She’s a handful of clients away from getting her name on that brass plate. And she hasn’t had sex in over a year.

When her best friend dares her to test-drive her erotic fantasies with a gorgeous stranger, she figures, why not? Loosening the reins will give her inner nympho some well-deserved pampering without jeopardizing her career goals.

Zach Halliday has enjoyed his bad-boy reputation to the fullest, but now it’s time to leave the relative safety of the family corporation and prove he can stand on his own in the business world. That doesn’t mean he’ll pass up an opportunity for some incredible phone sex with the beautiful strawberry blonde he met in a bar.

When business overlaps with the bedroom, Zach sees something special in Tess and is determined to convince her he’s the man she needs, anytime, anyplace. She can backpedal, but come hell or high-climbing-wall, he wants the fascinating, complicated sex bomb in his bed. Over and over again…

As my regular blog readers know, I used to host guest bloggers for the blog, until I got, well, lazy about it. And I used to interview authors every once in a while for my website until I got, well, lazy about it. So I thought I’d change things up a little and invite Kate over to the blog itself for a little interview.

Cindy: Hi, Kate. Welcome to my blog and thank you for being my first blog interviewee!

Kate: Where’s the chocolate?

Cindy: You’re welcome for hosting you. Congratulations on the release of A LITTLE WILD. This is your first single title and also your first release with Samhain Publishing. Where did you get the idea for the story?

Kate: Thanks, Cindy! Like most writers, ideas for stories and scenes basically pop into my mind, inspired by things I read and see and experience. I jot them down and when the time comes to write a new book, I’ll often combine several hastily scribbled elements to create one bigger idea. That’s basically how the idea for A LITTLE WILD came to be. For years I had a book opening in my mind that revolved around two women in a bar. Later, I wanted to do a book about a sex bet, so that bar scene seemed like a pretty good place to start. I also wanted to write about female friendships and show them as they really are, with all the warts and foibles. That’s how Tess Sheridan, my heroine, and her wisecracking best friend, Chloe Nichols, were born.

Cindy: How about the hero, Zach Halliday?

Kate: I needed a hero with a great sense of humor, and I wanted him to appear to be the opposite of Tess. However, inside, they’re really a lot the same. They’re both proficient at “wearing masks.” By that I mean following one path in life to make someone else happy or to match up with a preconceived idea of how their lives should unfold. In Tess’s case, she was raised to be an over-achiever, in a way to help create a “surface gloss” of a perfect family life when really her family has been in danger of falling apart for years and does fall apart, to an extent, during the story (however, there’s hope for rebuilding).

In Zach’s case, his mother died when he was fourteen, and so the natural inclincation was for him to band together with his brother and father, and to follow in his father’s footsteps in the business world when inside he wants to do something different, something that’s distinctly him. At the opening of the story, Zach has made the decision to leave his father’s company, but he hasn’t told his dad or brother yet.

Cindy: Tell us about the set-up.

Kate: The set-up for A LITTLE WILD was a lot of fun to write. I needed to get two very different people together, and I wanted to have fun with it. So when Tess and her friend Chloe are in the bar celebrating Tess’s career successes, Chloe dares Tess to prove that she can have sex like a man, without emotional commitment. Chloe doesn’t believe Tess can accomplish this goal if she has more than a one-night stand with the guy, so Chloe bets Tess that she has to survive a six-week sexual relationship without falling in love. Tess agrees to the deal thinking she can weasle out of it later. But then she meets Zach, one thing leads to another, and Tess and Zach wind up having phone sex without knowing who the other really is. A few days later, they meet in the law firm where Tess works and Tess discovers he’s the son of the law firm’s biggest client, to whom she’s been assigned. As such, Zach is off-limits and she backs off their very new relationship. He needs to get creative about wooing her, and he’s not shy about using his sexuality. The shocker for him is when he falls in love for the first time in his life.

Cindy: Sounds like a lot of fun! But there’s a secondary romance in A LITTLE WILD, too. Can you tell us a bit about that?

Kate: Yes, there’s a secondary romance between Chloe (Tess’s best friend) and Zach’s overworked older brother, Ethan. So there are four points of view in the book. While Tess is on a mission to have sex, Chloe is at the tail end of a six-month commiment NOT to have sex. For Chloe, having sex too early in a relationship screws it up. And her biological clock is ticking something fierce. She wants to make very sure that the next man she becomes involved with is The One, and she figures the only way to do that is to get to know him on a non-sexual level first.

However, Chloe’s also allergic to what she calls “suits”—business types. So when she meets Ethan Halliday and develops an instant connection with him, she tries to stay far, far away. Of course it doesn’t work. In the end, love prevails, for both Tess and Chloe. And for both the Halliday men.

Cindy: What else do you have on the go?

Kate: I started off writing humorous erotic romance novellas for Red Sage Publishing. My first three releases appeared in the Secrets novellas anthologies (Secrets 21, Secrets 26 and Secrets 28). Then, this October, my first erotica short story, Tea for Three, released from Ellora’s Cave Exotika Quickies. It’s a menage story also set in Vancouver, Canada, like A LITTLE WILD. I didn’t write A LITTLE WILD and Tea for Three at the same time. I just happened to sell them within several weeks of each other and so the release dates are only a few weeks apart. More information about Tea for Three can be found at Ellora’s Cave or on my website.

Cindy: Thank you, Kate! Best of luck with A LITTLE WILD and Tea for Three. Happy Release Day and Millions of Sales to you!

Kate: From your lips to readers’ ears. Thank you for having me on your blog!

Cindy: Thank you for agreeing to be here on such short notice.

Kate: Not a problem! Kisses!

Cindy: Smmmmmooooooooooooch!

Hugs all around.

***

Information about all of Kate’s books can be found on her website: www.katestjames.com. Like her Facebook page or follow her on Twitter. Now. Because I said so. And you are under my power (getting sleepy, very sleepy).

Okay, you can like my Facebook page, too. Or follow me on Twitter (very, very sleepy).

The best deal for Kate and me? Like and follow us both!

Me and Max

My December 2011 hardcover release, WHERE SHE BELONGS, is now available for pre-order from Barnes and Noble as well as Amazon and Amazon Canada (and Amazon has a price guarantee—you order the book now and if it shows up for a lower price before the December 16th release date, Amazon will match that lower price). Amazon Canada has the same guarantee.

Don’t forget that you can also ask your librarian to order a copy. Visit the Five Star/Cengage website to print out the book information—or just send your librarian to my website. Make sure, when writing down the web address, that you spell Procter-King with a hyphen and an E!

The cover isn’t up on the Barnes and Noble site yet. Not sure when that will happen. I’m just glad BN and Amazon are no longer saying that Western author Max Brand and I are co-authors for the book! We both have Five Star releases on December 16th, and somehow a glitch got in the works. Next thing I knew, not only was Max Brand a co-author for WHERE SHE BELONGS, but I was a co-author for the December 16th Max Brand release.

A very weird glitch! Especially considering Mr. Brand is no longer alive. How could he co-author my book? Oh, the Internet!

Don’t worry, Max Brand fans, I won’t be taking advantage of his name and/or sales. I reported the mistake to Amazon, and it was quickly fixed. The same mistake appeared on Barnes and Noble’s website, but I was busy doing something else and while I was doing that something else, it got fixed without me having to report it.

Now if only I could figure out how to upload the cover to the Barnes and Noble website. I provided the cover for Amazon, because I didn’t want to wait for it to get picked up. Anyone know how to do the same on the Barnes and Noble website?

Halloween Costumes People Other Than Me Have Been

It’s been a couple of years since I posted about Halloween Costumes I Have Been. So I thought I’d do it again. Except this time it’s Halloween Costumes People Other Than Me Have Been. I won’t reveal who the someones are, except to say they are related to me. I also won’t reveal the decade, because then I might be killed. I will reveal that the person standing beside the Caveman is Aphrodite. In the flesh. Just in case you didn’t believe she really existed.

If you’d like instructions for Halloween costumes for Pond Scum, the Chewing Gum Family, Robot Boy, or The Three Witches of Macbeth, check here and here. And don’t give me any grief about the Pond Scum costume. It made sense at the time!

Here we go…

Caveman!

INSTRUCTIONS:

Marry Aphrodite.
Go hunting. Don’t give me any grief about the hunting! It wasn’t me who did the hunting, and the hunter had hunted all his life, beginning with hunting deer for food as a 13-year-old in the decade following the Great Depression. People lived on farms and hunted for food and then later hunted for sport. And then realized maybe they should stop hunting for sport. And so they did.
While hunting for another animal entirely, get stalked by a wolverine (this is tricky, but I assure you it can be done.)
Shoot the wolverine before it pounces on you.
Have your brother-in-law by marriage, who happens to be a taxidermist, create a wolverine skin.
Have this same brother-in-law give you a beaver pelt, because what home is complete without one?
Wait a few years.
Get invited to a Halloween party. Decide to be a caveman.
Strap beaver pelt to your chest and secure with a wide leather belt at the waist.
Take no notice that the beaver pelt is no longer than a mini-skirt. Trust that your friends expect this sort of behavior from you and will accept you, with or without mocking.
Hang wolverine skin down your back so that the head hangs over your butt. Prepare to stand around all night so you don’t sit on the wolverine’s head. Or, prepare to lift the wolverine’s head to sit, revealing what you may or may not be wearing beneath the pelt.
Considering the length of the beaver pelt, you’d better be wearing something beneath it!
Coax Aphrodite into stitching the wolverine paws over your shoulders and onto the beaver pelt. Because it looks super cool.
Strap a diving knife onto your belt…because it makes total sense that a caveman would go diving. In case he encounters a shark, he needs a knife. And he can pretend the knife is really a hunting knife. Because it’s a knife. Who will argue with him?
Wear a fancy watch to detract from the length of the beaver pelt.
Clasp on ONE earring. Make sure to choose the correct ear. Choosing the wrong ear might lead people to think you’re really Hagar the Horrible.
Hey, maybe you ARE Hagar the Horrible. This is an adaptable costume!
Ask a teenage person who lives in your house to take a photograph to commemorate the costume for all time.
Thirty years later, consider choking the teenager.
But, for now, hie thee to thy Halloween party and have a blast!

APHRODITE INSTRUCTIONS:

Wrap sheet or other cloth around body toga-style.
Secure with Grecian rope at your waist and a broach on your shoulder.
Spray paint leafy crown thing with gold leaf.
Look amazingly hot.
Remember how much you love the teenager who took this picture.

Have you designed any creative Halloween costumes for this year? Too many people buy store bought costumes these days. Why, when it’s so easy to make your own?

Giving the Cold Shoulder

The good news is I don’t have a frozen shoulder. My doctor admits I have a bit of a chilly one, though.

It’s been 7 weeks since I last went to see him about my rotator cuff injury. Since then, I’ve been attending weekly massage therapy sessions. A couple of weeks ago, we had a breakthrough—I can now sometimes, depending on the day, undo my bra behind my back! After months of slipping the straps off my shoulders, this was a real coup.

The bad news is that while I WILL recover, I’ve had this injury about a year now and then the super-duper injury that exacerbated the first injury, for about 4 months. So, I will recover, but the process is slllllllllllooooooooww. I’m to continue with my strengthening exercises and the massage therapy treatments, although my therapist has been given the green light to extend the treatments to ten days or two weeks between, depending how I do. If I don’t progress, it’s back to weekly treatments.

The fantastic news is that I don’t need an MRI or surgery. My rather excellent massage therapist’s hard work has helped my chilly shoulder from developing into a frozen one, for which I am thankful.

My personally set progress meter about being able to undo my bra behind my back has led me to discovering that not everyone can do this, whether they have an injured shoulder or not. My husband definitely can’t undo his bra behind his back. Well, he doesn’t wear a bra so that would partially explain it. Also, he used to have very flexible joints and could wrap his right arm around his head and touch his right ear:

Plus, he was heavy into sports. Maybe I asked him to wrap his arm around his head one too many times (I could NEVER do that), or maybe it was all the basketball and golf and skiiing and curling. Whatever, his range of motion is now more limited than mine, as far as the bra test goes. Which got me to wondering…do men lose the flexibility to undo their nonexistent bras behind their backs because if you don’t use it, you lose it? Any men out there reading this? Can you undo your imaginary bra behind your back? Can you zip up your imaginary dress zipper behind your back? Can you hook the little hook at the top of the zipper behind your neck? No? Well, welcome to womanhood. Or womanhood with sucky flexibility. I used to take those little things for granted. Now, my left arm mocks my right one. But I shall persevere. My goal is mutual arm mocking.

McBeagle Birthday

baby_allie — Two months old, December 2001.

Allie McBeagle is ten today. Unlike my previous pets, I have never forgotten her birthday because we brought her home from the kennel on December 18th and she was exactly two months old. Over the last year, she’s made a big deal about turning ten. She wants a “baby burger” and a kiddie cone from Dairy Queen. Here’s where I confess that she eats the kiddie cones once or twice a month. It’s not my fault. My husband started it. That dog can inhale a kiddie cone, cone and all, in 3 minutes. And that’s holding back.

So…the “baby burger.” I don’t know if such a thing exists. I’ll probably order a cheeseburger instead and let her have 1/4th of it. Bad, bad, bad. But the beagle made ten, and so she deserves it. Our last dog, an Alaskan Malamute that lived to 13.5, had pizza on his tenth birthday. We’re big on ten!

mbeagle_6_months — Allie between 4-6 months. All the black is gone from her ears and her face is entirely brown.

Allie’s goal is to live to 16. So that’s six years to go. The average lifespan of a beagle is apparently 12-16 years. She’s been running three times a week for the last two, so is in better shape at 10 than she was at 7. But that’s not the reason she wants to live to 16. No, you see, there’s competition. Every pet of ours since my dh and I got married has lived longer than the preceding pet. Slink, the first cat, lived to 6 (got run over). Kanik, the first dog, lived to the aforesaid 13.5. Seiki, the most evil Siamese cat that ever existed, who nearly died (the first time) when he was four, lived to 15.5 years. And now Allie wants to outlive Seiki. So I hear. I mean, it’s not like the dog talks to me. Well, she tries. But it’s not like I listen. Creativity does have its bounds.

allie_10 — "A Walk in the Park" at ten years minus 2 days old. She began turning white in the face when she was four, but lately there's a lot of white! Happy dog.

Do you celebrate animal birthday milestones, or do you think I’m soft in the head? Come on, admit it, if you were a dog, you’d want to live with me.

WHERE SHE BELONGS Available for Pre-Order!

My December 2011 contemporary romance (and Golden Heart finalist in 2007), WHERE SHE BELONGS, is now available for pre-order from Amazon and Amazon Canada. Woot! You know the wonderful thing about pre-ordering, don’t you? It helps build buzz for the author, as in it makes her look good to her publisher. The more pre-orders, the more books that get shipped from the publisher’s warehouse on or around December 16th (my book’s release date), and then the greater likelihood that the print run will sell decently, or even (in my dreams) sell out, and then the publisher might be in a position to think, “Hey, we’d better do a second print run.”

Also, if you pre-order and then the price goes down, Amazon will honor the lower price between now and the shipping date. Plus, if you’re looking for Christmas and/or your-holiday-of-choice prezzies that you’d like delivered before, say, December 25th, considering the release date is December 16th, pre-ordering heightens your chances of receiving your copy in time. In fact, I’ve pre-ordered books that arrive before the official release date, so there’s another bonus in pre-ordering.

WHERE SHE BELONGS is releasing in library-edition hardcover, and I know it’s not the cheapest format in the world. There’s a chance that large print and/or trade paperback editions might release within the next year or two, but that’s not up to me. It’s up to the publisher. And the publisher most likely decides these things depending on how the first print run sells (hint, hint). I’d love to say a digital edition of the book will be available within the next six months, but, in this particular case, that won’t happen. The digital edition won’t release until December 2012. Yes, that’s a year. So if you love digital, you’ll just have to be patient. (Well, that’s taking for granted that you like my writing, or are willing to take a chance on a contemporary drama rather my usual romantic comedy fare).

But let’s just say there’s no way in Hootenany that you’re pre-ordering or buying or even pretending to buy a hardcover copy of my book. All is not lost. Because Five Star Expressions publishes library-edition hardcovers. If you look real close, you’ll notice the word “library.” That’s because the books are targeted primarily to the library market. But whether or not a librarian decides to order a copy of my book for her collection CAN depend largely on her clientele. The readers who frequent her library. She’s more likely to order a copy of my book (that you can then check out and read for free) if, say, a reader goes to the library and asks her to order it (hint, hint). Information about the publisher, Five Star/Cengage, and ordering for libraries can be found here. As a reader, you could print out the page of information and take it your librarian.

Your library might routinely order Five Star Expressions romances and women’s fiction novels from Five Star/Cengage (as in the library has a standing order) or they might not. However, the Five Star Expressions line is ending in December with the publication of my book and another by Western romance author Stacey Coverstone. You know what this means, don’t you? WHERE SHE BELONGS is a collector’s edition! Yesiree, you heard it here first.

Visit my WHERE SHE BELONGS book page to read an excerpt and check out reviews as they come in.

Blog post brought to you by Shameless Self-Promotion, which, after all, is the reason to have a website, so don’t give me any grief.