Updates on what’s going on!

I know so many of you probably thought I’d recently fallen into an abyss, but I haven’t!

Craziness has still consumed my life: my husband and father descend into a vertical cave and we came this close to us having to call cave rescue. The new year has begun which has resulted in me being back on a lettuce diet as they say in Regency books. These good eating habits are coupled with more exercise and I SWEAR that Jillian lady is trying to kill me! My kids are still being as sweet as can be. Why just the other day my oldest son offered to share his lunch of lentil loaf (which he detests) with his younger brother at lunch when his brother’s had spilled in his lunchbox. Why? Just because he didn’t want his brother to miss out. Sweet, isn’t it? Oh, another sweet thought from my little cherub was when we thought he might have strep throat and told him not to breathe on anyone. He immediately asked, “So, you’re saying with this disease if I breathe on someone, they’ll get it, too?” I’m not sure I’d call it a disease, exactly, but I nodded yes, that he’d make others sick. His response? He grinned and said, “Oh, good. Now I have a defense if someone says something I don’t like, I can yawn on them and they’ll get sick.” What a sweetheart I’m raising!

So when not wanting to pull my hair out, rolling on the floor in pain after an intense workout, or scraping my jaw off the floor, I’ve been doing an array of other things:

I’m giving away a $25 gift card to Amazon tomorrow over on Just Judy’s Jumbles.

Judy is celebrating her swift-approaching 100K blog views in two and a half years (to put this into prospective, I’ve been blogging for three years now and have only half that many) and in her celebration she has invited a multitude of authors do interviews and give away prizes. My interview full of everything you never knew you needed to know about me posted at this link on Monday and I’ll be giving away a $25 Amazon Gift card Friday. (This giveaway IS open Internationally, but the amount will adjust due to currency conversion.)

Other authors include: Ruth Ann Nordin, Janet Nitsick, Beverly Kendall, Jillian Hart and many, many others.

I’m also giving away something today, but not there…

I don’t usually post this here, but due to my sudden release date, I wasn’t afforded much time to offer ARCs (advanced reviewer copies) of Secrets of a Viscount, and would like to offer them now those who are interested in a free copy in exchange for an honest review to be posted on Amazon–it doesn’t have to be long and drawn out, nor does it have to be positive.

I know this is coming late so many have already purchased and read it, so if anyone reading this has already read that book and would like to leave a review for it in exchange for one of my backlist that they might not already have, let me know and we can try to work something out.

[DISCLAIMER: Requesting doesn’t ensure that a book will be given.]

Audiobooks are coming back on track. Sort of.

Honestly, I didn’t have a very good response with my audiobooks. I have had six available for six months now, but I stopped mid-series because they weren’t doing well. However, I plan to finish the series I started but didn’t finish then re-evaluate if I’ll do anymore or not.

Desires of a Baron is coming along.

Slowly, but surely, I’m making some progress on Desires of a Baron. Giles’ story. I’m not even able to give an estimated date of publication at this point as I am nowhere even NEAR knowing when I’ll be done which leads me to…

Publication schedule this year is very uncertain. 

Here’s the thing–in 2011, I entered the scene with four books completely written and one halfway done. I published the first three within eight weeks of each other in the spring. In the fall, I put out another three. That was six books (Secondhand was the only book I actually wrote that year). The majority of those books were written when I spent all day at home and didn’t have anything business-ish to attend to. In 2012, I put out only three (Imperfect, Contract and Yankee). I was so overwhelmed with the sudden changes that came into my life when I went from writing stories purely for my own enjoyment to keeping up with more than just writing a story. I suddenly found 15 million things that needed doing yesterday and had a tough time adjusting. In 2013 (last year), I found a better balance and wrote and published five books! It was incredible, but it came at a cost. I was spending about 12 hours a day six days a week working. I had hired a college student to come into my home a few hours every few days to help with cooking and cleaning and running my errands just so I could keep up with everything I needed to business related while still only actually writing about 2-3 hours per day.

It was completely crazy and when the year came to a close, I made a really hard publishing decision for 2014: I’m only *promising* three books. Secrets of a Viscount, Desires of a Baron and Passions of a Gentleman. I can’t say yet when the second two in this series will be out, but I’m hoping April and October, respectively.  Now, if suddenly I get on a roll and these just write themselves and more stories come, great, I’ll put out more than three, but I can’t promise anything because I don’t know if I can fulfill any more than these three books without having to go back to the crazy hours I had last year. I want to write. It’s what I absolutely love to do, but I also have a family and feel that I need to be more available to them. That’s one of my goals this year (and every year hereafter).

So there you have it the cliff notes on what’s kept me from posting fun stories about my kids and husband or regaling you all with other such fun nonsense.  I hope you all have a wonderful evening!

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