Kendra Leigh Castle

Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

So I’m not quite late with this post!  Okay, well…maybe a little

Hazards of vacation: forgetting what day it is, among other things.  By the time I realized it was Friday, I had to get ready to get out the door!  It was Spend Mah Birfday Money day at the Carolina Place Mall, and I must say, I think I succeeded admirably.  Fabulous new wide-legged jeans that are cut more like trousers and look like something out of the fabulous Forties, a few tops, a big long sweater to replace the gross old flannel of Brian’s I tend to wrap up in (which is not to say I’ll ditch the flannel completely, but really, I should have an attractive alternative for SOMETIMES), and most importantly, a plush Mr. Pricklepants for my desk.  He’s going to sit by the Cheshire Cat, I think.  Who, you ask, is Mr. Pricklepants?  Well, you really have to see Toy Story 3, but he’s a very cuddly thespian who wears leiderhosen and is, um, a hedgehog.  Went to see that movie yesterday in 3-D and it was SO good, and a lovely way to round out the story of Woody, Buzz & Co., but yes, I did cry.  My kids didn’t, but I think you have to be an adult to really understand what was sad about it.  At least the toys ended up okay, and that made me smile. 

In other “Yay!” type news, I finished up my werewolf story proposal for Nocturne, which will now head out for (hopeful) approval after I give it one more look tomorrow.  Wish I could have done another fallen angel, but they know what sells for them far better than I, and werewolves are ALWAYS fun!  I may have to change the heroine’s name.  I’ve got too many “J” names going on in there, and it’s getting weird.  I’m thinking Mia, maybe, instead of Julia.  Anyway, back to the vampire book tomorrow!  My brain is probably going to explode by the end of the summer.  It could happen.

Have a WONDERFUL Fourth of July weekend, everyone!  I’ll be heading home Monday, which means back to reality for me, but before then we’re having the big cookout here with family.  Dad says Casper has made this visit “interesting.”  Yeah…his interesting-ness made us decide to have a dog trainer come out to the house next weekend to teach us how to train this wild white animal, because oh my God.  Seriously.  Hope you all have a holiday that’s more fun than “interesting”!

Greetings from my (working) vacation!  Meant to get a post up earlier today, but I’m working from my laptop with an iffy connection and the internet here is sloooooow.  

Hope you all had a good weekend.  Mine was full of chasing Casper the wonder mutt, who likes to lay on the top step into the pool and bite the water.  At least he hasn’t punctured the liner again, now that we’ve mostly taught him about the steps, but he could still fall in again.  I put nothing past him.  I think he’s sleeping right now.  or he could be dismantling the downstairs.  I’m not sure I want to know.

Hope you all had a good weekend!  I’ve been enjoying the beer in the picture.  I know beer isn’t everyone’s thing, but IMO on a hot day it’s often just right.  Love a good Hefeweizen.  Didn’t have an orange to slice for a glass of it, so I settled for drinking out of the bottle   My children have discovered some ridiculous old movies that my sister and I made with the old video camera back in the late 80s/early 90s.  Wow was I a ham.  Also, revisiting bad hair was not really on my list of stuff to do here, but it happened anyway.  And now I remember exactly why I got braces. *shudder*  Ah, the awkward years.

On the writing front, I’m still flying, though a little terror has crept in.  I have a LOT to do!  I spent some time with Ty and Lily this morning, and then moved on to Nick and Julia.  They’re the stars of the werewolf tale I’m writing for my second Harlequin, and I’m a little surprised how quickly I’ve fallen for yet another big bad wolf.  YUM.  I’ve never written two things at once before.  Should be…interesting.  That’s the nicest word I can think of for it right now, LOL!  Thanks again for all the support and enthusiasm, ladies.  You all are awesome.

Oh, God, the dog is awake.  *kathump kathump kathump* “Nooo, Casper!” has become the sound of my doom.  Better go.  How’s your world looking today?

That eerie, disembodied sound you started hearing yesterday afternoon?  That was me, holding my own personal Wild Rumpus.  Look what I have!  A DEAL announcement!!

Kendra Leigh Castle’s DARK AWAKENING, in which a vampire queen’s personal hunter finds himself torn between his loyalty to the ancient dynasty he serves and his desire for the woman he has been charged to hunt down, a mysterious mortal who bears the mark of another dynasty long vanished, to Selina McLemore at Grand Central, in a two-book deal, by Kevan Lyon at Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

There seriously aren’t words for how awesome this is.  My dark and dangerous Scottish cat-shifting vampire, Tynan MacGillivray, is going to be stalking onto bookshelves next summer!  That is REALLY fast, and I now have myself a killer deadline that you all are probably going to hear me muttering about from time to time, but really, I can’t complain.  AND, the sequel will be out the following spring!  WOO!  I could not be any more thrilled to have been picked up by Grand Central if I tried.  They’re a huge, amazing publishing house, and Selina, from the conversation we had yesterday, is going to be a lot of fun to work with.  Between this and the thrill of my pretty, pretty Nocturne coming out in September (I’ll get the cover up shortly), I’m pretty much over the moon.  No more problems finding my books, ladies! 

I couldn’t do all this without the support and friendship I’ve found here.  Just hope you all know that.  Have an AMAZING weekend!  I’ll be here in North Carolina, mooching off my parents’ pool.  Maybe I can get a video of Casper getting on the top step into the pool and biting the water.  It’s a sight

Happy Monday, everyone…such as Monday is, anyway   Hope everyone had a good one!  I spent mine cleaning my house, reading the most excellent short free read Sin Eater by Evangeline Anderson (and if you haven’t read it, hie thee over to Ellora’s Cave and get you some, because seriously, there is nothing quite as refreshing as an afternoon quickie…uh, figuratively speaking…mostly), and doing some writing.  Yeah, reading well-written erotic romance once again made me want to try and write it, but this time I actually have a story going!  I’m just trying to figure out whether my hero and heroine should start the getting busy on the chair or, erm, with the manacles he has attached to the wall.  All of my choices should be so diverting

So I know a lot of you are familiar with the Ellora’s Cave authors…who else should I try reading over there?  They have a whole section of free “Naughty Nooners” too, but there are so many I don’t know where to start.  I love me some free reads.

Not much other writing news to share.  I should start hearing something about my vampire story pretty soon, possibly even by the end of next week.  So keep your digits crossed for me!  I’m also hoping to get my cover for Renegade Angel soon.  I really can’t wait to see!  The covers for Nocturnes are always so pretty, and they’ve got kind of a revamp of the line’s look going on as well. 

This is my kids’ last week of school…I’m hoping they don’t immediately start trying to kill one another, but my chances on that are slim.  The older two are like Pugsley and Wednesday Addams.  Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got today.  Got a vet appointment a little later, and hoping to do some more work on Kendra’s Erotic Romance Project too, once I figure out the chair-or-manacle dilemma.  Here’s a little song to send you off into the great wild week…have a good one, ladies!

Hmm, that break back in February seems to have turned into  three month hiatus!  Well, if any of my beloved blog readers are still out there, I think those depleted batteries of mine are finally recharged.  I’m dipping a toe back into blogging, and am thinking bi-weekly to start, with more posts if I feel the urge.  Haven’t figured out a schedule yet, but I’ll work it out if you’ll bear with me as I get my rusty ass back in gear.

So what have I been up to these past few months?  Well, as you might have noticed before I finally threw up my hands in despair, we basically had an ongoing case of the plague in this house all winter.  Three of us are now on allergy shots   I’ve spent my time shuttling children back and forth to school, swimming, and some occupational therapy for my two boys (needed a little help/tweaking on hand strength and fine motor skills).  I have read a bit, though not as much as I would have liked, and I’ve won that damn video game twice now.  Weird things soothe me when I’m stressed!  I’ve agonized over what to do about an ailing pet (Fizgig is still with us, hobbling around, which is where he’ll stay until he definitively lets me know he’s ready to go), and have agreed to take on a new one to add to the crazy zoo I live in.  I’ve doctored my husband after his most recent back surgery, which was a little over a month ago, and I’ve been Head Chauffeur since then.  I’ve written a couple of pitches, a couple of proposals, and am still trying to figure out what my second book for Nocturne will be.  The biggest news, in my opinion, is that after extensive tweaking, pushing, pulling, cutting, pasting, and excessive consumption of coffee, the vampire proposal that I originally worked up for Harlequin has just gone out on wide submission this week!  It’s some of my best work.  That is something I’m sure of.  Whether it will ever see the light of day, well…that’s something that will start to become clear in a month or so when the offers or rejections begin coming in.  I do hope I get to share that story with all of you!  Renegade Angel doesn’t have a cover yet, but I’m hoping I get to see one soon.  That’s a release I’m also anxious for…I’m VERY proud of Raum’s story, and I hope you all enjoy it.  I did discover that it’s available for pre-order on Amazon already, which was a thrilling little jolt.  It’s been a bit since I had a release!

Anyway, that’s my recent life in a nutshell.  Those of you who I see on facebook probably know all of this already, but a recap seemed in order as I return to the blog.  I’d love to hear what everyone else has been up to!  To finish up for today, I’ll share a picture of the new furry baby who we’ll pick up next Friday night.  We’re going through a rescue in DC, Lucky Dog Animal Rescue, which is a wonderful group of people working to find unwanted animals their forever homes. 

This is the new little big guy, a purebred Great Pyrenees who will soon outweigh most of us in this house (though not me if I don’t stay out of the fudge brownie swirl ice cream).  He was named Casper, but we’re changing it to Bogart, aka “Bogie,” aka “Bogie Bear” (thanks, Donna!).  He’s ten weeks old in this picture, which was taken a couple of weeks ago.  I’ll definitely post new pics as I have them so you can watch him grow..and grow…and GROW.  I’m interested to watch Bruno the cat train this new canine family member

I hope you all had a lovely spring, and I also hope to see you around here as I resume my rambling about life, the universe, and everything.  Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend!

That would be what I’m going to be taking from daily blogging for the next little bit.  Lately I’ve been feeling like I need to recharge the batteries a little and write more when I have actual interesting things to say.  The daily digging up of random interesting stuff has been tough recently, with the notable exceptions of Snowmageddon and the Manly Man commercial   It’s probably a combination of the long winter, which I hate every year regardless of snowfall amounts, and my own waiting for something, anything to happen that will allow me to make a video of myself running around the house like an asshole waving a sword and howling victoriously.  My writing career, such as it is, is just in a very in-betweeny feeling place right now, with me having a couple of things that are about to be shopped around widely (yay, more waiting!), and one more contracted book to write for Nocturne (this is not to say there won’t be more beyond that for the series, only that I have, at present, one more to write that is contracted), pending approval of the proposal for that book. 

Anyway, this sort of nebulous middle spot has left me at loose ends as far as daily blogging for the time being…try though I might, I’ve discovered that I’m honestly just not fascinating enough to merit daily babble!   What I really want is some fun writing news to be able to share, but right now, I’m in total waiting mode to see what happens next.  It’s a frustrating spot for someone with my level of patience, which would be about none.  But because I was not born Supreme Goddess of All the Universe, a fact I lament every day of my life, I do not get to be in charge of this.  A pox on natural laws, dude.  Seriously.

All that said, my posting will be sporadic for the next little while, at least until I know which direction I’ll be heading.  I’m thinking I’ll just hang at Cheryl’s and MsM’s to enjoy myself, and I’ll be posting here when I have either news ( of the good or bad varieties…I’ll share) or an actual thought that seems to merit a post.  Or if I run across any particularly awesome pictures of mostly naked guys that I am compelled to display.  So please check in and see what’s up (and to enjoy the mind-numbing minutiae of my daily life, you all know I’m on Facebook more than I should be), but know that as far as posting frequency goes, I’ll be in and out.  I’m still not sure if I’m naturally a daily blogger, but at some point here, I’ll find a rhythm that works!  

A big hug to my bloggy buddies who always manage to brighten my day, no matter how boring I’m feeling, and who are always up for a chat even if all I’ve managed to find to post is another video of Beaker exploding.  Because, I mean, I like those, but they’re probably not for everyone   I shall return, hopefully with that sword-shaking video in tow.  See you soon!

Manuscripts, I mean, not the Stephen King story (though that was pretty good).  Any writer will tell you that manuscripts do NOT stay gone, no matter how many times you try to send them off in the mail, by email, anything.  There’s always something.  And even once you get them on the shelf, chances are you’ll have a look out of morbid curiosity and discover, much to your chagrin, that you missed something anyway.  That said, I now have, parked upon my messy desk, the line edits for RENEGADE ANGEL which are fairly pressing in nature (as in, I have a couple of weeks and they’re due…quick turnaround, which is fine).  After flipping through, I’m comfortable that there’s nothing earth-shattering that must be messed with at this point, but there are a number of items I need to address with my Red Pen of Doom.  SO, I will be absent from blogging this week while I get this stuff done.  I very much like my editor and her assistant, and I’d like to make ‘em happy

Hope you all had a good weekend…my baby girl had a wonderful swim meet, making me a very proud mom (really, I stand amazed…she does things I could never do and makes them look effortless, plus she’s just a really great kid), and I’ve enjoyed having my mom in town.  I managed to watch Sleepless in Seattle yesterday with her, and only half listened to my husband’s mutterings about “chick movies” when he occasionally wandered through.  Man, I love that movie.  It’s one of my fave romantic films ever.  He’s right, though, it’s a total chick movie

Have a great week, ladies!  And for fun, what are some of YOUR favorite chick movies?

Morning, ladies!  Shockingly, I have a topic today: bad boy heroes.  See, I’m about half done with Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Night Pleasures, and am enjoying Kyrian, the leather-wearing bad boy hero who still, despite his styling himself as kind of a badass, comes off to me as the exiled prince he is.  Beautiful and decadent.  Anyway, I’m loving him, and then all of a sudden another bad boy roars up on his motorcycle and he’s even MORE badass than Kyrian!  So of course, as with all shiny objects, I am immediately distracted by his wonderfulness.  This would be Talon, who I’ll get to read about next, apparently.

This is definitely a trend in paranormal romance: the leather-clad bad boy hero.  Now, I write them myself (I mean, what else am I going to do with a demon?  Dress him in flannel?) but I do wonder sometimes if they’ll stay as popular as they are right now.  They are, IMO, the modern day equivalent of the Regency rogue, and God knows people still read those.  But I’m curious about what you all think.  Do you get tired of the big bad boys in leather?  Or are you happy to keep eating them up?  For me, I think as long as there are interesting  variations on the theme, I’m there, though I do have occasional hankerings for the straight-up knight in shining armor.  I always thought of the MacInnes brothers as more brave and noble knights than anything…being able to give them fur and claws just added that element of darkness that I love.  Only slightly off-topic, I’ve been dying for a good medieval lately, speaking of.  Suggestions are welcome!

Anyway, what do you think, ladies?  What sort of hero gets your motor running these days?  Wicked, good, or just wicked good?

Couple of things for Wednesday.  Firstly, hat tip to Donna for letting us know about the Glambert performance on Ellen yesterday!  I have video to share, because I love this song, Strut.  Not a big fan of Whataya Want From Me, the last single, but I like almost everything else on the album, so YAY!  He’s so pretty…and inspiring too, actually.  He was apparently quite heavy in high school and got picked on all the time.  The guy certainly turned into a swan after the fact!  But I would guess that his previous struggles are one of the reasons he seems so sweet.  I’m sad that he’s gay only because it’s such a loss for women everywhere!  I suppose, with my love of guyliner-wearing men who fall somwehere in the Goth/Glam Rock part of the spectrum, I am doomed to drool over a lot of gay men.  Oh well
Lemmee see, I found another thing that was entertaining as well.  I’m totally dating myself, but I still love Pee Wee Herman.  I miss his show (and if you’ve never seen the HBO special that started it all, you are missing out…it was NOT a kids’ show, just adult humor disguised as one, and OMG it was hysterical).  And color me thrilled that the guy seems to be making a comeback!  So I laughed my butt off when he appeared on Conan’s final show to explain the NBC mess.  The guy still has it!
Hope you all enjoy your day!  My mom’s coming to visit for a few, which is awesome, and yesterday I FINALLY got the dragon proposal to leave my desk for good.  It kept returning to me with just a few small tweaks needed…sort of got to be The Thing That Wouldn’t Leave.  BUT, it left, and is now on my editor’s desk, sooo…I will recommence finger crossing!!  Now I can get back to my Dark Hunter book   Happy Wednesday!

Okay, I haven’t watched the new PR yet…it’s on my DVR, so don’t give anything big away, but…does it at least look like it might be a decent season?  God I hope so.  I worked my tail off on the synopsis yesterday…not done yet, but I wrote a LOT.  I have mentioned before how utterly mind-numbing it is to recap an entire book, right?  In present tense.  It took forever just to get through what I’ve already written of the book because of having to explain the setup.  And now I’m into the place where the things I haven’t written yet will go, and this is even more painful right now, because while I know the heroines secrets and the hero’s impending issues with that, and while I have a sense of how it will end…I really don’t know all the twists and turns the story will take, nor do I want to!  But I’m going to have to come up with something.  I have some of it.  Will figure out more.  And then with probably run into the yard and do some kind of insane victory dance around a fire, possibly shaking my sword at the sky.  Well, or something like that:-)

Anyway, they released a second trailer for one of my “I Want” movies of the coming year, and I spent a couple of minutes in bliss as I watched it.  It’s for Clash of the Titans, and it looks so up my alley it isn’t even funny.  Must.  Have. Sam. Worthington. In. Leather. Armor.  That man is going to get the crown and sash one day soon.  Bet on it.  Check the freaking Kraken at the end.  Not everything makes me bounce around in my seat with joy and go “Oh DAMN!”  but that did.  And I mean, Neeson as Zeus?  Genius.  The glimpse of Medusa, who I both looked forward to and dreaded seeing in the original every time I watched it, makes her look super freaky in an excellent way.  And did I mention Sam Worthington in leather armor?  Okay.  Just checking.  The song for the trailer is one I have and love, “The Bird and the Worm” by The Used.  It’s a great song.  Dripping with black guyliner:-)

Anyway, here it is, and I hope you all have a great weekend!