THANK YOU!!!

I’d like to thank the readers who are adding my books to all those fun lists on Goodreads. I’m a reader who uses those lists like crazy and have found more wonderful authors than I could have without them, so I’m a fan. To see so many of my books showing up with votes on them is…well, it’s thrilling.

Hang with me. There are more Dani books coming in both the Crux Survivors and The Kithran Regenesis series. I had a bit of a shuffle with projects because I changed editors and I also publish books under my own name, Rinda Elliott. I have an urban fantasy series out and I will soon be making a really exciting announcement about another project. But I love writing my erotic novellas. Okay, they are turning into longer pieces at this point. Just check out Catalyst. 😉

I went through and voted on a few. Not any of the ones with “best” in the title because that seems dishonest because they’re my own books. LOL. But the descriptive lists work. I’m happy some of my Dani books have made some “best of” lists. 🙂 Anyway, thanks for the votes. You rock!!!!!!

Cover Reveal!!!!!!!!!!

Catalyst comes out 12/11/12 from Samhain Publishing!!

 

Replicant-One Week!

I am both excited and nervous about the release of Replicant next week. I really enjoyed writing this novella. My agent and editor both enjoyed it, but nobody else has read it. So yeah, nerves are chewing on me a bit. I’ll probably be haunting Goodreads for a couple of weeks after release to catch reader reactions.

This can be a good and bad thing. Realistically, every author knows that not everyone likes every book.  I’m glad it’s that way because as I’ve said before, this world would be a boring place if we all liked the same things. But again, I’ve written a niche book.

A menage.

A space opera.

A novella.

One really messed up heroine.

There’s a scene in this novella that wasn’t planned. It didn’t creep up on me, but slammed into the writing process, took me by surprise and I’ll warn you… made me cry.  But again, this is a story about loss and about love. I’m growing to love this Kithran world I’m building. 🙂

BTW, the end process in this book was tight, so I didn’t have early eARCs to send to reviewers. If any reviewers happen to catch this post and are interested in reviewing Replicant, feel free to let me know. I will have a few on hand within a few days.

Two Sales!

I announced the Replicant sale because it was listed at the end of Kithra, but the contract is officially signed and off. The fun news is I also signed a contract for a new series to be published at Samhain called Crux Survivors. I AM SO EXCITED!!!

Here’s a bit about book one:

AFTER THE CRUX (Series title-Crux Survivors)

Seventeen years after the Crux Virus wiped out most of the world’s population, Ross is doing what he can to keep his small community safe from raiders in a self-contained artist retreat in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. He’s made a habit of collecting survivors and they’ve all become family, but the most important members have always been Jenna and Dorian. At fourteen, Ross stumbled into the basement where the nine year-olds were hiding and the three have been together since. Years later, Jenna and Dorian became lovers, taking one room in the two bedroom wing they share with Ross. Now at thirty, Ross hopes to find a love of his own on supply runs, but he suffers incredible guilt because his heart has long been snagged by his two best friends.

What Ross doesn’t know is Dorian and Jenna want him too. His loneliness is tearing them up, so they decide it’s time to show this overprotective man of theirs what he’s been missing.

 

And here’s the current blurb for Replicant:

REPLICANT (The Kithran Regenesis, Volume 2)

Jarana Gothbrun is the number one Tracker in the known galaxies, especially famous for tagging Replicants—shape-shifting aliens who can take on humanoid forms once they have someone’s DNA. She has two more Replicants to catch in her current job, ones who escaped from Bastilleen, a high security prison planet. Unfortunately, one of them is currently on her home planet of Kithra. She hasn’t been back since a Replicant kidnapped her for DNA and took her off planet right before explosions wiped out most of her Gwinarian race.

Her entire family, all her friends, everyone she loved was killed. She’s spent the seven years since on the hunt. It’s the only thing that matters, the only thing keeping her from flying her ship into an asteroid. Now, she has to return to her home planet. She thinks she’s hard enough to handle it. She’s not. Nor is she ready to deal with falling in love with both a human male, Erik… and the Replicant, himself.

Maska has been hiding in a woman’s form and is engaged to Erik who had no idea the love of his life was an escaped prisoner. Or a male. When Jarana uses an untested device to force Maska’s shift, it puts him in danger and pisses off everyone on planet. Her plan to fly in and out with her prisoner is put on hold and she has to deal with the people who’ve come to love Maska as well as her own years of bottled grief.

Odds and Ends

Hi!

I took the weekend off. Been spending a little too much time dealing with home stresses, so my family enjoyed the weekend together. We put up a tree, enjoyed the warmth of hot soup and a roaring fireplace while the cold wind and rain rattled the house, and the Scot and I attended a wine share and ate at a FANTASTIC restaurant.

I played Skyrim. Am loving this game!

So, in writing news, I set up a quick author page at Amazon here. I can’t wait to see more books there! REPLICANT (sequel to Kithra) is due out sometime in March and I have another sale I can’t yet share because I’m waiting details.

And speaking of Kithra, it has received a few wonderful reviews at Goodreads. I admit, I haunt the net looking for readers who enjoyed the novella and I’m really enjoying the descriptions. So far, the only real complaint is the length. It is a novella–as will be the sequels. But, there will be longer books, too. 😉

I’ve set some lofty writing goals this week, so I’ll be checking in periodically with updates.

It Falls On Deaf Ears

I’m getting a lot of searches from people looking to download Kithra and now Replicant free. I truly wish you could understand what this does to an author. I’ve worked years to publish and in the last few, my family has suffered in this economy. I love to write and yes, I do it for the love, but it has also become a way for me to support my family.

I have Google Alerts set up in the hopes of running across a good review or two and every morning, I’m waking up to sites that have put my book up for free. I’ve seen the arguments–that these people wouldn’t have bought the book anyway. That I should be happy people are interested in my work. Sure, I’m happy people want to read my book, but watching people steal takes away all that pleasure. And it is stealing. I’ve seen more free downloads on one site than books I’ve sold.

There is no justification for that–not when the book is available at such a low price and it’s available all over the world. I know this won’t help, that it falls on deaf ears. I’ve been told to just learn to deal with this and I’m sure I will. But the “in your face” disregard for my hard work is just a little painful right now as I watch so many have so little respect for the work it takes to write.

An Early Thank You Post & Fun Announcement!

Things are moving fast now with Kithra (It releases in 5 DAYS!!) and I wanted to thank some authors and a couple of reviewers who were wonderful about sliding me in at the last minute. (You Guys Rock!)

First up, Bree and Donna of Moira Rogers. A mutual friend hooked us up because she’d thought we’d hit it off. We did. Oh, we did. <g> But, Bree has been patient with my every question about e-publishing. She’s shared knowledge, made me laugh–I’m thrilled we’ve become friends. I’m getting to know Donna as well and feel pretty damned lucky to know them. They are seriously fun. 🙂 I’ll be on the Moira Rogers blog on November 8th with a giveaway.

Another wonderful author I’ve been getting to know is Vivian Arend who also offered this new-to-e-publishing author a helpful ear when needed. (Her extreme books are hot! Plus, I’m really looking forward to the Six Pack Ranch books!) She plans to share release news of Kithra on her blog next week.

I signed up to post on Delilah Devlin’s blog on November 9th. She has the funniest signature line. Ever. Pretty sure I’ll be sharing what’s always drawn me to the SF genre. (Pretty sure I should already be working on that one… )

And because of the time crunch, I wasn’t able to get to reviewers early, but I’d like to send out a thanks to Danielle of Lush Reviews who seems excited about Kithra and is working to squeeze it in–we’ve known each other through Twitter so she’s also in on a little something I’ll be sharing next week. 😉

Another shout out to Nix at Scorching Reviews who is working to try and fit it in.

And now for the fun announcement.

REPLICANT HAS OFFICIALLY SOLD TO SAMHAIN!!!!

This is the second novella in The Kithran Regenesis series and features a kick-ass bounty hunter, a gender-bending replicating alien and a sweet human man whose entire world is thrown off by these two. I had such fun writing it and my editor loved it. (I love having an editor who is as crazy about SF!) Here’s a little about it.

REPLICANT (The Kithran Regenesis, Volume 2)

Jarana Gothbrun is the number one Tracker in the known galaxies, especially famous for tagging Replicants—shape-shifting aliens who can take on humanoid forms once they have someone’s DNA. She has two more Replicants to catch in her current job, ones who escaped from Bastilleen, a high security prison planet. Unfortunately, one of them is currently on her home planet of Kithra. She hasn’t been back since a Replicant kidnapped her for DNA and took her off planet right before explosions wiped out most of her Gwinarian race.

Her entire family, all her friends, everyone she loved was killed. She’s spent the seven years since on the hunt. It’s the only thing that matters, the only thing keeping her from flying her ship into an asteroid. Now, she has to return to her home planet. She thinks she’s hard enough to handle it. She’s not. Nor is she ready to deal with falling in love with both a human male, Erik… and the Replicant, himself.

Maska has been hiding in a woman’s form and is engaged to Erik who had no idea the love of his life was an escaped prisoner. Or a male. When Jarana uses an untested device to force Maska’s shift, it puts him in danger and pisses off everyone on planet. Her plan to fly in and out with her prisoner is put on hold and she has to deal with the people who’ve come to love Maska as well as her own years of bottled grief.

And for more fun, check out the incredible image I stumbled upon on DeviantArt by Valentina Kallias. This set Jarana in motion for me. 😉

http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=science%20fiction%20woman&order=9&offset=24#/d2r0smr

Snippet of Replicant

REPLICANT is still on submission, but these characters recently came up while writing the third one in the series which is tentatively called Catalyst. I really, really enjoyed writing Jarana, Maska and Erik and am looking forward to finding out if my editor likes the story, too. I didn’t have a beta reader for this, so the only person to read it so far is my agent and she was pretty enthusiastic. Yay!

Until then, how about a short snippet of some angst. I do loves me some angst. 😉

When I heard him snore, it was all I could do not to get up and smash my fist in his face. Instead, I got up and left him there, lurching toward the door and slapping my palm on the panel.

I stumbled through the doorway and tripped over something in the dark tunnel. “Fuck,” I ground out, my teeth so tight, my jaw hurt.

“Did you?”

I rolled over and nearly crawled out of my skin when I saw glowing, opaque eyes. They were like Kithran flowers, soaking up the moonlight and reflecting it back into the tunnel. Maska sat slumped against the dome wall, and he listed to the side like he’d just slid down the wall and stayed the way he landed…like he was too weak to sit back up. He’d plaited his long, ropy black hair and it pooled on the floor beside him. I reached out to help him and he hissed at me.

“Did you fuck him?” He pronounced each word sharp with a pause between.

“No.”

He stared at me, his mouth so tight, his full lower lip nearly disappeared.

“Let me help you back to the med pod. You aren’t in any condition to be wandering the tunnels.”

“Wasn’t wandering, Tracker.” He braced his hand on the floor, sat a little straighter. “I was looking for you. Just didn’t expect to find you on top of Erik.”

That’s right, I’d left the privacy panels open. I opened my mouth to tell him Erik had moved on, to start the process of getting them used to the idea of Maska not staying and instead I shocked myself. There was just something about this man, something that tugged at my heart in the strangest way. “He’s drunk. Thought I was you.”

His lip curled. “How could he possibly mistake you for me. Even in the form he loves, I’m very different.” He raked his gaze down my crouched form. “You’re bony. Hard. Not his type at all.”

“Don’t worry, he clued in fast.” I let him insult me. The throbbing ache in my groin should have had me snapping his head off, but the four whiskeys and his obvious resentment over his helplessness touched me.

Damn, I had to get off this planet.