I've been really bad about blogging. Not just really bad, like, 'Oh do I have a blog' slacking off on my duties.
So, I'm gonna fix that.
First things first, I love my readers. Mostly, I love that they would even take a chance on my work. But the fact that some of them love my work? Yeah. I repeat, I love my readers.
Second, school has begun again for us. This year, I have two middle schoolers and one in the fifth grade. Really? How did that happen? I have a teen boy for crying out loud! I know that because of his birthday, but also because of his ability to eat an entire kitchen's worth of food. Today, for lunch, he ate a bowl of macaroni and cheese, six chicken legs, salad, three pieces of jalapeno/cheese bread and two glasses of milk. In thirty minutes, I can guarantee you he will be hungry.
I need to publish more books just to feed him.
Yet, he's as skinny as a rail. *sigh*
Also, we homeschool, so my mornings and early afternoons are now filled with Algebra, Geometry, Biology, Geography, United States History and English. I admit, I love the English and the reading. And my kids are doing string art!!! String art makes me happy inside.
Onto bookish things!!
What I've been working on: A great percentage of my time is being funnelled into Dethroning Crown (Release Date: October 3). Second and third, I am devoting a good amount of word count daily to The Second Jam (A Love and Skate Spin-Off) and Love, Mercy (My contemporary Christian novel). Also, somewhere in there, I'm working on FA5.
I have to say, I love Dethroning Crown. Crown is a real ass. I'm just gonna lay it out there. He's an ass of epic proportions. It's sometimes embarassing to write. Especially since I've never written a guy with this large of an ego. Like seriously, it would be hard to squeeze his ego into a large European country.
It's awful.
So, I've blathered on too much.
Here's the teaser for Dethroning Crown: (un-edited)
Friday morning, my alarm sounded at seven. Without a second thought, I smacked the button on the archaic device, needing more rest than it gave me and went back to sleep.
My eyes were closed and I’d just drifted into that river between wake and sleep when a roarous vibration rocked me out of my lull and into full awareness and wrath. A rhythm reverberated through the walls, even causing my headboard to buzz with the grotesque beat.
What fresh hell is this? Someone is going to die today.
If I had anything hanging on the walls, it would’ve all fallen down with the earthquake happening next door.
As I stomped through my apartment, my eyes still at half-mast and my anger at full-mast, I tightened the belt around my robe and tore through the place in search of my nemesis.
I reached my new neighbor’s door in record time and banged on it with so much force that I had to cradle my wrist afterwards. Leave it to me to hurt myself while attempting to rail on someone else. I’d tried, in vain, to knock in between booms of bass, thinking that was the only time I would be heard. Several minutes later, the music still at levels that would make people’s ears bleed, the door opened. I took three or four steps backwards at the shock of the perpetrator.
His eyebrows were bunched together in an expression that I understood as aggravation at my interruption.
Well, that was just too damned bad.
He wheeled himself toward me, only to be stopped by the threshold of the door blocking his way. His mouth moved, saying something to me, but whatever it was muffled by the continuous molestation of the air around us. I’d heard the word bitch more times in the last three minutes than I had ever heard it before.
This dickhead seriously was trying to talk to me over that noise.
His jaw just kept flapping without a care while he looked me up and down like I was delivering a stripper-gram.
I’d had enough.
Without approval or giving a fat rat’s ass, I grabbed onto the arm rests of his chair and wheeled him backwards until there was room for me to scoot past. I found the wretched ear raper in question and pushed every button I could see until finally the only noise left in the room was the ringing in my ears as they tried to repair the damage caused by his gangster poetry.
He hadn’t said a word since I stormed in and his only movement was to turn his chair around and gape at me some more.
In a word, he was gorgeous. Straight out of a men’s magazine gorgeous with come hither gray eyes and lips that should be cast onto art or something.
Someone should really make lips like that on mannequins.
Those bastards would be able to sell anything that was put on them.
I took in the space around me, refusing to talk first. It looked like some sort of futuristic bachelor had moved in. The space was identical to mine in square footage and layout, but opposite in every other way possible. Every piece of furniture was either black lacquer or black leather. And for the love of all that’s holy, he had a round glass coffee table with gold accents around the bottom. He shouldn’t be playing rap music around this stuff, he should be playing seventies porn music.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
His face betrayed him and me. That face, perfectly tanned with a rigid jawline read refined gentleman, but the mouth on him and the attitude that coupled with it read cocky douchebag.
My rage coiled around me. “Keeping the peace. I don’t know where in outer space you came from, but around here, we don’t try to raise the dead through bass. That’s what we have voodoo for.”
