Tag Archives: Saturday

Chillin’ out

A cup of coffee watercolorI mean this quite literally too. While the sun’s out, and it looks like a gorgeous day, it’s bloody cold outside. Had to pop out for a few minutes, and that was more than enough for me. Convinced me staying inside to write was definitely the much better option.

Brewed up another carafe of coffee, and did some other projects first. Mainly setting up next weeks blog posts of fellow authors on my site, but also wrote a few more words on C&M Security book 6. Haven’t gotten a lot down yet with this headache I’m attempting to mitigate. But a little is better than none at all, lol!

Other happening’s are of course the release of the Uniform Fetish Anthologies coming this Friday, February 27th. Both editions are up for pre-order on a number of sites already, so you can one-click order now. Links are below for both sets of books.

AnthoBanner

Anthology Blurb:

Does the sight of a cop’s badge—or his handcuffs—make your pulse race?  Do you drive by your local firehouse just to catch a glimpse of your favorite fireman? Ever peek in the cockpit just to check out the captain?

If you agree the only thing sexier than a man in uniform is a man out of uniform, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve handpicked an assortment of sizzling hot, uniformed heroes to satisfy your uniform fetish.

Uniform Fetish
Amazon (US)  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TT68QWK/
Amazon (CA)  http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00TT68QWK/
Amazon (UK)  http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TT68QWK/
Bookstrand  http://www.bookstrand.com/uniform-fetish
All Romance  https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-uniformfetish-1750464-166.html

Uniform Fetish: Manlove Edition
Amazon (US)  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TT6O7EG/
Amazon (CA)  http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00TT6O7EG/
Amazon (UK)  http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TT6O7EG/
Bookstrand  http://www.bookstrand.com/uniform-fetish-manlove-edition-mm
All Romance  https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-uniformfetishmanloveedition-1750465-166.html

So go and pre-order your copy now. And have a great weekend ~ Moira

Having a great weekend

Have a good weekend. EPS 10 of a blurred nature background.Hope you’re having a great weekend! I definitely am so far. Just got back from having a late lunch with a bunch of friends. It was filled with laughter, lots of joking, a bunch of teasing, and a horde of innuendos being tossed around. On the up side, I think we’ve found our bi-annual meeting spot of choice. Mainly because we weren’t getting shushed by the staff every time we dared to laugh, or got a little loud. It was a blast and a half to see them all again, and play catch up as well.

In other news, first rounds of edits for my story in the Uniform Fetish Anthology have been completed, and submitted back to my publisher for the second look. They were extremely minimal, and I only had a couple of things I actually needed to fix. Beyond that it was adding in a little more detail on a key point of the story per my editors suggestion. Didn’t take all that long once I figured out where the hell to put it in. Only problem with a short story of this nature, you don’t always have a lot of room for additions. I was relatively smart and kept myself a bit of room when I submitted it originally. Now though with the addition, I’m sitting a little more snugly in the word limit so hopefully there isn’t too much more required on round two otherwise I may need to consider a bit of fat trimming.

Great news to also share is that book 5 of the C&M Security series, Dangerous Pasts, will be out this Wednesday. That’s January 28, 2015 for clarification. I’m waiting on the cover to look over, and approve anxiously, and hopefully I’ll be able to post that up soon as well. For anyone that’s interested I’m also running a contest on my Facebook Group site for 1 of 2 free copies of the book. If you’re interested you can join the group HERE or just enter on the post if you are already a part of the group – I’m only accepting entries on FB. It’s super simple, and a little bit of fun all rolled into one.

Other than that I’m planning to get some writing done this weekend. I’m hoping it will be on book 6 of the C&M series but only if the characters feel like talking. They’ve been quiet of late so I’m rather fearful they have something planned I may not like. I never know with this group what might suddenly pop out of my brain to throw a wild twist into my stories. Things I then need to figure how to get them back out of to get the HEA ending required.

I know for sure I’ll be working a bit on my paranormal story, I’ve had little twinges of ideas of where to take them next. Likely I’ll probably do a bit more on my other still unknown what the hell genre it falls into story. Seriously, I have zero clue where these characters are leading me, but it should be interesting to say the least. They seem to enjoy butting heads, and basically doing everything in their power to annoy the other. Makes it a never ending roller coaster for me as the one writing it, I never seem to know what they next plan to do to the other character.

Well, that’s all the updates I have currently. So I am off to work on whatever WIP comes to me first as needing some more written in. Have a great weekend ~ Moira

Thank goodness it’s Saturday

wake upHappy weekend to everyone! Hope you are all enjoying it as much as I am. The last week was brutal attempting to get back into the swing of things after a much needed break over Christmas. Still not fully back into it all yet but I’m getting there slowly. The worst of it all was that first Monday morning alarm that went off. I am such a natural night owl that having to pry myself from the warm depths of my bed is a chore and a half. But I managed it, and then had to repeat it four more times until today. I admit, I did sleep in a little more than I normally would but it’s the weekend – WHO CARES?! LOL!

MFAntho-001-07012015-evernightpublishing-JayAheer2015-3DrenderBut there was one particularly amazing shining spot in my week I must share. Got home on Thursday to find a great little surprise in my inbox. The covers, and some other visual goodies for the Uniform Anthology that I’m honored to be a part of. They are so damn pretty, so a huge thank you to the artist Jay Aheer for these. They are truly stunning. It took me a while to finally pry my eyeballs off the bloody things, and then only because I realized I was drooling and had the nearly uncontrollable urge to lick my screen.

It’s pretty amazing to see it all begin to come together. It won’t be out for a while yet, projected release is in February but a date hasn’t yet been finalized. Depends on our poor editor for the books, and how quickly we all get through whatever changes are required of us I think. But as soon as I know more I’ll definitely be sharing the news.

On other fronts the final edits for C&M Security 5, Dangerous Pasts, along with the teaser/dedication have been submitted back to my publisher for the last look through on their end. Should hopefully be seeing a cover draft in the next few days. Can’t wait to share that with everyone. In the meantime though I need to get to work on book 6 of the series. I have a lot of ground still to cover before the big finale of that one that will tie up the last little threads left dangling in a couple of the other books.

After that who knows what I’ll be working on. I know what I should be working on, the two WIP’s I have in my docs, or even the new “something” that’s tickling my brain. But for now it’s all about focusing on the one to get it done and submitted. Easier said then done with a case of attention jumping going on right now. My brain is all over the map, twitchy, and may or may not have something to do with all the coffee I’ve pumped into my system. Oh well, eventually I’ll come down from whatever’s got me and my thoughts all over the map. In the meantime maybe I’ll just randomly open up a WIP and see what pops out. Until later ~ Moira

Here we go…

Well it’s been a very chilly start to 2015 so far. We had a huge blizzard blow in yesterday, dumping a lot of snow onto the city, and brought some very unnecessarily cold weather with it. I know it’s winter and all, but it really wasn’t nice of Mother Nature to do that.

SnowyDayThankfully I haven’t had any reason to go outside beyond sticking my nose out my balcony doors to see just how chilly it was. It was damn chilly I’ll tell you right now. So I pulled the blinds, turned on the TV to the Holiday Fireplace for some ambiance, grabbed more coffee, and got down to some writing. Or attempted to. Apparently all my characters went off on an unauthorized bender over the holidays, and still haven’t fully recovered.

I did manage to get in some stuff on my C&M Security book, but definitely nothing of significance. Which is okay I guess, the brain isn’t back into full gear as it is anyway so getting back at this slowly isn’t a horrific plan. Especially since I’m still figuring out my new laptop, and the fact it has a few interesting quirks I’m having to work around. Like a possessed mouse pad. Which raises another question, who was the bloody brainiac that though increasing the size of the damn mouse pad on a laptop was a good idea? Like I don’t have enough problems with the things, no-no, lets make the space even bigger and ten times more sensitive than all previous models. Great plan there.

In other news my place has never been so spotless. I’ve had more than a bit of time to clean, obviously since the characters went off on hiatus. Not even complaining a little. Before the holidays I was too busy running around like a crazed lunatic to give it more than a quick once over, so it was nice to do the down and gritty cleaning. Though my knees may hate me for a few more days from scrubbing my floor by hand lol!

EPHolidayHangoverHopAnd before I completely forget to mention this. There is still a few hours left to my publishers Holiday Hangover Blog Hop. I’m hosting on my blog, A Great New Read, and there are also many other great spots to get in on the action as well. You can start right [HERE] on my publisher’s site.

Well that’s it for this rambling blog post. Hope everyone’s having a great start to the New Year. Have a great night, a great weekend, and I’ll post again soon… ~ Moira

Holiday chaos

christmas treeEvery damn year I swear I’ll do all my shopping early. Every damn year I’m down to the line to get it done in time. This year is absolutely no different sadly. Maybe next year I’ll actually start early. HA! Yeah, I don’t believe it either. But it’s a truly nice thought.

I went out on the hunt for a few items today, and must brave the masses again tomorrow for even more things. It wasn’t too bad today, did what I needed to do, and even found a few extra bits to add to the gift bags for the family. Tomorrow will be a slightly grander experiment in patience. I hate crowds. I despise people who can’t seem to walk a straight line from point A to point B. And I truly hate the fact that when someone stops to talk to another person they must stand out in the flow of bodies so that everyone needs to squish around them. Really? How is that necessary?

But I know exactly what I’m going for. I will get there at an appropriately early hour so I can complete my shopping prior to the mad crush of people who leave their brains at home, yet bring the attitude. Yes, it should be a rip roaring fun day in the mall. Ugh!

In much happier news I have the edits for book 5 of the C&M Security series. Took a quick look through some of it, and there’s definitely more than a few things I need to tend to. Some are very quick fixes, others are much more complicated but I should be able to get through them before I depart for the familial gathering. At least that’s my hope. Given when it was sent to me I’ll be out of town when it needs to be sent back – not exactly the best of timing I fear on my publisher’s part, but these things happen so I will roll with it, and figure it out.

Book 6 of the series is progressing, though the characters appear to have run off for a time. My trip to the shops may have had something to do with that. Christmas madness isn’t conducive to a creative mind. A homicidal one perhaps, but definitely not anything of a creative nature LOL! I haven’t had any new inspiration on my paranormal story, or the other one that’s in bits and pieces in a Word doc. I’m hopeful that once the crazy time has passed my characters will come out of hiding again and I can get back to writing.

Well, that’s all I have to say today. So I hope you enjoy your evening, and the balance of your weekend. ~ Moira

Taking a short break

antike SchreibutensilienI’ve been busily working on the next book in the C&M Security series. Book six is the prequel book for the series, the one that shows how the entire thing got started. It also is the story of Robyn Matthews, the “M” of C&M Security. It’s a little about her, and Shawn’s pasts as well as how she meets her fiancé Grant. My other goal to the book, beyond a bit of history of the two biggest characters of the series -Shawn and Robyn- is to also reveal why Robyn, and Grant are still engaged many years after the fact.

The biggest challenge is ensuring I don’t muck up anything so the other books still work in the series. So far so good since it’s all “history” at the moment. The plus of doing the prequel after the fact is knowing what’s to come since it’s already all laid out.

The biggest problem is working on it, it’s all at my characters whim what I manage to get down at any given time. That and my muse who seems to have a bit of a problem these days. She’s got me working not only on C&M, but also a new paranormal. On top of all that she’s kicking around another idea. Nothing solid on the third one as of yet, but who knows what it may end up being. Guess I’ll have to wait and see what all she gives me in regards to that.

Now, on that note I need to get a few things from the store so I’m heading offline for a time. Hopefully when I get back my muse’ll have some more for me to write. Hope everyone is having a great weekend, talk soon ~ Moira

A slightly chaotic rant

da020a81-a502-45bf-8f26-3422ecfc225eFiguring I should do up another post on my website I sit here staring at my screen. I have no clue what this post will be about given the number of things tumbling around in my head currently. So I think I’ll let it just ramble out at it’s own pace and see where it might lead. Be warned, this may be long, with some point to point insanity tossed in, and may actually get down, dirty, and plain old nasty. Here we go…

First thing that comes to mind is an issue of piracy. An author friend of mine recently had a release, and as part of the lead up to it had an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) give away. Being the smart cookie that she is, my friend found a way to embed coding into each copy to make them individually unique so when she gave them to the readers who won a copy, she’d know if any of them decided to be a douche. One such person proved themselves to be just that, a douche. This person took the gift from my author friend, and promptly uploaded it to a known piracy site. Because of the encoded meta data my friend put in it was easily traceable.

It’s people like this that make us authors so wary to gift our books. Personally I always do it via a site that has the DRM in place. Not saying this is the be all, end all to stop these folks. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction. The personalized meta data encoding is another. Making each book unique, easily traceable, and so you know exactly who the perpetrator is. Sadly I’m not sure what else you can do. While the FBI has a division set for cyber crime, including intellectual property theft on the Net, what all can truly be done to stop these jerks? You shut down one site, and another pops up. You find new ways to secure books to prevent this from happening, and some jackass finds three ways around it. It really makes me, as an author, wonder why I bother to do prize giveaways. Or at least ones involving my books. It also makes me fucking mad that these people continuously get away with stealing. And that others seem to think it’s perfectly fine.

Yes books cost money, so does gas, so do things like clothing, shoes, food. But not a one of these pirates goes out to steal a cup of coffee, or a loaf of bread because that would be “wrong”. So where the fuck do they get off thinking it’s perfectly okay to steal an author’s work? We spend hours, days, months getting a book just right before we send it into our publishers. Then there is more time in refining it, getting it perfect for sale, and then the hours of pimping the books to garner those sales. This is all time that we, at least initially, are giving away free. Because it takes a damn long time to actually make any money off your books.

Prime example. My first quarter as an author I earned enough to buy exactly 8 XL cups of Tim Horton’s coffee with a few pennies left over. Yes, I am a Timmy’s addict, and damn proud of it – so shush. My second quarter I earned enough to get exactly 16 XL cups of Tim Horton’s coffee (should mention this is prior to the just recent price hike of said XL coffee cup) with a few pennies left over. Yes that was twice as much as the first quarter, but it’s still not enough to live off of. No where NEAR enough. Yet I hear all too often, and this is a paraphrase of several different people, “authors make so much money why are they bitching about one/two/three (whatever number) of their books being pirated – it’s free advertising basically”. Bull-fucking-shit. It is THEFT. Unfortunately there’s no way YET to nail these assholes to the proverbial wall. Yet.

Okay, enough on that topic. All it does is piss me the fuck off which is totally not conducive to getting my head into the proper writing space. Which I need to do soon enough. I now have three, yes THREE damn WIP’s on the burner. Don’t know where the hell they keep coming from but they do seem to pop up to drive me insane.

Second topic of irritation I want to throw out there since I’m in a venting mood – Christmas. It is not the “holiday season”, it is Christmas. In a lot of things I am PC…to a degree. But not on this. I don’t give two shits who I offend, cause it’s my fucking country, it’s Merry Christmas. Every culture has their own version, I say celebrate it accordingly and proudly. But when folks who come to our country for a better life get all pissy because our holiday offends them, too fucking bad. We were here first and it’s our holiday. You get to celebrate your holidays without all of us getting pissy at you. So, quite honestly, if you don’t like it, there’s the fucking door – don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out.

Sadly too many things are getting all white washed out to ensure we don’t offend anyone. It’s more than beyond time to get back to the way things were. A time when kids weren’t given everything they snivelled for, but had to earn it with hard work. Or where a teacher actually had some authority over her classroom instead of getting fired for giving a student a failing grade – I had to earn my marks, why don’t the “next generation”? Come on, all this is doing is raising a bunch of people who think they don’t have to do anything to get it all. Personally I can’t wait for the reality check most of these little shits will get one day when they are all flipping burgers at McD’s or somewhere similar for barely minimum wage. How you going to afford the latest and greatest toys then?

Okay, I’d better stop before I really get myself worked into an unholy tizzy. Time to take some of my annoyance and put it into my writing. I need to get to work on those otherwise there’s not much coming out from me in the New Year. EEEK! Not good. All right. Sorry again for the rambling, spewing crap I tossed out. But I needed to get it out of my system. I hope all of you have a lovely weekend, and play safe out there in the malls, and stores. ~ Moira

Totally shocked!

Found out on Friday that I was in two, TWO, categories for the 2nd Annual Evernight Readers’ Choice Awards. I’m so excited! Forever Kind of Love was nominated in the Humor category, and Dangerous Lines was nominated in the Suspense category. I was hopeful that maybe one of my books might make the cut, but to get two books up there is making me seriously giddy.

Green Smiley

I don’t think I stopped grinning the entire night, lol! It’s just, wow. I’m completely awed, and stunned that my readers thought so much of my books to nominate them. I can’t do this job without their support, but to see it showcased so amazingly is heart warming to say the least. It definitely makes the long nights of arguing with my characters to get a scene just right, working and reworking a particular patch of dialogue, and of course the terror of seeing what the editor has done to fix my gaffes all worth it.

All I can say is thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I have amazing readers, and I love you all to bits for your vote of confidence in my works. You guys rock, and make me want to write even more for you to have.

But not right off, I have to do a few boring things first like grocery shopping and such things. Then I’ll get to work on some more of that words to page. I’ve already started on C&M Security book 6 (the prequel) that stars Robyn and Grant. I’ve also started a paranormal story too. Not exactly sure where that one is going, but it’s apparently quite happy to lead me on a merry little trail as I meander along with it. It popped into my head, and now it’s not letting go. Sucky thing though is I’m only getting little bursts, bits and pieces really, to add. I think the characters are still trying to figure out where it’s all going to go so they’re only giving up what’s needed to keep it fresh in my head. We shall see.

For now I’m off to get busy with a few things. Have a fantastic weekend – and don’t forget to VOTE! Click any of the Readers’ Choice Awards images in the right hand bar of items and you’ll be taken right to the voting form. ~ Moira

Relaxed into writing

It’s amazing what a haircut will do for the brain. Not literally of course… But all that time sitting relaxing is a great way for the mind to sort through things. There’s no pressure, no deadline, just down time. Between the wash, and scalp massage, the actual cut, and all the finishing touches the stylist does it’s a great way to let the mind just be. Mine started to think, to plot, and in the end gave me the start to the next book in the C&M Security series. So thank you to my stylist Sam for getting things back into gear for me.

CroppedQuill_55594464_XSAlso thank goodness for the technology to start putting it down into a doc before I got home. If not for that handy dandy phone of mine I might not have gotten the first pieces quite right. A short shopping trip for some necessities helped shake loose a few more bits and pieces, and now I can settle in for the balance of the night and just write. I’ll have to remember this for the next time the brain gets stopped up. Not that I have enough hair to do this every week, but maybe a massage the next time would work much the same way.

At any rate, I’m just happy to get started on it. It’s been bugging me for over two weeks now not knowing how to get started. But now I have a plan, a loose plan mind you, but definitely a plan.

In other news my impromptu submission for the Uniform Anthology with Evernight was accepted. I hadn’t originally planned on writing anything for it, but again the old brain had other plans for me. It interrupted my finishing of C&M 5 to get it all written down. I actually had the just under 10k words done in about 8 hours. Never done that before. But the words were flowing so it’s not like I could stop because of something as silly as exhaustion at four o’clock in the morning. Pssht! Who needs to sleep when a story is flowing? Apparently me actually.

Well, now that I’ve goofed off for a few minutes to update my site I think it’s time to get back to work. Happy Saturday to everyone ~ Moira