New Places to go!

Congratulations to Virginia! You’ve won Laura Griffin’s Unspeakable. You’re going to love this book! It was great. I’ll send you an e-mail to get your snail mail or you can email me on skully at skullybuzz dot com. And let’s all wish Laura good luck. At the upcoming Romance Writers of America National conference in Orlando, she’s up for both a Rita Award (the most prestigious Romance award) and the Daphne DuMaurier Award for romantic suspense. I won the Daphne for my first book Sex and the Serial Killer, and I can tell you it was the greatest honor. Good luck, Laura!

I have another great book to offer, Taming Her Irish Warrior by Michelle Willingham. I really loved this story, and it’s also another Rita nominee in the historical category. Good luck to Michelle, too! I’ll be announcing the winner on my next blog on Aug 16.

I have a diners club card for earning extra airline miles. And they’ve always got these little specials they’re running. The truth is we don’t eat often, I mostly cook, but I’m on this mileage kick now because I’m saving to go to RWA in New York next year. So, this month, if you go to a new restaurant within the network, you get an extra 500 miles. Who wouldn’t want that? My husband and his brother are working on fixing up the garage, adding new shelves, cleaning out all the detritus of from the million years we’ve lived here, and as payment I took them out to a new restaurant. It was just plain American food, hamburgers, BBQ pork sandwiches. There was a Harley motorcycle club having lunch there, too. And the place is only 5 miles from my house. I don’t know why we’ve never been there before! Anyway, we had a great time, I had a Maui burger with pineapple and Teriyaki. And I earned all those extra miles! Now, if I go out on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, I get double miles, plus the bonus miles if we try somewhere new! So I’m taking my mother to dinner on Monday to a new Chinese place that she’s never gone to before. She thinks it’s great fun, and Chinese is one of her favorites, though she’s pretty fond of Panda Express. It’s hard to tear her away!

So, what are your favorite restaurants or sinful foods? Leave a comment and your contact e-mail address and I’ll enter you in the drawing for Michelle’s Taming Her Irish Warrior. I’ll also add you to my newsletter for updates if you aren’t already a member.

Don’t forget to stop by the Tote Blog on Aug 3rd. I’ll be offering Fair Game as a prize. And on the next Jasmine blog, I’ll be telling you all about my August 17th release, Take Your Pick. Speaking of which, here’s the cover by Croco Designs. Isn't it great! Stop by the site for a sneak preview!

Fireworks in Tahoe!

Congratulations to Tamsyn! You’ve won One Snowy Knight by Deborah MacGillivray. I’ll send you an e-mail to get your snail mail or you can email me on skully at skullybuzz dot com.

I have a wonderful new offering for this blog. Laura Griffin was nice enough to provide a signed copy of her newest release, Unspeakable. While I was in Tahoe, I had the great pleasure of reading the book, and it was a wonderful romantic suspense! I loved the chemistry between Elaina and Troy, and the mystery was done extremely well, very believable and tense. I’d call it an FBI profiler/serial killer book. This is the second in a series, Untraceable was the first, and I can hardly wait for the next book, Unforgivable, which will be feature Mia and Santos from Unspeakable. Their exchanges were combustible, and I’m dying to read their story, too. Thanks to Laura for providing the book!

I just returned from a week in Tahoe, which is why I’m a week late on putting out this blog. The weather was gorgeous up there! We watched the fireworks set off on the lake. They did a fantastic job. I haven’t stayed up late enough to see fireworks in years! My camera isn’t really designed for fireworks, but here’s a taste. They shoot the fireworks off from a barge in the middle of the lake, and we were lucky enough to be able to see another set from Beacon Bay (at least that’s what someone said) behind us. Double the pleasure!

Of course, my family and I did a lot of hiking, sometimes right out our back door and sometimes up into the mountains. This waterfall was on the way to Grass Lake. There was a little cabin perched on the side of it overlooking. Wow, wouldn't that be the coolest place to have your Tahoe cabin!

We also took my mom on a really nice walk along a fire road out of Meeks Bay. She loved it! And she walked for 2.5 miles! This is a photo of Mom, my sister, and my sister-in-law. Would you look at that lupin, too? Gorgeous. Needless to say, we all had a wonderful time!

So, what are your summer holiday plans? Leave a comment and your contact e-mail address and I’ll enter you in the drawing for Laura Griffin’s Unspeakable. I’ll also add you to my newsletter for updates if you aren’t already a member.

Silly Things We Collect

You have an extra week to post and enter the book contest! I'll be on vacation in Tahoe. So post away!

Thanks to Bella, Anne and Laura for stopping by the last blog! And Elaine, you’re the lucky winner of Laura Griffin’s Whisper of Warning. I think you’re going to love it! I’ll e-mail you for your address. Yes, I do have it, but my computer crashed (totally dead-dead-dead) and the address is on that one! Not to worry; the techs are working on it now and will create miracles!

Okay, so, I’ve been working out in my garden. I don’t have grass; we live in the mountains. I have redwood and pine and oak. And a LOT of weeds! So I’ve been cleaning out the weeds (has to be done once a year, fire danger, you know). But I got this weird need to make a dinosaur garden. Hmm, it’s a rock garden with plastic dinosaurs. I sent my husband down to the local thrift store to see what interesting dinosaurs he could find. Actually, I sent him a couple of weeks ago and my neighbor works there so he asked her to be on the lookout. Well, oh my God, when he went there on Saturday, she’d collected a whole box for me! Call me a child, but I had a lot of fun setting my little dinosaurs out. I think I need more rocks, though. And I think I need to move the garden so that it’s right outside my office window. Then I can see my dinosaurs going to the water hole. Call me crazy, but ya gotta have a little fun in life. And since I don’t have kids to make a dinosaur garden, I had to do it myself.

So, feel like revealing your silly, or even your not-so-silly collections? Let’s have some fun with this. Leave a comment and your contact e-mail address and I’ll enter you in the drawing for One Snowy Knight by Deborah MacGillivray. It’s a medieval, and I love them! I’ll also add you to my newsletter for updates if you aren’t already a member.

And don’t miss the Tote Blog, I’ll be over there on July 2nd giving away something fun!