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!

Readers Groups

Thanks so much for being with us last time, Bella Andre! And congratulations to Booklover on winning Bella’s Wild Heat! I picked up my very own copy of Never Too Hot (with an autograph, whoohoo!) and had a luxurious evening reading in the tub last night! It’s great. For those of you who haven’t rushed out yet, get it right away!

Bella signed for my book group last week along with Anne Mallory. I’ve belonged to the group for over five years. It’s run by Ellen Higuchi at my local Borders in Los Gatos. Ellen is the BEST bookseller and the group is wonderful! Ellen hands out ARCs (advance reader copies) and we do reviews on them which are reported back to Borders Corporate. Plus we all do a lot of reading besides the ARCs, so we get lots of feedback on what everyone else has read during the month. And it’s all romance! Ellen compiles that list for us and sends it out after the meeting. Thank you, Ellen! As with Bella and Anne, many times we have guest authors signing their latest releases for us. I sign for the group when I’ve got a new book out, too. And LOL, the readers group meeting is my one night out every month! Here’s a few photos of the signing last Wednesday. The photographs are courtesy of Jackie Yau. I also picked up a copy of Anne’s Seven Secrets of Seduction. I can’t wait to read that, too! The group highly recommended both authors’ books. So many books, so little time!

So tell us, do you belong to a readers group? If not, where do you get your book recommendations? Leave a comment and your contact e-mail address and I’ll enter you in the drawing for Laura Griffin’s Rita-nominated Whisper of Warning. I loved the book! I’ll also add you to my newsletter for updates if you aren’t already a member.

Also, be sure to drop by the Tote blog tomorrow, 6/8, where I'll have more photos and a chance to win Laced with Desire. http://authorsoundrelations.blogspot.com/