Hopefully it’ll show up in the premium catalog soon: meaning that it will be available from iTunes and elsewhere. I’ll let you know know as soon as that happens.
There will be a blog tour beginning in February! Right now there’s a release event going on with a raffle for a $50 Amazon giftcard. Click on the banner to sign up if you’re interested in participating!
Get your copy today from Amazon or Smashwords!
It’s finally here, the day you’ve been waiting for! Well, at least I’ve been waiting for. The moment I saw the initial draft of this, I couldn’t wait to share it. I almost spoiled everything and posted it immediately for all the world to see.
The cover was done by the flipping amazing Nathalie Suellen of Brazil. She’s worked on covers for writers from major publishers like Simon and Schuster, Harper, Random House, and Penguin, amongst many others. She’s been featured in magazines like Imagine FX, IVEA, and Photigy. I feel pretty lucky that she agreed to work on my cover. She’s not only a phenomenal designer/artist, but she’s also friendly and easy to work with.
So, here’s the cover! Make sure you click on the link to add A Boat Made of Bone to your Goodreads shelf. It’s scheduled to come out on January 14th.
Hey. You. Did you enter the drawing on Facebook? Do it. Now. Head over to the old Facebook page, like the page, and enter the drawing. I’ll be doing a drawing every other week. So stick around because I really, really want to give you a gift card.
Any additional links you click here (anywhere attached to this post) will also get you five entries per extra method of sharing–Twitter, Digg, Stumble, anything extra, gets you more entries! Sharing on FB gets you 5 more entries and adding a review to Blue Hearts of Mars on Goodreads or Amazon (if you haven’t done it already), gives you 7 more entries! Just send me a note via the FB status about this contest to let me know and I’ll be sure to add up all your entries (I really do. It can take awhile, but it’s worth it!) See the Facebook status RE: the giveaway to get more info!
Can’t wait to see your adorable mug on my FB page. 🙂
If you’re one of my fabulous alpha readers, you might be wondering where the next chapter is. I have the same question!
What happened is I got caught up in a website redesign that I thought would be easy . . . because I don’t know anything about website design. I’ve found that it’s similar to home renovations: nothing goes as well as you thought it would and what SHOULD only take two days takes two years. At least, that’s how DIY home renovation went for me.
My website is almost done. I hope. I have a place-holder header up right now because guess what? I’m not a graphic designer. I thought I could just swing some sweet work of art out of nowhere, but I can’t. The header that’s up now took me two days to do and it looks like crap. I mean, as a postcard, it’s super cool. But as a header, not so much.
I’m looking for someone to do a new one. That or I’ll come up with a better option. In the meantime, most of the changes are done. For now my site is functional and not too ugly. If you encounter any problems, please let me know. I thought this new theme would be cool and easy to use, but I’ve found that it required a lot more customization and so there might be minor problems around the site that I haven’t found.
For my alpha readers, I apologize for the delay. I know it’s not any fun to get stalled in the middle of a book. The great news is that I finished the major overhaul of fixing the POV changes. The editing should go a lot smoother and quicker. My plan is to finish the editing mid-October, which means you’ll be able to have read the entire alpha copy by that time if you stay caught up.
Other news is that I have an official cover reveal scheduled for December 13th. That will push my book release into January. If you’re a blogger and want to participate in any of the publicity for A Boat Made of Bone, contact me! Nathalia Suellen is designing my cover, so it’s going to be a gorgeous cover (I know that much already).
Below is a sample of my stellar graphic design skills. I know. I should have been a designer. I’m so cool.
Two days ago, I powered through the remaining six chapters and finished changing the point-of-view in A Boat Made of Bone from 1st person to 3rd. It only took me six hours!
And today I STILL have a backache from looking down at my laptop. But I’m through the worst part of editing! I can’t even explain what a relief it is to not have to feel like the worst is yet to come regarding editing. I’ve learned my lesson. I will never, ever change the point -of-view of a book after writing sixty thousand words of it in one point-of-view. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I’m putting up another teaser.
Surprise! This is a teaser that features Kate’s real-life love-interest, Ty Watts. Enjoy! 
Ty followed Kate, carrying her guitar case slung over his shoulder. “Wait for a second, Kate. Let’s trade,” he suggested, stopping and slipping the case off to hand to her.
“Fine with me.” She let him take the amp, noticing his muscles flex with the weight of it. She averted her gaze, wondering if that was part of his plan—to entice her with his muscular plumage. Peacocking. He had to be peacocking. Kate put on the back-pack style case.
“I need the workout,” he explained, his dark shirt tight around his arms. They resumed the walk up the street to Kate’s house.
“In that case, give it back. I need the workout ten times more than you.” Let’s see how determined he is to carry it, she thought wryly.
“Sorry, no dice. In this relationship, I’m the pack-mule,” he said, miming a driver flicking a whip.
“That’s not exactly the animal I’d choose for you.”
“What would you pick? A stallion? A stallion, right?”
“Well, I guess that remains to be seen,” Kate responded with a coy smile. Her flirtatious tone caught her off guard and she kept her face turned away.
Ty laughed. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye as they stopped at the intersection, waiting for the traffic light to change. Beneath the streetlights, Kate saw his cheeks redden. Hmmm.
“I was talking about whether or not you can carry that amp all the way to my house without complaint, not—whatever you were thinking,” she lied, trying to sound casual.
“Are you telling me you can read my thoughts?” he asked, shifting the amp to his other hand. The disbelief and teasing tone in his voice were unmistakeable. The traffic light changed and they headed across. Tendrils of heat curled up from the pavement, swirling around Kate’s bare legs.
“Would you still hang out with me if I said yes?”
They continued up the northbound street, passing the soup place and the Scientology building. Trees lined the sidewalk and the shadows deepened beneath each tree where they were shielded from the yellow light of the street lamps.
“Foul,” he said, laughing. “There’s no way I can answer that and still be cool. If I say no, then you’ll suspect me of having bad motives or being unfaithful in thought. If I say yes, you’ll think I must be the dullest guy you’ve ever met, intellectually speaking.”
“So you’re worried I can actually read your thoughts?” A group of bike enthusiasts passed them, some of them riding extremely modified machines—one had a seat-post and steering column that were almost ten feet tall.
“Whoa, did you see that?” Ty asked, stopping and turning around to watch the group recede down the street.
“Yeah, I think a bunch of them live up the street from me. Weirdos,” Kate said, shaking her head.
“You think so?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe? I just don’t see the point in some of their bike modifications.”
“Fun? Just because they can?” Ty speculated as they continued up the street.
“Probably. I just don’t get it,” Kate said, waving a dismissive hand.
“So you’d never make a bike like that?” he asked, pointing the direction they went. He switched the amp to his other hand.
Kate pretended to think about it. “Um, no.”
“Not the adventurous type, eh?”
“Just not adventurous with bikes.”
“Then what? What are you adventurous with?”
Kate could hear the grin in his voice and wondered if he was looking for something specific. She cleared her throat. “You know, the usual. Rock climbing, bouldering, that seems pretty adventurous, right? I like to hike. Uh, I’m not afraid to try new foods.” They crossed the final street before Kate’s flat. Plinking sounds came from the driveway of a nearby house where a man had his head beneath the hood of his car, tinkering. Muffled voices rose from a group of smokers out on a porch further up the street.
“And what adventurous foods have you tried?” Ty asked.
“Uh, let me think,” she said, suddenly unable to remember anything remotely interesting. “OK, yeah, squid. I tried squid once.”
“Right on! I love kalamari,” he said, sounding excited.
“No, not kalamari. It was literally just a plateful of tentacles. Like as though the tentacles were supposed to be spaghetti noodles. They were in a dish, some kind of nasty Korean dish.”
“So . . . you didn’t like it?”
“No, but that’s not the point, is it? I tried it. That’s the point,” she explained, suddenly concerned that he’d find her adventurous spirit wanting, just because she didn’t like squid.
“Hmm, I guess. The jury is still out on whether or not you’re adventurous enough.”
Kate glanced at him, feeling defensive, and caught the gleam in his eye as they climbed the stairs to her front porch, where light from the front room spilled out the picture window. “Gee, thanks,” she said. She was beginning to feel like any relationship with him was a lost cause. The defeatist side of her whispered that she should give up and let the seams burst that she’d stitched up around the lopsided parts of her personality. That was how she kept it all in. Kept it hidden. See if he likes me then, a voice in her head seemed to say.
Kate pulled the keys from her messenger bag and unlocked the door. Ty followed her inside where he set the amp down. He rubbed his fingers together, massaging them a bit.
“Well. I’m impressed and I guess you’re a stallion. You didn’t complain at all, well done,” Kate observed as she dropped her bag on the floor and slipped out of her backpack-style guitar case. She leaned it against the cinderblock and plywood bookcase. “Audra would have—“ she began, turning. Without warning, Ty took her in his arms, backed her against the wall and kissed her.
Wait, what? Kate’s thoughts scrambled to catch up. Ty’s lips tasted minty. His breath filled her as he moved in deeper. It happened so quickly that she was receptive just out of confusion, and, well, to be honest, it wasn’t like she didn’t want it to happen.
She wanted this, didn’t she?
One hand came to the side of her face, the other touched her waist, tentatively. Beneath the delectable flavor of him, there was a hint of chocolate, and then just that, that one taste—the one that flipped a switch in her, shut down reason and turned on desire.
His hips pressed into her, and she felt his knee curve around her thigh. A groan came growling up into her throat and she couldn’t hold it back.
If he didn’t stop soon, Kate was afraid she’d begin tearing his clothes off. She opened her eyes to see if he was showing any signs of letting up and was surprised by the half-lidded, gray-blue eyes staring at her. Huh, she thought drunkenly, I didn’t know he had gray-blue eyes. There was a soft tone in his expression and a powerful lust pulled at the edges of his expanding pupils.
She managed to sort through the hormones of desire coursing through her blood to discover her hands, folded against his chest, like she’d been tranquilized by his lips. Her fingers responded to her commands and moved slightly, and then she found the strength to push him away. Their mouths disconnected and his coarse fingers slid down her jaw, trailing along like lightning until they reached her chin and drifted away as gentle as an electrified summer breeze.
He tilted his forehead until it touched hers. The hand that just left her cheek came to rest like a sunbeam on her arm. “I’ve been wanting to do that for weeks now, Kate,” he said. He was so close to her. She still felt the length of his body pressed against hers. Every nerve ending was aflame. Her thighs tingled, her gut screamed, “Take me! Take me!”
And . . . all she could think about . . . was Will.
“Storms” by Exitmusic, from the album Passage
I’m currently going through my second draft and changing all the sections that were originally in 1st person POV to limited 3rd. The process of changing a story from 1st to 3rd is a lot of work! And I’m betting it’s a lot harder than it sounds. I still have 19 more chapters to change. But it gives me a good chance to see how things feel. Anyway, I’ll probably still be altering sections on later drafts that I only gleaned for verbs and pronouns on this round of revisions. So fun!
But I’m revising this section right now, and so I’m offering it as a teaser. It’s one of my favorite parts of the book. I hope you enjoy it! 
She opened her eyes and was in darkness. A fire whipped and crackled a few feet in front of her. The smell of burning pine bit at her nose and a light breeze brought the odor of disturbed sand and incense rippling by. She sat on a large cold rock, watching the fire. Through the flames, on the other side of the fire, the bluest eyes she’d ever seen caught her gaze, staring at her. A slight smile tugged at the corners of their owner’s mouth. A dimple formed in his right cheek.
There were others around. Kate glanced at them. Their olive-complected faces were illuminated by the firelight. The flames flickered in the prisms of their eyes and cast shadows in the folds of their brightly colored robes. Strangers. Maybe Bedouins or some sort of desert dwellers. There were large tents surrounding the fire, but her eyes kept coming back to the set of sapphire eyes straight across from her. Who was he?
His gaze warmed her. He wore no headdress or flourish, just his dark cap of short hair and clean, shaven face. A tingle danced up her spine, hot like the touch of a summer breeze, though her back was cold. Overhead, the Milky Way was a white gash across the night sky—a sky so dusted with stars she felt like she may be one of them, fallen into darkness and lost in a desert.
She lowered her eyes and he was still staring at her. He winked. She glanced around to see if she was confused about who he was looking at. When their eyes met again, he tilted his head at her and grinned. Her hearts thudded at the sight of that smile. There was something familiar about it.
He stood and moved around the fire. He was wearing a white linen shirt and black linen pants. His bare feet brushed against the edge of the soft red coals of the fire, but he paid them no attention. Cinders shot up around him at being disturbed, dancing around him in the jetties of air his passing created. He seemed to glow in the firelight as though he too were made of stardust. He was in front of her, taking her hand and lifting her to stand beside him.
He pulled her past the fire, through the ring of people around it, and to the opening of one of the tents. He pulled the flap back and guided her inside. A lantern glowed in one corner, shedding muted light on a lush, Persian rug and piles of red and golden pillows. He moved close to her and kissed her. Kate’s heart drummed a thunderous, galloping beat which echoed across the desert plain outside their tent.
He paused long enough to whisper, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Add A Boat Made of Bone to your Goodreads shelf today!
Borrowing from a page out of the Mary Robinette Kowal play book, I’ve decided to experiment with running an alpha read program on my website using a password protected page. Anyone who is interested, fill out the form below and I’ll send you the password to access the page.
This is the second draft of the novel, so there will be mistakes and problems. I’ll mainly be asking for feedback on large issues that I can still change. There are the questions I’ll ask you to bear in mind as you read.
I will want you to look for things that:
What I want are your reader reactions, not grammar problems or other things related to punctuation and whatnot.
And yes, if you follow the link to Mary’s page, you’ll see that I COMPLETELY ripped her off. She’s great and smart and beautiful, why wouldn’t I? If you haven’t read her books, try them out. I’m about to start Without a Summer (I have to clear a couple other books off my plate first, but then . . .).
Also, if you can’t get enough of me (and I so would not blame you if you couldn’t, I mean, I’m utterly charming, right?), check out my recently added Free Fiction page for a fun story I started writing earlier this year.
I’ve added a new section to my website, Free Fiction!
This is something I’ve been wanting
to try for a while–doing a serial. I think it’ll work perfectly with the chick lit novel I started earlier this year, and then put on stand-by to write A Boat Made of Bone. BMOB is finished (yeah, I totally know I need to update my status bars!) and now I’m editing the first draft. So I thought it would be fun to release the chapters of my chick lit story, which I’ve lovingly titled Olivia Fox: Latter Day Lawyer, in serial form. I’ll be revealing chapters a week at a time. So be sure to mark your calendars, you know, once you get addicted to the story. Because it is addicting.
I’ve included comment forms at the end of each chapter, so please feel free to leave comments. As usual, they are moderated, so it might take a few hours for your comments to show up.
A bit of information about the Olivia Fox story. About two years ago I moved back to Utah after living abroad (is Nashville abroad? Seems like it, but not like abroad as in, you know, Europe, but still…) and even though I grew up here and didn’t move until I was in my mid-twenties, returning to Utah was a bit of culture shock. I love the state and the people, but I’d forgotten how a lot of things are here in the great state of Utah.
So I had to put it in a book. That’s what Olivia Fox is about–someone who left a small Utah community at a young age and moves back. And she’s single, so there’s romance in it. And she’s not Mormon, so there’s that too. Together, it all makes an interesting story. To me, at least. And maybe to a few others.
Check it out now!
A new teaser from A Boat Made of Bone!
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“I’m not just being dramatic, Kate. I was. I was awful. I never let anyone get close to me. I kept everyone at a distance. And I used people for my own ends.” He’s staring at a dresser vanity pushed up against the wall about eight feet from us. There’s a silver hair brush laying on its back upon it and a jewelry box. And the dragonfly ring. I let go of his hand, stand, and retrieve the ring.
“Am I close to you?” I ask, inspecting the ring and putting it on.
He sniffs and rubs his temple. “Yes. You know almost everything there is to know about me.”
This makes me warm inside. “Then it doesn’t matter that at one time, you didn’t let anyone close to you. Because you’ve changed.”
“What about you, Kate. Am I close to you? Do I know everything about you?”
I shift, staring at the dragonfly ring, feeling caught. “Um, no. Not everything.”
“What don’t I know?”
“Don’t forget, Will, that I’m actually alive. And things change constantly.”
“How does that change what we’re talking about now?”
“I don’t know.”
“So are you saying that you’re hiding from me?”
I think of Ty and my mouth goes dry. I don’t want to bring real-life into this, it doesn’t fit here, in the logic of the dream world. It will only upset the balance, I think, and it might scare Will away. I suddenly feel like I’m two-timing him. His eyes are narrow and staring hard at me, so I look away, aware at once of the aura of the room.
“Let’s get out of here, Will. Unless there’s something you want to show me.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
I shrug and wait for him to decide we can leave. With a sigh he stands up and takes my hand. He scans the room, his eyes focusing on the bed, then the mirrors, the dresser, and then, without warning, he lets go of my hand and charges the bed. In one motion, he tears the bedspread off and the sheets and tries to claw through the mattress, which is this very old, striped design. I avert my eyes when I begin to notice all the stains on it. I don’t want to know and I back up until I bump into the wall. Will upends the mattress and it falls against the wall on the opposite side, and then he rushes the dresser and yanks the drawers out, scattering the contents—lingerie, fishnet tights, lace nightgowns and bottles of cheap perfume—and then knocks the dresser over. All the while he yells and grunts, and screams as though exorcising the demons of the past inside him.
Add A Boat Made of Bone to your Goodreads shelf today!