Jaci Burton’s Muse

That pretty much sums up what I’ve been doing over the holiday weekend.

Who gets sick in August? Not me. Well, not usually. If I get sick (which is rare), it’s in the winter. Not in August. It’s freakin’ summer. I don’t get sick in the summer. Dammit.

Hacking up a lung over the holiday weekend is not my idea of a good time.

Hope y’all are having a good weekend.

Nyquil is my friend

Doesn’t this look like an awesome book? Check it out!

RAZOR GIRL by Marianne Mancusi

Molly Anderson is not your average twenty-one-year-old. It’s been six years since she and her family escaped into a bunker, led by her conspiracy theorist father and his foreknowledge of a plot to bring about the apocalypse. But her father’s precautions didn’t stop there. Molly is now built to survive.
Yes, Ian Anderson’s favorite book gave him ideas on how to “improve” his daughter. Molly is faster, stronger, and her ocular implants and razor-tipped nails set her apart. Apart, when—venturing alone out of the bunker and into a plague ravaged, monster-ridden wilderness—what Molly needs most is togetherness. Chase Griffin, a friend from her past, is her best bet. But while he and others have miraculously survived, the kind boy has become a tormented man. Together, these remnants of humanity must struggle toward trusting each other and journey to the one place Molly’s father believed all civilization would be reborn: the Magic Kingdom, where everyone knows it’s a small world after all.

ABOUT MARIANNE MANCUSI

When it comes to writing, award winning author Marianne Mancusi likes to play the field. From time travel comedies to kick butt speculative fiction romances to a Buffy’esque vampire series for teens, she’s published eleven books in three years, in a myriad of genres and styles.

In addition to writing, Marianne is a multiple Emmy award winning television producer, currently working for the nationally syndicated women’s lifestyle show Better TV. A Boston native and graduate of Boston University ’s College of Communications , she currently lives on Manhattan ’s Upper West Side . (But has NOT become a Yankees fan!) In her spare time, Marianne enjoys clubbing, cosplay, cheesy horror movies (especially those featuring zombies!), her dog Molly, and videogames.

REVIEWS

“Opens with danger and will grab your interest immediately. Stellar!”
–Huntress Reviews

“An increasingly intense, suspenseful edge-of-the-seat thrilling ride…stunning, cutting edge romance.”
–Merrimon Book Reviews

"Non-stop thrill ride from page one! Marianne Mancusi spins an eerily marvelous tale in her book RAZOR GIRL."
–Simply Romance Reviews

"Mancusi doesn¹t hesitate to take chances and innovate!"
–Romantic Times

"Marianne Mancusi has returned with an edgy all-new tale, Razor Girl, filled with fast-paced action and a heroine strong enough to mold her own destiny."
–SF Scope

Website: http://www.mariannemancusi.com

UNRAVELED has been cleaned up, prettified and turned into my editor. One project off the desk!

Now onto TAKEN BY SIN. I received the revisions from my editor, so now I need to dive in and tackle this project. It’s major, so this may take awhile.

And I’m sick. *glares at whoever threw germs my way*.  I so don’t have time to be sick. I didn’t pencil a cold into my schedule. :sigh:

But, hopefully I’ll have some good news to share soon. ;;)

The Writeminded blog, talking about guns and defending your own and killin’ and stuff.

No really, I am. Come see me and weigh in with your opinion!

Separated from her son and forced to create a neural implant that will mean the effective enslavement of her psychically gifted race, Ashaya Aleine is the perfect Psy–cool, calm, emotionless…at least on the surface. Inside, she’s fighting a desperate battle to save her son and escape the vicious cold of the PsyNet. Yet when escape comes, it leads not to safety, but to the lethal danger of a sniper’s embrace.

DarkRiver sniper Dorian Christensen lost his sister to a Psy killer. Though he lacks the changeling ability to shift into animal form, his leopard lives within. And that leopard’s rage at the brutal loss is a clawing darkness that hungers for vengeance. Falling for a Psy has never been on Dorian’s agenda. But charged with protecting Ashaya and her son, he discovers that passion has a way of changing the rules…

This is the 6th book in Nalini’s Psy/Changeling series. And…um…wow. If you haven’t picked up and started reading this series yet, you’ve missed some of the best writing this millennium. Every book gets better, draws you deeper into this world, makes you fall more and more in love with these characters.

Every time I read one of these books, I proclaim it my favorite. HOSTAGE TO PLEASURE is no different. I was in the middle of a writing frenzy last week, needing to finish a book in a week, and yet I still found myself taking breaks to devour chapter after chapter of Nalini’s wonderful, incredible world, unable to put her book down so I could go back to writing my own book. (I really have to stop reading excellent books like this while I’m writing. )

The thing I loved most about this book is the inherent flaws in both the characters makeup. Dorian is a changeling who is unable to shift, and yet instead of thinking himself a failure, he makes himself better at everything else, a super cat stuck in human form, an amazing, sensual creature with heightened senses, a sentinel who stands at the right hand of the pack leader, sworn to defend, to kill.

Ashaya is an imperfect psy who feels, who loves her son when Psy who exhibit emotions are damned. And yet this makes her stronger, able to slip beyond the Psy’s defenses in order to save those she cares for. It gives her an understanding of the people who rescue her, and propels her right into the arms of the man who guards her, the man who should hate her, but can’t.

Their story gripped me from the first page and wouldn’t let me go. Nalini weaves a tale of a man who lost everything, yet still remained strong, who should have hated the woman whose species took the one thing he loved, but learned to look beyond that to the women inside the Psy, and taught the woman grappling with the terror of emotions that letting go with him would give her the freedom she was afraid she’d never have.

I loved this book.

Excerpt here on Nalini’s website

You can preorder the book here at Amazon. It releases next week so it’ll be available everywhere.

Done! done done done!

My novella is finished (UNRAVELED, releasing from Samhain Publishing in December). I started last Monday and finished today. 30K in a week! Woo to the hooo!

My tendonitis is killing me, but by God that book is done!

I would show you the end of book happy dance, but I don’t have a webcam. Really, for a wicked cool end of book happy dance, go see Lauren Dane’s blog, then think of me doing it. Lauren rocks it like nobody’s business.

So how come I can write a 30K novella in a week, but I can’t write a 100K single title in a month?

One of those life mysteries I just can’t fathom, I guess.

Anyway, another project ticked off the to do list.

Now to go wrap my arm.

I know, y’all didn’t even know I was gone

So yesterday morning my phone line died. No phone line, no dsl. No dsl, no internet. It was horrible. Thank God for my Blackberry so I could get my emails.

This morning, phone line comes back up. Great.

But no internet.  :gah:  . So I had to mess with the router and the dsl modem for an hour or so and when I realized I couldn’t make it work, I had to call AT&T (calling tech support is never my idea of a good time).

And did I mention I’m trying to write a novella this week? I’m on a mission here, people. I so do not have time to screw away 3 hours of my day.

So I talk to the tech support dude. An hour later he hands me off to the ‘next’ level of support. (Apparently, there are ‘tiers’.) Whatever. Twenty minutes later, this dude says he has to turn it into maintenance, who should have it fixed in 4 hours. Fine, whatever.

Ten minutes later my internet is back up, which leads me to believe all maintenance had to do was walk into a back room and flip some freaking’ switch. Now why couldn’t they do that in the first place?

Corporate hierarchies. Geez.

Anyway, I have internet. I’m happy. And now 3 hours behind on my writing for the day. Ack.

By the way, I WILL finish the novella by the end of the weekend, making my goal. I’ll report in definitely on Monday to let you know, but I’m certain it’ll be done.

Dear NBC 5 and 6 p.m. Local and National News:

If you’re going to tell me who won the gold medals that day, why would I spend my evening watching all five freakin hours of coverage of the Olympics? Why would I sit through the boring events to wait for the ones I want to see (because you always show the best events last), stay up til midnight, then wake up the next day bleary eyed and exhausted?

I enjoy the element of surprise. Don’t fuck with me by announcing the winners during the early evening news.

kthxbai

So our vacation plans were thwarted because of rain. We arrived in Hot Springs and it poured. And poured. And poured. So we checked out and came home and finished up our vacation week there. And frankly, we had a great time just hanging out and doing things from home.

We went to the Aquarium, which had opened here a few years ago but we’d never gone. Had a great time looking at all the underwater life, from things that livein lakes to under the sea. There were even a couple giant turtles!

The shark tank was kind of meh. We definitely enjoyed all the other aquatic life much more.

The tattoos we got were already mentioned on a previous blog post (omg I’m at the healing stage now where the damn thing itches and of course you can’t scratch it. )

We went to the gun range–twice. Once indoor, once outdoor. I like the outdoor a lot better. Brighter, less closed in, and my brother-in-law went with us. He let me play with a few of his guns. I was in lust with his 9mm Glock and now I must have one. The .22 with the laser sighting gave me incredible accuracy too. I hit the bullseye on the target every time. (This is all research for books, of course. )

I think the best part of vacation was just relaxing, not working, and being able to hang out with Biker Dude all week. We both really needed the down time. So even though we weren’t able to be on the beach or do what we had originally planned to do, it was a great vacation.

And I’m loving being able to watch the Olympics every night. We’re enjoying that a lot, especially all the swimming last week. This week, it’s track and field which Biker Dude likes a lot. I like the gymnastics too. And the opening ceremonies were astounding! I’ve never seen anything like it.

So now it’s back to work for me. I’m going to try and write a novella this week. We’ll see if I can do 25K in a week. I wrote 5K yesterday, so if I can keep up that pace every day this week, I’ll get it done. Wish me luck.

Okay vacation’s over. Time to go back to work.

But first, I have to tell you that I actually did do a little bit of work last week. My agent and I worked on a book deal, and I’m SO excited about this deal.

New York Times Bestselling Author Lora Leigh and I are going to do a duet anthology together for Berkley!

She’ll do a novella of her Nauti series, and I’ll do a novella from my Wild Riders series. No title or release date yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

I’m just so stoked about this, and utterly thrilled that Lora has agreed to do this anthology with me!!