Jaci Burton’s Muse

Philandering husband and SC Governor Mark Sandford has been front and center in the news this past week, acknowledging having an affair with an Argentinian woman, and now admits to even more discretions. Oh but those didn’t ‘cross the line’. Um…right.

Anyway, I don’t want to give the dickhead anymore press than he’s already gotten. I was thinking about this, and about relationships, because hey, I spend the majority of every day writing about relationships, about the push/pull between a couple, and how they manage to find common ground and despite obstacles thrown at them, fall in love.

But then I got to thinking…okay, let’s inject some real life into this whole relationship thing. Everyone views relationships differently. Certainly every couple I’ve written handles their relationship differently, and they’re fictional people. it stands to reason real life people all see things differently too.

So I got to thinking about the kind of woman who would forgive a man for infidelity. You know there are women out there who would. Now whether that’s because they have low self esteem or depend on the man for their way of life or because infidelity in itself isn’t the dealbreaker in the relationship, I don’t know. But I’ve seen plenty of women take their men back after they’ve cheated on them. Me? I wouldn’t be so inclined to do so. But that’s me.

The #1 thing I insist upon is trust. Without it–the relationship is finished. You break trust with your partner one time, and you’re done. How will you ever trust that person again? They can say…hey, trust me. But can you ever believe anything they say is true? How do you know that every word they say to you isn’t a lie? So for me…trust is the dealbreaker in a relationship. I can forgive a lot of things…but you break my trust and it’s over.

So I’m curious about the rest of you. What are your dealbreakers in a relationship? What would you be willing to tolerate, and what would be the one thing that you would never forgive?

Oh, and for the record, my husband is an incredibly honorable man and I trust him 100% with my heart and with my life.

Fabulously talented author Beth Kery is giving away a copy of TAKEN BY SIN over at her blog today, so head on over and comment for a chance to win. And while you’re there, have a look see at her upcoming book, SWEET RESTRAINT, that releases on July 7th!

I know I haven’t been blogging regularly lately.

Here’s why:

Buddy, our lab, had surgery on his leg two weeks ago. This is the 4th time. He had multiple ACL surgeries but was still limping so the doc wanted to be sure one of the bands hadn’t come loose. Plus our daughter works at the vet’s office during her summers off from college, and they love both her and Buddy. Anyway, he just has arthritis so nothing can really be done for him. Problem is the wound abscessed and we’ve been dealing with infection and antibiotics and he’s in the house and an 85 lb dog in my house along with my son’s dog and my 2 little dogs and well…you can just imagine. Here he is…like a moat I have to cross over to get from the kitchen to the dining room:

And then my son brought his dog with him on this visit. Freedom is part German Shepherd, part…well he doesn’t really know. And she’s very afraid of people (She was a shelter dog). But she’s warmed up nicely to all of us, and our dogs. And she’s taken over my sofa, just like my dogs do:

I just want y’all to know that between Buddy and Freedom, I’ve swept up enough dog hair to knit an entire new dog. And I didn’t even include pics of Sam and Lucy, our other dogs. Or #1 son’s two dogs he dumped in our backyard SAturday so they’d be out of his house while they had my granddaughter’s birthday. For awhile there I felt like Animal Planet. For awhile on Saturday we had 8 dogs. Thank God we live on an acre and a half, huh?

So yeah, my granddaughter had a birthday. So of course there was a party:

Pool party. Lots of kids. Thankfully not at my house. My baby girl is 6 now.

#2 son (and his dog) were supposed to leave to drive back to California Sunday morning. Except Saturday night we went out to dinner. Biker Dude and I took the bike, and he followed behind in his car. On the way bike, Biker Dude spotted a deer about to dart out in front of us. Fortunately the deer changed its mind. Thankfully. Deer vs Motorcycle is never pretty. But then we didn’t see my son’s car lights behind us so we turned around and found him pulled over on the side of the road. Yeah…the deer darted out into the road anyway and my son hit it:

Needless to say, he didn’t leave Sunday. He needs to get at least a few repairs done to make the car driveable cross country.

And that’s why I haven’t been blogging much. Oh and I’m trying to write a book amidst all this madness. Send chocolate. Or tequila

I’m guest blogging today at author Leah Braemel’s blog. She’s having a big Birthday bash with guest bloggers and lots of prizes, so don’t just pop over today to see me (I’m giving away a book!). Hang out and see what else Leah’s got going on. And be sure to wish her a Happy Birthday!

TAKEN BY SIN, the 4th book in my Demon Hunter series, is now available!

More on the Demon Hunters series here

You can find it at your local bookstore, and if you can’t they can order it for you. You can also order it online at at:

Borders

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Chapters

Random House website

Or find it at your local Independent Bookstore via Indiebound

Taken By Sin is also available in ebook at:

The Sony Store

Amazon Kindle

Fictionwise

Books On Board

Or your favorite e-tailer

I hope you enjoy it! Please be sure to come by and let me know what you think :-)

The lovely Lea over at CLOSETWRITER is hosting a Demon Hunters giveaway contest in honor of tomorrow’s release of TAKEN BY SIN! So head on over there and enter for your chance to win one of my 4 Demon Hunter books! (Thank you Lea…you are rockin’ my socks off, woman )

You’ve noticed my tendency to pick a topic and then ramble off topic, right? Okay, then. Let’s carry on.

So I have the iPhone 3G and I did the 3.0 upgrade yesterday. Everything went smoothly for me, with no glitches. I haven’t used the cut and paste feature yet, but my son did on his phone and said it’s slick. Yay! I did play with the Voice Memo’s app…haven’t sung into it yet, but trust me, I will. Maybe #2 son and I can do a duet. Wheee!.

What I did do was sign up for Mobile Me, which I’d been pondering but on the fence about, until the 3.0 upgrade included Find My iPhone for Mobile Me. Which means if you lose your phone or it’s stolen, you can use Find My iPhone and it will locate the phone via GPS for you, tell you exactly where it is. So if you’ve left your phone, say, at a restaurant, you can send the phone a message which will pop up on the screen. That way if someone finds it they’ll see “Hey, I left my phone at your restaurant. I’m on my way to pick it up.” Pretty cool huh? Another awesome feature is if your phone is stolen, you can send a remote wipe command and wipe all the data from your phone. Awesome! I have mad love for this feature.

The Mobile Me sync feature just rocks my world. If I type an event or a reminder into the calendar of my Mac, it automatically syncs to my iPhone. If I type a contact name and phone # or email into my iPhone, it automatically syncs to my Mac. I don’t have to manually sync anything. This is amazing because no matter where I am I have access to my calendar, my contacts, and all my email addresses.

I haven’t used the Mobile Me email yet because I don’t really know what to do with it or what it’s for.

So onto things not Apple related….

So enjoying having #2 son visit. Especially enjoyed when #1 son and his family came over the other night. You can read my amusement at my blog post today over at Writeminded.

Temps here are in the high 90’s this week. Dude, it’s June,not August. Wtf? I can only imagine how brutal July and August are going to be. Just kill me now.

Hope you’re all having a wonderful week. 5 days until TAKEN BY SIN releases! Back to writing for me.

TAKEN BY SIN releases a week from today! How about an excerpt?
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#2 Son has descended from California with his dog and will be visiting for a couple weeks, always a great time of year for me because I love having him here. He’s a high school teacher so summer is the only time we get to see him. I can’t even begin to explain how enjoyable it is to have him around. Even though I have to work, he tosses his laptop on the table across from mine, does his thing while I do mine, and we work companionably together, occasionally stopping to talk to each other. He’s a great kid…okay, so he’ll be 28 this year and so not a kid anymore.

Working on the new book. Found out something about my heroine that rocked me back on my heels and will force me to take my book in an unexpected direction. That’s always fun when that happens. And no, I don’t always know everything about my characters until I sit down and start writing them. As I do, they reveal bits and pieces of their backgrounds to me. This was a big one and will provide a huge twist in this book that I hadn’t expected, but I think will deepen the emotional conflict between my characters. Yay!

In other news, TAKEN BY SIN releases next Tuesday, the 23rd! I’ll pop up an excerpt tomorrow. In the meantime, go read Greta’s review Thank you Greta!

This week, I’ll be visiting with the son, writing writing writing….and uh….writing.

Oh, and watching my usual way too much of reality tv. The Bachelorette and So You Think You Can Dance are my two favorites for this summer. Anyone else watching these?

What’s on tap for y’all this week?

Welcome to Snippet Saturday, where authors share pieces of their work or give you a glimpse into our insane or creative process.

Today we’re doing Outtakes. Outtakes are always such fun, because often we are asked to cut things from our books that we might absolutely love. But hey, editors have a reason for asking us to do that. Or we might cut a fun, beautiful, funny, emotional scene from our book because during the editorial stage we’ve made changes to a particular chapter and that scene no longer fits.

I’ve chosen a scene from SURVIVING DEMON ISLAND, the first book in my Demon Hunter series. It’s kind of a gory scene, but also pretty damn funny too. It involves piranhas. No, really. And it broke my heart to have to delete it from the book. I’ve always wanted to share this scene with my readers, so now I have the chance to. Some day I’m going to write a book where I can use a piranha scene and keep it.

Hope you enjoy, and be sure to click on the author links after my snippet to see everyone else’s outtakes.
Keep in mind this is an unedited excerpt since it was cut from the book before final editing. So any errors are mine.
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