July 3rd, 2009
See you on the other side of the void…
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July 1st, 2009
working on final edits before submission:
excerpt:
“You are good at what you do,” Cassian said.
This stopped his brother in place. “Are you too afraid?”
Cassian shook his head. “Why can’t you accept that I’m good at what I want to do, too?”
“Being a priest?” Calvis spat the word to one side. “Is that what will please you? Shaving your head, dressing in robes, smelling of oil and incense? Spending your days in the temple or in study, dissecting ancient words written so long ago none might know their meaning but only guess at it, and your nights in the arms of a woman who will never be satisfied with what you might offer?”
“I want to speak for those who are unable!” Cassian cried, pushed at last to anger. “What is so wrong with that?”
“She will make a cuckold of you!” Calvis shouted, and was upon his brother in the time it took to exhale.
Toe to toe, eye to eye. A matched pair. Calvis began it.
Cassian was the one who ended it.
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July 1st, 2009
Okay, so Deeper’s officially released today, including on audio at AUDIBLE.COM!
Normally I don’t listen to my audiobooks. (I guess if Zquin were narrating it I’d have to, huh? But then I wouldn’t get much else done. Ever.) But today I clicked on the sample and…wow…Savannah Richards is the narrator and she does a splendid job of portraying both Nick and Bess. I actually shivered.
Also, I realized that listening to my written words spoken aloud makes me feel like I didn’t write them. And I think I noticed a mistake. Also, she didn’t pronounce SUGARLAND the way I do, in my head, and I found that interesting and amusing. 
So, if you’re of a mind to buy the audio version, you can do that now. It will probably be available on iTunes some time later this week, iTunes seems to be a bit behind on releases. Or, if you just want to listen to the sample, head over to Audible.com and check it out. I was impressed and pleased with it, that’s for sure!
I got a little giddy, as a matter of fact. 
M
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June 30th, 2009
I have dispersed all the copies of DEEPER for the contest, so look for yours in the next week or so. (If you’re a lucky winner, that is.) Much like the Golden Ticket, it’s as random as…well, random as randomizer can make it. To all those who entered, wow, thank you! I had more people enter than I had books to give away, and that’s frankly not what I expected. Congratulations to the winners!
If you didn’t win, don’t worry, I give stuff away all the time and will probably have more stuff in the upcoming months.
And remember, everyone, DEEPER’s on sale now, now, now!
Hope you all like it!
M
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June 30th, 2009
Once again, I make a fool of myself for your viewing pleasure.
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June 27th, 2009
Wow.
Back from the land of Disney, and let me just say, I’m very glad we went. I’m very glad I do not ever have to go again within the near future. Disney is its own special brand of near-hell, countered by just enough “magic” to make you keep going. 96 degree weather, crowds, cranky kids (not mine, thank God!) — early days and late nights. NOT a relaxing vacation, but definitely one to remember. Spent some time with cousins and brothers and sisters and that was fun.
I’m so glad to be back, though.
I have a lot of stuff to do, you see.
So, got home, did the final pass edits on No Greater Pleasure
And then…one might imagine I could take a break, but one would be wrong. Instead, it will be on to edits of Selfish is the Heart (or whatever it’s going to be called) as well as writing the Spice Brief that’s not even titled at all…Oh, and yeah, I have that Mira book to work on, plus a book to revise for my agent to send out…
Um…summer?!?!
SUMMER?!!!!!?????
I’d rather have work to do than not, but I am verra sad I have not yet even purchased the Sims 3 or even played the Sims 2 in MONTHS. 
No time. Saving it as a reward…for August. August, sweet August, when I should be finished with everything and I can stay up late playing video games.
Maybe.
There is always more work to do, and I am SO GRATEFUL for it, indeed, I am. I feel better when I’m doing something I love. Well, who doesn’t?
M
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June 25th, 2009
Her breath snagged in her throat. She linked her fingers through his, pulling him to her. He came willingly enough. Pliable. She tucked herself against him again.
“I missed you so much. It was all could think about once I got here.”
“You never came back in all these years?”
She shook her head. “No. I never did.”
Nick’s lip curled and he looked at her with half his face illuminated from the golden light spilling from the kitchen windows and the other half dark. “You married that asshole.”
Bess nodded, silent.
Nick ran his hands through his hair before turning back to grip the railing with both hands. “Why?”
“Because I loved him.”
Nick laughed. “Yeah, I think I remember you saying something like that.”
Bess rubbed her bare arms and wished for a sweater. “It was true at the time.”
“Sort of,” Nick said with a mocking grin she only glimpsed, since his face was still turned away.
“A lot happened after that summer,” she said quietly. “It didn’t change all at once. We had to work on it, Nick. Andy was there. You weren’t.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” The wind turned Nick’s shout to confetti, but it was still loud enough to attract attention, if anyone else was outside on their decks. Before Bess had the chance to shush him he’d taken her by the upper arms and said from deep in his throat, “it wasn’t my fault. I wanted to.”
“I didn’t know that,” Bess told him without softening or bending. Without apologizing.
Nick let her go and paced the smoothly worn boards of the deck. His hands went to the pockets of his jeans, washed and dried now, but he pulled out nothing. Bess had brought him a toothbrush and toothpaste, clothes, but no cigarettes.
“How long?” Nick asked, his back to her. His bare feet paused on the boards.
“I told you. Twenty –”
“No.” He shook his head but didn’t turn to look at her. “How long did you wait before you decided to marry him?”
“It was six months before we got back together for good.” Then it had seemed an interminable amount of time, fraught with angst and anxiety. Now it was no more than a blink.
Now he turned, mouth bracketed again by lines. “So you married him? Because you didn’t believe I’d do what I said? You didn’t believe me?”
“Did you ever really give me any reason to believe you, Nick? Did you ever give me anything?”
He flinched. “Don’t be a bitch.”
“You can call me a bitch if you want, but you know it’s true.” Tears burned her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She didn’t bother dashing them away. “I asked you, flat out –”
“I didn’t mean it!” His voice rose again. “Jesus, Bess, didn’t you know I didn’t mean it?”
“I didn’t know anything!” She still didn’t, actually. “I don’t know anything now! All of this is crazy, Nick, it’s insane!”
He crossed to her in two steps and took her in his arms. It was the action of a man, not a boy, and though she didn’t remember him ever acting that way back then it seemed perfectly suited to him, now. He looked down into her face and brought their bodies close together. As it had been since the first night of his return, heat radiated from him like a small sun. Her own personal sun around which she orbited the way she always had.
“I know I was an ass back then, Bess. I know you hated me.”
She shook her head. “No. I never thought you were an ass. A lot of other things, but not that.”
A small grin touched the corners of his lips. “I know I lied to you, but not about coming to find you. I meant it. And now, this…it’s not crazy. Why do you think I came back? Why was I able to, after all this time?”
She shook her head a little. “I don’t know.”
“Because of you.” He pulled her closer and bent to brush his lips across her cheek and down to nuzzle at her neck. “Because when you went down to the water and wanted me, the gray went away.”
His hands were hot on her, his mouth, hotter. When he slid his palms up to cup her breasts through her t-shirt, Bess’s lips parted in a silent sigh. Her nipples tightened at once and the beat of her heart stepped up. Under his touch, she melted again, the way she always had.
Maybe, always would.
“This is crazy,” she whispered, but it didn’t feel crazy.
It felt right. It felt like she had waited her entire life to feel Nick’s hands on her, like she’d been born to fit his touch. It felt like nothing else had ever mattered or ever would but his mouth moving over her skin and his hands holding her.
“Everything was gray until I heard you say my name.” Nick kissed her throat and nudged her backward, his hands guiding her so she didn’t fall. “I didn’t know where I was, but it didn’t matter anymore because I heard your voice and I knew where I wanted to be.”
It was a more poetic speech than any she could remember hearing from him, but like the rest of this, it didn’t seem out of place. Bess let Nick guide her through the sliding glass doors, across the linoleum, through the living room and into the bedroom. He kissed her mouth when they got to the bed, and she pulled away to catch her breath.
They looked into each other’s eyes, both breathing hard. Nick licked his mouth and passed a hand over her hair, then cupped her cheek for a moment before finally resting his hand on her shoulder.
“What?” he asked.
“You didn’t used to…”
He kissed her mouth again, hard, before gentling the pressure. He pulled away just enough to say against her lips, “I didn’t used to do a lot of things.”
He nipped at her bottom lip, not hard enough to hurt, then ran his tongue over it. Her mouth parted for him and his kiss took her breath away not from its harshness but from the uncommon tenderness.
“Stop thinking about the way things were,” he murmured as his hands lifted her shirt over her head. His palms skimmed the lace of her bra, then unhooked it and tugged it off, too. “Just think about the way things are, now.”
* * * *
…You can preorder Deeper
You can also order it from Barnes and Noble and Borders
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June 22nd, 2009
“I thought I’d never see you again.”
At the sound of the voice in the doorway, Bess’s soap-slick hands twitched on the coffee mug she’d been rinsing. It slipped from her fingers and crashed to the kitchen’s tile floor. Hot water splashed her legs as she turned, gripping the counter to keep from sliding in the spill.
He stood, backlit, for just a moment before moving forward. The same dark hair, same dark eyes. Same quirked smile.
Everything the same.
Bess couldn’t move. Last night she had dreamed…oh, but it hadn’t been a dream. Had it? If not, surely she dreamed now. She curved her fingers against the sink’s porcelain, finding no purchase. Nothing to grip.
“Nick?”
Now he looked uncertain. His hair dripped, and the hems of his jeans. His bare toes, coated with sand, gritted on the tile as he took a step toward her, hand outstretched but quickly pulling back when Bess shrank against the counter. “Bess…it’s me.”
Her guts tumbled inside her, and she couldn’t breathe. She sipped at the air in uneven, hitching gasps. “I thought…I thought…”
“Hey.” He soothed her, coming closer.
She could smell him. Salt and water and sand and sun. The way he’d always smelled, back then. Bess found more air. Took a deeper breath. Nick didn’t touch her as she stared. His hand hovered an inch from her shoulder.
“It’s really me,” he said.
A low sob forced its way from her throat and she launched herself into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the damp fabric of his shirt. She breathed him in, deep and deeper.
It took him a second to put his arms around her, but when he did, his embrace was firm. Warm. He rubbed her back, then slid up a hand to cup the base of her skull.
Bess, eyes closed, shuddered against him. “I thought I was dreaming last night.”
She remembered stumbling up the beach, peeling off her clothes, tumbling into bed without even bothering to dry her hair or brush the sand from her skin. She’d woken to find the pile of salt-sodden clothes staining the rug and her bed a shambles. The passion of the night before had been replaced by a pounding head and slightly sick stomach.
Nick’s hand rubbed a small, tight circle on her back, just between the shoulder blades. “If you were dreaming, I was dreaming, too.”
Bess held him tighter. “Maybe we’re both dreaming, because this can’t be real, Nick. It can’t be real.”
He put his hands on her upper arms and pushed her from his body far enough to look into her face. She’d forgotten how small he could make her feel. How deceptively bigger he’d always been.
“I’m real.”
His fingers on her arms felt real. Solid. Strong. Her cheek was wet from where she’d pressed it to his shirt. Heat radiated from him as though she stood in front of a furnace, and the smell of him, that lost, welcome smell, filled her head until there was nothing else inside her. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away. Then she pushed herself out of his arms.
Bess looked at him. Salt water had spiked his hair, but had ceased sliding down his cheeks. His clothes had started to dry, too. He took up as much space as he ever had. His touch was as warm. Time hadn’t touched him, hadn’t painted lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth or silver in his hair.
Bess touched Nick’s cheek. “How can this be? Look at you. Look at me.”
He put his hand over hers, then turned his face to press a kiss to the center of her palm. He closed her fingers over it, but said nothing.
His smile broke her.
“Oh, no,” Bess said. “Oh, no. No.”
She pulled her hand from his. Neither of them moved, but the distance between them grew vast. Something flickered in Nick’s eyes, an emotion she couldn’t read.
“How many people have a second chance?” He asked. “Don’t turn me away, Bess. Please.”
He’d never asked her for anything. Blinking, Bess turned back to the sink. She’d left the water running and pushed the handle of the faucet down. Without the rush of water pouring from the spigot, the sound of the ocean outside filled the space between them and brought them together.
“How?” She asked.
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“It should.”
He smiled and sent the same old twist into her belly, and lower. “But does it? Really?”
When he bent to kiss her, the taste of him chased away logic. All reason. And that, too, was the same as it had always been.
“No,” Bess said, and opened her arms for him again.
* * * * * ** *
…You can preorder Deeper
You can also order it from Barnes and Noble and Borders
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