A childhood accident left Emmaline vulnerable to disturbing fugue states that last only minutes, but feel like an eternity. The blackouts are unsettling but manageable…until she meets Johnny Dellasandro.

The reclusive painter gained notoriety in the ’70s for his debauched lifestyle and raunchy art films. His naked body has achieved cult status, especially in Emm’s mind– she’s obsessed with the man, who’s grown even sexier with age. Today Johnny shuns the spotlight and Emm in particular…until she falls into a fugue on his doorstep.

In that moment she’s transported back thirty years, crashing a party at Johnny’s place in his wild-man heyday — the night is a blur of flesh and heat that lingers on her skin long after she’s woken to the present.

It happens again and again, each time-slip another mind-blowing orgy, and soon Emm can’t stop, though every episode leaves her weaker and weaker. She’s frightened by what’s happening to her her, but she’s even more terrified of losing this portal to the Johnny she wants so badly. The one who wants her, too, and takes her — every chance he gets.

* * * *

Want one?

I have ten to give away. If you want one, just send me an email with your name and mailing address to readinbed @ gmail.com — with COLLIDE in the subject. If you don’t put COLLIDE in the subject and your name and mailing address in the body of the message, you will NOT get a book. Period.

First ten people to email me get their very own, hot off the presses, copy! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

M

PS– since packing and mailing books is one of my very very least favorite things to do in the world, EVER, you can see how much I love you! 

EDIT: ALL GONE! Thanks…

DOUBLE EDIT UPDATE: ALL GONE! DO NOT SEND MORE ENTRIES!

But I wrote my 20 pages. I could write more. Should write more. Should clean my toilets, too. Should go buy cat food. Should finish my work so I can play the Sims! Hooray! But…I’ll probably do the barest tidying, write a few more pages, skip the shower, buy the cat food tomorrow and sadly, ignore the Sims.

It’s that sort of day.

I’m almost halfway through the book I’m working on, and if I keep plugging away at it I’ll be finished by the end of the month! Then it’s back to edits on COLLIDE so I can turn that in, then write the novella for an upcoming Heat anthology, then I’ll return to edits on this book (it’s the 4th Handmaiden book, for those of you following along.) I want to finish all of that by June so that when the summer comes I’m not trying to make page count with my kids home. Oh, and yeah, I’d like to spend a lot of time at the beach this summer.

Yeeeeeeeah.

So I guess I’ll get back to work, because work now means play later. So I keep telling myself. But then I just…do more work. It’s a good thing I love what I do!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

M

I also edited a Spice Brief called The Experiment and sent that off to my editor; so that’s what I do instead of watching The Super Bowl. I work. Oh, I did play some Sims 3 earlier today, but I don’t really count it since I was actually editing while I just let my Sim lady go about her business.

She discovered a star.

I know, right? Who knew they even could? Left to her business, she will play her guitar a lot and flirt with people. She also apparently likes to discover stars. And she found some seeds, but I don’t think she’ll plant them. Well, maybe she will, I don’t know.

Tomorrow I aim to get up at a good time (instead of letting the alarm just go off, then again, then again later…) which means I intend to get to bed very shortly. Which is also what I’m doing instead of watching the Super Bowl. Going to be early. I believe I shall read. Now, I just finished Under the Dome which was a doorstop of a book, my God, over 1000 pages, really? REALLY?! And I think I’m going to read The Lightning Thief or possibly The Dead and Gone next. Because I feel like it.

On the other hand, if I’m going to dive back into Collide tomorrow, I really should read through it to refresh my memory. So maybe I’ll take that to bed with me instead, and go over it.

See, that’s what I do instead of watching football.

I work!

M

buy from itunes here:

iTunes tells me I’ve listened to it 110 times (not counting when I listened in my car or the 10 times I listened on my iPod this morning while I took notes for Collide.)

This song is everything that anyone ever felt about love and yearning and loss. It is not, thank the heavens above, about my life. It’s not even about anything that ever happened in my life (at least not on the receiving side of things, I’m sorta kinda sure I’ve loved someone I never wanted to see again, so I guess I could’ve been loved but never wanted to be seen again…)

Anyway, my point is, sometimes music so transports me it colors everything I do and feel and write and think. And I love music for that reason. I love writing for that reason. I love sitting in a bustling coffee shop with my headphones on, and the music plays and I am transported, and the words come out.

I am the creator and destroyer of worlds.

When I was writing Broken, I sat in a coffee shop on the main street of the town in which I grew up. The coffee shop had once been a laundromat, I think, and a place that sold used video games; when it became a coffee shop I was overjoyed because it was close to where my spawn was going to preschool and that meant I could drop him off and head over there for a glorious two hours or so twice a week, and write.

I wrote sitting at the same table in the front of the store. I could look out into the street, watch the people pass. I’d drink coffee (I never drank coffee until I started writing in coffee shops) and I’d eat a plain bagel smeared with some strawberry jelly, because I was trying to lose weight and I didn’t want butter or cream cheese.

I’d finished a book I called Dirty, and I had several others I was working on, but I thought it might make sense to write another erotic novel. I’d had the idea for months and months, and I didn’t think I could write it. Broken, that is, which I was calling something else at the time. Cheater, I think, and eventually, Precious and Fragile Things — the title from a song by Depeche Mode called Precious.

I sat in the same seat at the same table in front of the window, and I put my headphones on — my iPod was new and white and like a brick; I didn’t think I’d ever fill it with music and as it turned out, I never did because it broke before I could.

I sat in that seat with my Alphasmart, not the Neo, the first one. And my iPod. And my music.

The song was What If You by Joshua Radin.

I sat in my chair, at my table, in front of my window, and I had that song on repeat as I wrote, and I cried, not caring if people stared (they might’ve, I didn’t notice) and I made words come from my head and into a document. I made a story. I took the words and I made them into something more than letters strung together with punctuation. I made them into a world.

I didn’t know if I would ever sell that book. I didn’t know if I’d sell Dirty. I didn’t know if I would ever reach the next step in my writing, and though I was grateful for where I was, I was not fulfilled. I wanted more. I didn’t know, sitting there with that song playing over and over and over again that what I was doing would work, or that it would someday become a book I could hold in my hands and which people have read and wept over just as I wept when I wrote it.

Today and yesterday and tomorrow, Unkle Bob’s Swan is that song for me now. It’s not even that it has so much to do with the book I’m writing, and it’s not about my life; it’s about the feeling that song gives me and what it makes me want to do and what it makes me want to create.

I am not uncomplicated. I am not easy. Who ever is?

I don’t sit in that coffee shop any more. It closed. And I don’t wonder if Collide will sell, because it already has. But I still sit with headphones in my ears as the soundtrack of my life plays over me as I push my cart down the grocery aisle, or as I type, or as I scribble notes in a black notebook that has the remnants of a dozen novels already inside it — as the music plays inside my head and I am transported, I think I should be walking in slow motion, my hair blowing, maybe with the ocean pushing itself onto the sand behind me and someone waiting there to take my hand.

M

PS– now it’s been 116 times.

And I will be. Alone.

Blessedly, quietly, silently, caffeinated, house-a-wreck, laundry-looming…ALONE.

If you could see my face it would be smiling.

So, what am I going to do on my glorious, glorious first day alone after what seemed like an endless holiday? I’m going to work on Collide, that’s for damn sure. And I think I shall clean off my desk, not because I want to clean anything but because I have to, if I want to see my keyboard.

And then I’m gonna write me some woe. Oh, yes, woe. Because the heroine has been soundly rejected by the hero and she’s one pissed off woman. He’s gonna get a smack down of epic proportions, that foron. He’s gonna get soundly spanked…and guess what?

HE WILL F-ING LOVE IT.

I do not know why I sometimes fake like I don’t curse by adding a “dash” in the middle of the f-word, when really, we all know I let that word fly around all the time. I shouldn’t act like I’m classy, that’s dishonest.

In other news, there are some people in this world who are simply so douchetastic it seems unbelievable that they could become any more ridiculously foronic, but guess what? THEY CAN! I know, right? Seems like that shouldn’t be so, but it really just is. And I’m not talking about the forons who keep putting my work up on illegal download sites (sorry if you don’t like to hear me complain about that, but the fact is, until they stop doing it, I’m not going to stop getting all Christian Bale about it) — I’m talking about the type of forons who act like the world is not just their oyster, but their entire f-ing pearl necklace.

And here’s what it looks like when the UPS person leaves my boxes of books out in the rain and I must save them, saaaaaaaave them!!!!!

And this is the disaster zone of my office:

And here is the disaster zone of my desk:

So. Yeah. Down to 18 minutes and counting. I’ma get my spawn into his shoes and coat and out the door, I’ma get my coffee brewing, I’ma get some sh** picked up off my floor and get to work!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Oh, btw? WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Say it with me now….

M

And I still have a cold.

Superman gave me acupuncture for my sinuses and the spot still hurts, which is unusual! He’s generally so gentle with the needles…

And, as it happens, I got to a great point in COLLIDE yesterday (despite having company in the form of one spawn) just as everyone returned home and it was time for dinner and whatnot, and I did brainstorm whilst laying abed, NOT sleeping, I fear I’ve forgotten what I brainstormed, and of course, today I have to do errands since the spawn is still home and there are parental-ish things that must be accomplished.

But I dreamed Vince Vaughn took me to a New York City diner and we had eggs while talking about iPhones.

Now I’m off! I hope to have some time to write today/tonight but it’s not looking good, and I’m annoyed, because I really want to write. Which is good. And bad. Because I can’t until much later, and by then I’ll probably feel like I have to go to bed.

Or watch Glee and Nip/Tuck.

M

So, before I go take a shower and get started on the day, here is a blog post to get me situated back in the reality of WORK and not PLAY.

Review of No Greater Pleasure

SWITCH is up for pre-order and wow, look at that price!

NEWLY FALLEN — available now!

Get 25% off DEEPER!

For audiolovers — — Woooo! Reason Enough, Layover and This Is What I Want on Audio! If you like that sort of thing. Sorry I can’t get a pretty linky type thing with a graphic and whatnot, but iTunes won’t let me.

And thanks to everyone who helped make THIS possible!

Ummm…LOL!!!

Buy this album:

Also, buy these albums.

Also:

FORON = “f-ing moron”
I’m not sure, but I believe I might have invented this word. Take it. Use it. Spread it throughout the universes and beyond.

Also:

I love my living room.

So, now I’m going to take a shower, get some coffee, some oatmeal, and get past the halfway point on COLLIDE.

M

Writing, writing, writing on Collide. Got a little stuck, but now I’m moving forward again. Of course have to cut off early today for family duties. *shakes fist*

Oh, and hungry. So, so hungry. *shakes fist*

You wanna see how real life and fiction collide? (haha, get it?)

lines of the day:
I looked again, closer. Long black coat. Long striped scarf. My stomach flip-flopped. I reached for the picture, the glass dusty and spotted, the wooden frame loose at the corners.
That was my house. This one. Tall and narrow, three windows on one side of the front door, one on the other. Okay, so it could’ve been any house, but it looked like mine.
And then, I saw the TARDIS. I’d missed it the first time, the blue shape partially obscured by the out-of-perspective trees. Oh.
“Hello, Doctor.” I touched the figure again. Mystery revealed. I’d been a huge Doctor Who freak as a kid. No disrespect to any who came after him, but Tom Baker would always be my doctor.

M

I wish I could write all night and sleep in tomorrow. THAT is what I would do if I didn’t have people living in my house who needed stuff from me.

But let me say this: It’s been awhile since a book gave me such utter uncomplicated joy. I’m not saying COLLIDE will be my best book (the best ones seem to actually be the hardest to write, though Tempted is my personal all time favorite and it came out pretty fast by necessity.) And don’t get me wrong, I love all my stories, or else I wouldn’t write them –contrary to what some people seem to to think about authors, I don’t personally know any who write books they hate on purpose!

But this one is…special.

Today’s page count: 23

more lines of the day: Johnny’s coat brushed our table as he passed, and I let my fingers creep over the spot to caress it. I caught Jen looking at me. I shrugged.
“You,” she said, “have it worse than I ever did.”

Lines of the day:

Johnny shrugged. “Coupla hours? I gotta tell you, Em, I figured you’d disappeared again, just run off. But you left your stuff behind. How’d you do that?”
He looked me over, a frown tipping his mouth for the first time since he’d seen me. “What are you wearing?”
I had on a pair of fuzzy sleep pants with Batman on them and a baby doll t-shirt. Sick-day clothes. I’d showered but done nothing with my hair, and it hung in still-damp sheaves, heavy down my back.
“Kiss me,” I said instead of answering him. “Just kiss me.”
And he did. Long, and soft and slow and sweet, just the way I wanted it and the way I needed it. The way I knew he would kiss me in my real life, if only I could ever convince him to try. I pulled away, knowing I must look tousled and glazed. Love drunk.

Mmmmm, Johnny. Wow. Am I ever loving him. I think I might change his name, though.

M