Plot Monkeys

So, late last night I finished a book, and my mind is currently MUSH.  I haven’t even begun to think about a blog for today, which means an impromptu giveaway for you!  I will pick three winners, and those winners can request one of the following of my books:

INTO THE NIGHT (1st book in Reliance Group Series — BOOK FORM)
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (2nd book in Reliance Group Series — BOOK FORM)
MEET ME AT MIDNIGHT (Kindle eBook Form)
SEDUCING SANTA (Kindle eBook Form)
KISS OF AN ANGEL (Kindle eBook Form)

All you have to do is post anything on today’s blog, then check back on Wednesday to see if your name was choosen as a winner! 

Thanks, everyone, for all the congratulation messages on my digital backlist releases. I now have six books up and it’s been quite an adventure in self-publishing. It’s a very good time to be a reader, I think, with so many choices!

Especially for the winner of the $20 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card…

#43 Throuthehaze!

Please email me julie @ julie leto . com and I’ll get the gift card out to you ASAP.

Now, for the funny…

…but I don’t have one. No one sends me funnies anymore. However, this is one of my favorite sites to visit when I want to laugh…click the link for Friday’s post, which was both shocking and hilarious!

Cakewrecks.com

So…just as a reminder…

If you have a spare buck or two…and a digital reading device…head on over and pick up a copy of PHANTOM PLEASURES, which is currently on sale everywhere for only .99! Also, DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, the first in my Marisela Morales romantic suspense series, is also only .99 now at Barnes & Noble and iTunes. (Amazon to come soon, I’m sure!)

What am I reading…well, I can’t tell you. I’m reading entries for the RITAs, the peer-judged awards for romance novels sponsored by Romance Writers of America. Since I’m a judge, I can’t say what I’m reading…but I can tell you that it’s really good and I’m enjoying myself immensely.

Unfortunately, I have 7 other books to read in the next month, which is hard for me because I am a very slow reader.

What will come after that? I will be able to finish Leslie’s IT HAPPENED ONE CHRISTMAS (I had to stop reading immediately to start the RITA books or I would never finish in time) and then I’m not sure. Probably Kresley Cole’s LOTHAIRE, which is sitting right beside me all nice and shiny and sexy. Or perhaps one of the urban fantasy recommendations I got a couple of weeks ago via Twitter.

What about you? What are you reading?

Woohoo! It’s Friday! Cue Rebecca Black.

No…wait, don’t do that.

But let’s celebrate!

First, an announcement. If you follow me on Facebook & Twitter you already know, but I recently re-released my contemporary paranormal trilogy digitally. The first book, PHANTOM PLEASURES, is available for Kindle, Nook, iPad & iPhone and at Smashwords for all other devices for only .99! Be sure and pick up a copy. The sequels, PHANTOM’S TOUCH and KISS OF THE PHANTOM (my favorite of the three!) are on sale for $3.99.

Next…the contest!

$20 Gift Card from Amazon or Barnes & Noble to one lucky commenter…go!

TGIF!

NO THEY DO NOT STAY THE SAME.

Soaps.

I’m sad. I’ve lost All My Children and One Life to Live and General Hospital is potentially on the chopping block. Suddenly my afternoons are empty from 1 PM – 3 PM EST and I’m afraid it will get worse. My evenings without them on Soap Net are empty. I feel adrift. And if any of you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not. Somehow these shows defined my life, my writing, my days.

I know you’re all expecting a long post since this is our first week back, but I don’t have it in me. What I would like are suggestions on what to watch, DVR, rent or put on the TV during that blank time during the day. I write to noise. Not music, that doesn’t work. I’m so desperate yesterday after Khloe and Lamar I watched an E! special on Snoop Dog’s life.

HELP!

So in the name of research, my daughter and I went to the rodeo last week. Apologies to those of you who follow my Twitter stream…this will be a lengthier recap of my tweets of the night.

The first question you might be asking yourself is why is the city-slicker author who writes mainly about corporate CEOs or the occasional spy or secret agent writing about the rodeo? Well, my answer is Kimberly Raye. I was invited to do a novella collection with her, a Blazing Bedtime Story. We chose to riff our stories on the Peter Pan oeuvre, with her taking on Peter and Wendy and me taking Hook and…the alligator. (Crocodile, alligator…try making a cute heroine name out of Crocodile. Can’t be done. Her name is Allie and that’s that.)

But because Kimberly is a queen of the sexy Western-set story, we decided to set the story in the fictional world of Lost Gun, Texas. I’m sure Kim could punch out her story without a lick of research (see, it’s already starting to rub off on me, even if I still use words like “oeuvre”) but not this chick. I’m around horses weekly, but it’s one thing to go to the barn and tack a horse with an English saddle and quite another to go “rodeo.” So I did some checking and when a rodeo ended up about an hour and a half away from home, I bought a couple of premium seats, got my newly 14 year old daughter to trade her Crocs for boots and we headed out.

Here are my impressions…initially in 140 characters or less.

#1: I was surprised that in addition to beer, you could have a martini. Not that I saw a single person buy one.

I drank a Dr. Pepper and ate a corn dog. It seemed like the right thing to do.

#2: Too much cotton candy is not good for my 46-yo stomach, esp. after eating tuna tartare for lunch.

Yes, I also had cotton candy. Freshly made. Soft as a cloud. Purple. Yum. And yes, I had tuna tartare for lunch…like I said. City slicker.

#3: I’m glad my daughter rides English (Hunter/Jumper) rather than Western so her horse NEVER has to go that fast.

I must have tweeted this one right after the barrel-racing, which I loved. But damn, they had eight year old girls riding at about a hundred miles an hour. Okay, maybe not quite that fast, but it sure looked about right. I get heart palpitations when she jumps one-handed–and her jumps aren’t that high yet!

#4: I love horses. (I knew that one before we went, but this solidified it.)

I really do adore them and the breeds the cowboys use are particularly gorgeous.

#5: Bucking broncos look WAY more dangerous to ride while rider is on than bull. Bull looks more dangerous when rider goes off.

The broncos are fast. And when they buck, they look like they really want to kill. The bulls, on the other hand, seem to want revenge after the damned rider is off. Both are scary, let’s be clear.

#6: You don’t have to know how the scoring works to enjoy yourself. They didn’t make a big deal out of winners, etc. At last, at this event.

That surprised me…I knew they were awarding points, but there was no presentation, no announcement of a winner, no nothing at the end of each event or at the end of the whole rodeo. I wonder if this is because we were there the first of two nights. This means more research.

#7: Cowboys have very different “styles” in how they ride a bull. One rider was fluid. Another stiff. Both rode the full time.

This didn’t exactly surprise me, but it was very interesting to see such divergent styles. I swear, the one stiff guy looked like a mannequin. The other guy looked like he and the horse were part of the same muscle mass. It was fascinating.

#8: Barrel racing was hands down the most compelling event to watch. Though gals rocked.

I can’t tell you how much I loved watching the barrel racing. The skill of these women and young girls…and horses! I could watch this event forever.

#9: Bulls/calves are smart animals. Know exactly what to do/where to go. Especially calves, who outsmarted more than one cowboy.

The calf roping event was actually hilarious because to borrow a phrase, it was clearly not these animals’s first rodeo. However, as they are calves, they are young, so they couldn’t be too experienced! And yet, in more than six separate attempts (might have been more like ten), the calves knew exactly what to do to make sure the cowboy’s rope didn’t get anywhere near them. One feinted right, then went left. One stopped dead and the cowboy overshot him. It was funny to the point where you couldn’t help but root for those adorable beasts!

Overall rodeo impressions: #10 Yes, cowboys are adorable. (Daughter wondered if it was a pre-requisite.)

Especially when they are sitting on the rail during a break, eating cotton candy. (Blue, of course.) Although I shouldn’t say “of course.” At least a half-dozen cowboys wore pink or lavender shirts. Real men, apparently, wear pastels. My favorite cowboy, whose name was Shane (I kid you not!), wore a deep amethyst purple for two events, then changed into white for the bull riding. I’m telling you…cowboys? Fashion plates.

And those are my impressions of my first rodeo. And I know it won’t be my last. (Actually, it wasn’t my first rodeo…I went years ago when my daughter was probably around two and I was miserable. But it was an outdoor rodeo in July in Florida.) So I will do a lot to accurately research my books, but it’s so much better when it’s January in Florida, indoor and with box seats.

Have you been to the rodeo? Do you want to go?

The winners from Monday’s blog who have won a copy of Samantha Hunter’s STRAIGHT TO THE HEART are:
Pat Cochran (Comment #40)
Limecello (Comment #36)
Angie T (Comment #8)
You can contact Samantha at samhunter @ samanthahunter.com for details!

A few years back, wonderful author Diana Peterfreund started a trend when she came up with the acronym: EBWAR.

It means: Everything’s Better With Alan Rickman.

I agreed then, and I agree now.

I’ve loved Rickman since the first movie I saw him in–Die Hard–in which he was a deliciously evil villain. He continued playing wonderful bad guys, including a movie-stealing turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood. I also love him as the good guy–can anybody not swoon over Sense & Sensibility? Or how about his hilarious role in Galaxy Quest (one of my favorite movies!)

Anyway, as you might remember from before we fell into hacker-hell, I went on a trip up to NYC with Bruce and the girls 2 weekends ago. We had a FABULOUS time. Just 2 nights, but wow, we packed a wallop into that time. We drove up, made it to Times Square from our house in under 4 hours, super easy drive. Bruce is great about driving in the city, we only had one or two little snafus. (The girls will never stop wondering about the “super-secret magic bus world” that exists high above the streets just outside of the Lincoln Tunnel. We accidentally got into that lane and had to turn around and climb back down…lots of “bus conspiracy” comments going on the rest of the trip!)

I’m sure you’re wondering what this has to do with EBWAR. Well, it just so happens that Alan Rickman is appearing on Broadway right now in a play called Seminar. And, it just so happens that we got tickets to Seminar. And, it just so happens that we’re Broadway fanatics, so we know how to stake-out a stage door. And, it just so happens, that I MET ALAN FREAKING RICKMAN!

He wasn’t posing for pictures, but we snapped candids as he signed autographs. He was very nice, though obviously very tired, and I managed to keep my tongue untied and sounded like a reasonable, intelligent adult rather than the squeeing fangirl trying to crawl out of my big mouth.

He managed to keep his very droll sense of humor. Two women beside me asked him, “Why don’t you ever do parts where you smile?” And he looked at them, lifted his brow, and replied, “I smiled in this one. You should have seen it…if you didn’t fall asleep, Mr. Potter!” (Sorry, I added the Mr. Potter part, but he just sounded SO Snape-like my mind inserted that!)

Anyway, it was a great trip, meeting him was a big part of what made it great. What made it just a tiny bit more great was meeting the next guy the next night. This guy…

Dear daughter was holding the camera and got him as he was looking into my eyes having a warm conversation (I swear, I was on the outside edge of that shot! I’m hoping my other daughter got one with me actually in it…lolol!)

He was a real cutie. I loved hearing him sing in person. He’s doing the show On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, which was adorable. I loved the movie many years ago and was fascinated by how they took it and twisted it for this new, updated version. The Barbra Streisand character, Daisy, is now a gay young man, Davey, who was played by an absolutely brilliant young actor, David Turner. (Oh, did I mention we met him, too? He was very obliging about posing for pics!)

Wow, what a great time. We got to see Bernadette Peters in Follies the next day. Didn’t stalk her because I’ve met her before (lol…not kidding!) But the show was wonderful–though the girls didn’t much care for it.

We came home and I put my 3 new programs into my Playbill binder, which is now just a couple of slots away from being full. And that’s not all my Playbills–I can’t find my very oldest ones, like from the original casts of Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Into The Woods and Wicked. ARGH. Lost them sometime over the years! I am hoping they’ll turn up so I can close out the whole book and get to work on my next 40 shows!

So, are there any other Broadway/Alan Rickman/Harry Connick fans out there? Have you ever done the stalking-the-stage-door thing? (That’s how I met Bernadette, by the way. And Tim Curry. And John Lithgow. AND HUGH FREAKING JACKMAN!)

Harlequin Blaze author Samantha Hunter is in the house today! She has a do-not-miss Blaze book out this month, STRAIGHT TO THE HEART, featuring a hot and sexy ex-Navy Seal! And lucky for you, she’s giving away 3 copies of STRAIGHT TO THE HEART! All you have to do is post on today’s blog, and check back on Wednesday to see if your name was chosen as a winner!

Now, let’s give a big welcome to SAMANTHA HUNTER!

COULD YOU LIE FOR A LIVING?

Thanks so much to Janelle and the other Plotmonkeys for having me by the blog! Happy New Year to everyone.

I’ve been excited about blogging here, and hope we will all have a fun chat! I saw Mission Impossible 4 over Christmas break, and I thought it was great. I love movies like that, lots of action, adventure, hot guys *G* and particularly the secrets that lead to the big revealing moments. But it made me think about why I love those kinds of stories so much, and how I use those kinds of elements in my own books.

As anyone who knows me knows, I love TV. I’m currently re-watching Numb3rs, the episodes after Colby’s secret has been revealed, leaving at least one of his friends feeling betrayed. In so many of the shows I watch – Burn Notice, The Closer, White Collar, Covert Affairs, NCIS, etc — or in my favorite movies and books, secrets are a huge part of the story. Contestants on Survivor, another show I enjoy, lie to win a game and money that will change their lives – and often get angry with each other for lying (which seems a little crazy to me, truthfully). Some lies damage, some protect, some win you a million dollars – there are so many lies that can be told, and sometimes, they are even “justified.” (Or are they?)

Law enforcement officials, spies, military, etc all often have to lie for a living, to protect people or get their jobs done. I often wonder if I could do it. In my current Harlequin Blaze, Straight to the Heart, the heroine is keeping a whopper from the hero, but it’s part of her job. She’s a US Marshal assigned to protect a guy who doesn’t want any protection. She has to get that job done in any way she can, and the attraction they feel sure makes it a lot more difficult when the truth comes out. I sympathized with my heroine’s position – she had a job to do, part of which demanded her to keep her cover. It wasn’t easy for her, either, but she’s good at what she does.

Probably the most interesting part of the story for me was how the people around her would deal with that revelation after it was out. Even Ben, my ex-Navy SEAL hero, has a hard time dealing with being lied to, though he has a history where he has also been involved in “covert” operations and has secrets of his own. Nothing is ever as straightforward as it seems.

On Covert Affairs, my husband and I have often guffawed and been a little annoyed with how judgmental and whiney Annie’s sister is after finding out she is a spy – to us, her sister’s reaction seems ridiculous. But maybe not. What if my husband, after nearly 20 years, told me tomorrow that he’s really a CIA agent, and we have to up and leave our lives as they are and go, or we’ll be killed? Would I feel betrayed? I like to think not – I would go or do whatever he needed me to. I think some people have very good reasons for keeping secrets, if they have to do with safety, security, or professional responsibilities of various sorts. But it gets complicated. What if, instead, you found out a good friend was a spy who had simply recruited you for information you could provide? I love the situations that make us think through these twisty questions, which have been in play since Shakespeare and even before that.
I guess it all depends on the people and the situations, but I’m happy that there aren’t any easy answers, since it leads to many good movies, TV, and books! I am actually very good at keeping secrets, and so I think, if I had any of those jobs, I might be able to do it – lie for a living – if I thought the purpose was just. But who knows ? Could you?

Share your response, and I’ll giveaway 3 copies of my current book, Straight to the Heart (Kindle/Nook or paperback – paperback in US/Ca/UK only), to three winners. I’m looking forward to what people have to say.

Places to buy STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART:
AMAZON
BARNES & NOBLE

Places to find SAMANTHA HUNTER on the Internet:
WEBSITE
TWITTER
FACEBOOK

Thanks so much to everyone for that wonderful, big “welcome-back” on Friday…we’re thrilled to have you and thrilled to be here.

Now the winners…the four lucky people who each win a $25.00 gift card (names picked at random by youngest daughter!) are:

# 7 ANYA SANDOVAL
# 78 PAMIAM
# 269 M.J.
#301 JAN C.

CONGRATULATIONS!!

Please write to me, author @ lesliekelly . com (no spaces) with your contact information, and I’ll arrange for your gift card.

And please come back this week, we’ll have to catch up on all we missed during our black-due-to-stupid-hacker days!

PS: This video cracked me up. If you loathe Toddlers and Tiaras as much as I do, you’ll like it. Be sure to watch all the way to the end for the payoff!

Yay–it’s our first Saturday back in the Jungle and I couldn’t be happier. WE MISSED YOU ALL so much!!

Those of you who are regulars, welcome back. For the newbies who’ve found us, please stick around, make yourselves at home, say hello and tell us who you are. We’re a very social bunch and love newcomers.

On Saturdays, we like to talk about great books we’ve read or are reading. Every author knows word of mouth is the best marketing tool, but in order to get that (positive) word of mouth, you have to write a really great book. So on Saturdays, we celebrate really great books we’re reading.

I’ll start…I just read a debut book, RIDE WITH ME, by an author named Ruthie Knox. It is coming out as a digital book from Random House-Loveswept next month and I was asked to provide a cover quote for it. I was thrilled to do so because I ended up really loving the book. It’s sexy (very), with a tortured alpha hero, Tom, who’s not at all a jerk. He’s moody and has a dark past, but he’s also an environmentalist, he runs a bike repair shop, he can’t stop himself from helping people in need, and he really doesn’t want to fall in love with high school teacher, Lexie, who ends up being his riding partner on a cross-country bicycle trip. I highly recommend this book! Here’s the author’s website.

Now, what about you? What are you reading?

PS: Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for the winners of our BIG “Welcome Back Plotmonkeys” giveaway from yesterday!