Blazing Pentacle is Now Available!

Blazing Pentacle is now available from Loose Id! The story can be read as a stand alone novel, and is also the third book in my Pentacle Series, following Nature's Pentacle and Broken Pentacle (both available from Loose Id).

Devastated by her lover’s death at the hands of a rogue witch, Serena denied her magic. But when dark witches use sexual rites to summon killer storms, she’s forced to act. Her ability to negate spells makes it impossible to ignore the plight of storm-ravaged towns when she knows she can stop the destruction. As she struggles to overcome her terror of magic, her proximity to the sexual rituals plunges her into a cycle of burning need, and Joel and Trey are the only ones able to ease her lust. But the powerful witch and psychic human have secrets of their own, including their desire for each other.

After they enter into a wild ménage to help her control her hungers, Serena discovers the men may have ties to her enemies. Still, she’s captivated by the mystery surrounding Joel, who was orphaned in a mysterious fire and is obsessed with finding clues to his racial identity and magical legacy. As the three prepare to fight the dark witches, the sexual, psychic link they share proves critical in merging their powers. If they survive and Serena manages to free herself from the lust that enslaves her, the larger struggle lies in winning each other’s trust.

To read an adult rated excerpt, click here.

Season of Color

I love spring. Love it with a passion that defies words. So rather than a list of my favorite things about the season, I’ll paint it in pictures. These were all taken in my yard, and the color’s enough to make me forget that for a startling succession of dull, dreary months, the area surrounding my house was locked down in a prison of snow and ice.

One more great thing about spring, before I get to the photos. The third book in my Pentacle Series, Blazing Pentacle, will be available from Loose Id on May 26! I loved seeing Serena come into her full power, as both woman and witch. And Joel and Trey are more than up to the challenge when she throws everything she’s got their way.

Hot New Cover for Blazing Pentacle!

Here's the (somewhat rough and as yet unedited) blurb for Blazing Pentacle, coming May 26 from Loose Id:

Devastated by her lover’s death at the hands of a rogue witch, Serena denied her magic. But when dark witches use sexual rites to summon killer storms, she’s forced to act. Her ability to negate spells makes it impossible to ignore the plight of storm-ravaged towns when she knows she can stop the destruction. As she struggles to overcome her terror of magic, her proximity to the sexual rituals plunges her into a cycle of burning need, and Joel and Trey are the only ones able to ease her lust. But the powerful witch and psychic human have secrets of their own, including their desire for each other.

After they enter into a wild ménage to help her control her hungers, Serena discovers the men may have ties to her enemies. Still, she’s captivated by the mystery surrounding Joel, who was orphaned in a mysterious fire and is obsessed with finding clues to his racial identity and magical legacy. As the three prepare to fight the dark witches, the sexual, psychic link they share proves critical in merging their powers. If they survive, and Serena manages to free herself from the lust that enslaves her, the lager struggle lies in winning each other’s trust.

Some Favorite Reads

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, but February really kicked my butt, thus the absence of blogs for an entire month. I had pneumonia, and everyone in the family (only exception was the dog) ended up on antibiotics for something or other. My daughter with Cystic Fibrosis is having a difficult winter, health-wise, so my posts during March may be few and far between as well. Believe me, no one's wishing for spring more than I am this year!

I thought I'd share a list of some of my favorite reads with you today. This list is of mainstream fiction I've enjoyed. I've got lists for other genres, as well, and maybe I'll share some of those at a later date.

Barbara Kingsolver
Animal Dreams
The Bean Trees
Pigs in Heaven
The Poisonwood Bible

Alice Hoffman
Turtle Moon
Practical Magic
Probable Future
The Drowning Season
Here on Earth
The River King
Blackbird House
Seventh Heaven

Jane Hamilton
When Madeline Was Young
The Short History of a Prince
Disobedience
A Map of the World
The Book of Ruth

Toni Morrison
Beloved
Song of Solomon
Tar Baby
The Bluest Eye

Sue Monk Kidd
The Secret Life of Bees
The Mermaid Chair

Alexander McCall Smith
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men
The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Donna Andrews
Murder with Peacocks
Murder with Puffins

Eric Jerome Dickey
Pleasure
Sleeping with Strangers

Pearl Cleage, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Mary Lawson, Crow Lake

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree

Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

Christopher A. Bohjalian, Midwives: a Novel

John Burdett, Bangkok 8

Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling

Michael Dorris, A Yellow Raft on Blue Water

John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

I'd love to hear what some of your favorite books of all time are. You know, the ones that stay with you for some reason even after you put the book down. The book you'd like to have on a desert island with you. What do you like, and what about the story touched you?

Birthday Wishes for 2009

Today is officially my coldest birthday ever. It was 19 below zero last night, and today the high’s supposed to hit negative six, with a wind chill between 20 and 40 below zero. The kids are home from school because of the cold, and it’s likely school will be cancelled tomorrow as well. It’s supposed to go down to 21 below tonight, with wind chills as cold as 50 below zero. I could do without the arctic cold, but it’s nice to have my daughters home for my birthday. My 14-year-old has been experimenting with new frosting flavors for my birthday cupcakes (more opportunity to try out new frostings than with a cake). And my 16-year-old needed the extra day to prepare for final exams.

Since my birthday falls just after the start of the new calendar year, I tend do a lot of looking back, and looking ahead. January’s a good time for introspection. The world’s frozen solid, and I can manage a lot of philosophizing over a cup of hot herb tea (flavor of the moment, Bigelow Apple Cider). So much has happened this year. When my first book, Nature’s Pentacle, came out with Loose Id last February, I intended to keep my public and personal lives separate. But because it’s been an eventful year for my family, my life as an author hit a collision course with my private life, and I gave up trying to separate out the threads in my blogs, newsletters, and such.

Looking back, I’ve had three e-books and a novella released this year with Loose Id (one of them an EPPIE finalist). That’s a lot of writing. Looking ahead, I just turned in the manuscript for Blazing Pentacle, the third book in my Pentacle Series, and I’ve got lots more projects planned for 2009. I’m starting out the year with a NY targeted project; then I’ll go back and forth between writing erotic romance and other genres. That’s the current plan, in any case.

In the midst of all the writing I did this year, family life kicked out all sorts of events. In June, at our family’s solstice celebration, my older daughter came out of the closet to us, and my younger daughter followed not long after. Both of them came out at school in October (the older as lesbian, the younger as bi). I can’t begin to say how much I admire their courage and determination to be themselves. It was a rocky process, and teenage emotions ran high around here this fall. As a bi woman, I can’t begin to imagine having come out as young as they did. But the world’s changing, and Gay-Straight-Alliances at schools have gone a long way to provide a safer, more informed environment than when I was in school. This makes the top five of my “thank goodness” list for the year.

I finished the rough draft for Blazing Pentacle in early November, and soon after that, my younger daughter, who has Cystic Fibrosis, ended up in the hospital with pneumonia in both lungs. I put writing and promotion on hold for an entire month, focusing on family. My daughter’s doing great now. Her weight’s back up, and her lungs are clear. With incredible maturity for a 14-year-old, she’s been doing a lot of thinking about her future as a person with CF, asking important questions, and facing some of her fears.

Number one on my wish list for ’09 and every subsequent year--a cure for CF. Number two on my wish list--equal marriage rights across the US so my girls have the option to marry whoever they love, wherever they want, enjoying the same rights as any other American.

One of the best things about ’08 was that everyone in my family made new friends. It seems to me like that’s always an important goal for a year. I hope we’ll be able to say the same at the end of ’09. New things are important, but so is continuity. Like any other year, we watched the seasons parade through our backyard, from the soft greens of spring, to the explosion of color in our summer gardens, to the russet brown and deep burgundy of autumn. Now, the yard is covered in snow, and every day our bushes and trees fill with the movement of wings as birds dart back and forth, visiting the feeders.

With the world quiet and wrapped in snow, I’ll take a moment to make a few birthday wishes. In 2009, I wish all of you a world of success, a wealth of friendship, and just enough adventure to keep life interesting. I wish for financial security for those who are currently struggling in a difficult economy. I wish for peace where there’s now war. And I wish for discoveries and events filled with wonder and promise.

Happy 2009, everyone!

Winter Holiday Traditions

Traditions hold a special spot in human culture, and I think they’re especially important in the winter, when daylight is scarce, and here in Wisconsin snow is plentiful. The thermometer keeps dipping down below zero this week, and my car makes an unhappy rawrrrrr, rawrrrr, rawrrr sound when I start it on cold days just to tease me a little and make me think it might refuse to get it’s little Honda butt in gear for me.

At least we’re lucky enough to live in an age of insulated homes and central heating systems (right at the top of my “to be grateful for” list lately!), but the dark half of the year is still a challenge. More so with the economy so rocky. In the dark of winter, holidays bring light, color, and joy. Time honored traditions give us something familiar to cherish, a touch of comfort in the cold.

My family celebrates Yule on the winter solstice. Sometime in early December, we cut small branches from the cedars in our backyard and fill glass vases with the vivid evergreens. Then we cut a bundle of bright red dogwood branches and put them in a large ceramic jug of water. The girls hang a collection of carved wooden birds on the branches, some of which we’ve had since before our teens were born. Next, they attach red silk flowers and red feathered cardinals, until the branches are filled with color.

We exchange the first gifts of the season on Yule, and then another each day until we’ve worked our way through the pile. Our family keeps gifts simple, and the girls often give us things they’ve made themselves. The other night, I was sorting through a drawer and I found a present from Solstice past--a little creature made out of pom-poms and glued-on eyes nestled into a yellow and white woven bed created with a potholder loom. I’m not sure which daughter made that particular gift, but she couldn’t have been more than five at the time, and it was delightful finding it now that they’re thirteen and fifteen.

Another solstice tradition in our family is that we put food out for the animals. We make sure the birdfeeders are brimming full, and the girls cut up fruit and vegetables to put out for the small critters that populate our yard. Dried feed corn cobs are another favorite treat for the bunnies and squirrels, though we can only put those out in the front yard so our goofy poodle doesn’t eat them. If it’s not too cold, we all go outside to look at the moon after dark while the girls put out food for the animals.

As with any celebration, food plays a central role. We have a big feast on Yule, and some foods--nuts to crack, clementines, fresh cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mulled or sparkling cider, homemade pumpkin or apple pie, and either homemade cookies or scones--appear every year, and others vary. After the meal, we hold our Yule circle ritual, a time for spiritual introspection and a welcoming of the return of the light, since each day following the solstice will be a bit longer, and each night a bit shorter.

In a tradition unique to our family, we hold a Winterfest celebration several days after the solstice. Each year we pick a different food theme for a fun family meal. This year’s theme is Mexican food. Last year, the girls cooked the entire Winterfest meal, and we had six different kinds of pancakes. I’m not kidding--blueberry, banana, chocolate chip, plain, cinnamon sugar, and apple pancakes. The event provoked a great deal of laughter as we watched the teenage chefs scurry around in their red aprons concocting different batters and sprinkling the kitchen liberally with flour and globs of wet pancake goo. In addition to the feast, we decorate the table in keeping with the meal theme, listen to music, and watch a movie together in the evening.

Our winter holiday traditions help knit the family together, and give us something to look forward to when we’re cooped up indoors fighting cabin fever. What are some of your family’s most treasured winter traditions?

Nature's Pentacle is an EPPIE Finalist!

After a rocky November, December started out on a much more positive note. On the first day of the month, I got a wonderful little note in my in box announcing that Nature’s Pentacle is a finalist in the 2009 EPPIE Competition. I’m still doing a happy dance over that one!

Here’s the blurb for Nature’s Pentacle, my paranormal witch ménage, available now from Loose Id :

After someone exposes their role in a forbidden, sexual rite to heal the parched earth, Matt and Lena are forced to flee vigilantes and a rogue witch. Drawn to each other despite Matt's ties to Kenji, the man who rescued him from a troubled past, they're swept into a ménage, and the three witches exchange magical traits in an explosion of power and passion.

As Matt and Lena face another pentacle rite, a violent kidnapping, and a magical duel, their attachment deepens--and so does Kenji's resentment at losing Matt. The addition of another witch to the group eases Kenji's jealousy, and sparks fly when the foursome mingles sex and magic on the kitchen floor, carrying them finally, to the love they never imagined they'd find.

And here’s a PG-13 rated excerpt to introduce you to Lena, Matt, and Kenji and give you a little taste of the story:

Perhaps sensing her distress, Matt crossed the room and touched her shoulder. “Not your fault, little witch.” Returning to the table, he scooped his violet glow from the bowl of oil and gestured for her to retrieve hers.

“Why?”

“I’m going to show you what you’re feeling isn’t anything you can control. I feel like I’m caught in the sun’s gravitational field, and I couldn’t break free of you if my life depended on it.”

Curious, she reached out and called her light globe to her hand, cupping her palm to receive the slight weight. “I don’t see what you--”

“Something happened during the rite--a connection between us. I think our magic got scrambled, tied together, and I want to test my theory.” The streak of mud across Matt’s shoulder and his tangled curls didn’t do anything to diminish his beauty. When he smiled at her, his amber brown eyes glowed with warmth.

“Okay, I’ll play. What next?”

“Toss your glow sphere in the air. If I’m wrong, it’ll just float back to your palm.”

Realizing he had no more idea what would happen than she did, she bit back a cheeky, “And if you’re right?” Instead, she tossed her blue orb at the same time he launched his. When the spheres spun toward each other she let out a surprised yelp. The lights crashed together, setting loose waves of force, sound, and shimmering color.

“Get down!”

At his warning, she plastered herself flat on the rough wooden floorboards. But rather than harming her, whatever magic they’d set loose caressed her body like a warm stream. Sheets of emerald, sapphire, ruby, and turquoise arched over them like the aurora borealis.

Helpless in the wake of the unexpected discharge of power, she tensed as the door opened a crack. She staggered to her feet, attempting to gather a protective shield. “Matt?”

“‘S okay. No one can cross the wards but me and Kenji. This is his place, and the magic guarding it is unbreakable.”

As if on cue, Kenji--looking no less intimidating than when he anchored the rite last night--stepped into the room and gaped at the light show. “Every witch in the country is in danger, and the two of you decide to play bedroom games with your power?”

Ignoring the continuing display, he clicked the door shut, strode across the room to the table, and set down two grocery bags and his cell phone. Lena’s first impulse was to grab the phone and call Serena, but she had to get something straight first.

“What do you mean, no one can get past the wards?” Bedraggled and exhausted, she drew herself up to her full five feet five inches and cloaked herself in a curtain of power. “Given the time and inclination, I could smash those wards.” She fixed Kenji with a brittle stare. “And what you walked in on was an exercise to test our combined magic--not some kinky game.”

“My apologies.” Six feet of wiry grace wrapped in a package of soft leather shoes, tan chinos, and a plum-colored shirt, Kenji bowed. The formality that would have seemed ludicrous coming from Matt seemed natural, if slightly mocking, coming from Kenji.

Suddenly, the fact that this was one of the three witches who’d drawn molten power through her last night, bleeding her dry as she trembled and wept, hit her with the force of a blow. Kenji couldn’t be much older than she was, and yet he’d earned a spot as one of the three anchors--alongside Sorren, the most powerful witch in North America.

Sweet Brighid, what had she gotten herself into? Taking a step back, she studied the lines and angles of Kenji’s face. The cinnamon mocha warmth of his skin softened his sculpted features, and thick lashes shaded his deep brown eyes. Black curls fell to his shoulders, covered with a sprinkling of rain. But for all his heart-stopping beauty, every movement, every mannerism, reeked of power.

When outmatched, bluff. “I need to borrow your phone.” Feigning confidence, she crossed the room to the table.

Matt, not Kenji, intervened. “You can’t. It’s not safe.” Closing the distance between them, he covered her hand with his own as she grasped the phone. “Your sister needs to be able to say she hasn’t heard from you--with 100 percent honesty. That’s the only thing that will guarantee her safety--and your mother’s.”