Enslave Me Sweetly by Gena Showalter

She has the heart of a killer, and the body of an angel. . .

Eden Black walks among humans, protecting them from the murderous evil of other-worlders who abduct and enslave. And though she appears to be human herself, Eden is an alien, a Raka, distinguished by her golden hair and skin, and gifted with the ominous ability to kill without remorse – and with total accuracy. That is, until the fateful night she has one shot to eliminate her target, a human slaver – and misses. Eden Black walks among humans, protecting them from the murderous evil of other-worlders who abduct and enslave. And though she appears to be human herself, Eden is an alien, a Raka, distinguished by her golden hair and skin, and gifted with the ominous ability to kill without remorse – and with total accuracy. That is, until the fateful night she has one shot to eliminate her target, a human slaver – and misses.

“Failure” is not in Eden’s vocabulary. Neither is “partner” – but that’s what she is forcibly assigned after recovering from her disastrous mission. A sexy, steely-nerved human agent, Lucius Adaire enjoys nothing more than sparking the fury – and rousing the desire – of the fiery female assassin to proud to admit defeat. Locked in an assignment they cannot afford to lose, Lucius and Eden find themselves bound in two high-stakes, heart-pounding games: the dangerous web of kill or be killed, and the erotic dance of seduction. . .

Showalter first demonstrated her skill at blending sizzling romance and nail-biting suspense set in a convincing futuristic society in Awaken Me Darkly (2005). She now continues the roller-coaster-like adventure in an equally entertaining tale that will please a wide cross section of readers. *Starred Review* Booklist.

Order your copy from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or BooksAMillion.

For more information, visit Gena’s website at http://www.genashowalter.com/ and her blog at http://www.genashowalter.blogspot.com/

Okay…so the post title has NOTHING to do with today’s post, but I was recently revisiting the movie The Wedding Singer and for some reason that line keeps sticking in my head.

The other day we (me, my husband, and my boys) went to the store. Always a nightmare situation, but we were out and about and needed to make a quick stop. I walked in and saw a small tub of chocolate covered pretzels (which I just finished polishing off, by the way).

My husband looks at them and says, “You want those?”

I debate for a minute and then respond. “No. That’s okay. But I love chocolate covered pretzels. Just one thing I’ve yet to reveal about myself after nine years of marriage.”

So, I pass on the pretzels, we continue with the shopping. My children are acting like they’re on speed, running around the aisles, yelling, and doing some sort of battle thing, that frankly, has me wondering if they are from some alien planet. By the time we finished our trip inside the store, I thought I was going to tear my hair out. We make our way to the checkout line, but I keep on going. My husband asks me where I’m going.

I keep on walking. “I’m going back for the pretzels.”

And, yum, let me tell you, they were good.

By the way, I’m getting the itch to redesign my website, but I can’t decide what kind of layout I want. I’m also trying to come up with a good tagline for what I write. “The author that thinks she knows what she’s doing”, just won’t cut it. I think I want something that incorporates both contemporary romance as well as suspense, because I’m leaning towards maybe trying to build a career in single title romantic suspense and category contemporary romance (like Harlequin Superromance). Any ideas on either the website layout or the tagline?

This week has been a hectic, neverending round of school parties (all of which I’ve somehow volunteered for). On Monday was my youngest’s (son #2) preschool “Un-Birthday” party. I went with a dinosaur theme: made a dinosaur cake, played musical dinosaur footprints (like musical chairs, but with paper footprints on the floor), and had them ‘hatch’ a dino egg (each child had a balloon with a few pieces of candy in it and they had to pop the ballon to get the candy).

On Tuesday, my first-grade son (son #1) had a “field day” where all the first graders went to the baseball field and participated in a bunch of activities like running bases, tug of war, horseshoes, softball, octopus, etc. I ran the running bases activity and clocked each child on how fast they made it to home plate. Field day took up another entire morning, ending in a picnic.

Today, my son #1 had an ice cream party. Everyone made ice cream sundaes and played games. It was also son #2’s last day of school. Tonight we have son #2’s graduation program/pot luck dinner. Of course, I still have to make the dish I promised to bring, plus go back to the elementary school to pick up son #1.

Tomorrow is son #1’s last day of school. So, I’ll at least get a break from running back and forth. Of course, this means both sons will be home driving me nuts with whines of “We’re so bored!”

* * *

Okay, I’ve taken a dozen pictures of myself, and I’m only happy with one of them. So, here it is. Me with my new haircut. The current picture on my website is over a year old, which was the last time I had a cut before this. So, my hair was past my shoulders before this current haircut. I love having manageable hair again! :)

What do you think?

The other day my boys were playing outside. I was inside washing dishes, when suddenly, “C” comes running inside and says, “I have to go to the bathroom. Quick!”

He runs in the bathroom and takes care of business. When he comes back out I give him “the lecture”:

“Just because you’re playing doesn’t mean you should forget about going to the bathroom. You need to listen to your body when it tells you it’s time to go.”

“I didn’t hear it telling me anything.”

“Well, then you weren’t listening.”

He thinks about that for a moment. Then: “My body was whispering.”

Yes, my son has an answer for everything!

* * *

Making some slow progress on the wip, but it’s been a little rough since my children only have about a week left of school and there is lots of ‘end of the year’ things to do.

I also cut my hair! Who hoo! The last time I had a haircut was over a year ago, so it was waayy past time. I love it! I’m hoping to take some pictures this weekend, so maybe I can update the pic on my website.

And, that’s about it for news. Pretty boring, huh?

As you can see, I updated my word meter in my sidebar. I’m now nearing the halfway point on Her Own Best Enemy’s second draft. Who hoo! I’m feeling good about that, but the finish line seems as if it is almost getting further and further away from me. I have a feeling I won’t make it to the end by May 31st, but I’m doing the best I can, so I refuse to get too down about not meeting that goal.

Once the second draft is complete, that will mean that the basic story structure is in place, and hopefully, I’ll make one more pass through the entire ms layering even more, and then one more pass for editing. But, by that time, I also hope to have some queries out to HQN and possibly even Berkley.

Now, if the muse would just see fit to enlighten me with the important plot details of my second half, the writing would go much quicker. No, instead, it’s enlightening me about stories that I’ve yet to tell…

Ah, well…another day, another word count…

If I pop in and out of the boards/blogs irratically in the next month, it’s because I have put myself on a strict internet diet. I’ve procrastinated far too much, and as a result, I’m really behind in my goals.

So. No more. Internet ONLY if I meet my page goals for the day.

I can already feel the withdrawal symptoms kicking in…