The six authors who are taking part in the continuity series The Codys: The First Family of Rodeo are hosting a contest. Here are the details:

June kicks off the debut of Harlequin American Romance’s first-ever six-book continuity The Codys: First Family of Rodeo. In honor of this exciting occasion we’re running 6 one-day-a-month Social Media Blitz Contests at www.harauthors.blogspot.com

Contest Scoop
Beginning next month in June, an author in the continuity will post a blog at www.harauthors.blogspot.com and discuss her contribution to the The Codys: First Family of Rodeo series. After reading the author’s blog, post the link www.harauthors.blogspot.com, the title of the book and the author’s name to your Facebook, MySpace and or Twitter pages as well as your favorite blogs. The more places you link to and mention the author and her book, the more chances you have to win.

You can earn additional chances to win if you refer a friend and they in turn post a link to their favorite social media websites and blogs. Be sure to return to www.harauthors.blogspot.com and tell us where you’re spreading the word by posting the information in the comment section of the blog–that way we can keep a tally of your activity. Remember, it’s One Day Only Each Month June-November 2010!

Authors will be giving away prizes to several lucky winners. Your name will be entered into a drawing for each social media site you promote The Codys: First Family of Rodeo and for each friend you contact who in turn spreads the word through their favorite networks. You have twenty-four hours to link to us and win! The author will post the winners in the comment section of her blog the next day–be sure to return to see if you’re one of the lucky winners.

On June 5th Senior Editor for American Romance, Kathleen Scheibling will introduce The Codys: First Family of Rodeo to readers and the following day on June 6th Rebecca Winters kicks off the Social Media Blitz Contest with the first book in the series– Walker: The Rodeo Legend!

With the help of our faithful readers we’re hoping that on June 6th the web is buzzing with chatter about The Codys: First Family of Rodeo!

Up now is a critique of the first 25 pages of an unpublished young adult manuscript and an autographed copy of my first YA novel, Heartbreak River. This is to benefit diabetes research and is sponsored by author Brenda Novak, whose son has diabetes. You can access the auction listing (and bid!) here.

Tomorrow (Sunday, May 9), I’ll have a similar package available on the Do the Write Thing for Nashville auction to benefit flood victims here in Middle Tennessee. While my auction isn’t up yet, you’ll want to go over and look through all the fabulous auctions available now. I’ve bid on a few myself. Books, critiques, phone calls with agents, and all kinds of good stuff is just waiting for your bid.

Here I am with Teresa Medeiros, whom I’m guessing I’ve known more than 10 years now though we don’t get the opportunity to talk very often. So it was nice to take the opportunity to catch up.

And here are some of the other fabulous authors in our area. From left: Susan Crandall, Molly Harper, fellow Harlequin American author Laura Bradford, and fellow MCRW member Bente Gallagher.

Hopefully I’ll be invited back next year and feel, oh, a million percent better than I did this time.

Q. Tell us a little bit about Beneath the Surface.

A. Beneath the Surface is a reunion story between two archaeologists on the verge of divorce. Mallory Reeves brings the divorce papers to the Yucatan Peninsula for her husband to sign. When a storm strands her there, she has to work to remember why she left archaeology–and Adrian–in the first place.
Q. What drew you to excavating sunken ships as a story backdrop?

A. You know, I don’t remember. My baby brother loves archaeology and I remember bouncing a lot of ideas off of him. I think the original idea was for Adrian to have found a Phoenician ship in the Caribbean. The way it was written, though, it overwhelmed the romance. so I revised. And revised. And revised.

Another issue was that I needed Adrian to have a specialty, and I thought underwater archaeology would be a cool specialty.

Q. Would you ever like to dive a sunken ship?

A. God, no. I’m claustrophobic as all get-out. I couldn’t even get in the submarine at Disneyland!

Q. Your couple is already married in the story but on the verge of divorce at the beginning. This isn’t usually a type of story that attracts me, but yours is wonderful. It has the same feeling of newly falling in love about it. Have you ever written about other married couples, or is this your first?

A. This is my second estranged couple book. The first isn’t published, though I’d like to go back and work on it one day. I was intrigued by the movie Twister. In fact, the first scene is similar, though my heroine goes to my hero. I wanted to find out how people who could feel so strongly about each other once upon a time could be pulled apart. This was a struggle as well, finding the balance between what had split them up, but not making it so serious that they couldn’t recover, but also not making it a big misunderstanding. I think I struck the right balance.

I loved playing with their memories, too, feeding that information of their early passion throughout the story.

Q. What’s coming up from MJ Fredrick?

A. I have another book from Samhain coming January 2010 called Breaking Daylight. It’s a story of a mother trying to find her child with the help of an Army Ranger who would rather be doing anything else.

I also have another book, Don’t Look Back, my 2006 Golden Heart finalist, coming from The Wild Rose Press in 2010, but I don’t have a release date yet.

Be sure to get your own copy of Beneath the Surface (in electronic format) from Samhain Publishing by clicking this link and following the directions.

But for now, here are some more pictures from the RWA National Conference. These are from Wednesday of conference week.

It was my first year to be able to sign at the huge RWA Literacy Signing. Imagine 500 authors in one room with lots of readers going from table to table to meet them and get books signed. So cool. And the proceeds go to literacy groups. We raised more than $60,000 this year. Extra cool was the fact that my next-door neighbor during the signing was my good pal Tanya Michna/Tanya Micheals. Here we look like normal, friendly authors. In a few weeks, we’ll be getting our geek on and dressing up at Dragon*Con.

Lots of friends stopped by my table. Among them were Michelle Butler, who I’ve now known for 13 years!

And Vanessa Barnevald, talented YA author and Golden Heart finalist this year. I fully expect to hear about a first sale from her soon.

After the Lit Signing was the annual Bandit Bash, sponsored by my fellow Romance Bandits and myself. Here’s a view from above of part of the crowd.

If you’re a regular visitor to the Romance Bandits blog, you’ll know how popular our Golden Rooster is. He’s a virtual rooster who goes to the first comment poster of the day, but don’t tell him he’s not real. He might get upset and karate chop me. The rooster, sporting a cape and mask, graced our party cake — along with some of his cocky attitude.

Banditas KJ Howe and Anna Sugden.

And more Banditas, Beth Andrews and Susan Sey.

Me with one of the Bash guests, Jessica Andersen, who took time away from pimping the end of the world, to come party with us. (See Jess’s books to see what I’m talking about.)

On Sunday and Monday of conference week, I was pretty much in board member mode from the time I got up until the time I went to bed. I think we got out of the board meeting around 8 p.m. on Monday. Consequently, I slept in on Tuesday instead of going to play tourist. Two reasons: I was already run down and knew I’d get sick if I didn’t catch up on rest before the conference even started. And I’d broken my toe the night before my slamming it into the base of the bed. Ugh. Never had a broken anything before. I didn’t realize it was broken until the next morning when I discovered it was very sore, swollen and quite purple. Good thing I brought all open-toed shoes. So I didn’t think I wanted to go walking around museums all day.

Tuesday night, we had a party for the Romance Bandits and Bandita Jeanne’s house. Very fun — good food, good conversation, many laugh-out-loud moments. Plus, it was a hoot to hear Donna MacMeans’ GPS telling us how to get to Jeanne’s house in his proper British voice. Here for your viewing pleasure are several photos from the evening.

Donna MacMeans and Loucinda McGary

Nancy Northcott and Suzanne Welsh

Suz with Christie Kelley

The Golden Rooster eyeballing some of the yummies

Jeanne Adams, Anna Campbell and Caren Crane

Joan Kayse offering the GR one of her awesomely scrumptious chocolate chip cookies

Beth Andrews and Anna Sugden

The next day, I headed to Green Bay for the WisRWA conference. I’d never been to Green Bay, and pretty much all I equated with it was the Packers and being really friggin’ cold. I made my way to the hotel attached to the Oneida Casino, where I checked in and found this in the lobby:

Let me just say it’s still very weird to see my name listed as a featured speaker, especially with New York Times best-selling author Sherrilyn Kenyon. Now, I know Sherry, and she’s as down to earth as they come, but it’s still a little squee moment to be listed with her. Here we are together.

I spoke at the conference on Making Your Setting Come Alive, and I was also able to reconnect with writers I’d met at this conference 2-3 years ago when it was last held in Madison.

Here I am with Meagan Hatfield and Ann Voss-Peterson.

And with Lori Devoti.

With fellow guest author Karin Tabke. We were next-door neighbors at the book signing.

With Rachel Berens-VanHeest.

I was also able to have a nice meeting with Harlequin Executive Editor Birgit-Davis Todd. She’s not my editor but does work closely with my editor.

With fellow writers Ann Curtis and Cat Shield (who won the WisRWA Fab Five award for best YA manuscript).

With Publishers Weekly blogger Barbara Vey.

I’ve got one more Wisconsin trip post in me, about my post-conference trip through the lovely Door County and the journey back south. Be sure to check in over the weekend for the final installment. And for those of you in the U.S., Happy 4th of July!

Anyway, I took part in a group book signing with five of my RWA chaptermates at Sherlock’s Books in Lebanon, Tennessee yesterday. Here are a few snapshots.

Marie-Nicole Ryan, left, and Ramona Richards

Sandra Thomas Wales and Shannon Dauphin

Jody Wallace and me

Anyone out there have a garden this summer? If so, how’s it doing? What is your favorite thing to eat fresh from the garden.

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On a different note, I’m hosting author Jeanne Adams over at the Wet Noodle Posse blog today. She’s talking about how her dad helped foster her love of books and reading.

In car news, the claims adjuster should be here within the next hour or so. We’ll see what he says.

And in wasted time news, I am WAY too addicted to the Farm Town game on Facebook. But, like my sister says, it’s fun and a stress-reliever.

But I wrote 6 pages yesterday. My goal had been 10, so I’m shooting for 14 today. And if I get them, I can play Farm Town with no guilt.