Mary e-mailed me yesterday to tell me the cover for my October book, Elly: Cowgirl Bride, was up on Amazon.com. Squee! Here it is. What do you think?

I’m excited to show my first book trailer, for next month’s release, Winter Longing. Hope you all enjoy it. Feel free to share.

My first-ever online read at eHarlequin.com begins today. You can go here to read the first chapter.

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!

I’m being auctioned off! Okay, not really. But I have donated some critiques and books to be auctioned for good causes.

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.

Since I last posted, I:

* Drove 12 hours from the beach to Kentucky for Christmas
* Took down all the Christmas decorations and shoved them in the attic
* Marked as many things off my to-do list as I could
* Watched Avatar again, this time in 3-D, as well as DVDs of Push (confusing, not as good as I’d hoped) and Knocked Up (okay)

Speaking of movies, I keep a spreadsheet each year of all the movies I see and another of all the books I read. Yes, I’m odd. Anyway, here are my top 5 movies I saw and books I read in 2009:

Movies

Avatar
Star Trek
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Up
Gran Torino

Books

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Graceling by Kristin Cashor
As Shadows Fade by Colleen Gleason
Lover Avenged by J.R. Ward

What were your faves of 2009?

It was beautiful here today, sunny and warmer. I went for another walk and enjoyed the sea breeze and the sound of the palm fronds swaying. Here’s the view out the window about mid-day.

When I returned from my walk, I found hubby chilling and reading on the balcony.

I finished my proofing job and ran it to FedEx, then went to an area Books-a-Million to set up a book signing for March since the book I have coming out then, The Family Man, is the second book I’ve written set in this area. My hope is that since it’ll be spring break all those spring breakers will need a good beach read.

While I was out, I also bought the soundtrack to Avatar. As usual with James Horner’s work, it’s beautiful. I’m listening to it now. Hubby took this shot while I was out and about.

We went to Floyd’s Shrimp House for dinner. We ate there last December and really enjoyed it, so it’s the only place we’ve gone back to for a repeat visit this trip. We played a game of Perquacky, a word game, and have been playing on the Internet since. Hubby is reading the book I got him today as an early Christmas gift, The Art of Avatar.

Santa must really love me this week because I just saw the cover of my March Harlequin American release today on Amazon. And it’s awesome! The art department did a fantastic job of capturing the look of Adam, the hero in The Family Man. I told them he was supposed to look similar to Eric Dane, aka McSteamy from Grey’s Anatomy, and I think they totally nailed what I was looking for.

What do you think?

Considering a recent phone conversation with my father-in-law recently started with him asking, “Have you died?”, I think perhaps it’s time to do a better job blogging.

And as luck would have it, I have something exciting to share — the cover for my second young adult novel, Winter Longing, which is set to come out next August. I really like it, and I’m hoping it will make people pick it up off store shelves and race to the cash register. What do you think?

I just turned in a proposal for a trilogy to my agent, who sent it to my editor at Harlequin American. I’m hopeful she loves it as much as my agent who said she “loved every word!” I heart my agent.

I’ve also got lots of other things out there under submission, so Santa, if you’re listening, I’d like a new contract for Christmas!

After I put together the big Dragon*Con post last week, I managed to get sick with whatever it was hubby had when I got home. We’re not sure if it was a really bad cold, a sinus infection or possibly a lighter case of the flu, but whatever it was I’m glad it’s now gone. Bleh.

It’s a busy blog today for me elsewhere. I’m blogging over at Nobody Writes It Better about the passing of Patrick Swayze, and at the Romance Bandits blog I’m hosting MJ Fredrick, whose new book release, Beneath the Surface, is great. She’s talking about heroes who make us melt with the things they say. There’s even a quiz with a lovely prize.

My good friend Mary, who writes as M.J. Fredrick, has a new romantic adventure release that went on sale today. So I’m going to hold off one more day on putting up more conference pictures so I can share the following Q&A with M.J. By the way, Beneath the Surface is one of my absolute favorite stories she’s written. So I was so happy when this book was bought by her publisher and thrilled when she got the gorgeous cover.

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.