Autumn Harvest Blog Hop

CONGRATULATIONS TO LISA F.W. WHO WON THE $10 AMAZON GIFT CARD

Autumn is such a fun time of year. The heat of summer is gone, at least here in Michigan. Crisp cool night, comfortably warm days. Great holidays. Columbus Day--big sales, anyone? Halloween--kiddies in costumes but, please get that candy out of my house! My birthday. What? You didn’t know that was a holiday? Veterans Day where we honor those who have served our country. And then there's my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving. Fun time with family getting together, a chance to give thanks for all our blessings, overdosing on great food, falling asleep on the couch while the guys watch football.

But, there’s another reason, a better reason why Thanksgiving is my favorite. You see, I was married on Thanksgiving. Some people think it’s weird to get married on a holiday. I guess weirdness runs in my family since my grandmother and mother were also married on Thanksgiving. I thought it would be kind of cool to carry on a tradition. Hubs says he’s grateful because he doesn’t have to remember a specific date. Wouldn’t you know, my daughter also decided to get married on Thanksgiving. That's four generations of women marrying on that holiday. (Note to granddaughter: you do NOT have to follow that tradition. You can get married any day you wish!)

This year, Thanksgiving is very special as I celebrate forty years together with my best friend, the man I love.

What do you love about Autumn and Fall? 

One commenter will win a $10 Amazon e-Gift Card. PLEASE LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. For more chances to win, enter in the Rafflecopter giveaway.

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My science fiction romance Switched takes place in Autumn. 

When wise-cracking Jessie Wyndom is beamed from her Michigan farmhouse aboard an Alliance starship, she meets a regular Mr. Spock. Captain Marcus Viator's well-organized life is turned upside down by a free-spirited Terran. Fate brings them together. Treachery tears them apart.

Excerpt from Switched: 

     “So, is there a secret salute I should know?” Jessie glanced at the little guy. “A troll. Nice costume, kid. Aren’t you a little young to be one of my nerdy brother’s friends?”

     The man who called himself Captain Viator raised a finely-sculpted black eyebrow. “Ensign Drakus is not a child. He is a Trucanian.”

     She snorted again. “From the planet Trucania, I suppose.”

     “The planet Trucan,” the troll corrected with glee.

     “Right. And I’ve been kidnapped by aliens.” She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break. I’m not going to fall for that gag. I recognize Tim’s handiwork here.”

     “Captain, she does not believe—”

     The tall man held up his hand. “It is better that she not.”

     An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. She shook it off. “I like your outfit, big guy. Pretty authentic looking.” Hobbling on one shoe, she circled the Captain, examining him. “You’re quite an improvement over the geeks Tim usually hangs with.” She stopped behind him. “Great buns.”

Switched is available at Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Smashwords

To continue on the Hop go to http://carrieannbloghops.blogspot.com/  for more links and to qualify for the  THREE grand prizes. There are over 200 participants in the Autumn Harvest Blog Hop. You can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times! So, be sure to leave a comment! And don't forget to leave your email address.

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains 10+ paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more! (Sorry this prize is available only to US addresses.)

Thanks for stopping by! Don't forget to leave a comment with your email address.

Meet Michele Stegman

My guest today is author Michele Stegman. Michele was here in March and shared stories of her passion for crafts, as well as books. Most memorable for me was the picture of the beautiful circular shawl she made from wool she spun on tiny drop spindles. Michele is back with more stories and a new book.


Please welcome back this very talented lady who claims to be

Different, not necessarily weird

I have always enjoyed being just a little different. Not weird, just different enough to elicit that, “Oh, wow!” response of appreciation. For instance, when my husband, Ron, and I bought a piece of property and wanted to build a house, we didn’t want “just a house.” We wanted something unusual. We finally bought, moved, and rebuilt an 1840’s log cabin.

I also have a lot of hobbies, some of which fit right in with our antique house and decor. I have a spinning wheel and a couple of looms, which I use. And I make my own soap and bake everything from scratch. I knit socks with yarn I have spun. My daughter calls the place Pioneer Village.

But I am also a sucker for new technology. My husband calls my iPad my “boyfriend” because I spend so much time with it. I also spend time trolling the aisles of Best Buy asking questions about what’s new.

Art has always been a love of mine and I enjoy painting with water colors and acrylics, as well as creating cards with my many rubber stamps. Playing the piano is also something I enjoy and feel privileged to be our church pianist--even though I only hold that position because they are desperate. :)

With my writing, I am trying new things and want my writing to stand out because it is different. Again, not weird, but different enough that people think, “Oh, wow!” and want to buy my next book.

For instance, my short story, A PIRATE’S TALE, has a very different point of view. Normally, in romances, you are in the head of the hero or heroine. Maybe, in a longer book, the villain or secondary character might have a brief point of view. In A PIRATE’S TALE, the whole story is told from the point of view of a minor character. This might not work in a novel, but for a short story, I think it works quite well. I hope you give it a read and let me know what you think!

CONQUEST OF THE HEART is my upcoming book. Again, I wanted to be different. This is a “Conquest” book. You know, a book set during the Norman conquest of England. Normally, a Conquest story is about one of William’s knights who is landless because he’s a bastard. He comes conquering and the heroine marries him to protect her people. I wrote down every cliché I could think of in these books and turned them around. My hero is a Saxon, one of the conquered, not a Norman. He is not a big, brash, never-defeated-in-battle, bulging with muscle kind of guy. As the third son, he was studying for the priesthood. He has to learn all this macho stuff really fast when his brothers die. He’s also a virgin. And he ends up having to marry a Norman woman in order to keep his land and protect his people. As you might guess, there are a lot of humorous situations in the book so I call it, “a light-hearted romp through the Dark Ages.”

Diane wanted to know how I come up with my ideas. For me, it’s different with each book. Sometimes, like CONQUEST OF THE HEART, I work it all out. For MR. RIGHT’S BABY, I didn’t have to work on it at all. I was driving along not thinking about anything in particular, and suddenly, the whole story popped into my head. I’m not kidding you. It was just there.

For A PIRATE’S TALE, I was just lying down to go to sleep wondering what I could write about next, when this pirate began telling me his story. I was intrigued! But I was also tired and asked him if he could please wait until morning when I was at the computer to tell me the story. The next morning I sat down with fingers poised and he told me this tale which I transcribed for him.

Diane: I loved A PIRATE’S TALE. It reads exactly as you describe it—the pirate telling the story.

FORTUNE’S FOE was a book I had to work for. I love pirate books, but usually, the Spanish are the bad guys in those books. I decided (me, being different again!) to write a historical romance with a Spaniard as the hero. Believe me, it took a lot of finagling to make it work, but history helped out by fitting right in with the story I came up with. Which is something that seems to happen to me a lot. I don’t research ahead of time, but write and research as I go.  In FORTUNE’S SON, I needed a pirate to capture the hero’s ship, The Fortune, just before the pirate gets captured himself. I found a real pirate in the right place, the right year, and even the right month to capture the ship. But he was pretty famous. It was probably a matter of record just which ship he captured last. So I looked it up. Would you believe the last ship Stede Bonnet actually captured was a ship called The Fortune?

To see some of my art and to read excerpts from my books, you can go to my website at: www.michelestegman.com

Thank you, Diane, for asking me to guest blog with you!

My pleasure. Readers, be sure to check out Michele's art. Just gorgeous. Here are other places where you can find Michele:

Twitter: @michelestegman

Facebook: MicheleStegman

And here's a little glimpse into Michele's books.

MR. RIGHT’S BABY

Short description

He wants to marry her for all the wrong reasons. If she finds out what they are, she just might walk away forever...

Extended description

He wants to find his child. Carly was put up for adoption without his knowledge or consent, and Adrian Wright is determined to get her back. What he doesn’t count on is an unexpected attraction for her now widowed, adoptive mother, Katie Simmons. But Adrian worries that the attraction he feels is more for his daughter than for Katie. Even more worrisome is how Katie will react when she finds out that the man who has been courting her is her daughter’s natural father. Will she think he only wants to marry her to get his daughter without a lengthy court battle?

MR. RIGHT’S BABY is available at Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Smashwords

FORTUNE’S FOE

Short description

Historical Romance set in 1740 In the midst of a raging war, Mariette Fortune is torn between saving the life of her brother or the enemy Spaniard she has come to love.

Extended description

Mariette Fortune knows her brother will die if she doesn’t rescue him--especially if the Spanish discover they hold captive the son of the infamous privateer, Sean Fortune. But she didn’t count on falling in love with the man whose life depends on keeping the English prisoners from escaping. Now she had to choose between them.

Alejandro de Silva knows there is more to the lovely Mestiza woman he has hired to keep his house...more than she will admit. Regardless, he cannot help falling in love with her. But he never dreams she is an English spy and that her presence in Spanish St. Augustine will put both their lives in deadly peril.

FORTUNE’S FOE is available at Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Smashwords

A PIRATE'S TALE

Short description:

A short story of betrayal and revenge.
In 1720 along the Cornwall coast the captain has come back for vengeance—and for Bess. He was forced into piracy when he was framed for smuggling. Now pardoned, he has returned to confront his enemy and force a confession from him. And then there’s Bess--she's been living with his enemy.

 

A PIRATE'S TALE is available at Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Smashwords

Michele, I'm so glad you came back. I hope you'll come back when CONQUEST OF THE HEART is out. Now, who writes about Norman conquests? Different but not weird. LOL

 

New Year's Resolutions

Wait. It’s only November so why am I writing about New Year’s Resolutions? I’m not jumping the gun. Back in January, I wrote about goal setting for 2012. One of my writer friends (thanks, Margo) suggested revisiting this topic. I guess it’s accountability time.

On the personal level, one of my goals was to organize my photos. <nasty buzzer sound> Nope. Didn’t even touch them. I still have eight weeks. Guess I’d better get started. Another goal was to reduce the number of books and DVDs. <ding, ding, ding> I did it! I gave away a whole boxful of books at MMRWA's Retreat and the DVDs went to a good home. Shred old papers was another goal. <nasty buzzer and tiny ding> My intentions were good. Does that count? Of course not. We all know where the path of good intentions leads. Poor Hubs. He made several trips to the recycling center with boxes and boxes of paper, but I hardly made a dent. I resolved to work out four times a week at a fitness center. <buzzer and ding> Most weeks, I make it at least three times so I figure I’m doing pretty good.

Then, there were my business goals:

• Request five reviews of Switched. I requested ten and received two. Two are better than none so I’m ahead.
• Publish Switched, Too by March 31st. Missed my self-imposed deadline by a few weeks, but it went up on June 8th.
• Increase online presence by:
• writing a blog post every week Did it! (or is that "doing" it?)
• host a guest once a month Did It! Actually, starting in August I host a guest once a week.
• increase guest blog appearances by 50% That was under ambitious since I’d only done two in 2011; don’t know what I was thinking with that goal. I’ve done 13 guest appearances so far and am scheduled for two more this year plus two blog hops.

Speaking of blog hops. I’m in (or is it "on"?) my first one this Friday, the Autumn Harvest Blog Hop. Lots of prizes, over 200 participants (which means you can visit all and have over 200 opportunities to win prizes). I’ll be giving away a $10 Amazon e-Gift Card so be sure to come back here on Friday and join the fun.

Regarding accountability for my 2012 resolutions: I’m doing a lot better with my writing goals than with my personal ones. Meantime, I’d better get started on those photos.

How did you do with your resolutions?

Something for Fun

TAG, YOU'RE IT . . .

I was tagged by Alicia Dean, author of Soul Seducer, Lady in the Mist, and Thicker Than Water. I love her books, filled with lots of suspense, but I'm not sure whether to thank her for this opportunity or not. LOL

So, here are my answers to Alicia’s questions about my next book…

What is the working title of your book? The Pilot (Outer Rim: Book 1)


Where did the idea come from for the book? – I love space adventure, as you can tell from the Switched series. I see the Outer Rim as comparable to our 19th century Wild West. Like on our frontier, women on the Rim have to be strong enough to make their own way without--sometimes in spite of--men. The Pilot is about cargo hauler, risk taker Celera d'Enfaden who must work with rule-bound administrator Trevarr Jovano to save her brother from an intergalactic mobster.


What genre does your book fall under? Science Fiction Romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? All the redheaded actresses I can think of are too tall, but I can see Bryce Dallas Howard as Celera and Jeremy Renner as Trevarr. 

 
Now, it's my turn to tag 5 writers whose work I admire. I'm sure I'll leave out a ton of people out and I'm already feeling guilty! Anyway, here goes…

Mara Jacobs is a new author who writes fabulous mysteries (Broken Wings, Against the Odds, Against the Spread) which keep me reading half the night because I can't put them down.

Jennifer Lowery, another new author (Hard Core) writes romantic suspense with alpha males. Jenny is such a strong supporter of fellow writers she hosts them on her blog Romantic Recipes twice a week.

Christine Warner writes romantic comedy (Some Like it in Handcuffs, Two-Timing the Boss). Her books are laugh out loud funny.

Patricia Kiyono writes sweet romances (The Christmas Phoenix) that tug at your heart.

Nancy Gideon, dear friend for almost 20 years, terrific supporter and fabulous author (Seeker of Shadows and the By Midnight series) who made me an avid reader of vampire and shifter romances.

Now, if you were tagged, grab the questions above – or create your own! – and tag five authors you love…let’s keep it going.