Book pet peeves... and a little rant. LOL.

Today... I'm a reader. LOL. I blame being an avid reader on my deep seated need to write. How many times have you picked up a book... got into it... got disgusted or just couldn't get into it... and chucked the book? It's happened to me a time or two...or a few dozen times. My pet peeves are as follows. I can't stand really stupid characters. The woman who hides in the closet when someone breaks in her back door instead of running out the front. The male lead who crosses lines that are so far out there... there's no coming back from those kind of mistakes and YET... you are suppose to believe anyone could forgive a guy who stole your dog, slept with your sister AND your mom, your best friends, and maybe even your ex boyfriend. LOL.

I love to read all kinds of stories. If it's got a good plot, strong emotional ties or even fun loving... you got me. I read just about everything be it multi partner, m/m, shifters, ghosts, or vampires. You can bring out the whips, chains, or whip cream sundaes... and I will read it. LOL. I admit I'm not into 'Titanic' books. I wanted Jack to live, I wanted them to have hot sex again in a car... on land... and drive away into the sunset together to live happily ever after. LOL. My worst pet peeve though... I found in a book I sat down to read this week. Grrrrr!

I won't name any names and if you're an EC writer... don't get paranoid. It's not you. (Don't glance at each other pondering... was it your's???) LOL. This book is from another publisher. I love this author. I have bought every book they put out. They write a variety of stories involving anything from m/m/f to m/f. I think one of them was a m/m/m/f. I loved every sorted tale. Lately my 'want' list has been a lot longer than my 'did' list when it comes to reading. I'm a mother of 4. My oldest teenager is recently pregnant so I'm going to be a grandma in 7 months. I have 3 other children ages 10-4. School is starting. My first book is coming out Friday (Ral's Woman at ellorascave). I'm pretty busy writing and editing a few other books. (I submitted a second book to Ral's Woman... cross your fingers... shameless plug cuz it's my blog...LOL).

I sat down and started to read this book. I'm into it. I'm reading every line with anticipation. These characters are living, breathing people to me in my mind. They were intense, falling in love, and I'm scrolling my screen happily, eating it all up. Then suddenly about half way through... BOOM! I'm reading and thinking...WTF??? Where did my charaters go??? What happened to the plot??? What did I miss? Which way did it go??? I backtracked, read the pages again thinking I'd missed something. Nope. I sat there shocked, then angry, and I wanted to throw the book. Of course it was an Ebook. I'm not tossing my monitor so instead I did this. I hit DELETE! Yes, I so did that. LOL. I deleted that sucker. I was that mad.

Okay, here's a not so secret thing about deleting something on your computer. On the top left side of my screen I have the recycle bin. There it sat, that book lurking in that clear little icon trashcan. I have glanced up at, sometimes outright stared at it, and I thought a lot of things. This person writes good books. I love some of these books a LOT. I took deep breaths, I gave myself days to evaluate the situation, and I went back. I restored the book and tried again. I wanted to be fair. I thought... this author has something planned. There's a reason! I grabbed hold of that thought with both mental hands. I thought... it's going to be brilliant... just watch. So I read it over, got to that spot, flinched really, really, really hard... and forced myself to read through it and beyond.

What was the problem? I won't give away the plot because I don't want to hurt this author's feelings on the off chance they ever stumble into my part of blogspace. LOL. It was this though in a nutshell. Don't take a loyal, undying type of female lead who refuses to date, sleep with anyone else, because she's fixed on one man she loves.... and then turn her into "insert name here" does "insert city name here". It doesn't work! It angered me. It threw me and worse, the scenes were so uncomfortable for me because who was this person... certainly not the charater I had grown fond on and thought I knew. Nope. This was... someone else, someone I didn't even like anymore... and the scenes weren't hot. I like multi partner scenes but this was uncomfortable and just...eeewwww because it was like taking your mild manored little innocent friend who is the poster child for monogomy... and tossing her in a situation that this friend is majorly going to be messed up afterwards in. The male lead in the space of a few pages went from this possessive, caring, alpha male protective figure that didn't even want her talking to other men... into serving her up to other guys. WTF??? It made no sense. It upset me. It ticked me off. It didn't fit the story. It was like this scene was shoved in the wrong book, made the characters written into strangers, and it was icky.

So there's my biggest pet peeve and the reason for this post. If these characters had been written to be the kind of people who would turn that scene into something hot... YEAH! But to completely change them mid stream into strangers... GRRRRRR. I gave the book another shot, I tried to be fair, I tried to get around the whole uncomfortable 'WTF???' situation these characters found themselves in... but I couldn't. I hit delete again, I went up to recycle bin, and I emptied it for good. No more lurking book hiding under a trashcan icon. It's GONE! Now if only I had that delete key for my brain because it still bugs me that I read one book, ended up with two strangers in the middle, and they were so different that I couldn't even stand them. LOL.

Okay... so what are your pet peeves? What makes you GRRRRRR over books? Am I the only one who gets frustrated enough to toss a book or in Ebook case... delete? LOL. Thanks for reading and letting me rant.

What I love in a weekend

It's Friday evening, the best part of my week for me. I have four children, three of them are ages ten and under. Since school is out until Sept 8th... I'm home every day with them. They make it almost impossible for me to write. They turn my living room into their play worlds. They love to argue, wrestle, and break things in general. Every weekend though... my husband takes charge of them so I can put on my headphones, block out the kid noise, and write. I LOVE weekends!

So here it is and I'm about to put on the headphones, dive into the latest book I'm working on (well, actually I'm working on three right now but one is stuck in my head) so I am probably going to spend the next four to six hours on the planet Zorn with a hot alien. LOL. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night. Tomorrow I'm planning on working on book project number 2 so I'm going to spend a little time with a few sexy werewolves. On Sunday I get to play with a smoking hot Cowboy that is good with ropes in another book I'm writing. NOT a bad way to spend a weekend. LOL. I sure don't get bored.

I always make time for my husband. Tomorrow we're going to get pizza and rent some movies. No one will take on babysitting my little ones. They are terrors. I admit it. We rent movies instead of going out. That's actually better. It's hard to cuddle up to my favorite guy with an armrest between us if we go out to see a movie. This is why I love weekends. All the writing I can get in, a break from the kids, and a husband who is addicted to video games on the weekends so he doesn't mind at all if I'm writing away. LOL. And he's easy to lure away from his games when I need a little 'research' help. Weekends are great. I hope everyone else has a great weekend too!

My cover came! Ral's Woman by Laurann Dohner

My cover is finally here! I really love it. This is my first book. It's kind of funny but I was more excited about the idea of a book cover than I was at finishing this book. LOL. I've written books before (not published... of course... but I've written at home for fun for years to keep sane since I'm at home with 4 kids (ages 4, 6, 10, and 17). This year since the last one was starting school I thought now is the time to devote the time it deserves to my writing and was lucky enough to land a contract. It's all been amazing, fun, and a little crazy since I've learned a lot in such a short time (editing mostly, crafting how I write) and I wrote the second book to Ral's Woman which I just submitted and cross my fingers... they accept. LOL. I'll keep you updated.

So here's the super hot cover that I adore. The book comes out Sept 4th!!! Here's a direct link if you would like to read the first chapter they put up in the excerpt section.

http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-7518-50-rals-woman.aspx

Ral's Woman by Laurann Dohner 9-4-2009!!!

I just found out yesterday that my book is being released through Ellorascave.com on September 4th. I'm very excited. This is my first release, one of many I hope! I don't have the cover art yet but it should be along at any time. When I do get it, I'll post it. I'm in shock that it's coming out so soon but it's a great thing.

I've always wanted to be a published author but life always had me putting it to the back burner. This year with all of my younger children starting school I knew that I'd finally have the ability to give writing the time and attention that it deserves. Tonight we celebrated by having a nice family dinner together. I cooked up Tri tip. The wonderful hubby and I drank a wine coolers with dinner. All of the kids were home (I have a teenager... if you have one... you know it's rare to get them home for dinner...LOL) so it was just really great. My husband is and has always been very supportive of my need to write. He's very proud of me.

It almost doesn't seem real yet but I went to the http://www.ellorascave.com/ website and there's my author bio up and my book is in the coming soon section! If you follow this link it will take you to the blurb and they have posted the first chapter. Please go check it out!!!
http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-7518-50-rals-woman.aspx

Here's a blurb to Ral's Woman by Laurann Dohner

Ariel never knew aliens existed until she finds herself kidnapped and taken from Earth. When the Anzon declare humans useless, she learns her fate—prize for the winner of a brutal fight between large, muscled alien men.

Ral is a Zorn warrior. He has also been kidnapped by the Anzon, along with his crew. Forced into slavery, working an asteroid mine, the only thing on his mind is to free his people. That is until he sees the small human woman he’s willing to fight to win. He doesn’t just want her body but he wants her heart forever.

Ariel quickly discovers captivity can be a very pleasurable experience in the hot hands of a sexy alien.

My Website

Ok, I've had the best time with building my website. I knew NOTHING. Keep in mind... I can't even program numbers in my cell. It took me a while to get the hang of computers and I only learned them because I spent hour after hour on one when we bought our first. I could take a VCR apart and fix it but... I could never figure out how to program one. That's just how I'm wired. Now you understand what a daunting task it was when I realized I needed a website. I checked into having one built. We couldn't afford even the most reasonable ones. I expected the worst (something a 5 year old would turn out) but I am impressed with how I did. Of course my site isn't nearly as nice as people pay hefty money for. Some of those are just... WOW. But for someone on a really tight budget, had to learn EVERYTHING, and who thought a 'stock' photo was something you'd find in a product catalog.... I think I did good.

First I tweaked with the darn layouts. That was a week of horror while I learned what a gadget even was. WHO KNEW??? ( And so far.... I haven't even used one so.... that was a waste of time...LOL )Then the hunt was on for free stock photos because...well, something has to be on the site. Then a friend of mine directed me to a few sites and then of course I found the pay one that was really affordable that I picked up a few pics from. So anyway, the site is almost up and running. It looks a thousand times better than I imagined I could do I'm proud of it... if you hate it... LIE!!! (I think I'm kidding...LOL) So... when it's 'live' as to speak... I'll post the link here.

I'm editing the second book. I'm waiting to hear back how the first round of edits went with the first book. I'm waiting for the book cover and a release date when the editing is totally done. I'm really excited.

The wait is over and man am I busy. LOL

I have tasks. I have editing to do. I have a ton of editing to do. I'm learning alright (ooops) all right. LOL. TWO WORDS. I didn't know that. See? Learning. It's really a great experience, a lot of work, but I am loving every minute of it. I have my checklists (I'm really happy I have a 24 inch widescreen monitor to have the room to keep both book and checklists up next to each other without squinting at tiny print or overlapping documents). It's also really a good way to find out how much you think you knew but didn't. LOL. I've learned that 'and' is something I use too much of. I edited the book I needed to and sent it in. Hopefully I didn't mess up, misunderstand, or just muck up in general when I edited. I'm sure I'll find out. I'll sweat it until I hear back on how I did. Again, good thing I'm a fast learner because that will come in handy. I've spent time re-editing books I wanted to submit. I'm almost ready to send in another one. I have to go over it a few more times to polish it up. Then I have a few more books to re-edit to go so I can submit them.



I'm an at home mom which can be challenging. Today I was editing a sex scene. My kids decided it was a great time to get into a fight. I have two kids screaming at each other, toys flying in all directions (thankfully they aren't real great on aiming when they throw toys at each other), they are chasing each other, and I'm doing an immitation of a jack in the box only with a chair. Up and down. This went on for about twenty minutes. Every time I sat down they started up again. I'm working on this same section in the book and all I can think is... this poor guy is never going to get off. LOL. I finally settled them down with popcorn and a movie. I sit back down, sighing in relief, and face the screen... to realize the cat walked across my keyboard. No fear. I save so often it's not funny. I have backups for my backups. In this case the wonderful 'undo' worked. Of course the kids decided to throw popcorn at each other a minute later. I did finish the scene but it's not easy being home with kids! I long for school to start next month.



I'm really lucky. I have a great husband. After we ate and watched a few shows we'd DVR'd (Okay, it was Saving Grace which is a great show with the best opening in my opinion and In Plain Site which I also enjoy a lot), the wonderful guy I married took charge of the kids so I could really get some work done. He's terrific and I got really lucky twenty years ago when I met him. He does laundry (be still my heart), cooks occasionally (he can make steaks with a cast iron skillet that will leave you drooling just with the scent of them cooking... and heaven to taste), and he's informed me he's totally prepared to help me with any research I need help with for any of the scenes in my books I'm working on. Those sex scenes SHOULD be realistic... LOL. Yeah, I'm really lucky. While he's wrangling the kids I better get back to that editing.