Thursday, April 30, 2009

RT Pictures!





I'm not much of a photographer, but here are some pics you might not have seen yet.
First, the Ellora's Cave Welcome party for their authors!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

If you have to miss the party...

I'll be at RT all next week, but I'll be sending pictures and blog tidbits back home to my friend Stephanie Giancola.

Stephanie and I met a few years ago through our RWA chapter and discovered we lived down the street from each other! We became fast friends as romance writers often do. She recently landed a gig writing about romance novels and authors of romance for the National Examiner!

http://www.examiner.com/x-2533-Romance-Novel-Examiner?cid=examiner-email
Check out her column, especially next week to hear about the wild 5 day party with 2,000+ readers, booksellers, agents, editors, authors and (*drool) those cover models!

Djinn and Tonic is available now at www.jasminejade.com, for about 1/3 of the price of a regular Gin and Tonic. It will relax you, make you giggle and even boost your libido! All with no hangover!

Monday, April 13, 2009

New book and cover!

Coming soon! Order from www.jasminejade.com (It's only $2.49)

Thursday, April 2, 2009

What a week!

I had planned to blog right after the NE romance writer's conference last weekend, but it wasn't possible. I was hit with more craziness than I could have predicted. My final line edits came in for a story I have a 4/17 release date for. That had to be taken care of pronto. (See www.jasminejade.com on the 17th for my story, Djinn and Tonic!) The price of Quickies is being reduced to only $2.49! So do your part to stimulate the economy and save money at the same time!

I just submitted my story Giggles by Gabby for an anthology to benefit an employee of Ellora's Cave who lost her daughter in a fire. She held on for two weeks, but eventually expired. She was only 19 years old. Such a tragedy.

Today I'm sore, but my house is clean and fresh, and I feel so good about it. I hired a young woman (wonder girl) to help me with my spring cleaning. I can hardly believe the energy of that woman. She went for 6 hours straight. She wouldn't let me give her lunch or even water! She had two cigarette breaks (outdoors, of course) and that was all. I don't know if I ever had that much stamina! Maybe she's an immortal. One that has super strength and doesn't need food or water. Hmm...maybe there was a canteen of blood in her car? I can't believe what she did was humanly possible.

I'm SO hiring her again next year!

Monday, March 30, 2009

I survived!

The New England chapter of RWA had its annual conference this weekend. I'm exhausted but SO happy it went off without a hitch.

Since I'm president of the group, I welcomed everyone the first evening, introduced all of our main speakers and generally "supervised" to be sure everyone was happy. We presented awards, offered numerous professional workshops and I think we had a very successful outcome. That's according to all the feedback I received. If you were there and have anything to add, please feel free!

Hugs,

Ash

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

I finished it!!!

I finished my first book in the urban fantasy Strange Neighbor series. YAYYYYYYYY!!!
Okay, so it's the first draft of the first book, but any writer will tell you that's the hardest part of the whole process.

Now, I'll have a few days to judge a contest and then return to self-edit the whole mess. Still, a weight has been lifted since I know I'll make my April 30th deadline. Whew!

I already have a great idea for book #2. Stay tuned for more progress reports. And now you may return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Ash

Monday, March 2, 2009

Taking a breather

I should be writing, but I want to take a moment to talk about something very important. If you haven't heard about epiracy, there's a great deal of passionate conversation about it that may need a bit of simple explanation. I'd like to provide that in a calm, dispassionate manner (if I can.)

Contrary to popular opinion, most authors cannot live on what they make by writing. A few years ago, it was reported that only 5% of all authors fall into that category. Steven King, Norah Roberts and the rest of the top 5% made 95% of the money paid to 100% of the authors. Now, with the event of eauthors joining the ranks, the gap has grown even wider.

Did you know that epublishers pay their authors with royalties only? They get no advance money. In other words, eauthors make NO money unless someone buys their book.

I believe that some folks really don’t realize that the practice of epiracy is illegal and may think this is a great way to read books in our tough economy. If you come across anyone who believes this, you might want to let them know that there are legal avenues to read books cheaply or for free, without getting arrested, fined $250,000 and spending 5 years in jail. Libraries will be happy to order and pay for any book you want to read, then loan it out again to someone else. The big difference is that this is done one at a time. Many used book stores are in existence and are a completely legal business, selling books cheaply, again one at a time.

When a book is borrowed or bought at half price, this is considered by authors to be good promotion. But to download a book from a site giving or selling way below cost to millions of people at once deprives authors and publishers of their hard earned money. And let me tell you, it’s extremely hard to string together 100,000 cohesive words and make it entertainment worthy. It takes several months to craft a book, even if working at it full time. Many, many authors have outside jobs and cannot create more than a book a year.

Consider how you would deal with a thief making off with half of your hard earned paycheck month after month. Okay, here's where the calm, dispassionate part ends. Please help us fight epiracy!!

I posted some suggestions for authors on one of my other blogs today. Please visit www.leagueofamazingwriters.com

Thanks!
Ash