Music Monday 5/30

Hope everyone is enjoying the long weekend!  Today's bit of musical inspiration is actually visual too.  I had planned to use something else more pertinent to a book, but this is too gorgeous to resist, and the music could work very well for a romance, I think.  I absolutely love violin.  Complete sucker for it.  In FACT, I had a string trio at my wedding, I love strings so much:-)  As for the video...it honestly just took my breath away.  This, my bloggy friends, is Iceland in all its glory.  I had no idea it was so full of light.  Sometimes, it's nice to be reminded that there are still places like this on earth, little touched and full of beauty. I think my idea of heaven might look a bit like this.  Enjoy.  And to see it a bit larger (well worth it) simply click the first link beneath the vid.


Raw Lightscapes from Enrique Pacheco on Vimeo.

Lucky Thirteen

Warning, mushy post ahead!

The Guy I Fell in Love With, Circa 1997, with Fizgig

For me, this is a sweet day...Brian and I are celebrating our 13th anniversary.  And for the first time in all those thirteen years, he actually lined up a babysitter himself and planned to take me out to dinner without my knowing about it!  My grin was a mile wide...even after all this time, it's nice to know he can still surprise me.  Not that he needs to most of the time.  The man puts up with my weird hours, handles living with me when I'm a watery mess, and pushes me to follow my own dreams while I move around the country to enable him to follow his.  We've shared a lot of joy, much of it from the three beautiful kids we've made together, and weathered our share of sorrow and difficulty too.

I was little more than a kid when I met him...eighteen and just starting to figure myself out, much less other people.  Mr. Confident scared the hell out of me in some ways...I knew it was going to be serious from the get-go, and I was a master of the unserious.  But hell if I could figure out how to let him go.  He's tricky like that:-)  I married him a week after he graduated from the Naval Academy, a month shy of my 21st birthday.  We were young and stupid, but because of it I think we rolled with the punches more easily than we might have had we met even a few years later.  In a lot of ways, we've grown up together.  And because of good fortune or just simple compatibility, neither of us fell out of love with the people we've grown into. 

Neither of us is perfect: he's got a temper, I've got a mouth, he's into structure and I seem to roll with a certain amount of chaos whether I mean to or not.  He is not a romantic, and I...well, take a look at what I write.  But my husband is honest, true, unfailingly loyal, and deeply good-hearted.  He's the sort of man who rescues small creatures from the road, meticulously paints teddy bears or clouds on nursery walls, and sends the kids into shrieking gales of laughter by being a big kid himself.  Oh, and he still looks damn fine in a uniform.  In short, I got a good one, and I'm glad he's mine.  Happy Anniversary, babe.  Thanks for loving me.

We Have A Winner!

Thanks so much for playing along, everyone!  I had my daughter pull a name out of a hat this morning, and the winner of a shiny new copy of DARK AWAKENING is...

NANCY!  Congrats!  Drop me a note at kendra@kendraleighcastle.com, and I'll get your book out to you on Tuesday.

I'll be giving away another book this coming Friday, so be sure to come back!

Dark Awakening Giveaway!

It's Friday!  Friday, Friday, gettin' down on...oh, God, forget I sang that.  Anyway, a couple of days ago, I received a most excellent surprise from the fabulous Latoya Smith: four hot off the press copies of my book!  They are gorgeous.  So, so gorgeous.  I was on my way out, so I grabbed one and forced all the parents at my youngest kid's preschool to observe its beauty.  Probably they were afraid, but I was excited:-)

In any case, I gave a copy to the graphic artist who did the Dynasty tattoos for me, and I'm hanging onto a couple until my actual box of author copies arrives, but I thought it would be fun to give one away.  Because, hey, Friday, free stuff, it's all good.  I'm not going to get fancy, just do a drawing, so if you'd like to be entered let me know in the comments.  Contest open until midnight tonight (PST), and I'll announce the winner tomorrow.

And for discussion, since I started with that awful earworm of a song (the Epic Mullet Guy version is way better), what other sings make you crazy in a "this sucks but it won't leave me alooooone" kind of way?  A recent one for me was Nickelback's "This Afternoon" (you click that link at your own risk...some of the band is cute, but the video quickly becomes obnoxious bimbo overload).  Yes, I know there are a lot of Nickelback fans out there.  I'm not one of them, belonging to the prestigious Every Time a Nickelback Song is Played, God Kills a Llama group on facebook.  And yet, despite my lunging to change the channel every time I heard the opening chords of that song, there it would stick.  Sometimes for days. *shudder*  Share you pain, win free stuff.  It's all good!

Happy Friday, everyone!

Ye Olde Opinion Box

And before I get started, I have to say that I just love this picture.  Show of hands: who would like to be this woman in this moment? *raises hand and waves it madly*  Vampires.  Yum.

Anyway, I need some help, as you may have surmised from my whiny title.  I'm supposed to do some erotic short stories.  Which is AWESOME, because hey, my books always get rated hot, so I should be able to stretch a little further, right?  But I would love to read some more erotic romance before I dive in so I have a better feel for the structure.  And...stuff.  So if you would, can any of you direct me to your favorite erotic short stories?  Even just your go-to author or authors.  There's so much available, I don't know which direction to go!  And over the last year, my reading time really took a beating.  Haven't managed to read much, though I THOROUGHLY enjoyed Olivia Cunning's Backstage Pass.  Rock Hard is next on my list, woohoo!  Though I'm not sure anything can surpass having music written all over your body while you...uh, what were we talking about?  Oh.  Um.  Anyway, today's an open call for suggestions.  What are you loving and just as importantly, why?  I'm interested to hear your answers!

In other news, my dogs are getting so big that I trip over them all the time.  Especially in their favorite room, the kitchen.  Trying to operate around a big, lumbering, hungry bear dog and his smaller but waaaaay more spastic companion has become...difficult.  They are right now trying to eat one another's faces directly beside my desk chair, which won't bother me until they try to knock me over.  Oh, and Stella has taken to stealing things off the counters when we're not looking.  Argh.  I still love them to pieces, by the way.  But the "big dogs" chapter of my life is thus far an interesting journey.  I've decided to give one of my next heroines a Newf sidekick.  It's gotta happen:-)

Have a great day!  

Schedule, etc.

So I've decided I'll be on a M/W/F blogging schedule around here, if you all would like to know when to come looking for something new.  As today is Tuesday, consider this FABULOUS BONUS CONTENT.  Erm, or not:-)  Do have a couple of things...Romantic Times has given DARK AWAKENING 4 stars and a HOT rating, along with a lovely review calling me a "rising star" (*blushes*) and saying the new series is "sure to please".  Couldn't ask for more!  Awesome kickoff.  Also, I see a couple of my Goodreads readers who have already won copies of the book have enjoyed the story and rated it highly, and I hope they know I am SO appreciative.  I want people to love this story as much as I do, and it's really great to see the book starting off well-received.  Aaaaand...that's all I've got for today.  So I will present you with the Lonely Island/Michael Bolton collaboration that is still making me laugh a couple of weeks after I first saw it.  Davy Jones! Giant squid!  Catch you all tomorrow!

Music Monday 5/23

Thought I'd kick off my Music Monday thing with a song that has been part of the soundtrack for every Scottish hero I've written (and there have already been a few in my short career).  From Call of the Highland Moon's Gideon MacInnes to Dark Awakening's Tynan MacGillivray, my Scotsmen have a sweetness at their core, even if it's not readily apparent at first.  And though they would never admit it, being the sorts of men who aren't into discussing such alien concepts as "feelings" except under extreme duress, they want very much to love and be loved in return.  This also scares the hell out of them, but you know...they're men.  Supernaturally powerful men, but that doesn't make a lot of difference in this area.  In their more vulnerable moments, this lovely song by a favorite band of mine, the appropriately Scottish band Travis, always seems to apply.  I've loved it for years now, so it seems like a good one to share.  Hope you enjoy it too!
 

Return of the Blogger

Hey everyone!  Okay, prompted by butt-kickings from various people in my life (all much appreciated, btw), I'm hopping back on the blogging train.  I made it through the experience of writing two books in six months with most of my sanity intact and probably more white hair, though I don't let my roots grow out enough to really know for sure:-)  I've got a lot of exciting stuff happening in my professional universe, and I've got a series launching on June 28th.  If I ever say I have nothing to blog about right now, smack me. 

We'll start with tomorrow and a suggestion from my buddy Lisa.  I am a complete music junkie, which you'll figure out quickly if you listen to my ramblings for any length of time.  I use music for writing inspiration ALL the time, and sometimes can even tame my writerly ADD enough to have it playing while I'm working.  Some books lend themselves to that more than others...seems to depend. Sooo, henceforth, we'll be having Music Mondays 'round these parts, wherein I'll share a song that I've used or am using in my writing.  My iPod is full o' goodness.  So this should be fun!  I'm always open to suggestions for new stuff, too.  As for Wednesdays and Fridays, which are the other days I'll be hanging out here, well...we'll see what I come up with:-)

As for tonight, I wanted to share something cool with you all.  I recently sold Dark Dynasties books 3 and 4 to Grand Central (YAY!), and the description of Book 3, SHADOW RISING, interested the good people at Romantic Times enough that they mentioned it HERE. Is that not cool?  I've only got about three chapters of that book done so far, but I absolutely love the characters already.  Gonna be a fun one.

Thanks for stopping by, and I'll see you tomorrow!