I’m talking about my next book release.

It feels like forever since I’ve had a new release. And I guess in e-book terms, it has been forever. Seven months. That’s a loooooong time.

But the wait is almost over. Because in just five days, the first book in my brand new “More Than” series, releases from Samhain.

WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHOOOOOOO

Um. Er….Ooops. Sorry, that just kind of slipped out.

So, wanna know more about More Than Friends? Just read on for the blurb.

MORE THAN FRIENDS:

Overheard conversation:

Princess:  Look, it’s an aeroplane

Cherub: Is it a Tiger aeroplane?

Princess: I can’t see. But if it was it would be full of tigers grrrr

Cherub: And if it was a virgin plane, it would be full of virgins.

(That’s not what I heard)

 After eating all of her spaghetti bolognaise:

Cherub: I ate it all up. Even the marshmallows!

(I put mushrooms in my bolognaise, in case you were wondering)

 Looking at the clouds:

Princess: Mummy, those look like serious (meaning cirrus) clouds.

Me: yeah, I heard they had no sense of humour

Princess: (blankly) No, that must mean something serious is about to happen.

(her sense of humour will develop over time, I’m sure)

 Exact conversation that took place between me and my four year old Cherub

Cherub: Do you want to play shops mummy?

Me: Ok, sure

Cherub: What would you like?

Me: (knowing what plastic food is available) I’ll have a banana split—that’s banana with ice cream on it.

Cherub: I can’t do that

Me: Then I’ll just have a plain banana

Cherub: Ok. Would you like ice cream too?

Me: I thought  you didn’t have… oh okay I’ll have banana and ice cream.

Cherub: Would you like chocolate or vanilla

Me: Vanilla

Cherub: I only have chocolate

Me: For goodness sakes. Don’t offer me something you don’t have! What kind of joint are you running?

Cherub: I told you I only have chocolate or vanilla

Me: And I want vanilla

Cherub: With your banana?

Me: Yes! With my banana. I want vanilla ice cream with my banana.

(Finally my meal is delivered. One banana with… a chocolate ice-cream cone. All day of this and people wonder why I drink)

And then it begins again with the drinks

Cherub: Would you like milk or juice

Me: Milk please.

Cherub: I don’t have any milk

Me: Can’t you pretend to have milk?

Cherub: Nope

Me: But you’re pretending to have juice

Cherub: Can’t pretend to have milk

Me: All right I’ll have some juice but when I drink it I’ll pretend it’s milk

Cherub: Nooooooo!

I will never understand the rules of pretend shops.

 HAPPY BELATED MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL

Sami

I could write a long post here about my time at RT this year, but I think the best way to share how awesome it is, is with photos. Questions will be answered after. Honest

Breakfast at IHOP on my first day…

Which I could not finish. But yummy!

Look! A bookstore! A brick and motar bookstore (in which I bought a Sonic Screwdriver and a talking Dalek!)

Mari, Valerie and me. Being awesome.

Why yes, we are all gorgeous. Thank you for noticing.

Mari Carr is a pervert.

A touchy-feely pervert.

Now, is the frog spitting at the little boy’s you-know-what?

Or is the little boy peeing on the frog?

Valerie. Riding a bull. Because.

Tequila shots. Mr. C’s face in this (blurry) photo cracks me up.

Valerie Tibbs is NOT asleep. Don’t be fooled!!

Look VERY closely at the name on the badge I’m wear. Very closely… (and yes, I WILL answer questions about it)

Snow! And me and Jess. In SNOW! Holy smokes, it snowed while we were there!

The badge. Again. Look at it. Now look at Mari’s face. And mine. Hee hee hee.

Of course, Lila and Mari were utterly gorgeous. As always (bitches!)

While Valerie and I couldn’t quite figure out what the hell I was doing with my phone (We were at the bar after all.)

Zombie attack!

Arggghhh. Grrrrrooaannn. Braaaaaiiiinsss. (Can you believe we didn’t win the costume contest?)

Connie and Val. Who are awesome. In awesome shirts. Because they are awesome.

I maybe feeling up a complete stranger.

Remember when I felt up a stranger? Well, I also got a massage from a complete stranger. How’s that for the universe restoring balance?

Me, Mari Carr and Val, the best personal assistant ever!

A random photo of me. I sent this one home to my girls. They responded with a picture of our cat.

So my Ellora’s Cave editor could not make it to RT this year (boo boo), so we took her.

And Farm Boy (Lila Dubois’ husband) posed with her.

And kissed her.

While Lila and Rhian looked like they were about to make out.

Duck faces! (I love Michelle Boone, in case you’re wondering)

And more duck faces (with some serious groping. Hee hee hee)

And me. At the Dallas airport about to fly back to Oz. Happy to be going home, but sad RT was over for another year

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, I am so close achieving my goal of 10,000 words while the girls are at RT. I’ve gotten to 9000, and thought I’d reach 10 this morning, but for some ungodly reason hubs decided to get up at 5am too. Now, let me just say this: when I get up early I sneak around the house, afraid to open the fridge to even get myself a drink so as not to wake up the kids, caaaarefully turning the knob on the office door so it doesn’t squeak and trying to type super quiet. When hubs gets up, all the lights go on, breakfast is made, he clacks around in his work shoes. Yeah, the kids were up a lot earlier than usual. So my writing time disappeared into thin air. Kind of pissed I got up for nothing, actually.

So I’m still hanging on 9k and am stuck at a point in the ms where I feel like a wall has come up. The scene I wrote this morning?

She hears Jake on the radio and he says something that makes her change her mind.

Think I can just leave it like that?

Perhaps not.

Best pic from RT ever!

Sami

…maybe it’s because almost everyone I know is off at the Romantic Times Convention. Yes EVERYONE I tell you, except me.  My bright idea was to have all the other divas email me with anecdotes of their time in Kansas City so I could post them on here, but have a guess how many emails I have in my inbox? That’s right. A big fat zero. I guess the world travellers have forgotten all about me, stuck back here in suburban Australia. Sniff sniff. From the twitter feed it seems they are all too busy drinking and doing lunch to have time for much else. Bitches.

Oops, I was meant to whisper that.

On the good news front, I’ve been writing up a storm this week. I decided I would try for 10,000 words in the time I would ordinarily have been away at RT getting no words down so I feel a little better about not being there. I am after all a writer and writing is what I must do, I tellsya! So far I’m at just over 4,000 since Monday, with another five days to go. I think I’m going to make it, and I might even go over my admittedly conservative goal.

SO SUCK THAT OTHER DIVAS.

Sami

Or, you might say something like this…

“H-hello.” Damn it, her voice was still croaky. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Of course, after you greet them, and get to know them for a few minutes, you might go on to do this…

“So who’s going to try to kiss me first?”

This, in turn, may be followed by some of this…

Harper whimpered, her pussy constricting. The sensation of being pressed between the two men was intoxicating. There was no definition for her mind to comprehend. Pleasure surrounded her. Hard, sculpted pleasure.

Her fantasy hadn’t even come close.

Keith’s erection nudged the curve of her mons, his thighs brushing hers in the water. His tongue swept into her mouth, a gentle exploration that belied the urgent want she felt in his cock.

Marc’s fingers played with her nipples, pinching, flicking, twisting. His lips traveled her throat, his teeth nipping her flushed skin. She groaned with each bite, rolling her hips between them. The stiff length of Marc’s desire stroked between her butt cheeks, Keith’s equally hard pole rubbing against her belly.

God help her, she’d never felt so…so…

Keith’s lips left hers, dragging down her throat, over her collarbone. He skimmed the tip of his tongue into the shallow dip at the base of her neck, lowering deeper into the water as he worked his way down her body.

Without a word, Marc scooped up her breasts, holding them in his palms as if offering them to his best friend. Keith took one nipple into his mouth, sucking fast.

Harper bucked in Marc’s arms, her cry loud in the quiet afternoon. “Christ, yes!”

Marc sucked on her neck, brushing his thumb over her other nipple as Keith continued to feast on her breast.

Ribbons of pleasure unfurled through the pit of her belly. Tingles of heat shot to every limb. Radiating from her breasts down to her very core. She squirmed, her pussy prickling with sudden heat. Her clit ached. She tried to push her thighs together but Keith’s hands stopped her.

He flattened his palms to her upper thighs, his thumbs tracing circles over her flesh. His tongue and teeth and mouth tormented her nipple, each suckling pressure growing fiercer. Behind her, Marc kneaded her breasts, his mouth exploring the side of her neck, her jaw. His tongue swiped into the shell of her ear before he captured her lobe with his teeth.

She hissed at the shard of pleasurable pain the bite awoke, bucking her hips forward.

Keith took advantage of her shift, his thumb grazing the seam of her sex.

“Oh,” she panted, rolling her head. The sun beat against her closed eyelids. The water lapped against her skin. Her senses were in overdrive, her body more aware of every caress, every touch, than she could fathom.

When Keith dipped his thumb into her pussy, she gasped.

When Marc pinched her nipple she begged for more.

Want to find out more of what Harper says? And does?

Misplaced Hands, the fourth book in the Foreign Affairs series written by the most amazing New York Times Bestselling author, Mari Carr and myself, releases on the 24th of this month. TWO DAYS!! You can read more about it at the Foreign Affairs blog (click here), as well as see how you can enter the Foreign Affairs contest

Sooo, what would you would say to two hot Aussie stockmen?

One of the shopping mall/hotels has a huge fountain inside -

While shopping today (which has been double for us as we left Sydney Thursday afternoon and arrived in Hawaii Thursday morning!) I spotted this cool pj’s set –

The pic is a bit wonky but is says ‘come to the dark side…….we have cookies’.

We’re off for more shopping tomorrow and sightseeing the next. That’s pretty much the plan for the whole eight days we’re here. And once those days are up Mr.C and I are off to LA for a couple do days before heading on to the Romantic Times Convention in Kansas City. It’s going to be an amazing, busy, insane few weeks.

Rhian Cahill
http://www.rhiancahill.com

Thought I’d share with you a little snippet from the book. This is not FINAL final, but I don’t think it’s going to change much. if at all, from here. This shows Summer Campbell about to give professional surfer Ty Butler, her long lost first love, a massage ten years after they broke broke each other’s hearts. Talk about awkward!

 ______________________________________

“Take a seat and fill this out.” Summer handed him a clipboard with a single sheet of paper attached. “Standard procedure for all new clients.”

Sitting on a rattan chair beside what was obviously Summer’s desk, Ty filled out the form quickly, spending a bit of time at the “list previous injuries” section before handing it back.

Summer raised an eyebrow as she read the form. “Your body’s been through a lot. Your shoulder, your knee. You have a nasty scar there.”

Ty touched the jagged pink line that curved around his kneecap. “A nasty collision with some coral a while back.”

“Does it give you trouble as well?”

“Not today. But it’s more of a help, seeing as it aches when it’s about to rain. I can pretty accurately predict the weather.”

“A skill usually only possessed by elderly men and meteorologists.”

He grimaced at her quip, uncomfortably aware as he occasionally was these days that he was getting old. Not old old, but professional-athlete old. His thirtieth birthday was around the corner, which meant if he kept going at the pace he had been the past ten years he could look forward to another ten collecting more injuries and aches than most men in their sixties had.

“I apologize, that was a rude thing to say.”

“No worries.” He didn’t want her to think she could impact his mood so easily. “The body’s not going to hold up forever, I know that.”

“So you are thinking of quitting surfing and moving back here?”

“Which rumor mill churned that one out?”

“I’m not in the habit of listening to rumors,” she said stiffly. “I saw you looking at real estate at AJ Sanderson’s.”

Ty’s lips twitched. “So you’re only in the habit of spying then.”

“I wasn’t spying.”

The twitch turned to a grin at her indignant denial. Summer looked up from the clipboard and saw the expression on his face. She let out a breath. “I forgot what it was like to be teased by you.”

“Missed it, have you?”

Summer’s gaze darted away once more. Ty instantly regretted the taunt, wondering why he had the urge to taunt her at all. He wasn’t nineteen and tied up in knots about her anymore. He wasn’t interested and she wasn’t available anyway, end of story.

_______________________________________________

Unforgettable Summer is a follow up to Moonlight Mirage, where I first met Ty Butler. I’m looking forward to it coming out in November . How about you?

Sami

You are welcome.

Sami

However, today put me way out of celebration mode, and straight into status panic.

What happened, you ask? Well, sit down, have a drink (I sure did) and let me fill you in.

It began early this morning as I walked into my office to check my emails. My usually twinkling computer was unexpectedly…Not twinkling. I mean it was dead. Seriously, my trusted Mac had checked out on me.

Pretending everything was fine, I simply rebooted it and waited for that screen to flicker happily to life. Which it did. For all of one minute, and then it checked out again. So I stopped, took a deep breath, and repeated the process. Several times. As did my hubby. He continued to do so as I dropped the kids at school. But even heroes cannot achieve the impossible, and heroic as Mr Dee is, he finally admitted defeat, and phoned the Apple store.

Two hours later I sat at that genius bar, pouring out my sad tale of woe to the guy helping me. Along with my woefully dead computer, I had our back up time machine. We thought I could take it along just to make sure I had my most recent back ups from the day before.

So, Mr Helpful at Apple gets us all plugged in, switches on my computer, does a thorough check on it, and proclaims it is still alive and functioning beautifully. (Cue my grateful tears of relief.) Then he checks our time machine, and informs me, in a very solemn voice, that while Mr Dee’s computer backed up yesterday, the last time mine backed up was in August. Of 2011. (Cue more tears, this time, not grateful ones.)

He closed down the computer and sent me home to back up everything.

Bless Mr Dee. He did just that, then a few hours later, returned to check it had all backed up. And guess what happened as he tried? You got it. My beautiful, faithful computer checked out once more. And guess what else? It hasn’t checked back in again. So now I have no idea what was backed up today and what wasn’t.

Okay, I’m trying breathe regularly. Seriously I am. But let me fill you in about another few details of my life.
1) I have a book due to my editor on 1st of May, of which I have written one fifth.
2) Next week, school breaks up til the end of April. I have to look after two kids full time for the duration of the holiday.
3) two days after school breaks up, Mr Dee heads overseas for a business trip for a week.
4) I leave for RT on the 26th of April. (Yes, this is wonderful. But remember the deadline? It means that the book I owe my editor needs to be finished beforehand, so my deadline moves up to April 25.)
5) as I checked my emails earlier (thank God for my iPad, giving me Internet access) I found a lovely email from that very same editor, with a first set of edits for More Than Lovers.)

Make no mistake, I love my editor very, very dearly, and thank the powers that be almost everyday that she is my editor.
But all of this, on top of my now defunct computer means only one thing for me:
FULL BLOWN PANIC.

So forgive me if I neglect to talk about Office Affair.
Forgive me for pouring out my tale of woe to you here, and forgive me if you don’t hear from me again for a while.
I am currently drinking a very lot of alcohol and doing my best to hold my life together as panic slams me straight between the eyes.

Jess