FRIDAY FIRSTS with... Vicki Batman

THE FIRST FEW SENTENCES OF... This is NOT Working

Why today--of all days?

Monday, and here I am in my brand new position, which took beaucoup de months to find in this wacky economy, only to feel like the ultimate failure.

          

Right after bouncing like a school kid in my ergonomically designed desk chair, I’d punched the computer's on button. Nothing happened.

Genre: Romantic comedy

Publisher: Indie published

Amazon | Smashwords

Available now!

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Fun First Facts About Vicki

What was the first romance you ever read?

 My first romance(s) were written by Emilie Loring. At age fourteen, I was in an in-between stage in my reading life and had complained to my mom. She handed one to me and I devoured it. Fortunately, Ms. Loring had written seventy-something. I had a fantastic summer.

What was your first date with your significant other?

 Our first date doesn't really count. I'd made plans with a guy who lived in my apartment complex to go see "For Your Eyes Only." Only my friend had had too much fun-in-the-sun. So when I was checking on him, his doorbell rang. On the other side stood Handsome, my friend's co-worker. He thought my friend and I were dating, but we weren't. Handsome made excuses to leave, but my friend dragged him inside and introduced us. Then he blurted out, "Why don't you take her to the movie?" I assured Handsome he didn't need to bother. Imagine my amazement when he said yes. We went and I did all the talking. Not a good sign in my book. And didn't hear back (not that I really thought I would) for six weeks until the night I was hostessing my girlfriend's birthday party. After blessings from my cousin, another girlfriend, and a college chum, I continued to go out with him.

What was the first meal your significant other ever made for you?

One time, he decided to host a dinner party with me and a co-worker as guests. Only he didn't have a full set of silverware. We passed around a Ginsu knife to cut our steaks.

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More about Vicki: Like some of her characters, award-winning author, Vicki Batman has worked a wide variety of jobs including lifeguard, ride attendant at an amusement park; a hardware store, department store, book store, antique store clerk; administrative assistant in an international real estate firm; and a general “do anything gal” at a financial services firm. The list is…endless.

She has completed three manuscripts, written essays, and sold many short stories. She is a member of RWA and several writing groups and chapters. In 2004, she joined DARA and has served in several capacities, including 2009 President. DARA awarded her the Robin Teer Memorial Service Award in 2010.

Most days begin with her hands set to the keyboard and thinking "What if??"

You can learn even more about Vicki here:

Blogsite

Facebook

Twitter 

Pinterest

Goodreads

AuthorCentral

Smashwords Author Profile

FRIDAY FIRSTS with Stephanie Queen

The first five sentences of... PLAYING THE GAME

“Damn it,” Roxanne muttered. Her drink had splashed on her dress. Looking right, and then left, at the partygoers around her, she took a surreptitious glance down to inspect the damage.

A very large, dark, wet spot spread over her left breast. Luckily it was only ice water—or maybe not so lucky, on second thought. 

Amazon|Barnes & Noble
Available now!
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FUN FIRST FACTS ABOUT STEPHANIE

1. Who was your first love? 
He was a summer love. We were 17, lived on a lake and water skied every day. He got to be real good and wanted to become a professional water skier--he even learned to ski barefoot. We were engaged at age 18 but the following summer he was in a terrible water skiing accident and shattered his elbow. The doctors told him he'd never water ski again. He fell apart. We were dis-engaged by the age of 19. Tragic and True. Of course now every time I tell the story over a margarita I can't stop laughing at the youthful absurdity.

2. What was the first Rated R movie you ever saw?
My tragic water-skiing hero and I, on our first date, went to see Live or Let Die, a James Bond movie, at the drive-in no less. He was hot to see it because there was a speed boat chase scene and he and James Bond happened to have the same speed boat. Geesh. I should have known then...

3. If you could live your life over again, what’s the first thing you’d do differently or change? 
Mostly I've had a wonderful life so far--although it's far from over yet! But maybe I would skip the engagement to the tragic water skiing guy... just saying.

More about Stephanie: Stephanie Queen is a romantic at heart, a writer by nature, and has the soul of a cheerleader. She enjoys creating stories where her rose-colored glasses-view comes to life and the good guys always win. Spending most of her life in New England, she's attended many of the area colleges, including Harvard, and even earned a couple of degrees along the way. Although she lost count of all the jobs she's had before she settled on being a Novelist, her favorite was joining with the Keebler Elves to sell cookies.

Playing the Game is Stephanie’s latest release. Other novels by Stephanie Queen include a romantic comedy, The Throwbacks, first in the Scotland Yard Exchange Program series, and a contemporary romance, Between a Rock and a Mad Woman. Both are available atAmazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. Her next release, The Hot Shots, the second book in her romantic comedy mystery series, will be out this summer.

Visit the author at www.StephanieQueen.com or at her Stephanie Queen author page on Facebook and follow her @StephanieQueen on Twitter.

FRIDAY FIRSTS with Darcy Burke

The first five sentences of... HER WICKED WAYS
“Stand and deliver!” Montgomery Foxcroft demanded a second time as he and the other four members of his band stepped out from the trees lining the rutted and muddy road. They’d scouted the two coaches for the last quarter mile. Each had a coachman at the reins and a footman on the back. The footman on the rear coach crouched low as both vehicles rumbled to a halt.

Genre: Regency romance

Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Smashwords

Available now!

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FUN FIRST FACTS ABOUT DARCY

1. What was the first romance you ever read? I'm not sure, especially since my mother recently told me that we read a lot of Harlequins. I have no recollection of reading Harlequins! I do remember reading Kathleen Woodiwiss' Ashes in the Wind and thinking it was the best book ever written.

2.What’s the first thing you do when you start writing a new story?Buy a composition notebook for research and plotting notes. It becomes my "bible" for that story. I think I'm going to run out of space in the notebook for my WIP. That's never happened before! But it's a contemporary paranormal, which requires a lot of world building and it's so important to keep all of that straight. I actually find it more challenging than writing historicals!

3. When standing in front of a buffet line, what’s the first food that catches your eye? Dessert, but I rarely leave room to eat it! I also think many desserts look better than they taste. And this may shock you, but chocolate is not my first choice. I'll usually go for lemon or a creme brulee or similar.

More about Darcy:  Darcy Burke wrote her first bookat age 11, a happily ever after about a swan addicted to magic and the female swan who loved him, with exceedingly poor illustrations. An RWA Golden Heart® Finalist, Darcy loves all things British (except tomatoes for breakfast, or any other time of day, actually) and happy ever afters.

A native Oregonian, Darcy lives on the edge of wine country with her devoted husband,their two great kids, and three cats. In her “spare” time Darcy is a serial volunteer enrolled in a 12-step program where one learns to say “no,” but she keeps having to start over. She’s also a fair-weather runner, and her happy places are Disneyland and Labor Day weekend at the Gorge.

You can find Darcy online here:
http://www.darcy-burke.com
http://www.facebook.com/darcyburkefans
Twitter - @darcyburke

Give Away! Sign up to receive Darcy's newsletter (go to her website-http://www.darcy-burke.com) before May 25, and be entered into a drawing to win an advanced electronic copy of Darcy's June release, His Wicked Heart!

FRIDAY FIRSTS with GENIE GABRIEL

The first five sentences of... PICTURE PERFECT LEGACY

Don't take my baby. Please don't take my baby. The woman's plea whispered in the steady swish, swish of the wipers. Her image wavered among the falling flakes of snow, horror streaking in anguished tears down her face. Marly O'Shea shivered and forced her attention back to the narrow, twisting road grudgingly carved out of the side of the mountain.

Amazon|Barnes & Noble

Available now!

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FUN FIRST FACTS ABOUT GENIE

1. Tell me about the first novel you ever wrote? What ever happened to it?

It was published fourteen years after I started writing it. :) And the rest of the story… Like most teenaged girls, I was infatuated with a few rock stars. So when I was supposedly grown up and started writing, I thought a rock star would make a good hero of a romance book. Well, if you overlooked the rock star's mantra of "drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll." So my hero became a reformed rock star. And did someone say celebrity-type heroes don't sell well unless it's an exposé to a tabloid? Um, I must have missed that e-mail. I blithely started writing. And writing. And writing. Six-hundred pages later, I realized the story was far too long for any contemporary romance markets.

I had also been attending Romance Writers of America meetings and conferences and was learning the craft of writing. Point of view? Character arcs? Conflict? Building tension? Oops! I totally rewrote that book over half a dozen times, but I loved the two main characters and wanted to tell their story. I "came close" to selling it to New York publishers--meaning I got personal rejection letters from editors.

Fourteen years after I started writing THE ROCK STAR, I sold it to an e-book publisher. I later got my rights back and another e-publisher re-issued it last fall with its current title and a new cover. I still love that story and continue to promote it along with my more recent books.

2. If you had a free afternoon, what’s the first thing you’d do?

Find some work to do? LOL! I'm happiest when I'm busy. I'm also at a point in my life where I can pretty much do what I want. So I write. I'm also a graphic designer and I love to design book covers. I have a herd of doggies--mostly rescues--who have taught me more than I ever learned in a classroom. I am a Reiki master and experience miracles every day. The door to my office opens onto the deck to my back yard and I can meander out and dig in the dirt if I want to. If I scheduled a free afternoon, I'd sit on the bench under my magnolia tree and read books, or go play with my kids and grandkids.

3. If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you’d buy?

Funny this is one of your questions! I bought a ticket for the $640 million lottery drawing just for fun. What would you do with that much money? Pay off the mortgages of everyone you know? However, what I would buy first is property for my herd of doggies so the animal sanctuary I've planned for years would have room to spread out!

More about Genie

For years I've been fascinated by the puzzle of why some people collapse under life's traumas and others emerge triumphantly stronger. These triumphs of the human spirit over the ugliest of adversities became the basis for my stories. Yet my dramatic stories have always contained touches of humor, and sometimes I have great fun writing romantic comedy novellas. However, in all my stories, my passion for writing romance is an outlet for the powerful messages that people can overcome great difficulties, and true love can turn life’s heartaches into happily ever after.

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THANK YOU, Rebecca, for having me as a guest on your blog today! Maybe just for fun, anyone who comments would tell me what they would buy first if they won the lottery. I love to hear people's dreams!

And…it's not the lottery, but anyone who comments here will be entered in the contest drawing I'm having on my LEGACY blog for a $15 gift card. The drawing will be April 27. If you want to check out that blog, the url is http://oshealegacyseries.blogspot.com/. You can also check out my Web site http://www.GenieGabriel.com for more information about me and about my books.

Thanks to everyone who stops by!

FRIDAY FIRSTS with Ramona Butler

The First Five Sentences of... SABRINA SAYS

WANTED: SINGLE LADIES.

Please send your picture and writeto:

Three Lonesome Cowboys, PO Box 58,Stagecoach, Nevada.

“What the hell?”

Rusty Daniels swerved his shiny new four-by-four pickup off the roadand out of the crush of traffic. Open-mouthed, he stared at the gigantic billboard erected on thehillside above Highway 395.

Amazon|Barnes & Noble

Available now!

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FUN FIRST FACTS ABOUT RAMONA

1. Tell me about the first novel you ever wrote.  Whatever happened to it?
My first novel was born a short story, written via an all-night gusher of adrenaline, in a motel room on the way back home from the out-of-state high school reunion I'd just attended.  My first reunion -- my first short story.  But after I got home, I realized there was a lot more I wanted to include in that tale about reconnecting with old friends and classmates.  Until then, I'd never considered writing something as lengthy as a book.   I had been writing for publication, but that was poetry, short nostalgia pieces, and opinion pieces for one newspaper, while reporting for another.  But that reunion romance just grew and grew and grew, until it became a 400+ page manuscript.  More accurately, it became a 400+ page dust catcher, because it has never even been submitted to a publisher for consideration.  It was my "learning" book, and it's still a story I love, with wonderful characters and a unique setting.  So whenever I hit a wall with whatever I’m working on, I think about dusting off that manuscript, doing major surgery on it, and then seeing if it might fly.  But I probably never will.  There are too many other stories to tell.

2.  What's the first thing you do after you wake up in the morning?
That's an easy one.  Now that I no longer have to rush off to an office, the first thing I do is head downstairs, prepare hot tea, and then open up the house.  I've lived so long in an area where skies go on forever, that I can't stand for blinds and drapes to block out the sun or hide my view of the mountains and high desert.  By the time tea is ready, my cat is up and ready to join me for a few quiet moments before I actually start my day.  I know, I know, I'm really spoiled.

3.  Tell me about your very first date.
Gosh, that was so long ago it's nothing but a fuzzy memory.  I think it was a blind date.  A friend, a classmate named Marilyn, was invited to go on a hayride by her boyfriend, and he had a friend who was going along.  I think they set it up for me to join them just to keep their "third rail" busy and out of their hair.  I didn't mind, however.  I'd never been on a hayride and Danny was a nice kid, sort of quiet and kind of dorky, but he gave me my first kiss.  It happened that night.  I think he became a city bus driver like his father.  (Hmmm, guess that memory isn’t so fuzzy, after all.)

MORE ABOUT RAMONA

Ramona Butler is a true romantic. She met the love of her life at age seven -- she just didn’t realize it until they reconnected at fifteen.  They married at eighteen and are still going strong. She loves sunshine, ballads, the smell of freshly peeled oranges, the purr of kittens, the taste of nachos with all the fixings (including lots of jalapeños), plus the feel/freedom of truth and wide open spaces . . .  And her family.

WEBSITE-- www.ramonabutler.com
BLOG  --  http://ramonabutler.blogspot.com/
I’m on Twitter as Ramona2252