Things That Work

I use this Nifty Grabber for all sorts of things, from reaching the pull-string on ceiling fans to grabbing down the mongo-packs of paper towels and toilet paper I keep on the ledge above the over-the-laundry cabinets, to grabbing hubby's rear end. Oh, and also to occasionally retrieve a lost sock or pair of undies when they slip behind the washer.

We found ours at Home Depot, for around $15-$20. And it's been soooo worth it.

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy!

10 Things Not to Say to a Romance Writer

I love this list--and the responses she included.

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy!

Things That Work

Warning: This may turn into a rave...

I really, really love this product. Bed, Bath & Beyond sells 2 different models--the other is stainless steel and costs about double, but I can tell you the plastic one works just fine.

I love pineapple, but it's such a sticky mess to process, and dang near impossible to get rid of all that rough husk and chewy core. Not anymore! I'm telling you, this tool makes it so fast and easy, I want to have a pineapple party. I could buy a whole stack and just keep coring and wedging them all day long.

For 10 bucks, how can you go wrong?

Autumn Piper

Got pineapple?

Happy Jamaican Anniversary, Mon

OK, I had to do it. So if you hate me and you don't want to watch, I understand.

But if you'd like to see what I'm about to see...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTMol6j4kSE&feature=related

Happy 20th Anniversary to my guy. :)

Autumn Piper

Got romance?

Double Release day--Twice the fun

I've got 2 outstanding releases to announce today, both books I edited from fantabulous authors: Til Death Undo Us, by Morgan Q O'Reilly (who I've had the honor of being CP with for about 5 years) and Dangerous Desire, by Diane Escalera--who writes muy caliente romance and is multi-published with Kensington's Encanto Books.

A quick bit about each:

Til Death Undo Us

She never imagined love could happen twice—until her husband returned from the dead.

Cassidy thinks she’s getting on with her life just fine after her husband’s fall to cancer. Life is quiet, which is just the way she likes it, half a continent away from her overbearing Irish family.

Niall doesn’t want to scare the fragile Irish rose, but her husband, supposedly two years in the grave, has been caught on security tapes at a secret government laboratory.

Together, they unearth evidence of industrial espionage and identity theft...and frightening connections to the Irish Mob that will put more than just their own lives at risk.

Content warning: Sex, bullets, more sex, intimate body piercings and a few red roses. What more could a girl want?

*** Editor's note--This one has just the right blend of intrigue and heat (and it's first in the Open Windows series. I really, really love book #2). Imagine being investigated because the feds think your (dead) husband is stealing top secret government secrets and you're in on it! And what about that title? Rock on, Morgan Q.

Dangerous Desire

Sometimes you have to lose one thing to find another.

Sienna Diaz is desperate to find her missing beagle, no matter what it costs. She hires Cruz Santino, the best—and hottest—in the business. He’s an ex cop, dangerous on many levels, which comes in handy when all evidence indicates her beloved pet was snatched to use in a dogfighting ring.

Cruz will do whatever it takes to find Sienna’s lost pet, but he also wants results from the smokin’ hot attraction between them—and he isn’t above breaking his own hands-off-clients rule to get there. However, until he brings her beloved beagle home safely, he won’t have Sienna's undivided attention...and affection.

Warning: Strong language, caliente sex, violence, and a dangerously hot rescue.

***'Nother editor's note: Again with the intrigue/mystery and hot summer lovin'. If you like Beagles (who doesn't?), hot men who're good at kicking butt and unearthing clues (who doesn't?) and goofy BFFs (do I need to ask again?).... what are you waiting for?

These books are available in digital formats, like, everywhere. (and 30% off this week at the LPI bookstore.) Go get your copy!

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy!

Then again, this is better for today

I had a whole other blog post planned, but then I saw this awesomeness by my pal Sutton Fox

(an article for beginning novelists) and decided to share it today. I especially love how she explains about back story.

Go Sutton girl!

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy!

There's definitely a threshold

My friend and I had a lengthy text-versation yesterday about ebook prices. She wants to buy the new Jennifer Weiner ebook, but doesn't want to pay the going price. And I don't blame her. The going price is $12.99. We both agreed that for a new book by a bestselling author, $9.99 feels like the most we're willing to pay.

And ya know, I realize I've made comparisons between the music industry and the publishing industry before, but I'm going to do it again. I pay between $0.89 and $1.29 per song for music--whether it's old or new, whether it's by Bon Jovi, or Lady Gaga, or David Archuletta or Weird Al. It's a song. (and the $0.89 only come from Amazon, btw). A digital audio file. Well, guess what? I don't care if it's a book by a new author and it's her first release, or it's by Stephen King or Jenn Weiner or who. It's a book. A digital text file.

My person opinion is, if the authors and their agents aren't earning enough from ebooks that they have to be priced as high as trade paperbacks, well... their publishers are obviously taking too high a cut. (and we know they are--we're bombarded with articles on the web about the small royalty percentage the big pubs pay on ebooks, compared to what smaller pubs pay. But who's letting them get by with this, signing those contracts?) Bestselling authors can certainly choose whatever publisher they damn well please, and get their books contracted/marketed/sold. Hell. Once they have a following, they can self-pub if they want, and hire their own editors/marketers. They're the ones in this equation with the power to change the pricing. (and they just might be the first ones to feel the squeeze, if other readers feel as squeamish about paying so much for a book)

Just sayin'.

So, what's your threshold? Is there a price you feel is too high?

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy! (but not sexy enough to pay more than $9.99 for)

Is a quiet library a relic?

I spent some time working in our local library today (gassed the house for summer insects and had to vacate for a couple hours). Here I thought it'd be a nice, quiet place to concentrate.

Wrong.

Now, I understand kids are a huge portion of the patrons, and I'm all for that. But what I don't get is, don't moms teach their kids to be quiet in the library anymore? It's not a playland. I know the children's section has some neat things for toddlers to get their hands on, but that isn't an open license to run screaming throughout the building, or throw things, or tumble, or... Hey. I remember what it's like to have energetic little ones, and there's no way you can predict what they're going to do next. But when they do something entirely too loud or out of appropriate norms in a given setting (church, library, etc), the mom should it at least give them a "Shhh!" How else are they going to learn?

And I'm used to working around activity--old episodes of Seinfeld, teen kids fighting, cats begging to go in or out, incoming texts and calls... I don't need total peace. But sheesh.

Heading home to work on the back porch outside. Where it's semi-quiet.

Autumn Piper

Got quiet?

Potatoes get a pardon!

In other (non related) news, I recently discovered potatoes contain some awesome resistant starch that lingers in the bod for 24 hours and suppresses appetite. I read about it in All You magazine, but here's an online article with some of the info.

See, I knew those carbs couldn't be bad...

Yahoo! Bring on the baked spuds, baby.

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy!

A is for Apple, B is for Body paint

To celebrate release of her new book, today's blog is a guest post by LK Below.

Ten things I bet you didn’t know about body paint:

1) Mehndi or “henna tattoos” are a form of body paint. Through the application of the design on a body, they look almost like ink tattoos but slowly wear off after a week or two.

2) Some young Nuba (African) men celebrate their youth and vigor by painting their bodies.

3) Recent archeological research indicates that body paint may have been used as far back in the past as by Neanderthals.

4) In 1933 at the World Fair in Chicago, Max Factor (founder of Max Factor & Company cosmetics) was arrested for bringing a model dressed only in the specialized body paint he was developing for Hollywood.

5) In the 1950s and 1960s, there was an alternative art movement which involved painting a nude model and having that model then roll on a canvas to distribute it.

6) The World Body Painting Festival in Seeboden in Austria is the largest in the world, boasting thousands of visitors.

7) There are art galleries to display such body art. Craig Tracy is a famous artist who has opened one such gallery in New Orleans, called Painted Alive.

8) In 2009, Air New Zealand, a national airline, recorded a television commercial and safety video wearing painted-on uniforms as a part of their “Nothing to Hide” campaign. CEO Rob Fyde also took part in this activity.

9) Perhaps the most famous instance of the use of body paint is worn by model Rebecca Romijn as Mystique in the X-Men movies.

10) The heroine, Colleen, from my newest novella Never a Princess, Always a Frog wears nothing but green body paint to a saucy Halloween party, and it leads to a wild escapade that might just last longer than one night…

Here's the blurb for Never a Princess, Always a Frog:

Has this frog finally found her prince?

From the moment Colleen confesses her deepest desire--to experience the same passion she’s read about in books--she is swept away on the most daring escapade she’s ever experienced. Dressed in nothing but green paint, she attends a Halloween party searching for the man of her dreams. She finds him, but then fears she won’t be able to give him up.

Since the death of his wife five years ago, Dan’s life has been on auto-pilot. But from the moment he meets Colleen, he starts to feel alive again. And he knows he can’t let this would-be princess stride out of his life…

Buy the book or learn more at http://bit.ly/NeverAPrincess.

Want to win this book? Be sure to visit L.K. Below's blog for her Week-After-Release Party on Monday, July 11th 2011. One lucky commenter will win this book! Visit http://lbelow.blogspot.com and leave a comment on her party post on Monday to enter.

L.K. Below writes romance and speculative fiction. Under her full name, Lindsay Below, she pens young adult novels. Visit her online at www.lbelow.net.

Are you a checker?

I love things that are concrete. (not sidewalk kind of concrete, but real kind of concrete, so don't start thinking you need to put me on an episode of Taboo or anything) One of the job-skills/personality strengths assessments I took long, long ago pegged me as someone who likes to know exactly what is expected of me, what is coming up. Totally true. Which makes me... listmaker. A checker-off-er. I love to create lists of what I know I have to get done (and I always leave room to write in things I end up doing that I didn't foresee), so I can look back and see how much I've finished in relation to how much is left. And lists on the computer are... just okay for me. I do like to generate the lists there, but then I always print them. For me, there's whole other level of accompishment-satisfaction in physically checking something off.

How the heck this relates to someone who writes mainly by the seat of her pants, I cannot say. LOL

But the fact is, I've got the Megalodon of all To-Do lists running right now, to keep myself on track for finishing everything before my upcoming vacation... and I'm pretty stoked looking at it. Looks like I'm going to have all those boxes checked.

Love,

Rainman

Never a Princess?

It's release day for another of the books I edited--Never a Princess, Always a Frog, by LK Below.

This is a fun, short novella about a woman who dares to do something terrifyingly, outrageously, sexy (with a helping nudge from a friend)... with wonderful results.

It's on sale all this week for 30% off, which makes it just $1.75

Piper Denna

Romance is sexy!

Cookbooks... victims of the internet?

My cookbooks are gathering dust, and not because I've stopped using recipes (or cooking, though my family might argue). I still use them for my tried-and-true favorite recipes--got an index box with the best of those, mostly magazine tearouts, and some of them are internet printouts. But, when I'm going for something new, I turn to the net. Because, let's face it... my sweet collection of cookbooks can't come close to the vast number of recipes online.

This morning it was a recipe for croutons. I know I made them a couple years ago, but can't remember if it was from a book or the net. So I blew 10 minutes looking through all my books... and here I am now, going online to read some better ones. (note I said "read". LOL. This is one where I'll look at how somebody else does it, take away what I want, and wing it."

Do you get recipes online?

Autumn Piper

Got recipes?