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January 2018 contest winners!

1/16/2018

Congratulations to all of you who entered--and there are a LOT of you! Since the prize this month is a novella that is not available unless you can find an out of print anthology, and because it's a "sort of sequel" to a longer book that I've released through Beyond The Page Publishing that is totally NOT like my usual stuff, I'm sending a pdf copy of Dime Store Cowboy to everyone who entered my contest this month.

The main character, Mark Connor, was introduced in Cowboy in My Pocket, a romance I wrote back in 2000 that used--on purpose--every trope ever written in a cowboy romance. I essentially set out to write a parody of romances as a joke, and the more I wrote, the better I liked the way the book was turning out. Tag, the cowboy hero, needs a bride of convenience to save the family ranch, and his trusty side-kick finds one. Only he finds the wrong one. Instead of a barrel racer who has volunteered to play the bride, he drags home a woman he finds wandering along a mountain road who has amnesia...do you see where this one is going?

I had more darned fun writing this book. It ended up winning awards and getting a top pick review from Romantic Times Magazine. What's really funny is that before I sold it to a small epub, I actually had a verbal commitment from an editor at a large publishing house (that I will not name) who had no idea I was making fun of exactly the kind of romances her publisher is famous for. When the senior editor read it, the manuscript suddenly showed up on my doorstop, overnighted back to me!

The title of the book is COWBOY IN MY POCKET and I think it still holds up as a fun romance today. Tag, the hero, is based on my husband (yep, the clueless cowboy hero) to the point where, when our daughter was reading the book she said she had to stop when she got to the part where Tag and Lee were getting up close and personal.

Actual dialog: "Mom! I couldn't read it. I kept thinking of Dad when I read Tag's words, and THEN HE TOOK HIS PANTS OFF!"

Aren't kids great? Anyway, if you like the style of Dime Store Cowboy, you might enjoy Cowboy in My Pocket. And, btw, that's our son and his then girlfriend, now wife, on the cover. He's wearing his dad's cowboy hat, Mel's wearing my Levis, and Sarah was egging them on just out of the frame for the photo shoot. My husband took the picture--it was truly a family affair!

It's going to take me a while to get the copies all sent, but if you don't have yours by tomorrow afternoon, please drop me a note (email, please. I don't always catch all the Facebook messages and notifications, and I'm rarely on Twitter) so write to me at katedouglas13@gmail.com.

And contrary to what I said about reading JAK's new book, PROMISE NOT TO TELL, I got a whole stack of books I need to judge for a contest, so will have to read those first. That's not a bad thing, though. I've found some amazing authors while judging for contests! Jayne's book is sitting here taunting me, and it's the first one I plan to dig into after I'm through reading the contest entries. Then I've got Eileen Wilks' Dragon Blood, JR Ward's Blood Fury, and Susan' Fox's latest Blue Moon Harbor book, Come Home With Me. I'm gonna be so busy! But, they're incentive to finish my judging.

I hope you're not freezing wherever you are--weather has been yucky here, but nothing like a lot of the country where it's absolutely frigid! Stay safe, and watch for your copy of Dime Store Cowboy. I'll be sending them out shortly.

Kate

January 2018 Newsletter

1/9/2018

This is the one I've been waiting to show off--we finally came up with the perfect cover for Wolf Tales 12 Exposed, the final book in my Wolf Tales series, and the story that led to my Spirit Wild series.

This one should be up for pre-order (for those of you who haven't already read the book--this is a re-release of the original) for $2.99 on Saturday, January 13, and comes out January 23. At that time, the price will go up to $3.99.

This is really the story of the entire pack, a time when all of their tales sort of come together as they are faced with the greatest threat to the Chanku since they first discovered their shape shifting abilities.

If you click on the cover, it will take you to the Wolf Tales 12 Exposed page with an excerpt. Buy links will be active by Friday, January 12, though sometimes Nook and iBooks take longer. Once submitted, we have no control over the actual update. And yes, that makes my inner control freak go absolutely batshit crazy!

I've just gotten the rights back to more of my Kensington titles, which is sort of a mixed blessing. They're mine to sell at whatever price, which is good for readers since I keep them as affordable as I can afford to have them, but it takes time to get them back up for sale. I'm still working on Dark Captive, mainly because I took the entire month of December off. My husband had surgery and still can't walk (he had part of his foot fused, and it's going to take a long time to heal) plus the grandkids were all in town for the holidays. Sad husband and busy grandkids will always win out over anything else, even my fantasy world!

I've done some reading the past week or so, which has been a real treat. One beautiful story was a YA title by CC Hunter, aka my dear friend Christie Craig. Last year she told me about a story she wanted to write, about a young woman who has a heart transplant and then starts having strange dreams that she is convinced come from the donor of her new heart, who was a student at her school. The story is that Eric committed suicide, but his twin brother Matt and now Leah, as well, are beginning to think that maybe Eric was murdered. At least that's what the dreams are beginning to tell them.

If you click on the cover, it will take you to information about the book (which comes out February 27) including an excerpt. After hearing Christie's description of the story she planned to write, and knowing that her husband had just gone through a kidney transplant, I was really anxious to know how it all came together.

Honestly? It's amazing. I've got it out to read it again, but take a look at the excerpt and tell me you're not interested in this book!

Okay, so it's no secret that I'm a diehard JAK/Amanda Quick/ Jayne Castle fan, but I'm a creature of habit and I knew that this Amanda Quick historical wasn't set in a familiar historical setting--no, this one takes place in the 1930s in Los Angeles. It took me all of about three sentences before I was hooked. I think it was the glitz and glamor and a young woman on the run from a murder she didn't commit.

Or maybe it was just that I am such a huge fan of this author's work.

I don’t want to give away any plot points, but I will say this one also includes a sexy Hollywood leading man, a burned out, moderately disabled ex-magician, a higher than average number of dead bodies, and the aforementioned young woman on the run. And it's wonderfully romantic and left me smiling, but then that's what a truly good romance--and even romantic suspense--is supposed to do. I've got another of Jayne's books sitting here, taunting me, and I think this one just released. It's called PROMISE NOT TO TELL, and I haven't even allowed myself to read the jacket blurb because I am so far behind on my work.

ell, damn. As soon as I wrote that, I had to go read the cover blurb. And yes, it looks wonderful, and I imagine I'll have a full report by the time we have a contest winner. Yes...I'm planning to do a contest, but will figure out just what when I come back to work on this tomorrow. Right now it's 11 pm. and I'm fading fast.

Okay...it's officially tomorrow, and my "prize" is really for those of you who have read my romantic comedy, COWBOY IN MY POCKET. I wrote a sequel to that book that appeared in an anthology with Lori Foster called The Promise of Love. My story, DIME STORE COWBOY, is a stand alone story with characters from Cowboy in My Pocket. It's a short read, and not even available right now, but I will send a .pdf file to those selected as winners. I'm seriously considering going back to my romantic comedy roots for a bit, though I still want to do more Spirit Wild stories. Will see what you think of my Dime Store Cowboy... Just fill in the entry form (the one that says CONTEST ENTRY FORM!) and you'll be entered. Remember, I married a cowboy almost 46 years ago, so those guys in blue jeans, ten gallon hats and beat up boots will always be my hot button!

Have to add one more book that I just remembered--it was a BookBub freebie last month that I clicked on both because it was free and because I loved the cover. I also loved the book. Rimmel is the quintessential nerd on scholarship who has to tutor the campus jock, a guy appropriately named Romeo. The writing is wonderful, the characters absolutely spot-on, and the story way too much fun. It's impossible not to identify with Rimmel, unless, of course, you were the most popular girl in school. I never was--in so many ways, I was such a nerd that reading Rimmel's chapters (this is split with chapters in both Rimmel and Romeo's points of view) was sometimes absolutely painful, with the caveat that, thank goodness I'm past all that. I'm no longer a college nerd--now I'm just a grown-up one, but that is, for some reason, much easier to deal with! Anyway, check this one out, and take a look at the trailer as well, especially the outtakes. Really fun, and Cambria Hebert is definitely an author I need to read more of.

That's about it for now. I'm back into Dark Captive--started back at the beginning to refresh my memory and clean up some things I thought of while I was busy with holiday stuff--and the more I reread, the more I like my characters, especially Asha, the Berserker snow leopard learning to be human. She's definitely keeping Leo on his toes--and if you'll recall, Leo's character is one I misnamed in Dark Refuge, where I called him Aaron. That was a stupid mistake, but comes of having so many characters. When I was writing him into the book, I referred back to some of my old notes from the original Wolf Tales series where I had first named him Aaron. I should have looked at my own notes right here on my website! It's been corrected in the ebook version, but sadly the print is forever incorrect. You can see the full list of characters in my Chanku section of this site.

That's it for now. Remember, you can pre-order Wolf Tales 12 Exposure beginning Saturday for $2.99. If you've read some of my Wolf Tales books but not the final one, I'd suggest that you read 12. It's the one where so many of the things that happened in earlier stories are fully explained, and it sets up the world of the Chanku for the Spirit Wild stories I'm writing now. Enjoy!

I hope your holidays were happy and "flu free!" So many people out here in California have been sick this year, but they're saying that the flu shot makes it less dangerous even if the shot doesn't completely protect you from getting it. I want all of you healthy for the new year, and I do hope you can steal away for some time to read a good book.

Obviously, I've been stealing more time than I should! Need to get back to work, now.

All the best,
Kate

I'm a romance author--I really love those happy endings, though I don't mind putting my characters through pure, unadulterated hell before they get there...

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 Newsletter Contest:
Contests are back! I'm not totally settled, but really miss giving things away, so ready or not, I'm going to start slow. International entries are welcome, though I will have to limit International winners to ebooks. Postage costs are just too high. Your addresses will not be shared or sold--I respect your privacy. I will only collect addresses if I am giving away print books. I won't be doing that as much because I've got very few print books left in my stash, but I do have other things!

January 2018 contest winners!

January 2018 Newsletter

I'm a romance author--I really love those happy endings, though I don't mind putting my characters through pure, unadulterated hell before they get there...

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