April 10, 2007

SNOW-FREE

A clear road ahead  I need one!

My Path: Whistler Golf Course, above — 30 mins solid, slow running. Knee very stiff to start — one leg feeling a completely different length to the other. Eased into movement about 12 minutes down the road. Ended happy! Going to shoot for 40 mins tomorrow.

I’m up against a crrrrazy set of writing deadlines over the next few months, and I hope the discipline of aerobic exercise will help me stay on track. And sane. Yeah, yeah, I know …  I’m already well beyond help in some people’s minds …

April 9, 2007

PLOT COMPLICATIONS …

That’s what this tree brought to mind. I’ve just got to remember to somehow connect the tangle of branches back to the core, and down to the roots …

My Path: 45 minutes speed walk, Whistler golf course.

My Goal: This training program –> I want to give my knee a rest this season after my two back-to-back marathons late last year. So, a half marathon is the hope. This training program is for real beginners, very do-able, and I plan to embark on it with my 13-year-old.

The intent is some special mum-daughter bonding time while we struggle towards a common goal … and all the processes that entails. That common goal would be doing The Victoria Half Marathon in the Fall … both DDs and I. How cool would that be!!?? Me and my girls running a race together at Thanksgiving. It won’t be about speed, or ultra distance, it’ll be about something deeper.

However, if that knee betrays me  — I’m buying some Nordic Walking poles. Having a plan B from the get-go could be considered defeatist, but given my knee, it’s also realistic. And Nordic Walking is an activity particularly suited to writers who sit at computers 9-10 hours a day … it burns the calories, clears the plotting brain, and de-hunches those neck and shoulders   And it makes you smarter. There’s research

April 7, 2007

GUESS WHO’s awake?

Saved by a momentary sound of silence …  As the headphones plugged into my MP3 went quiet, shifting from the Pointer Sisters to Tina Turner, I heard a tell-tale crack in the brush up ahead. There was no mistaking the particular weight and resonance of that sound. I whipped off the headphones,  waited for a second, and he emerged, lumbering big and fat and black onto the trail. My first bear encounter of 2007.

Made me realize how many warning signs are drowned out by my running music. Had I kept going, I’d have been right onto the guy. It wasn’t the bear pictured above — the bruin I encountered was one of Whistler’s collared bears. The photo below shows Whistler local Lori Homstl tracking one of our collared friends through a residential neighborhood using radio telemetry.

I think I’ll be breaking out the bear bangers about now … and this is the reason we don’t hide Easter Eggs outside

Photo -National Geographic

April 4, 2007

IT’S IN THE SIGNS

MY HOROSCOPE from Rob Brezsny’s Free Will:
“Depending on which surveys you choose to believe, the job satisfaction rate is either abysmally low or surprisingly high. Sirota Consulting, an attitude research company, found that 76 percent of all workers like their jobs. But the Conference Board, a management advisory group, put the figure at less than 50 percent. Wherever the truth may lie, you Cancerians have a great chance to skew the data upward during all of 2007. And you’re now in a phase that offers the best possible opportunities for getting that prospect in full swing. I suggest you concentrate on upgrading your relationship to work in every way you can imagine.”

Hmmm, sounds nice …… but  I  just don’t know whether to trust ol’ Rob anymore. He let me down this week — said I’d get lucky and enjoy an unexpected perk. Well, Rob, those two lottery tickets I rushed out and bought before six o’clock?? … nada. zip. I’ve tried to think of what other unexpected lucky perks I may have enjoyed over these past few days … but it was not a particularly smooth week at all. Quite the contrary, in fact.

The only real extra perk was being able to acutally RUN. Without the knee giving out. Yes. That was a perk. Definitely. The sun was shining. I had the MP3 in my ear, the wind in my hair, the sky achingly blue, the air so clean and cool you felt you could drink it. It was like being on drugs.

But I did work for that perk, Rob. I’m going to work on my work relationship, too … just in case you’re right. It needs some loving attention. And I’m certainly not going to shake a sceptical stick at “upwards for ALL of 2007!!”

Sometimes I think Rob is a Cancerian.

April 3, 2007

ONE STEP AT A TIME … GETS YOU THERE

Or somewhere other than where you started  

I launched my new website around this time last year, and April 16 was the date of my first wobbly forway into the blogosphere. It was late by trend standards, but I liked the idea of having a place to offer readers a window into my writing world here in the mountains. And I enjoyed the idea of providing daily updates as a way to keep the content of my site fresh. I hadn’t had much need for a blog until that point.

80,070+ hits later, and one year under the blog belt, I’m still standing, and taking a brief look over my shoulder. I see that in April last year I was busy on line edits for THE HEART OF A MERCENARY, and edits for A SULTAN’S RANSOM, plus putting finishing touches to RULES OF RE-ENGAGEMENT. It seems like forever ago.

I enjoyed the intense pleasure of seeing those books released back-to-back later that year, and had a ton of fun with readers and a photo contest — which Leanna won. She’s now enjoying six-month subscription of Silhouette Romantic Suspense books — her choice

I was blessed with some fabulous reviews of the SHADOW SOLDIERS series, and I met some wonderful readers through mail, all of whom offered the most exciting and encouraging feedback. You know who you are — Thank you!!!

Fast-forward to April 2007. I am expecting line edits for SEDUCING THE MERCENARY in the not-too-distant future — it’s being released in November 2007 —  and I’m finishing THE HEART OF A RENEGADE over the next eight weeks — both new SHADOW SOLDIERS books. I’m also digging into an exciting Harlequin continuity series this month, which I hope will challenge me to grow in new ways. Plus I’m plotting the third Silhouette Romantic Suspense in my contract. It’s also due this year, and it’s one that I think will step away from the SHADOW SOLDIERS format  … just to throw in some variety.

During this debut blog year, my blogger buddies also shared — and motivated me – in my quest to train for and complete two back-to-back marathons — The Victoria, and The Honolulu. They saw me tackle my first mountain trail races, and come winter, my first loonie ski races. They saw me struggle through a wounded knee in the process, and they held my hand with the launch of my first online read with eHarlequin.

It’s been an exciting year for me, and I thank the powers and stars that kept me on track Most of all … I look back and realize that this blog was a way to stay in touch — however peripherally — with friends, and with readers. Sharing the road is what made it the most fun of all. And now it’s affording me reason to look back, and reasses, within a frame.

Thanks for hanging in for the ride, guys, each little step of the way :). I think I’m going to be blogging for a while yet …. and watch for the next contest.

• Up for grabs, once again, will be a six-month subscription from Harlequin/MIRA/Silouette etc … again, winners choice. Details in the months to come …

The Women of the FDS

The Force du Sable — the private military company of the SHADOW SOLDIERS series — employs several full-time woman operatives, and many more contract specialists the world over. The first to get her story is Manhattan profiler, Dr. Emily Carlin.

Dr. Emily Carlin, psychologist and owner-director of the Carlin Institute in Manhattan, is a renowned profiler of ‘alpha-dog’ personalities – dictators, mafia bosses, tyrants. She is driven, cool, and career minded, in control emotionally and mentally at all times. But Emily meets her match in one of her darkest subjects yet — a powerfully seductive and enigmatic mercenary who has taken a small country by force. 

But where Emily is sent in to help orchestrate this alpha renegade’s downfall, as she delves into his mind she becomes the “tyrant’s” prisoner instead, and as she falls under his mesmerizing spell, she comes to realize that she is the one and only person in this world who can save him from certain death at the hands of her own people in exactly one week.

To do it, Emily will first need to confront her deepest fear. And in an emotional race against time she will have to abandon everything she ever thought she believed  … because all is not what it seems in this equatorial voodoo-steeped African jungle …. and the choice between good and bad is no simple matter.

But what will the notoriously dangerous mercenary Jean-Charles Laroque do to Emily when he learns the woman he welcomed into his castle, into his bed, and into his very heart … is a traitor sent to destroy not only him, but his country, his people — the dream for his land for which he is prepared to die?

SEDUCING THE MERCENARY — out November 2007, followed by the sequel,

THE HEART OF A RENEGADE — out in 2008