Monday, July 15, 2013

Happy Reading Camper.

Last night Debbie Macomber's latest book popped up on my Kindle. Lost and Found in Cedar Cove. I love her writing.
I was surprised, I thought this book was being published around the 25th of July. I'm really glad it is here.
I don't have a scanner to give you a shot of the cover. It is the Debbie Macomber lovely covers.
Excuse me, I am going to read, now. Have a great day.



Saturday, July 13, 2013

GOOD NEWS

The Canyon Fire is 45% contained. Yay!!!

The Fire Update Sat. Morning

I didn't get to watch the news last night, so really nothing but personal observation. I was out and about on the west side of town and the east as well and kind of every place in between. The smoke was in the main confined to the mountain ridges. In some places it looked as though it might have been raining hard. There was lots of humidity, lots for us. At 7AM yesterday there was 66% humidity. I know, if you live in New Jersey you are saying, "I'll take that." To us cactus patch dwellers high humidity is 12%. Several days ago, I could not see the mountain directly in front of my window. Yesterday afternoon, I could see all three of them. Little Black Mountain, Sunrise Mountain and Black Mountain out the kitchen window.
I have some night pictures. I'm not sure if they are taken by my son Brian Colt or of our favorite lady photog Laura Billman. But anyway. They know who took them, thanks guys.
The last I heard the spokesperson for the emergency crews said they thought the fire would be under control by the 19th of July.


These are Free Come and Get 'Um.


These books of mine are free this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. July 12,13,14. That is right zero, zilch, nada, freebie books, how good is that?

 Spill the beans, Jacqueline, where, how and what kind of books are they.

Here is the link to MS. GOT ROCKS   http://amzn.to/12tSITP
Do You Love a Story With Romance, Adventure and Hunky, Handsome, Mysterious Heroes?
Look no further. Rocky Clancy will rock you. Rock with her adventures from Alaska to California.

Follow Rocky as she leaves her beloved Alaska to make her fortune on her father's gold claim in California. Her attempts at earning a living are seriously and dangerously complicated when her gold claim is jumped by the most gorgeous man ever born.

Her new found BFF is a world class bad girl, and that hunk of a guy is not what he first seems. To make everything worse, the Feds suspect she is up to no good on a world wide scale and Mother Nature is not happy with her, either.
Her gold claim produces a whopper nugget and exacts a horrible price in exchange. Rocky's life is at the lowest point. At least, she thought it was, with the Feds poking around her ranch, and everything in her life going topsy turvy. The devastating point is the news that her BFF is the most wanted criminal in the world. Mr. Tall, Dark and Not As He Seems doesn't know what to make of Rocky, is she an international bad girl or a unknowing gold dredger trying to reconstruct her life? Whichever, he fights the urge to get closer and and closer to the fire that is the red-haired Rocky.
Rocky is a full length novel. About 275 pages depending on your reader. Friday, Saturday and Sunday it will be free, regularly priced at 3.99.


Here is the link for BANGLES AND BRIGHT LIGHTShttp://amzn.to/189H5q3   

JoJo Lucas is one of the top dancers in the Tom Kats Male Dance Revue at the Wild Kats Theater in Las Vegas. JoJo is blessed with the body of a quarterback and the intelligence to know what he wants in life and what he does not. He wants to be a one woman man, in a business where every woman is supremely beautiful and he can have his choice. 
Mimi Moro is the almost frumpy costume designer at the The Four Aces Casino, she designed and fitted what little costume JoJo wears. Her goal is to design fuzzy bears and bunny rabbit hats for the shows and stay in love with Carlo. The co-workers have met briefly at work, but Jo Jo is involved with Autumn and Carlo is the always absent man for Mimi. Then, Autumn dumps JoJo at the most intimate time (ahem) and a week later Mimi finds Carlo with the Glorious Gloria and that is it for Mimi. Weeks later, when Mimi gets back from Europe,JoJo and Mimi connect over the pizza at Whole Foods. She know instantly he is the one as soon as she looks in his grocery cart. He knows she is the one when, she bites into her artichoke pizza. Loving under the desert stars seals the deal for them. There will be another wedding gown for her to design, one just for her, at last and some interesting play clothes for JoJo to enjoy.
Bangles and Bright Lights is a sensuous  playful, romantic behind the scenes look at the real people who make the City of Illusion work and how they love in Sin City.

BANGLES is a short story of 75 pages depending on your e-reader. Now is it free, regularly priced at 1.99.

Both books are available at www.amazon.com  in all e-reader formats, tablets and your PC. There  are no print editions.















Thursday, July 11, 2013

Blackberry Mystery

Disney Studios.

I am editing a full length novel I wrote some time ago. There are two bad guys. Or what I wrote to be bad guys. In the first five chapters of it, they are reminding me of the Apple Dumpling Gang. I have either a very strange dark comedy or a very, very strange mystery on my hands.
Photo from Disney Studios.

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Update on Fire Carpenter 1



Top and lower photos courtesy of Laura Billman of Pahrump, NV  Mid photo courtesy Brian Colt of Las Vegas NV. The photos are showing the west side and the east side of the Spring Mountains. Pahrump is West. Las Vegas is East.
As of 5 pm this afternoon, the fire is at 20K acres and is now 10% contained. The good news is no homes have been lost, the really bad news is that one business has been burned out.
Wind is at 35 mph. This morning and early afternoon the wind has the smoke over the mountains South to North. Right now I look out my window and the air is filled with yellow, gray smoke. I cannot see Sunrise Mountain and just barely can see Little Black Mountain, which normally are clear as bells view of mine. The wind is coming out of all directions.
There are now 500 total people working on the fire. The monetary cost is 5 Million. The human cost is incalculable.

Carpenter Canyon 1 Fire Update.

This is Carpenter Canyon Fire Monday afternoon. Wind blowing smoke north on the ridges of the Spring Mountains. Photo compliments of Brian Colt.
This is the picture from the other day from the Pahrump NV. side of the Spring Mountains. The volume of the smoke looks about the same. Photo compliments of Laura Billman.

The fire is 15 per cent contained. It is now 15,000 acres.

I am sitting at my computer looking North. The sky is Las Vegas blue except for a huge bank of smoke on the left running S to N. Nye County must be covered by now. OMG.

I just received this night photo from the Pahrump side. Again the photo is compliments of our friend Laura Billman from Pahrump NV.

Th humidity is coming up in the next few days that will help. The Feds have sent in a air tanker. But that doesn't make it any easier to go up and down those canyons trying as best the firefighters can to save those homes. Carpenter 1 Fire is now the #1 priority fire in the nation. We wish we weren't.

Thanks to Laura and Brian for the photos.

Monday, July 08, 2013

It Rained Sunday.

It rained for all of about 3 minutes and it was lovely. Big fat raindrops knocking the smoke from the air and raising the humidity and lowering the temperature. I opened the door and windows and enjoyed. I know I'm nuts, but I really like monsoon season here. I do not like the lightening setting off fires, but other than that I like monsoon.
There was street flooding warning just to the east of the "Strip" in the area of Gi Gi's cupcakes.

 Next time you are in Las Vegas go to Gi Gi's cupcakes and have a mini cupcake or even better a regular size one. I didn't get one today, but I heard reports that the Orange Cream with Butter Cream Frosting was delicious. I like Cravin' Cakes cupcakes even better but they do not have a storefront. Cravin' Cake has the best butter cream frosting in the world and was voted the best wedding cakes in Las Vegas.

I think I am giving a tour here

I finished writing the novel Sunday afternoon. This book just went on and on. I really am glad to stop writing on it. I have been doing a sentence by sentence of the cover blurb since then.

Mostly yesterday, I felt an sense of unease. A nap didn't help, a chocolate candy didn't help, a cup of tea didn't help, mopping the kitchen floor certainly didn't help. Still feeling I don't know what. Foreboding, just general unease. Probably the humidity, I will be back on the beam later.

Maybe it will rain today and make my day.

Sunday, July 07, 2013

Sunday Morning, Oh Sunday Morning and Carpenter Canyon Fire

Oops, now I will be singing that song all day. Just some updates on things happening around my old homestead in Nevada.
The bad news is the Carpenter Canyon Fire is 0 per cent contained, with over 10,000 acres burned. There are about 500 firefighters working through horrid conditions to get the monster under control and out. I believe that there were 200 homes evacuated. That may be incorrect, but the other data is from yesterday afternoon. The wind in the valley has dropped this morning, but the top ridges are still getting the 20-35 mph winds. Bad new is T-storms predicted for the Sheep Mountains, the dry kind, of course. That is what started the whole thing in the first place.
.
The good news is that the temp this AM is 88 F and is going to be cooler. I'm talking Mojave Desert cooler here, so read that cooler than 117 F. Today, is supposed to get to the 105-108 area. Cooler, I say.The humidity is still high, it is morning so that is normal we are at 22% right now. In case you haven't noticed I'm a weather follower. I live next to a weather station, so I can personally check how accurate the forecast is. Even I can stick my head out the door and agree it is durned hot out there.

The other good news is that I woke this morning with the ending of Love Arrives on Horseback spelled out in my head. I got up and started writing. I have less than 3K words to get to goal.
The bad news is that now I have to edit. I have already gone through most of it once. I've run a spell check then went back and spell checked the spell checker with my dictionary.
Making progress.
Good news today is flower day here at the Sr. Citizen complex. One of the local gourmet grocery stores loves us. We get flower deliveries every Sunday. This is what they do rather than throwing out the bouquets that didn't sell on Saturday. There are always plenty of good flowers and I have come to love flower Sunday.
Have a great Sunday, I need coffee.

Saturday, July 06, 2013

Nitty Gritty Writing

Getting down to the nitty gritty of the new novel. I have about 3000 words to go, the cover is finished and I have part of the cover blurbs finished. The permanent title is Love Arrives on Horseback. Only in my own mind is it finished.

The blurbs are what describe the book and entice the reader to want to enjoy what a writer's imagination has concocted for the reader's pleasure. It is the hardest part of writing a novel. If I think about it, that should be the easiest part.
 It is only a couple of paragraphs about something that you have lived, eaten, slept with for months. I am a writer, a wordsmith, a singer of stories. What is wrong with me that suddenly I can't write myself out of a paper bag? I am there right now.

But that is alright, I will have written the finish of the book by midnight tonight and the blurb, well, I'll just keep plugging at it. I can hardly wait for you to see the smashing cover I have for it. It is a Wow.

If you want to see the blurb that I just finished writing for Ms.Got Rocks, it is here.
amzn.to/12tSITP


Friday, July 05, 2013

Very Scary Carpenter Canyon Fire

As of this afternoon, the fire had burned 9000 acres of the only forest southern Nevada has. The temp right now at 930 PM is 100 F, and the wind is at 20 gusting to 25-35 mph. You can imagine at the top of those ridges the wind is blowing harder that that.
We went out for ice cream a little while ago and could see the fire on the top of the ridge at Mt.Charleston. I have been in floods, major blizzards, ice storms, lots of earthquakes and wind so hard that you were moved out of the way. But seeing that fire on that ridge was/is one of the scary-ist things ever.
I live about 30 miles from the area of the fire. That should give you some idea how huge it is. I did not get a photo. If you have ever been in the Las Vegas area you have seen that our mountains go straight up and straight down. There are very few roads up there. The roads there are closed, except for emergency vehicles. If you are a praying person, give a shout out for the firefighters up there.

Carpenter Canyon Fire Outside Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Las Vegas Valley is filling with smoke. Carpenter Canyon is on fire. It is hotter than the hinges of Hades here and today the wind is kicking in at 35 mph. Though it is cooler at 105+ than last week it is still a witch with a B for the firefighters.
This fire isn't as big as the monster by Prescott AZ, thank God. But Kyle Canyon and Mt. Charlie (Charleston to you) are in danger and all the little communities up there in the resort area.
Last night on the TV news, there was a picture of a helicopter taking water out of the Mt. Charleston Ski Resort pond where they store the water to make artificial snow.
It is so pretty up there in that area. If I can get the picture on here I will try. Our friend Laura Billman took it on the other side of the Spring Mountains in Pahrump, NV. I could watch the smoke all day out my kitchen window.The wind has shifted and so we have the smoke.
If you look really closely you can see the flames. Someone reported that the bunch of smoke was at 30,000 ft., where it started to anvil out.

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

This May be Weird. Tall, Dark and Handsome.

I was visiting my usual blog haunts this AM. Author Jill Shalvis www.jillshalvis.com asked this question of her readers. Was your first love a good thing or did you want to key his car for him? Plus, has the reader re-connected with their first love.
I did not key his car, we were 13 and 14. No cars for us.

So here goes. I would like to contact my first love. 
Howard Crosswhite. Attended Livermore, California High School in 1954. My name then was Jackie Ayen.

If you know him or are him. Hi. Please comment.

If you like good romance novels give Jill Shalvis' books a try, you won't be sorry.

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

I Just Learned Something Exciting to Me.Thank you, Amazon.

The Armed Venus or Amazon in the National Museum in Washington, DC.

If you are an Indie writer, one of the things you do is create your own book cover, or hire someone to do it for you. An author then hopes to recover the cost of the pro when the book sells.
I am not in that cash range, yet.
However, yesterday I got a e-book called Free Kindle Book Covers.by Paula Neal Mooney. First, I am right there for anything free. Come on, you know you are too. Second, I spent hours and hours yesterday afternoon making a new cover for Ms. Got Rocks. I tensed up so that my back ached.
I reminded myself that I was not out in the 107F heat digging ditches. So shut up and do it. I did.
I started reading Free Kindle Book Covers when I went to bed at 1AM. By 1:15, I was out of bed looking at the Kindle Publishing Web page and making a new cover in about 15 minutes and it was terrific. The pre-made covers have wonderful art work. I was terribly impressed, and today I'm going to start finding what I want for the "Love Arrives" covers. I have never met Miss Mooney, but should I ever, I shall throw myself at her feet and hug her lovely feet. I did not get paid for this post. Before I start working on the new cover I will jump over to the book page and leave a 5 star review.
If you write you need to look at this book.

New Cover for the Novel.This is What I Made Yesterday.


Meet Callaghan, you guys. He lives in the adventure romance Ms. Got Rocks. The novel needed a new cover. I spent all afternoon working on this. Someday when I am rich and famous, I will hire someone else to make the covers.
I love this man's eyes.
Here is the link for Ms. Got Rocks. http://amzn.to/13p70KP

Monday, July 01, 2013

Put on Your Monday Shoes.



Photo courtesy of www.becauseclothing.com


I know it is hot and icky. I know, I have just been out in the stuff to pay bills. I know, I have a heat headache to prove it.

But I will suck it up and get my Monday boogy shoes on.

My sister just finished reading Ms. Got Rocks http://amzn.to/1avvRzp, and she loved it. She said that this one was much better than the last one she read. I thought she really liked the last one. Oh well, I want to improve, so that is good Monday news.

More good Monday news. The lady across the way had successful cataract surgery, that is great. She is one of those 91 year old ladies who makes the Every Ready bunny exhausted. She was doing her laundry when I visited her. Even that common chore must be so much easier now that she has one eye that works. Very happy for her. Try measuring laundry soap with your eyes closed, to say nothing of sorting colors.

I think that is all the good morning news from here. Oh, I almost forgot, it is supposed to be cooler tomorrow. Around 102F or so.That is very good Monday news.

Have to get back to writing, work, work ,work isn't that what Mondays are all about.
Stay cool, be cool.