Bantam sent me the cover for Deadly Desire (Riley 7) today, and I thought I’d share:

I think it’s stunning

AJ Hampton from Shapeshifter Romance has put up an interview she did with me if anyone is interested in popping over for a read. I’ll be over there answering questions if anyone has any.

Didn’t write anything yesterday–after watching 27 Dresses at lunchtime, I got one of the songs stuck in my head and spent a good part of the afternoon trying to find the artist, and then trying to find the CD in Australia. I ended up getting in from Amazon, for about the same price I would have been able to get it here, but at least with Amazon it’s delivered to my door. I didn’t have to waste gas running about trying to find it. (Note for Aussies–I’ve not gone American. I have an LPG only engine in my car). Oh, and what was the song? Ray LaMontagne, Be Here Now. Lovely, lovely song. The cd is Till the Sun Turns Black.

Oh, and NY Time Bestseller news–The Darkest Kiss climbed on spot on the list (published 25th May). It’s now number 15

My lovely editor (Anne) sent me flowers for making the NY Times list Here’s the pics:

the first pic is just after they’d arrived, the second pic is a few days later, with the flowers coming out. Pretty, aren’t they?

And while we’re doing pics, here’s the cover for Chasing the Shadows, the third book in the Nikki and Michael series, which is being released by Piatkus in December:

and it’s another great cover, I think

I’ve also been slack in announcing this week’s contest winner, so without further delay, the winner of Rachel Vincent’s Stray (as well as a signed copy of Lifemate Connections from me) is Tamara Brandon–congrats Tamara! Your books will be posted today

Onto some writing news–Mercy continues slowly. The hero is still proving problematic in this one. The bugger keeps smiling! Which doesn’t seem such a bad thing, except he’s supposed to be all dark and moody and he isn’t. Not sure what I’m going to do with this man (although the heroine does know what she wants to do with him! lol) but right now, I’m just writing the book and I’ll fix all those annoying smiley bits later.

Mercy Burns progress meter:

Brenda Novak’s online auction to benefit Diabetes research is happening again right now, and there’s lots of great items up for auction–actually, there’s just about everything imaginable, from wallets, purses and gift baskets to antiques, sports items and jewellery. There’s also lots of stuff for readers and writers–from autographed collections of books to critiques from editors and agents. There’s even a autographed collection of Riley books currently up for auction The good thing is, every cent of the money goes back to diabetes research.  So, if you’ve got nothing else to do, and little spare cash up your sleeve, why not head on over there and check it out? You never know, you could get a bargain, and help diabetes research in the process

The Darkest Kiss has hit the New York Times best seller list (May 18th version) at number 16! Woohoo! Once again, I’d just like to thank everyone who ran out and bought the book–I literally couldn’t have done it without you

In other writing news–I have ARC’s for Destiny Kills. Only two, but I’ll be giving away one of them on my site once I finish the current round of give aways, so keep an eye open for that one.

Mercy Burns news–this book (which is the sequel to Destiny Kills) continues to plod along. The plot is slowly becoming tighter although I still think the current section is a bit talky-talky. Still, it’s words on page, so I’m not going to worry about it too much until I get all the words on the page, and I have a whole book to consider and edit. The hero in this one is a bit harder to pin down though–he’s supposed to be all dark and broody, but he keeps giving me these flashes of cheekiness. Which doesn’t exactly go with the dark and broody profile. I’m not sure if all of these will remain through the edit stage, but it does make him fun to work with

Mercy Burns progress meter:

Piatkus just sent me the final versions of the Dancing with the Devil and Hearts in Darkness covers. For those who don’t know, Piatkus have bought the non-American rights for all my ImaJinn books, and will be releasing them over the coming year, starting in September this year with the Ripple Creek series (a spot of trivia–Beneath a Rising Moon/Darkening Moon, along with Circle of Desire, are the books that Riley’s world grew from. You can see much of the same world building in them, including the moon ceremony Riley often talks about). Dancing with the Devil and Hearts in Darkness are both being released in November, and the sequels–Chasing the Shadows and Kiss the Night Goodbye will be coming in December. All of which is great news for all my non-American readers, simply because it means the books will now be on the shelves of book stores and readily available!

Anyway, here’s the covers:

you like?

The winner of the signed copy of Mark Henry’s Happy Hour of the Damned is Cassi Simpson. Congrats Cassi! An email should be winging its way towards you, and your books soon should be

New contest–this time the book is a signed copy of Rachel’s Vincent’s Rogue (the sequel to Stray). We’ll run with the same rules as last time– send me an email at kez @ keriarthur .com (without the spaces) and put Rogue Giveaway in the subject line. The contest will run until Sunday 18th (Aussie time) and the winner announced Monday. A signed copy of my erotic novella Lifemate Connections will accompany Stray.

Writing news– well, there isn’t any. I was out most of the weekend (lunching with friends on Saturday) and doing the rounds visiting the mum’s on Sunday. Hopefully today I’ll get back to some writing

I found out today that The Darkest Kiss hit 29 on the USA Today best seller list, and 10 on the Publisher’s Weekly best seller list. Both of which are pretty damn cool.  The New York Times list is a week behind everyone else, so that doesn’t officially come out until next week.  But thanks to everyone who bought the book and made those list debuts possible!

Writing news–well, I actually haven’t written anything these last two days. Mercy has changed direction (in that the muse has changed who the bad guy actually is), so before I got too much further ahead, I went back and did a read through, and wove the new bits and pieces of information into it.  So, with the story more complete, the muse can move on. Hopefully.

On a side note–I’m a regular visitor over to Lynn Viehl’s paperback writer blog, simply because she always has great writing tips on her site and I’m a big believer in the fact that a writer never stops learning (or shouldn’t, anyway.)  I was there the other day, and she’d just blogged about one page plotting, and gave an example of how to do it. Hmmm, says I, the unplotter, maybe this could work for me. Yes, I have plotted the last two books, but the plotting has basically happened after I’ve started the story. I’ve never actually tried plotting either before–or at least near–the start of a story, and this one page format looked easy enough to do. Of course, it wasn’t, because it actually meant I had to think a little more about the nuts and bolts of Mercy’s story. But it is the format that the muse has used to work out a few problems I was having with the story, and it is the reason for the change of direction. I think Mercy’s story is going to be stronger for it. So, if you’re not quite a plotter, the one page plotting process might just work for you. It seems to done the trick for me (although I still haven’t written the resolution down–I don’t think ‘it all works out in the end’ quite makes the grade. lol)

and really, the man set the standard for how all authors should act at these things (the author in me was taking notes!). He spoke brilliantly and he read brilliantly (he was reading pages from one of his upcoming books–which has graveyard in the title, but for the life of me I can’t remember the rest of it. I’ll be searching the stores come October, though), he did all the various voices for the characters and the made the prose come to life just that little bit more.  Did I mention the man had a wonderful speaking voice? And then he signed for ages, taking the time to talk to every single person, posed for pictures whenever asked, and there was absolutely no restrictions on what he’d sign. Some folks had bought in whole collections, others (like me) bought books there. He didn’t care, he signed them all. Oh, and Mel? So jealous you got a handdrawn original Gaiman pic in your book!

Writing news–Mercy continues to trundle along at a slow pace, and the plot deviation continues. I’ve only half-plotted part of this, but the muse seems intent on going her own way for the moment. I may have to draw her back to the plot line, because I’ve got a feeling it might be getting a bit talky-talky, but we’ll see.

Mercy Burns progress meter

of the Jenna Black The Devil Inside give away is Lia Kamp from Australia! I’ll also be sending a signed copy of Lifemate Connections–my erotic short novella–so hope you enjoy both books

The next give away is Mark Henry’s Happy Hour of the Damned (which I haven’t read yet but looks a real hoot), and again, I’ll be giving away a copy of Lifemate Connections along with it.

The contest will run until Sunday 11th (Aussie time) and I’ll announce the winner either Sunday night or Monday. To enter, just send an email to kez @ keriarthur .com (without spaces) and put Happy Hour give away in the subject line.

Writing Update–well, there hasn’t been a whole lot of that done over the weekend. I’ve been having massive modem/isp problems, and I’ve been on the line talking to our internet provider a whole lot (who were very helpful–and patient–I might add). And what happens when we finally got it fixed? We had a power outage which crashed the modem. Again. So, I’ve got a couple of pages done, but that’s about it. Hopefully I’ll get more done this afternoon, but I have the Neil Gaiman dinner and chat to go to tonight, which should be ace. I haven’t read a whole lot of his books but the man is an amazing writer and I’m looking forward to hearing him speak. I’ll probably ramble on about the aceness of it tomorrow.