A great read....

Here's a romantic thriller I read last weekend and would highly recommend.
It is on offer free from August 27-30.

Watching Over the Watcher

Psychic Selene Johansen is an excellent police investigator, able to determine guilt from the first handshake. 

While her talent for fact-finding keeps her busy, her personal life is lonely. After all, who wants to date a girl who can read minds?

But Selene's consuming solitude dissolves when she learns longtime friend Brandon Price knows about her psychic gift ... and her secret love for him.
 
As their relationship heats up, Selene dares let her guard down, not realizing that a ruthless stalker is determined to put an end to the couple's passion... and their lives.


Review: Sensual and Intriguing

This is a sexy, fast moving romance with a strong thriller component that lurks in the background and strikes when you're not expecting it. The way the psychic character is handled in this story is fascinating. The human side of he gift. This clever and imaginative author makes us think about what it would actually be like to read thoughts with a simple touch. And it is not all good. I thoroughly enjoyed the story. Read it cover to cover in one sitting. I highly recommend it to others who like their romances sensual and intriguing.

Beta Reading

Beta reading rocks!

I kind of thought about it with my first two books but didn’t do anything with it until my sister had a look at my work and gasped in horror at the spelling and grammar. She, Jenny, is a bit of an English guru and fixed it all for me, but, more importantly, left me with the idea that I had to have my work looked at by fresh eyes.

A wonderful writer named Simone started a thread on Amazon looking for beta-exchange. My next book is close to being complete and is being passed around the terrific little group of readers/writers who have come together there.

Not only spelling/grammar – also great ideas to polish your work in general. If you are not being beta-read you’re missing out!!!

Here’s a link to the group on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/forum/meet%20our%20authors/ref=cm_cd_fp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2UYC1FC06SU8S&cdThread=Tx1M9M711GVV8YK

'CLEAN' romance - no sex or profanity

I think sex scenes in romance books are a good thing. There is a litmus test though. Erotica is decidedly B-grade. If the romance needs the sexual content to stand up, it falls over into the erotica B-grade basket. Much the same as a great psychological thriller stands up without the blood and gore. Do you have a strong psycho-thriller if you change nothing and simply delete the blood & gore scenes? Do you have a strong romance if you change nothing and simply delete the sex scenes (close that bedroom door)? That's the litmus test IMO. Sex/gore are useful to add spice to an already powerful story.

That said, there is nothing wrong with B-grade stories done deliberately. Erotica and blood & gore are easy, cheap-thrill material, and perfect if that's what you're in the mood for.

I think profanity has its place in modern dialogue. In real life, men in the company of other men are crude and profane. Right or wrong that is the way it is. Children should never be exposed to profanity. Women should not be exposed to profanity unless they use it themselves and set that standard. That's the way most people I know behave - it's what reads well in books for me. But again, if the story needs profanity to stand up???

But there's more!

If you pick up any one of the books in the Rainy Day series you will be reading a complete story that begins and ends between the covers of that particular book. You do not need to read volumes 1-3 to make sense of volume 4. If you only ever read volume 2 you will never know you missed anything.

There are no cliff-hanger endings in this series. If you read more than one volume you will get a pleasant surprise to see the link in the series developing. If you read all 6 books in the series you may find a bonus plot strand that was buried, figuratively and literally.

G'day

Have you ever been to Australia? This is a huge island continent but living here still has an island feel about it because we're sort of isolated from the US and Europe. We're in a different hemisphere, which means the opposite seasons, and with time differences it's generally night here when it's day-time over there.

As for culture we're probably not much different. We're modern, western, multicultural. There's a lot of European influence here from migration back in the 50's and 60's and onward. There's a lot of Asian influence from more recent migration. Of course, we're still a bit British from 200+ years of settlement and we have a great aboriginal culture that dates back thousands of years beyond that. And we have weird animals.

My mystery/romance books are set here in Australia. I've travelled and worked all over this island and am drawing on that experience for settings. We have massive deserts, tropical rain forests, grasslands rolling with the curvature of the earth, beaches north, south, east and west, and we have snowy mountains in the south. We have huge cosmopolitan cities and one pub, outback towns. Usually there's a pub.

There are links over the right side there to preview the 6 books in this series.