Cover poll

I'm almost done with my next book, tentatively titled The Path (or possibly El camino since it's set in Peru) and I need some input on the cover. I took close to a thousand pictures while I was in Peru, many of them of the Inca Trail, one of the elements of the book that the title refers to. And this is where you come in. I've included some of the best pictures of the trail below. Leave a comment with your favorite to help me decide which one to submit for possible use on the cover of the book.

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Birthday wishes and more fangirl squees

I wrote pretty extensively last spring about meeting Janelle Taylor at RT and everything that meant to me.

She sent me a birthday wish on Facebook for her "KC  Book Fair buddy." Of the hundreds of birthday wishes I got yesterday, and I got many, that's the one that made me tingle in excitement. You see, Ariel the author wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for one of Janelle Taylor's books. I was bored with YA books because 30 years ago, YA books romances didn't even have a kiss half the time, and they certainly never went beyond a kiss, and that kiss had no description surrounding it. Just the simple statement that they kissed. Imagine my delight, then, when I opened Destiny's Temptress and found not just kissing but descriptions of kissing and sex! I knew the mechanics of sex all fifth graders learn in sex ed, but that was hardly the same.

I read that book until it fell apart. I studied it. I wanted to see how to build tension, how to develop a relationship, how to write sex. And then I turned around and practiced all the things I'd (hopefully) learned by studying a master. 

And now that master is my KC Book Fair buddy.

Yeah, I'm doing a happy dance all over the house once more.