Hello, all! Since my organization is legendary *big sigh of damn-I-wish-that-was-true*, this post is about two totally different things:

1. Next week I will be at the Romantic Times Convention in Kansas City, MO!
Come if you can because it is so fun. At the E-book Signing Expo on Thursday afternoon, I will need company and perhaps someone to sit in my chair and pretend they are me if I have to go potty. :) I'll also be going to classes, chatting with strangers who share a passion for books, or will be in the bar. But I intend to see very little of my hotel room. Please send me a note if you are going or if you can drop by, as I'd love to meet you.
www.rtconvention.com

2. A sneak peek/update of Strange Case (Hyde Book III)
Right now, the book is in the hands of my two amazing critique partners. When I get it back, I'll be doing some more obsessive tweaking. Then the copy editing starts. So, fingers crossed, the book will be ready for a June release. And let me tell you, kids, it is a very big book.

Below is a snippet from the first moment Mitch is freed from Hyde. You all knew Mitch was going to come back, didn't you?  I'm cruel, but not that cruel. Enjoy!

Mitch would’ve given anything to have his hands free. Except his cock. That he’d like to keep, just in case he was ever lucky enough to need it again. His head felt like it was about to explode and all he wanted was to push against the pain. But at least he was somewhere warm, somewhere different than where he’d been—an unknown place for an unknown amount of time. There was a chance he was actually alive. And if he was, he hoped it would continue. But then, that was something that seemed to be out of his control most of the time. His body and his mind were his own—no pain from Hyde, no physical reminders other than the headache. Maybe the bastard had thrown their head into the wall a few dozen times. Yeah, that sounded about right. Sad. Because it was a perfectly good head. The stuff inside of it was shit, but the head itself was fine.

When he heard the door slam into the wall, he craned his head up. Fuck, that hurt. But it was so worth it. Because he saw her. His love. His life. His afterlife. Oh shit. Maybe he was really dead. Sure it was a shitload better than the last place he’d been, but how mother-fucking ironic that he’d be strapped down in hell too. With her image just across the room to torture him because he couldn’t touch her.

Damn it, that was so poetic he wanted to kill someone. Again.

~~~~~~

That's all for now. But I promise to post more here and on FB. Also please sign up for my newsletter. I'll tell you why you'll want to in about two weeks.

A lot of people have been asking me when they can expect Book III to be released. You know I'm not one for giving spoilers. I like unpredictability, and I love surprises. So here's what I can tell you…

The third book of Hyde is tentatively titled:

Strange Case

I'm hard at work on it and plan to have it out this summer. As you know, this story is complex, and all the pieces need to be set just right to make them fit. Believe me, I tried using a hammer, but it didn't work. :) So please be patient with me while I squeeze it all together.

Mitch and Eden have gone through a lot to get to this point. And they have a lot more to figure out before they can have their HEA (happily ever after). I know someone out there just screamed, “What?!? An HEA?” Of course. After all they've been through, all they've had taken from them, I can't leave them hanging. Nor can I leave you hanging…for too much longer. Ha.

If you sign up for my newsletter, you'll be notified of Strange Case's release, my other releases, and any big news I need to share. But I'm not into spam, so I'll only be sending them out if the news is BIG. Add it to your Goodreads TBR list. If you friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, you'll be able to see updates as release day approaches.

Thank you for your kind words and support. I can't express how wonderful it is to know you are so anxious to see more of Mitch and Eden's story. All I ask of you is a little bit more patience.

Thanks again, and happy reading!

 Jekyll, an Urban Fantasy (Hyde, Book II) is out on kindle!

 And also on Nook!

That was the good news. The not-as-good news is that as of 8am on 12/28/12, Jekyll is only available on Amazon and B&N. I'm sure the kind folks at the other major retailers are working their damnedest to get it out. But this is a very busy time of year for them, and a ton of authors are releasing new books. I will be posting on Facebook and here just as soon as I see the book go up on iTunes, Smashwords, and the others. Thank you so much for your patience!

And thank you all for being so amazingly supportive and encouraging.
Sure, some of it was borderline nagging.

But I truly appreciate your excitement for the next installment of Mitch and Eden's story.

I hope you love the book! Happy New Year and happy reading!

Lauren

My good friend and critique partner, Olivia Rivers (look for her paranormal YA novel Frost Fire, coming soon, and add it to your TBR list on goodreads now) has truly outdone herself this time.

Backstory: Long, long ago, at our writer’s group meeting, I pitched the concept for Hyde, an Urban Fantasy to the group. I have no idea what I said, but it probably didn’t make a lot of sense since the story was only partially written at that point. Not to mention that I tend to ramble…like I’m doing now. Anyway…

The following week, Olivia shyly handed me a piece of thick photo paper. Having no idea what it was, I flipped it over and was struck dumb. Dumb-du-du-dumb.

The most gloriously perfect cover stared back at me. Somehow Olivia had been able to turn my confusing explanation of the story into the most exquisitely symbolic cover. No other design was ever considered. Ultimately, the final cover had to be reformed using  other stock images and fonts, but the design was as close to her original as humanly possible.

And now, I get to show you the cover she created for Jekyll. Ooooh, I love it. IMO, it’s even better than Hyde’s, which I would’ve never thought possible. So here it is:

Perfect, right?

I have to shout out a HUGE thank you to Olivia for all of her hard work and her incredible vision. And then I need to shout, “Now, get to work on the cover for book three!” before she realizes she has other things that need doing.

Isn’t it gorgeous? Please let her know how much you enjoy her work by leaving a comment in the box below.

Fifty Shades of Hyde

For the first three weeks of my son’s life, his name was ‘Baby’. This should tell you something about my ability to commit to names. Granted, most of that was because his father wanted to name him after Leonard Cohen. Really? Sure, because Leonard seems like such a happy, well-adjusted man. Exactly the footsteps I want my kid to follow in.

Naming novels is just as hard as naming children. Perhaps even harder because there are no little pink or blue books with popular titles. And if there were, they’d all have been used before. To title a book, you need something original, something people will remember, something people can mention in public without blushing.

Authors often use a ‘working title’ while they are writing or editing a book. It may not be perfect, but it is something easy to say or refer to. For instance, my soon-to-be-released comedic-mystery is called No Experience Required because my heroine is perpetually unemployed. But “No Experience Required” proved to be too unwieldy a name to scream at my computer when a scene wasn’t working. And thus, its nickname ‘NERF’ was born. The ‘F’ stands for something, but you’ll have to use your imagination as to which word it is. ;)

The story of how I came up with the incredibly original title for my urban fantasy novel, is more complicated. Here’s the first shocker—it’s inspired by R.L. Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Big surprise, right?

The second surprise came to me recently. While looking through various documents on my hard drive, I found the very first blurb I’d written for the book. For those of you who don’t know, a blurb is the description found on the back of the book or on the book’s buy-page. And yes, there are usually many, many attempts before it’s right. Here’s the part that surprised me (ignore the melodramatic nature of all the words surrounding the title, which is in caps):

Mitch is confronted with the reality that there's good inside of him yet, and Eden learns that being good all the time is a complete waste of her time…and her life. They have to meet in the middle to discover life is always A SHADE OF GRAY.

 “A Shade of Gray.” Huh. It goes with the theme of the book—dark and light, good and evil, black and white. But I’m pretty sure that title is similar to another book I’ve seen around lately.

Now, I chose that title back before there was such a thing as “Post Traumatic Fifty-Shades-of-Grey Disorder”. It was before you could find FSoG in bookstores, underwear shops, and hotels. It was even before the book hit the top 100,000 on Amazon, let alone the NYT Bestseller’s list. And well before hundreds of other books appeared with cute derivatives of the title.

It was a good thing I changed it, huh? And while “Shades of Gray” was the official title while my book was in its first draft, I still called it ‘Hyde’. And I just couldn’t think of it as anything else. So “Shades of Gray” was tossed. Phew, that was close. Imagine how confusing that would have been. ;)

Book two of my series will (everyone please knock on something wooden for me) be out by the end of the year. People have been asking what the title is. Probably because “Hyde 2” sounds pretty lame. I wish my answer was exciting and original, but it isn’t. The title of the second book is…
 

 Jekyll

So simple, so not-shocking. Jekyll. I played around with the idea of just calling it the second half of the word: “Kyll” because I think it’s cool. Hyde/hide; Kyll/kill. Get it? Yeah, probably too subtle. But when I show you the gor-ge-ous cover of the book, I think you'll get it. Because it’s cool.

 Jekyll

 So there it is, in all its glory. A friend who shall not be named (but whom I’ll always adore) made the unveiling of the title a bigger deal than it should’ve been. Because, honestly, it’s just a title. And, while I’ve bought books simply because they had a great title, isn’t it all the words that are behind a great title and cover that matter? So I’m focusing on those words, to make those as memorable as possible.

Here's a little bit about Jekyll…

At the end of Hyde, Eden has changed. So if you’re expecting the same goody-two-shoes she was in book one, you’ll be disappointed. Sometimes a girl has to adapt, be flexible, and be willing to kick some ass to get what she wants.

Mitch has changed too, but not in the same way. He’s lost something he’d never thought he’d find to begin with. And the whole “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is a lie. A lie people tell themselves to make the pain go away. But the pain doesn’t go away, not for someone like Mitch. It festers. It grows. Until it can’t be held back, even by the bars of a cage.

 ~~~~~~~~~~

Please be sure to add it to your TBR list. Also, feel free to follow me on twitter and friend me on Facebook. I'll be posting updates and teasers as the book's launch approaches. And please send me an email if you'd like to be on my mailing list once I figure out how to get the mother-f*cking thing to work.

And as for book three's title? Hmm…I’m still thinking. Anyone have any suggestions?