The new Romantic Times came out this week. It’s the October issue. And, yes, TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT is not reviewed in it as it should be. A kind reader already emailed me to warn me. I actually knew earlier this week. It’s was a mix-up that had nothing to do with Donna, Jill and HelenKay. We were good authors and got the novellas in on time. This one was out of our hands.

The book is an October release, which means it comes out at the very end of September. Due to the printing schedule of RT, it will get a review but not until the December issue. These things happen. Rather than make you wait, I thought I’d reprint the beginning of my novella from this collection, Can You Hand Me The Tape?

Natalie just got out of a bad relationship. She escaped with her dignity…but forgot to grab the sexy tape she made for her then-(idiot) boyfriend. She turns to her ex’s legal partner to help her retrieve the item in question. But have you ever tried to ask your work enemy for a favor? Yeah, not easy.
_______________

“I need to talk to you.” Asking anyone for help made Natalie Pritchard uncomfortable. Asking this guy made her downright twitchy.

Spencer Donovan stopped in the middle of shrugging out of his overcoat. “What are you doing here?”

She would have been offended at his tone except she asked the same question about forty times on her walk from the courthouse to Spence’s office. Her current sorry situation kept her distracted and off balance, which explained why she stood in the middle of the room with melting snow dripping down her chin and not a clue about how to begin her story.

“I followed you,” she said just jumping in instead of over-thinking the situation.

“From the garage downstairs?”

“From the courthouse.” Over several blocks, through security in lobby, up fourteen floors, past his assistant Sue, and into the private office suite. She now knew Spence was not an easy man to stalk.

“That’s almost two miles,”

He acted as if the feat were impossible. And, since it felt more like ten miles, all of them straight uphill with ice blocks for feet, she could understand his confusion.

“A bit more than two actually.”

“That explains the shoes.”

She glanced down at the hiking boots making her feet look like she wore a size fifteen or whatever size a giant wore. “They kept me from falling down on the way over here.”

“It’s snowing.”

His comment was not exactly news. “Mixed with freezing rain. Yeah.”

She lost feeling in her face ten minutes earlier. The freezing temperatures in Washington, D.C. wiped out all of her nerve endings and left behind only a wet, shivering mess. At that moment she felt strands of her hair sticking to her face and counted the lack of a mirror in the room as a small mercy.

“Did Charlie send you in to talk to me?” Spence’s dark brown eyes glanced past her and out into the empty hallway of the flashy office behind her.

Charlie Adams. The very big, very nasty and very annoying reason she now stood in a puddle in front of Spence’s desk.

“Why would you think that?”

“Charlie’s tried everything else to piss me off during the last two weeks. It was only a matter of time until he used you.” Spence sat back in his oversized black leather chair.

“No one uses me…” His words sunk into her brain. “And why would my coming here tick you off?”

“Yeah, I wonder.”
_______________

Want to win a copy? Yeah, there are rules: (1) you have to leave a comment here about holiday books, the authors in this collection or any other relevant thing; (2) you need to read the antho and post your thoughts/a review; (3) you need to have a blog or website where you can post a review/your thoughts (whatever they are) on the antho; (4) you need to post your review/thoughts by September 15th; (5) you can only enter the contest once; and (6) you need to be a U.S. resident for this one - sorry.

I’ll pick two winners and post their names here (in an Update) by Saturday morning. Good luck!

UPDATE: I just realized that my idea of Saturday morning was probably afternoon on the East Coast. Sorry about that. I should have said morning PST. Anyway… The winners are: DINA and BRANDY. Congratulations!!! Email me with your addresses.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28th, 2008 at 10:22 am and is filed under About Me, About My Books, About Publishing, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.