Category Archives: Announcements

Cool Contests, Annotated Version, Grand Prizes

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Blog Tour: Blogging at The Burton Review about my Tang Dynasty muses. I’m the guest author this week at Unusual Historicals and you can comment up until next Sunday to be entered to win a copy of Butterfly Swords. Also blogging about Mashups and Crossovers with pics of my inspirational Fast Draft collages.

Review Round-Up: A C+ Review for Butterfly Swords from Vagabond. One shining spot is the reviewer is interested in Adrian and Miya’s story. Also a pair of reviews from Poisoned Rationality. One for The Taming of Mei Lin and one for Butterfly Swords. The Romance Reviews is launching their new book portal site and featuring a giveaway for Butterfly Swords on the site.

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We’re reaching the mid-point of October, so I can definitely say the Butterfly Swords Launch is underway. Fly little book, fly…

This is the last week to enter for the Grand Prize giveaways. I’m quite excited about the prizes as they’re very special to me:

The “butterfly swords”

from my costume

Color poster of

Wendy Wang’s artwork

Butterfly Swords

with author commentary

I realized, however, that there are some people who are entered multiple times and fans of Butterfly Swords. There are others signed up who may not have read it yet. So if any winner wants to opt for just a nice clean copy of Butterfly Swords to read, instead of the geeky annotated version, I’ll happily make the switch. I figured I’d then put any traded prizes up in next year’s Brenda Novak auction or some other worthy cause.

There is also another pretty cool Butterfly Swords contest going on, hosted by Bria Quinlan, YA author and one of my trusted readers. The pictures so far gave me a good laugh. I hope there will be a couple more entries. It’s always good to smile.

I’m tempted to enter a picture of my Asian books collection because…I got some game there. Though, of course, I’d be ineligible to win.

Two more signings this month! This Saturday at the Crestwood Barnes & Noble right down the street and then next Saturday in New Jersey at the NJRW Conference. Here’s the road show. Shortly after that, Butterfly Swords will be flitting out of bookstores and only available for order online.

You can still join the celebration and enter the drawings by blogging, tweeting, and getting the word out. I’ll draw the names October 15 and post on October 16 before I head out to the MORWA meeting and my signing.

World Teacher Day

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Blog Tour: Casting for the BUTTERFLY SWORDS movie at VauxHall Vixens. For fun only, there is no movie in the works other than in my wildest fantasies. Also blogging about Guy-friendly romance at Thoughts in Progress.

Review Round Up: Medieval Bookworm wrote up a nice review for Butterfly Swords. Also 4 1/2 Flowers of Love review for Butterfly Swords at Diva Bookcase.

Book Club Vote: Thanks to Daz for pointing out that Butterfly Swords is a candidate for Book Club pick for October. I really would love to discuss Trial by Desire for it’s atypical romance hero, so that’s the one I voted for, but take a look and vote for the title that piques your interest. The Season October Book Club.

And in case you missed it, I’m joining the Dear Author online book chat on Butterfly Swords this Saturday from 7pm to 9pm EST. Drop by any time. No link yet, but here are some details.

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In a surprise request, SOS Aloha interviewed me for World Teacher Day. I was very humbled and had to tell Kim that I was no longer a teacher, but she insisted that once a teacher, always a teacher. That’s true in part, but I can’t claim to be a teacher now that I’m no longer in the trenches. At the same time, she’d read in my bio that I started writing while teaching high school and she wanted to feature teachers who wrote romance in today’s blog.

I re-read the interview and saw that the other interviewee quoted Carl Jung whereas I provided two quotes from a guy named Joshua Hartford. I thought for a moment that I should have quoted someone like Paulo Freire or Gandhi. I mean, I had a decent collection of inspirational quotes about teaching from my master’s program way back when.

But I think I have to stick by Joshua Hartford. He played a influential role in teaching me how to teach. Don’t you get WTD double bonus points for teaching a teacher? And though I realize those two quotes might make no sense out of context, they’re the words of advice that stuck with me.

In short: “Get it done. And it’s going to hurt doing it, but that doesn’t mean you’re not on the right track.”

I’d have to say, after teaching in South Central and having the experience of starting a charter school, this writing gig sometimes seems like cake. Rejections are merely paper cuts, revisions par for the course. A rejection can’t hurt worse than a student failing a course after you’ve worked so hard to help them. And how many times did I revise every lesson I taught?

Joshua Hartford is now the principal of Animo Pat Brown in Los Angeles. It’s a school started by some of the finest people I’ve ever known on this earth and earned a California Distinguished School Award only four years after inception.

Happy World Teacher Day APB teachers. Keep on fighting the good fight.


Hartford is that bloke sitting in the lower right hand corner.

Say hello and thank you to one of your past teachers in honor of World Teacher Day.