Saturday Souvenirs: Arizona Dreamin' 2012

Good morning, dear readers. I wanted to share my trip to Chandler, AZ, last weekend with my friend Cara Michaels. We drove from Las Vegas to Flagstaff and hung out in the pleasant summer weather, then braved the heat and the traffic to attend Arizona Dreamin': Romance Reader Event in Chandler (Phoenix), AZ.

Colorado River from AZ

Cinder cone outside of Flagstaff, AZ

Beverly, Caylee, Siobhan, and Cara

We had a great time when we got down to AZ Dreamin'. We visited with CR Moss, Shannan Albright, Beverly Preston, Kris Tualla, and met the guys competing in the Man of Our Dreams contest.

JP, Ryan, and Ron

Siobhan and Ryan

JP said he wanted pampering...I think ;)

Cara with Ron the Goofball

Even Jimmy Thomas graciously agreed to take photos with us.

Siobhan and Jimmy

Cara and Jimmy

Then we ended our trip with a stop at the Hoover Dam and a visit to the Las Vegas Strip. We even stopped at the Sign.

Hanging at the Dam

THE Bridge

Hoover Dam from AZ

Arizona Dreamin' is already scheduled for 2013 and you're welcome to come. We'd love to see you, so sign up this year for an awesome time with handsome men and fun authors!

Siobhan and Cara at Caesars

Cara at THE Sign

Happy reading!

Siobhan and Cara

Six Sentence Sunday - Queen Bitch of the Callowwood Pack - Immediate Connection

Welcoeme back, Sixers! Today I'm in Phoenix with my twin writing sister Cara Michaels, enjoying Arizona Dreamin': Romance Reader Event. It was awesome and so great to see so many authors and readers in one place. I'm sure there will be incriminating photos later. In the meantime, thank you so much for coming to visit my snippet. I really appreciate it and will try to get back to all my commentors when I return home.

In this snippet of my newest release, Queen Bitch of the Callowwood Pack, Julianna Morris has met with the hero, Jeff Lightfoot, for the first time in eighteen years, at her father's funeral. She'd always had a connection to Jeff, but this time he feels it too. The scene is written in Julianna's POV.

Jeff’s eyes widened, and he inhaled deeply like his sister had earlier. His grip tightened on her hand, and his arm flexed as if he was going to jerk her into his embrace.

Yes, yes, give me a hug. Let me rub against you.

But he came back to himself and his environment at that moment, and his arm relaxed into a regular handshake. Disappointment surged through her.

Darn those public places with her mother and the whole town watching! Thanks so much for stopping by. There several very good authors on the Six Sentence Sunday list and a few of my favorites are Cara Bristol, Dianne Hartsock, Goran Zidar, Zee Monodee, Silver James, and Sarah Ballance. Happy reading! :)

Saturday Souvenirs: Meet Wild Siobhan Muir

Good morning and happy Saturday. I realized recently that my blog has become very writer oriented and I haven't done much interaction with the readers lately. While I love my writer friends, and am so glad to connect as well as read their writings, I wanted to also connect with the people who graciously buy my books and read for the pleasure of it.

I thought I'd share a little each week about myself as a reader and fellow human being in order to connect with people beyond my writing. I'm an extrovert and I love to interact with people. I'll be attending Arizona Dreamin' Romance Reader Event at the beginning of June in Chandler, AZ, so you can meet me in person, as well as several other romance authors.

Until then, here is a little something about me. The title of my blog is the Weird, the Wild, and the Wicked. Today I thought I'd share a little Wild about a recent visit with my friend Morgan Kearns. She came to Las Vegas to give a talk on cover art, and afterwards, we walked around the Strip together.

On the way back to our hotel in the Excalibur, we came across some knights errant offering photographs with the ladies. We were given a choice of photographs to take home with us and I couldn't resist a copy of this one:

Aww, aren't we cute? Of course, Morgan maintained she was the sweeter of the two of us (in terms of romance writing) so when the did the next photo, I got to be the whipping girl. ;)

Yes, it was as fun as it looked, and yes, I laughed my butt off all the way to the room afterwards, just because of Morgan's expression.

Of course, what trip to the Strip with your girlfriends is ever complete without a visit to the boys from Down Under? We saw a Thunder From Down Under show that night and had a great time.

I'd never seen men look like that outside of a romance novel cover and it was amazing to realize they were real. Breathing even. :D We cheered on the Brides they brought up onto stage (and there had to be at least 15 wedding parties in the crowd that night), and watched those guys dance. You know, for being so big, they actually moved together pretty well, and most of them seemed to really enjoy what they were doing (I know the ladies did).

If you get a chance to visit Las Vegas, I highly recommend Thunder From Down Under. It's fun, and at $40 it's a reasonable evening's entertainment. :)

So have any of you ever been to the Las Vegas Strip? And if you have, what fun things did you do while there?

Oh, and one other little tidbit. See that knight errant dressed all in black? You can meet him in person at the Man of Our Dreams contest at Arizona Dreamin' this year. Let me tell you, he was very nice! ;)

Thanks for stopping by and happy reading. :)

Big (HUGE) News

A couple of weeks ago I attendedI the Arizona Dream' Romance Reader Event in Tempe (and I'm planning to go again next year). I had a wonderful time, learned a lot about being an author and writing, and met a lot of amazing people.

Some of those people were the folks of Sapphire Blue Publishing. I was given the opportunity to pitch my story to them and at the end of the pitch, they asked me to send them my manuscript and a synopsis. I was so excited about it, I had to sit down because my legs were shaking. I called my husband and he let out a war whoop! Not every "new" author gets their manuscript requested. I'm still excited just writing about it!

Yesterday, I sent the manuscript, synopsis and "cover email" off to them. That was an even bigger spike of excitement for me. According to their website, it should take about 16 weeks for them to make a decision. In the meantime, I'll be working on The Bone Flute (excerpt on previous post And the Winner Is . . . ).

I want to say a huge thank you to my critique group (Natascha McIntyre, L. Ross, Tom Keller) for helping me scour the novel until the best story came out and my kick-ass editor EK Yenawine, who corrected all my nitpicky mistakes and even my cover email. Your efforts and help have been invaluable.

So think good thoughts that Jeff Lightfoot's story is coming out (because it is; the story is just that good :D) and I'll let you know when I have an acceptance. Until then, happy reading! :)

And We're Back!

Testing, testing, one, two, three! Is this on?

I was all hot to trot to write a new blog entry and what happened? No way to post. What? How can that be?

So now I can post, I can write, I can tell the world everything! But can I remember what I wanted to write about?

Uh, no. Hmm. What was I thinking about?

Crap. Focus, focus, focus!

Okay, the biggest news? I'm now on Twitter, though I admit to being a newbie at it. How often are you supposed to tweet? In 140 characters, what really can you tweet about? Sigh. If you want to "follow" me (sounds like an invitation to a stalker, doesn't it?) I'm @SiobhanMuir. I'll try to tweet something pithy.

Facebook is cracking down on giveaways and contests, saying authors (and anyone really) who puts a contest or giveaway up on their page, can have their page deleted without warning, banishing those folks into internet obscurity. It seems like they've shot themselves in the foot. As I understood it, Facebook was a FREE social media site, meant for communication and interaction, including self-promotion. It garnered good press for Facebook (and probably many more members) from all the readers who wanted to get their hands on books from the various authors who post there.

But Facebook made new guidelines disallowing all sorts of giveaway interactions. Just my opinion, of course, but I think it may hurt them more than help them.

As for writing news, I'm working on Jeff Lightfoot's manuscript and editing like a crazy person. I'll be going to Arizona Dreamin' in Tempe at the beginning of June to interact with other romance authors, learn new tricks to this trade (which I'll blog about when I get back) and maybe even, pitch the story to the publisher who's supposed to be there, too! :D Wish me luck!

I hope your week has been great and I hope to have a more informative blog entry on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Do you have an opinion about Facebook or Twitter or both? Which do you like better and why? Just curious.