April 12, 2007
If you can’t tell from my title, I’m being b*tchy today. I’m grouchy as all get out and no amount of coffee is helping! I woke up at three-thirty AM this morning and believe it or not, by choice. Lately, I find everyday ending before I can hardly get a thing accomplished. There just isn’t enough time. I’m always behind and playing catch up. Years ago, before I was writing, I used to wake up with my husband to see him off to work every morning. Back then, it seemed I could accomplish everything before noon. Now a days, I’m barely dressed before noon. Grant you, I’m working now, but still, I think I’m devoting too much time to rest. So yesterday, I decided I needed to start getting up earlier. The only trouble? I can sleep through ten alarm clocks, a fire alarm, and the phone ringing…all at once. That leaves me with one option—have my husband wake me up before he leaves for work. At three-thirty. AM. I’m sooooo tired…and wondering how on earth I’ll ever adjust to this schedule. So bear with me…I’m in the mood to complain!
The Top Ten Things I Can’t Stand
1. GETTING UP EARLY!
2. Bras. There isn’t a strong enough word in the English language for how I feel about bras. And no, I don’t, I won’t, I can’t wear one. Ban bras! Go free!
3. Email. I love to hear from people—I just don’t like to write back. It’s so time consuming!
4. Telemarketers. Junk email. Anyone trying to sell me anything. Enough said. Oh, but I love junk mail.
5. Turtlenecks and tight jeans. Ever since I was a kid, I couldn’t stand them. Once, in first grade, my mother insisted I wear a turtleneck and later I went to the nurse and had her call my mother to bring in a new shirt. That was the last turtleneck I wore.
6. People reading over my shoulders. Like my husband. Right now. Hold on while I kick some butt.
7. Being too warm. My thermostat stays set at 62 degrees.
8. Dishonesty. Lies drives me nuts. I’m the type of person that tells it like it is and I appreciate the same.
9. Splenda and other artificial, cancer-causing sweeteners and flavorings that mask themselves as good for you. It’s shameful that we’ve reached a point where we can’t trust what’s in our own supermarkets.
10. Drunk drivers! There’s always an option and decide to endanger others is plain selfish. There you have it. I could go on…and on. But maybe next time I’ll post about the things I love. 
Good evening! I’m going to bed! Alyssa
November 26, 2006
So, I decided to take a couple weeks off writing, but the other night I couldn’t resist playing around on the internet a bit. On a whim, I googled my name (something I’ll admit I do from time to time…okay…alot lol) and guess what popped up? A link to preorder Come and Get Me! on Amazon.com…with my new cover!!!!! My editor is on vacation and I haven’t recieved cover flats yet, so I don’t know for certain if this is the final version, but I’m guessing it is if they put it up in Amazon.
So what do you think? I love the colors…so bright and sunny, perfect for a June release.
Come and Get Me is my first Berkley Heat book…my first single title in print. I’m sooooooooooooo excited about it’s impending release. Here’s the blurb:
Sexual freedom … exotic destinations …
Who ever said you can’t have a honeymoon before and after your wedding?
The thought of her impending marriage is giving Sadie panic attacks. Hives. Nightmares. She loves her fiancé, Dylan, but the concept of happily ever after is suffocating her. She isn’t ready to face the future, and worse, the sex could be better.
Panicking, she packs her bags in the middle of the night, and dares her sexually repressed lover to come and get her.
Dylan will be damned if he’s going to lose Sadie so easily. Leaving behind his inhibitions, he pursues her, a sexually hungry and desperate man prepared to do anything to seduce his woman, once and for all.
And so the game begins …
Now doesn’t that sound like fun?! LOL. I hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving and didn’t gain too much weight stuffing themselves with stuffing.:)
Hugs,
Alyssa
November 10, 2006
Hi everyone! Well, this week I officially kissed a manuscript goodbye and mailed it to my editor. Nothing better than the feeling of being done…at least not until I realized all the promo things and emails I neglected while nonstop writing. Ughh! Suddenly I’m so busy I’m dizzy…and I feel like I’ll never catch up. The good news is once I do, I’ve got a clean slate and I can play a bit. Golly, playing… that sounds like a fantasy! I know just what I’ll be doing too…I’m hitting the malls for some XMAS shopping! This year, for the first time ever, my stepsons are going to their mother’s for Christmas, so we are celebrating two Christmas’s—a mock one on Thanksgiving for them, and of course, the normal one. Double the fun (but double the work)! Today I was stunned with the reality that only leaves me two weeks to do their shopping. Yikes! Good thing I love the Christmas season so much!
So, since I’m trying to catch up on promo, I realized I have a couple of contests I should be advertising and I thought I’d share them with you:
Wicked Escapes 2nd annual Writing Contest
Interested in submitting your flash erotic fiction for 2007 placement in Wicked Escapes? With over 600 members and counting, Wicked Escapes is an excellent place to promote your books as well publish your first work. See the details below!
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Alyssa Brooks and Larissa Lyons would like to invite interested authors, both published and aspiring, to enter their annual Wicked Escapes writing contest.
What is Wicked Escapes? Check out Alyssa and Larissa’s free monthly ezine packed full of naughty and nice reading pleasures at
http://www.WickedEscapesEzine.com.
What are we looking for?
Erotic flash fiction, in any genre. These quickie stories must be 500-1000 words and very sexy. Up to six winners will be awarded a feature in Wicked Escapes. The feature will consist of the author’s winning piece of erotic flash fiction, a banner or cover spot, and a link. This is a great way to expose your writing style to readers and gain their attention. Not published? That’s okay! If your story makes the cut, you’ll receive a chapter critique from Alyssa or Larissa.
Writers should use their talent to whisk readers away from daily life into a short, HOT escape that will leave them breathless and wanting more. Any genre is acceptable! From vamps to regency to m/m to BDSM, the point of a Wicked Escape is to arouse and to tempt.
This year we will also be accepting up to two erotic romance short story entries. These stories must be between 2000-5000 words and extremely sexy. Please pay strong attention to editing as we will only award these short story spots to worthy pieces of fiction. The winners of the short story spots will each receive promotion within Wicked Escapes for the month their story is published, as well as a $15 dollar gift certificate to Amazon.com.
Visit
http://www.wickedescapesezine.com/news.htm for more information, contest rules, and past examples of winners.
Holiday Delights Contest 2006
Who doesn’t love chocolate? Better yet, who doesn’t love HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE? And sex? Chocolate and sex? It’s the ultimate prize!
We’re spreading holiday cheer a little early this year! For your chance to win a Wicked Escapes personalized chocolate bar accompanied by Hershey’s Kisses and Reese’s Miniatures, along with a signed copy of The Cop and signed cover flats from Alyssa Brooks, a free download of Zodiac: Capricorn from Larissa Lyons, and promotional goodies from all the Wicked Escapes authors, find the sexy Santa!
Visit www.wickedescapesezine.com to discover how to play!
GOOD LUCK! Alyssa
September 26, 2006
What’s your chocolate?
Okay, so the truth is, my mind is a blank page today. 
I’ve stared at the computer screen for an hour, unable to think of what to blog, unable to answer emails, unable to write. So I’m pulling out the big guns. Chocolate.
Chocolate is my solution for everything. Sad? Chocolate! Frustrated? Chocolate! Bored? Chocolate! Hungry? Chocolate! Not sure what to say? Chocolate! Crying toddler? Chocolate! Yeah, I know, how healthy and mature! But hey, I quit smoking…don’t I deserve to have some sort of vice? Probably not, but I’ll never give up chocolate!
Sometime in October, my chocolate partner in crime–who also happens to be my critique partner—is coming to visit me for the first time and we’re going to Hershey, Pennsylvania. In the chocolate capitol of the world, we’re going to learn how chocolate is made, make our own chocolate, and yes, eat lots and lots chocolate. I can’t wait!
Are you having a craving yet? I’m kinda dangerous for dieters.
LOL.
I personally will eat any kind of chocolate any time of day…but give me chocolate covered cherries and I’ll love you for life (after all, that’s how my husband got the ring on my finger!)
So what’s your chocolate?
September 12, 2006
Just when life gets normal—wham!
I’m surfacing from the bucket of Pine Sol I’ve been swimming in because I just remembered I needed to blog. Whew!
Talk about life throwing you curve balls. I’m beginning think that enjoying the simple pleasures in life is really only a fantasy.
My days just finally started to settle into somewhat of a normal rhythm after having my daughter then contracting my first deals, including a couple books that needed to be written. Then there was my husband losing his job and his big car accident. Not to mention all the work I’ve done to my home–my gardens just filled out this year. We just redid the front porch to our house and painted several rooms. I could go on and on and on…
And now we are moving.
The need to move and the decision regarding it happened so fast, my mind is whirling. Within a week’s time, we viewed three homes, put a contract on one, then today signed a agreement with a realtor to put our house up for sale. I wanted to blog about something else today, but honestly, moving is all that’s on my mind. The cleaning. The boxes. The running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I hate it.
It’s for the best. Heck, a new house will probably be fun. I know that. But I am beginning to wonder when life will ever be ‘normal’. Easy. Fun. Is it? Or is it just one big blur of changes and making your way to the finish line?
I’m trying to be optimistic. This is a new page in our life and moving will be an adventure. Actually, the house we are moving to is situated on four wooded acres near a river and is my dream home. Quiet, peaceful…
(but then, I’m dragging my kids along, so that won’t last long!)
But anyway, it’s amazing how much literal junk you realize you have when you consider putting it into boxes. Sigh…
Two other great and ‘jump up and squeal things’ happened this week as well—I finished the rough draft of my second Berkley book, and I learned how to make book trailers (I was actually shocked to find I rock at this…it’s so fun!!!!! I officially have a new hobby). If you want to take a look at my first one, check out www.alyssabrooks.com, on my books page. The other I’ll post soon, so check back too!
Off to drowning in my bucket of Pine Sol…
Alyssa
August 25, 2006
Are you interesting?
Ever since I learned to write, I’ve become a picky, picky reader. Usually, I flip through a book and check out the prose before I make a purchase—if an author is sloppy or lazy, I don’t want to read it. Mistakes drive me crazy. I mean, I’m positive that I’m not perfect myself, though I am always striving to be as good as I can be. I’m make an effort though—a big one—to provide my readers with quality writing as well as terrific stories, and it’s the books I see hastily written and chucked onto the shelves that I don’t want to read.
So why, why, why! do I see "bad" books getting stellar reviews? Hitting the best seller lists? How do these books even get bought when I struggled for years to make a sale? Until recently, this also drove me a little nutty.
Then I bought the worst/best book ever. I won’t name names, at the risk of insulting one of my peers, but the writing sucked. The plotting was almost unbearable—with huge flashbacks and unbelievable characters. But the premise was interesting, so I gave it a try. Turns out, the whole story was interesting, and despite myself, I couldn’t stop reading. In fact, I read it twice. And there it sits, on my keeper shelf, as a constant reminder: clean writing and a good story may be important, but above and beyond all else, a book must be interesting.
What’s your take?
August 10, 2006
Hello everyone! Alyssa Brooks here, erotic romance author with Berkley HEAT. My first ST, Come and Get Me, is due out June 2007.
Today is my first post on the Berkley Babes blog—so I figured I’d start with a confession. Blogs make me nervous. Terrified. Okay…maybe terrified is an exaggeration. I tend to exaggerate…one of my many issues. 
I’ve been around blogs enough you’d think I’d have grown out of this silly discomfort of posting by now. For a short stint, I even had one of my own, which was quickly deleted for fear I’d say something stupid…my whole problem. I can’t talk right–and I mean literally. And thank God your not hearing my actual voice…I am a yank who’s been told by several southerners just how very northern I sound. Funny, I think they sound southern. The bad thing is, I can’t pronounce anything correctly. For example, much to my writing partner’s irritation, I’ve been consistently calling my latest heroine, Phoebe, Phob. And recently, I told her that she really needed a protagonist in her novel or it wasn’t interesting enough…a confusing suggestion, considering the hero and heroine filled that criteria quite nicely…might I have meant antagonist? 
But seriously, I use the wrong words, stick my foot in my mouth, make an overall idiot of myself so much when I do talk, that for the most part, I’ve opted not to. I know…I know…I’m an author who can’t use words correctly? Yes, that right. And after literally years of examining this curious trait, I’ve realize something: I think faster than I compute. When I talk, I don’t have time to edit! When I’m typing, I have time to examine my words, to consider them. When I get chatty, it all gushes out at the rate I come up with things, and that’s not always pretty. When I get on blog, I tend to censor myself. To hold back and hold in and not be me…but wait! Isn’t that killing off the whole idea of a blog? Hence my unease. I just can’t seem to get the hang of it.
Knowing I was going to start posting here—and be witty and fun and interesting and ME this time–I started to surf the net and read blogs in an effort to convince myself that being normal idiot Alyssa is perfectly okay. Let’s just say, I’m starting to feel much smarter after reading some of the comments posted in the public eye…
Blogging has because almost a standard for author promoting these days…and I’d really like to know: do any of ya’ll get nervous about posting? Regret things you’ve said?
With all this, I also seem to have an acute fear of the idea of conventions and book signings. I love the thought of meeting readers and editors and etc…but I get so anxious about ‘performing’…rather than being comfortable going just as little unsophisticated me. Am I alone?
So here I am, about to hit the submit key, and I’m ready to rewrite this whole post into something more interesting. Ahhhhh…here goes nothing!
Hugs,
Alyssa Brooks
www.alyssabrooks.com
