B Cubed

Behold, the cover for my now completed manuscript, B Cubed!

Need some feedback on my blurb. Is it compelling enough?

From the moment he spies her silhouette cast by the bonfire, Cormack understands what it is to yearn for something he will never possess. Breds are made to provide for the natural born humans, dig their homes deep beneath the surface of the earth and to protect them from the ever-present cyborg threat.  A bred who reaches beyond his station will be recycled immediately, yet Cormack cannot get her visage out of his mind.  Until he unearths a box, buried long before the earth stopped spinning. 

Task Mistress Allora has no wish to brutalize the bred soldier she finds hoarding treasure, but as a servant of the colony that raised her from infancy, she is duty bound to report anything unusual to the overlord, even if it costs the blue-eyed man his life. Yet something about the way Cormack watches her forces Allora to reevaluate her understanding of right and wrong. For this genetically engineered soldier is her only protection against the cyborgs who seek what they have discovered, a journal written by the prophetess Cassandra and a way to end the warring between the factions forever.

Thoughts? Hints? Suggestions?

Guest Spotlight Jennifer L Hart and Redeeming Characters Blog Tour!

LL: Okay, so as you may or may not know, I'm actually the other side of an already established author. Please welcome my stick-in-the-mud half, Jennifer L Hart

Jenn: The milk of human kindness flows through your veins, Lusha. Is it any wonder I hide you like a dirty secret?

LL: Kay, so what do you suppose is the fundamental difference between your persona and mine?

Jenn: Several things.  You write fantasy erotica to my more reality based romances and mysteries.

LL: You once swore up down and sideways that you would never have a pen name. What changed your mind?

Jenn: Honestly, I was pretty ignorant about why having a pseudonym might be important. I wrote contemporary romance and mystery as myself for years, sweet and steamy. But the pen name has more to do with my readers than with me.  You're not for everyone and I can't write with the same level of freedom and intensity as you do. You're the specialist to my general practitioner.

LL:*snicker* So am I the gyno or the proctologist?

Jenn: Next question.

LL: Let's talk about sex, baby.

Jenn: With myself? Sounds like a typical Thursday morning.

LL: Why do some of your books have no open door love scenes and others, like Redeeming Characters  have several?



Jenn: The story and the characters dictate the amount of intimacy that needs to be revealed. In my Laundry Hag mysteries, the primary couple is married and already emotionally connected. Doing an open door love scene for them would just be the equivalent of writing porn. Sometimes what you don't say is just as important as what you do.


Redeeming Characters is different because I believed the reader needed to witness the emotional bonding between Drue and Dakota.And then my editor got a hold of it and said it could use even more! The encounter on the balcony scene was not in the original draft, but I absolutely love it.

LL: You've mentioned that it took you three years to write this book. Did you work on it exclusively?

Jenn: Nope. I started it in April of '06. We moved in May of the same year and I abandoned it while I wrote the first Misadventures of the Laundry Hag book.  Then came "Worth the Wait", River Rats and Hag 2, plus a little dabbling with other stories. If my mind went in a straight line instead of whirling around the infinity symbol, I'd be dangerous.

LL: You're claiming Stellar Timing, even though outer space is clearly my domain. Any thoughts on handing it over?

Jenn: Nope, even though its fantasy, it's my break out sci-fi fantasy.The sexual tension adds to the story but it isn't the foundation for it like it your stuff. Deal is you get one book and one short story a year while I get the hag mysteries and the stellarverse.

LL*pouts* I want to play with Talenforth.

Jenn: Maybe I'll let you do a guest short, but you need to cooperate.

LL: So back to Redeeming Characters. Where did the name come from?

Jenn: The dark orifice where all my story titles come from. ;-) Granted this one took longer to work its way out than most. I had to consider themes within the story and narrowed it down to two. The decision was made the way all m tough calls are made. 

"Hey, Scott. Which do you like better, Redeeming Characters or Character Redemption?"
"Character Redemption."
"Redeeming Characters it is."

LL:You did something sneaky with the story, making it a contemporary romance about writers creating a sci-fi/futuristic world. Did you plan on heading into outer space from the start?

Jenn: Nope. I've always loved science fiction but I never thought I could write it, Honestly I didn't believe I was that creative. 

LL: What are some of your favorite science fiction stories?

Jenn: Star Trek TNG, Star Wars, Farscape, LEXX, but my all time favorite is Firefly and Serenity. It's how Sci Fi should be done, with the setting and special effects enhancing the story, not carrying it.  

LL: Well, this talking to myself business has gone on long enough, so any final statements?

Jenn: Giving away a PDF copy of one of my stories to a random commenter. Read up on the choices here:

http://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-L.-Hart/e/B003MAFV4A/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

And I'm giving away a fifty dollar Amazon.com giftcard to the faithful on Saturday. For full details please visit www.jenniferlhart.com.

LL: Oh I got a great way to pick the winner! Eniy meany miney mick, catch a shifter by the--

Jenn: And I'm out!

Let this be a lesson, always back it up!

I wrote over 5,000 words yesterday, more than doubling my typical 2,500 words in one day and accomplishing the 50,000 word count goal for National Novel Writing Month.  No Limits is far from complete, but it'll get there eventually. I was planning on launching right into my cyberpunk short B Cubed but about three hours later, my laptop started acting up. It wouldn't retrieve my user profile, and was running(crawling) very slowly. Though I was dead tired, I staied up and backed up all of my writing files to thumb drive. Good thing too, because by this morning, all that is left is the blue screen of death.

I'm taking that as a sign I need to slow down a little. maybe go outside for a spell, snag some Vitamin D. After I blog, of course. The home computer is ancient in PC terms, about 5 years old and very slow, so don't worry if you don't see too much of me in the coming weeks. Just means that I'm making things explode again.  Ain't technology grand?

At A Loss

I don't know how it is for other writers, but I have a tendency to hit dry spells. Not necessarily writer's block more like a lack of enthusiasm for my projects, periods of total stifling lung-seizing doubt. The thoughts that go through my head are this is awful. who would want to read this? What the hell could I have been thinking?
Well the easiest answer is that I had to put words on the page. The biggest drawback to being a panster, someone who doesn't plan a novel but just sits down to write, is that you delete great quantities of writing before you get it right.

I thought I had it licked this time, with my Nano novel. I wrote the synopsis ahead of time, got to know my characters, what the valued and what they wanted, what was standing in their way. I was all set, ready to write another great Lusha erotic.

Not gonna happen. Unlike Saranna and Liane who have incredibly awesome drafts of stories they love, I hate mine, really don't even want to waste my time combing through it to see if it's fixable.

I sit here now, at day twenty one of national novel writing month with forty one thousand some odd words of unadulterated crap. It has it's moments, but overall, it sucks. So now comes decision time.

Where do I go from here?

On the one hand, I could quit, just delete everything and focus on something else. The upside of that is having a fresh start, clean slate so to speak. At least theoretically. The stank of failure tends to follow me well after I put away a project. I could kid myself and think, well, I might want to fix it later...

Yeah, right. I've already done that with one project this year, almost 65 K in. Which brings my total of unpublishable productivity to over 100,000 words for 2010. That of course does not include the words I actually did delete in these and other projects, query letters, synopsis and all the other behind the scenes writing that the average reader never views.

The other choice is to plod onward, hope something happens that makes me love this beast again. But that has the potential to turn into a soul sucking kind of depressing, because if the magic doesn't come back, I not only doubt the story, but I might start questioning my ability to write in general. The cancer spreads from an isolated easily removable segment to a career threatening sense of doubt. A writer who doesn't believe in his or her ability has no place in professional publishing.

So what to do? Which risk is bigger? Are there any other options that I'm too entrenched in my own little misery box to see? What would you do?

NaNoWriMo and A Free Read!

Want a taste of what Lusha Lovelace is all about? Read and vote for my short story Space Invasion.


My NaNoWriMo story, No Limits is going well. I'm one chapter in and looking forward to Gen and Rhys time.They've been with me for a little while now, and are ready for some exposure ;-).

Hope everyone else is off to a smashing start!

The Missing B.J. Scene

Due to not wanting to go over my word count I cut this out of Luke and Mary's story. But my hero really does deserve it so here  you go.

He seemed to be searching through the assortment of paraphernalia, one hand fisted over his straining erection. Maybe if she took the edge off him first…. No sooner had the idea manifest then she bent down to take him in her mouth.

            At the first small contact, Luke cried out and fell off the bed with a thump. “Christ, woman! You need to give me some warning!”

            She followed him down, slinking so that her tits popped out of the low cut top. Despite his angry words, Luke fixated on her exposed nipple, licking his lips hungrily as if he couldn’t wait to taste her. Strumming the puckered flesh, she smiled at him saucily. “Consider this your warning.”

            “What—” he cut himself off with a groan as her lips closed over his shaft. She sucked him deep, greedy for everything that made him Luke, whatever he could give her. The salty tang of him made her ravenous like never before.

            As he hit the back of her throat, she sank her nails into the corded muscles on his thighs. He jerked in surprise at the tiny bite of pain and she stopped to stare up at him.

            “Mary,” he breathed as her tongue darted out, laving the length of him, holding his gaze. Needing for him to see how much she enjoyed doing this to him, for him. She backed away for a moment, cupping his sac, rubbing her thumb over his stones and letting her exhales prickle his wet flesh. When his body trembled, she swallowed him again, moaning when his fists clenched in her hair.

            Using both her hands, one on his balls, the other working his shaft, she milked every bit of orgasm from him until he tugged at her hair. Reluctantly, she released him with a wet sounding pop.

            “What the fuck was that about?” He panted.

            She shrugged. “Just something I wanted to do.”

            Chest heaving, he pulled her up against him. She curled into him, listing to the steady thrumming of his heart. “I doubt I’ll ever figure you out, Mary.”

            “Probably not.” She agreed cheerily. Content, she settled in to listen to the sound of his heartbeat and let her mind drift in the ether.

            Fingers gliding up and down her backbone, Luke’s breathing slowly returned to normal. “Are you tired?”

            Those three little words brought everything back home for her. How come it was so easy to forget that she was sick, dying, doomed to leave this life soon when she as with him? He made her feel like a normal woman, one with a future. Not some sickly broken down old mare destined for the glue factory.

            Luke read her mood, the way he alone seemed able to do. Easing out from under her he stood up first and helped her to her feet. “Don’t even pretend like you have forgotten the agreement we reached before you so cleverly distracted me.”

            Her lips twitched. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

            “Seriously baby, if you want to sleep—”

            She placed a finger over his lips. “Don’t Luke. You know how I feel about wasting time.”

            He kissed the digit and placed her hand over his heart. “No regrets?”

            She nodded once, succinctly. “You got it, tough guy.”

Starting up

I always feel as though I should post something important, something which will clue you in to the inner workings of my mind...but frankly, I've got nothing. I write erotic romance or "romantica". Male-female interactions only because while I am a wild woman, there is only so much choreography a girl can imagine without losing her damn mind.