Check out the Latest Review for Black Dragon's Heart

"This is the third and final book of Anita Philmar’s Black Dragon trilogy. It is full of action and suspense, as well as lots of hot and sweaty sex, in many varied locations. Sarah is an extremely intelligent young woman, and is key to the difficulties facing her race of people. She has access to everything she needs to find out why her race is dying out, and with Jake’s help she intends to find out. She is a strong and determined heroine, although she has her moments of doubt as well."

To read the rest of the review visit
http://whippedcream2.blogspot.com/2009/12/black-dragons-heart-by-anita-philmar.html?zx=c1dedd8acc71af14

Just in time for the Holidays

AFTER HOURS is now available at The Wilder Rose Press.

Can you think of a better way to warm up?

Here's an excerpt:

Some men simply walk across a room, but not David.

Elle Simpson watched from her office as the new intern, his hips moving in a predatory roll, strolled to the copier and stood with his back toward her. No, not David.

She felt the color rise in her cheeks as her gaze traced his body, from the dark hair just curling at the nape of his neck, past wide shoulders, to the dangerous-looking narrow hips and an ass made for grabbing. Her body warmed and her inner thighs began to tingle.

David turned, as though he could sense her scrutiny, and flashed a smile that could short-circuit a city. Hell, it certainly did a number on her. Elle swallowed, hiding behind a noncommittal nod, and hoped she gave the impression she was too busy for pleasantries. Damn. She needed to be more careful.

After many years with the company, she’d earned her reputation as a dependable, hard working, no-nonsense kind of woman. She grimaced. What would her fellow employees think if they knew every time David Nelson walked in the room, Elle’s synapses stopped firing as all the blood left her head to settle between her legs? She shifted on her chair and the friction caused her pussy to ache, reminding her of its neglected state.

Evidently finished with the copier, David gathered his papers and walked back to his cubicle.

Elle tilted her head to better watch him walk down the hall. A damn sexy man. Perhaps he’d been born with some sort of exclusive hip design. It would explain the fluidity of movement.

Elle shrugged. One thing was certain—when David walked into a room, or out of it, he had her undivided attention. She didn’t think he was trying to be sexy, or if he was, the effort had become, well...effortless.

Becoming a less neurotic writer AKA Creative Recovery

by Becca Simone

A while back, I set out on a journey to become a less neurotic writer in 12 weeks, using The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron as my guide. Well, I’m realizing it’ll probably take way longer than that. I have a lifetime of bad habits and neuroses to overcome. Cameron calls this journey “creative recovery.” Hmm. That has a much more positive ring to it, doesn’t it?

My personal journey involves daily journaling, meditating, yoga and nature walks. I haven’t been doing any of those things as much as I would like, but I am making progress.

I normally have the meanest, bitchiest internal editor to ever walk the face of the earth. Her name is Helga. Ugly name for an ugly being. She is downright cruel. You should hear what she says to me. It’s not even printable.

During the month of November I’ve been involved in NaNo, and I think the frantic, don’t-look-back pace of writing has helped me to avoid, or at least temporarily shut up, Helga a bit. Thank God.

Some things I’ve read in The Artist’s Way have really hit home. In Week 3 Cameron talks about how anger is at the root of much of our creative neuroses. She says that “in the recovery of a blocked artist, anger is a sign of health.” Awesome. I must be a flippin’ health guru, because I’ve been mad a lot. Recently, a couple of writer friends/acquaintances who just started writing achieved greater success (ie: big sales to major publishers) than I have in all my years of struggling. I went through the mature reactions of “It’s not fair!” and “They haven’t paid their dues!” and listened when Helga told me that I’ll never achieve similar success because I suck as a writer.

Yeah, it was a really pleasant time in the Simone household.

Cameron asks us to pinpoint what it is we’re really mad at. She says anger is our friend—it will always tell us when we have betrayed ourselves. This was an “a ha!” moment for me. I’m not really angry at these friends or even the situation. I’m angry at myself—for the opportunities I didn’t explore, the countless hours I’ve wasted not writing, the wrong turns I’ve taken. It’s all about me. Now that I realize it’s me I’m pissed at, now maybe I can redirect that feeling into my work.

Cameron also talks about synchronicity, which is another word for answered prayers. Be careful what you wish for, knock and the door will open, ask and you will receive, however you want to say it. Cameron says once we begin our creative recovery, synchronicity will pop up everywhere. It’s really true. It’s happened to me. I experienced this just recently. I was just telling one of my CPs that I really want to do a blog under my pen name but didn’t have the time to go solo. I wished I knew of a group of erotica writers to blog with. The very next day I get an email from a fellow erotica author asking if I might be interested in joining a new group blog. Can you hear the Twilight Zone theme song here? Weird, eh? Another recent instance was as I worked on a promo plan for my next release. I wrote in my notebook to brainstorm creative places to hold a booksigning. That very day, a friend told me she’s planning a huge naughty toy party in February, right in time for Valentine’s Day, and would I be interested in selling some of my books there?

Try it for yourself. Put your wish or desire “out there” and see what happens. And keep me posted.

Holidays, Being Superwoman & Finding Time to Write

Now that Halloween is over, I can't ignore what I've been trying so hard to ignore...the holidays are looming. Don't get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving. Who doesn't love a great turkey dinner with all the trimmings and family gathered around? The feast is always at my house and now that some of my kids are grown and on their own, significant others and strays have wandered in and taken seats at our table, which I think is great. The more the merrier means fewer leftovers. Plus, we have a quaint tradition where everyone at the table has to give a reason for being thankful...last year, my brother-in-law gave thanks that his "soldiers were good swimmers" (my sister had just revealed her pregnancy to the rest of us). Okay...

Christmas is really what stresses me out. Shopping, baking, wrapping, hostessing, decorating. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a scrooge in the decorating area, I hate to decorate and hate to put the decorations away after the holidays even worse. When we sold our artificial Christmas tree before a big move, I dragged my feet for three years before we bought another one. I didn't miss it. But my biggest gripe about the holidays is the time it takes away from my writing. While I'm being superwoman, my characters are talking to me, calling me a neglectful mommy, asking me to please start taking dictation. They get impatient. I get frustrated. I'm afraid I'll forget what they're saying or won't remember that really cool plot twist that came to me while rolling out sugar cookies. As fellow writers, you understand this crushing fear. Well, maybe not the sugar cookie part but you get my drift.

So, my New Year's resolution, six weeks early, is to take time for my WIP this holiday season. Surely I can carve out time in my day, I'm superwoman after all. Simple solution - I just won't decorate. Yeah, that's it!

Happy Holidays and don't forget to write!

A Little Bit of Everything

Wildflowerafternoons

Okay, so it's the day after Halloween. For the first time in thirteen years, I had a quiet, I don't have to go out, fight traffic, crowds and the fright of a little kid running out infront of my car night. Yes, the teenager went off to do his own thing, not trick or treating, all he wanted was the candy, admitted he's really not into it anymore, so I told him I'd buy a couple bags today to satisfy the candy hunger and he was happy with that, LOL. So now it's time to start having Halloween Parties. *YAY*

So not sure about the rest of you, but my butt was up at 7:23 AM (Damn turning back the clocks) :-) What did I do, well, I jumped right back into bed until 8AM, LOL.
I do feel fully refreshed and rested though.

Florida's starting to cool down a bit, *YAY* it's to be in the low 80's today with less humidity and in the upper 50's tonight!! I've waited so long!! (Hand brushing across forehead)

jorge1782

I'm also in the market for a mini netbook. I've played with a few here and there, messed around with a Acer and A dell mini inspiration last night at Wal-Mart and went to read several reviews. I really like the key board on the dell. The buttons are just a bit larger, and felt more comfortable.

It seems the Toshiba mini has had a lot of negative feed back about the keypad being really sensitive and the mouse jumping around. That is one thing I want to avoid big time. I can't stand that.
Anyone out there have a netbook they want to share the scoop on? I'll take the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I need more coffee so I'm going to end here and say, Good Morning to Happy the Clock has been turned back day! You all got to sleep an extra hour and wake up earlier, LOL. :-)

Week 2--Becoming a Less Neurotic Writer in 12 Weeks

How's everyone doing out there? I can't say I'm feeling less neurotic, but I am focusing more on my writing and trying my best to ignore that brutal internal editor bitching on my shoulder. Is it working? Mmm, not really, but I am getting better at telling her to shut up. My week one checkin is at the end of the post.

Week Two: Recovering a Sense of Identity.
I love Julia Cameron's quote here: "Going sane feels just like going crazy." Yeah, that’s about right. But if that’s true, how do you tell the difference?

Cameron talks about barriers to our creativity. One of them is external. She calls them “crazymakers.” They’re the people in your life who create storm centers and chaos. The ones who need us right when we’re about to write or are in the middle of writing. The ones who always have some sort of melodrama in their life that then becomes part of our life. The ones who tell us we’re being selfish by taking time to write. Luckily, I don’t have a crazymaker in my life right now, but if you do, consider what you can do to either get them out of your life or minimize the damage they inflict upon your creativity.

There are also internal barriers to our creativity. The biggest one is our skepticism. Cameron describes the mind like a room. Inside our room are all our usual ideas about our life, our creativity, our higher power, etc. The room has a door and it’s slightly ajar. Outside the room is a dazzling light. In that light is a bunch of great, new ideas that are slightly outside of our comfort zone, so we keep them out of our room. The ideas we are comfortable with are inside the room with us. All others are kept outside.

Before our creative recovery, we kept that door closed. Cameron wants us to try opening it now and then. See what happens. “It is not necessary to change our beliefs,” she says. “It is necessary that we examine them.” She says creative recovery is all about “open-mindedness.” She suggests we spend this week consciously opening our mind a bit.

Cameron also talks about how writers tend to waste a lot of time in fantasy and daydreams when we’re blocked. We think about what could have, should have, would have. She says we simply need to pay attention. She suggests writing down how we spend our time during the day. What are the time suckers? We need to stop daydreaming and start doing.

Some other tasks she suggests are to write a list of 20 things we’ve always wanted to do in our life. Can we incorporate anything from that list into our week? She reminds us to read our affirmations daily before or after our Morning Pages.

Here's my Week One checkin:

Daily walking: Did this every day but two days. The weather was horrible here, so that's my excuse. I worked through a couple of plot issues during my walks and my dog really enjoyed it, so that's progress.

Daily 3-min meditation: I'm resisting this for some reason. It's not like it takes a lot of time, but I only fit it in 2x. I just don't think about it during the day. Maybe I should meditate right when I get up in the morning, when I'm making my To Do list (that I never remember to look at for the rest of the day...)

Daily morning pages: I did this every day but one (I was at the ocean for the weekend and ran out of pages in my journal). This is definitely a habit, one I can't do without. Just this morning I wrote out a whole new series idea that just came to me while I rambled about something else.

Weekly Artist Date: Yes, I did this. My siblings, mom, daughter and I went to the ocean for the weekend. I took an hour and went for a walk on the beach by myself, and spent some time drawing pictures in the sand with a stick and just standing in the surf watching the waves.

Yoga 2x/week: Did this and it felt great. Once was with the class I taught, then a second time for about 20 minutes working mainly on the tightness in my hips. This is a habit that I really want to cultivate.

Good luck this week!

Early Bird Special - Black Dragon's Heart

Get the last book in the series first.

Blurb - Devoted chemist, Sarah VanHorn, lives for her research but fantasizes about loving Jake Ramsey. Her two worlds collide when the dragon center agent arrives to rescue her from the company suspected of producing chemicals dangerous to those with dragon blood.

Sarah's not the only one with fantasies. Jake wants Sarah as his mate and he's waited years to claim her. Now, under his protective custody--not to mention the influence of Syndetic's sexual stimulant scenting the air--he can't resist the fiery temptation to finally make her his.

But when tragedy strikes and their dreams are threatened, will Sarah sacrifice her career, Jake, and possibly her life to discover the answers? And will Jake let her?