My musical muse

Thruth be told...my muse loves music, but not just any music. There is a certain beat, a melody, a feel that my muse loves the most.

Evanescence, Gloria Estefan, Paramore, anything that has that flair of love, lovemaking or just sexiness to it. And lately, Rihanna has filled those shoes! Have you seen her new video? H.O.T! And let's not forget to mention Lady Gaga's, Born This Way...OMG! I have to limit Gaga's music to when I'm not writing because all I want to do is get up and shake my groove.

I crank the music to wall shaking levels and allow myself to be absorded into the "feel" of it. There is nothing sexier than listening to Gato Barbieri's, Europa playing in the background and finishing a kick ass romance scene or when Rihanna's S&M finishes playing and I've just banged out a sexy love/bondage scene! Yeah, baby! That's what some writers live for...at least, I do!

So, what turns your muse's head and gets him/her/its creative juices flowing?

Story Ideas

The one question I am always asked is if I use my personal experiences to write my books. The answer is sort-of. Let me explain.

A few days before Christmas, we found a hot water foundation leak in our home. I called several plumbers to make the repairs. Unfortunately, the holidays were upon us and I couldn't find anyone, except this one company to come out on such short notice. Needless to say, we all know how that can work out, but I had high hopes that all would turn out well. The plumber did come out and eventually, did make the necessary repairs while I sat back helplessly watching the reign of devastation that plagued my humble abode. Woohoo, right? Wrong. He took us to the cleaners!

So this is how it ties in...in my next installment of the Hightower Series, Tamara, the Matriach of the clan, gets an unexpected visit from a nasty little demon nicknamed... yes, you guessed it, the Plumber.

And much in the same way that our real plumber cut holes in our walls, jack hammered our floors and basically, tore our precious home apart before it could be put back together, Tamara's Demon Plumber will do the same with her soul while Izzy sits helplessly on the sidelines.

Now, I don't profess to know how other authors come up with ideas for their stories. It may be similiar or not, but I do know one thing. Authors have the innate ability to write about anything in their stories. So, keep in mind that its not a good idea to piss an author off, you just might end up as an undying brain eating zombie that gets killed multiple times before finding true death.

Speaking of...my next book, Carly Bright - Sex Games has a March 2011 release date.

See you next month...

Annie :0)

http://www.anniealvarez.net/
http://naughtylittlevamp.blogspot.com/
http://www.romancewiki.com/Annie_Alvarez

Morrigan – The Great Dane

As promised from last month, I would like you all to meet Morrigan, our Great Dane. She’s our resident character and what a character she has, can’t you tell by the photo?

This huge girl, wasn’t always so big. When we rescued her, from a backyard breeder, she was in SERIOUS need of medical attention. Actually, none of us, including the Vet thought she would live. For a 6 month old puppy, she was the size of a 6 month old kitten. Yes, it’s hard to believe that her entire body fit in one hand! She was cute, but the truth is that she never should have been so small.

Morrigan was infested with worms, fleas and I know you can’t tell from this photo, but as a very young puppy, her left eye was punctured and left as is. I won’t described the details, believe me, you don’t want to know them. It was pretty gruesome and we, my partner and I, were pretty pissed! Needless to say, she is blind as a bat in that one eye.

After 7 rounds of MAJOR antibiotics and 5 rounds of de-wormer, we were finally able to get her stabilized. We all now believed she had a pretty good chance to survive, because she still wasn’t in the clear, yet. The infection from the eye injury had wrecked havoc on her poor little body.

Skipping forward several months and the fact that I believe we bought our Vet his new house…Morrigan is a happy and healthy galouf! Yes, I do call her our galouf. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is blind in one eye. Believe me! She’ll be 3 years old and I swear, she’s a 120 lb freaking puppy and we have the broken furniture to prove it!

She’s one smart cookie, sometimes too smart for her own good! She’s loyal. She can be affectionate. She warns us before Jaque has a seizure. She loves our cats, although they aren’t always too sure about her. She’s sensitive, God forbid, we yell at her for anything, she gets her feelings hurt. And she doesn't like strangers. Not a bad combination.

We would have it any other way? No! All in all, she’s a great addition to the family.

Now, for a little shameless self promoting…

My newest book, Gaia’s Lust was released a couple of weeks ago. It is Book 5 of the Hightower Series and it’s got some hot, sexy scenes, involving hard candies. Yes, you read correctly. Hard candies.

You can read an excerpt on my webpage: http://www.anniealvarez.net/

Please note: This is intended for mature audiences only!

If you’ve read my series, no doubt you know about Zoe, the were-human. Next month, I’ll introduce the cat behind the character!


Thanks for having me here!
Annie Alvarez
http://www.anniealvarez.net/
http://naughtylittlevamp.blogspot.com/

This is Jaque

I know most authors don't invite you into their private lives but, I'm not like most authors out there, in case you haven't noticed. So, I've decided that over the several months, I'll introduce you to our kids, and yes, they are our kids.

I'd like to start with Jaque, our Yellow Lab. Jaque is the only animal that came to us...really.

One Saturday morning, a few years back, Jen and I were leaving the house to go run errands, like we typically do on a Saturday. I openned the garage door to find a big, very smelly and very dirty dog sitting on our front porch. We canvassed the neighborhood, trying to find his owner and came up blank. No one had ever seen or heard about him, and if they had, they weren't saying.

As it so happens, one of our neighbors offered to take this loveable, dirty, smelly walking dirt bag home with him. He said and I quote, "I'll take good care of him (I had no doubt about that) and I have a six foot fence, he can't get out."

Never having owned dogs before, I agreed and the two of them happily trotted down the street to Jaques new home. Situation resolved, we went on our way to run our errands.

A few hours later, we returned to find the Jaque comfortably sleeping on our front porch. We had heard that Labs are diggers and assumed that he got out of our neighbors yard. So, we gathered up Jaque and back he went to our neighbors house and his "new home".

Again, situation resolved, we ran out.
We were half way down our street, returning home, when our neighbor stopped us with bad news. Apparently, Jaque had run away again. Our neighbor had spent hours looking for the dog, with no luck. Maybe, the neighbor said, he knows where he belongs and went home.

I'll buy that. We pulled into the garage, unloaded the shopping bags, and Jen went out to water the plants. She wasn't out there more than a minute when she stuck her head back inside and told me to come out front and be quite. She pointed under the large Sage bush we have and there was Jaque, happily snoring away, waiting for us to return home.

We have tortured this poor dog in every way possible. We gave him a bath, took him to the vets, got his shots and had him chipped. We even had him neutered and to this day, he hasn't gotten out of our little three foot fence of which, he knows how to open the gate. As for the digging, yeah, he made trench diggers look like amateurs. No joke. Thankfully, he has grown out of his puppy stage. The digging, the chewing and the mischievious stuff has stopped. We don't lose shoes anymore and our cats love him.

Very recently, Jaque had 3 grand mal seizures. It scared the hell out of us and I'm still a little afraid to leave him alone. We've been working with our vet trying to figure out why he suddenly started having seizures. He'll start anti-seizure medication soon, just in case and I'll finally be able to get a good nights sleep again.

Truth is, we'll do whatever it takes to make sure he is happy and healthy.

I guess he knew where he belonged.

A little Shamless Promotion!

Okay, maybe not so little.

Wait! Didn't I talk about POS (Promotion Overload Syndrome) last time? Yes! I did, but the truth is, I'm not as popular as some of the greats yet, so I gotta do what a writer does...promote.

Sessions was released last month and this story is especially important to me. No, it's not like that. Get your mind out the gutter! It's because this is the story that originally got me a contract. I know, pretty cool huh? And now my baby is out there for all the world to see. I'm so proud.

As the title implies, it is about therapy, but wait, don't knock it yet! I can just hear it now..."I all ready know the ending." Are you sure? This isn't your typical, girl has problems, girl goes to therapy and therapist fixes it with sex. Well, okay, part of it is any ways, but the story isn't at all what you think and that's what I love about it. I even mixed some B&D in it to help the characters along. Wasn't I sneaky?

If I did a good job with the story, you'll find yourself rooting one of the characters along, and hating the other only to find out that maybe you were wrong all along. Or maybe not, I don't want to give too much away.

Now, as some of you know, I am a lesbian erotica writer because...well, I'm a lesbian. Shhh...did I really just out myself? Krud! I gave it away, didn't I? Here's the thing, you're going to find f/f sex in every chapter, oops, session in the ebook. And its explicit. Oh, one more thing, you can read an explicit excerpt on my website: http://www.anniealvarez.net  (For mature audiences only, please.)

The other side of me is the Paranormal Erotic author and I've been working on The Hightower Series. A clan of sexy vampire ladies ready to steal your heart and other things if you let them.

Book 4, Lustful Torment is actually from Mistress Tamara's POV (Point Of View) and believe me, my vampires don't sparkle!

Oh, where do I begin? How about at the beginning? Book 1, For The Love Of Blood, introduces you to Tamara and Izzy. Remember, I am a lesbian erotica writer so you'll find a lot of f/f interactions in this series, too. It's also where you'll find the infamous "pearl scene". I'll let you read about that yourself. :)

I would say that it's a must read series, but that would be tooting my own horn, and I won't do that. Instead, I'll quote my cousin David. "Damn girl, even my wife thinks your girls are hot!

In honor of non-sparkly vampires, we're having a Naughty Little Vamp June Extravaganza, and I invite you all to participate in the festivites! Starting on the 1st of June, stop by and leave a comment and you could win a prize! http://naughtylittlevamp.blogspot.com/

See you next month!

POS sufferers unite!

I wanted to write something witty, sharp and meaningful and to quote my 12 year old nephew, "I got nothing."

For most normal people, having nothing is no big deal. For a writer, it's an automatic death sentence and I am sitting in the corridors awaiting my fate. No. I'm not suffering from the dreaded writer's block. I have named my affliction, POS - wait! It's not what you're thinking really!

POS stands for Promotions Overload Syndrome. Many authors are affecting by this crippling disease, just ask one.

Here's the dirty...we write, what we think is an awesome story. A publishing house accepts our manuscript and then we have to figure out how to promote our baby. Yes, publishing houses do promote, but let's get real for a minute...they can only do so much and no matter how much they do, we the creators of the story think it's never enough. We have to step in and get our name out there and rightfully so.

We must introduce ourselves to the world and let everyone know who we are and what we've written, and oh yeah, that they want to buy it. So, we start with the small Ning groups at first, then we incorporate the Yahoo Groups. By this time, we've got a Kazillion email addresses and passwords to remember, but that isn't enough! We squeeze in a blog of our own! Just in case, you know?

My problem is that I am so preoccupied with keeping up with the Jones that my Muse took a temporary vacation. I think she's in the Bahamas with the Smith's.

I have resolved to fix this and bring my Muse back. I am dwendling down the list I commit myself to. If you don't see me somewhere, it's not that I don't care, I promise. It's that I want my Muse back. Pronto!

I need to keep my readers happy and I can't do that with my Muse sipping Margaritas on a deserted Island, hiding from me. Statistics stated that the f/f genre, was not a favorable one and in spite of that, I have done pretty good. Not great, but good and I don't want to ruin it by streching myself so thin that I disappear.

I invite you all to get to know me, visit my website and my blog. You just might like something you read.

Here's are my words of wisdom, when the POS interferes with your writing, it's time to take the BS out back and put it to rest!

Annie :0)

http://www.anniealvarez.net/