Money Back Guarantee - cover reveal

Busy Saturdays are nothing new. After working a day job all week, it's a necessity to cram a lot of "to dos" into the weekend. Laundry, yard work, family all require our physical presence. 

I don't mind, most weeks, but today my creative side really, really, really wanted to finish the cover for Money Back Guarantee. I did, but it's too late to try to load the book up at All Romance eBooks as planned. I'll have to settle for having completed the cover and leave the uploading for tomorrow.

The cover looks just as I envisioned. I'd do a happy dance but I'm tuckered. That'll have to wait until tomorrow, too.

Rayne
rayneforrest.blogspot.com
twitter.com/rayneforrest

Forgotten gems

After several lifetimes, I have a new work in progress. And having something new to work on inevitably leads me to the "pause" stage, or the halfway point. This is where I step back and re-read from the beginning before setting the outline for the rest of the story. 

That doesn't mean I'm sitting on my hands doing nothing. A few days ago I opened the folder for Money Back Guarantee. It got some great reviews - 5 Kisses from the old Two Lips Reviews. I gave it a read and was amazed at how clean the old manuscript is, a true forgotten gem. 

It didn't take much to go through it and tighten up a few passages. Then the search for stock for the cover ensued. I've been looking at this for two evenings and I think it's going to be a go as soon as I skip on over to iStock and buy the kissing couple. I like to do a mock-up and look at it a bit before I plunk down my money. I think it makes sense. 

While reading Money Back Guarantee, it struck me what a jewel the story truly is. Our hero is a strong man, but not a chest-thumping Neanderthal. Our heroine is mentally tough and all lady until it's time to not be a lady. They never question that they are equals and they never treat each other as anything else. 

This gem deserves to shine again. I'll be back in a few days with the real cover, an excerpt, and purchase information. Check back!

Rayne
rayneforrest.blogspot.com
twitter.com/rayneforrest

Taking Chances

Life is full of highs and lows. No one can escape them. Both can exhaust us, so with any luck balance will be quickly restored. 

I've been contemplating giving up the paid website for many months now. Yahoo developed a new marketing tool that sends information directly to a paying customer's inbox. That quickly became a low - for Yahoo.

Tracking website hits compared to blog hits left no doubt in my mind I needed to rethink a few things. Twenty-Six Keys gets five times the hits the paid website gets. It's a no-brainer. If I'm going to pay for a home on the web, I'd do better to pay Blogger. 

Oh wait. It's FREE. At least for now and until I can switch the .com domain over. 

I'm going to bite the bullet, as they say, and give up the paid website. Yes, I've had it for thirteen years, but we need to be frugal even if it makes us a bit sad. 

So rayneforrest.blogspot.com is my new web home. I'll still be blogging right here at Twenty-Six Keys, but I think having a separate site for the books will work out just fine. I might even give Facebook a look now. 

Rayne
http://www.twitter.com/rayneforrest

IWSG - The once and future writer

Way back in 2003 I signed my first publishing contract. It was 9:00 PM when the email came in and I screamed loud enough to make my partner jump out of his chair and come back the hall to the computer room (as we called it in those days).

No, I didn't see a mouse, dear. Someone is actually going to publish The Skies of Mahdis. 

And so it began. I had a very successful writing career up until the Triskelion Publishing debacle. Excuse me. They called it bankruptcy. RAYNE calls it a debacle. Same damn difference.

The debacle happened at the end of a very trying personal time. My beloved partner had, we prayed, been successfully treated for cancer. It's an insidious disease. Even after almost nine years we panic if he gets a cold or some weird symptom. Anyway, I was already mentally and emotionally exhausted and the debacle was pretty much the last straw.

I shifted gears and took on a new name and a new genre. Was it a "cut and run?" Yes, it was. I needed to write and I needed the stress free environment of anonymity. It's been a successful cut and run, though. I started over without telling anyone other than author Brenda Williamson what I was doing. I submitted the first story and it was immediately accepted.

Huh. Maybe I really do have some small talent at this writing stuff. But the world has turned.

Publishing isn't what it once was. Going indie is no-longer the kiss of death to the serious writer. Yet even as indie authors bask in the new freedoms, the screw tightens to control them. Amazon, the land of indie opportunity, keeps changing the game. Our, ahem, illustrious, government does nothing to control piracy.

I have a nice collection of completed stories sitting on my hard drive. I've already re-edited a few, learned some basic photoshop techniques, created a few simple covers, and indie published them. I might even indie publish The Skies of Mahdis and come full circle. 

It's daunting to be effectively starting over yet again. I question if, knowing so much more about the publishing industry, I can do it. 

Will I be as successful (or at least my definition of the word) in 2015 and forward as I was a decade ago? I don't know. Do I need it to be to be happy? Probably not. I simply know that as the once and future writer, I'll figure it out as I go. 

That's what all of us do, one step at a time. 

Thanks for stopping in here at Twenty-six Keys as part of the IWSG blog hop. 

Rayne
http://www.rayneforrest.com
www.twitter.com/RayneForrest

Rayne's Ramblings: What camp will you be in?

Blogs are strange beasts, each as individual as the blogger themselves. You can’t run a Google search without finding a blog on your chosen topic. Blogs are freedom of speech at its best – and sometimes, worst.

With Google alerts set on a variety of topics, I’m treated to a handful of new blogs every day. Some days I simply can’t take the time to read any of them, but I generally look at one or two when I have a quiet moment. Lately I’ve noticed an uncomfortable trend in blogs – bashing.

The Internet is populated by only twelve people and eleven of them have a gzillion screen names each.  I wouldn’t kid you about that. It has to be. I must be the only person who represents myself as only the writer and the “real me.” That’s all the multiple personality disorder I can do. The other eleven people are taking over all the bandwidths.

Okay. I’m being silly. My point is that the Internet provides a never before enjoyed anonymity to everyone. So…does our anonymity give us permission to post truly hurtful things about another person? I think not.

Things blogged about today will live on for no one knows how long. The Internet grows new storage every day. Five years. Fifteen? Fifty? It’s anyone’s guess how big the cloud will grow. The dregs of thought and spirit, and the enlightened and wonderful reside side-by-side. In a hundred years, what will future generations decide most realistically reflects those of us blogging today?  The nasty or the delightful?

I can’t speak for you, but I know which camp I want to be in.

Rayne Forrest

http://www.rayneforrest.com

http://www.twitter.com/rayneforrest

#MSS102 - Rayne Forrest's Mischief at Midnight

Welcome to another My Sexy Saturday. My Sexy Saturday is a blog hop for romance fiction where authors showcase seven sexy words, sentences or paragraphs from one of their works. Today, I have seven sexy paragraphs from Mischief at Midnight.

Madelyn thinks she's hired a service drone for the evening to help with a dinner party - and more - but it really Dallas, the drone creator whose come to her aid. 

Enjoy!

*_*_*_*

Chivalry died. He’d just killed it. His last opportunity to confess his deception looked him square in the eye and he let it slide away.It wasn’t that he lacked female companionship. Dallas had plenty of women falling at his size eleven feet.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the size of his feet that attracted all those women, it was the size of his bankroll. He had the distinct impression Madelyn had a bankroll of her own, a definite plus for a man with his wealth, and maybe part of the reason why she would consider a night with a personal pleasure drone. She probably had more than a few men looking at her bankroll, too. She wiggled her toes against his palm.

"Tell me, Dallas, how extensive is your intimate programming?"

A shiver ran up his spine quickly followed by the breakout of sweat on his back. “Extensive enough, however, I am not programmed for extreme fetishes."

Madelyn blinked coyly. “I’m not programmed for fetishes, extreme or otherwise, either, so we’re even, although that wasn’t what I was asking. No matter.” She pulled her foot out of his grasp and rolled to her feet. Dallas stood up promptly, ready to follow her, or run, he didn’t know which.

Yes, he did. The mix of facial expressions that had come and gone, and come again, as she waged her internal war would haunt him if he walked away. All the unasked, unanswered questions he had, his unbridled curiosity about this good-looking woman who seemed part kitten, part tigress, part shy, part bold, would not allow him to walk away. If she needed company for tonight, she would have it.

Never had he courted such disaster. It was thrilling, invigorating even.

_*_*_*_*_

MISCHIEF AT MIDNIGHT is available now at Amazon. 

More about Mischief at Midnight:

Madelyn Murphy isn’t your typical spoiled rich girl. Self-sufficient, Madelyn maintains only one household drone to help out. She even does her own cooking, something virtually unheard of for a woman of 2115.

Triple D Drones’ owner, Dallas Dyson, has made a fortune in the service drone industry. He’ll even lend a helping hand himself if someone’s in a pinch.

When Madelyn’s service drone breaks just before a dinner party, she calls Triple Drones for help. When the new Dallas "prototype" shows up to lend a hand, Madelyn discovers a bit of a deception. It's not the latest drone lending a hand - it's a flesh and blood man. Madelyn has but one question - What's a guy like Dallas Dyson doing impersonating a drone?

Rayne
www.rayneforrest.com
www.twitter.com/rayneforrest

Visit all the My Sexy Saturday blogs on the list below for more great romance!

Dragonflies

I've had several blogs over the years in several blogging platforms. Having reached a point where there were just too many old, broken links to update, a few years ago I started over here at Twenty-Six Keys. This left me with a multitude of old blogs about my life in the woods in the files. Some of them are as relevant now as they were then. Today I want to share with you one of those old blogs. - RF

Blog notes

August 6, 2005        

Dragonflies

Every year brings something different to my little fishpond. One year it was a large garden spider, resplendent in her black and yellow garb and skilled in her spinning. One year it was a tiny garter snake that, thankfully, didn’t stay around long enough for me to be forced to remove him by any means at my disposal. Many years it has been frogs. This year it has been dragonflies, or maybe the damselfly. I'll call them dragonflies because I like that better. 

I much prefer the dragonflies to everything else that has been attracted by the sound of trickling water. The spider was fascinating; seldom do you see such as her around here. But she was a spider, and we weren’t friendly. Same with the little snake. I was accepting only up to a point. I pay property tax and they don’t.

We installed the pond over a Memorial Day weekend. I got ten “feeder” goldfish to start the nitrogen cycle. The fellow at the pet store advised against the feeders, saying they would never live. Aye. Right. Like they would live long after he sold them to someone to feed their Caymans. At least in my pond they’d have a few good months before winter hit. Those ten “worthless” little goldfish are now eight years old, and even spawned their own addition to the ranks. They aren’t so little anymore, either.

The first spring, a frog came. I’ve long had toads and salamanders about the garden so what was another amphibian or two? Well, I quickly found out I like snakes better than frogs. Snakes are quiet. Snakes are clean. Frogs are not.

A happy frog with his own freshwater pond wants a girlfriend. How does he attract one? He sings. He sings loudly and all night long, night after night after night until he’s finally caught in a bucket and safely transported to the nearest creek. 

Maybe the lack of frogs is why the dragonflies arrived in such numbers this year. The first one appeared in early June, hovering on shiny blue wings to check out the place. It wasn’t long before a second one appeared. Then more. They move too fast in their intricate flights to count. The number present doesn’t really matter but there are a lot of them. One was joyful and many are delightful.

Dragonflies are quiet - seen and not heard. They are clean except for the occasional shed wing floating on the surface of the pond. This surprised me at first but I quickly learned they shed old wings as they grow. The dragonflies entertain with their aerial acrobatics. We sit on the patio and watch them instead of doing our chores. Yes, they are a good addition to my backyard. I hope they return for many years to come.

Rayne

http://www.rayneforrest.com