Blessed Samhain

Waiting for dinner—prepared the first part and let Sam finish the second when he came home from the gym. Halloween—not many trick or treaters here at our new house. Am working, to make up for time while I was out with the cold. Happy with Night Veil—I think I rocked it. Will get it sent off tomorrow to my editor, then finish page proofs of Blood Wyne.

This morning, when I woke up I looked outside at the sequoia tree. It was blowing in the wind—the thing has to be a good sixty feet tall. And it was so beautiful, and the sky was clear, that it made me happy in a way that I haven’t felt in awhile. Just lying there, watching the tree blow in the wind…was a peace-of-mind moment that you can’t buy anywhere. Well, I guess you can buy it by buying a house. ~grins~ But you know what I mean.

Blessed Samhain and Happy Halloween to you all,

Yasmine

HARVEST HUNTING RELEASE DAY

Go. Buy. Read. ('Scuse me while I hide under the covers now!).

Yasmine

HARVEST HUNTING BASKETS CONTEST

My house is all decked out for the Witching Season--is yours? And what better way to celebrate the coming of Samhain/Halloween than a NEW RELEASE?



Just five more days until the official release of HARVEST HUNTING, people! And to celebrate, I'm giving away two mystery baskets full of goodies that all somehow relate to the book and/or the season! What's in there? Hmmm...smell-goods and ear-candy and all sorts of autumn paraphenilia. The baskets will NOT be containing copies of Harvest Hunting.

Why am I not showing a picture of it? Because the baskets are a surprise--but you all know I give good baskets, so you know these will be wonderful.

Because I cannot afford international postage, I'll also be giving away a $30 Amazon online gift certificate to one international winner. So you can make your own basket via Amazon.com. :)

CONTEST IS OVER! No further entries will be counted. We'll announce the winners later this week!

Anyway, to enter:
1. You MUST be 18 or over.
2. You MUST include an email address for contact in your entry--don't run back to put it five entries down the line--if you forget, delete your original post and re-post with email addy included.
3. You MUST include whether you are USA or other country (and pls specify).
4. Contest ends November 1st at midnight, Pacific Time.

In your entry, tell me: have you ever had an encounter of the ghostly kind? If so, what was it like? If not, do you ever want to actually meet/see a ghost--you can't choose whether it would be friendly or not.

Happy Hauntings, Blessed Samhain, and Happy Halloween. And most of all: Happy HARVEST HUNTING.

Bright Blessings
Yasmine Galenorn

Harvest Hunting Wednesdays - Part 4

It's just a little under a month until Harvest Hunting comes out so to get you in the mood here's an excerpt from chapter 2--stay tuned for next week for more. Also, check out the Moon Daughters web comic each Friday for more Otherworld fun!

You can read the first chapter up on Yasmine's site so we'll be posting excerpts from chapter 2 each Wednesday until the release date. If we find anybody reproducing this on other sites we'll stop and everybody loses out. That means: NO cutting/pasting/copying/sending through email.

-- J.L. Anderson
Yasmine's Assistant and Comic Artist

Chapter 1
Chapter 2 part 1
Chapter 2 part 2
Chapter 2 part 3


Harvest Hunting:
CHAPTER 2 (part 4)

Copyright 2010 Yasmine Galenorn
DO NOT REPRODUCE

As she slowly released me and I sat back, Menolly grimaced. “I’m so happy. But Kitten, you have to promise to do something for me.”

“What?” I asked, breathless, wondering if she wanted a better apology for my hesitance all those years.

“Do something about that mop.” She pointed to my hair.

Iris meandered in, clad in a silk kimono. Her hair was tousled, loose and falling to her ankles in a golden rain of silk strands. And her cheeks were rosy, with an afterglow impossible to hide.

Milkmaids gone wild, I thought impulsively. Grinning, I waggled my finger at her. “You and Bruce been busy?”

“Hush you,” she said, scolding me. “None of your business, girl. But I will tell you that I did some checking. I’m not comfortable using hair dye, at least not right now. After the peroxide, it would fry your hair and probably muck it up worse than it is.”

“Well, I don’t want that.” I frowned, not at all happy. “Hell.” I glanced over at Menolly. “You’re right, I need to do something—I can’t just leave it like this. Maybe it’s time for a change.” I motioned to Iris. “Get your scissors.”

“What? You’re kidding.” She stared at me like I was crazy.

“Just do it. I want it short and edgy. If I’m going to have punk hair, I’m going all the way. And this way it will grow out my normal color, and I can just trim the ends a little bit till all the mismatched patches are gone.”

Menolly giggled. “You’re really going to do it, Kitten? I bet you won’t go through with it.”

I snorted. “Watch me. Fire up Jerry Springer, haul out the Cheetos; we’re having a party.”

Menolly obligingly brought me a bowl of the orange crispy puffs I loved so much, along with a glass of milk, and then, after cajoling Nerissa to sprawl out on the sofa where the gorgeous golden-haired Amazon promptly passed out, she folded her legs and hovered up toward the ceiling, tossing me the remote.

As I channel-surfed, Iris brought out her kit and bade me sit on the hassock in front of her. She still had to stand on a stepstool since I was so tall.

“Can you make it stylish?”

“I know what you want, girl. Just hold still.”

The first cut was torture—I heard the clip of the scissors and shuddered as Iris handed me a fistful of blotched hair. But as I stared at it, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t a bad idea at all. I would have looked hideous; the hair was frizzed from the peroxide and baking soda.

As she snipped her way across my head, razoring in some parts, I began to look forward to the difference. Hell, I felt different—something about losing my fear of Menolly’s vampirism had opened the desire to make big changes, to sacrifice the parts of myself that made me uncertain and frightened. I was tired of being timid, of being hesitant.

“Almost done,” Iris said, whisking off my neck.


Tuesday October 26th is Harvest Hunting release day! The rest is continued there!

I Admit It: I Can't Tell Time

I have many odd qualities that seem to endear me to my friends—like my quirky ability to volunteer (railroad *koff koff*) them into doing certain things, and my incessant desire to send scary spider pictures to them via email, and my habit of finding bizarre things on YouTube for them to watch, and my love of all things Spongebob (except Spongebob porn, that’s just wrong), and my delight when I find something quirky and fun. (Well, to be honest, I’m not sure endear is the right word—maybe ‘put up with’ is a better choice).

But today I discovered yet another quirk for them to love (laugh at): apparently I don’t know how to tell time. We had to be up by 8:00 to be ready for the plumbers to be here by around 9:00 am. So I set the alarm for 7:45.

At 6:00, I wake up to take my thyroid medicine. I know it’s six because the clock tells me so—it’s a digital readout and it would not lie to me. I glance over at the cable box and pause. The cable box is telling me it’s 4:00 AM and I know that can’t be right—my alarm clock does not lie.

So I decide that the cable box is trying to fool me into thinking I’ve got more time left to sleep than I do, and I glare at it to let it know that HA! I’m no fool, (I know what you're up to, you maniacal machine), and then fall back asleep for another hour and forty-five minutes.

I wake up at 7:50, wondering why the alarm didn’t go off. I decide I must not have set it right.

So I drag myself out of bed, wake up my husband and make him get dressed. I complain about being tired and he asks, “Do you want more sleep?” and I valiantly say, “I can’t—we have to be up for the plumber guys.”

Then, I come in here to my office, turn on my computer and think, huh? My computer’s taunting me now: it tells me it’s 6:00 am. Well, 6:03 to be honest. I stare at it and think…what the hell…

I go back into the bedroom and look at my clock. 8:04. I blink, look closer and see it says it’s 8:04 PM. I briefly wonder if all three of us—my husband, mother in law, and me—slept through the night and the day, but decide that’s a stupid idea—the plumber guys would have called, Got Junk would have shown up, Jenn would have called. Besides, I feel like I barely slept five hours. And then I look at the cable box again, back to the clock, and think…damn, if two electronic devices are telling me it’s only 6:00, they must be right.

By now I’m slowly getting it through my brain that yes, it’s still way too early, somehow the alarm clock got re-set, and then it registers that I’m very tired and made Sam get up and dressed for nothing.

I tell him, and he says, “I know. I wondered why we had to get up so early.”

I tell him he can go back to sleep and he, in a fit of Prince Charming, offers to make breakfast while I rest. I demure, he insists. He asks what I want, I say ‘bacon’ because nothing in the world is better than bacon. He says we don’t have any bacon so I say “soup would be fine” but now he’s decided that if I want bacon, I’m going to get it and so he decides to go to the grocery store.

Now I feel like a total rat because he’s going out into the cold to buy me bacon at 6:00 in the morning. Well, 6:30 by now.

I really should insist he not bother, but my inner whiny little kid pops up and so I promptly ask him to bring me back a latte, and something gluten free along with the bacon. And after he leaves I try to rest but feel so guilty about him going out that I decide to come in my office and write this blog as penance for sending him out into the cold morning.

So yes, world: I, Yasmine Galenorn cannot tell time. Even when electronic devices try to help me. And my husband’s a prince in blue jeans.

Yasmine

Harvest Hunting Wednesdays - Part 3

It's just a little under a month until Harvest Hunting comes out so to get you in the mood here's an excerpt from chapter 2--stay tuned for next week for more. Also, check out the Moon Daughters web comic each Friday for more Otherworld fun!

You can read the first chapter up on Yasmine's site so we'll be posting excerpts from chapter 2 each Wednesday until the release date. If we find anybody reproducing this on other sites we'll stop and everybody loses out. That means: NO cutting/pasting/copying/sending through email.

-- J.L. Anderson
Yasmine's Assistant and Comic Artist

Chapter 1
Chapter 2 part 1
Chapter 2 part 2

Harvest Hunting:
CHAPTER 2 (part 3)

Copyright 2010 Yasmine Galenorn
DO NOT REPRODUCE

“What happened?” I asked, suddenly thinking that there was a whole lot more depth to Luke than I’d assumed.

“I was in love with a girl—Marla. We wanted to get married, but the Packmaster gave her to someone who beat the crap out of her and passed her around to his buddies. I tried to sneak out, take her with me, and they caught us. There was a big fight . . . it was a bad scene. She’s dead now, and I’m pariah. I can never go back. I defied the law of the Packmaster.”

Neither Menolly nor I said a word, just waited. His eyes echoed the pain in his voice, and I felt like I’d overstepped my boundaries.

He pushed himself to his feet. “I gave Delilah all the information about Amber that I could think of. Tomorrow I’ll bring the skunk scent remover to the bar. Delilah, you can pick it up there.”

He nodded, again tapping his hat, and I flushed, looking at him. It had been over a month since I’d had sex, and he was lean, lanky, and all male. But he didn’t even blink an eye my way, and truthfully, I was relieved. I was so confused over Chase. And Zach, the werepuma I’d slept with twice and who had saved Chase’s life, was taking far longer to heal up from his injuries than anybody had first thought. Last time I’d gone to visit him at the rehabilitation center where he was staying, he’d refused to see me, and we hadn’t spoken in over a month, even though I’d tried calling every week.

Menolly saw Luke out while I sorted through the notes. When she came back, I looked up, and she smiled softly at me. Her eyes had once been a gorgeous blue, but the further she sank into her new life as a vampire, the grayer they became and now—now they were almost silver.

“You’re horny, aren’t you?” She let out a sigh. “That’s the trouble with getting involved with somebody. You begin to need them . . . and then . . .” With a glance over at Nerissa, she shrugged. “And then you can’t imagine them not being in your life.”

It was then I noticed a gold band on her right index finger. I pointed to it. “That’s new. Just when and where did you get it?” I held her gaze, and she narrowed her eyes and gave a little huff. If she was voluntarily breathing, I knew I’d gotten under her skin. Go, me!

“Oh, all right. Nerissa gave it to me. It’s . . . a promise ring. It symbolizes that we’re off the market, at least as far as other women go. Guys—eh, they come and go, but . . . with women? We’re exclusive. I bought her one to match.” She gently reached over and lifted the werepuma’s hand, and I saw a duplicate band. Both were engraved with Celtic knot work. I caught my breath and looked into my sister’s eyes.

Menolly had come so far from the torture and rape she’d undergone before being killed and thrust into life as a vampire. She was happy now, for the most part, and she’d actually opened herself up to love—of whatever sort she could handle at this point.

I reached out and took her other hand and brought it to my cheek, and for the fi rst time I didn’t fl inch at the coldness. As I pressed my lips to her fingers, I glanced up and saw bloody tears sliding down Menolly’s cheeks. She silently opened her arms, and I slid inside them as she enfolded me to her chest.

“I’m sorry—I’m so sorry. I tried for so long to just accept you like Camille did without reservations, but I was afraid . . . And now . . .”

“And now you’re not,” she whispered.

“And now . . . I’m not,” I said, realizing it was true. The fear of her death and rebirth had fallen away like a shroud, leaving only Menolly standing in front of me. My sister, unveiled in her new life, happy and radiant and no longer the monster Dredge had turned her into—the monster I still remembered when she was sent home to kill us, when Camille chased me out the window to protect me.

To be continued next Wednesday!

Banned Book Giveaway Winners

Congratulations to those who won Yasmine's Banned Book Week Giveaway! Those winners will have a week to get back to us and it might take up to a month for us to send out the books. here are the names of the winners and first lines of the entries so there isn't any confusion. If you see your entry here and didn't get an email from me please let us know!

Lisa - "I am fairly lucky that our small college library and it's director doesn't subscribe to the banned books frenzy..."

Lady D - "I just posted, "It's Banned Book week! Read a banned book! Give a friend a banned book!"...

Kristina - "This is honestly the 1st time I have heard about banned book week...."

Strange Little Girl - "I actually just realized that I've read quite a few banned books..."

Chavvala - "Thank you for keeping up the good fight, Yasmine!..."


Thank you to all of those who entered and for supporting banned books!

~J.L. Anderson
Yasmine's assistant and artist