Whee!

It’s been a hectic weekend. First off, it’s looking like we need to replace our car sooner than we’d anticipated, so my plans to go to RWA Nationals this year are more than a bit moot, unless Morgan should manage to get a significantly better job in the next couple months (given his recent health, not very likely). Needless to say, I’m pretty bummed about that.

We went to Boskone, a local science fiction and fantasy convention, with a couple friends. Unfortunately, due to a fubar on Boston’s part (parts of the subway line we needed to take were shut down for this weekend only), we didn’t get to the con until 4pm on Saturday, so I missed quite a bit of the panels I’d wanted to see. Still a lot of fun, though, and I got to meet up with some people I hadn’t seen in a year or more.

I might be going to Lunacon next month. Smudge and Pen are going and offered to split a room with me and the male. Morgan has had to take a lot of time off work, so he wouldn’t be able to, but Pen lives close enough that we can probably carpool. It’d be a lot of fun–and hey, it’s in New York, which is one place I haven’t been to yet. Not that I’d do much besides hang around folks at the con, but still!

In other news, I’ve received a few awesome reviews these past couple days. Cocktail Reviews, a new review blog, gave The Twilight Deception five champagne flutes (their second highest rating!) and Wasting the Dawn four flutes. A couple quotes:

“What an utterly fantastic read. I haven’t read a book that has affected me in this way for a while.” — Wilga Hill Boomerang on Twilight.

“Ms. Drake has an exceptional voice and a unique ‘thing’ that just shines from the page.” — White Russian on Wasting.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd…

About a month or so ago, I sent a query to Mrs. Giggles for The Twilight Deception. I happened to check the website today, not so much because I wanted to check, but because I love her site… and she’d posted the review.

She rated it an 83.

For Mrs. Giggles, this is high praise, indeed. I’m still bouncing off the walls. A long-ish quote: “Elisabeth Drake has an interesting alternate world in this story. Vampires and witches are nothing new, but the otherworldly vampires here are not the usual vampires and their ability to pass themselves off as humans even in broad daylight allows some interesting possibilities. The author also knows how to tell a story in an entertaining manner - this short story has excellent build-up and ends most satisfactorily despite the book being only 75 pages long. I don’t feel that the story is rushed to a conclusion.”

I’d hoped she would like it, but… this is Mrs. Giggles. She is known for char-broiling manuscripts. While I’ve had several picky people crit/beta read my work, much less editors, I’m not going to assume that someone won’t think it’s crap anyway. ^_^

So, yeah, bouncing off walls. Whee!

Romance Divas eBook Challenge: Transformation

(Note: Argh! I posted this the other day and for some reason, the blog program I posted from marked it as private even though it wasn’t supposed to be. >_< Better late than never, I guess…)

Happy Valentine’s Day! I’m participating in Romance Divas’ eBook Challenge. Click here for the full list of participants and genres, though I think some of the latter are a bit out-of-date. (Gotta love it when you change your mind about what you’re writing, LOL.)

Here’s a short excerpt from the story I’ve contributed, Transformation. I should mention that the story isn’t a romance. It’s dark urban fantasy with a different spin on werewolves and vampires. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

Chill air surrounded me, shadows of souls long since passed haunting its crisp essence. Goosebumps rose across my flesh, tingling; I shivered. Surrounded by death, Kestrel. You will always be surrounded by death. My grandmother’s last words rang through my head. My face paled. The bouquet of flowers I had brought her dropped from my hand to the grave below.

What would she think? I could do naught but stare down at it as night’s mist wrapped around me. I loved my grandmother very much… perhaps almost too much. It’d been five years since her death, and still, I brought her lilies every anniversary of her death.

And now these are soiled by the touch of another soul. I could, of course, pick them up and take them to Grandmother’s grave anyway–but both she and I would know the truth. She haunted my dreams enough. I did not need to give her cause to do so further.

Apprehension roiled in my stomach as the howl of my brethren pierced night’s flimsy armor. Nearly time. Clouds moved, and the moon shone down, through withered scarecrow trees. My heart beat fast, and my gut clenched.

So close. I hadn’t realized…

“Houndfather’s bloody kill!” I swore, but anger disguised confusion within. With the full moon so high, I should already have felt the alterform stirring within me, claws scraping beneath my skin, tearing at the mask of humanity. Perhaps even have already entered the beginnings of the transformation–body hair multiplying in patches, fingernails sharpening, enlarging, sense of smell increasing …

But I felt nothing but my own fear.

Wanna read the rest? Click here!

One down…

I finished my short story for Forbidden Publications’ Valentine’s Day collection yesterday. It ended up about 8k long — so much for my 5k estimate — and I’m rather pleased with it. There’s some things I want to go over and punch up, but overall, I think it came out quite nicely.

Now that that’s done, I’m back to working on Stronger than the Night, as well as preparing what equates to a series plan. I need to figure some things out on that end first, though. All in all, I’m a busy kitty.

Waking the Shadows…

Waking the Shadows is now available at Freya’s Bower

Two pieces of good news…

First off, I got my cover for Waking the Shadows today. Click here to see it.
Secondly … I finished Resurrection! After the absolute hell I’ve gone through with this damn thing, I’ve finally finished it. Total wordcount: 53610

I’m going to post the total manuscript for my crit partners to look over and hopefully get to rewriting it in short order. As the first sixteen chapters were written three years ago, I think that’s enough time to let it sit.
*squeeboing*