Night Owl Reviews

What a fun story, smooth, easy to read, and lots of laugh out loud moments. Oh, and add two characters that generate enough heat between them no wonder there’s global warming.

Dru is a brilliant scientist very focused on her career (Tawny has the details on this career nailed) and being a success. Her career is everything. She’s not truly a risk taker. In making her career the center of her life she has neglected such things as interpersonal skills (Actually, if you’ve watched Bones, on TV, she reminds me of Temperance).

“Blond, cool and contained, Dru knew she put off a don’t-touch-me air. She didn’t mean to, but couldn’t seem to change it.” Dru is attractive but tends to hide it behind severe hairstyles and the color beige.

Dru’s experience with sex, so far: “Drucilla wanted to love sex. Better yet, she wanted a sex life worth loving. She was a firm believer in maintaining a healthy balance between mind and body. Her mind was top-notch and she worked to keep her body the same. Good food, regular exercise. And sex, dammit. She’d read plenty of studies that claimed that regular, satisfying sex was important to good health…Maybe self-gratification would be enough if she increased her beta-carotene intake?

It was damn hard to test a theory if all the guys she dated had the sexual skills of a ninth-grade nerd with a National Geographic fetish.”

She has a best friend, Nikki, who is determined to expand her narrow world. I love Nikki’s one liners and deadpan ways of making her point. Nikki deftly maneuvers Dru (enlisting the aid of the boss) in taking a vacation with the instructions to find a hottie.

Enter said hottie, Alex, whom Dru thinks of as nothing more than a bit above average in smarts, surf-boy and perfect for a hot, no strings, fling. Sparks fly and even more when she comes home to find that her wild sexy lover, the man who gave her the most blowing sex on every available surface, is the Rock Star of the science world and her partner on a major project. Which means no personal fraternizing, much less hot sex.

I love to read Tawny’s stories. She has a way of creating realistic conflicts and setting an excellent set of characters in place to solve them. Tawny’s characters are fun and characters you truly enjoy reading about. I love the way she fashions her Happily-ever-after.

If you like a fast paced story, and entertaining plot, with a dose of hot sex you’re going to love reading this one. 4 stars

“The mission always comes first.”

Undercover agent Jake Pierson figures one romantic dinner will get never-been-kissed librarian Mary Walsh to tell him everything she knows about her late father’s criminal activities.  But the more Mary talks, the more Jake wants to shut her up with kisses.  Because he’s falling for his own too-trusting target—and there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it.  Well, maybe one thing…

With her shiny new lease on life, Mary has become wiser about a lot of things.  For one, she can spot a liar a mile away.  She knows her gorgeous new boyfriend is hiding something.  And she has a sneaking suspicion those secrets will get them both killed unless he trusts her with the truth.

Plotter or Pantzer?
Wish I could plot. Writing a synopsis would be so much easier for me if I could. I do character sketches and know the main characters’ backgrounds, and then I write a paragraph or two of where I would like for the main characters to be at the end of the story. That’s about it. If I’m too detailed with a plot, I lose all interest in the story. It’s like I’ve already told it once, why bother writing it again?

Historical or Contemporary?
No offense to you historical fans out there, but I’m a contemporary girl all the way. I can relate better to a contemporary heroine and her contemporary problems and setting. I’ve read a few historicals—and a few futuristics—that I liked. But when reading for pure enjoyment, I tend to read stories based in the now.

Romantic suspense or Romantic comedy?
Definitely romantic suspense. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t like a good laugh or a good chuckle as much as the next guy. In fact, Janet Evanovitch and Susan Elizabeth Phillips are two of my favorite authors. But the bulk of my reading (as well as my writing) is in the suspense genre. Give me a good ole Who Done It to figure out and I’m as happy as if I were in my right mind.

Light or Dark?
See my answer to romantic comedy above. The black moments are so much blacker with dark books. And I just love to cry. Sniff. Give me either a scary, dark book or an emotional, dark book every time.

City or country?
Well, country…if you include the beach as country. Also love the mountains and ranch lands. So, guess that puts me squarely in the country category. Besides, don’t you have to wear shoes in the city?

High heels or flats?
When I used to work in an office instead of in my pajamas, I always wore heels. Back then, we all wore nylons too. Ugh. You can have them. Now that I’m free of all that, and now that my hubby and I just celebrated a very (very) long term wedding anniversary, I’m into flats, thank you. And if the flats are sandals or open-toed, all the better. Growing up in the Miami area, my mom kept me in bare feet when I was little, and I intend to die that way if at all possible.

Back rub, foot rub, or neck massage?
All of them, please. Depends on my mood, whichever one is best for the moment. Ahem. If you know what I mean.

My either/or question: On top, on the bottom, or side by side?

Best selling author Linda Conrad writes for Silhouette. Her novels have been translated into sixteen languages and sold around the world. She’s appeared on the Waldenbooks Best Seller list and the Bookscan top 100. Winner of the National Readers Choice Award, Write Touch Readers Award, the Maggie, the Cataromance award, and the 2007 Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award Linda has been honored by many in the romance industry. She and her husband and dog KiKi live near the Florida Keys where she loves reading, boating and telling her Happily Ever After stories!

Laney4 and Fedora!!! YAY and congrats to both of you

Ladies, if you’ll email Paula with your shipping info, she’ll mail those to you

And I’m guest blogging today over at The Writing Playground if you’d like to stop by and talk indulgent decadence with me!  When it comes to vacations, that is.  Oh – and I’m giving away a copy of RIDING THE WAVES to one commenter there

Fall?  Sure, but as much as I love heading into soup and homemade bread season, that’s not what I’m excited about.

Back to school?  Not even close, since as wonderful as this always sounds, it really means a lot more work around our house.

My September Blaze release, RIDING THE WAVES?  Oooooh yeah! I’m definitely jazzed about that! I can’t wait to hear if readers like Drucilla and Alex’s story (actually, Alex is being interviewed today over at Romance University)

But… no.  That’s not what I meant.  My big yay and excitement right now is because pretty soon we can start the countdown for Castle’s Season Three premier! Wooot!!!  I love me some Castle and Beckett sparks.  I can’t wait to see how this season kicks off -and if this preview is anything to go by, it’s gonna rock.

What do you think?  Are you looking forward to saying goodbye to August and summer?  Are you counting the days until we get our weekly Castle fix again? Are there any other shows you’re excited to see resume this fall?

One of the ideas I came across as I was researching this was a Tread Desk.  Stephanie Bond mentioned it a few years ago in a workshop I’d attended,  and I’ve run across a variety of versions on the internet over the years.  After mentioning it in my  Healthy Writer post,  I got hooked on the idea of having one. I pow-wowed with my husband, who really can build anything, and he came up with a plan.

He got a length of angled steel, something he called an angle bracket (shrug, the only thing I understand in the hardware store is the garden section) and cut two pieces to fit between the treadmill’s two side bars (the rounded black bar and the squared off silver bar in the photo).  Then he screwed them into place.  He cut a length of wood to fit, and set it on the brackets.  Voila, his job was done   (at least, it is unless various predictions come true and I break my leg.  Then he’ll have to drive me to the hospital)

Then it was my turn.  We’d measured to see where I’d be most comfortable typing, but he couldn’t raise the desktop quite that high because of the metal bars of the heart-rate monitor on the treadmill.  So I used a lapdesk, which brought the laptop to the perfect typing height, and slid the laptop screen behind the heart-rate monitor bar to secure it from slipping when the treadmill was moving.  I can see the treadmill readouts just fine over the top of the laptop, and while the recommendations are to walk at 1 mph, I’ve found that 2 mph is much more comfortable for me.

And for the 6 hours a week I want to use my treadmill as an actual, you know, exercise machine treadmill?  I simply slide the laptop and lapdesk off, remove the wooden board aka the desktop, and voila – it’s back to a regular ole treadmill.  The only concern we have is that once I’m comfortable and not paying attention (which happens amazingly fast) I could bang into the sharp edges of the angle brackets.  Our solution is to get rounded foam, like you see on the bars of kids bikes to keep them from knocking their teeth out, and slide it over the brackets when the desk isn’t in use.  Safe and easy, and again, so very simple!  I’m loving this.

My goal is 3 hours of computer time a day is to be done on the tread-desk.  My record to date (after two whole days) is an hour and a half, which included answering emails, writing two blog posts, commenting on a couple blogs and cruising the internet to keep up with all the current gossip as well as various visits to the Facebook and Twitter.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to critique from here, as well as do any sort of short writing stints that doesn’t require staring off in space.

So… What do you think?  Would you try a tread-desk?  Are you one of those disciplined people who remembers to get up and move around every hour to keep your circulation healthy and your metabolism alive or are you like me, prone to sitting for hours before you remember you have legs?

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life. ~Wayne Dyer

Plotter or Pantzer?
I’m a plotter with pantser tendencies. I tried for a long time to be a pantser, but I never finished anything that way. So I decided to organize my writing and started finishing books. Then I got hyper-organized and started finishing them faster. I like to have a roadmap plotted out for my books. I may still take detours, but I try to hit all my planned destinations by the end of the book.

Alpha, beta or gamma?
Gamma, I think. My heroes are tough, decisive, take charge guys, but they’re not overbearing and they really love and appreciate tough, decisive, take charge women. In my books, they often relate to the heroines as friends as well as lovers, which I think gives them some beta tendencies, but they’re definitely not betas. I guess they’re on the alpha side of the spectrum but not the extreme end.

Light or Dark?
Dark. And meaty. (Sounds like I’m talking about chicken legs). I like stories that explore difficult topics, that show men and women facing some of their deepest, darkest nightmares and finding that core of steel within themselves to overcome the odds stacked against them. I find that kind of story very satisfying as a reader. As a writer as well.

Football or basketball?
I’m from Alabama, sugar. Football all the way. Roll Tide!

Ocean or mountain?
Mountain. I like the ocean, but when I think about my dream place to live, it’s somewhere in the Smoky Mountains, in a big house with a gorgeous view. And a lake nearby so I can go fishing. One of my favorite memories from my youth was a trip to Lake Junaluska in North Carolina. It was so beautiful it took my breath away. I fell in love with the mountains there, and they still call to me even today. Where I live in Alabama, we’re surrounded by foothills, but it’s not the same thing as being surrounded by the enormous old mountains you find farther up the Appalachian chain.

Dogs or Cats?
Cats. I have three dogs I love, along with my cats, but if I could have only one kind of pet, it would definitely be a cat. Cats are my soulmates. I love their independence, their “take no guff” attitudes. They mete out their affection judiciously, but that makes those moments when they hop in your lap for some bonding time all the more meaningful. They can be difficult pets to deal with, especially emotionally. They’re kind of like fictional characters—they tend to follow their own lead and expect you to keep up the best you can, but where they’re going is almost always interesting and worth the ride.

Paula’s offering not one, but two books to commenter’s today. For a chance to win a book from her backlist, answer Paula’s either/or question: Facebook or Twitter?

As a child, Paula Graves’s favorite books were Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries and Harlequin Romances. When she realized there were books that featured both romance and mystery, she knew she’d found her calling. Now Paula writes for Harlequin Intrigue, where she gets to play both matchmaker and murderer and has a blast doing it.  She loves to hear from her readers, who can reach her by clicking the contact button on her website, www.paulagraves.com.

When the world says, “Give up,”
Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”
~Author Unknown

Here’s to hope!!