The results are in! And they're not what I expected.




When I put this poll together, I expected that Iain, Morgan and Nicholas would be the most popular historical heroes, with Alec and Jamie garnering few votes. Of those, I thought Iain would win. Silly me!

Nicholas came in first with 33 percent of the vote.
Iain came in second with 28 percent of the vote.
Alec — ! — came in third with 19 percent.
And poor Morgan came in fourth with 14 percent of the vote.
Jamie came in last (no surprise to me) with 4 percent.

Benjy thinks that perhaps some people voted without having read Untamed. That would be nice, but I'm not betting on it.



As for your contemporary hero, a full 50 percent chose Marc "Hunt" Hunter, while 35 percent chose Julian "Dark Angel" Darcangelo, and 15 percent chose Reece Sheridan. This didn't surprise me at all, as I felt most readers were being forced to choose between Marc and Julian.

Then came the real shocker. Yes, a total upset!


(The best I can do to depict Connor right now with no cover and no story written...)


Here I am laboring away on Naked Edge, thinking that most of my readers are jonesing for an I-Team fix, when 60 percent of you say you want Connor's story, Defiant, next rather than Kat and Gabe's!

D'oh!



I won't let my Muse hear this, or she might kick Gabe right off a rock.

So, my dears, can you indulge me and tell me why you voted the way you did with regard to your favorite historical hero and which book you're anticipating most.

Of course, there may be some surprises in store for you...

And those are the subject of my next poll.

XOXOXO,
Pamela

I hope you all like the new design of my blog. Barbara at Happily Ever After has such an amazing blog that I asked her to help me do something different with my darn Blogger account. I was suffering from a really bad case of Widget Envy and couldn't make my blog do a darned thing. It turns out that part of my problem was having the old Blogger template from just after the dinosaurs went extinct. Blogger 10,000 B.C. or something like that.

So thanks, Barbara!

Anyway, I thought I'd share something with you all, a little sneak peek at Naked Edge, which finally seems to be moving in the right direction after a rewrite or two...

In this scene from Chapter 10, Gabe is having a hard time, grappling with his ghosts and with the emotional turmoil Kat has brought to his life. Enjoy!


Not far from a certain butte outside Boulder...


Gabe turned onto his side, rearranged the pillow beneath his head, jerked the blanket up to his chin, willing himself to sleep. It didn’t work. The arm of the couch bent his neck at an unnatural angle. His feet hung off the other end. Worse, the seam of his boxer briefs cut into his nuts like piano wire.

He rolled onto his back, adjusted himself, his hand closing around his cock. And for a moment he considered jacking off. He could kill two birds with one stone — relieve the tension roiling inside him and make himself fall asleep. There was only one catch: what he wanted was in his bedroom, lying in his bed, wearing one of his T-shirts. Touching himself seemed pretty lame when compared to touching her.

What would she do if he went to her, if he stretched himself out beside her and started kissing her? Would she tell him to get out, or would she kiss him back? And what the hell was wrong with him that he was even considering it?

He closed his eyes again, his head crowded by thoughts, images, memories. Jill lying dead at the morgue. Two Crows lying dead at Mesa Butte. Kat crawling, dragging her broken leg behind her. Kat being dragged out of the sweat lodge by her hair. Her tears as she’d knelt at Two Crows’s side. Her whimpers as Gabe kissed and sucked her nipples. Falling at the rock gym. Almost falling outside his own damn door, drunk on his ass.

Somehow it all came down to one thing: he wanted Kat.

He shoved the blanket aside and stood, glancing down at the Glock and deciding to leave it by the couch. The alarm would give him plenty of time to retrieve it if he needed it. Before he could think too hard about what he was doing, he crossed the room, walked down the hallway, and silently opened his bedroom door.

She lay on her side facing the door, her hair a dark halo against the white pillowcases. He moved closer and saw that she was sound asleep, her face relaxed, her breathing deep and even, her lips slightly parted. Her arm rested on top the comforter, his T-shirt slipping to reveal the soft curve of her shoulder.

For a moment, he stood there, watching her sleep, feeling oddly like a trespasser in his own bedroom. Then he reached out, brushed a lock of hair from her cheek, rubbed the strands between his fingers, feeling their softness.

What was it about her that got to him? If only he knew, he’d get vaccinated, find a cure, look for some way to stop it. Hell, he’d wear a rope of garlic around his neck if he thought that would do the trick. He didn’t want to want her, didn’t want to get any more tangled up in her than he already was, didn’t want to feel.

As if to prove to him how impossible that would be, she sighed in her sleep and nuzzled deeper into her pillow, and the same feeling of protectiveness he always seemed to feel for her growing inside him.

Then something slipped from her hand onto the sheet.

Her cell phone.

The damned thing was still on.

He picked it up. Letting his gaze linger on her face for a second longer, he turned, walked out of his room, and closed the door behind him. When he was sure the sound wouldn’t wake her, he flipped the little device open and turned it off. He’d be damned if anyone was going to scare her again tonight. Then, setting the phone beside the Glock, he lay down, stared up at the ceiling, and waited for morning.

I hope everyone had a safe and fun New Year's celebration. Despite another car accident in the family — my brother's in-laws were rear-ended and suffered minor injuries — we had a great evening. I spent the last hours of 2008 with my two boys and my brother's oldest son watching Charleton Heston overact in Planet of the Apes and eating fondue. We finished in time to count down the last minutes of the year.

Then I took my nephew home and watched P.S. I Love You with my brother and nephew. I cried from the beginning of that movie through the end. My eyes were still swollen yesterday. Egads! Great film, but be sure to watch it with a box of Kleenex. I'd avoided it all this time precisely because I knew I'd cry like a baby.

My brother and I stayed up till 4 AM talking, this past year and its struggles giving us a lot to talk over as we both looked forward to the new year. I always take New Year's very seriously. For me, it's never been about drinking — I didn't drink a drop of booze — but rather about taking a personal inventory of one's life. I've never entered a new year without ideas of what I wanted to change. Sometimes I write them down; other times I just keep them in mind.

So what are this year's New Year's resolutions?

To eat healthier.
To exercise more.
To stress less.
To get completely out of debt.
To act with greater integrity and kindness in all areas of my life.
To focus more on my spiritual life.
To write faster and spend less time online.
To offer more service to others and make fewer demands.

Does anyone have resolutions they want to share?

Right now I'm working on NAKED EDGE. I'm probably going to take an extended Internet break here soon so that I can finish the book on time. But we still have the MacKinnon Brothers interview to enjoy and a few other things besides.

Have a great day!