A while back — it seems like eons ago — I posted a poll asking you all to tell me what your favorite sex scenes are from my novels. Fun idea, only it seems I didn't do it right.

Because the poll function doesn't allow you to enter words, I had to make a list from which you could choose. In making that list, I attempted to put what I thought (from a reader point of view) were the best scenes from each book. But I left out the waterfall scene with Morgan and Amalie, and I left out an entire story — Will and Lissy's story, "Heaven Can't Wait."

As a result, some of you let me know that you couldn't vote because your favorite scene wasn't listed.

Here are the results as they stand:

Alec & Cassie: The shackle scene — 0 (0 percent)
Jamie & Bríghid: Tied up in the forest — 1 (3 percent)
Bethie & Nicholas: "No man but me" — 6 (21 percent)
Iain and Annie: The shaving scene — 6 (21 percent)
Morgan & Amalie: The "wolf" scene — 0 (0 percent)
Kara & Reece: The "menage" with Mr. Jiggle Stick — 0 (0 percent)
Tessa & Julian: The shower scene — 4 (14 percent)
Sophie & Marc: The Jag shag — 9 (32 percent)
None of the above. I have a different favorite — 2 (7 percent)

The Jag Shag won, but with only 32 percent of the vote. That was followed by the "No Man But Me" scene from Ride the Fire, a favorite of mine, and the shaving scene from Surrender. After that came Tessa and Julian's shower scene, and then Jamie and Bríghid's forest scene.

I was surprised that Alec and Cassie's shackle scene got no votes and that Kara and Reece and Mr. Jiggle Stick similarly got no votes. But, hey, what do I know? The wolf scene from Untamed also received no votes, but for some reason that doesn't surprise me.

So here's the question: If you could choose and weren't limited to the choices I made, what would it be?

And, most importantly, why???????

My new mattress

Busy, busy week in newspaper land. Looks like I'm revving up for a big investigation. Can't say more about it than I think I'm going to enjoy this one. I love making life difficult for people who've worked hard to be jerks.

The big news at home this week is that I bought a new bed. I've been sleeping on the same box springs and mattress since I was five months pregnant with Benjy — that's 20 years ago — and even though it was top-of-the-line in its day, it hasn't been comfortable for several years. The price made me sweat bullets, but then I thought of what it would be like to sleep and I handed that credit card right over.

How's that for edge-of-your-seat excitement. A new bed! Woohoo!

Other news:


Lilac attack


My lilacs are so lovely I can't stand them. Benjy and I planted the bushes a few years ago. At the time, they were not taller than my knee. But now they're up to my chin and dripping with beautiful, scenterrific blossoms. My garden is starting to take off — Benjy is outside right now in the last phase of weeding the front beds — so the "What's Blooming Now?" feature on the left panel here isn't going to be enough to keep you up to date.


Lily of the valley


Lilacs, hardy geranium and lilly of the valley are all in bloom right now. The geranium will bloom all summer. The other two are fleeting but sweet.


Hardy geranium


My Russian sage bush seems to have bit the dust. It's a huge bush and well-suited to dry climates. But we had such a bitter cold snap early in the winter, followed by no moisture till late March. I think that was too much. Fortunately, though other plants suffered, it appears to be the only casualty.

My climbing rose died back to the ground after three years of growth making it more than 10 feet tall. And all of the rose bushes except for the Blanc Double du Coubert died back to the ground. All of the canes are D-E-A-D dead. Fortunately, they're all sending up new canes, or I'd be rolling on my lawn and wailing. I love roses so much!

The tulips are either gone or past their prime, and asiatic lilies are pushing their way up.

Okay, now that I've bored you into oblivion with the minutiae of my garden, I thought I'd share a humorous but (hopefully) still sexy excerpt from Naked Edge.

This is from Chapter 19, which I haven't quite finished yet. So it's hot off my finger tips:

-----------

Feeling replete and contented, Gabe cradled Kat’s head against his shoulder, watching through half-closed eyes as she trailed a fingertip through the pool of ejaculate on his belly. She dabbed at it, made little circles in it, rubbed it into his skin like lotion, her actions somehow both innocent and amusing.

“So this makes a baby.” There was a note of awe in her voice.

“Not like this.” He reached for the box of tissues on his nightstand. “Mostly, it just makes a mess.”

# # #

Five minutes later, Gabe sat at the table in his boxer briefs, watching as Kat, wearing that same old T-shirt of his she’d worn this morning, made them a dinner of buffalo steaks, roasted potatoes and salad. Where she came by this sudden burst of energy when he could barely think and would rather be dozing in his bed with her still in his arms was beyond him. He supposed it was one of the great mysteries of life — how having a good orgasm knocked a man out, but re-energized a woman and left her ravenous.

Maybe it was an evolutionary thing that had enabled women to fatten up for pregnancy and produce healthier offspring back in the day when life was hard and food scarce. He could kind of see that. A cave woman has sex with a cave man, and while he’s lying on the mammoth skin in a post-coital stupor, she raids his cave for leftovers. Still, Gabe supposed human males had it easy. If he were a male black widow or praying mantis, Kat would be munching on him right now, not carrot sticks.

Not that he and Kat had mated. Not that they’d actually had sex. They’d done nothing more than get each other off like a couple of high school kids. And yet it had satisfied him in a way that three years of hard-core fucking hadn’t. Later, when his brain was working again, this would probably scare the shit out of him. Which was why he didn’t want to think about it now.

He watched Kat sprinkle salt and pepper on the rib eyes. Then she bent down to slide them in the oven to broil, and his gaze shifted to the curve of her ass and her cute lavender panties. And some of his daze lifted.

She shut the oven, then stood and turned to him, half-eaten carrot stick in hand. “Do you like onions in your salad?”

Despite what had happened today, she seemed relaxed, almost happy, the ordeal she’d been through temporarily forgotten. Some macho part of him found this more than a little gratifying. Distracted by the sweetness of her face, he barely heard himself answer. “Uh-huh.”

It was a good thing she hadn’t just asked him if he liked rat turds in his salad.

You’re in over your head, buddy!


Yeah, he was. But at the moment that didn’t seem so bad.

I think the last time I posted about a book I'd recently read, it was Kathleen Givens' On a Highland Shore, which I still love and still recommend for those who love Scottish history and in-depth, sympathetic characters. I really loved that book.

Recently, I've read two books that I enjoyed so much I thought I'd mention them.

The first is Anna Campbell's Tempt the Devil, which is read last week. Here's a brief synopsis from Amazon:

Any man in London would worship her. Yet Olivia is, quite frankly, bored of them all. Despite her many dalliances, she's never felt true passion, never longed for any lover's touch . . . until Julian, London's most notoriously wanton rake, decided to make her his mistress.

From the moment he first saw her, Julian knew he must possess her. And when he discovers her greatest secret, a scandal that could ruin her reputation and end her career, he knows just the way to use this damaging information to his most delightful advantage. He offers Olivia a deal with the devil: he'll keep her secret . . . if she allows him the chance to show her true ecstasy.

But Olivia must be careful, for Julian has a secret of his own: he will not rest until she is completely, shamelessly his.

I'm not typically one to read Regencies. I'm far less interested in lords and ladies and society than I am in the lives of common people. It's the archaeologist in me. Also, a story with a courtesan as the heroine.... Not typically my thing. But I was excited to read this book because it was written by Anna Campbell. She writes unusual historicals that tend to turn the dominant paradigm on its head. And she's very, very good at making us care about her characters.

I found an emotional richness in this story that is often lacking in romance novels. The depth of the characterization, the fact that neither Olivia nor Julian are one-dimensional characters, the fact that story revolves around sex as an issue and yet isn't about sex at all... A really wonderful story. It brought tears to my eyes at times, particularly the parts that resonated with topics in Ride the Fire. (That's all the hint you're getting from me.)




The second book — one I finished in the wee hours this morning — is historical fiction written by a romance novelist, Joan Wood. The Road to Avalon retells the Arthurian legend in a way that is as historically accurate as you're probably going to get. Again, this thrills the archeologist in me.

In Wood's book, we're actually in post-Roman Britain fighting to survive incursions by the Sea Wolves, the Saxons. One gets a strong taste of the Roman history, but also the Welsh components of the story. Rather than setting the medieval version of the story we all know in a post-Roman setting, she strips many of the medieval components away, revealing a story about a man who was destined to be king, the woman he loved beyond all others, the wife he tried to love, and the kingdom he built through staggering self-sacrifice.

Mary Jo Putney wrote in her forward to the story: "I've never read a version that had greater psychological resonance than Joan Wood's treatment."

I read that before I read the story, thinking, "Yeah, I love Mists of Avalon, and there's no way you can beat that."

However, I have to say that Wood at the very least equalled Mists of Avalon for me precisely because of this psychological resonance. All of the strange events in Camelot — Gwenhwyfar's affair with Bedwyr (often spelled Bedivere, who was her lover prior to Lancelot's appearance in the stories); Arthur's son through incest, Mordred; the deaths of Arthur at Mordred's hand. It all makes sense in this story, and it's all terribly tragic because non of these characters are evil. The Christian vs. Pagan angst of Mists of Avalon is downplayed to the point of being irrelevant, which was fine with me. And these are masculine Romanized Britons, which has its definitely appeal. There is no explicit sex, though there is sex.

And I loved it. It was one of those books where, although you know Arthur dies, you have to keep reading. And when he does die, the bittersweetness of his passing is excruciating.

I've tried to find a .jpg of the book's new cover to post, but they're all very tiny. So instead I'll just show you the painting that's on the cover, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" (The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy). It's being reprinted, so you'll be able to find it at Amazon and in bookstores soon, I'm guessing.

And just what am I doing reading instead of writing? I read on nights when I'm too exhausted from my job to write. As for why I might focus on reading books about King Arthur and why everything I read for the next several months will be about King Arthur... You'll just have to guess.

I hope all of you mothers had a wonderful Mother's Day. I spent the day with Benjamin, and I've taken an extra day off this week to be with him today. Which is wonderful! We're off to do some grocery shopping — finally I have someone to help! My broken foot rejoices! — and then I'll be back.

So, tell me whether you've read this books, what you thought and what you're reading now.

If the person we're talking about is I, the answer is quite slow, indeed. Not by choice. Not because I want to be the slowest writer on the face of the Earth. Not because I don't care that there are readers who want Kat's story now and Connor's story now and Lord William's story now and Joseph's story now. And what about Ruaidhrí and Emma Rose??? Won't I write about them, too???

Yes, I get your e-mails, and I, too, want these stories to be written. I want to lavish you with prose that inspires you and characters that delight you and make you fall in love. Here's the catch:

I'm very, very picky, and I'm very, very busy.

I'm very picky because I don't ever want to put a book in your hands that disappoints you. A fool's hope, perhaps, as I know that has happened. Still, I make it my goal to write books that satisfy with no loose ends forgotten, no chance for heightened emotion overlooked.

I'm very busy because I'm a single mom with a day job. If I could find a corporate sponsor to enable to sit at home and write all day every day, I would gladly wear their T-shirt and paint their logo on my house. Sadly, no one has offered yet, which leaves me in my current situation.

The image at top was taken back when I started Naked Edge. You'll notice that in those days, writers were made to be content with quill and parchment — vellum, mostly.



Time passed, and the quill fell into disuse. Some fellow in Germany came up with the idea of moveable type. (Imagine that!) And my entire manuscript — all 20 pages that were written by then — was printed onto paper using wooden block letters like these.

And still I toiled and labored and worked, hoping to bring you all the best possible story I could, listening to my characters when I ought to have been sleeping, looking at the most intimate details of their hearts and minds, foregoing fun and dates and food and personal hygiene to focus my energy on Kat and Gabe's story.




The seasons progressed, springs and winters without number, and then God created the typewriter. I'm not certain it actually was God — I wasn't looking at the time — but when I saw it, I saw that it was good. It enabled writers to type into the wee hours of the night in their own homes, where they could be have as writers behave — wearing pajamas, drinking too much coffee in the morning and too much wine at night, having conversations with non-existent people, and behaving strangely.

Then, of course, there were "word processors," and now I own a laptop. Yes, a Mac.

The point is that I have been writing this novel for a very long time, and you all have been very patient. I am making progress, and I am working very hard on it. I will be taking time out to see Star Trek because I must, but that's the only real break I'm giving myself. So I am sorry the publication date has been bumped back to February 2010. I hope to turn it in on time so the date doesn't need to be pushed back once more.

I promise to write as fast as I can!

The Freedom Forum Journalists Memorial honors journalists who've died while trying to expose the truth.

Today, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day, an international day intended to draw attention to the eroding freedom of the press worldwide and to the important work journalists do, sometimes at great cost to themselves. Some are harassed and threatened. Some are imprisoned. Some experience violence. And some are killed.

Those of you who've followed the I-Team series, which is in part based on my own work as an investigative journalist, understand by now that being a reporter can be dangerous. I jokingly tell people that I went in to journalism not understanding that it was a contact sport. It's a joke, and yet it's kind of not funny.

When I wrote Extreme Exposure, I dedicated the book to the 1,400 or so journalists who'd died in the line of duty. The number of slain journalists is now at least 1,913.

Far too often these days when we think of "media," we think of mainstream media that doesn't do its job, or we think of paparazzi-type reportage that involves chasing people and invading their lives to bring the public news that doesn't matter. Rarely do people think of those reporters who toil away, day in and day out, doing the hard work of muckraking — digging and researching in order to protect our freedom by acting as a watchdog on government and those in power.

In my own tiny way, I've tried to fight the good fight. I have friends who still fight the good fight, some of whom you may have seen on TV or heard on the radio, telling about injustices they've exposed. All the investigative reporters I know have, at times, been threatened. I've had two stalkers, one of whom threatened to kill me with an AK-47 and who sent me letters detailing where I went and what I said to the cashier at the gas station, etc. If it's like that for us here in the U.S., imagine what it's like in other countries.

So today while enjoying your beautiful spring Sunday, take a second to remember reporters around the world, some of whom are languishing in prison cells for the crime of telling the truth.

And, Michael, congrats for making it onto Colorado Public Radio with the program about PTSD and soldiers at Fort Carson. You rock.

Coming soon: I-Team hero interviews and more Naked Edge excerpts!