​Ok, book #2 of the Hell to Pay series has been released. Book #3 (Flame Unleashed) is headed out the door for final copywriting in a week and will release in September, 2015.

So what, if anything, have I learned now?

#1) Marketing. Need to increase education in this area. Still doing the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks method, and it's not ideal. In better news, I now have a list of worthwhile investments of time/funds. (And a list of worthless ones....)

#2) Newsletters. I was like a monkey doing a math problem trying to set up my sign up newsletter signup form, new email (because something about yahoo is gnarly with mail lists), and creating and editing my first newsletter. I hit send only to realize....I sent the test newsletter. Ugh. Author fail. Dude, aren't there people to help with this kind of stuff?

#3) Covers. IMHO, these covers need a hot dude, smart lady, mountains, a bad guy oozing yellow smoke, snow and/or avalanches, a puppy, some nondescript people looking on in sympathy/awe, an old bald guy and molten lava. Why my editor believes that all of these critically important features won't fit on a standard thumbnail image is beyond me. Luckily, I don't design my own covers, or it'd be a flaming, hot mess.

#4) Crushes. Kind of have one on each hero while I write them. Didn't really expect that to occur.

#5) Terror. Just because I wrote a few books doesn't mean I can keep doing it. Maybe the juju runs out after a while. What if, one day, I can't come up with a new description of "heaving breasts" or "throbbing members"?

​To update you: Dante Blackstone is the proportionally-superior hero of my second novel, Relentless Flame. I've shared with brutal honesty why I would definitely date my first hero, Peter Blackstone. Now I'm going to explain why I'd never date Dante Blackstone. Let's press forward with this onerous task.

#10) Rippling muscles and the big frame to carry them. Yuck-o-rama. Who wants beefcake? I'm a vegetarian.

#9) Glacier blue eyes that see into a woman's soul. On a dude? Come on, we all know that looks weird. And not hot...at all....>sigh<....

#8) Rumbling/vibrating bass voice in a Swedish accent. Bleeack. Mrrrfff. Feeling nauseous just thinking about it.

#7) Thick, blond -- yet manly-coiffed -- hair. No way. Give me a bald dude any day. And make him short while you're at it.

#6) Ability to quote romantic fine literature. Um....barf. What woman wants that? Oh, wait, that's pretty awesome....