Hi all!  Happy Father’s Day!!!

I hope you all are having time to celebrate a father today – those dads are so important!  Although…is it just me, or is it all but impossible to find a father’s day gift usually?  Man.  Seriously.  Last year I bought Big Tone a bunch of new shorts for summer.  This year, he doesn’t need shorts.  Or another golf shirt.

The best present I ever found for him was right after we’d had Tackle.  We had just finished college, had student loans, had a new baby, and were broke.  Big Tone likes cars and always has, and he takes good care of his cars.  So that year, I gave him two rolls of quarters to make it easy to hit the car wash.

He was so thrilled.  Seriously.  It was the best present ever.  🙂

But now, we’re older, we have our own businesses, and we have accounts at a car wash.  So…no dice.

I was getting my hair cut by Niki at Shape salon last week, and Heather, who owns the awesome place, mentioned what she was getting her husband.  And it was freakin awesome, so I totally copied her.

Big Tone isn’t one for desserts, except for…cheesecake.  Plain cheesecake with no toppings.

And Heather told me about a monastery in Vermont where nuns create the best cheesecakes ever.  Yeah.  I know.  Nuns in Vermont and cheesecake.  LOL!  So I ordered Tony a cheesecake made by the nuns in Vermont.  Yes, the shipping cost as much as the cheesecake, but man, it looks good.

He’s at the lake right now, and I’ll give it to him later, but I’ll let you know what he thinks. 

Isn’t life fun?

For my dad…well, he doesn’t need another golf shirt, either.  (And I think that’s what Deb got him, anyway, so I can’t get that).  I found a couple of books for him, one about what dogs think.  LOL!  My dad and his dog, Sammy, are very close.  Sammy even goes to the office with him and also celebrates Cheeseburger Thursday way too often. So I think Dad will be amused.

Anyway, I hope you’re having a lovely day, wherever you are. 

Just a quick note that WICKED RIDE releases on Tuesday.  It’s the first book in the Realm Enforcers, which is a Dark Protector spinoff.  (Yes, you’ll see some Dark Protectors in there.)  I’m posting Chapter 1 early Tuesday morning.

Have a great week, and I hope you’re enjoying the guest posts we have going on here this summer.   XO  Rebecca

Hi all!  We’re having a fun twitter party right now!  (4pm PST and 7pm EST) I’m answering questions, and we’re giving away Sin Brother books.  If you’d like to join in, just tweet something to me @RebeccaZanetti or to anybody, really…and make sure you use the hashtag:  #TotalSurrender

So, say you tweet to me – here’s an example:

@RebeccaZanetti Do you think Audrey has a boy or a girl? #TotalSurrender

@RebeccaZanetti Will Chance get his own book? #TotalSurrender

Or if you tweet to somebody else:

@MomJones  Have you read Jory’s story yet? #TotalSurrender

@SisterFran Do you like super soldiers? #TotalSurrender

See?  It’s easy.  You can do it!

First, take a good look at the website, because it’s about to be updated and upgraded within the next couple of weeks. YAY!

Second, I feel like I should blog more, but I’m a writer usually caught in imaginary worlds that I’m not ready to share. Plus, the kids are incredibly busy with sports, Big Tone is busy, my extended family is busy…and I’ve got friends.  And I’m not one of those authors/bloggers who shares everything on the internet.  Especially stuff about real people.  I know many authors share a lot (all about people they know, people who aren’t nice to them, the slights they’ve received), but I kind of think those people are buttheads.  Yeah, I said it.  Talking about somebody else (in real life) just because one has a blog and avenue to reach people seems dickish to me.

By the way, nobody has talked badly about me on the net lately, and this isn’t personal. Just a general observation.  I read a blog lately from an author dissing on people she met in a new social group.  I mean, knock that off.  Those people are real, probably don’t have blogs to counter, and should be left alone.

(NOTE HERE that I’m fine talking about Big Tone, my sisters, and some close friends. They know the risk of me.  Plus, I’d never say anything bad about them publicly.  Not even Debbie, my youngest sister, who used to have garage sales every once in a while to sell the stuff she’d borrowed from us.  I wouldn’t say this publicly.  Plus, it was a long time ago.  LOL!)

I also do talk in generalizations once in a while. My kid’s football team plays another team every year where a couple of the moms ring cowbells through the whole damn game.  It takes a special woman to ring a cowbell, and I’ve been known to talk about it generally. 

But you know who I do like? Chuck Wendig.  That guy is freakin hilarious and I wish I could live in his brain for a little while.  Not a long while.  But maybe for an afternoon.  He also gives great advice to other writers.  I also like Jennie Crusie, who shares her interesting life and her writing style with us.  Although, as a fan, I wish she’d release another new book soon.

Anyway, the thing on my mind right now is odd. We’ve moved to the top of a mountain (it’s not a big mountain or anything), and I’ve been taking a walk every day trying to get back into shape.  On a mountain, if you walk down, you have to walk up…so it’s been pretty handy.  We have a lot of wildlife up here, and there have been a bunch of wild turkeys that are now huge.  I mean, really big.

The other day as I walked, I heard a strange noise from them. There were about thirty of them, and they were trilling and encircling this cat.  I mean, they had this cat totally surrounded.  Are turkeys aggressive?  Do they eat cats?  I’m not sure, but they were definitely messing with this cat, and it was incredibly odd.

Yes, I was going to rescue the cat. But a biker sped by at about a 100 miles an hour, going downhill, and the turkeys scattered.  The cat escaped.  So all you cat lovers, no worries here!  The cat was fine.  (I have a cat named Buddy, so I, too, like cats).

But I’ve been pondering the situation since. What the heck is up with the turkeys?

How is everybody doing?  I feel like I’ve been buried under deadlines for the last couple of months and can now finally breathe a little.  It’s fall where I live, the leaves are turning, and it’s not unusual to have rain, sun, and hail in the same day.  I’m hoping for an early snow, but I don’t think it’s going to happen this year.  I need to organize my thoughts, so I thought I’d do a quick update here to figure out where I am and what I should do now.  🙂

MARKED, Janie’s story, is in the pipeline and is ready to go.  (Release date: 12-22-14). I’ve finished page proofs, which means I won’t see the book again until it releases.  As you might know, Marked is the tenth and final book in the main Dark Protector series.  It was both the most difficult and the easiest book to write so far.  It was the most difficult because so many questions had to be answered and so many threads completed.  It was the easiest for the same reason–I had tons to write and didn’t stop for a second to wonder what to add.  I have to admit, I’m very happy with how Janie’s story turned out, and I hope you like it, too.  I was also really nervous to write it initially because readers have known Janie since she was a child, and now she’s all grown up, so it was a little like watching your niece fall in love with a badass Alpha male.  But I think it worked out nicely.  🙂

I hit send on TOTAL SURRENDER edits this morning, and it’s the longest book I’ve written at 102,000 words (approx. 400 pages).  (Releases 3/14).  This is Jory Dean’s story, and he was so much fun to write about.  My editor says it’s the best book yet, and of course, this makes me both nervous as hell and happy.  I hope you all like it.  This one choked me up a couple of times because those lost, dangerous, wounded soldiers can do that to you.

I’m finishing up Hawk and Dawn’s story (Maverick MT book 4) now, and I’m hoping it has a release date of early next year – but I probably won’t know the date until early next year.  The first scene is really fun with Dawn teaching Hawk a little lesson.  I hope you like it.  The last Maverick MT book hit the NY Times, so of course, I have high hopes for this one, too.

Did you know we contracted for a spin-off series for the Dark Protectors?  We did, and it’s called the Realm Enforcers.  The first book, WICKED RIDE, is already turned in and should have a release date soon.  I’m thinking it’ll be June of next year.  Wicked Ride is about Kellach Dunne (cousin to Moira and Brenna), badass witch enforcer and motorcycle club member.  The book takes place in Seattle, and a few of the Dark Protectors show up, including Dage and Garrett.

Also, I have a brand new series coming out.  We don’t have a name for the series yet, but it’s going to be something different for me.  Yes, it’s still a romance with some pretty hot Alpha males, and I’d tell you more, but I don’t really know more.  A novella will kick off the series, and it’ll be in an anthology with Alexandra Ivy to be released around next September.  Then the three books will be released January, February, and March of 2016.  These will be in mass market print and available at bookstores, online, etc.

Finally, if any of frequent BAM stores, keep an eye out for CONSUMED and SHADOWED from the Dark Protectors, would you?  (They should be available for preorder end of October).  Those books are part of a brand new program between Lyrical Press and Books-A-Million to be in print, with gifts for people who buy them.  I’d love to see those do well so the other DP books could be in bookstores. 

Also, there’s going to be a big party for the program in York, PA at the BAM store on November 8th starting at 2:00pm.  If you are anywhere near York on that day, I will be there, and I’d love to see you! 

Other than that, there’s a boxed set of the first four stories (Fated, Claimed, Tempted, Hunted) in the Dark Protector series releasing on October 13th, Blind Faith (Sin Bros 3) releases in print in January, and then Total Surrender releases in print and digital in March.

Whew.  Okay.  Now I feel organized. 

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