Alpha Heroes and Kimchee

Welcome to all the new subscribers to this blog! I'm astounded by how many of you have joined up lately, and feeling a little guilty that I haven't posted anything fabulously interesting recently. How about this for interesting?

One of the things Harlequin does extremely well is translate books into foreign languages and distribute them in lots of global markets. I *love* getting copies of my translations! Here's my first Korean translation: THE MAN WITH THE MONEY, book 5 in the Notorious Wolfes series.

Something you may not know about me is that I love Korean food! I spent two months there back in 1998/1999, and I fell in love with the food. Bring on the kimchee, baby! Love it. One of my favorite things is Yuk Gae Jang, a very spicy soup that just makes me so happy when I have it. Mmmm.

Quick couple of announcements: if you haven't subscribed to my newsletter yet, you should! I'm going to start holding a drawing on the first of every month for a $50 gift card to Amazon, B&N, or Kobo. All you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing else.

Secondly, if you haven't gotten a copy yet, MADDIE'S MARINE is now FREE on all the major outlets! Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iTunes, and Smashwords. I'm not sure the price change has trickled out to international outlets yet, but if not, you can always get it free right here on this site or from Smashwords, which has no geographical restrictions.

Now isn't this cover pretty? 🙂

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Hot Military Heroes & Summer Publishing Plans

Hey, y'all! I hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend! I worked on my books this weekend, because I have no time to goof off and still get these stories out, but I also had a great day yesterday when the family went out to a nature trail and then to the botanical gardens. First up, Mr. Harris had been hearing about this covered bridge from a coworker, so he wanted to take pictures of it. Here's one he took of me, and I really like it! I wasn't dressed up or prepared, so I'm glad it turned out.

Lynn Raye Harris

But that's not what this post is about, right? This post is about hot military heroes and summer publishing plans! First up, if you haven't yet gotten my free read, MADDIE'S MARINE, you can get it at several different places.

First, there's Smashwords, where you can download it in any format you wish: http://bit.ly/12VEvQJ

Then there's Kobo, where it's totally free to download: http://bit.ly/14HXZu3

Amazon has it, but they haven't price matched it to free yet. They still want .99, so be aware of that. You might want to wait until they drop the price, unless you just can't wait: http://amzn.to/12CawNg

Apple will have it quite soon! I'm waiting for it to go live there. Barnes & Noble will also have it, and I'm waiting not-so-patiently for that to happen as well. You can also, and always, get the story right here on my website for free, though you can only read it online if you do.

Another thing you can now do is add HOT PURSUIT to your Goodreads TBR shelf! Go ahead and put it on your shelf so others can see it's coming! 🙂

Now, as for the plans. Plans are always subject to change, based on deadlines and all kinds of other things, but here's what the tentative plan is. On June 1st, you can get my digital exclusive short story from Harlequin (no military hero in this one). HIS ROYAL LOVE-CHILD is about a prince and a commoner and what happens when they are reunited after 10 years apart!

In July, HOT PURSUIT will be available for your downloading pleasure! I don't have an exact date, but we are aiming for July 15th. Then you can read all about Matt Girard, Evie Baker, and the Hostile Operations Team! I'm so excited about this book and I can't wait for you to be able to read it! I know MADDIE'S MARINE is short, and it has that teaser excerpt for HOT PURSUIT — but never fear that HP is short! It's nearly 100K, so you'll get plenty to read!

After HOT PURSUIT, I have a novella coming called HOT MESS. There's no information on this one yet, as I am writing it right now. But I can tell you a little about the hero. He's Sergeant Sam McKnight and he's one bad ass soldier. He's from Texas, he's big and hot and tattooed, and he's focusing all his attention on the absolute last woman he can ever have, much to his chagrin. She's the little sister of his best friend growing up, and she's off limits. But then he has to get her out of a spot of trouble, and she's very inconveniently refusing to let him treat her like she's his little sister too. Which just leads to trouble of all sorts. 😉

Want a taste? Here's an exclusive peek just for you:

“I’m sorry about Sergeant Hamilton, Georgie. But I won’t let anything happen to you. You can count on that.”

“I know it.” She reached out and ran her palm along his jaw. She’d been aching to touch him. His eyes darkened, became hot pools she wanted to drown in. “I trust you, Sam. Completely.”

He caught her hand and pulled it away from his skin. “You can trust me with your life, Georgie. But don’t make the mistake of thinking you can trust me with anything else. I’m not that good, believe me.”

“Maybe I don’t want good,” she said on a soft breath. “Maybe I want you to be as bad as you can be.”

She didn’t think it possible, but his eyes grew even darker. His expression was taut. His voice, when he spoke, sounded choked off. “Don’t say shit like that to me. You know I’m not going there.”

Georgeanne pushed herself upright, skirting him as he continued to kneel where she’d just been. “You keep forgetting something, Sam. You keep forgetting that I don’t give a fuck what kind of twisted up logic you’ve got going on in your head about me. I’m not your sister, and I’m not thirteen anymore. And my brother has absolutely no say about what I do or whom I do it with.”

And there you have it! More HOT military heroes, a Harlequin Prince, and lots of plans in the works. This fall, I'll have two books from Harlequin (three, really, because you'll get a bonus book in December!), and hopefully another HOT book. So long as y'all keep reading, I'll keep writing!

Happy reading! 🙂

Maddie’s Marine and American Idol

How on earth do those two things go together, you ask? Well, they don't really, but my weekend involved both! On Saturday, I went up to Franklin, TN, to a Meet & Greet with my Music City Romance Writers chapter. It was held at the main library in Franklin, which is a gorgeous town. We signed books and talked to readers for three hours. It was a lot of fun! We also gave away prizes, and one of the ladies who won a prize from me was the amazing Melinda Doolittle of American Idol fame.

In Season 6, the first season Mr. Harris and I ever watched it (after years of being overseas), we were awed by the talent of two particular women. LaKisha Jones and Melinda Doolittle. Week after week we tuned in and watched these ladies wow us with their voices. Simon never had a bad word to say about Melinda's performances, if that tells you anything. 😉

So, yeah, I had a fangirl moment when I realized that the lady who'd won my bag and books was Melinda. She came in third that year, and she's had an amazing career since. She is also sweet, polite, and very unassuming. I may have shocked her just a little bit with my fangirling, but I was truly excited. She graciously posed for pictures with me, and here's my favorite! Isn't she lovely?

Lynn&Melinda

The other thing I have to tell you about today is my adventures with Smashwords. Yes, I finally figured out how to format MADDIE'S MARINE properly, and I uploaded it to Smashwords. It's totally FREE, as always — and you can now download it on your preferred ereader! Simply click here to choose! It will eventually make its way out to all the e-tailer outlets for direct download, but right now you can get any format you wish from Smashwords. It's a very short story, but I still love it and I hope you will enjoy it. Here's the fab cover that my lovely web designer made. Doesn't it just make you want to go somewhere tropical with your own handsome hero?

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New Release — with a secret revealed!

If you've been waiting for A GAME WITH ONE WINNER in the UK, you can now get your copy a month early from the Mills & Boon site! I've been told it's also shipping from Amazon UK. This is the story of sexy Russian Roman Kazarov and heiress Caroline Sullivan-Wells. The cover copy alludes to a secret, but I have no idea why they just didn't tell you the darn secret up front — it's pretty obvious! Caroline has a son who just so happens to be about nine months younger than the breakup between Caroline and Roman five years ago! Now that's a secret worth reading about. Because what's going to happen when Roman realizes the truth, eh?

Hope you enjoy!

Here are the US pre-order links for you too!

Amazon
Kindle
B&N
Nook

There are more buy links on the book page, so click the title in red at the top of this post and it will take you there. 🙂

Beach Reading

We have a winner! Shelley Bagby, it's your lucky day! The random number generator has chosen you, so please send me your details to claim your prize! Thanks everyone for stopping by, and keep checking back for more blog contests.

I finished a book last week and sent it to my editor. I always feel a little bit like a dog that's been straining against a chain and suddenly finds the chain has broken and she's free to run. I don't know where to run or what to do, so I zigzag a bit. I clean my office, make notes for other stories, open up old manuscripts and wonder if they can be saved. I go to the grocery store, do some laundry, and meet friends for lunch. I lollygag a bit, but I always have it in the back of my head that I have more work to do. The work is never, ever done when you write for a living.

One of the things I love to do, however, is read. I always buy way too many books with the hope that I'll read them all on my short break. I never do, but the nice thing about books is they don't expire. Happy sigh. Lately, I've been thinking back to the wonderful days I spent at the beach reading books. When I lived in Hawaii, every day was a beach day if you wanted it to be. Mr. Harris and I would load up the Jeep with chairs, towels, cooler, umbrella, sunscreen, and books. For me, lots of books.

I once spent about a week reading T. H. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom at the beach. There's still sand in the book when I open it now. I love that. Of course I didn't always read giant tomes like Lawrence. I also read plenty of romances and other literature. One of my best memories of Hawaii is all that beach reading. I sat in the shade whenever possible and read book after book. It was glorious, with the sparkling ocean, the green Ko'olau Mountains in the background, the sound of the surf, the white clouds scudding overhead, and the company of friends who also sat and read.

In fact, little aside, but the beach in Hawaii is where I reconnected with the Presents line after not having read it for a few years. I'd just met Jane Porter and thought she was so smart and articulate that I had to read her books. I bought her latest Harlequin and dived in. And then I went and bought more. Presents are great beach reads!

This summer, I have my own beach read for you. Captive But Forbidden is a July release from Harlequin Presents. It's full of all the passion and emotion you've come to expect from the line, but there's also a bit of a twist. The heroine is the newly-elected president of her tiny nation. When there are threats against Veronica St. Germaine's life, she needs a better bodyguard than the official ones she has already. That's where Raj Vala comes in. He's tall, dark, handsome, rich, and just as arrogant and powerful as you want a Presents hero to be. And he's not about to take any crap from Veronica.

The sparks are sparky. The sex is hot. Stuff happens.

I loved writing this book, with my half-Indian ex-Special Forces hero and a heroine who used to be a very, very bad girl. I keep hearing from readers that it's different, that it's not what they were expecting. I like that! I call this book my special snowflake book, and it is. I hope you'll give it a try! Read it on the beach. Or by the pool. Or even in the comfort of your home. If you've already read and enjoyed the book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble (or both!).

And now, to help at least one of you have a nice beachy time, I'll give away one copy of Captive But Forbidden today, along with a beach towel, a tote, a pair of flip flops, some goodies from me, and a $5 Starbucks card (so you can get an icy latte on the way to the beach/pool!). Leave a comment to be entered to win. I'll announce a winner on Friday. 🙂

RT Convention in Chicago!

I'm off to the RT Convention today! It's one week of non-stop fun and partying with readers, authors, and aspiring authors. This is my third RT, and I wouldn't miss it for anything. It's just such a fun time! There will be themed parties (but I'm a party-pooper and have no costumes) and dancing and lots of opportunities for fans to meet their favorite authors. I can't wait!

If you're coming to RT, be sure and look me up. I'll be rolling around a wheelie bag stuffed with books and goodies, and I'll be giving those books away. That's right, free books! I'll be giving them away until I run out, so come and see me and say hi if you want one. (I have to limit it to one per person so I'll have enough to last a couple of days!) I'll also have excerpt books to give away as well.

Don't be shy! Come and introduce yourself. And if you've never been to RT before, be sure to attend the RT Virgin workshop where you'll learn how to get the most out of the experience. I went my first year, and it was helpful! I still have the button they gave me. 🙂

Hope to see some of you there!