When Spring Temperatures Rise, I Get a Sunshine Blogging Award.

I’m tickled to announce that dear friend and sister Wild Rose Press author, Calisa Rhose, has awarded me and several other deserving recipients with the Sunshine Award! I met Calisa when she sold her first book, HOME our shared publisher last year. She’s a kind and very talented writer and has an amazing blog I’ve been invited to many times. She deserves this award and I’m honored she passed it on to me.

The Sunshine Award is a lovely sunny flower that bloggers give to other “bloggers who positively and creatively inspire others in the blogosphere”.

Thank you for your thoughtful gift, Calisa!

Here are my answers to the questions:

Favorite Color: Pink, lavender, aqua, red. OK, anything but tan and brown.

Favorite Animal: Cats, Giraffes and Koala Bears

Favorite Number: 3

Favorite Non-alcoholic Drink: The cappuccinos Calvin makes me every afternoon. He whips the milk until it gets frothy.

Facebook or Twitter: Both, though I don’t use either enough.

Your Passion: Writing.

Giving or getting presents: “Giving. That’s not to say I don’t like to receive! I just like to watch someone’s face when they open a present from me” (I copied this verbatim from Calisa. She voiced the sentiment so well).

Favorite Day: Any day I get to see one of my six grandchildren.

Favorite Flowers: White tulips, purple lilacs and peach or pink roses.

As with most awards, the Sunshine Award comes with a few simple rules:

(1) Thank the person who gave you the award in your blog post.
(2) Do the Q&A above
(3) Pass on the award to 3-5 deserving and inspiring bloggers, inform them and link to their blogs.

And these are the 4 fantastic bloggers I’m tagging for this award (Now, I’m off to tell them, so maybe they’ll have posts up in a few days. If not, at least you can look around some terrific sites!):

Mackenzie Crowne
LaVerne Clark
Christine Elaine Black
Dixie Lee Brown

RISK FACTORS is Available!!!

WE'RE HAVING A RELEASE DAY PARTY!!!

 

Hi Vonnie!

I am literally jumping up and down right now, I’m so excited to be here today.

It is March 4, 2013, the release date for my second book! WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! Oh, wait, are those for me? Oh, Chocolate, my very favorite. I've been dieting, but surely one or five won't hurt.

 

 

RISK FACTORS is so special to me. Besides being my second published work, it’s the first full length, or category, romance and my first book with Lyrical Press, Inc. I have my editor, Piper Denna to thank for that.

 

After writing this book as a medical and then altering it some to fit another publisher besides the one I wrote it for, I’m so excited to share it with you all. But it’s been a long journey. Well yes, Vonnie, long jouneys do require a bit of bubbly. Of course I'll take a flute. Ohhhhh, and it's French Champagne, too. Strawberries? Well, ah, okay. Yes, I know strawberries are best with with champagne, but I was going to talk about my release, not get tipsy on a Monday. Oh, chocolate on the berries keeps you from getting dru...er...tipsy? I didn't know...

 

Now, where was I? Oh yes...I thought publishing would be a little like getting into a new relationship and moving past those awkward first moments. You know the ones I’m talking about. First hello, first hand holding, first dance. Taken with slow beginnings you eventually move to the first sensual moments like that first hesitant kiss.
 

Then once you get through all those firsts, everything else is easy and flows like it’s meant to be. You hold hands like you own that man or woman, kiss with free abandon and think you know this person so well there can’t be any awkward moments left.

 

That’s sort of how I felt going into publication. Once you break the ice with that first book it’s old hat. Oh how gloriously wrong I’ve been!

 

With my second sale there are still so many new firsts to get through. So much excitement! The first full length vs. the novella. It feels different somehow. That first book with another new publisher. I can’t tell you enough how wonderful my experiences have been with LPI; as a writer and as one of their editors. They are a family of fun writers and I have made some wonderful friendships…again.

 

My cover…another first as I drool over the talent and beauty produced by an artist I hadn’t worked with before. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ms. Valerie Tibbs! I. Still. LOVE. The cover of Risk Factors!!! I didn’t make the job easy for her either. On my cover art sheet--the form we writers fill out to help an artist get an idea of what we’d like to see as a cover-- I was very specific. Can you imagine her face as she read my cover art sheet where I asked for a skunk with a little girl in a lovely meadow? With a sexy man kissing a woman and a helicopter. I compromised, knowing how difficult a couple and a helicopter might fit, and conceded I’d settle for a golden retriever.

 

LOL I know! I didn’t think it would be hard to find a skunk! A slice of cake? Oh no, I couldn't possibly...well, one slice...small...to go with the second glass of bubbly you just poured me. You know, you can be an evil incluence...er...influence.

 

But seriously--I can’t ask for a better cover than my wise cover guru created. I so appreciate her wisdom and eye for detail. Valerie nailed it. Perfectly. From the gorgeous blonde Viv to the smexxy Connor. And the helicopter?! O.M.G.  *ok, give me back my towel, Vonnie* Must be the wine you keep pouring down my throat. Or the sugar high. Is it HOT in here???

 

 

Of course there was the cursory edits and waiting…and waiting, and waiting, but those go without saying, don’t they? And as time neared I received my final copy and loved it. Naturally.

But then it comes down to the wire and I realize some things just don’t change from the first to the one hundredth publication--not that I’ve seen one hundred--and I’m a week out from release day and ten blog posts behind. *sigh*

 

Isn’t that the way? But honestly, the thrill, excitement, nausea, head in hands, and pulling hair is all exactly the way I remember it was from my first book tour and release. It’s NOT old hat… ARGHHHH What was I thinking!?

 

So here I am. Gnawing what little nails I have left, kicking off another tour for a book I have so much hope and faith in. At the end of this tour I’ll be picking one winner to gift either a signature rose rock for a USA winner or a $10 GC of choice (Kindle or Nook) for one overseas or in Canada. Either winner will also get a PDF copy of Risk Factors!

The more you stalk me and comment, the greater your chance to win on April 8^th. I’ll announce the winner on the 10^th. Thank you for joining me on this fun journey’s end and good luck to all!

 

As a special bonus, I’ll be pooling all my blog hosts and the one with the most comments on their blog for my post will also win one of the same prizes as the winners! They need your help to win! Please note, this also includes my two hosts before today, so I’d appreciate if you check my official blog tour schedule and give them a chance to win by going to their blogs too. 

 

Let the kicking, hair-pulling, scratching and boxing… Okay, maybe without the violence, let the games begin! 

Thanks for being my party girl, Vonnie! You do know how to put on a spread. Oh, what are these....

 

BUY LINKS:

 

LPI- http://lyricalpress.com/risk-factors/

amazon- http://is.gd/OOGR4t

b&N- http://is.gd/PfGvg9

Blog of 2012 Award -- by Vonnie Davis

I’m thrilled to receive this blogging award from talented writer and friend, Calisa Rhose. I can’t think of a better way to ring in the New Year on Vintage Vonnie than to honor Calisa. This is a woman who consistently opens her blog, also known as the ranch, at http://www.calisarhose.wordpress.com as a place for other writers to promote. In addition to interviewing other writers, she also does cover, banner and video reveals to pay forward to other authors.

We met online via the yahoo loops for authors with The Wild Rose Press. She’s fun, interesting and talented…and knows how to sit a horse. Whereas I know how to sit a recliner, but we don’t need to go there. She also possesses a heart as big as I hope mine will be one day. If she knows you, she loves you. How lucky for her family, whom she loves without reserve. She’s fabulous.

This award is unlike other awards that you can only add to your blog once. This award can be updated with additional stars. For every time your blog is nominated, you get to add an additional star. How cool is that?
 

There are a total of “6” stars to collect. Which means that you can checks out your favorite blogs—and even if they have already been given the award by someone else—you can still make your opinion count and pass it on to them again and help them (or me) reach the maximum of “6” stars.

The rules of the award are simple:

1.      Select the blogs you think deserve the 2012 Blog of the Year Award.

2.      Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen—there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required and present them with this award.

3.      Please include a link back to this page: Blog of the Year Award. http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/our-rewards/blog-of-the-year-award/ and include these rules in your post. (Please don’t alter the rules or the badge!)

4.      Let the blogs(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the rules with them.

5.      You can now join our Facebook page – click the link here. ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award (http://www.facebook.com/groups/BlogoftheYear/) and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience.

 

And now it’s my turn and a thrill to pay this honor forward by giving the award to the following bloggers:

 

Angela Adams blogging at http://www.authorangela.blogspot.com/  Here’s a lady—and I mean that in every delightful meaning of the word—who loves promoting other writers. She reviews many books and stories on her blog. I met her through RWA’s online site, From the Heart Romance Writers. She’s truly a delight, full of encouragement and support.

 

Then there’s delightful, spirited Mackenzie Crowne blogging at Mad Mac’s Mania, found at http://mackenziecrowne.com/wp/ . Mac and I met on The Wild Rose Press’s yahoo loop. We refer to it as The Garden—not a thorn in the bunch. Mac is like sunshine in a jar of honey. She’s talented and, in my opinion, an up and coming romance writer. I just love her style. I love the design of her blog and get serious blog envy every time I visit, which is often. Her blog is as open to visitors as her heart is to more friends.

 

I don’t want to forget another up and coming author, Rachel Brimble. Rachel blogs from her home in England at http://rachelbrimble.blogspot.com/ We also met in The Garden and are now represented by the same agent. Rachel has opened her blog to me several times and also to my husband, Calvin. She’s full of energy and encouragement.

 

THANKS TO THE THREE OF YOU FOR SUPPORTING MY JOURNEY AS A WRITER THESE LAST COUPLE YEARS. ENJOY YOUR BLOG OF 2012 AWARD.

SWEETEST BLOGGER AWARD --

I was wondering what to fix for dinner when I opened Calisa Rhose's email. I wiped the drool from my chin and gained 5 pounds just from looking at the award.

Calisa is author of the Vietnam era romance, Home. As I wrote in my Amazon review, her historically accurate details of clothing, music, cars, attitudes and morals were very true to the era. I graduated from high school in '66, so reading her story truly was like going home for me. You may find her blog at http://calisarhose.wordpress.com/


Along with the blogger award comes a requirement. I have to share seven things about myself. These are supposed to be things people may not know about me.

Here are my seven:
1. When not writing or reading, I love to draw blueprints for houses.
2. I was 45 when I started college...typical granny goes to college story. I became the "poster child" for Penn State for non-traditional students by way of posters, interviews and speaking to women's groups.
3. I wrote plays put on by Penn State students and also for a non-profit theatre group.
4. I used to work on engines at a Mack Truck plant.
5. In high school I fell UP the bus steps. Graceful, I'm not.
6. While in Berlin, I got in trouble trying to get into a Jewish synogague. It's a long story that involves a metal detector, an open fly and being unable to speak German. Plus, those German security guards have NO sense of humor...sigh.
7. I was, for a few years, a motorcycle momma.

CALISA RHOSE--Romance Author

We're having a party at Vintage Vonnie today! Welcome! My guest is romance author, Calisa Rhose. We're celebrating her release--TODAY, in fact--of her debut story, Home. Isn't the cover dreamy?

I am so excited to be here with you, Vonnie! Thank you for helping me celebrate the release TODAY of my first book with The Wild Rose Press. HOME is available NOW!!!!! And it felt like this day would never come but it is here! To celebrate, I’m at two blogs today. After you comment here, hop over to AJ Nuest’s Tattered Pages and leave a comment for another chance to win your own copy of HOME!

Whistle! Confetti! Streamers!

So let’s get on with this countdown!!!!

DAY FOUR!!!

Calisa, being the sweet person she is, has agreed to answer some questions I sent her.

1.   What is your life like away from the computer? Tell us something about your household. Jazzie, my cat, wants to know if you have any kitty-pusses. Life away from the computer usually has me going to work or somewhere with my darlin’ hubby. After 28 years I love that we aren’t totally sick of one another. Lol I spent time with my beautiful granddaughters when I can, because they just grow up SO fast! And, yes, Jazzie. I have a very spoiled Himalayan Siamese Persian named Trouble, and her moniker suits her perfectly.

2.   What authors and genres do you like to read? I mostly like contemporary and paranormal genres. As for the authors, I read everyone I think. I have your book on my Kindle, in fact, I have dozens of Wild Rose Press authors waiting for me to read! But I love Ms. Nora Roberts and Sharon Sala. I love reading new authors and new to me authors. I have been known to read the occasional historical, steampunk or fantasy, too, if they catch me in the right mood.

3.  Do you enter writing contests? If so, has this been a positive experience for you? Before publishing I entered exactly one contest of which I didn’t even final in. lol I always ‘plan’ to enter, but just never do. I’m thinking of entering the local rwa chapter contest again this year, though.

4.    Do you ever dream of writing in a different genre? As a contemporary author, I don’t normally write historical- so I guess you could say HOME IS my venture into ‘another genre.’ I’m also working on some paranormal works.

5.  What part of the writing process brings you the most pleasure? The most angst? Everyone says it’s the first idea that excites them the most. I’m no different in that, but writing THE END gives me a thrill like nothing else can. To know I have given that first spark of an idea life by finishing the story is nice. On the flip-side, I hate that part in the middle when all intelligent creativity seems to fly out the window, you can’t figure out how to breathe new life into a wilting wip to reach the end. Ugh! I shiver to think about it. lol

6.  What are you currently working on? Right now I’m trying to get through that lifeless middle on a cowboy novella that I hope to submit as part of a series for TWRP’s Yellow Rose line. I’m also and constantly thinking and adding to one or another of five shifter books in a paranormal series. Yes, I work on all simultaneously, but that works since it’s a continuity series.

7.  What is one of your most embarrassing or laughable moments? That would be the night I watched a crush next door undress for bed and he turned to face the window just as he unzipped those tight levis. The curtains were wide open facing my house and I was all teen-agnsty-eyes as he began to ease the jeans down...and then his little brother flipped the light out at THAT moment. Then a few weeks later crush boy, Nick, let me know he knew I was watching! I could have died. Then he said he didn’t mind and when would I return the favor?... OMG!!! That scene may make it into a book some day.

Oh, hon, I think you should use it. What a hoot!!

8.   Tell us about your current release…or soon to be release. HOME is a story about hope and love in a time when people were more focused on the Vietnam war and all its ramifications. Two unlikely people, each fighting stigmas from a town they had always called home and differences in their pasts, find hope and a future together when all seems lost. Will they each realize home is more than a geological location, or people they thought cared? I hope you read HOME to find out.

BLURB:

What could a gypsy and a Vietnam veteran have in common?

Silvertown’s outcast, Poppy Tippen, has loved football hero Sam “The Force” Callahan forever. But he never seemed to know she was alive. Now he’s home from the war and she suddenly finds herself comforting him from the demons of “that damn war.” Is his attention merely an escape from the haunting nightmares? Or does she hold the interest of the only man she’s ever truly loved?

Sam Callahan’s only solace from the war nightmares wrecking his life comes in the unlikely form of a gypsy girl with stigmas of her own. He’s known Poppy his entire life, but there’s something different about her now. Something special he desperately wants to hold on to. Can he convince her she’s the only thing he needs to put the past behind him?

Excerpt:

“I’ll always want you, Poppy.”

Her head shook in automatic denial. “You’ll want a girl who fits your life. Not some gypsy with no family lineage to brag about. Your momma won’t accept that, either. She’ll make you choose someone like Connie, someone who fits into your world. Not the girl everyone avoids and whispers about behind her back. You’re gonna be the town’s doctor. You need an uppity wife who will make you proud.”

When Sam laughed, his chest shuddered against her back. Deep, husky, real. He turned her in his arms and looked down at her, smiling. “Poppy, do you honestly think I give a damn what people think? Look at me! I’m the town outcast, the survivor who should have died saving the others, not be here planning a future that includes a wife, a medical practice. “I shimmy under park benches, run from my mother’s lipstick, for God’s sake. I wake up screaming and crying over nothing in the middle of the night, crawl under my bed and hide, shaking, until morning. Hell, I can’t even be a doctor because I haven’t finished school yet.”

“I didn’t know. It must be awful for you.” No matter how it hurt Poppy to know he used her, it felt much worse to know how he hurt alone. “The only time it isn’t awful is when I’m with you. When I think of you.”

Get your copy of HOME at The Wild Rose Press. Buy link is: http://bit.ly/sdT0E9
Or order at Amazon: http://amzn.to/vmLNov

Small-town country girl Calisa Rhose lives in a semi-remote area of Oklahoma with her husband, five dogs and one horse. All of her three daughters and their families live within throwing distance. She’s a member of RWA and the local chapter OKRWA. She intends to nurture and continue to grow as an author with the help of her family and supporters.

Find Calisa at her website/blog http://calisarhose.wordpress.com

On twitter @Calisa_Rhose and Facebook @Calisa Rhose

She loves to hear from readers so drop her a line at calisa.rhose@gmail.com

ATTENTION:

The day following the New Years Day party, on my blog, I will be giving away the first copy of HOME to one lucky commenter! The more you comment this week, the greater your chance to win! Don’t forget to leave your EMAIL ADDRESS in all your comments this week! Be sure to come to my BIG SALE PARTY on my blog on January 1, 2012!

You can find the full tour schedule on my website at the link above.