Working hard

have 3 deadlines coming up at the first of January. O.O

How does this happen? Yikes.

one menage and 2 m/m - all yummy :D

Taking up my own challenge

I challenged folks on my Twitter to post something positive on a blog or a social media site this week.

This is one of the biggest positives in my life:

This is my basset girl, Sadie. She keeps my feet warm at night, makes sure I am always blessed with drool and dog hair, and keeps me in line when I don't feed her treats. She insists on a walk at 3pm every day, and if I'm out of town, they tell me she goes to my desk chair and barks like I'll magically appear if she just wishes hard enough

She reminds me that we all need to wag more and bite less

post Thanksgiving whoa

Hey y'll

as always, the holidays are messing with my schedule

New book out at Changeling! Cirque Caprice 4: Ringmaster, came out last week

this one is m/m, About Jon, a security professional at Caprice, and Amadeo, the new ringmaster

it has intrigue, hotness and sexy control issues

Check it out!

no idea what I meant to write about

hey y'all

I had it on my to do list to do a blog yesterday

So, yeah, that went so well

I fell walking the dogs yesterday. Boom. Luckily, Sadie, who I walk while BA walks Sonny, did not run when I dropped her leash. She went right to her other mom.

Scraped up my hands, knees and pride and twisted my ankle. Not too bad, all in all, but it sure put a kibosh on my writing blogs!

Life is finally slowing down

Hey y'all!

I know I've been sporadic. I apologize. Without getting too personal, life has been a little crazy, with a new grand-nephew in the family, a slew of deadlines, and a house that needed to be fall-cleaned.

Okay, we're still cleaning and donating bags and bags to the Goodwill. BA and I are a little pack-ratty. We collect weird cooking implements, for example. Garlic presses? We have 3, one of which rolls. Bizarre egg white beaters? No less than 4. One is a crank kind with its own bowl. One is a tiny one that also does chocolate milk.

Then there's the stuff. Teapots. Turtles (BA) crocodiles (me) basset hounds (both)... Cowboy art (we were out of space so we made a pact to only buy originals. (We still need a sliding gallery wall.) Ravens. weird gothic dolls. Yeah. We're packed to the gills.

Anyhoo, I should be back on a regular schedule now for a bit. I missed y'all

Looking forward to art time

BA and I went to the studio today and cleaned and put everything away. we're ready to start making Christmas art. I want to make ornaments and advent calendars and cthulhu santas!

Babies and cowboys and trick or treat oh my!

Got back from the Professional Bullriding Finals just in time for Halloween. I thought sure I had some cowboy pictures on this machine, but it looks like they're all on the desktop, not the laptop.

So instead I share our Halloween decorations:

I also give you the boy basset dressed as a bull with a cowboy on his back

So I guess there are cowboys!

Last but certainly not least, our niece gave birth to our great-nephew this morning at about 4:45am. 6lbs 3ounces, and everyone is healthy. Hooray!

Home from Vegas

man, the cowboy watching with BA Tortuga was awesome-- home for 3 months

hooray

Fright Night

Watching Fright Night. The old one, not the new one. I have to admit, Colin Farrell is way hotter than Chris Sarandon. It's hard to beat Roddy McDowall, though. It really is. I'm sure David Tennant is great, but man...

I love Halloween movie season!

Halloween is coming!

Bring out your undead, y'all! It's October and Halloween is coming up.

Spooky movies? check

ridiculous werewolf hat? check

Candy? homemade paleo-- check

I love the fall, which admittedly comes late in Texas. Still, we had a norther come in day before yesterday and it's cool and breezy. BA Tortuga and I are putting up Halloween decorations together. Gravestones and spiderwebs and witches, oh my! We cleaned up the yard yesterday, getting weeds pulled, pulling out the potted plants that didn't make it through the hot, drought-ridden summer. We cleaned off the 5 foot tall metal chicken, y'all. It rocks once more.

We're dressing him up as a wolf this year.

I love Halloween goodies, too, but this year I'm eating paleo, so I have to make my own

Here's a recipe to love:

1 cup unsweetened chocolate chips
1 tsp honey
1 tablespoon butter or coconut oil
2 tablespoons coffee or espresso, brewed
1/2 pecan halves

line small cookie sheet with parchment. Melt together choc chips, honey, butter and espresso. Drop 5-6 pecan halves on sheet in a small circle and top with dollop of chocolate (about 2 tbs) depending on the size candy you desire, Press down with spoon to enrobe nuts in chocolate.

Chill until chocolate firms

yum

More on halloween all week!

XXOO

Julia

Back from GayRomLit

Hey, y'all!

Back from GayRomLit, and what a fun con that was! How neat to go to a con where everyone reads what we write, you know?

We had a ball in NOLA, which was easier to eat gluten free than it was three years ago, and was full of sights and sounds and a new gelato shop called La Divina. Oh, y'all. Goat's milk and sesame gelato...

Even if we couldn't gorge on beignets, we managed to have a blast. The Torquere Press publisher spotlight on Friday morning went really well, with the books flying off the table. We took donations for books rather than selling, and we raised $720.00 for the It Gets Better project. Thanks to all the readers for your extreme generosity.

The booksigning on Friday also went great. BA Tortuga and I walked from the hotel to the riverboat, and met some amazing readers, like Kelli and Yvonne, while seeing old friends like Elisa Rolle and Jen from Goodreads. Waves at y'all. It was so good to see you. We'd sold out of books at the spotlight, so I signed a lot of those, as well as postcards, Kindle covers, and one really neat electronic reader that had a place on the ebook file to sign.

Friday night after the booksigning we had a TQ author get-together, where I got to meet EM Lynley, Eden Winters, PD Singer, Stormy Glenn, Angela Benedetti, Lydia Nyx, TC Blue, and our old friends Kiernan Kelly and her husband, who goes by Kiernan's publicist. It was the biggest gathering of TQ authors since RT back in Orlando, and it was a hoot, especially after TC Blue started buying shots. Lydia's friend Isisfrog was a hilarious addition to the group. A few of the ladies peeled off to go to other events, but the rest of us hit Bourboun Street afterward and hunted supper. That was a hoot!

Saturday we hit the cemetery tour with ZA Maxfield and a bunch of readers, and we learned all about NOLA funerary styles. Neat! Then it was lunch with the reader, Chris, who had asked for a gluten free author. BA and I took her to Muriel's on the square, and let me tell you, y'all, GF shrimp creole is a treat.

We shopped and visited and went to bed early Sat, as we had to leave at 3:30 am to get on our 5:30 flight home. Sorry to anyone we missed saying goodbye to, as we were just pooped!

Thanks so much to Carol, Lynn, JP, Ethan and Amanda for the amazing con. They did a great job organizing, and y'all should think about attending next year!

XXOO

Julia

Gay Rom Lit

Hey y'all!

Been busy gearing up for GayRomLit, a conference this weekend in New Orleans. This is the first con devoted exclusively to GLBT romance, and it's very exciting and reader oriented. If you'll be there, stop by the riverboat book signing to see me and BA Tortuga signing Cereus!

Also, if you know of any good Gluten Free places in Nola, give me a shout out. Pre-gluten intolerance, NOLA was one of my favorite places on earth. Now? It's almost impossible to eat in. Cajun and creole food are roux heavy, and everything there is battered and fried. Makes partying hearty with the beignet and pretzel parties at the con a little tough...

Hope to see y'all there!

XXOO

J

Romance Trading Cards!

My lovely BA is totally into the Romance Trading Cards. So she made me some!

OMG so neat

I have ones so far for Jed and Eli from the Thatcher's series, Jumping, Landing and Taking.


Here's an example-- front

and back--

How awesome is that?

Want a set? Email me your snail mail at juliatalbot at gmail.com

Paranormal month!

It's October. Do you know what that means? It means the high is 86 degrees today, 20 degrees cooler than it was a week ago. It means we might be able to turn off the air and open windows by the end of the month. It means fall recipes like soup and pumpkin bread. It means bullriding finals and hot guys in chaps...

And Halloween!

It surprises no one, I'm sure, to know that Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love spooky bats and cats and costumes. I love carved pumpkins and twinkly orange lights. I love scary movie month on AMC and the however many nights of halloween on whatever channel that is!

So, this month is paranormal month at Torquere

Look for my Sip, Crate Trained, in late October

Go vote for me!

Hey y'all!

The Just One Bite contest is going on at All Romance Ebooks

Go vote for my story Friends Not Food!

http://www.allromanceebooks.com/contest_just_one_bite.html

You get to read lots of free stories and I get to know you love me!

XXOO

Julia

Where I'll be - Gayromlit

Hey y'all!

Oct 13-15 I'll be in New Orleans for the Gayromlit convention.

This is the first annual edition of this con, and I'm excited that it's all m/m all the time. I have no idea how it will go, but I'm so tickled, and I love NOLA, even if it is hard to eat gluten free there. No beignets or mufalettas for us anymore.

I used to say that the best thing about NOLA was the food. Now I know better, because I can't eat ;) Now I know it's the people. And the architecture. I like the shopping, too.

Y'all should come see me and BA if you have a chance!

XXOO

Julia

Pushing Limits - New Short m/m - Excerpt

Hey, y'all!

Got a new Sip out today at Torquere. You can find it here!

I had a lot of fun writing this story, because it's a bit of a departure for me. 1st person bdsm with a lot of voyeurism tossed in for good measure. It's a short, hot, fun read, and I hope y'all love it.

Here's a bit of it just to tease you:

The whole spanking thing came up as a way for Dell to push my boundaries. He said he liked to do that, said he knew I was really a kinkster deep down.
I don't think I'm into kink so much as I'm into the things Dell does to me. He makes me feel everything, every square inch of my skin, every emotion I would like to lock deep inside and hide. He wants to see me like no one else does, and I let him.
"I hope you like the demonstration, baby," he said when we walked into his friend Jimmy's house. He just started calling me baby about two weeks ago, and it's a rather exquisite humiliation, how much I like it. It makes my dick hard almost every time.
I keep assuring myself that soon the novelty will wear off, as will the urge to get down on my knees and blow him when he tells me how hot I am. No one has ever called me baby.
"So, what's going on?"
"Well, you know Jimmy has that hot new guy in his life, right?"
I nodded. Jimmy was a nice guy, one of Dell's best friends at work. He'd hooked up with this smokin' hot artist guy maybe three weeks ago when we all went to Charlie's together. I thought Teiko was stunning, even if his lean, Eurasian look was the opposite of Dell, who's really my type.
"It turns out that Teiko is something of a pain slut."
My cheeks heated for maybe the tenth time that night. Dell likes to throw words like that around like I've been in the BDSM scene or something, like kink has been a habit my whole adult life. It's all still so new to me that it makes me a little crazy.
"Anyway, they found out they're perfectly matched. Jimmy likes to spank, Teiko likes to take it, and they both like to show it off."

playing at the TQ Livejournal today

check me out if you have time

http://torquere-social.livejournal.com/

Charity Sip out and newsletter

Hey y'all

Busier than a one-legged buttkicker.

Just wanted to announce my Getting Better Charity Sip at Torquere! At 1.99 it's a bargain, and all of my royalties on it go to the It Gets Better project with TQ matching it 100% It's also available at Rainbow Ebooks, who awesomely agreed to sponsor the Charity Sips this year and are the sole offsite distributor.

The story is called Coming Out Wolf, wherein Steve proves the worst thing in the world is certainly not being gay...

Find it here!

and here!

Also, I put out my first newsletter this week! If you go look on www.juliatalbot.com you can sign up and get that newsletter, which features a contest for my novel Manners and Means in paperback

Release Party at TRS today!

We have a release party at TRS today!

Sean Michael, BA Tortuga and I are promoting Cereus: the Building and giving away a kindle!

Go here to see