Social Networking

Indulge me, Star-crossed fans, with a cross-post from my blog. It took me many many days to compose this (hell, it takes me many many days ...

Five Things I've Learned About Being An Author

My first full-length novel came out in 2006...it will have been out three years come next month. My second full-length novel is due to be r...

Long Tail of a Comet

We all know how comets are chunks of dirty ice in extreme orbit around the sun, which pass close enough to Earth every so often to be seen f...

Things You Should Know About E-Publishing

So I thought a great topic for today's blog post would be something that authors and readers would find interest in. I decided to ident...

A Fresh New Year, Ready for Speculation

Happy New Year, everyone! I confess, I haven't been around much in the past few weeks. Between a deadline and family commitments, I re...

Browsing the Bookstore

The other day, I was in my local big bookstore, looking for something to read. It was actually a crochet book, but as I walked past the (ra...

Reading Habits

I confess, I have really sketchy reading habits. You'd think a writer would read anything and everything, including the backs of cereal...

Doing the Nasty

Villains are a fun bunch. Every writer I talk to thinks so. I find them devilishly hard (pardon the pun), because my tendency goes to taki...

Plausible Eroticability

Mr. Xandra and I recently stood in the great room of our house and looked up at the 11-ft ceilings, and admiring the walls we'd just fin...

Thirteen Things I Know About Writing

Okay, since I missed last week, I had to shuffle around and my list has changed a bit. 1. While you don't absolutely, die-hard need it, ...

It's Not What You Say...

Authorial Voice. What is it? What does it mean to you? It's that guy you hear in commercials all the time, "A hard-headed cop on ...

You and Your Tagline - Author Branding and Promotion

I will confess--I'm probably not the expert I should be when it comes to author branding. As an ebook author (meaning one small fish am...

Ten Little Things

Ten Little Things about writing Science Fiction Romance, from the world according to Xandra. 1. No matter what you're writing, Story Is ...

Like A Drunken Sailor

There's always a point in one's career when one must look back upon the path and all the decisions leading up to that point, and gaz...

Ya Pays Yer Buck & Ya Takes Yer Chances

Contests are a crapshoot. Now, before all the contest coordinators from RWA chapters put out contract hits on me, let me qualify this and sa...

Professional Development--A Season For Everything

"How long have you been writing?" "Did you go to college for it?" "How did you learn to write?" The three ques...

Dear Diary...Bridget Jones I Ain't

I've been reading these excellent posts on journaling and thinking, "gosh, I'm off on such a tangent from everybody else."...

Erotic Romance's Slutty Reputation

The lovely folks over at Title Magic just posted a guest blog by fabulous author Monica Burns entitled " Sex, Language, and Readers .&...

Han or Leia

"Where do you get your ideas?" is a question writers are frequently asked, and writers I've talked to, when we get together, l...

Hawt Men and Crazy Writers

Okay, so in case everyone was wondering, my current WIP of choice is an M/M, set in the near future, on planet Earth. There are elements of...