Cera/Sarah ... Tell Us Who You Really Are

My guest blogger today is paranormal author Cera duBois, who is celebrating the release of A Hunter's Blade. Cera is the alter ego of romance author Sarah Walter Ellwood, who writes sexy contemporary westerns about cowboys and the women who love them. I'm amazed by how much Cera/Sarah has accomplished this year. I need her to stand behind me with a whip!

Treat her nice, buy her a Margarita, and keep that one cabana boy away from her. You know the one I'm talking about :)

:::

Looking Back

Thanks so much Carol for having me today!

Yeah, I know—I know—we should never look back only forward. But I’m looking back on 2012 and at the goals I’d set for the year. How did I fare? Well, let’s compare and find out.

*Submit A Hunter’s Blade to my editor at The Wild Rose Press. ***Did this and it was published...In fact today is its release day!***

*Finish rewriting The Long Road Home for a different editor at The Wild Rose Press who gave me a revise/resubmit option with a rejection. ***Did this and was rejected again... But this time I totally rewrote the book and submitted it to Lyrical Press in May. They contracted it and Heartstrings, the new title, comes out April 1.***

*Write A Hunter’s Wing (Book 3 of the Hunter’s Dagger series). ***Ummm... Still working on this one***

*Finish A Family for Jesse and submit it. ***Someday I plan to finish this darned book!***

 *Promote the heck out of A Hunter’s Angel when it’s released later this year. ***Did this. At least I think I did.***

*Figure out a plan for self-publishing Butterfly and The Hardest Words to Say (Books 1 and 2 of The Cowboys of Colton)—find a content editor and cover artist. ***LOL! Talk about curveballs! I ended up pitching “Butterfly” to Piper Denna, Executive Editor at Lyrical Press, on a blog and getting a request last February. That request morphed into eventually 2 contracts one for the newly titled Gambling On A Secret, which releases on January 7 and another for Gambling On A Heart (“The Hardest Words to Say”) which has a tentative release of September.***

*Start writing A Wife’s Dying Wish (Book 3 of The Cowboys of Colton).  ***Sort of doing this right now, though the new title of book 3 of the newly titled The Colton Gamblers is Gambling On A Dream and the book that was titled “A Wife’s Dying Wish” will be book 4 (Gambling On A Wish).***

*Continue my duties as the Communications Committee Chair for the RWA and as webmistress for my local RWA chapter. ***Did this... And was elected Secretary of my local chapter too.***

*Blog more—at least twice a month. ***Not sure if I achieved this goal or not. I probably average this many blogs with my book tours, but I don’t blog regularly on my own blog.  Bad girl!***

*Eat better and take better care of myself. ***Working on it...***

*Don’t let the day job drive me crazy. ***This one is impossible! It’s crazier now than ever...LOL***

*Plant a memorial garden in memory of my brother who passed away in September (2011). ***Sad, but I did it. And then I cried.***

*Remember to smell the roses when they’re blooming and enjoy my garden more this summer!  ***I tried. Honestly, I tried to be better at taking a breather now and then.***

Overall I don’t think I did too shabby at keeping my goals. Some of them changed, but in the end I think this year was a success for my writing goals.

What will next year’s goals be? To be honest, I haven’t had time to think about them, but I will. I believe goal setting is extremely important. They help keep me on track, even of something changes, I know exactly what the next goal on my list is.

Did you see your last year’s goals to reality? And do you have goals for the coming year?

~*~*~

A Hunter’s Blade, book 2 The Hunter’s Dagger Series

BLURB:

Brigit Wolfe, a born werewolf, hasn’t killed a human in over a hundred years, although now, she wonders if the animal attacking people in Silver Creek, Colorado, isn’t her. But she might have bigger problems when her cowboy neighbor, Austin Calhoun, ambles into her bar. Austin hasn’t been a vampire for long, but he is determined to prove to himself that he’s worthy of his hunter’s dagger. Brigit’s rare beauty and blade-sharp tongue enchants him. She ignites a passion he thought was dead, but is she the killer his master sent him to destroy? During Austin’s investigation regarding Brigit’s involvement in the deaths, an old crime surfaces connected to her human best friend. These two immortal enemies have to join forces to solve the mystery before someone else dies. But can they survive the heat of their own desire?

5 Star Review: WiLoveBooks: “Great paranormal romance...Pulled me right along. hought the story was really good and pulled me right along... This is the second book in the series but stood well on its own. I haven't read the first, but now I want to. If you are looking for a good paranormal romance series, definitely check this one out.”

EXCERPT:

She stopped in front of him and growled, “Let’s get something established about werewolves. There are two kinds. The lesser wolves who are made. And the Lykan who are born. I’m not one of the degenerates. I was born a Lykan in 1647. The first child of Valeriu and Elena. I’m an alpha and you are nothing more than a fledgling just hatched.”

He broke free of her power by drawing on his own. When he moved toward her, Austin held his hands to his side, ready to grab the hunter’s dagger sheathed inside his jacket. His fangs had long ago descended ready for a fight. “I don’t really give a flying fuck whether you were made, born, or hatched.”

When the energy of Brigit’s power touched him again, he pulled the silver blade. “I want to know if you’re the one preying on these people.”

Her eyes widened and she backed up a step as he approached. “I told you I didn’t attack those humans. I haven’t killed a mortal in over a hundred years. How many innocents have you snacked on tonight? How many of them did you want to kill?”

“I don’t hurt my prey,” he said through clenched teeth. He’d never let her know battling the beast within every feeding was the hardest thing he’d ever done. “If you didn’t kill those people then you have nothing to worry about. Best way to figure out who did is by working together.” He put the sliver blade away, and his fangs retracted.

“What do you have planned?”

Austin didn’t miss the slight quiver in her voice. “We begin with you telling me everything you remember from those nights you became the big, bad wolf.”

BIO:

Cera duBois has a strong belief in never giving up on your dreams…

Although Cera was unable to read due to dyslexia and a learning disability until she was in the fourth grade, she always had a story to tell. She wrote her first novel in eleventh grade when she had to keep a journal for her academic English class. Since her life was far from exciting growing up as a farm girl in West Central Pennsylvania, she decided to rely on her imagination to give her something to write about. Over the course of the school year, she wrote a tangled romance set in the Deep South during the Civil War.  Becoming an author was her ultimate dream. Despite holding a BS in secondary social studies education from Penn State University, she currently works full-time as a medical secretary. A mother of a teenage son and pre-teen daughter, she lives near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with her husband of nearly 20 years. If she isn’t sitting in a quiet corner with her laptop, warm days will find her in the English garden surrounding her house. Cera loves to read and is interested in history, romance, science fiction and the paranormal. She also writes contemporary Westerns under her real name of Sara Walter Ellwood.

LINKS:

Website: http://www.ceradubois.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sarawalterellwood.ceradubois/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/sara_w_ellwood

To Sign up for my newsletter: http://eepurl.com/mVxXf

BUY LINKS:

The Wild Rose Press: http://www.thewildrosepress.com/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=980

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_pop_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=Cera%20duBois&search-alias=digital-text

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/cera-dubois

If you would like to participate in the

cover reveal

for my new book, 

SOLOMON'S COMPASS

on Monday, January 7,

please sign up here.

Thanks to all who help me get the word out!