I've been sort of teasing some of you with it. But now it's official. I recently signed a contract with Carina Press to publish The Last Slayer, an urban fantasy with romantic elements.

Unofficial blurb:

Ashera del Cid is a demon hunter who takes great pride in her work, but when she kills a demigod's pet dragon, the hunter becomes the hunted. Her only potential ally is Ramiel, an untrustworthy, sexy-as-hell demon who destroyed her home. Now the two must work together to battle dragons and demigods…and the chemistry sizzling between them.

I'm super psyched since I really love this story. It has a smart-mouthed heroine and lots of immortal hotties with secret agendas. Oh and a hilariously subservient dragon. My agent pitched it as a “fun, fast read — think cotton candy and roller coaster rides, but with swords, magic, and supernaturally hot sex”. It's tentatively scheduled to be released sometime in fall or winter of 2011.

September's been pretty productive.

I finished Step 5 for All's Fair, and now it's all with my 1st beta.

A Goddess to Love was supposed to be done by today, but for some reason, I couldn't seem to get in the right mood for it, and I kept nodding and not making the changes I know I need to make. Maybe it's because I spent like more than two months on revision…? Anyway, I'm letting it sit a little longer.

I also had a chance to talk with Agent, and I started outlining / arcing a new story. I don't know much about it except that the heroine is an assistant / nanny, but since I'm the one writing it, a lot of people are going to die. (Don't worry, h/H get their happy ending!) Actually I think the body count in the new nanny project is going to be greater than the one in All's Fair, which features assassins as heroine and hero, plus a Russian mafia boss.

Who said romancing a nanny was safe?

I've listened to multiple workshop tapes from 2010 RWA. Many of them are excellent and inspiring. I highly recommend getting the whole set if you can. It's cheaper than buying each workshop separately.

I also had a chance to watch some really good low budget Asian horror drama. The plot's pretty straightforward, and the supernatural elements are pretty familiar (to Asians, that is!), but I loved how they managed to create awesome mystery and tension by continually escalating the stakes and intensifying the internal and external conflict of all the characters. I just couldn't stop watching. Thankfully it had only sixteen episodes. (Some dramas go for over 50 episodes.)

As for reading, September has been a lackluster month. Jeannie Lin's Historical Undone was good, but the rest of the books I started were mediocre, clumsily written / plotted, and/or just boring. A couple of them got hyped quite a bit, so I'm sure that didn't help.

Fortunately I just got Sin Undone by Larissa Ione, who has yet to disappoint. So that should make up for September. :)

Can you believe it's already July? 2010 is officially half over.

Since finishing the first draft of my Sekrit Love Story in May, I took June off to give myself a little bit of distance before I start revising. Mostly I spent last month reading books I've been dying to read for a while and watching soccer. I finally got to read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. What an excellent YA. If you like gorgeous prose and an interesting twist on werewolves, you ought to try it.

Now that July 1st is here, a pristine print copy of Sekrit Love Story is ready for my highlighters and color pens. July and August will be all about revision.

How do you plan to spend your summer?

P.S. For those of you who missed the announcement, don't forget about my Kiss of the Rose contest!

May was a super busy month. I have no idea what I was thinking, joining MayNoWriMo while doing the uber-challenging (but also uber-rewarding) mentorship with Kate Pearce.

But the good thing is I got a lot of writing done. Finally I'm finished with my sooper-sekrit project set in futuristic Paris and Shintokyo (New Tokyo) to the point where I'm satisfied with all the major plot / character arcs. I also edited a short erotic novella and sent it off to Agent, wrote the first draft of a paranormal romance novella plus a synopsis for the sequel.

On the non-writing front — I'm sure you've noticed that my site looks different. Frauke from CrocoDesigns worked her magic again. It's amazing that she knew exactly what I wanted even though my emails were somewhat vague. If you ever need a web designer, definitely check her out. She's just fantastic.

Also say hello to Miss Moneypenny (Dragon Naturally Speaking 10). I've been having problems with wrist and hand pain, and I figured I should learn to dictate. If nothing else, I can “speak” dialogue out loud, so I don't have too much downtime due to pain. I honestly don't mind having pages and pages of dialogue to go back and fill out later with descriptions and tags, etc. And now that I have a new helper, I need to train her so she can transcribe correctly.

(BTW — Amazon has an incredible deal on Dragon 10 right now. So if you're interested in trying it, you may want to check out Amazon's price.)

Finally, I uploaded A Happily Ever After of Her Own on Amazon Kindle. Several people asked me about its availability in the Kindle format, and I decided to just go ahead and do it. It's still available on my site for free to my newsletter subscribers, but if you want the convenience of reading it on your Kindle, you can get it. (Unfortunately Amazon doesn't allow individual authors to give away stuff via Kindle, so I had to price it at ninety-nine cents, the lowest allowable.)

Later this month I plan to give away a copy of Kate Pearce‘s Kiss of the Rose, the first book in her Tudor Vampire Chronicles. Vampires in Henry VIII's court — what more can paranormal and/or historical fans can ask for?

Stayed tuned for your chance to win!

(FYI – The giveaway is open to anybody anywhere in the world. I don't have any author copies or ARCs; BookDepository will ship a copy to the winner when Kiss of the Rose is released.)

May is one of my favorite months. Not only is it beautiful and warm, but everything's so green and lively! (April is hit-or-miss where I am, alas…!) Also May is when I try to organize my stuff, toss out things I no longer need, etc. Hero Material and I bought bunch of shelves and closet storage boxes. And I found the coolest thing called DropBox. It allows you to back up all your project files, etc. on their server. It also automatically syncs your files so no matter which computer you're working on, you have the latest version of your work.

Perfect, huh? :)

Since my last update, I've been pretty busy. I found a project that I had totally forgotten about on my hard drive. I know, you guys are thinking, “How can you forget about your own project? Aren't your stories like your babies or something?”

Alas, no. I don't really consider my projects babies. If I did, I couldn't be a writer since trying to sell babies for profit is a crime, and I do try to be a good law-abiding citizen. *grin*

Actually, I worked on the project all the way up to my wedding. But around that time we had lots of drama, including the bride getting ready to call off the wedding (not the groom's fault), and so on…and in all the excitement the project kinda slipped my mind until I was going through my project folders last month to decide what to back up on DropBox.

Anyway, I revised it and sent it off to Agent, who told me she liked it. Yay me.

The mentor program with Kate is going very well. She's been super encouraging, and I've learned so much from her already. I don't know how she does everything though because she has insane deadlines this year. I'm in awe.

I may also have found a good crit partner whose interests match mine. She likes to read the kind of stuff I like to read and so on. And speaking of reading, if you haven't done so, check out Larissa Ione‘s awesome Demonica series. She made my autobuy list with solid writing, hot heroes and strong heroines.

The rest of the month is going to be spent on reading and doing MayNoWriMo. I have some simple goals for the challenge and for the rest of the year. I plan to do a book giveaway in June, so stay tuned!

It's getting warmer in Japan, and many news programs have already started talking about hanami. I can't wait to see the gorgeous cherry blossoms in April.

I'm making a couple of changes to my blog. As you might have noticed, I'm not blogging much. Mostly I don't have anything to say on my blog that I haven't said on Twitter, and I hate repeating myself. Besides I already share what I read and my ratings on Goodreads. I feel bad, but right now, I don't have the inspiration to blog regularly. So my blog's going on a bit of a hiatus. This doesn't mean I'll never blog again or that my blog's going to disappear. You can still browse the archives, and I'm going to occasionally post pictures and news. Furthermore, if you leave me a question on my blog, I will answer it. This applies to my Twitter account, too. I don't auto-follow, but I will answer if you send me a @ reply with a question or comment. If I don't answer, it's because I somehow missed your question. Feel free to try again. My email is also open to anyone.

So what am I going to do now that I won't be spending time trying to blog regularly?

Firstly, I'm going to focus on working with my mentor, Kate Pearce. We hooked up through the Romance Divas formal mentor program, and I get to pick her brain until the end of June. I've already learned a lot from her, and I'm totally excited about honing my craft and learning more about how publishing works.

Secondly, I'm going to finish the current draft of my untitled novel plus a sexy paranormal romance novella set in Greek-myth-world by the end of April. These items are not negotiable.

Thirdly, I plan to work out more regularly. I'm turning into a couch potato, and it just won't do, especially with the bum back I have. Regular stretching and exercise make a big difference, and I've got to take care of myself better.

Fourthly, I plan to read more.

Finally, I'm going on an eight-day honeymoon to Thailand with Hero Material. We'll be hitting Phuket and Chiang Mai, and I'll post lots of pictures on the blog when we get back.

How about you? What do you plan to do for the rest of the month and April?