June has always been a pretty busy month for me. Looking back on my life, many of the major events happened in June. There are the standard June events–high school and college graduation. I also got married in June–hubby and I celebrate our twelfth anniversary at the end of the month. The first house I purchased, we moved into in June, then out of in another June five years later. (To move into the second house we purchased…in June.)

The biggest and most important day in my life also happened in June. I became a mom on June 9, nine years ago, to the most amazing kid on the planet. To celebrate, we’re going to dinner tonight–sushi–my son’s choice. Then tomorrow, I’m taking the kidlet to Disneyland for the day. He doesn’t know about it though–it’s a complete and total surprise. It’s hard to keep anything a secret from him because he’s pretty smart and aware, but I’ve managed to plan the trip without him figuring anything out. My entire family’s attending, as well as my bestest friend Wendy, who’s driving in from San Diego with her son. I remember my parents surprising me with a trip to Disneyland when I was a kid–it’s one of my favorite memories–and I wanted to give my son that special memory as well.

Happy birthday to my beautiful boy. I love you, sunshine. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and my best, proudest accomplishment.

For those of you who’ve been following our blog for awhile, you know that Lisa and I are major fans of the TV show Torchwood. We’ve been waiting over a year now for Series 3, and it’s almost here! This new trailer released late last week, and I’m not ashamed to say I’ve watched it more than a dozen times.

There’s not much on TV this summer worth watching, but this…oh yeah. I canNOT wait.

If you haven’t seen Torchwood yet, rent or buy–I suggest buying because you will become addicted and want to watch it over and over–series 1 and 2 on DVD. It’s one of the best sci-fi paranormal shows on TV right now. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Fantastic stories, great characters, hot men (ahem, you know I had to add that last one in there, didn’t you?)

Where else on TV could a reunion end like this?

Have you ever solved a mystery a) without trying and b) in a rather strange manner?

Well, yesterday was my day for that. The mystery is pretty small, kinda funny and definitely weird, but nonetheless, I finally solved it.

Last Christmas, one of my friends gave me a hot water dispenser for my kitchen. It’s a strange contraption built in Japan where they do things a little differently… Like, it plays a song when I turn it off for the night. Beautiful Dreamer. And it also plays a song when the water is warmed up to temperature.

But while the song was familiar, I just couldn’t place it. Where had I heard it? My husband knew the song, but couldn’t remember the name of it, either. It beeps the song which I affectionately dubbed The Sound of Joy, but I still wanted to know what the name of it was.

Well, yesterday I was working on my computer (no, really?!) and listening to music (no way!?) and like I always do when I know I’m stepping away for awhile, I turn off the music by hitting the remote control that came with it (otherwise, I don’t think I’d ever use the remote except that hitting the pause button is so much quicker than opening iTunes and turning it off.)

As I walked down the hallway, I heard a bizarre rendition of The Sound of Joy. Where in the world was that coming from? My office? I don’t have that song in my iTunes. WTF?

Wait! The Sound of Joy ACOUSTIC?!?!? That’s not my water heater.

It took me a few minutes, but I figured out what happened. When I’d gotten up from my computer and hit the pause button, I’d been working in iPhoto–which does slide shows if you hit the play button. It thought I’d hit play slideshow when I thought I’d hit pause music. It’s the same button. I dug into iPhoto and learned the answer to the mysterious Sound of Joy:

Minuet in G.

The Sound of Joy is a mystery no more!

Lisa and I are both big sleepers. We love our sleep. Pretty much need our eight hours plus a night or we’re either incoherent or grumpy or both–and no one loves an incoherent grumpy butt, especially when we both haven’t slept and we’re incoherent and grumpy with each other.

But I realized something this morning. When we’re writing, and the words are flying fast, and we’re deep in our Talisman Bay world, suddenly sleep isn’t as necessary. Last night I was working on Eternal Talisman, and when I finished my part and had sent it off to Lisa, I looked up from my laptop and realized I was sitting in my living room in the dark. The house was quiet. My husband and son had disappeared off to bed. I vaguely remembered them telling me good night, but I’d been miles away in Talisman Bay at the time. I was more a part of that world than my own.

I climbed into bed a couple hours after I normally do, and although I was tired, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was still in Talisman Bay. I finally fell asleep sometime in the middle of the night to thoughts of the Shadow Walkers and the demons they have to conquer in Eternal Talisman.

This morning, when I climbed out of bed much too early–especially after only a few hours of sleep–I stumbled to my computer. I was excited–and surprised–to see that Lisa had already sent Eternal Talisman back to me. I was even more surprised when I noticed the time stamp on her email. She sent it to me after two in the morning, way past the time she’d normally be asleep as well.

But you know what? Even though I should be falling over exhausted, as soon as I saw that Eternal Talisman was back on my end again, I got a rush better than the one I normally get from caffeine. I get to go back to Talisman Bay today. I get to spend time with the Shadow Walkers. When I can do that, who needs sleep?

The movie I’m most looking forward to seeing this year is the new Star Trek movie. So when I heard that I could Trek myself, well, I just couldn’t pass it up.

I think I make an awesome-looking Vulcan. I love my eyebrows and ears. I’m not sure I can pull off that hairstyle though. And my voice is a little deeper than normal, but overall, yeah, I think I accomplish the vulcan ‘tude.

You can Trek Yourself, too. Have fun!

So, today Jen and I are pretending we’re 16 again and going to a New Kids on the Block concert. Okay, so not quite 16…because then we would be going to the 5 nearest concerts and nowadays, we have neither the money nor the stamina it seems.

Where did we get all that energy? I know where we got the money: chores and NOTHING else to buy other than New Kids stuff. Yeah, no grown-up, money-sucking responsibilities draining our bank accounts. Funny how much money I was able to save when there were no expensive responsibilities and no online shopping! I mean, how in the world did we get by without surfing eBay or amazon, or Etsy?

Anyhow, in honor of being sixteen again, I’m posting something that makes up for going to fewer concerts back in the day… The advent of digital cameras. Hooray for technology! I still have all the photographs I took (I believe I blew through something like 4 rolls per concert!)–most of which are so blurry that if you’re not a New Kids fan, you’d have no idea that those blobs really are guys let alone which ones!

When Jen and I went to see the guys back in October and November last year, I snuck in some video. And then, being the geek that I am, I edited them together. Hooray for technology!

This is Twisted…and Joe totally owns it in concert. Holy wow!:

And finally there’s Grown Man…which I think Donnie owns quite well…:

Here’s hoping for more stories as rich as the ones we came back with when we were 16!

How did you celebrate your holiday weekend? I enjoyed the most unique Easter I can remember in a while. Well, it was a fairly normal Easter for our family–we get together at my parents’ house and eat a yummy brunch, then five-six hours later we eat a yummy dinner. Food and family. It’s what we do best.

But it’s what came after the standard Easter fare that made this year different. The kids were playing with their Easter basket goodies, the men were watching TV, and my mom, sis and I were playing Skip-Bo, one of our favorite card games. We noticed a bee flying around the dining-room table where we were playing cards. It started banging against the front window and we were afraid it was going to kill itself. My mom got a glass and a piece of cardboard and captured the bee, and I went to open the front door so my mom could let the bee out. It was a beautiful day so we had the front door open, screen door closed, to allow in fresh air.

Just as I was opening the door, we heard a loud buzzing sound and looked outside to see a swarm of bees right in front of the door. I have never seen anything like it in my life. We could not see past the dark mass of bees on the front porch. We stumbled backward and closed the front door as fast as we could, and then stood and stared at each other for a heartbeat before we ran around and made sure all the other windows and doors were shut. From what we could tell, the solo bee had gotten through the crack between the screen door and the doorframe and we didn’t want to repeat the situation with the thousand and thousands of bees taking up residence on the porch.

After we made sure everything was locked up tight, we realized we had no idea what to do next. Clearly we couldn’t leave the house. We could see the thousands of bees starting to funnel down into a hollow brick pillar that frames the entrance to my parents’ porch. It was like watching a bee tornado, all of them swarming in a black funnel and heading into the pillar. Unfortunately, the photo I took of the bees didn’t come out because of the screen door, and I wasn’t going to open it to get a better picture!

We tried making several phone calls (animal control, everyone listed under “bee removal” in the yellow pages) and no one answered. Finally, we spoke to a living, breathing person at the non-emergency police number. The wonderful human being transferred us to fire department, who, we were surprised to learn, take care of handling bee swarms when animal control isn’t available.

Within twenty minutes our heroes arrived on scene. In that short period of time, the bees had already begun nesting. A hive had started being built, coming out of the top of the pillar. I wish my photo had turned out. It was amazing (and a little scary) to see nature at work. As my husband put it, there’s a reason for the saying “Busy as a bee.”

Arrival of firemen

The heroes of the day

Going after the hive

Foaming out the bees

Now, normally I wouldn’t want to kill bees, but in this case we had no other option. We were literally stuck in the house. The firemen sprayed the bees and hive with foam. Because the bees were continuing to swarm, they dragged a bench over so the fireman could stand on it, and they directed the hose down into the pillar where the bees had taken up residence. One of the firemen lifted a brick that was partially blocking the hole, and I heard him yell “Whoa!” as he jumped one way off the bench and the brick went flying in the other direction, while bees came flying out of the pillar. Thankfully, none of our heroes got stung. They stayed for about half an hour and flooded out the bees–and my parents’ front yard–which ended up covered in more than a foot of foam. It looked like the episode of The Brady Bunch where they put too much soap in the washing machine. We got a good laugh out of that.

Once the firemen were done, they told us that it was likely that the bees that hadn’t been in the hive would probably continue to show up, and that we’d have to call a bee removal service to take care of the remainder of them. We offered our heroes Easter dinner, but they declined the offer with a thank you, and headed out.

So I just have to say a huge thank you to the firemen who worked on Easter and helped us out of an interesting situation. A couple hundred bees did return, and my parents are having a bee removal service out to the house. But we were able to leave the house (through the backyard and out a side gate) something we wouldn’t have been able to do if the firemen hadn’t taken care of the worst of the swarm.

Did anyone else have anything exciting or unique happen to them this weekend?

We’ve got some exciting plans for our website/blog that we’ll be debuting over the new few weeks. A new contest will be going live sometime in the next week, and we’ll be posting a bunch of deleted scenes from Forsaken Talisman with introductions/explanations from us about those scenes.

We’re also planning on being much better at regularly posting here. We’ve been horribly slacking at it lately (um, lately being pretty much the entire last year), so it’s time to change things up.

Is there anything you’d like us to post about? Any questions you want to ask us? Anything in particular you want to know more about? Feel free to drop us an email or comment here and we’ll be happy to oblige. We’ve been thinking about doing an FAQ for awhile, so that’s on our agenda, as well as some posts about us as writers, best friends, hobbyists, fangirls, wives, mother, cooks, crafters, ghost hunters, actor, etc.

So keep an eye on the blog. Who knows what we’ll post from day to day.

I recently started thinking about having a guest blogger or two stop by, but I wanted to do something a little different–I just hadn’t figured out what. Around that same time a reader friend I met through MySpace emailed me talking about ebooks and how she’d become addicted to them after a couple of her friends and I had harassed her into trying them. And I thought, hey, this is just what I’ve been looking for.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce my friend Katie to talk about ebooks:

I hate change! I have been fighting very hard not to look at eBooks. I like my books made out of paper. I like to turn the pages. I like to smell the paper and that is why I love going to a book store. Books just have that certain smell to them. Plus I am obsessed with bookmarks. You can’t use one of those with an Ebook.

I had friends telling me to stop whining and just try it. Ashleigh Raine was at the top of the list telling me to try it. After fighting it for what seems like years, I caved in and tried one. The rest, as they say, was history.

Now about 6 months later I belong to one of those eBooks sites. Okay, I belong to 7! I have bought a few books and also some free short novels. Yup you read that correctly. I am now addicted to not only paper books but also eBooks. Just shoot me now!

Some of the benefits of eBooks: you can buy your book on line and never have to leave for the bookstore. You press a button and you’ve got a book. Instant happiness and no makeup needed. They take up less space. The best part of eBooks is that you can hide them better from your husband. He will never know how bad my addiction is now! *evil laugh*

The only negatives of eBooks are pretty small. They don’t smell like the paper books. I can’t afford the e-readers so I use my laptop to read them. I have hinted about an e-reader for Christmas but I won’t hold my breath. That is it for the negatives. Pretty short, huh?

Also, there are so many new authors out there that only are published in ebook format. Think of all of the great stories you are missing.

~~Katie is a stay at home mom of two and has been married for 14 years. They all live in sunny Florida. Her biggest dream is to become a published author one day. She started reading books at a young age and never looked back. Katie sometimes even stayed home from school sick just so she could finish a book. Sorry, Mom! She loves to read mostly paranormals but will read anything that is put in front of her. She has a To Be Read pile that is bigger than she is. Katie has enjoyed reading eBooks so much that she has joined a review site, where she reviews under the name Megan to keep her multiple personalities separate. To read her latest reviews or others go to Bitten By Books at http://bittenbybooks.com/ She has her own blog http://katiebugdomesticdiva.blogspot.com/ where you can read about her family or anything else that might pop in her head.

*************Permission to re-post granted**************I’m asking for your help to get the word out that folks need to “re-friend” us on MySpace and I’m asking that you “friend” us if you have an account. Most of you know that ARe has been using MySpace to communicate with readers about The eBookclub. We opened our MySpace page for that purpose and in 2 months we’d managed to accumulate close to 6000 friends.Apparently that’s too tempting for some hackers. MySpace and Scrapfairy Designs have been quick to respond and our page is back up at the same address but with only 1 friend, Tom.

ARe–The eBookclub is featuring a wonderful read for the month of September and our second eBookblub meeting is going to be in a couple weeks. We have a great fall season planned and are determined to get back on our feet as quickly as possible.

Please repost this to reader and author forums, loops, and on your MySpace page if you have one. Sending a bulletin to your friends asking that they do the same would be a huge help to us. We’re relying on the power of social networking and the good will of our affiliates, readers, and authors to help us. We don’t want our bookclub members to think that we’ve wavered in our commitment to this project or that All Romance eBooks *gasp* deleted them. Here’s the address:

http://www.myspace.com/allromanceebooks

Lori James
COO
All Romance eBooks, LLC

P.S. For those of you who don’t know….ARe–The eBookclub is a on-line Bookclub specific to romance eBooks. Each month we select a new release to feature. We advance purchase copies from the publisher and give them away to the first fifty members that attempt download. We also promote the book with special Behind the Scenes features, excerpts, and interviews, and host an on-line chat (usually with the author) at The Romance Galleria. This is a great way for people that love romance to get introduced to eBooks and for people from all around the world that already are fans of romance eBooks to meet and share the experience of a fabulous read.