(View entire post here)

Happy Friday, everyone!  This week has been... well, weird.  For the first two days of the week, I was the regular old writer me.  I walked the dog, ate toast for breakfast, went to the day job, came home and walked the dog again, wrote in the evening, went to bed.

But on Tuesday, my first book Seduced By Shadows officially hit the shelves at bookstores everywhere.  Friends and family from around the country sent me messages via Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and my website, telling me they'd spotted Archer's abs rippling in new romance sections, on end caps, in free-standing displays, over by the escalator, even on their Kindle.

I went to my local Barnes & Noble to sign the copies there.  I brandished a nice pen sent by my critique partner, special for the occasion.  I placed pretty gold stickers-"Signed by Jessa"-on the covers and slipped glossy bookmarks between the pages.  I beseeched a store employee to take a picture of me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then I slunk back to the day job (I skipped my lunch hour to sneak out) and later I went home and walked the dog.  I had two pieces of leftover pepperoni pizza to celebrate.  And in the evening, I finished up revisions on Book 2 of the Marked Souls, Forged of Shadows (Read an excerpt here).

The glitz!  The glamour!  The glory!

Instead of the regular old writer me, I'm the brand new author me.  And now that I've met the author me, I really thought I'd be taller.  Dreams are funny that way.

Part of the strangeness of the week is that, in a way, I feel I've stepped into my heroine's shoes.  Sera Littlejohn wears very practical shoes and so do I, and stiletto heels would've made us taller.  But I don't mean that.  Nor do I mean that I've suddenly been possessed by a demon like poor beleaguered Sera has been.  Although the urge to write might be considered a sort of possession.

I just feel, like Sera, I've crossed into that strange new world I mentioned in my Monday post.  In Seduced By Shadows, Sera faces a moment where she hovers between the two states of being--her old self and the new--and is terrified.  Archer, the hero, makes her choose.  I guess he made me choose too, since no way was I NOT going to write him!  My heroes know their eternal fight is not about the glitz and glamour; it's the guts and the groove. 

Taking my cue from them, I'm hard at work on Book 3 of the Marked Souls, the end of the first trilogy, tentatively titled Vowed In Shadows. 

Check out my contest page for one last chance to win a signed copy of Seduced By Shadows.  Thanks for sharing this release week madness with me!

 

Jessa Slade, Seduced by Shadows, Marked Souls, paranormal romance, Signet