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New Website is Up and Running!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Okay, yes, I know I should have been writing today.

But the new website is up!


The new website template is going to change a lot as I figure out what I want to do with it.

Also, please update your feeds: http://www.tymberdalton.com/feed

There are options over on the new website to subscribe if you're already a WordPress member, or if you want to get emails via FeedBurner. There's also a link on the site if you use a different feed reader.

Most everything is over at the "new" site. It let me import posts and comments, and I'm still in the process of reconfiguring my book pages. But the nice thing is, you'll have an easier time now locating series information (once I get it all set up). Every series will have its own page.

Thanks!

Hmm. WordPress, here I come. Again.


I think I might be changing back to a privately hosted WordPress format. I haven't decided for sure yet.

(Which, of course, as we all know means I HAVE decided to do it, but I just haven't slotted it into my massive to-do list yet.)

Yes, yes, I know. For years, I've been a "Blogger is da-shizzle" kind of gal. And I still believe that.

Here's the thing, I had, for years, several reasons for switching back to and using Blogger. And, I STILL think that Blogger is a better alternative than most of the "freebie" sites out there. For starters, there are a shit-ton of freebie templates available for it that you can customize to your heart's content, without having to pay Google/Blogger for the privilege of doing so. I think it's FAR better for an author to stake their URL for their pen name and point it at a Blogger blog than to do anything else with it if their budget is limited. If you can't scrape the cost together of three Starbucks venti drinks to register one .com URL through Godaddy, then I really can't help you with your brand.

And no, this isn't a delayed reaction to the uproar a few months back about Google going after certain "adult" sites (which, really, had nothing to do with erotica authors' sites, they were targeting pay-per-click porn advertisers).

When I jumped off the self-hosted WP platform a few years back, one of the top reasons for me doing so was that I honestly didn't have the time to keep up with security updates. It was a pain in the ass. I was constantly battling to stay one step ahead of hackers. But now, there are so many WP-dedicated hosts out there who do all that stuff for you, for a very reasonable monthly fee, with few/no limits on bandwidth, it doesn't make sense not to look at all the options.

Also, I'm in the process of creating reader guides for my Triple Trouble series and my Suncoast Society series. I want the ability to self-host the downloads, as well as things like my printable book list, without having to depend on other third-party sites for those downloads.

I was happy with Yahoogroups supplying that kind of support, but now they've fucked up beyond all recognition changed how Yahoogroups is set up, and I'd rather have teeth pulled without the benefit of anesthesia than not deal with them. I'm also looking into alternatives for my newsletter/update list, which I could potentially piggyback onto a WP hosting installation.

Another thing is that I'm getting more and more readers emailing me that they can't access my site from work because I've got it tagged as adult in Blogger's system, meaning you get that click through splash screen when you first jump on it in a session. While yeah, some of my content on here isn't necessarily work safe or kid safe, it's not pictures of nekkid people doing stuff you wouldn't want displayed in your living room in mixed company, if you know what I mean. In the grand scheme of things, it's relatively tame. But to keep from running afoul of Blogger's guidelines, I had no problem setting the tag as "adult."

Basically, this is all just a heads-up kind of notice, that if you start seeing changes, or you show up here one day and it's all...different, you'll know why. LOL  So let the cyber-construction/renovations begin!

Gun Review: Bersa .380 Thunder Duotone

Monday, December 9, 2013
I'm warning you, if guns aren't your thing, don't bother reading any farther. LOL

Okay, we all set? Good.

Last week, my dad gave me a new-in-box Bersa Thunder .380 Duotone. Frankly? I'd never even heard of Bersa before. I have a S&W .38 spcl Bodyguard revolver, and a S&W 9mm 3913. I use the revolver for carry, and the 9mm for home defense/range shooting. I'd mentioned to him that I was going to be looking for a smaller semi-automatic to carry in specific cases where I wanted to carry using an underarm holster shirt I have, because the .38 was a little too big for that. I needed something lower profile for that specific purpose.

Source bersa.com
He called me up a couple of days later and offered it to me. (Did I mention I LOVE my dad? LOL) He'd originally bought it to carry, but he has a different one he carries all the time now and offered it to me rather than it sitting in his gun safe and not being used.

I took it to the gun range Saturday and ran a box of 50 rounds through it. It jammed a couple of times on me, usually on the first shot of 7 in the magazine, but other than that it was a joy to shoot. The gun shop there said likely it was just due to it being so new, and to take it home, clean and oil it well, and try again. (They also mentioned this was one of their most popular guns they sell.)

So, I did. Took it back to the range on Sunday and it was like a different (and even better) gun. Another 50 rounds through it, and it performed flawlessly.

Can't say the same about my aim, but I can hit what I'm aiming for at 10 yards with a handgun, so that's good enough for me. LOL (I've always been better with rifles than with handguns, and now that I'm shooting skeet, trying to remember my handgun "stuff" after nearly three years since hitting the range and I'm just glad all my shots were acceptable. LOL Even at 50 feet, I still had decent aim with it.

As a reminder, I'm a female with both fibromyalgia and OA in my hands. Which is why my .38 is nearly exclusively for carry purposes and NOT range shooting. It beats me to death, and when Sir tried it yesterday, He took His first shot with it and was like, "Holy crap, how do you hold on to it?" LOL (Yes, I have decent aim with it, but it hurts like hell to shoot it.)

I love my S&W 9mm (which my dad also gave me) because I can run a hundred rounds or more through it and it doesn't hurt me at all. I was happy to see the Bersa gave me similar performance. After shooting it and the 9mm on Saturday, my hands were great. I ran 10 rounds through the revolver (5-round gun) and holy crap, my hands were killing me. I didn't fire the .38 at all on Sunday, just the .380 Bersa and the 9mm S&W, and no problem.

I easily disassembled it for cleaning and oiling, and reassembly was also easy.

I am not a firearm wunderkind by any stretch of the imagination, so I refer you to the manufacturer's website for detailed information. From what I understand, these guns are very similar to Walther PPKs. It also has a drop hammer feature to decock it, as well as a built-in lock so that even if a round is chambered and the magazine in place, you cannot fire the gun. (Nice feature as an extra layer of security for people with kids in the home.) From what I understand, and what I saw at the Tampa gun show yesterday morning, these are very reasonably priced guns, usually under $400, frequently closer to $300. I can personally attest to how it fires, at least in my experience. I'm very happy with it, and look forward to having it for years to come. If you're a woman looking for a reasonably priced weapon that won't beat you to death, try one of these out if you have a gun shop that will let you rent or test fire one. I don't know how it compares in weight and size to similar guns, and it's not a sub-compact frame. It's smaller and lighter than my 9mm (which is why I don't use my 9mm for carry).

So, those are my thoughts on it. Disclaimer: I was not paid to give a review, I have no affiliation with the manufacturer/importer, and it was given to me as a gift by my dad, who purchased it.

Blurb for Triple Trouble 6

Friday, December 6, 2013
Right now, it looks like my tentative release date for A Wolf in the Fold (Triple Trouble 6) will be January 27th. Woot!

Today, I turned in the cover form, and here's the long blurb for the book:

Cockatrice, wolfotes, and dragons, oh, my. All Elain wants this Christmas is for life to settle down and give her a break so she can enjoy her three hunky wolf shifter hubbies Ain, Brodey, and Cail, as well as her extended family.

Fat chance of that. Current events are woven from ancient vengeance. The future of the new mega-Clan, and lives of countless innocents, hinge upon the Triad of Elain, Lina, and Mai untangling threads from the tapestry of the past.

Fate's a real bitch...but so is Elain. She isn't a wolf to be trifled with, especially where loved ones are concerned. It's time for her to embrace her heritage and her destiny, and she's determined to do so with open paws. With lives on the line, Elain must dig deeper than ever before and figure out how to walk her new path, or risk losing everything when she discovers lurking amongst them A Wolf in the Fold.

If you have never read the first book in the series (technically the fourth if you count the prequels) Trouble Comes in Threes, it's available at a discount from Siren-BookStrand. Click here.

The reading order for the complete series is as follows:

  1. Boiling Point (Tasty Treats, Vol. 3) (Prequel) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  2. Steam (Prequel) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  3. Fire and Ice (Prequel) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  4. Trouble Comes in Threes (Book 1) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  5. Storm Warning (Book 2) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  6. Three Dog Night (Book 3) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  7. Triple Dog Dare (Book 4) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  8. Out of Smoke and Ashes (Book 5) - Buy from Siren-BookStrand | Amazon | Nook | Kobo
  9. A Wolf in the Fold (Coming 1/27/14)
(Note: The print versions of books 1 and 2, Trouble Comes in Threes and Storm Warning, are available as one compendium volume.) Most of the books are also available through other third-party vendors like Apple, Sony, and Google.

Also, if you're on Facebook, I have a Facebook page for the Triple Trouble series where I share stuff specifically related to the series. :) (Right now we're looking at pics of guys in kilts. LOL)

https://www.facebook.com/TripleTroubleSeries

"Without Porpoise" now on Kindle.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013
I guess the emails Amazon lets you sign up for on authors' pages isn't working. I just realized yesterday that the third book of my Placida Pod dolphin shifter series, Without Porpoise, is now available on Kindle.

Click here to buy on Kindle.

Book 4 of the series, Porpoisefully Yours, is still only available at Siren-BookStrand, but should be available in a couple of weeks on Kindle. (You can buy directly from Siren-BookStrand and have it sent to your Kindle if you don't want to wait.)

Book 5, Wyatt and Marisela's story, is already in progress, so stay tuned. :)

Coming Soon: Triple Trouble 6, and other stuff.

Monday, December 2, 2013
So spent a crazy week last week with the Thanksgiving holiday making my deadline on Saturday. But, I did it. Triple Trouble 6 (tentatively titled "A Wolf in the Fold" as long as the publisher doesn't ask for a new title) is submitted to Siren. Yay!

You know, there are three kinds of books. There are books that just seem to fall out your ass (Hope Heals and The Reluctant Dom were such books) easy as in the plots are there, the characters are eager to drag you along, all you have to do is try to type fast enough to keep up with them. There are books that...well, need a little push, a little effort. They need some coaxing (or regular doses of mental fiber).

Then there are books that are the mental equivalent of trying to pass a concrete block.

Sideways.

Yeeeeaaahhhh.

Mentally, it's about the same kind of pain.

A Wolf in the Fold was that kind of book. I had the DAMN THING WRITTEN. I really did. But I didn't submit it, because I was like, hmm. Believe me, I am my own first and worst critique. If I'm not happy with a book, I don't submit it. It's not even that I wasn't "happy" with it, it's just the characters were sitting there, tapping their feet at me, and giving me dirty looks.

So I took a second look at it, and that's when the characters started talking up a storm at me, changing things, adding things. It came in over 120k words (more than double the original length). I ended up taking out a couple of plot points that I'd originally thought the focus was on, and have moved them into the next book. That's when Elain (the main focal heroine) really started to shine and her true story came out.

It's still sort of the same book it was before, only it's fuller and better. There were some minor things I really didn't pick up before that were brought out in the revision that once Elain started going down that road, I realized, yeah, that's the way this should be. I don't think I listened well enough the first time around.

You'll hear me and other writers joke about "the voices," but for me, yeah, that's kind of what it is. I "see" books as movies and write them. I tend to "view" the scenes several times, from several points of view, back and forth, rewinding it and fast-forwarding it until I'm happy with it and write it. In that process, I can filter through the extraneous and not write that. Most of the time, that works, the characters are happy with what I did, end of story (haha).

Not this time. This is why you should not be in a rush to submit (or self-publish) a book. Sometimes, books need a little percolating before they're ready. I'm not saying all books should take twenty years to write (*cough*Out of the Darkness*cough*) but you don't want to be tossing your NanoWriMo books up on Kindle by next week, either.

Anyhoo.

I hope if you're in the US you had a safe and happy Thanksgiving (or a good week if you're elsewhere).

My current WIP in the mental grinder is book 7 in my Suncoast Society BDSM series. I can tell you it's a MF, the hero is Det. William Thomas, who appeared as a minor character in Pinch Me, and that I'm 1.7k into it and already crying as I tried to summarize the plot to Hubby tonight.

Sooo...

Yeah.

(No, nobody dies, don't worry.)

I have warned him that if he hears crying, sniffling, wailing, whatever from my office that he is NOT to interrupt me. Actually, I'm very weird about that. I don't like to cry in front of him for writing-related stuff. (That's just me, not anything to do with him. Yes, I'm weird. I get that.) He was still working when I wrote The Reluctant Dom, so I either did the worst of it while he wasn't home, or after he went to bed. One night he got up at around 3 a.m. walked out and saw me sobbing and pounding away at my laptop, asked, "The Reluctant Dom?" I just nodded and he turned around and went back to bed. LOL I'm just very self-conscious about it when I write, I always have been. Laugh my ass off? Yes. Cry in front of someone while writing? I hate doing that.

I haven't settled on a title yet, but I'm strongly leaning toward Broken Toy, which relates to something the heroine says at one point, as well as relates to something that happens in the book. Not sure if that will be my final title or not. (Yes, I can write a book without settling on the title first. I've had books where I finally had to make myself come up with a title when it was time to submit it. LOL)

So that's where I'm at right now. Bleacke Shifters 2 (case in point, I'm still waffling on titles) is in edits. Yes, there will be a book 7 and beyond in my Triple Trouble series, at least 3 or 4 more books. And don't worry, I was looking at my idea notebook and I've got at least 12 good ideas for future Suncoast Society books, and I'm sure more will come to me. Will be working on more Good Will Ghost Hunting books since Ryan Ausar makes another small guest appearance in Triple Trouble 6 and it jump-started some stuff for that series.

What are you all up to lately? LOL

Fibromyalgia homeopathic supplements.

This is a recent addition to my supplement routine to help manage my fibromyalgia symptoms. A friend of mine sent me a link to a product a friend of theirs found great success with, so I decided to try it.

I've only been taking it less than a week, so I don't have a definitive answer for you. However, I started taking it on a week when our weather went from lows in the 60's to lows in the upper 30's and back again. That alone is usually a flare trigger (or at least a symptom aggravator) for me. Add onto that holiday dinner with family (stress at being around a lot of people, yes we had fun and a good time but people are always a stressor for me, that's just me), AND the massive stress of being on deadline and spending way too much time at the computer to get my book turned in, and I have to say I'm liking what I've experienced so far.

Normally, just the deadline alone would be a huge issue. I usually end up with horrible fibro knots in my left shoulder especially, very stove up and achy. Surprisingly, despite a lot of problems the past several weeks with knots in that shoulder, I am not as knotted and sore as I usually am after making deadline. So that was a bonus.

I received the supplements very quickly, on Wednesday, and started taking them. I ordered the following:


I'm not going to declare them a magic cure of some sort. I've been taking them less than a week. I'm not UNhappy with the results so far, but as far as whether or not long-term they'll work for me, we'll wait and see. Winter is the worst time of year for me, because of wildly fluctuating weather and other stresses. It'll take me several months to render a verdict.

If you have other issues, check out their site, they have a wide variety of products for various conditions, allergies, etc. No, I'm not affiliated with them in any way, am not getting any kickbacks from them, and I paid for the products I am giving my opinion on.