Tessa Dare

Sorry…tried to post this this morning, and just now realized it didn’t go through! Better late than never, right?

It’s been a fun and fabulous release week – thank you all SO much. Today, I’m wrapping up a week of blogs and interviews over at Romance B(u)y The Book, where I’m blogging about Jeremy Trescott, the hero of Goddess of the Hunt, and posting an exclusive excerpt! And as always, there’s a signed copy up for grabs…

Today’s stops on the Tessa Dare magical whirlwind online tour:

Goddess of the Hunt is today’s “Fresh Pick” at Fresh Fiction!

Among other very nice things, their review says:

Debut author Tessa Dare bursts upon the scene with a high-energy and high-drama romance. She tells the story with provocative words and feverish action. Her cast of secondary characters is unforgettable and set the stage for the next book in this back-to-back series.

Thank you so much, Fresh Fiction!

And I’ve been interviewed at The Good, The Bad, and The Unread, where…you guessed it…another signed copy is up for grabs. Hie thee over and comment! The TGTBTU ladies asked me all sorts of questions, but I’m also on hand to answer any new ones! Come on, I know you’re dying to know whether I prefer smooth or chunky peanut butter, or what my least-favorite word is, in love scenes.

Oh, man. Today I woke up with a post-release-day hangover! Yesterday was a blur. I did manage to drag the darelings to a few local stores to sign stock. The wonderful Mr. Dare brought me roses and champagne to celebrate, and we took the family out for enchiladas. All in all, it was terrific! Thank you so much to everyone who helped make it such a fun and exciting release day, on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the like.

Today I’m guestblogging at Yankee Romance Reviewers about the heroine of GODDESS OF THE HUNT, Lucy Waltham. She’s a fierce, flawed, and hopefully funny heroine — drop by to find out a bit more about her and chat. And of course, there’s a signed copy up for grabs!

Woohooo!! At long, LONG last, it is the official release day of Goddess of the Hunt. I am tempted to go into a long, sappy speech thanking everyone I’ve ever met – but truthfully, it’s 1 AM over here and I’m dead tired! That speech will have to wait. (Plus, it’s in the Acknowledgments. See page 361.)

I do want to tell you about some fun stuff I’m doing today to celebrate. And as with any good party, there are prizes involved!

I’ll be guest-blogging today at Romance Vagabonds about the timely topic of friendship–both in romance novels and behind-the-scenes of their creation. The post isn’t live yet as I write this, but I understand there will be prizes up for grabs!

The lovely Vauxhall Vixens also threw me a virtual surprise party to celebrate the release. If you want to read the words of overly generous friends saying completely gushy things about me, by all means, click over.

And last but not least, over at Courtney Milan’s blog, she explains the day-long Goddess of the Hunt Twitter Talk contest. She’s giving away copies of my book, as well as some of the other fabulous historicals releasing today. All you have to do is get on twitter, use the hashtag #tessadare, and make patently outrageous assertions about GOTH and/or its characters. Elyssa Papa takes an early lead with this hilarious pic of President Obama holding “GotH”. See Courtney’s blog for specifics.

And somewhere in there, if you find time to actually order, purchase, and/or read the book, that would be awesome, too.

Thank you everyone, for making this day so very special!

Tomorrow is the official release date of Goddess of the Hunt, but the troops on the ground tell me it’s already showing up on bookstore shelves. We had a WalMart sighting yesterday, and I think a Books-A-Million one. So exciting!

A number of lovely people have interviewed me or asked me to blog with them in the coming weeks, and I’ll link to those appearances as they come up. In most cases, there is some sort of giveaway involved.

Today, I’ve been interviewed by Keli Gwyn at Romance Writers on the Journey. As the title of her blog suggests, Keli asked me all sorts of thoughtful questions about the highs and lows on my journey to publication. Check it out! And tell me about your own personal tolerance of highs and lows, with regards to amusement park rides. You could win an autographed copy of Goddess of the Hunt!

And if you’d like to be guaranteed to receive something, come fill out my new Freebies form and I’ll send you some exclusive Tessa Dare swag!

“Well, is it working?”

Since I first launched my TessaDare.com website, I’ve had pretty much the same excerpt of Goddess of the Hunt available. It ends with this line from Lucy to Jeremy, where she’s asking him if her seduction efforts are having any, erm, measurable effect. That question has hung unanswered in cyberspace for almost two and a half years.

Until now.

Of course, starting Tuesday anyone might buy Goddess of the Hunt at her nearest bookstore and read the entire thing from cover to cover in one sitting (recommended). But if you can’t wait that long to read Jeremy’s answer to Lucy’s question, you can download The Dangerous Book of Excerpts today! This is an excerpt booklet the brilliant Courtney Milan designed, and it features lengthy excerpts of GOTH, Surrender of a Siren, and Courtney’s two upcoming releases, This Wicked Gift (in the anthology The Heart of Christmas) and Proof by Seduction. We printed 400 of these booklets to take to RWA National Conference and came home with 30. They were a hot, hot item. The tagline? “Read with caution! You might get sucked in…”

So download if you dare. It’s yours free at this link.

Okay, so I have a very loose definition of “tomorrow”… *shrug* Click on any of the pictures for a better view.

Friday was a big day at RWA, and I began it by sleeping late. Seriously, I’d planned to attend morning workshops, but I was just so beat by the previous two days’ activities to drag myself out of bed before 9:30 AM.

So my first real activity of the day was to attend the Awards Luncheon, which I would not have missed for the world – because the speaker was none other than Eloisa James. And what a speech she gave.

A Washington Post columnist happened to be in attendance, and you can read his summary and reaction here. (Be sure to scroll down and read the comments for a more rounded view of the event.) For me, Eloisa’s main point was that we can’t be afraid to use the drama and humor of our own lives to fuel our fiction. A quote I tweeted from the luncheon went something like this: “Best-sellers are born of strong emotion, not just lots of sex.” I can tell you that there was not a dry eye at our table at the conclusion of the luncheon.

After the luncheon, Courtney Milan and I were on a panel with our wonderful agents, Kristin Nelson and Helen Breitwieser, and historical authors Sherry Thomas and Tracy Anne Warren. The topic of the panel was something akin to “How to be an Anomaly”–which, obviously, isn’t really something you can give six easy steps for. But we tried to talk about our query letters and how our agents got editors interested in our manuscripts, and most of all it was just uber-cool to be there, sitting in such esteemed company and looking at the front row full of smiling friends.

Then it was off to my publisher parties–first I swung by the happenin’ Samhain suite, which was absolutely packed with people. Then I caught a ride to the Ballantine/Bantam cocktail party off-site, which was swanky and posh. I couldn’t stay too long, because I had to rush back to the hotel to film a short video interview for future use on the Borders website (woot!), but Jane Litte of Dear Author was my fearless guide on the Metro and helped me get back in time. Friday evening was spent hanging out in the hotel bar, chatting with other authors. Okay, yes — I will name drop. Miranda Neville, Jennifer Haymore, Anna Campbell, Elizabeth Hoyt…awesomeness.

Saturday morning began with the Ballantine/Bantam author signing, at which I had a much larger stack of books. Hooray! It was, without a doubt, the most fun hour of my conference. I signed books for readers from Germany, Australia, Azerbaijan…! And also for many dear, dear friends.

After lunch with my editor and agent (which was interrupted by an exciting fire drill! So high school), I actually attended some workshops! And then it was off to get pretty for the RITA and Golden Heart Awards. The historical categories were positively packed with authors I admire and books I loved, so it was impossible to be disappointed. I was excited to text my agent Helen and let her know her client Pam Rosenthal had won for Best Historical. And we were all so excited to see Joanna Bourne win for Best Regency.

More fun times in the bar ensued…pictured are Victoria Dahl, Tiffany Clare, Courtney Milan, Amy/Carey Baldwin, and Jennifer Echols.
(please note – not all those empty glasses belonged to us!)

And then a few precious of sleep before packing for the flight home. After a surprise diversion to Tulsa due to storms, I was so glad to get home to Mr. Dare and the darelings–even without my suitcase.

So that’s the insanity and wonderment that was RWA 2009. Can’t wait for next year!

Whew. Why did I think I’d be able to blog from RWA National Conference? I don’t think I even cracked open the laptop but once. It was iphone or nothing. But anyway, I am finally home and had such a great time. This was my first conference as a really, truly, almost-all-grownup author! And it ROCKED.

The fun started Wednesday with the Eloisa James/Julia Quinn Bulletin Board get-together, catered by the amazing Kim Castillo (we were enjoying the fruits cookies of her labor all week). Later that day, I had my first-ever book signing at the RWA Readers for Life literacy benefit. I only had about 15 copies there, and they were all gone within minutes, thanks to my wonderful friends. I can’t tell you how touching it was to see people I’ve “known” online for three years show up with hugs and misty eyes to support the release of GODDESS OF THE HUNT. I am so blessed with a wonderful network of friendship and support.

Thursday started with breakfast with my roomies Courtney Milan and Carey Baldwin, plus…oh…a dozen? of the historical romance genre’s most esteemed authors. Oh my stars – Joanna Bourne, Sherry Thomas, Mary Jo Putney, and several more – all before I’d had my coffee. I may have dreamed it.

After breakfast, I attended the Rogue Digital Seminar presented by Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Kassia Kroszer of QuartetPress, Angela James of Samhain Publishing, and Jane Litte of Dear Author, along with authors Maya Banks and Lauren Dane. It was standing room only. These ladies did an awesome job of packing that hour with valuable information on digital rights, e-publishing, the Google Books settlement, and more.

Then it was off to the RWA Annual General Meeting. I can’t claim to understand exactly what all went down at that meeting, but it was fascinating to see the organization at work and very exciting to see that we had achieved a quorum, through proxies and attendance.

The Thursday keynote luncheon address was given by Linda Howard, bless her heart. She delivered absolutely side-splitting speech of anecdotes and advice, delivered in smooth Southern storytelling style. I can’t wait until she visits my chapter this September.

Later that afternoon, I had coffee with my wonderful agent and attended a hilarious and inspiring chat session with the amazing Nora Roberts. Then I caught up with a dozen or so members of the Orange County chapter for drinks in the bar. (Are you beginning to see why I had no time for blogging?)

And then my fabulous friends surprised me with a release party for GODDESS OF THE HUNT!

Courtney, Carey, Sara Lindsey, Kim Castillo, and (I’m sure) many more worked to put together an amazing (and surprising!) party for me and many new and old friends from FanLit, Twitter, the online review community, and more. Even my dear Ballantine editor, Kate Collins, came by! Vagabond Lindsey and author Toni Blake were generous enough to offer up their swingin’ suite as the venue, and there was delicious cake, food and drink, and hunting and fishing party games! But I cannot forget the piece de resistance, this poster fashioned by Sara Lindsey:

Click on the image to see the whole thing. Sara photoshopped my face onto the GOTH cover. Ingenious, no? And a little disturbing…

I had a wonderful time and was so touched by all the effort they put into planning such an extravaganza. I love you all! And Lucy and Jeremy thank you.

My goodness…look at the length of this post, and I’m still on Thursday. I’ll be back tomorrow to roundup the fun of Friday and Saturday!

I’ve been interviewed by The Season, author Beverley Kendall’s beautiful online newsletter for readers of historical romance.  Bev asked me all sorts of thoughtful questions about Goddess of the Hunt, writing in series, and what I’m working on next. In conjunction with the interview, she’s running a giveaway – one lucky person will win a copy of GOTH and a $15 gift certificate to the online bookstore of her choice!  So click on over and win.

It’s also a sort of holiday season for me…I’m getting ready to fly off to DC next week for the RWA National Conference, which is pretty much my Christmas in July.  It’s definitely the occasion that warrants the most shopping outside of December!  I’ve got my new frocks and shoes and bookmarks and promo buttons (click photo for a better view):

I plan to set up a form on this website, to give away extras once I get home from conference…

If you’ll be in DC, please do stop by and see me Wednesday at the Literacy Signing (even if you don’t buy a book!  Really!), or the panel I’ll be on with authors Courtney Milan, Sherry Thomas, Tracy Anne Warren, and our wonderful agents, Kristin Nelson and Helen Breitwieser – it’s Friday at 2PM.

I’ll try to post a few updates and pix from conference!