Clover Autrey

My Fiftieth Year

photo by thesparechangekitchen

I turn Fifty this year. The big Five-Oh, You're over the hill and rolling down it, When's menopause going to hit? Fifty. FiftyFiftyFifty.

I shouldn't like that so much, but I do. It took a long time--fifty years, ha!--to get here and I have a lot of past that is painful, a lot of things I've had to conquer and get over, and other things to let go or toss aside and move on in spite of. I earned every single one of these years and I feel happy and light and free. Freer than I've ever felt. So what if one of my ear lobes has a wrinkle in it and slopes so that I can't just wear any old pair of earrings because they aren't level? So what if my belly sits on my lap like a frightened old cat? Getting old is part of life. Embrace the great things about it.

Okay, so I don't really turn Fifty until June, but I'm taking a page from my older sister Bekie. (Notice how I said older?) I have only one sister I get to be the youngest for and she's it. She's always been adventurous and wise beyond her years. When she turned fifty (Because she did it before me), she celebrated the entire year. Even took a European trip on her own for fun.

While I don't see a European vacation in my immediate future, I've decided that I'm going to do something for myself each month. Something that I haven't taken the time to do either because of finances or not being able to leave my ill child home alone for a long period of time.

This year I'll be going to the RWA national conference in Atlanta in July. I've wanted to do that for 6 years, but there was never any way possible.

I'm going to lose weight. Okay, yes, I say this every year, but now I have a diabetes doctor telling me I have to and prescribing some meds to help with my dumb diabetic body wanting to store all the sugar it can. This time I can do it. They've already helped me lose 15 pounds so I just have to stay the course. Maybe I'll be a new healthy slenderer me by my birthday. Fifty and fabulous. Oh bother, I'm fabulous now. Fat or skinny, I like me. This is for health cuz I have a lot of things I want to do. I also want to buy whatever clothes I want. So I'm doing it for that too.

Speaking of...I'm going to buy clothes this year. I've been Miss Practical and haven't really gotten much for myself the past couple of years. That's changing. My books are selling well (Thank you very much my dear readers--I'm truly grateful) and I can afford to get things for me as well as the kids. Purses, shoes, clothes. Yep, this is my Fiftieth year. I deserve it.

Have a Sister's Weekend with, well, my sisters. I miss them terribly.

A Massage. Would you believe I've never had a professional massage? That's almost criminal, isn't it? So that's on the list.

And that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure more things will pop up as I think of them.

So what kinds of things would you treat yourself to?

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Blood Marriage

A friend of mine got to read Blood Marriage by Regina Richards before it was printed, and she said it is so beautifully written it even made her like vampires and she doesn't like vampire books. So as soon as I heard this was out, I immediately went and bought my copy.

(psshh: it's on sale for 99 cents until January 8th)

I'm excited to have Regina as a guest today.

So Regina, tell us a little about what Blood Marriage is about.

Set in England in 1813, Blood Marriage is the story of Elizabeth Smith, a young woman who is dying of the same mysterious disease that has claimed most of her family. One night she meets Nicholas Devlin, a charming man who lures her into a rose garden with disastrous results. In short order she finds herself married to Nicholas and at turns frightened and confused by his behavior and the behavior of nearly everyone around him: his family, his friends, and even his houseguests.

When a pair of detectives arrive at Elizabeth’s new home to accuse Nicholas of a series of vampire-style killings, Elizabeth is certain they have the wrong man. Yet as servants, friends, and even family die, she begins to question who - or what - she’s married. Is she falling in love with a monster? As the evidence mounts against Nicholas and the detectives close in on their killer, Elizabeth must decide whether to follow her head or her heart.

Why vampires?

I never meant to write a vampire story. Truly. But many of my stories begin with an object and this question: what is happening around this object? It was November 1^stand the Halloween decorations were still on the front porch. The previous night my son had been laying in a coffin he’d built from a cardboard box. He’d been dressed as a vampire and rising up to scare the Trick or Treaters that came to our door. The next morning the coffin was still there. As I sat down to write, the empty coffin was less than an arm’s length away on the other side of the window. So a cardboard box was the object that inspired Blood Marriage. And if you start with a coffin and Halloween still fresh in your mind…

A few days later I had an amazingly vivid dream about vampires. I won’t go into detail, though I remember the dream clearly still, but it spurred me on to write this story.

Anything else you'd like us to know?

I blog most Mondays at reginarichards.net and would love to have everyone drop by and add their two cents to whatever I’m musing about that day.

Also, I’m currently working on a new series of three connected romantic alternative history novels. What if the plague that decimated Europe in the Middle Ages had come with a twist that produced a very different society? Look for the first of this series in the winter of 2013.

Finally, if there’s sufficient interest in Blood Marriage, I have a second novel in mind along similar lines and would love to write it. So if readers like Blood Marriage and want to see more Regency Gothic Vampire Romance, they can contact me through my website and let me know.

Thanks for inviting me to your absolutely gorgeous blog today, Clover.

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Holiday Blog Hop

Thanks to all the participants and those who left a comment. I loved reading them. Anyhoo, I had my child pick a number so lucky #7 commenter Laurie is the winner of my prize Highland Sorcerer.

Congrats Laurie. I'll be contacting you shortly for mailing details! And as far as the nook or kindle winner, that should be listed soon as well. Good luck y'all for that! I hope one of you that came over here wins it!!!

It's a Happy Holiday from your favorite Authors and Bloggers. While we know everyone celebrates a different way, we wanted to make sure that you guys knew how much we treasure you all. So from Dec 14th to Dec 17th, all 200 or so of us will be blogging about the holidays and what they mean to us. We may talk about our favorite holiday traditions, recipes, gifts, reads, heroes, and so much more. We want to hear about what you do for the holidays, what you read, and who you'll spend it with. We hope to see you here and happy hopping!

And while we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 200 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

But that's not all....

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times!

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $200 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

So what are the Holidays like for the Autrey Family? Weird actually. We are still finding our way. Having a child with cystic fibrosis meant that more often than not due to cold season, Chase was in the hospital for Christmas. Fortunately the children's hospital tried to make it really nice for families with lots of special events, even Santa visits, going on. Then there were all the do-gooders that pop up around Christmas. We've met several Texas Rangers, and Dallas Cowboys, and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (tiny petite things in real life-could blow them over with one breath), a few celebrities like Garth Brooks. As nice as that is, we'd much rather be at home.

Then we had the year when we nearly made it without a Christmas hospitalization Chase's lungs were holding their own (okay he had just been in over Thanksgiving so our fingers were crossed), but just our luck, my sister-in-law thought it'd be a great thing to hook a trailer behind a SUV and enjoy a pseudo hayride in which our other son fell out and got run over by the trailer. There was a horrifying Bump as the first tire ran over him, then a second Bump as the rear tire got him.

Christmas Eve. Miraculously he was fine, not even bruised, but had to take him in just to make sure... 6 hours later totally bored in the ER, we got to take him home. Joy. What would a Christmas be like without that? And now one of our favorite Christmas carols (cuz we are all sarcastic butts) is "Samuel got run over by a trailer".

So for years we haven't had a normal Christmas. Two years ago, Chase passed away a couple of months before Christmas. No hospital stay, but being at home sucked too, so we hit the road and went down to Galveston. Yes, Galveston in winter. Cold windy beaches, flopping jellyfish, but great food. We wandered around not really knowing what to say to each other and missing the one we lost terribly and opened presents in a motel room beneath a little tree because we couldn't bear to be at home.

Last year? A hotel again, this time closer to home. 15 minutes away actually, which was kind of lame.But we saw a few movies, went out to eat, and went ice skating together so it was fun and different, but home pulled us back a day earlier than we planned.

This year it's time to stay home. I still won't hang any stockings. The youngest is insisting on getting our tree out so that's inevitable though we're waiting for our daughter to fly in from college and she and T can decorate together, though I'm not sure where to put the tree since part of my present to my husband this year is letting him keep his music set-up in our living room for all of December. It is wall-to-wall speakers, guitars, cords, amps, drums, and electric piano. Don't ask. I can't fathom why he needs the huge speakers in a little 10x16 room either. He just does.

I get two reactions from people coming to our door. One of amused indulgence from the women and salivation from the guys.

So there you have it, the not-so-Holidayish-yet-true story of Autrey Christmas Pasts. I have no idea what this one will end up being like. Shrugs.

Run along and comment on all these blogs. I hope you win a Kindle. My personal giveaway will be a signed copy of Highland Sorcerer, so be sure to comment and while you're at it, let me what your most unusual Holiday was like.

The main list for all the Author Blogs is here. or they are all below...

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Making of a Book Cover: Banshee's Cry

So here are the two models for the half-human, half-Anointed Gillant brothers Cael and Jake. As you can see the lighting is way different. Cael needed some darkening up some.

Superimposed the pictures together, but had to put a wall for Cael to lean on so he wouldn't be floating in mid-air. Then I grittied them up in keeping within the dark edginess of their world.

Below, I was playing with turning them into illustrations, but decided not to go with that look.

So this is the final cover. I'm quite proud of it.

Kindle version Nook version

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Making of a Book Cover: A Haunting

For the third book in The Anointed series, A Haunting, I wanted to keep both brothers on the cover again. This one was a little harder to get just right. I loved the picture of Jake standing by the window, but I couldn't find any full bodied pictures of Cael to go with him so I had to not only cut and paste him in, but use one guy's body, and Cael's head. Here's the three original stock photos I had to work with:

Had to mirror image this guy's body to fit in the picture and darkened him up a little. He'll be darkened a little bit more after the fact.

Then desaturated Cael's head because he is so light And then layer up the three different pictures. Head to body, Cael to Jake's photo... Cael still is too light for the whole though, but that will be taken care of.