Coming to Texas!

The countdown has begun. Me and Mr. Zetta will be in the Lone Star State in exactly one week!!

Yeeeeee HAAAAAAWWWWW!

We'll be going to the State Fair in Dallas where I gotta introduce Mr. Jim to Big Tex and let them fight it out as to who's taller.


But before *that*, I'll be running into Miz Drea Riley, The Texas Tornado!!

She and her hunny are coming to meet me and my hunny while we visit my grandparents in that booming metropolis that IS Vernon, Texas.

And, of course, while there I gotta stock up on all the goodies you just can't find in Scotland. You know...staple goods.

Lawry's Seasoned Salt
Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
Grape Soda, Root Beer....

Y'know...necessities of life.

We may also be making a trip to Austin but that's still up in the air.

Woo! Hoo! This Texas brat is coming HOME!!!

Zetta Brown
Messalina - Devourer of Men
www.zettabrown.com

Getting off of the Dead Horse by Jeanie Johnson and Jayha Leigh

It’s one-ish in the morning and Jeanie and Jayha are sixteen hours apart, knee deep in edits, and school is back in so forgive the errors.

***
Katie Geneva Cannon is one down sister with some badazz prose. One of Jayha's favorite people to read, she once began a class by proclaiming: “I’ve already done in my life everything that I said I wouldn’t do!”(Cannon, Katie’s Canon, 10). That statement gave us pause not because of its candor, but because of its speaker. Dr. Cannon isn’t just someone who throws out words willy-nilly. A minister, an ethicist, she is heavy into womanist and liberation theology. Upon further reflection and deeper discussion, we realized that yes, while Dr. Cannon was all of these things, she is also … human. Sometimes we forget that for all of a person’s deeds, underneath the titles, the reputation, the infamy, notoriety, the rumors, they are first and foremost human.

***
We also forget our own humanness. In our rush to do for everyone else, please everyone else, live up to social and familial expectations, we neglect ourselves to the point of forgetting ourselves. That’s a dangerous, dangerous thing. To forget ourselves puts us one step closer to forgetting our humanity. To forget ourselves is to forget that we were made in the image of a Creator who so loved the world…you know the rest.

***
Advances in medicine allow us to live better, to feel better quicker, to feel no pain, to feel nothing at all. Advances in technology have allowed us to jam pack our days with more activities. The credit system has allowed us to fill our lives with more stuff. But for all of that, medicine, technology, and credit cannot get us more time. There are only twenty-four hours in a day and too many of us fill every waking moment with things to do, that we feel absolutely, positively just must get done. And we do them not necessarily because we want to but because we feel that if we don’t do them then they won’t get done. The truth is, those things will get done whether we do it or not and if we thought about it, we’d realize that. But we don’t want to think about that (in fact, it seems that we don’t want to think), because if we think about it we have to consider the state of our lives.

***
While we can face down monsters, we find it hard to face ourselves. Not the public self that we shrug into before leaving our homes, or even the public self that we wear inside of our homes, but the self that we are left with when all of the public, when all of the make-up, when all of the politeness comes off/is stripped off/wears off. The self that emerges in the dark, in the silence, in the nooks and crannies of our conscience doesn’t care about being polite; that self is busy speaking raw truth uncaring that it is tearing our carefully-constructed self to shreds.

***
We don’t like to visit that self just like we don’t like to hear the truth because living in denial, living in indifference and living in our dreams is so much easier then living in the truth. We claw, scratch, and fight to hold onto mediocrity (whether it is a lifestyle, a significant other, or a pre-approved future complete with white picket fence). Why do we fight so hard to hold onto a façade that in reality isn’t all that good? Is it because we’re more comfortable with our disappointments than we are with the possibilities of what we could be, who we could be, and what we could accomplish if we stepped out of our comfort zones, our prejudices, and society’s labels? If we had the courage, how would we answer Mary Oliver’s question from ‘The Summer Day’: “Tell me what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Do we appreciate the wildness of it? Do we appreciate the preciousness of it? Do we recognize the oneness of it?

***
We’ve been busy thinking about life for a few reasons. One, we read our sister-friend’s (Dréa Riley) poem “Closing Doors (Cleaning out My Closet). Actually, we keep copies of it close by. Like the Mona Lisa, there's something about the woman on the accompanying artwork that draws you to it. It’s that look on her face—the look that says she’s traveled down many, many roads. The look that says ‘damn’. The look that says so much yet has no words that can adequately describe it. And then there’s the prose itself. Each time we read it, we discover yet another thing that we need to clean out of our lives. While the states of our actual closets vary (mine is pretty clean; Jeanie’s not so much), we have to wade through our metaphorical closets and weed out the people that don’t uplift us, lifestyles that don’t fulfill us, words that don’t encourage us, love that doesn’t sustain us, practices that don’t liberate us, the gods (small g) that are punitive rather than loving … the gods that aren’t God. We have to clean all of that out of our lives so that we can actually get to our lives.

***
Another reason that we’ve busy thinking about life is because not so long ago, we just started new lives. It started with a story. And then there was an email, and then a letter, and then another and another until half a million words and twenty stories later, there was a universe. We don’t need a team of scientists to explain its creation. It was born in destiny, forged in the fires of belief and trust and love from women and men who believed in us, encouraged our dream even when it wasn’t fleshed all the way out. It’s sustained by their faith in the women we are, their enjoyment in the words we write, and their acceptance of our many imperfections. And we love and thank them for it.

***
A third reason that we’ve been busy thinking about life is because during a talk with our sister-friend Laura, and during the course of our conversation, I commented upon another event that we should attend. After her agreement, I suggested that we add it to our list. There was a pause in her typing before she remarked on the length of our list (of things to do before we die). In that pause it hit us all, right smack dab in the center of our existence. Yeah, our list was getting long and we’ve hardly crossed anything out as we’re always too busy to get to our dreams.

***
There’s twenty-four hours in a day and we don’t have time because there’s always something to do, always something that needs to be done. While that’s true, it’s also true that we are one of those things that should be on our daily to-do list. There are only twenty-four hours in a day, but there are only so many days in a life, and we’ve already used up thirty some years worth.

***
That’s humbling, and eye-opening, and heart-breaking. Were tired of having our hearts broken. And upon further reflection, we’re real tired of the woman in the mirror being the one who breaks it. J and J

What makes you reread a book?

I know that alot of us have read a good book, but what makes you want to go back and read that one special book again and again?

Marie Rochelle

2009 Lub-Dub Awards

Several Badazz Authors have been nominated! If you all would be so kind as to vote for us...that would be awesome! You can submit your votes via e-mail to dreamwild1985@gmail.com, and names are bolded for easy finding. The deadline is today. Thanks in advance!



Best Hero :
Tim Capshaw in “Trolling Nights” by Savannah J. Frierson
Dorian Christensen in “Hostage to Pleasure” by Nalini Singh
Tyson Kincade in “Kincade’s Rose” by Aliyah Burke
Adrian Redwolfe in “In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee

Best Heroine :
Ashaya Aleine in “Hostage to Pleasure” by Nalini Singh
Faith Wheeler in “Tempting Faith” by Crystal Hubbard
Tamara Holifield in “The Blacker the Berry” by Lena Matthews
Miki Kendrick in “Go Fetch” by Shelly Laurenston

Best Alpha Male :
Fenris in “A Guardian’s Desire” by Mya
Dorian Christensen in “Hostage to Pleasure” by Nalini Singh
Adrian Redwolfe in “In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee
Russell Crichton in “The Blacker the Berry” by Lena Matthews

Best Vampire/Warewolf/Shape-Shifter :
Jace Archane in “A Kiss of Ashen Twilight” by Rae Lori
Freya Daniels in “A Guardian’s Desire” by Mya
Adrian Redwolfe in “In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee
Dorian Christensen in “Hostage to Pleasure” by Nalini Singh
Dante Grimaldi in “Dante’s Wrath” by Eve Vaughn

Best Author of the Year :
Savannah J. Frierson
Eve Vaughn
LaVerne Thompson
Lena Matthews

Best Publisher :
Liquid Silver Books
Red Rose Publishing
Parker Publishing

Life Time Achievement Award :
Marilyn Lee
Sandra Kitt
Eve Vaughn

Best Website/Fan-Group/Blog :
The Official Marilyn Lee Fan Club
Fans of Interracial Romance on Goodreads
Fans of Interracial Romance on Yahoo!
Interracial/Multiracial Romance Readers Group

Best Fan :
Caylah Walters
Shawnette from Goodreads
Danielle Hill
Johnandvan

Best BBW :
“Eye of the Beholder” by Marilyn Lee
“Trolling Nights” by Savannah J. Frierson
“In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee

Best Contemporary :
“Trolling Nights” by Savannah J. Frierson
“Tempting Faith” by Crystal Hubbard

Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Paranormal :
“A Kiss of Ashen Twilight” by Rae Lori
“Starstruck: Hunter” by Michelle Lauren
“Hostage to Pleasure” by Nalini Singh
“The Alpha Promise” by Hayat Ali
“In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee

Best Erotica :
“In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee
“Beg for It” by Minx Malone

Best Historical :
“Badazz Daddy Squad: Ragnar” by Jeanie Johnson & Jayha Leigh
“After the Lies” by Mandessa Selby

Best Fight Scene :
“A Guardian’s Desire” by Mya
“A Kiss of Ashen Twilight” by Rae Lori
“Go Fetch” by Shelly Laurenston
“Hold On” by LaVerne Thompson

Best Love Scene :
“Hostage to Pleasure” by Nalini Singh
“The Blacker the Berry” by Lena Matthews
“Tempting Faith” by Crystal Hubbard

Best Choice to Become A Movie :
“Tempting Faith” by Crystal Hubbard
“The Megalodon Team Series” by Aliyah Burke
“Starstruck: Hunter” by Michelle Lauren
“Trolling Nights” by Savannah J. Frierson

Best Cover Art :
“Rendezvous with Fate” by Jeanne Sumerix
“A Kiss of Ashen Twilight” by Rae Lori
“Beg for It” by Minx Malone
“Pursuing Zarah” by Jennifer Cole

Best Short Story :
“Tempting a Wolf” by Tressie Lockwood
“Promises” by LaVerne Thompson
“Tempting Neal” by Marilyn Lee
“Your Local Handyman” by Stephanie Williams

Best Novella :
“Starstruck: Hunter” by Michelle Lauren
“The Blacker the Berry” by Lena Matthews
“Boss Man” by Marie Rochelle
“Beg for It” by Minx Malone

Best Novel :
“Trolling Nights” by Savannah J. Frierson
“Tempting Faith” by Crystal Hubbard
“Dante’s Wrath” by Eve Vaughn
“In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee
“Eye of the Beholder” by Marilyn Lee

Best Series :
“The Undead Series” by Emma Petersen
“The Tycoon Club Series” by Marie Rochelle
“The Drace Brothers Series” by Marie Rochelle
“The Megalodon Team Series” by Aliyah Burke
“The Three Sisters Series” by LaVerne Thomspon & Stephanie Williams

Best Story of the Year :
“Trolling Nights” by Savannah J. Frierson
“Tempting Faith” by Crystal Hubbard
“In Blood and Worth Loving” by Marilyn Lee

Dear Kanye West

This BLOG has been moved to http://drearileyandlauraguevara.blogspot.com/?zx=729df10bb65eed5
THanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a peek at the maddness in the mind of a new author.

HEY THERE HI THERE!!!!
So Just saying upfront, don't get used to D, being here everyday. I have a blog with Laura and even though my email reminds me everyday to post something there, well you know...

Anyway today I thought I'd take a moment and chittychat about the experience of being a new kind on the block. You know some one asked me if writing was hard and I said "yes, no ermmm huh?"

The world of writing is small, and the world of romantic/erotic authors is smaller still. Breaking into the game isn't hard. Well, it is but its not. See ok here is the thing. Anyone can write something and self pub it. We've all read stuff that made us want our money back, right? So no its not hard to get in the game. If you wanted to that is. NOW to get in the game and be good. There is a lot of preasure there. You have to interact with fans, you have to continue to write. To produce to grow. TO LOSE YOUR MIND!!!!

When I wrote my first ms, I had no clue anyone was gonna want to read it. I had intended for it to be a short lil' tid bit to entertain my friends. I had no idea that Shara was going to highjack me and that any of the stuff that followed would. Now, some new authors do. THey have a plan. They say to themselves "SELVES TODAY WE ARE GONNA BE WRITERS". They submit thier ms all over creation. They suffer all the heart ache and break of new york rejections and well, its disheartening I am very blessed that this has not been my experience, but I am aware of it. I am beyond aware of it. I am scared of it.

Just because I am in the game(according to me anyways) doesn't mean that I am not suspect to fall OUT of the game at any moment.

I've been wondering lately if recording artists feel this way after their first couple of singles. Do they sit around and wonder how long it will be before they are sitting around watching vh1 and see them selves on Where are they now. I do. I wonder when I will get the lightening strike of my muse and pen something else. (not that I lack encourgagement, i have the greatest cheerleaders on earth), but I now fear wether or not readers will like what i write. Am I being fresh and original? Am I biting some one elses style or story. OMG THE PRESSURE....OOOOOOOSAAAAAWWW.

Part of me (most of my close friends know this) doesn't care. "Hey," I say, "I never said i wanted to be a writer/author it just happened." *shrugging* And then I look at the people who bust their hump every day to keep the industry going. And I feel obligated to ....I dunno hustle, harder, write something, anything. I feel the need to make my mark and then stamp everything. I feel the need to write the need to contribute, the need to satisfy myself and my readers...then i wake up, look at the clock and its 3am. Time for the hubs to get up and go to work, which means time for me to get up and pretend to make him breakfast(hey at three am he is lucky if i make sure there is milk in the house or eggos or a pop tart.) Time for me to roll over and hit the snooze button and pretend that I didn't just wake up from dreaming of my characters engaging in all manner of antics.

I toss and turn and try to go to sleep knowning that my day must start in a nother few scant hours. That by 8 am I have to get up and get showered and dressed and deal with life. But i dont' sleep. So I get up. and i make notes and sometimes i start new stories, or i call laura and wake her up and go "hey write this bit down and then i'll expand on it next juvemberuary".

Then I go to work and well, I must be a crazy magnet. BECAUSE YOU WONT BELIEVE ALL THE STUFF I SEE. And then I come home DETERMINED TO WRITE, but mymomdadbrothermotherinlawbossfriendcousinneighborcrazychurchladies call/email/stop by.
Then when i've slammed and locked the door, turned off the ringer settled in at my laptop, facebook/myspace/twitter/yahoo/gmail/blogs captivates me with their sirens call.

uh oh DINNER TIME. SCREW IT i dont' miss a beat i open the little icon in my navigation tray and bingo pizzahut/pappajohns/jimmyjohns/quiznos/dominoe/chinapandatown/paco'stacosttogo gets my usual order runs my oft used cc number emails me a confirmation asks if i want to monitor the process of my order or play a game on the site while I wait.

Time for bed...but its two am and i just answered the last email/ group post. And did i write anything. "well, yes i wrote but not what i should have or intended to, but who cares i don't care...stop playing you know you care" As tears well up in my eyes and the brownies start dancing on my optical nerves and sinuses, I slam down the lap top and crawl into bed. I'll write tomorrow.


Ok *sigh* what was I saying? Any one Else feel like this?

Love and Chaos
Drea

BLOGGING BLAH BLAH BLAH

Well, we've had this blog for nearly a year and the only message on here says we are here. LOL Hell, I didn't even know we had THIS blog. I thought it was the one on our website and I couldn't figure out how to log into it. BUT Now that I know how to get in, best believe I will be here a little more often.

NOW for all the Intros. Who are we and why are we here.
Well duh, we are the block rockin' chics of BAA(Bad Azz Authors). A group of authors that looked around one day and said "hey you know we could take the world by storm". We all "aye'd" in on it and here we are. Jayha Leigh, Jeanie Johnson, Camille Anthony, Shara Azod, Raelyn Blue, Savannah J. Frierson, Marie Rochelle, Yazmin Taylor, Reid Randolph, Zetta Brown, Laura Guevara and ME(Dréa Riley)!!!

Though we all write IR/MC we span the gambit from chic lit/ sci-fi/ erotica/ paranormal/ furturistic...whatever it is one of us touches it.
JandJ's prose is known for having super bad azz chic and strong alpha men who love them. I have begun to refer to them as Solomon and their prose is the NEW PSALMS... It doesn't matter who you are there is something in each story for everyone...and the stories as a whole, teach a woman how to be strong and a man how to treat a woman.

Miss Camille is our matriarch and we are in awe of her skill with a quill. She is fiestly and bold, like that poem about wearing prulpe when you get older, only I bet Miss Camille has always worn purple. She pushes the enevelope with her shifters and if you don't like it she will hit you with the whammy eye and you will step right on in line like the rest of us. OH and Jayha says "Hunter is MINE."

Shara Azod...makes you wish ever man wore a uniform and was secure enough in their stuff to share you with another dude. This PetiteGRAND DAME is the buisness and their ain't no other way about it.

Pair her up with her mini me Raelyn Blue and you better watch out. On her own Raelyn will take you to strange worlds and having you check your bank account to see if you can buy some realestate there, with Azod at her side you might as well toss convention out the window get a note book and get to class. They are taking you places and you need to make notes and a map for when you need to come back to the realworld...Please don't go walking around talking about things you read in there books unless you intend to have folks in your buisness.

Savannah J. Frierson what more can I say. The name alone speaks to her talent. Sav brings a purity and innocenst to romance that has long been missed. If you want to have your heart strings tugged as well need a fan and some ice tea, pick up anything that has her name on.

Marie Rochelle just might be one of the hardest working women in the industry. Hell i knwo she is , she's one of us. This chic knows how to pen a tale. Her men make you want to beat them down and love some dayum sense into their thick heads *snickers*. If you want a heater you wont pass her by.

Yaz and Reid are so cute together. They are like Lucy and Ethell or those chics with the L and S on their shirts, except with way better fashion sense. I can't wait for you to get to know these ladies because they embody a quick witted style that is unrivaled.

Zetta Brown!!!! our sister in scottland is Editor in Chief at Logical and Lust publishing. And not only that the sistah can spin a tale or two. There is no amount of discribing it...you have to read Messalina, devourer of men for your self. No wonder she caught Unca Jim and got him on lock with the quickness.

Laura Guevara is my ace, my rawd dawg, the other side of me. If you want dominating men and spicey women, you want to read and LG book. Shara calls her "Lil G-Spot" and I call her FREAKAZOID. Chic will make you tie yourself up and hop around town looking for some one to "help you out".

And then there is me...and I didn't do it! (ROFLMAO)

To find out more about us stay tuned to this blog or hit us up on yahoo facebook twitter myspace and of course http://www.badazzauthors.com/

LOVE AND CHAOS.
DREA