IOU Booty!

Aunty Cindy fired up her handy dandy Random Number Generator to find a winner for her post on the 18th. So without further adieu, the Generator says:

Treethyme!

You are the winner of the IOU for Aunty's September release The Treasures of Venice! CONGRATS!

Please send your snail mail into to cindymm18 AT gmail DOT com. Only 70 more days to wait!Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/Loucinda%20McGary
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And the winner is...

Catslady's comment on Websites and Blogs and Social Networks, Oh My! was drawn as the winner! Catslady- congratulations. If you'll drop me an email at Tawny@Tawnyweber.com with your shipping information, I'll mail you a copy of Risque Business. Be sure to put Bandits in the header.




Everyone, thanks so much for all the great insight and info. I'm all a'twitter about learning this new stuff (are you groaning? I am LOL)

Hey (Aunty horns in), can I announce my winners too???
Congrats to Crystalgb, you've won a copy of my debut release The Wild Sight!

And Maria Lokken, you've won some Bailey's Irish Creme filled chocolates!

Please email me at cindymm18 AT gmail DOT com.

Big THANX to all who attended my Launch Party!


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A Little Bit Me and a Little Bit You

posted by Aunty Cindy aka Loucinda McGary

The other day, I was sent some interview questions for a guest blog I'll be doing in a couple of weeks (Aunty squees with excitement). One of the questions was: Do you base your characters on real people or are they purely figments of your imagination?

My first reaction was of course they are TOTALLY made up from my imagination. But then I realized that's not exactly true. So in order to honor the "truth in lending" law... No wait! That's not right! So in honor of honesty being the best policy- -yes, much better!- - Aunty will reveal some of the real people whose names or traits wound up in characters in The Wild Sight.
• The hero's older sister, Doreen. Okay, might as well start with the obvious! I have three younger siblings. It was my duty as first born to see that they did not run amuck too terribly much. THEY called me bossy (I suspect they still do), but I was merely doing my duty and trying to look out for their best interests. It was only natural that I give my hero's older sister some of these same wonderful traits.
• Doreen's husband, Sean. My DH has a cousin in Northern Ireland named Sean (imagine that!) who is a sweet and charming man, and definitely influenced my creation of this character.
• PSNI Inspector Colm Lynch. When I first went to work for the Department of Health Services lo these many years ago, my boss's boss had the last name Lynch. He was a big, beefy man with white hair, but I swear all resemblances end there!
• The heroine, Rylie is a petite, sassy young woman with the tenacity of a bulldog. One of my beloved nieces happens to be 4' 10" and a size two, with quite a mouth on her (can't imagine where she got that trait), but the resemblance ends there. She is a couple of years younger than Rylie and does not have blonde hair or gray eyes. There is, however, a certain pointy-chinned young actress who has portrayed several sassy characters in films that provided much inspiration for Rylie.
• The hero, Donovan is one of those strong, rather silent types who does not like to talk about himself nor his feelings. Gee, has anybody EVER met or known a guy like that? (To quote Craig Ferguson, "Remind you of anyone?") ME TOO! I even married a guy like that... AHEM! But Donovan's interest in art is definitely rooted in my DH and his artistic endeavors. And yes, there is a certain tall and lean Aussie actor who provided some physical inspiration for Donovan. But you already knew that Aunty likes 'em tall and lean. ;-)
  
Finally, I purposely named a minor character for my son. He has an Irish first name, after all, and he actually thought that was "cool." He didn't even mind that I gave his character two daughters who have the same names as two of my nieces. They don't know yet, but I think they will get a laugh out of it.

What about you? Have you ever read a book and thought you recognized one of the characters? Or certain aspects of a character? If you are a writer, do you base your characters on "real" people? Bits and pieces maybe? C'mon now, honesty is the best policy!Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/Loucinda%20McGary
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Dream a Little Dream

By Anna Campbell

As most of our Bandita Buddies know, September is a huge month in the lair. Three Banditas have books hitting the shelves. Christine Wells follows up her sublime SCANDAL'S DAUGHTER with the sparkling and sexy THE DANGEROUS DUKE. Tawny Weber, who is an astonishingly good writer, has her third Blaze romance out, RISQUE BUSINESS. Trish Milburn sees her debut book, A FIREFIGHTER IN THE FAMILY, out from Harlequin American. Can't wait to read this - although Amazon don't seem to be hear me yelling at them to send the &&%%% thing pronto! Then next month, Aunty Cindy's THE WILD SIGHT is on sale. It's garnering some great buzz, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

That's an amazing achievement and I hope you'll all rush to your nearest bookstore and pick up these books! By the way, we can save you that trouble - if you click on the covers here, you go straight to Amazon. Can't get much easier, can it?

But what's even more amazing is that when all the Banditas met as finalists in the 2006 Golden Heart Award, NONE of us had sold a book. Since then eleven of us have been published! And I'd lay money (and you people know I'm not a bettin' woman unless it's a sure thing) that there will be more good news in the pipeline before we're done.

So when we all got together, one thing united us (apart from the Golden Heart contest!). We all had a dream. We all wanted to be published writers. A substantial proportion of us (more than half which is well over the odds!) have now achieved that particular dream in a little over two years. The other as-yet-unpublished Banditas are working hard and purposefully towards that goal and I know will achieve it before too long.

I'm sure if you asked the published Banditas, we'd all say that we still have dreams. To make the New York Times list. Or to win a RITA. Or to have a movie made of one of our stories. Or even, for those waiting for their first book to hit the stands, to get that first magical bit of fanmail which tells them that their characters and stories have become real to someone they've never met, who perhaps lives half a world away.

One of my dreams sounds a bit silly unless you've spent your life drooling over romance novels. I wanted a stepback! That's the cover art you get INSIDE the cover of a romance novel. And guess what? With my January release TEMPT THE DEVIL, I get a stepback. This is it here, the couple staring into each other's eyes with smoldering passion as they pose half-dressed on a rainy clifftop (as you do!).

Oh, and just to keep the heat quotient up, this is the cover for TEMPT THE DEVIL. I'm hoping this handsome young fellow will take your fancy in a bookstore near you in a couple of months. It's a gloriously brooding, sexy picture, isn't it? I adored my gothic covers with their clinches but I think this one is really going to grab readers' attention.
Anyway, congratulations to all the Banditas seeing their oeuvres in the stores this month! You're all brilliantly talented women and it's an honor to be associated with you.

And what about you? Do you have a dream? Is it a pipe dream (like Jeanne's three wishes blog this week) or is it something you can see yourself turning into reality? Have you achieved a long-held dream? What was it? How did that feel? What did you do to attain your dream? Let's talk about dreams before I start dreaming of Jeanne! Oh, and just before I forget, CONGRATULATIONS, BANDITAS WITH NEW BOOKS!
Source URL: https://violeta-diario.blogspot.com/search/label/Loucinda%20McGary
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