Yep, I do. I can admit it–I’m afraid of the walking dead. Or, by their  more popular name, zombies.  I don’t like the zombie movies because the idea of someone eating my brains just creeps me out.

I don’t suffer from Sanguivoriphobia.  Oh, no, not me.  I don’t have a “fear of blood eaters.” I tend to like the vampires.  🙂

And in case you were wondering, I’ve found a cool page that lists all of these unusual fears–so I had to blog about it!  Unfortunately, I can’t get the main page to load up for some reason today, so I have to link to the cached page.

Here are some more fun fears (fears that paranormal romance readers probably don’t have):

Spectrophobia–fear of ghosts

Wiccaphobia: Fear of witches

Teratophobia: Fear of monsters  (Now this is one that the site said lots of people suffered from. Remember when you were a kid and you were afraid of the monster under the bed? Uh, huh.  Teratophobia.  When Jack starts telling me there is a monster in his closet, I’ll say, “Oh, son, of course there isn’t.  You’re just letting your Teratophobia get to you.” He’ll totally understand.)

Phagophobia: Fear of eating, or being eaten  (Okay, I fear being eaten.)

Spakafobia: Fear of aliens  (ET! Ack!)

Capgras Syndrome: Fear of an individual being replaced by an imposter  (The old body switch)

Oh, and this is a good one…

Automatonophobia: Fear of wax statues, ventriloquist dummies (Those dummies have always struck me as being a bit creepy.)

Santaphobia: Fear of Santa Clause (Now you know why children scream so when they are put on the red guy’s lap in December)

Bogyphobia: Fear of the boogieman  (Been there.)

Do you have any of these fears?  Or other unusual ones you’d like to share?

And, hey, today is my last day of hanging out over at Candy Ready’s place.  Be sure to comment for your chance to win an autographed books (I’ll be giving two away.)

Have a great weekend!

I love secondary characters in books. The characters that help to twist and turn the plots, the characters that test the hero and heroine.  The characters that sometimes just be…fun.

One of my all time favorite secondary characters appeared in HOTTER AFTER MIDNIGHT.  The guy I liked so much?  The demon Niol. I liked him so much that I couldn’t just leave him hanging in the wind. I needed to write more about him.

And, with my new release, IMMORTAL DANGER, there are a few other secondary characters that I sure did enjoy.  One character in particular appeared in a not-so-good light (shifter Lucas Simone), and I’ve already had folks asking what will become of him.  (Thank you for asking!  I love it when people contact me about characters!)

If you haven’t read the book (What? Come on, get thee to a bookstore!), and you want a snippet of Lucas Simone’s life, then you can read an excerpt about him over at Lori Devoti’s blog.  I posted the excerpt a few days ago, but click this link and it will take you there (and you can enjoy Lori’s Full Moon of Werewolves fun).

Don’t forget–I’m participating in Candy Ready’s Godiva Week–that means she is posting excerpts and interview responses from me all week. Tomorrow, two commenters will be selected (from all the comments she has received this week), and those people will receive autographed books. So if you get a chance, drop by and comment.

Have a great day!  We’re due for more storms down here, so I’m just going to try to keep dry!

HOTTER AFTER MIDNIGHT won the Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence in the paranormal category!  Wow!  I am so thrilled by this news!  Thank you so much to the judges!

When my husband told me about the phone call from the contest coordinator, I had to make sure he wasn’t just April Fooling me. Because if he had been, I probably would have hurt the man…

Today I am very excited to have super author Larissa Ione as my interview victim. Larissa has an absolutely amazing new release on store shelves. PASSION UNLEASHED released yesterday, and, all I can say is WOW!  Larissa has got a definite hit on her hands when it comes to her Demonica series. If you haven’t read these books yet, you really, really should!

Welcome, Larissa!

1.    Please tell us a bit about yourself and the genre (or genres) that you write.

Well, I’m Larissa Ione, and I have written contemporary romance for Red Sage and Samhain, and am currently chin-deep writing dark paranormal romances for Grand Central Publishing. I also write erotic sci-fi/paranormal/action-adventure romance for Bantam Dell under the pen name Sydney Croft, with partner Stephanie Tyler.

2.    Describe your current (or upcoming) release in 15 words or less.

Vampires, demons, Egypt, the end of the world, lots of sex, and a badass hero.

3.   Okay, now use as many words as you’d like to describe your story.

Oh, whew!  Okay, Passion Unleashed is…well, let me just paste the blurb:

Both a demon and a vampire, Wraith has waited a hundred years to escape his miserable existence and make the change that will allow him to seduce anyone and anything, and then impregnate it without a care in the world. He has standards, though, and no humans need apply. So when he finds himself needing to seduce a human female named Serena in order to save his life, the horrors of his past come back to haunt him. Thanks to a divine charm, Serena is immortal, but only if she remains a virgin. Can she resist the ultimate temptation, the touch of a tortured, dark-souled demon who is sex personified?

4.    Which character do you like better from PASSION UNLEASHED—the hero or the heroine?  Why?

The heroine, because she gets to sleep with Wraith! *g*

5.    What is the most challenging part of being a writer?

Finding time for a life.  For some reason, writing seems to take over, and when you have deadlines and revisions and promo all happening at the same time, real life gets get shoved aside.  And it’s bad when people around you don’t understand why you can’t take time off, since you pretty much make your own schedule (which I do, but I have prime writing times when my brain works best or when the family is gone and I have some peace.)

6.    In a fight, who would win…Dracula or the wolf-man?  What? This question seems odd? Please, folks are dying to know this answer.

Tough one, but I’m going to go with Dracula because he’s my favorite.  Plus, I’m assuming that they are fighting over me, and I’d rather be the prize for the super-sexy Dracula…

7.    What’s your favorite scary movie?  Come on, spill.  No explanations—just name it.  Let everyone else guess why.

Poltergeist.

8.    Tell me the one thing you wish you’d known about being a writer, um, before you became  a writer.

It might have been nice to know how much time it would take to get published.  This is definitely a career where you invest years of practice before you finally make a sale.  But isn’t that the way it is with many jobs that require skill?  You spend years in college or in training before you see success.  And it’s totally worth it!

9.    What is your writing schedule like?

I pretty much write every day from 8 AM to 3 PM, and then after dinner I’ll sit down and try to get a little more work in.  When my husband is gone (he’s Coast Guard so is often out on patrols,) I write a lot more than that.

10.    Tell me anything you’d like to tell me. 🙂

I just want to tell you that I love your books! 🙂  I can’t wait to dig into Immortal Danger.  And congrats again on your sale to Grand Central Publishing!  It’s great to have you as a Forever sister!

Aw, thank you, Larissa!  You know I absolutely adore your books!! They keep me up late at night because I can’t stop reading them! And I’m very happy to be your Forever sister!

If you want to snatch up Larissa’s new book, you can find it at your local bookstore or, hey, just click here to get it delivered from Amazon.

Wraith is such a great, very, very bad boy hero.  For the nice folks reading this blog, what do you think of the heroes who walk on the dark side?

Today is the official release day for IMMORTAL DANGER.

So if you want to read about my ex-cop turned vampire, you can find Maya’s book at your local bookstore or, if you prefer online shopping, Amazon can ship it to you (so can Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Borders, Powell’s,…)

I’m going to celebrate today. Release days don’t come that often, so I’ll have fun with this one.

I’m also scheduled to hop around the web today. To help with my celebration, I’m guest blogging at a few spots…

Romance Vagabonds–Topic: Normal Paranormal Characters (Come on by for a chance at at prize!)

Lori Devoti’s blog–Topic:  Full Moon of Werewolves. Head over for a sneak peek at an excerpt from IMMORTAL DANGER that has never been posted anywhere else on the web.  Cause, yep, there’s a wolf in this story.

Jess Granger’s Butterfly Blog:  Jess posted an interview–hey, my turn to be interviewed! Fun! 🙂

Candy Ready’s–I’ll be at Candy’s all week chatting about books and sharing excerpts–and two commenters will win autographed books.

Hope you have a wonderful day!!