Hello from the great state of Maine! I finally unearthed my digital camera again and decided to snap a few shots while the sun was out — it’s the first time it’s been out for more than twenty minutes in the past seven days. I am happy to report, however, that my camper is not leaking, despite my fears!

This first shot is from the side of Dixmont “mountain” (living at the northern edge of the Presidential range in New Hampshire has definitely changed my perspective on what constitutes a mountain). On a clear day, looking north across Route 9, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of Mt. Katahdin (which even in Sierra’s parlance does deserve the term).

 Today, obviously, was not one of those days.

 This next is my wonderful old puppy, Lionel — and these days he really is an old puppy, sedately enjoying his last summer in Maine. Sadly, I suspect he’s only going to be with me a few more weeks, so during those weeks we’ll be visiting some of his favorite haunts — and I’ll be posting pictures for you to enjoy as well! Kind of your own photo-tour of Maine in summer, so stop back often!

Happy summer, everybody! And if you’re in the northeast, stay dry!

Hi everybody! Our featured author chat with Christine d’Abo is tonight, starting at 7 pm eastern. I hope you’ll come join us at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Sierra_Dafoe/ and if you haven’t yet, you can check out Christine’s interview at http://www.sierradafoe.com/interviews/christinedabo.php

As always, I’ll have a participation prize drawing, and I do believe Christine’s got a contest planned, too.

Cya tonight!

 – Sierra

Whee! I found out recently that The Boys Back Home won a “Best of 2008″ award from All Romance eBooks! It was apparently one of the top 10 bestselling books on ARe for the year — how totally cool is that?

I’d have found out earlier except I was MIA during much of January and February, but Barb Perfetti finally contacted me by email to send me my award — she’d been carrying it around with her, hoping to hook up at a convention, bless her!

Sadly, my little cheapy digital camera takes horrible close-ups (although it does pretty well for snapshots), so I’ve done the best I can — but believe me it is waaay shinier and prettier in real life!

And suddenly I am reminded that I need to nag the hubby to mow the lawn…lol!

Hi everybody! Well, it was my birthday yesterday (and thanks for all the birthday wishes and to everybody who came to hang out at my pre-birthday party on Sunday!) so I celebrated by getting home internet again, yay! Of course, it’s pokey old dial-up, but that’s okay. I’ll suffer through. Although once you’ve had DSL, it’s hard to go back.

So hello! God, it feels good to be back. Of course the *first* thing I have to do this afternoon is update the website, including our interview with this month’s featured author, Christine d’Abo! So I’ll be doing that and checking in again later when I’ve got things done, but I just wanted to give a big shout out:

HELLO! I’m BAAAAAACK!

Gawd, I am DYING to see X-Men: Origins! So of course to make my impatience that much worse, one of the gals on my readers group has to tell me about the waterfall scene… (Thanks a lot, Anne!)

I don’t do patient well, dang it. But despite my best efforts, I couldn’t catch a sneak peek — however, I did find some absolutely scrumptious Wolverine pix! So, for all our enjoyment

And… (be still, my heart!)

Sweet dreams, everybody!!!

Hi everybody! Happy May! I’ve been over in Maine the past week, visiting my boy who was up visiting from Richmond.  So of course I have to share a picture or two — this is such an AWFUL one of me, but Josh looks so handsome in it! 6′2″ of blond, grinning sweetness — anyone have an eligible daughter or grand-daughter? LOL! (I’m joking. Really!)

It was wonderful to see him. I hate having him so far away. Okay, it could be worse — it could be, like, New Mexico or someplace (then again, an excuse to visit New Mexico might be nice!) Anyway, here’s another pic — wow. We don’t look at all alike, do we?

 So I just got back yesterday and got the site all updated including our featured author interview with NJ Walters, yay! You can click here to read it — and come join us at my readers club on Thursday May 7th for a special chat with NJ.

Also at the readers club all week — it’s Dragon Week! To celebrate the release of the Dragon’s Heir collection this coming Thursday, I’m giving away a free pdf download of the entire collection — just come play and you’re entered! I’ll be drawing the winner at the beginning of NJ’s chat Thursday evening — and I’ll be posting excerpts all week!

Happy May, everybody! I’m soooo glad it’s finally really truly spring!

Once again, everyone, thank you so much for helping us get the word out so quickly and getting the situation at Amazon fixed. Our contest winner was Chris Anson — congrats, Chris!

In other news, I have a sleepy kitten on my lap and a sleepy puppy at my feet — it’s a lovely quiet night here in Berlin, NH.

(note: this picture was taken early last fall — we don’t have leaves yet, darn it, just a bunch of bare branches. One of these days, I’ll get some pictures of the BIG mountains — the one in the background here is just a little ‘un.)

Have a great weekend, everybody!

 – Sierra

Hey everybody! Nephele sent me this link a while ago, and it’s a RIOT! Well, especially for writers, although readers may get a kick out of it, too:

http://magicdistrict.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/text-adventure/

And yeah, it really is like that

Just got a great new review for The Dragon Prince — five hearts from TRS!

Reviewer Dee writes “Sierra Dafoe continues this excellent series about the exotic and erotic dragon shifters with another that’s hot, steamy, and fun. Kevan is a sheltered young dragon so the picture Ms. Dafoe paints of him walking down the streets of Provincetown surrounded by sights he’s never seen before is great… Cal has been around, usually emotionally destroyed by his lovers. They seem perfectly matched as a pair of opposites who need one another… I adore this entire series.”

Yay!! You can read the entire review here, check out an excerpt here, or order your copy today!

It was a lot of fun having Ashlyn Chase in yesterday evening at my readers group — she’s great to chat with Keep an eye out for her Quickie, Djinn & Tonic, releasing today from Ellora’s Cave!

Other than that, it’s a GORGEOUS day out up here in northern New Hampshire, and I think we might actually reach 60 degrees out — downright balmy! So I’ll be playing over on the readers loop for a bit, and then I think I’m taking my laptop and settling in somewhere in a pool of sunshine. Happy reading, everyone!

Amazon forecast: clear skies? Still dubious.

Good morning! Yes, for some insane reason I’m up at this hour. I’m finding I rather like this way of starting my day, although the topic of the past few days sure wasn’t pleasant. While I’m on that subject, everything seems fixed. At least my test cases turned up good results. Is anyone still seeing discrepancies or other weirdness? Let me know!

And this is for my wonderful editors (you know who you are):

Hee! I’m not serious. There’s actually something wonderfully reassuring about knowing you have someone who will catch your rough prose, your mis-matched pronouns… Editors are more like really good friends. The ones who’ll tell you you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe. The ones who love you enough to expain why fuschia lipstick with a fire-engine red dress just isn’t, well, maybe the best idea.

So this morning, I raise my cup of tea in their honor and salute the brave, hardworking women who dare to conquer that most fearsome of beasts: an unedited Sierra manuscript. LOL!

Amazon forecast: mildly encouraging

Heya everybody! As most of you probably know, late yesterday afternoon Amazon finally released a statement which, although still attributing the de-listing of books to a glitch, did commit to fixing the error as quickly as possible.

Things on their site are still flickering on and off — some of my books are still appearing and disappearing (not a huge deal for me, but always a good test case) and whereas last night a search for “homosexuality” turned up what looked like a more complete listing of books, this morning it’s again stripped down to “how to cure being gay” texts (Obviously, I occasionally write gay characters, I don’t think being gay is a condition that needs to be “fixed”).

So the problem isn’t resolved yet, and I’m gonna be giving Amazon the evil eye till it IS, but they do look to be working on it.

I know a few things. I know that, glitch or not, they would NEVER have addressed this so quickly without the kind of outrage they met with. That pressure came from YOU, and everyone who helped get the word out about this.

I know I’m going to be watching Amazon closely to see what they do in future. We’ve already seen them be awfully high-handed with the print-on-demand market, having tried just last year to force indie publishers to use THEIR print on demand service or risk having their books removed from Amazon — an attempt that they did back off on after being met with a similar level of outrage.

I know that the idea of one online retailer controlling so much of the book industry makes me very, very nervous in a way it didn’t before. I mean, the *idea* is great — one site you can go to for pretty much any and everything, worldwide. That’s pretty sweet! But I think we have just seen a good demonstration of the risks of it, too.

Among other things, a lot of small publishers have disappeared over the past ten years, and while Amazon wasn’t the only factor by any means, it’s been a contributing one. One the other hand, a site like Amazon can give a small publisher a worldwide platform they NEVER would have had otherwise, so it’s a mixed bag. But we definitely just saw how quick and easy it would be for a company like Amazon (and what other company IS like Amazon?) to have a huge impact on what we can and can’t read.

So I’m still leery and skeptical — although I don’t believe that Jeff Bezos personally has ever had any interest in censorship. I don’t know what happened, or what caused this to happen. We may never know exactly what transpired, whether it was simple error, or someone with an agressive agenda convincing Amazon (or themselves) this was a good idea, or what. I’m going to be leery and skeptical until I see every book relisted and ranked, with none of this “here again, gone again” weirdness that’s going on right now – and probably for a long time after that.

But I’m willing to give them a couple of days to get the situation fixed, since they appear to be trying to do so. Let’s hope that they do (said with stern, no nonsense Mom look on face, lol!)

For the rest of the day, I’m going to be off writing. Once again, thank you so much for all your support on this issue! Whether Amazon has in fact “changed its mind”, or simply responded to a major cock-up far faster than it would have otherwise, this outcome would not have happened without your passion, your energy, and your willingness to step up to the plate.

KUDOS TO YOU!!!!!

– Sierra