N is for New Orleans - A to Z Challenge

New Orleans is one of my favorite cities and the setting of my first book. My husband and I had a chance to visit again last year, and I took tons of pics as research and settings for the sequel. Here are a few of my favorites:

Night life in the French Quarter - Rachel's favorite haunt

One of the city's many voodoo shops - Viola would love it here

Cemetery where Rachel hunts ghosts

Private yard and hot tub in the French Quarter -
it gets even hotter when Rachel shows up without a suit!

How do you do book research?

A is for Astrology - A to Z Challenge

Welcome to day 1 of my A-to-Z blogging challenge! Nearly every day this month, I’ll be writing a new blog post. Yep, that’ll keep me busy! 

Speaking of busy, I’ve been working on a project recently. It’s a novel for Crescent Moon Press’s Sabian Symbols signature line. I sent the first official draft of my book to my publisher Friday night!

My new book's tag line:
In a Zodiac-based world, finding a mate is easy.
Falling in love is the hard part.

The story takes place in a world that believes strongly in astrology. It was fun to write, but a challenge to research. I relied heavily on the expertise of my husband, John. He’s been studying astrology for years and can actually make sense of those scary-looking natal charts! 

There are so many facets to astrology, I had plenty of ways to explore what I thought this fictional astrological world looked like. People’s charts could determine everything from where they would live to their chosen careers. The most interesting aspect to me was the idea of a council that determined your best romantic match based purely on how well two people’s astrology charts matched with one another. 

What are your views on astrology? And if such a world as I described existed, how would it be different from this one?

Get in on the Blogging A to Z challenge by clicking the icon at the top right of my blog!

Thursday 13: Novels Set in New Orleans

I'm currently in New Orleans on vacation and looking for inspiration for the sequel to Magick Charm. It got me thinking about other books set here. So here's a list of a few of the ones I've read as well as others on my TBR list.

1. The Vampire Chronicles series by Anne Rice
2. The Lives of the Mayfair Witches series by Anne Rice (I could do this whole list with Anne Rice books alone, but I’ll stop with these two.)
3. Voodoo Dreams series by Jewell Parker Rhodes
4. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
5. Runaway Jury by John Grisham
6. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
7. Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg (The movie, Angel Heart, was based on this book.)
8. Fat Tuesday by Sandra Brown
9. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
10. Dark Hunter Series by Sherrilyn Kenyon
11. Benjamin January Mysteries by Barbara Hambly
12. Ghost Walk by Heather Graham
13. Frankenstein series by Dean Koontz

Thursday 13: Things I'm looking forward to in New Orleans

(Note: This really was posted on Thursday before Blogger had its little hiccough!) 


John and I are renting a house on the edge of the French Quarter for a week. We leave in 18 days and 17 hours (but who's counting)! The last time I was in New Orleans was only a couple weeks before Katrina, and I'm so glad to finally be going back. Here's a few things I'm planning to do there:

1. Book research. My first book takes place in New Orleans, and I’m currently working on a sequel. What better way to capture the flavor of this fabulous city than to do a bit of writing while I’m there.
2. Drinking a hurricane. A little rum on Bourbon Street… okay, it’s probably more accurate to say a lot of rum.
3. Dueling piano bar. Pat O’Brien’s is also famous for their hurricanes. How serendipitous! And it’s always fun to make the pianists play “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
4. Hot tub!
5. Shopping at the French Market. Shopping... need I say more?
6. Ordering a muffuletta from Central Grocery. What is a muffuletta, you ask? It’s an enormous sandwich made with Italian meats and cheeses and topped with olive salad.
7. Live jazz music. You can’t sling a dead cat in this town without hitting a jazz musician. Not that I’d want to sling a cat, dead or alive, or hit a musician, jazz or otherwise.
8. Voodoo shops. Metaphysical stuff + shopping = happiness.
9. Beignets and café au lait. There is no other way to start the morning in New Orleans, at least as far as I’m concerned.
10. Aquarium. Have I ever been to a city with an aquarium and NOT visited it? I think not.
11. St. Louis Cemetery #1. Okay, potentially morbid, but it is a key location in my next book!
12. Karaoke at the Cat’s Meow. Yes, enough hurricanes (see #2!) and I have been known to do karaoke.
13. Relaxing!