Stupid, lazy author hasn't had a book out for how long? What the @#%$ has she been doing?

If you've been reading this blog awhile, you're already familiar with the story of my very long road to publication. For those new to this space (or for those who stumbled here by accident after googling monkey sex or garage porn), you can go here here to read the post I wrote more than three years ago.

Suffice it to say, getting to the point where I have actual books for sale in bookstores was a long journey involving canceled book deals, a few tears, copious curse words, and countless glasses of cheap wine.

Which is why I've become more than a little reluctant to post new book deals until things are absolutely, positively certain. Even then, I'm hesitant. More than once, I've opened a box of advance reading copies of one of my romantic comedies and looked around for the swarm of SWAT team members charging up my driveway to seize them from me.

"Sorry, ma'am," a gun-wielding man in full body armor will say as he wrestles the box from my arms. "There's been a mistake, and you aren't really going to have a book published."

And then with one hand I will rip the AK-47 from his grip, while I use the other hand to unbutton my blouse as I purr, "Surely there must be something we can to do–"

Wait, where was I?

Right, I'm nervous about announcing book deals. Which is why I refrained from saying much about these two deals until the announcements appeared in Publishers Marketplace last week:

So that means I have one short novella coming out this August, followed by a three-book series of full novels launching this November (with two more coming sometime around next March and July).

But wait – there's more!

Remember how I had a three-book deal for romantic comedies with Sourcebooks? And remember how Making Waves and Believe it or Not hit shelves when they were supposed to, but the third book kinda vanished? There's a long, grueling, tear-wrenching backstory that involves divorce, romance, editorial differences, a changing marketplace, ninjas, peanut butter, and nipple clamps. I might have made some of that up.

But all that aside, the third book is not only finished, it's slated for publication in May 2014. It doesn't have a title yet, and the cover artists are still working on what it'll look like, but here's what it's about:

Marley Cartman wants a guy with a tiny one.

Bank account, that is.

She’s had her fill of overbearing rich guys, from her dad to her ex-fiancée to the wealthy guys she rubs shoulders with working as a professional fund-raiser. When Marley takes a new job handling donor relations for a wildlife sanctuary in Central Oregon, she vows to make some changes in her personal life, too. She’s only dating blue-collar men with modest paychecks and a little dirt under their fingernails.

That sure as hell doesn’t describe William Barclay, the quirky board chairman who supervises Marley’s position. But Will’s not your typical millionaire, either, with his duct-taped shoes, his assortment of outcast canine companions, and his fondness for shaking up stuffy board meetings with wacky jokes.

Will has issues of his own, namely his ex-wife and his sister. He had no idea the two women were playing clap-the-cupcakes on the side, but he’s over it now, and they’re all friends. Mostly. But he’s had his fill of women pretending to be something they’re not, which is why Marley Cartman rubs Will the wrong way. Is she simply a people-pleasure in sharp suits, or something a little more scheming?

As Will and Marley butt heads over grumpy badgers and phallic artifacts, they discover they have more in common than they imagined. And sometimes, the opposite of what you think you want is exactly what you need.

So there's that. If you're keeping track, that means in the next 13 months, I'll be releasing one novella and FOUR full-length novels. But wait – there's more!

Because my agent figured I wasn't quite busy enough, she asked if I could fit in one more project. So I'm currently at work on a standalone project for Coliloquy that's part of my existing family of Getting Dumped romantic capers. I'm hesitant to say too much (see aforementioned paragraphs about acute paranoia) but we're aiming to have that release sometime in the early fall of 2013).

So, yeah. I've been busy. And happy. And busy. And happy. And horny. And busy. And–