All things being personal

Hi there. I know I am a day late, but I have been prepping for my NY trip which then leads into my Cincinnati trip. I'll be at the Lori Foster get together so, anyone who is going please look me up! Also, I have a bunch of baskets I put in going out to raffle. Two of them will have Noah's ARC (sounds like Noah's ARK!! ROFL!!!) in them. It's for a whole bunch of good causes, and you know I am a sucker for a good cause! So please take part if you are going to be there!

Now on to all things personal. I figured I would share this with you all since I share everything else, and it's something that can potentially affect my presence here for a while. After RAW in September, I am going to be scheduling gastric bypass surgery for myself. As terrifying as it sounds, that's about how scared I am. But I am more afraid of dying young...and dying without ever having lived my life to the fullest. Food is my curse, one that no one can throw off completely. When I say I have tried EVERYTHING else first, I really do mean it. Those of you who have met me in person must see how I struggle, how frustrating it is for me to live with both morbid obesity and fibromyalgia. The fibromyalgia will most likely never go away, not as severe as it is for me, but carrying around a whole other person most certainly makes it worse, and shedding that other person will most certainly help. In all things.

Before making this choice, I asked myself to give 25 reasons why I would want to do this sort of thing. They rolled off of the top of my mind without hesitation. Some were simple, vain things...but most were about the quality of my life. This is a drastic decision, not to be entered lightly by anyone. But I have chosen a top class surgeon, one who has done this over a thousand times. In all those instances, he has had only one mortality...and that was from an unexpected heart arrhythmia...more likely due to the patient's obesity that the surgery.

I was still hesitant just the same, that fear thing again, plus I don;t like being spoon fed my resources. I turned to someone I knew who had been through it. Angela Knight. I don't think she'll mind me mentioning we've talked, she's very open about it in her blogs and such. It was a good perspective, a real one, and we spoke for hours. I think I am much better prepared for it. But I also know I will be talking to her again and again for a variety of reasons.

Why am I sharing this with you? So that you understand why I am too weak to write to you for months afterward. So that you understand how stressful the progress toward it will be for me. You won;t see it affect my work for at least a year or better, but somewhere down the line there will be a hiccup in the pacing of my releases. Worst case scenario, that is. But the hope is that I will bounce back better than ever, that I will be healthy for my tour of Australia and London. That I will be more comfortable than ever before as I sleep in flat hotel room beds. That I will have the energy to walk and sight see as I haven't done in years. Decades. It's too late for me to repair the damage done to my uterus, which was removed last year, but perhaps I will find the energy and health and well being I need to become a foster mother...or to adopt a child. I have so much to offer now, and so little hope if I don't do something.

I hope you don't mind if I share parts of the journey with you. It will be mostly about needing your support, or a place to vent, or, hopefully, my best resource. You. You've all been by my side for some time now. Making me who and what I am. I know you are the best place to turn because you've proven to be kindhearted, generous and loyal to a fault. I'll be selfish and I'll need you a lot. I just thought I'd warn you!!

Now, I have one other favor to ask. If you have won a prize from me (other than the RIF covers) please email me with the name of the prize as the subject line and you snail mail please. I have a lot of names here and no idea who won which prize. My assistant will be mailing them out while I am away but I need to know how to sign what before then. I don't want you to have to wait til I come back on June 8th. Do this quickly, I leave tomorrow morning and I only have a day stopover in between next week.

Meanwhile, I want to run a new contest :) This one will be bunches of fun. I want to call it the Rumpelstiltskin contest. I have a middle name. Oh yes, and it's a pretty one. I like it. But no one out the knows what it is unless they are my very best of real life friends. So...that means if you want to know what it is, you have to figure out the name. Here are your clues. It has eight letters. It is the title of a song. The name of a winery. And it means "Who is like God".

Everyone who gets it right enters a drawing for a Noah ARC. :) Be careful. You only get one guess!! Send all entries to the usual email: jacquelynfrank@hotmail.com and I will pick a winner when I come back from my NY trip and before I go to Ohio. Good luck!

And don't forget, Damien hits the shelves tomorrow!! (Yes, the date was moved again!!) Go and get him!! The buzz is pretty sweet so far! And I was #69 on B and N the other day!! (Great number huh? Suits me so well!!) Let kick ass!!

Hugs and kitties to all of you!
Jacki

And the Winner...

Sorry guys, I had a huge family thing come up. I meant to keep blogging but things got a little weird around here on many many levels. But before you head off to your memorial day fun, I thought I'd show you some of the pics I was sent for our contest!!

This one is a clear attempt to appeal to my love of felines. ;)





This link leads you to an ingenious slide show :)

http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg173/meshelle8531/?action=view&current=JackiSlideshow.flv



This is a very different and artistic approach :)


















And this made an appeal to me missing my B. Man, do you guys know me or what???















And now for the winner.
I hope this works.

Jace you are soon to be the proud owner of a full set of autographed books. Mainly because you made me laugh :) Email me you snail mail at jacquelynfrank@hotmail.com

I have an interesting blog for tomorrow (or Sunday if something else comes up!)

Have a great time this holiday.

More to Say

I just had to say that I am convinced I have the best readers in the world. I get to read, every day, some of the sweetest and most flattering emails ever created. In the beginning of all of this I had to face more mean-spirited reviews than anything else, and I was convinced it was going to suck to be a writer. But then I started to get emails for readers like you and, whether they were eloquent or not, it just meant a lot to me and acted as a balm to take the sting out of those petty reviews.

But that was just in the beginning. Now I get several letters a day and sometimes they are worded in just such a way that I am in threat of walking on air for a week and getting a big fat head and ego! I do try to answer every letter quickly, and I absolutely answer everything I am sent. If you have ever sent me something and it wasn't responded to, it means either I never got it or I made a filing mistake without intending to. I did that once and wrote the gal months later when I realized it :) The address you use for all contests and correspondence is jacquelynfrank@hotmail.com. Don't be shy about writing me if that's what you want to do. As you see it is something I take great delight in.

One other thing I try to do is make appearances in places where groups of individuals request my presence. If you have a book club or writing group or even an RWA group that would like to have contact with me, please don't be shy about asking. I enjoy meeting my readers face to face.

Now on that note, I wanted to put something out to you. I would like to visit London and Australia. I know I have many fans in London by the number of letters I have received...but I have no idea how to find the best place to go in either of these countries. If anyone knows of a great book shop willing to throw a big signing and put a lot of effort into gathering those fans together (advertising, coffee, snacks, etc.) then please send me the name, address, email, phone number and the name of the central contact connected to that store.

Australia is another story. It's such a big country. But since I have friends who live near Perth, I think I can start there and then slowly work out where to go next...if I go to more than one location. Now, this is all going to be at an undetermined time of year...preferably springtime in each country respectively. You know...the WARMER part of spring...but not too warm that's I'm going to sweat my bollocks off. Only you guys can tell me when that will be. After all, these are YOUR countries!!

Now, someone pointed out to me that I was supposed to give away two sets of books. Good thing, too!! I totally forgot! You may love me, but this is one author with a shitty memory. It wasn't always that way, but age and medication has gotten the best of me. Please forgive me my lapse.

Anyway, our second winner is....

Crystal GB!

Crystal, please send me your snail mail addy at the above address.

As for everyone else, I have had custom decks of cards made up for the promotion of Noah's release in September. Only 100 decks exist at this time, several were given away at RT, but now I am giving these decks out very carefully :) and it is hard to get a hold of them. I am going to give a deck away to a winner. If you want to be that winner you have to do the following:

Send me a picture of you (or your kids or your cats...etc) with ANY of my books!!

Now, the person who is going to win the deck of cards will be random from those entries, but the person who sends me the most creative (sexy, funny, romantic, artistic) picture will win the ENTIRE set of Nightwalker books, including the Noah ARC, all signed by me :) AND a deck of cards to boot. This is a HUGE prize. :) I hope you have fun competing for it!! I will pick my favorite pictures and post them in the blog announcing the winners on Wednesday of this coming week. So best get to it!! :)

Have fun!! Love yas!!

Hugs and Kitties
Jacki

WOW

You guys really have strong ideas about Noah's HEA!! Wonderful. And I have to say that this is not only the largest response I ever received to one of these contests, but I also feel, in my heart, that the majority of those responses mean you guys are going to LOVE Noah's woman.

But I am very certain you are going to let me know one way or another :P

I have chosen a winner from all the responses here, but before I give the name I wanted to say a couple of things. First, if you are wanting to join in the comments and don;t know how, all you need is a Google mail (gmail) account. What is Gmail? Click on THIS LINK to get started. Then you simply sign in and voila! Access to all my contests and more.

Second, I am having another chat party :) It's a plan in it's early stages yet, but I figure June 28th, the last Saturday in June, will be a great date for it. You are going to want to come because I will be inviting all your favorite authors over a 12 hour period!! Thus your task for today is...tell me who you would like to see and speak to at my next Chat-a-thon!! Please, don't even say JRW or CF or SK because I am NOT going to be able to get them.

But my buds Gena Showalter, Yasmine Galenorn and Bianca D' Arc are very likely candidates :)

Now....the winner of signed copies of Damien and Noah is...

Swallowing Darkness!!!

This is a random winner drawn in my head like a stick figure using complex addition and subtraction logic.

Now for a story. I went out yesterday with my niece to Pet Harmony, we are making it a ritual to go and socialize with the cats and even the dogs. When we get back, Ryanne (my live-in assistant) and my sister Lynnora are standing outside the front door. As I walk through the house I hear them laughing their asses off. Always one for a good joke, I ask "What up?". As I approach I step in something wet and sticky.

Have you ever come up on people who were so toasted they barely made sense? Apparently while we were gone my sis and Ryanne thought it would be fun to get pissed. Why the laughter? They had been heading outside with Ryanne in the lead. Apparently she forgot to hold the door open and it slammed closed into my sister. The result was alcohol abuse. The door smacked my sister head-on while she was carrying a glass of wine and sent it splashing up in her face, down my door, on the cement and my floor.

Apparently this was hysterically funny. I suppose it would have been for me, too, if I had just spilled my sixth glass of wine all over myself. OMG, were they ever tanked! My sister has hazel eyes, but after that much wine they were a bright jade green with large pupils and you could see the nastagmus (jittering) of her eyeballs. (This is what cops look for when they suspect you are drunk driving) My niece and I just went back inside and sat down, giggling every time they laughed (still because of the door) in peals of hysteria.

I turned to my 14 yr old niece and said: "Now, you see why getting drunk is bad? It makes you act like a total dork. It's much more fun to be sober and watching the lunacy of others!"

In truth...I am in the mood for a martini. :P

Love and Children!!

I got a mother's day card today!!! It had Bianca's number and addy in it. I was so happy I started to cry and nearly killed myself getting to the phone. I had just made plane reservations for NY to hunt for her. Phew. So I will go up and see her for a weekend, go to court, and then she comes down here to visit me for two weeks. YAY!!

Plus, I just got my author copies of Damien :) Gorgeous shiny purple. I hope like hell you guys like.

Anyway, I am SOOO friggin happy, I have to give stuff away.

I will give away TWO sets of a Damien and a Noah ARC to someone who responds to this posting and tells me:

What do you think Noah's heroine should be like??

Ready? Set?? GO!!!

Hugs and Kitties
Jacki