Welcome to the twenty-fifth day of my Almost Heaven West Virginia Blog Bash.

The following pictures are of Stonewall Jackson Lake named in honor of the Confederate General, yes he fought for the South even though West Virginia split from the state of Virgina to stay with the North and the Union.     Now as you look at these pictures somewhere under the water lies my dh’s aunt Gracie’s house. Yes the state bought all the land for fair market value from the people living there and flooded the valley.           

Welcome to all my followers and visitors, I am having a month-long celebration in my husbands honor. My husband Denny is retiring from the Navy after serving for 24 years. We are packing up one last time and moving back to his home state of Wild Wonderful West Virginia. Each post will start off with a picture to showcase West Virginia.  Everyday their will be a prize up for grabs and at the end we’ll be giving away some chocolate.      My brother and sister and I.

Please follow the rules posted at the end of each post to enter the daily contests and remember you don’t have to subscribe to win but I hope you decide to stick around. Also any post that contain super erotic material will carry the warning label so as not to shock or offend anyone upon opening.

So now I have the pleasure of introducing you to Crystal Jordan.

Crystal writes, paranormal, futuristic, contemporary and erotic, well let’s just read her HEA Bio:   Crystal Jordan began writing romance after she finished graduate school and needed something to fill the hours that used to be eaten away by coursework. She spent far too many years in school and now has degrees in History and Library Science…but swears that both of them help enormously with her writing and research.

Her family sprawls from Texas to Illinois and from California to the United Kingdom. She has three brothers, several rather adorable nieces and nephews, a quirky grandmother who pushed her into writing in the first place, an indispensable best friend codenamed the Mad Madam M, and her very own hero, the Professor Moriarty (who codenamed himself after Sherlock Holmes’s arch-nemesis. Who wouldn’t love a man who loves a good villain?).

Never one to stay in one place very long, Crystal has lived and worked all over the United States. Currently, she serves as a librarian at a university in the California Bay Area.

In 2006, Crystal sold the first story she ever finished to the e-publisher, Cobblestone Press. Since then, she’s sold paranormal, futuristic, contemporary, and erotic romance to Samhain Publishing, Harlequin Spice Briefs, The Wild Rose Press, and Ellora’s Cave.

Then, the day before the 2007 RWA National Conference, she got The Call to be a part of Kensington Aphrodisia’s Sexy Beast anthology. After a whirlwind month, she had an agent and an additional two-book deal with Kensington.

And she lived happily ever after. 

Crystal is also a Smutketeer and I love to chat with her over on their blog and yahoo group.

Crystal has a new book coming out with Samhain Demon’s Caress book 1 in her Demon Heat series.

Maron is being hunted. The thrill of the chase is unusual, exciting. Most of the time, she is the hunter—a demon sent to earth to imprison evil souls and hurl them down to the hot spot. It’s dirty work and it’s gotten her kind demonized by mankind, but someone has to take out the trash, and that’s her job.

But a demon can’t trap a soul alone. They need a partner, and the perfect synergy can be found in a Demon’s Triad. Three demons, triple the power, and the deeper the bond between them, the higher the power yield for trapping corrupt souls. Sexual bonds make the energy sizzle on every possible level. Maron’s partner was roped into a sexual Triad, and that leaves Maron at loose ends, tracking down an evil man alone and knowing there’s no way to capture him even if she can find him. She’ll have to tag him and then cool her heels until her boss, Samael, sends in reinforcements.

Only the demons he sends as backup are the last men she wants to see—Raum and Kobal—bonded partners who’ve been trying to seduce her into a Triad for months, since the night of debauchery when they found their combined power was nothing short of explosive. Now they hunt her as she hunts her human quarry. She’s stunned at how exhilarating it is to be chased. The last thing she wants is to give up her independence. She likes her work, she’s good at it, and Raum and Kobal would complicate her eternity.

But her two demons are as relentless as she is. They’ve found the woman to complete their Triad, and they’re determined to claim her heart and body…if they can cage the evil soul they’d been sent capture.

Here are Fifty Fascinating Facts about Crystal from her website:

1.   She stole the idea to have fifty fascinating facts from her friend Lilli Feisty.

2.  She graduated from college Summa Cum Laude, which means “with highest honors” in Latin, which means she had a 3.9 or higher GPA.

3.   It was higher than 3.9.

4.   Clearly, this means she’s a nerd. And she’s okay with that. Hey, if you can’t beat it, own it, baby!

5.    In college, she took three years of French. But since she hasn’t used it, she’s forgotten about 90% of what she learned. Which means she remembers just enough to be dangerous.

6.   She just started taking German classes for fun. Her boyfriend is originally from Germany.

7.    She likes being a librarian and never intends to write full-time.

8.   She recently learned to knit and has started knitting hats for cancer patients.

9.   She was sixteen the first time she flew on a plane.

10.  She was twenty-nine when she got her passport.

11.   Traveling to every continent is on her bucket list.

12.   It’s not unheard of for her to dance in the rain. She loves rain.

13.   She hates snow with the fire of a thousand suns. In her vocabulary, “snow” is a four-letter word roughly equal to the f-bomb.

14.   Part of her hatred for snow comes from the time she slipped down an icy set of stairs and hit every step on the way down. There were fifteen of them, and she had the bruises to prove it. She also still has a scar on her left shin to remember the incident by.

15.   The word “math” is even dirtier than “snow” in her vocabulary.

16.   For her thirtieth birthday, her best friend threw a cupcake party for her.

17.   She met her best friend the first day of freshman year in college. They were in the same history class.

18.   She’s lived in every timezone in the continental United States.

19.   On average, she’s moved to a different house every two years for her entire life. Some places she stayed a little longer, some a little less, but that’s the average.

20.  She likes going to plays, the symphony, the ballet, and the opera. Her first was The Nutcracker performed by the San Francisco Ballet.

21.   She loves the painting “Grande Odalisque” by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.

22.  Her favorite color is green. Especially lime green. She’s owned four purses and two matching wallets in lime green.

23.  She adores key lime pie.

24.  Autumn is her favorite season. She loves watching the leaves turn.

25.  Though she writes romance novels, she hates weddings. Her idea of the perfect wedding is eloping to an exotic location. Minus the crazy-making family or any need to go bridezilla on anyone. She’ll send pictures.

26.  She also hates attending graduations, including her own. Her grandparents bribed her with an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas to get her to show up to her own college graduation.

27.  She likes flying, but hates dealing with airports.

28.  Her favorite chocolate brand is called “Côte d’Or” from Belgium. One of her college French professors was from Belgium and brought some back for everyone in class.

29.  Her boyfriend likes to ply her with different brands of German chocolate, trying to win her over from the Belgians.

30.  Her grandmother is from England, and passed on her love of shepherd’s pie, pasties (it’s a type of meat and veggie filled pastry, not the sticky things for your nipples), and tea with cream and sugar.

31.  She can’t believe she just wrote a sentence that included her grandmother and nipples. Lightning might strike at any moment.

32.  She’s right handed.

33.  She detests brussel sprouts.

34.  She detests exercise even more.

35.  She loves baking cookies. There’s nothing better than chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven.

36.  Her favorite movie is The Sound of Music. Her Grandad used to wake her up when it was showing on TV at six in the morning and they’d watch it together. Those are some of her best memories ever.

37.  Because of her Grandad, she loves classic films, especially musicals. Cary Grant is her favorite actor.

38.  She likes to go to a theater near her house that only shows old movies. They also have the best popcorn. Seriously, the stuff must be sprinkled with crack, it’s so addictive.

39.  The Fourth of July is her favorite holiday. Not because she’s extremely patriotic, but because her family always had the best BBQ parties when she was growing up on that day.

40.  She’s from a military family. Her grandfather was in the Air Force, her other grandfather was in the Marines and then the Army. Her father served in the Navy, and her older brother served in the Marines during the Second Gulf War.

41.  She sold the first book she ever finished writing. That fact still makes her proud.

42.  If she sees a shooting star, she’ll make a wish. Even if it turns out to be a satellite.

43.  She’s obsessed with Post-It notes. They’re her brain on sticky little pieces of paper.

44.  Her boyfriend once left her a Post-It note on her bathroom mirror that said he loved her. She still has it.

45.  As a child, she would sing the song “Tomorrow” from the movie Annie. Constantly. Non-stop. She can’t stand that song now.

46.  Watching people chew with their mouths open makes her want to puke. It’s one of her biggest pet peeves.

47.  She thinks her curly hair is her best feature.

48.  She loves trying local restaurants wherever she goes. They’re so much more interesting than chain-food eateries. Even if they turn out to be bad restaurants.

49.  Don’t ask her about the local Mexican place she tried in Wyoming with her cousin. You’ll find out about salsa served in ketchup bottles, among other things.

50.  She doesn’t believe in love at first sight. But she does believe in love that lasts forever.

Now let’s look at more of her loverly cover art, shall we…..

                   

Ok ladies slow your hearts down…don’t you just love that next to last title..It’s Raining Men?????

So now let’s get to know Crystal with our Question and Answer portion:

Oh but first thank you Crystal for your family’s service to our country.

Z;  Did you choose your genre or did it choose you?
C:  A little of both. I wanted to try something I’d never tried before because I was bored with the chick lit book I was struggling with, so I gave smutty romance a whirl and it just clicked. Poof.
Z:  What is your favorite comfort food?
C:  A turkey and cheddar sandwich. Boring, I know, but there’s never a time I don’t like it, so that says something.
Z; When I was a kid I hated eggs…my da almost fainted when I ordered a omlet as an adult.
Z:  Do you have a comfort read? Tell us about it.
C:  The Mackenzie series by Linda Howard.
Tall, dark, handsome men. Sexy. Dangerous. And occasionally in uniform. What’s not to love about that?
Z: not the first to mention this series,I must look into it.
Z; Were you a bookworm growing up?
C: Oh, yeah. Right from the beginning.
Who did you read?
My aunt lived with us for a while when I was growing up and she used to read us Where the Wild things Are and chapters from Huckleberry Finn every night. The first real book I ever read on my own was the Secret Garden, but I also spent a lot of time reading the Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Anne of Green Gables series. Total bookworm. I became a librarian and a writer, so books and I are good friends.
Z: What is something that scares the heck out of you?
Sharks! Oh, my gosh. My older cousin made me watch Jaws when I was little and I’ve been terrified of sharks ever since.
Z: I did live on the ocean but wouldn’t go in past my calves unless coerced, from Jaws also.
Z:  If you could go on the Ultimate Vaca where would you go and who or what would go with you?
C:  I’d take my guy, the Prof Moriarty, on a cruise to Antarctica. Then we’d do a year-long vacation where we visited every continent and we’d end with Christmas in Hawaii.
Z: Working on the bucket list, I see.
Z: Who are some of your favorite authors?
C:  Oh, man. Too many to count. I’ll forget some, I always do! First, my critique group are some awesome writers…Patti O’Shea, Dayna Hart, Loribelle Hunt, and Kate Pearce. I love reading their work. And my Smutketeers, natch. Eden Bradley, R.G. Alexander, and Karen Erickson. Then there are the ones who made me love romance in the first place–Linda Howard, Robin D. Owens, Gena Showalter, and soooo many more!
Z:  Research?  How do you prefer to do it; plane/train/automobile, laptop or library?
Laptop and library. I work in a library, and that means I can check the books our for my own research purposes. Then, of course, a lot of info is easily found online, so it’s a combination.
Z:  Do you attend conferences?
C: I do, though not as many as I’d like. There’s just never enough time with a full time job.
If so where can we “stalk” I mean go to find you and which is your favorite to attend?
 I tend to go to RWA every year, but not a lot more than that.
Z:  What do you like to drink, nibble on or listen to while you write?
C:  Herbal teas, chai tea, water, and for music it really depends on the mood of the scene or book I’m writing.
11. Do you have kids? If so are they toddlers, school age, teens, college bound or “Hey Mom, I’m home again! or are you an empty nester?
C:  Nope, no kids here.
Z:  If you could have one of your books or series to be made into a movie which would it be and who do you see staring in it? C:  Maybe my Embrace the Night series…I don’t really think about these things. RG is always the one telling me about how my books should be films and who’d be in them.
Z: Hey RG 😉
Z:  Favorite TV shows?
C:  Firefly, Supernatural, Veronica Mars, Castle…and I’m sure there’s more. This season, I’m liking the new ones Hart of Dixie and Once Upon a Time, but Grimm is on the fence for me. I like it, but I’m not sure it can sustain its momentum. I’ll stay tuned for now, though!
Z:  To finish off, describe your self in 5 words.

C:  Quirky, funny, sarcastic, bookish, curly-haired

If you’d like to go visit Crystal you can go here. http://www.crystaljordan.com/  or here  http://www.crystaljordan.com/blog/  or here   http://crystaljordan.tumblr.com/  or here   http://www.smutketeers.com/

So today I will be giving away an ebook copy of Demon’s Caress to 3 commentors.

Rules:

1. You must leave a meaningful comment, something more than Hi, Hello, or Great Post.   Ask a question, squee like a fan girl or whatever you want as long as it’s appropriate.

2. Every comment counts so chat away. Please include your email in your comment.

3. Winners will be drawn 3 days after each post and a master list will be posted on Feb 17th. You will have until Feb 29th to email me at SeawitchReviews @ yahoo (dot) com. I will also send an email to each winner but if I don’t hear from you by the 29th a new winner will be drawn.

Z Seawitch