Just wanted to share this:

Ms. Jewel has written a wonderfully emotional story. The characters are interesting and engaging. Their pasts have formed them as they are in this book. The story is packed with adventure and danger. Over every other emotion, the reader will experience the depth of the love between Edward and Sabine. This is one of the best books I've read all year. I would highly recommend it to others.
Leanne Davis -- Fresh Fiction

Read the full review Leave a comment, too. If you feel like it.

I try to bask in the good reviews because, well, it feels good and it makes up for the small number of copies out there for people to buy. If you haven't bought Indiscreet yet, hey, can you resist now?

Labels: Indiscreet, reviews

Today, you can buy my historical Indiscreet. Please do. I would be so happy if you did. My publisher would be really happy if you did.

You can Read about and order Indiscreet at my website.

Not sure? you can Read Chapters 1 and 2

Buying my book means there's a better chance that you will be able to buy other books by me in future. Not only do you get to Help An Author Out, you get a really great story that will entertain you as many times as you care to read it.

Indiscreet has love and adventure and a pasha; there's intrigue and cross-dressing, too. I mention Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia. All in the same book. I don't think you can afford to pass this one up.

OK, so that's my pitch to you. If you do read it, I hope you enjoy it!

Labels: Indiscreet

The attraction and tension between Foye and Sabine is palpable as the story advances, and Carolyn Jewel does a remarkable job at keeping their attraction and sexual tension building throughout the story. Both Foye and Sabine are in denial of their feelings, and both have emotional obstacles to surpass before they are free to love each other. [ ...]

Indiscreet has the perfect balance of intrigue, action, romance and desire to keep the reader hooked from page one to conclusion. Readers will find themselves rooting for Foye and Sabine and hopeful that they can overcome the odds to find the true love they each so deserve. Indiscreet is deliciously sensual and suspenseful in turn, a perfect formula for a wonderful romance novel.
By: Joyce Greenfield

Read the full review: Reader to Reader

Labels: Indiscreet, reviews

From RT Book Reviews

RT Rating: 4 Stars
Category: HISTORICAL
Setting: 1811 Turkey
Publisher: BERKLEY SENSATION
Published: October 2009
Type: Historical
Two British subjects meet while traveling in Turkey -- an intelligent but naive spinster trying to outrun rumors of a scandal and a nobleman who not only recognizes her, but is partially responsible for the scandal. Jewel places strong, likable characters in a part of the world where they're challenged at every turn. After a slow start, the pace picks up, leaving the reader breathless by the end.

Summary: Miss Sabine Godard is traveling in the Far East with her elderly uncle, who is writing a book about the area. When she meets the Marquis of Foye at a local assembly, she recognizes him as the friend of the man who ruined her reputation.

Against all odds, Sabine and Foye become friends. Both have vowed never to marry, but their attraction becomes heated. When a political leader invites Sabine and her uncle to his palace, Foye realizes that the pasha's intentions are to add Sabine to his harem or sell her as a white slave. Can he rescue her before the pasha carries out his evil plans?

(BERKLEY SENSATION, Oct., 293 pp., $7.99) HOT
Linda Roberts

Labels: Indiscreet, reviews

First, thank you to everyone who commented on my post about Pantsers, by the way. It's nice to know there are many others out there. Solidarity! And there was that fascinating hint of others who share my love for office supplies. That's my biggest regret about not being more of a plotter type, because plotters seem to use a lot of neato supplies for which, mostly, I have no use.

In other news, I am, of course, working on The Next Paranormal which is going pretty well, all things considered. I'm above 30K words and there are interesting developments. Not as fast as I'd like, but consistent progress also gets things done. I'm looking forward to having enough written that I can really tear in to the story. First draft writing is hard work.

All my ARCs of Indiscreet, my October historical from Berkley have been mailed out as have the prizes for my newsletter subscriber contest. I do indeed hold subscriber only contests, so if you like my books and want to know about when the next one is out by all means subscribe.

Last night I went to see Harry Potter. Golly, those movies are well done. But all the movie trailers were terrible. There wasn't one single movie previewed that seemed even remotely interesting. What's up with that?

I am giving some thought to the best way to put fangs on my beautiful MacBook Pro. I'll have to go stroll around an art supply store looking for appropriate materials. I want to put them on the forward edge, where you'd reach to open the laptop. Anybody have any ideas on that one? Too bad HBO doesn't sell an Eric Northman laptop skin, because I'd be all over that.

Since I'm on the subject, I LOVE Fang. (That's the MBP) It's smaller and lighter than my old Dell and on the 4+ hour flight from DC to SFO, I used hardly half the battery, and I had it on pretty much the whole time. It's small enough to easily sit on the airplane seat tray without bumping the neighbors or anything. It's great in the back of the car, too and no problem in waiting rooms either. (Son has had orthodontist, ortho xray and dentist appts -- all routine, no worries!)

I'm delaying any action on the possibility of adopting a Greyhound. We have two gates that need fixing first. One of them is a simple fix. The other is a bit more complicated, but I'm also not clear on why it's an issue. The objection was, in essence, What if someone leaves the gate open? Certainly a good question, but how is that any different than the possibility that someone in a house facing a street would leave the front door open? In our case, if that were to happen and the dog was also outside unattended, it would still have to choose that direction to run -- which is not line of sight from anywhere near the house. Homes with gates across the driveway are the exception not the rule, yet Greyhounds get adopted into homes where an accidentally open door puts them directly onto a street. What we have is not one but two barriers to road access and that is actually safer.

At the moment, I don't have the energy to call and argue the fallacy with the guy. And I've always been one to resent and deliberately fail sekret tests and trick questions because they piss me off and I more than halfway think that's what's going on here.

I need to think about it more.

Anyway, that's the weekend report. Any fang art suggestions are welcome

Labels: dogs, Indiscreet, The Next Paranormal

The fabulous Ann Aguirre is giving away an ARC of my October historical, Indiscreet. Read How to Win an ARC of Indiscreet.

Also, it's true Ann was on my bed. And that I have been on hers. We also ate doughnuts together.

Labels: ARCs, contest, Indiscreet

Just a quick note to say I'm working on the page proofs for Indiscreet so I have my head down getting through those. Plus too much day job stuff bleeding into my real life and eating up my evenings. Sigh so I am behind in everything now and getting paid less for more work. Should Not Compute. But it does, sadly.

Am also woefully unprepared for RWA in July. However, good news is that I'll be at the Literacy signing July 15 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm so if you're in the DC area, come by!

On July 24 I'll be at the Hachette booth at Comic Con San Diego signing 200 free copies of My Forbidden Desire so if you're there, drop by. When not signing I will be looking for Alexander Skarsgard and all things True Blood related. I'm only there for the day. I'll post better time info when I have it.

Labels: Comic Con, Indiscreet, My Forbidden Desire, RWA Nationals, signing

The big day has arrived. Huzzah!! Herewith, a picture of today's gift, a friendship ball, suitable for dangling in a window:




For your chance to win this lovely birthday present from me, leave a comment about friendship. Or maybe how much you LOVE cake and ice cream. Either will do. As ever, if you don't leave me a way to contact you, commit to checking back here tomorrow May 1, 2009 or thereabouts to see if you won one or more of the Birthday Bash presents.

I have tomorrow off of work and will be working on copy edits for Indiscreet.

Labels: Birthday bash, contests, Indiscreet

Things were hopping for a while over here at Carolyn Jewel central.

Sidebar: The border collie is standing at my sliding glass door with her nose pressed against the glass begging to be let in. Normally I'd give in, but she's obviously been soaking herself in the pond and is completely wet and muddy. Sorry Patch. You're staying outside for a while!

I had revisions for Indiscreet which were due on an incredibly tight schedule. I ended up doing some major changes - in 10 days with an injured hand. Which is why I pretty much dropped out of sight for 10 days. But now they're done and my editor is very pleased. Yay! This was combined with some urgent projects at work... Oh gosh. Not a fun 10 days, at all.

Now I'm coming down from 10 days of high tension and sleep deprivation and beginning to relax a bit. I'm starting in on implementing the new website. If you want a preview, check out the blog (if you're reading in a feed) which has been skinned with the new design. I like it lots.

More later -- errands to run.

Labels: Indiscreet, Revisions

My editor sent on the Revisions for Indiscreet and I am in the middle of them now, head down, fixing as fast as I can. Oh, and I injured my hand and for three days was in an exquisite amount of pain and having a lot of trouble just typing...

It's been ugly folks.

In fun news, don't forget to leave your comment in the post below so you can maybe win a free book! See post for details. You have until 4/10/2009. Go. Enter.

In other fun news, since my birthday is this month, I am going to cook up some fun stuff for us to do to celebrate my big day. Stay tuned. Fun stuff!!!

Speaking of cooking, my son has to make aioli for his French class. We followed the Joy of Cooking recipe yesterday and didn't even get defeated mayonnaise which, apparently, is what happens to losers who can't make aoili. We got soup.

It was a really really embarrassing cooking failure. Today we tried again. I took the liberty of stopping at Trader Joe's on the way home to buy aioli (mustard) as the Death Star Aioli Back up Plan. It's what Darth Vader would have done. Right? Cause he was like evil and stuff.

Soccer Boy and I agreed failure was not an option, as passing off Trader Joe's Aoili mustard as something home made was... well.... cheating. But still. I just couldn't see facing the humiliation of sending him to French class with a mason jar of failed aioli soup.

We started off correcting the known mistakes from yesterday. I had good olive oil, brand new. We need a freaking pair of pliers to get the damn olive oil open! Then I started freaking and made my son look up tips for fixing failed aioli on his iPhone which led us to a couple of recipes that contained better instructions than Joy of Cooking and well...

voila!

The aioli came out fantastique!

I am so proud.

Off to revise.

Labels: contest, cooking, death Star backup plan, free stuff, Indiscreet, Revising

Okay, I still don't understand how I can be so busy, but there it is. I have too much stuff to do. Of course, Mondays these days last until 6:30 pm when I am finally home to deal with stuff. I get home just in time to take Soccer Boy to his math tutoring thing because he's bored out of his mind in the Advanced math class. Great. At last, after the review stuff to make sure there weren't any skills he needed to brush up on, he's now working on stuff that they haven't done yet in his class. But really. In an advanced math class, why are any of the kids bored? They're supposed to be going faster. I am concerned about this. Anyway, after that, it's grocery shopping. Sigh.


Therefore, I admit right to you all that I am going to bed now. Well, right after I fold the laundry. Then I'm going to bed.

The machete work went well yesterday. That would be machete work on Indiscreet. I figured I should just start revising before I get the revision letter. I'll be that much further ahead. But not even the weed whacker tonight.

I need some sleep.

Labels: Indiscreet, Revising

I've updated my website with fresh content including the first two chapters of Indiscreet which are, at this point, still subject to revision.

The first chapter is very short so I decided, after some thought, to also include chapter 2 since Chapter 2 depends on Chapter 1 for a great deal of its impact. There is a major reveal in Chapter 2, but not one that directly impacts Foye and Sabine's story.

Let me know what you think.

There's also some fresh and new (both and separately!) content for Scandal and My Forbidden Desire. Less for Indiscreet since the cover copy isn't even final yet and it's not even available for pre-order yet.

Labels: Indiscreet, My Forbidden Desire, Scandal

Title Title, Who's Gotta Title?

First off, The Next Historical (or the book briefly known as Sinful) is now officially entitled Indiscreet. My editor emailed yesterday and said it turns out Berkley has a July 2009 release titled Sinful, and sales didn't like the second choice title which was A Reputation for Sin, so did we (my agent and I) have any other ideas? My agent, I do believe came up with Indiscreet. So there it is. It has the Sales seal of approval.

Reading Controversy!!

Apparently, Suzanne Brockmann has a prologue posted for her next Troubleshooters book, Dark of Night. The heroine is Sophia and as any fan of Brockmann knows, Sophia is in love with Decker. Well, readers are all atwitter (in the traditional sense) with the possibility that Sophia's hero will be Dave, not Decker. Some appear to be enraged. One woman opined that there should never be ambiguity about the hero, to which I must say au contraire!!

Personally, I think whoever the hero turns out to be, Brockmann will pull it off. We'll all be thinking we want to marry Dave or Decker or whoever it is and be glad that Sophia gets her hero.

I also think that the last Troubleshooter book laid some excellent groundwork for Dave or Decker. I think it could go either way, and I don't care which way (ok, I have a slight preference for Decker, who wouldn't?) but I know I'll be entertained and enthralled the entire time either way.

As to the no ambiguity about the hero? By the end of a Romance, there should indeed be no ambiguity over who the hero is. But in the beginning, I disagree with that statement wholeheartedly. In fact, I think a big part of the trouble with a lot of Romances is the very lack of ambiguity.

The only Rule for Romance is the HEA. (Just like the only Rule For Msytery is that there's a mystery to be solved) That's it. All the other stuff that gets you there can be anything at all. Anything. And that can mean a hero who isn't the best candidate for the job at the start.

Off to make sure I've pre-ordered my copy...

Carolyn's Reading List - Partial and in no particular order

• The Outlander by Gil Adams


• The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart


• Brain Rules by John Medina


• Clowngirl by Monica Drake


• The Crown Road by Ian Banks


• The Black Arts - a concise history of witchcraft, demonology, astrology, alchemy and other mystical practices throughout the ages by Richard Cavendish


• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson


• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewksi


• Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer


• In Cod We Trust, Living the Norwegian Dream by Eric Dregni


• The truckload of books I brought back from RWA


• miscellanous other books lurking in the TBR

How about you? Leave a comment so I'm not so lonely here!

Labels: Heroes, Indiscreet, reading, relaxing, The Next Historical