Quiet Canadians' reach their first milestone!!! ~~~ 100 books read!

Congratulations!!

 You reached your first 100, way to go!

Keep up the good work.  Now I'm going to go see just what you've been reading.

Happy Easter weekend.

Y A Y ! !  Shall we cut a rug here, or go behind the Barn for more funner stuff???

keep up the good work

Hey Marty - don't crush me! All I was doing was sitting here behind the barn with a few good books

...HOW do you make that quotation box????

And aside from my wondering at your tech abilities, I agree my current Medical titles are more hooky, latching on the main themes in the books, telling it to the reader straight.

Which, from finding out that The Sheikh Surgeon's Proposal had been the only Medical to sell out on the Mills & Boon site in February, seems to be working well!

And ooh, that you reread my books. I hope I keep giving you books worthy of rereading!!

And THANKS for your congrats. It IS cool to get an RT TOP PICK for my debut Desire. THE DESERT LORD'S BABY even got featured out of only seven books that month out of the rest of the TOP PICKs, which I'm told is a huge deal, since this is being picked up from among more than 250 books they review a month, competing with all romance books out that month across the board, from all publishers.

And say, I just made my new website active. It isn't fully done yet, but I was driving myself crazy over fonts and legibility and such stuff. Can you and anyone else do me a HUGE favor by taking a look (and reading an excerpt of The Desert Lord's Baby, too, while at it. ) and telling me what you think? How does the colors look to you? Too light, too bright, too dark? The fonts? Their size and legibility...etc? And any other comments or advise on content, navigation...etc?

Will be HUGELY thankful for any input!!!

first either type or copy and paste the text you want to be in the
quote box .... highlight that text .... then on the editing tool bar
below this comment box, click on the icon that is the fifth from the
right .... it looks like a bit of text with a small blue arrow on it
.... if you hold your cursor over it it's called "indent" ....... then
to get out of the indent/quote box, hit return .and then click on the
icon that is sixth from the right it looks like a bit of text with a
small blue arrow on it, called "outdent" .... not sure if that is
clear but play with it ... unfortunately you won't see the quote box
until you click on preview or submit ...

I got it right...FINALLY. I was just about to give up and come wailing to you for more directions.

MEGA thanks for taking a look at my site. And of course I quoted you. I'm only surprised I'm the first who did. You write incredible reviews!

As for the hunks, uh, I paint them, sometimes from scratch, sometimes I totally change some hunk's photo to make him look like the hero. It's the only way to get that exact look I have in my mind for my heroes. So glad you think them drool worthy.

As for the website, so far I've had comments saying that the red background, the white font, and the drop shadows with some of the text makes it hard to read. Also that it takes long to load. Was this your experience too???

Olivia, the way you have it set right now 7:00 PM EST, the colours work very well 

Eek! I hope I haven't tinkered with them since you last saw them! I  had suggestions to turn the red background to light gold and the white font to black. I guess it's the artist in me wanting to go with the esthetic look, the desert background and the gradient overlay, both of which might not really serve the main issue of a website about my books...legibility!

I like what you've done with the darker deeper filtered panel down the
center .... this really set off the white font  ... which for me was
very easy to read 

You mean in the home page, yes? Where I announce the RT Top Pick and Throne of Judar launch?

about speed ... well, I have a DSL hookup so speed really isn't much of an issue for me ... every page seemed to load very well

Great to hear, as this IS a site heavy on graphics. Maybe those who complained were on dial up, or on shared DSL connections?

Still, it's something to consider, to make the pages lighter by deleting shadows and such?

I love that you've painted your heroes! .... you have a thing for
eyes   :D  .... and those lips!  ... oh my! .... no wonder your books
are so passionate ... the heart races and the blood boils with men like
those!

It IS ALL about the eyes for me. Once I get THAT look I need, I have my hero. In my mind, Farooq, my first and oldest prince brother is on the left, my second hero Shehab, is on the left, and the one who becomes king, Kamal, is in the middle. Do you see their characters in their eyes and expressions?

And yes, the LIPS. I need my heart to race and my blood to boil so I can convey that in my writing. So glad that I do!

And I just had the wording of my RT Top Pick! The wonderful reviewer describebd The Desert Lord's Baby as "...stunningly romantic, sexy tale, rich with palace intrigue.."

rest!

I love the site, except I found the sheikh's images behind the excerpt almost too distracting

Fantastic sheikhs! - they'd nearly distract me from Damian ( tell me he didn't hear that! )

Hugs

Sadhbh 

Olivia - wow that excerpt has me really impatient to read the rest!

SOOO glad it had that effect.  

I love the site, except I found the sheikh's images behind the excerpt almost too distracting

The bad kind of distracting, yes? 

OK, I guess the sheikh images will have to go, if they gave you a hard time reading the excerpt, which isn't what I want at all, of course.

Fantastic sheikhs!

Thanks! Farooq is also doing something fantastic at the moment.

I just found out that The Desert Lord's Baby is already number 2 in the top ten bestsellers in ebooks here on eHarlequin!!!

I was going there to place and order and had to do a triple take when I saw it up there on the list. I had no idea ebooks were up for preorder that early!!  

- they'd nearly distract me from Damian ( tell me he didn't hear that! )

 I hope they will do just that. (Let's keep this a deep, dark secret from Damian. But then...he hears and knows everything...)

Katherine, you're so right. I WILL just let the site be, and just add the pages dedicated to the backstory of Judar and to tantalize about the sheikh brothers and the series. BUT I won't tinker with the look anymore. Thanks for test-driving it for me.

I think I'm going to have to pull out those Bombshells! ... I seem to
be missing out on Damien ... Sadhbh is making him sounds so delish  
.... okay, next month it's going to be an Olivia Gates month! .... a
Medical, two bombshells, and maybe a Desire if I can get my order early
enough in the month  ....

Awesome!! I hope all those books entertain. And yep, Damian has quite a following. I hope you'll enjoy getting to know him, too.

Olivia, I am sooooo glad you're publishing again .... that dry spell lasted far too long!

You can say that. Eighteen months just felt like forever. Here's hoping they will never be repeated...

It's me who's blind. I didn't add any contact info yet. Thanks for reminding me. My email is my fullname @ my fullname. com  NO spaces between olivia and gates.

Hmmm, DO I have it on here in my profile? Going to check if I remembered to do that!