Lynne Silver Heated Match tour!

Book one in the awesome Lynne Silver's Coded for Love series, Heated Match, is free until August 25th on Ellora's Cave and Amazon! And to celebrate, Lynne is giving away a Coded for Love tote with swag. If you're not familiar with it, here's the series blurb:

Engineered with superior strength, agility and acumen, the genetically enhanced soldiers of the top secret Program do the dangerous assignments no one else can. Now, they’re tasked with one additional job. Breed.

But finding and convincing their perfect DNA match they are the right men for the job may be their most dangerous mission to date. And the hottest. Good thing, they’re Coded for Love.

So now that we've wet your appetite, don't you want to hear about Heated Match? Yeah, I'm sure you do *grin*, so here we go.

Blurb:

A lead byline and a cover story—that’s what journalist Loren Stanton wants most. Until she meets genetically enhanced soldier Adam Blacker. Team leader of a top-secret covert ops group, Adam never wanted to search for his genetic match, but whenever he gets close to Loren, things turn hot quickly, making him forget every reason he had for retaining his bachelor status. After a scorching night together, neither doubts they’re connected at a DNA-deep level, although both fear the high stakes of what it means to be together.

Loren gives Adam two weeks to prove he’s bred for more than war. He must convince her that he’s also coded for love.

About the Author:

By day, Lynne Silver lives the suburban soccer mom life; volunteering with the PTA, doing laundry and working. By night she enters the sensuous world of alpha males and passionate heroines.

She calls the nation’s capital home and lives in an old fixer-upper with her husband and their two sons. When not writing romance, she reads it. Lots of it. Over and over and over again, preferably with a bag of M&Ms in hand.

She is represented by literary agent, Jessica Alvarez of Bookends LLC

How to Find Lynne:

Website: http://www.lynnesilver.com/
Blog: http://www.lynnesilver.com/blog/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lynnesilver
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LynneSilverAuthor
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4441166.Lynne_Silver
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Lynne-Silver/e/B004FQXSAE

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Speaking of Cocks

Do you ever wonder what characters would cook if they got into the kitchen? I sometimes do, because often I find I’ve written an entire book, or read an entire book, and the characters have been too busy doing…um…other stuff to actually make an entire meal. Strange, really, in the case of my own writing since I’m a devote foodie! With that in mind, Foodie Friday was born.

Sometimes it’ll just be a recipe I particularly like, or maybe some strange food fact I’ve come across. On occasion you’ll find a short story involving a character from my or other author’s books getting crazy in the kitchen. Foodie Friday is about the love of food, in all its forms, so come back often for a little taste!

I was on Twitter the other day when someone posted a link to this Amazon page http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Cock-Flavored-Soup-Mix/dp/B002Q46EH6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1339373016&sr=8-2&keywords=Grace+Cock+Soup with a rather cheeky comment.

Okay, I know what a lot of you are thinking—WTF? But hear me out, and remember what sound EEEEWWW to one person is *shrug* to someone else.

I’m Jamaican, and Grace is a large manufacturing company on the island. They specialize in what Jamaicans use on a daily basis in their kitchens…stuff people from the rest of the world might never have heard of but are considered essentials to us. One of those products is Cock Soup.

Before I get into what we do with this soup, and what it tastes like and all those good things, let me explain one thing…it is NOT penis soup. A look at the actual package should make that pretty clear, but I thought I’d reiterate it. In Jamaica, traditionally, a ‘cock’ is a rooster, coming straight from our colonial, English roots. Now, if someone were to offer you “hood soup” or “buddy soup” (words denoting penis in our vernacular), I suggest you politely decline. There is one soup, cow cod, that’s made from the intimate bits of a bull, so if that kind of thing makes you queasy, that the one to watch for. Otherwise, if offered cock soup on vacation in Jamaica, I say go for it!

So, the packaged Cock Soup is like any other dry chicken noodle soup mix, except it’s spicier, with a more intense flavor. I use it as a base for making a large pot of chicken soup, add it sometimes to chicken stew and it makes a delicious broth for boiling chicken. (Use skinless chicken breasts, bone in or out, as you prefer. Chop into approximately 2” chunks. Get rid of the noodles from the soup by emptying the package into a strainer and shaking out the flavor base into a bowl. Discard the noodles, because they get flabby and gummy if boiled too long. Put the flavor base into boiling water and add the chicken, cooking just until done. Serve with soya sauce.)

I’ve actually also used the above method to boil shrimps for shrimp cocktail, because it gives them just enough of an oomph without overpowering the shrimp flavor! Of course, if you just want a nice bowl of soup to eat with your crackers, and plain out chicken noodle isn’t cutting it, Cock Soup may be right up your alley.

So, that’s the low-down on Cock Soup, a great Jamaican tradition! Thinking about it, this is probably the tamest blog I’ve ever written with the word “cock” in it… *shakes head*

Crazy people, crazy times

Just when you think "civilization" has moved past the blatant bigotry of the past, Amazon makes you realise sheer stupidity and ass-wipe prejudice hasn't died: it was just waiting to find a powerful, fucked-up jackass corporation to lead the charge.

In a move of monumental ridiculousness, Amazon has stripped sales figures and rankings from a wide selection of books they deem to have "adult content." To put it into context, they have decided to to exclude GLBT, erotica and some romance novels from their rankings, which converts into those books not showing up on best seller lists and even on searches done within Amazon. From what I have been able to glean, the main thrust of this book banning exercise is to get all books with any mention of gay, lesbian, transexual or bi-sexual relationships out of the public's view.

To experience the ridiculousness of what they are doing, please visit Meta Writer, for their list of books that have had their sales ranks removed. I'll quote one thing, of the many, that caught my eye in that list. Regarding the stripping of sales rank from The Well of Lonliness by Radclyffe Hall, there was this brief note: "(the only "sex scene" in The Well of Loneliness consists in its entirety of the words "And that night they were not divided.")"

Frankly, no matter how you look at it, it's censorship, pure and simple, with a thick, nasty overcoat of bigotted prejudice.

Sarah, from the Smart Bitches website, has created a new definition for Amazon Rank and it says it all far better than I ever could.

I'm not the combative type, but Amazon is really starting to piss me the hell off. I keep picturing Bezos as The Brain, with the guy who suggested this fuckery as Pinky, saying, "Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?" and Bezos replying, "The same thing we do every night, Pinky--try to take over the world."

Amazon...you're gonna have to go through a bunch of us first.