So I guess I can go ahead and announce this since it’s men­tioned in the Feb­ru­ary issue of Roman­tic Times mag­a­zine.

I’ve sold books 4 and 5 in my Ele­men­tal Assas­sin urban fan­tasy series to my pub­lisher, Pocket Books. Huz­zah!

I’m super excited about this because my edi­tor and all the other folks at Pocket have been absolutely great to work with. Plus, books 4 and 5 will let me fin­ish out the first main story arc with Gin and her neme­sis, which I hope will please readers.

Of course, I want to write more Gin books beyond these five, but that will depend on sales, like every­thing does in the book world.

At this point, I don’t know when books 4 and 5 will be out — I’m hop­ing both of them will be pub­lished in 2011, but we’ll see. In the mean­time, there will be three Ele­men­tal Assas­sin books out in 2010, which will hope­fully get folks hooked on the series. (Three weeks to Spider’s Bite!)

But for now, I’m doing the happy dance!

So of course I have to share my New Year’s res­o­lu­tions here on the blog.

I imag­ine the per­sonal stuff is the same it is for most folks — eat bet­ter, exer­cise more, drop a few pounds, be a bet­ter per­son in gen­eral. So here’s the good stuff — my book goals/resolutions for 2010:

1) Write three Ele­men­tal Assas­sin books this year.

2) Write a free short story to go with each new Ele­men­tal Assas­sin book.

3) Write two more Spy books this year. This is a new urban fan­tasy series that I’m hop­ing to sell — think Alias with magic.

4) Write a young adult book this year. I have an idea that I think would be really cool — find­ing the time to write it is the main problem.

5) Do as much pro­mo­tion as I can for the Ele­men­tal Assas­sin series. With three books out in 2010, this will def­i­nitely be tak­ing up a lot of my time this year.

6) Sell more books. I’d love to sell my Spy series, and I’d really like to break into another mar­ket as well, like young adult or con­tem­po­rary romance.

7) Write a book in a dif­fer­ent genre. I also have ideas for a con­tem­po­rary romance and a roman­tic sus­pense. But find­ing the time is really dif­fi­cult with my com­mit­ments for the Ele­men­tal Assas­sin series, the day job, and every­thing else I have going on.

Yeah, I know I prob­a­bly won’t meet/keep all of these res­o­lu­tions, but hey — it’s good to have goals.

What about you guys? What are some of your goals/resolutions for 2010? Share in the comments.

Just want to wish every­one a happy New Year. I hope 2010 is filled with lots of good things for every­one — includ­ing lots of good books to read. Cheers!

Since I do so many book reviews here on the blog, I thought I would take a brief look back at my year in books:

Num­ber of books I read: 53. I think this is down a lit­tle from 2008. I’m hop­ing to read at least 75 books in 2010. On the flip side, I wrote four books and heav­ily revised another one, which I think is up from 2008. It all evens out in the end.

Gen­res I read: All types of fan­tasy and romance, spy thrillers, action-adventure books, west­erns … pretty much every­thing but non-fiction and sci­ence fic­tion (I’m not a huge fan of those genres).

Authors: I read lots of my old favorite authors (Don­ald E. West­lake, Robert B. Parker, Kres­ley Cole, Jeaniene Frost, Lee Child, etc.) and sev­eral new peo­ple too (Scott Lynch, Alex Bled­soe, Kris­tan Hig­gins, etc.). I’ll try any­body once.

Best reads of the year: I absolutely loved Smooth Talk­ing Stranger by Lisa Kley­pas; Gracel­ing by Kristin Cashore; and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Those are all books that I wish that I had writ­ten — they’re just that good. Hon­or­able men­tions go to The Lies of Locke Lam­ora by Scott Lynch and The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bled­soe, two epic fan­tasy nov­els that kept me turn­ing the pages (and surf­ing Ama­zon to find out when the sequels come out).

Sad­dest read of the year: Get Real by Don­ald E. West­lake because he passed away in 2008 and there prob­a­bly won’t be any more books by him (unless he had some­thing in the works prior to his death). I’ll miss West­lake and his clever sense of humor. Ditto for his alter ego writ­ing as Richard Stark. But luck­ily, he left me a lot of great books to re-read over the years.

Most frus­trat­ing read of the year: The Pro­fes­sional by Robert B. Parker. As much as I like the Spenser series, I’m get­ting a lit­tle tired of see­ing the same char­ac­ter over and over again — namely, the psy­cho, nympho woman who uses sex to get what she wants and isn’t too smart about it.

YA mania: I’d for­got­ten how good young adult books could be. But with every­one buzzing about titles like Gracel­ing by Kristin Cashore; The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins; and Vam­pire Acad­emy by Richelle Mead, I read sev­eral YA titles in 2009 — and some of them were among my top reads of the year. I’ll be read­ing more YA in 2010 — and maybe writ­ing one myself.

So there you have it. Some of my thoughts about the books I read in 2009.

What about you guys? What were some of your top reads in 2009? Share in the com­ments. And happy read­ing in 2010!

And now, here’s the review for the last book that I read in 2009, Poi­son Study by Maria V. Sny­der. This is the first book in her young adult fan­tasy Study tril­ogy.

Yelena is sched­uled to be exe­cuted because she killed the young man who raped and hor­ri­bly abused her. But she is spared and offered the job of being the poi­son taster for her country’s Com­man­der (leader) instead. It’s a dan­ger­ous job, but it’s bet­ter than the hangman’s noose. Soon, Yelena is learn­ing all about poi­sons, thanks to her mentor/boss Valek, as well as try­ing to avoid a pow­er­ful gen­eral, whose son she killed. But there are other peo­ple who want Yelena dead, and being the poi­son taster is just the begin­ning of her troubles …

I’ve heard lots of good things about this book over the years so I decided to check it out. I enjoyed it a lot. Yelena is a strong, capa­ble hero­ine, and I also liked Valek’s manner-of-fact man­ner. The magic and poi­sons were inter­est­ing, plus Snyder’s descrip­tions are very lush and ele­gant in places, as you’d expect in this type of epic fan­tasy YA.

My only quib­ble is the fact that every­one in the book wanted to either a) use b) kill or c) profit from Yelena and her skills and magic. Seri­ously, it seemed like every­one was out to get the poor girl all at once and all at the same time. I would have liked just a lit­tle less of that kind of non­stop action and more scenes with Yelena and Valek. I also found the Commander’s zero-tolerance pol­icy to be a lit­tle strange (you can’t kill any­one for any rea­son, not even in self-defense like Yelena does).

But over­all, if you’re look­ing for a new YA book to try, check out Poi­son Study. Thumbs up.

Up next: Deep Kiss of Win­ter by Kres­ley Cole and Gena Showalter.

Books in my TBR pile: About 20.