Julie Miller | Covers, Covers, Covers

Thank you to Sara Reyes and the gang at Fresh Fiction for inviting me to blog with them this month! I’m honored. Today, I’m going to be talking Harlequin Intrigue.

Since Intrigue is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, I thought it'd be fun to share some Intrigue covers, and show how the look of our beloved romantic suspense novels have changed over the years.

1. Here's where it all started, with THE KEY by Rebecca Flanders.


2. Then we went through a "white" period--I discovered 43 Light Street series by Rebecca York in this phase--read bunches of the white covers in college.

Click here to read the rest of Julie's blog and to comment.

Pamela Stone | All Time Favorite Books

We all have a select few favorite books. I don’t just mean the ones on your keeper shelves. I’m talking about that book that you’ve read until the pages are dog-eared and the cover is coming off, perhaps the pages are falling out. The one that you raved to your friends about and possibly loaned them and never got returned. My theory is that they liked the book so well, they just kept it. Since I love good books and enjoy sharing my passion, I just buy another copy for myself. I have purchased, full price, at least three copies of Sea Swept by Nora Roberts. One I actually bought for a friend, but the other got lost twice before it didn’t make it home the final time. The other books in Nora’s Chesapeake series are also wonderful reads, but Sea Swept stands out. Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss is another book that sits atop my shelf. I’ve read many, many good books, but these are the ones that make me swoon. They aren’t just on my keeper shelf, if they disappear, I will go to all lengths to replace them.

Click here to read the rest of Pamela's blog and to leave a comment.

Dana Marton | Daydreaming

I love a great many things about romance, but I like the fantasy aspect the most. Daydreaming is such a wonderful pastime, isn’t it? And it’s free! I did get to indulge in a big way while writing SAVED BY THE MONARCH.

Since I’m scared to death of flying, I make a point to do it at least once a year. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my intrepid heroines, it’s that life is too short to let fear win. When I travel, I see as people wait for their loved ones at airports, or for strangers holding up signs with names. And since I’m a writer, I see book ideas everywhere…

What if someone went on vacation to Europe, to a small kingdom her parents had left behind when she’d been a very young child? And what if the surprise of a lifetime waited for her when she arrived?

Click to read the rest of Dana's blog and to leave a comment.

Kimberly Lang | Hero Characteristic

One year at the RWA National Conference, I had coffee with an editor (not my editor) who told me that if you read an author’s books closely, you’ll be able to see that all of her heroes will share some common characteristics. Maybe it’s a core value or just their sense of humor, but it’s often unique to that author’s heroes and it shows up over and over again. And, she says, if you get to meet the author’s husband, you’ll often see that same quality in him.

It makes sense – after all, the author has to fall in love with her hero before the heroine or the reader can. The same qualities the author loves in her real-life hero are going to be what she wants her fictional heroes to have as well.

When I told my husband this, he got a cute little worried look on his face. He quickly ran down a list of common characteristics my heroes have: insanely rich, powerful, successful, tall, muscular, athletic. He figured he could claim “tall.”

Click here to read the rest of Kimberly's blog and to comment.

Tina Leonard | MAKING LISTS

I love lists. I am a list-maker, a list-keeper, a doodling scribe of anything on any surface. My kids have picked up a dinner napkin as we left a restaurant because I had jotted a few ideas down on the paper. Bless their hearts, they were afraid to leave behind one of Mom's Big Ideas. Lists keep me organized, make me aware of how much I get done in a day or not done as life may have it.

I also love bestseller lists, especially when one of my books or a friend's book makes its way onto the hallowed spaces. Recently, my four-book series, The Morgan Men, was fortunate enough to make a few lists, one book being first on the eharlequin.com list, and another staying on same list for about eighteen days in various spots. Throw in a Waldenbooks/Borders list for three weeks in a row for my March book—culminating in the #2 spot in the third week!--and I began to ponder the scattered good fortune in the universe. (Remember, I am a student of listing—I try to figure out these random occurrences, whether or not I can find an answer being irrelevant). Greater minds than mine have written about the quirky fate in making bestseller lists, but my house is on the market so I have time to scattershoot while I'm scrubbing floors and cleaning out shrub beds.

Click to read the rest of Tina's blog and to leave a comment.

Tara Taylor Quinn | A Ninth and a First

The first, first. Last week delivered to my door, in five boxes, were my copies of my first, first printing hardcover. It's not wholly mine. It's an anthology of work by five authors. But my name is on the cover. My story is inside. I've had two other books in hardcover. One was a foreign edition. The other was a subsidiary sale to Thorndike Press who prints mostly for libraries. Both were cool.

This is cooler.

The book, More Than Words Volume 5 is due out in April. Heather Graham, a woman I've known and admired for years, is the headliner. I'm honored to be in the volume with her.

Even more meaningful than being out in Hardcover, or being published with Heather, is having been a part of the work itself. More Than Words is a project that Harlequin started several years ago. Throughout the year, the company solicits applications from private women's charities. Five are chosen. Each of the five authors, who are hand chosen by the publisher, are given one of the charities. I was given Sandra Ramos, founder of Strengthen our Sisters. Sandra founded the very first battered women's shelter in the United States. She's an amazing amazing woman. I spent a couple of days reading about Sandra, speaking with her, getting to know her. And then I wrote a fictional story inspired by all that I had learned. Each of the other four authors in the anthology did the same with their charity founders.

All proceeds for the book go to the five charities.

Click to read to the rest of Tara's blog and to leave a comment.

Maxine Sullivan | THE LONG JOURNEY

If anyone had told me in the early 1980s that it would take me over 20 years to be published, I probably wouldn't have kept on writing. Perhaps. Back then the world was much smaller, and living in Australia it was smaller still and very isolated. There was no internet, no romance writer organisations, it took two weeks for a letter to get to a publisher before waiting months for a reply, and it took me weeks to type up a manuscript on a typewriter from longhand. Patience was something you had to have. And that was a good training ground for the next twenty years as I tried hard to get published.

In the early 1990s the fledgling internet began to trickle information through. Luckily I knew a computer guru who set me up with an internal modem with a speed that is laughable now but was sheer heaven back then, and I started to learn that there was a growing network of writers out there. It was fantastic. The world was coming into my home and suddenly Down Under wasn't so far away.

Click here to the rest and enter Maxine's one day blog contest.

Darlene Gardner | Secondary Romances

Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley. Willow and Oz. Betty and Barney Rubble.

You've probably figured out by now what the couples from the book Pride and Prejudice, the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the cartoon The Flintstones have in common: They're involved in secondary romances.

Now here's my shameless confession: I adore secondary romances, often considerably more than the main event. In THE HERO'S SIN, my February release from Superromance that starts a new series, the secondary hero relentlessly -- and, I hope, charmingly -- pursues his ex-wife. Part of the reason their marriage broke up was because his favorite pasttime was getting drunk with his buddies. I wouldn't give the primary hero that flaw unless there was a deep, dark reason he was drinking.

Click here to read the rest...

Tina Leonard | Fail-And-Succeed Success

I love writing. I feel fortunate that I get to make my living at putting words to paper. It means that I get to indulge my love of doing what I enjoyed when I was a child, which was read every single word I could get my hands on. Now I get to read wonderful works by other authors and friends, and sometimes I feel like I have a front-row seat to the ever-changing publishing world. I see a book make a bestseller list and I think, "Wow! I met that author!" Call me perpetually star-struck because I suppose I am. I root for everybody's careers and the state of the publishing industry because this is my team, the team that allows me to stay at home and do what I love to do most: Write, read, be a mom, a wife, a good neighbor and friend.

Click Here To Read More

Mary Nichols | Writing Historical

I love writing historical romance, researching the backgrounds and working out how my hero and heroine are going to resolve their dilemmas. Although the majority of my books have Regency backgrounds, I have also used the English Civil War, the Jacobite Rebellion, the building of the railways (Working Man, Society Bride) and the outcry for and against building the Crystal Palace in Victoria's reign (A Desirable Husband). Romance can be found in the most unexpected places. For instance, the conflict between Roland, the Earl of Amerleigh and Charlotte Cartwright in The Earl and The Hoyden, just out in the UK, involves a quarrel over the ownership of a Shropshire lead mine.

Click To Read More

Anne McAllister | Where do you get your ideas?

The most common question writers are asked is: Where do you get your ideas?

Generally the people asking it are perplexed because they can't quite fathom how such ideas come or how they are different from other ideas or what writers can possibly do with them when they do turn up.

Usually I say, "Ideas are everywhere."

But that doesn't really help. So in case you're wondering how things come together, let me just illustrate with my January Harlequin Presents, Antonides' Forbidden Wife.

It certainly didn't come as a full-blown story. No IDEA (in capital letters) popped up in my head. In fact, it wasn't supposed to be a story at all -- because PJ Antonides is not what is commonly considered "a Presents hero." He was a surfer, for heaven's sake!

He made an appearance in an earlier book. As the younger brother of the uptight, determined, severely responsible hero, PJ was by turns annoying, misunderstood, breezy and charming. Pretty much everything his brother was not. He also didn't own any multi-national corporations on the side.

He was also, in that book, called Peter because that's my husband's name and I called him that because I wanted a name I liked but one that I wouldn't be using for a hero (one hero named Peter is all anyone is allowed, I figure).

But I needed a book (I'd just stopped writing the one I had been working on, due to circumstances beyond my control), and one of the higher beings in the Harlequin pantheon of editors suggested Peter's story.

I said, "What story?"

Long pause on the trans-atlantic telephone line.

"He's a surfer!" I said.

"I thought you left him running the company," she replied, "when Elias went off to build boats." There was a sniff of disapproval about Elias's behavior.

"Well, yes," I said. And already the wheels were turning. I had left Peter running the company. But he was pretty much an unknown quantity as far as the family went. They'd barely seen him in ten years. He'd gone off to Hawaii and rarely came back. He'd even left his old identity behind. He'd become PJ out there. (Tricky guy. He obviously had designs on becoming a hero).

I wondered what other secrets he might have.

No secrets, he told me. Just a wife.

A wife? Where did that come from?

I have no idea. I guess it was mulling over what shocking revelation might create an interesting set-up and provide a stepping stone for some conflict. Yeah, a wife would definitely do that!

But where did he get her? Hawaii, apparently, because that's where he'd gone. Who was PJ likely to meet in Hawaii?

And just when I needed her, Ally Maruyama waltzed into the book.

Ally was a combination of several girls I'd known growing up in California -- daughters of mixed cultural backgrounds who had to try to deal with "old world" expectations within the world they wanted to live.

But why did PJ marry her? And where was she now? And what had brought her back?

All these questions demanded ideas to answer them. They were questions that took a lot of thought -- a lot of playing around with who these people were, what mattered to them, what drove them.

And then, of course, I had to ask who was Ally now, so many years later?

There were, as I said, lots of ideas involved in discovering the answers to that.

And that's where another bit of my own background came in. One of my best friends, growing up, has become a talent fiber artist. Melody Crust has won awards, written books, taught scads of workshops. Her career informed Ally's. I read Melody's book, A Fine Line, trying to see it through Ally's eyes.

I didn't know a lot about fiber art. I'm not an intensely visual person. But one of the joys of writing, as Silhouette author Karen Sandler said the other day at the Harlequin Open House, is learning about so many different things in the course of research.

Melody's vocation was my starting point. Ally's career and Ally's personality grew from there.

That's what most ideas are -- they are beginnings. They are catalysts. But alone they are no more than sparks. They need to ignite interest, research, discussion, and ultimately they need to create more questions and more answers until the story begins to develop and, eventually, takes on a life of its own.

And when it does, the characters come up with their own ideas -- and it's all I can do to keep up with them!

Anne McAllister
www.annemcallister.com/

Tracy Wolffe | Traditions

When I sat down to write A Christmas Wedding, I had a lot of different things in my head that I wanted to get across to my readers. I wanted to create a super-strong female character who wasn’t afraid to take on the establishment—and win. I wanted to tell a story about horseracing and the world of thoroughbreds. And I wanted to tell a story of love—with all its ups and downs, a story that showed how difficult marriage can be sometimes, but also how worthwhile.

But as I was writing the book, something else worked its way into the pages, and it became not just the story of a relationship between a man and a woman, but the story of that woman’s—of Desiree’s—relationship with her father and husband and children and the very male-dominated world in which she lives. It became a story of old and new, of borrowed and blue. Of hanging on to old traditions and making new ones—something I think is particularly apropos to the holiday season beginning to unfold around us.

For Desiree, keeping old traditions and making new ones was often a matter of necessity—playing hardball in a man’s world often requires a blending of following the herd and blazing new trails. For me, unlike Desiree, keeping traditions—or making new ones—has been largely about choice.

One holiday tradition I love is baking a huge number of cookies with my mother—and my children—on the days leading up to Christmas. Of assembling trays and passing the cookies out to all my neighbors, who have come to depend on the tradition as much as we have. Two years ago we were late passing out the cookies, and when I finally made it around my neighbors all breathed a sigh of relief and told me they’d been afraid I had forgotten them that year.

I also love filling my house to the brim for the holidays—with friends and family and acquaintances who don’t have anyone else to celebrate with. It’s a tradition I learned from my mother, who learned it from her mother and nothing thrills me more than putting on a huge buffet at Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and feeding thirty or forty or more people. At the same time, I love that Christmas Eve is all about my immediate family—my husband and children and mother and I go to Mass and then out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate the holiday (and a meal that I don’t have to cook ;)

And one last tradition I can’t do without—one that I started a number of years ago and hope to pass on to my children. The tradition of service, of giving to those who don’t have the family and friends and support system that I have. At least once every couple of months—not just during the holidays but throughout the year—I make a point of taking a bunch of food to my county’s food closet and of volunteering to cook at one of the many soup kitchens in town. So far, it is only my oldest son who comes with me, as the others are too young, but as they grow I hope to make it a family affair—one that helps my children understand that not all kids have Wiis and Nintendo DS’s and that not having Playstation 3 because their Playstation 2 works just fine does not make them underprivileged.

So, what traditions do you observe every year? Have they been passed down from your parents and grandparents or have you started them as you became an adult?

Tracy Wolff
tracywolff.com

Pamela Ford | How would you change your wedding?

I went to a wedding last weekend. The ceremony was lovely, the bride and groom, Dan and Lindsay, a striking couple very much in love, the reception elegant, the atmosphere festive. But, I got to wondering…if people could go back and do their wedding all over again, what would they change? Soon, I was asking the question out loud. Leaving out the jokester who replied, “I’d change the groom,” here are some of the answers I got.

Katie, who married three years ago, wishes she had videotaped the ceremony so she could see everything she missed as she waited in the back room and as she walked down the aisle, too filled with excitement to notice much.

Don, who married 55 years ago at the Carmel Mission in California, would go back and hire a professional photographer because the friend who took their pictures set the camera on the wrong speed and every picture was blurred.

Teri, married 17 years ago, wishes she’d bought a wedding dress off the rack instead of having hers made. The seamstress kept insisting the dress was almost done and when she finally let Teri try it on the day before the wedding, not only was it too big, but half the lace and the collar were missing. The next morning, the seamstress arrived with the dress unpressed, partially-fixed, and the hem falling out.

Which brings me to you. What would you change about your wedding if you could go back and do it all over again?

Weddings are at the center of my new book, THE WEDDING HEIRESS, which got 4-1/2 stars from Romantic Times BOOKreviews. Delaney is an upwardly mobile career woman who doesn't believe in happily ever after – even when she has to return to her hometown to plan weddings in order to get her inheritance. Going home brings her back in contact with Mike Connery, the girlhood crush she's never gotten over. Good thing Mike doesn't believe in happily ever after either. Or does he?

I’m celebrating the release with two contests – the first runs from October 15-31; the second from November 1-15. Stop by my website www.pamelaford.net/, read the excerpt and enter to win.

Now, don’t forget to take a moment and tell us about how you would change your own wedding!

Pamela Ford

www.pamelaford.net/

pamelaford@pamelaford.net

Tessa Radley | O for a beaker full of the warm South…

I wasn't thinking about Keats' Ode to a Nightingale when I first started to write MISTAKEN MISTRESS. But when I conceive of a story one of the first things that I have to decide is where to set the book. For me, the atmosphere of the setting will permeate the entire story.

The Saxon Brides is about a family who run a vineyard, Saxon's Folly. So I knew I wanted the homestead to have a sense of family history and go back at least a couple of generations. I had a great deal of fun researching the locations where I could possibly set the books.

My first thought was of the Napa Valley. I'd read about it, but because I like to be able to visualize the place where the story takes place my big stumbling block was I'd never visited the Napa and I wasn't going to have time to go stake it out.

Next, I considered the Barossa in Australia. It's awesome. Named for the Battle

of Barrosa which Colonel Light, Surveyor General of the day, fought in during 1811, it boasts some of the oldest existing Shiraz vines in the world.

And then of course there is the Loire Valley with its fertile valley and rich history…those chateaux, the Frenchmen, the romance...it nearly won.

I finally settled on the Hawkes Bay region in New Zealand simply because it is one of my favorite places on earth. I adore the art deco jewel that is the town of Napier. And it's a place I've taken to visiting fairly frequently so when I close my eyes I can visualize the hills, the sea, the sky and the vines.

Against this background I could see Alyssa, the heroine of MISTAKEN MISTRESS, striding up to the Victorian homestead and gate-crashing a masked ball at the winery. I could imagine the reaction of Joshua, my hero, to this woman who wasn't leaving until she'd gotten what she came for.

Do you have a favorite place? One that you escape to when you lean back and close your eyes? And if you could choose to visit a region anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Once you've posted your comment you might want to check out my October contest being run by Fresh Fiction for a chance to win a $15 Barnes & Noble Gift card and my BILLIONAIRE HEIRS trilogy. Click to read an excerpt from my October book MISTAKEN MISTRESS.

Tessa Radley

Stephanie Bond | Writing a Letter to Yourself

In this day of faxes, e-mails, instant messages, and texting, what a treat it is to receive an old-fashioned hand-written letter! The pleasure of unfolding crisp pages of stationery..ahhh. But what if you received a letter one day, and it was a letter you'd written to yourself ten years ago!

My husband had a high school instructor who asked his students to write a letter to themselves about the things they wanted out of life and where they thought they would be in ten years. Then he sealed the envelopes and ten years later, sent them to the last address of record the school had for each student. My husband's parents forwarded his letter on to him and I remembered how amazed and thrilled he was when he realized what he was reading. It was like a time capsule into his teenage mind, and he must have reread it a dozen times. It was a time of self-evaluation for my husband, comparing where he thought he'd be with where he was. As it turned out, my husband's achievements had surpassed what he'd thought himself capable of
only ten years earlier, and he said that revelation alone reinforced the idea of never underestimating what he could do.

I loved the idea of writing a letter to yourself, and used it as the premise for my Harlequin Blaze Sex for Beginners trilogy: The women at an all-girls college who took Dr. Michelle Alexander's Sexual Psyche class (fondly dubbed "Sex for Beginners" by students) were given the optional assignment of writing a letter of their sexual fantasies and sealing them, with the promise that the letters would be mailed to them in 10 years. Now 10 years later, the women are at pivotal points in their lives. When they each receive their fantasies letter, it takes them on a sensual path they never imagined!

The idea is that the women were 22 when they recorded their fantasies. When they receive their letter, they are in their early 30's and at a sexual peak-it's the perfect time to relive the things about sex they were curious about, what things turned them on, and what they were hoping for in a partner. Their letters help them reevaluate where they are in their lives in general-have they settled? And if so, can they redirect their destiny?

Do you remember what you were doing and thinking ten years ago? How much do you think you'll change in the next ten years? Writing a letter to yourself is an enlightening exercise for taking stock of your relationships, achievements, and hopes, and would be a great project for family or best friends, book club members, school mates, etc. (And hey, if you want to
record your sexual fantasies, no one's stopping you!) Have fun with it-happy writing.and reading!

About the author: Stephanie Bond is the author of over 40 humorous romance and mystery novels, including the BODY MOVERS sexy mystery series and the Harlequin Blaze Sex for Beginners trilogy: WATCH AND LEARN (Oct 2008), IN A BIND (Nov 2008), and NO PEEKING. (December 2008). Learn more about Stephanie and her books at www.stephaniebond.com/.

Stephanie Bond

Jennifer Lewis | What’s your fantasy destination?

Inventing your own country is a lot of fun. If you like hunky Mediterranean men, you can make sure it’s densely populated with them. Naturally all your favorite foods feature prominently in local cuisine. And if you’d like to take a sensuous mental dip in the warm waters lapping against the crystal sands of your imaginary locale—who’s to stop you?

I had all this fun and more in creating the nation of Caspia for my new book Prince of Midtown. It’s the third book in Silhouette Desire’s “Park Avenue Scandals.” The editors at Silhouette chose a different Desire author for each book in the series and gave us the plot and characters to make our own. In my case they also gave me a country.

I was handed the name Caspia and informed that it was in Europe and “like Venice.” It came complete with handsome prince Sebastian Stone, a spirited playboy in desperate need of reform by the love of a good woman: namely his down-to-earth American assistant Tessa Banks.

I’m the kind of writer who likes to know ALL the details, even if they don’t actually end up in the book, so first I had to figure out where Caspia was. I remembered there’s a Caspian Sea, but when I rushed to the globe I realized that—bordered by countries including Iran and Kazakhstan—it wasn’t technically in Europe. While visions of Kazakh horsemen galloped readily across my brain, I decided that wasn’t exactly what the Silhouette editors had in mind. After a lot of research and intense daydreaming, I imagined the horsemen had galloped through Southern Europe, conquered some picturesque countryside between Italy and Greece, and named it Caspia.

You’d never know all that from reading the book, but I needed to know ::grin::

I love warm weather, so naturally Caspia enjoys a balmy Mediterranean climate. Since I enjoy dramatic landscapes, I brushed in some steep mountains skirted with lush wildflower meadows. From the top of the crags you can look down over the red-tiled roofs of the town all the way to the glittering ocean. As Sebastian was proud of bringing prominent designer stores to his homeland, I made sure the harbor was ringed with upscale boutiques, accessible by a stroll along the smooth stone quays, or by a romantic gondola trip. ::sigh::

Nearly every review I’ve had has mentioned how much the reader enjoyed visiting Caspia in the book, so I guess my fantasy works for other people too. What would your personal paradise look like?

Jen
http://www.jenlewis.com/

Leanne Banks | Great Days

Thank you Fresh Fiction for allowing me to visit today. I’m having a great day because my book, BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN, which features a hot, powerful, charming and RICH man is on the stands! Alex Megalos has the ability to charm women into his bed with no difficulty at all. When my shero, Mallory James tells him she’s not interested in him, he decides to prove her wrong. There is a lot of heat and a couple of scandals to keep things interesting. If you get a chance to read BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN, please write me. I’d love to hear from you.

I’m having a great day, but that got me to thinking about bad days... or odd days.

...cuz you had an odd day...

I changed the lyrics to that hit song American Idol played over and over again because I believe there are degrees to bad. Bad is a piano falling on you, incurable diseases, a plane flying into your condo, bombs going off in your town ...

You get the picture. I feel like a real whiner if I say I’ve had a bad day when I think about how tough a lot of other people have it. So, again I have different ways of expressing an “odd day” using words like sucks or crappy or my favorite “I’m not having a sparkling day.” Could be the weather, could be the dog gets out of the yard, could be a fender bender, could be I’m the recipient of a snark attack from a pretend friend... A day that doesn’t sparkle usually has at least three sucky things associated with it.

How to put some sparkle back in your day:

1. Wear your favorite bright color. Remember you’re trying to ward off the blackness.
   
2. Play beach music especially in your car. Crank up the volume, roll down your windows (if it’s cold, turn up the heat).
   
3. Call a friend and ask them to give you a phone hug.
   
4. Splurge... at the Dollar Store. It’s so fun! And no guilt! You can buy 15 items and only spend $15.00.
   
5. Do something small for someone else. Bake brownies, take flowers, send a card of encouragement or thanks. Sometimes it helps to think about someone else because thinking about yourself too much can be depressing. And it makes you feel like less of a POS person.
   
6. Watch a funny sitcom or movie. I have an aversion to crying. For the most part, I don’t find it cathartic. I much prefer to laugh.
   
7. Make a list of things for which you are thankful. Yeah, I know it sounds hokey, but it helps.
   
8. Get a cosmetic counter makeover. But tell them you don’t want the natural look. Tell them you want the movie star look. If you like what they do, you can use some of their tips. If you don’t, you can use it for Halloween.:)
   
9. Love this one from Cherry Adair. I had an upsetting day a couple months ago and she said “Did you buy yourself a gift?” That was wonderful, so I must pass it on. Buy yourself a gift.
   
10. Eat chocolate!

I’m celebrating the release of BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN with lots of cool stuff:

A chat party Wednesday, August 27 at 9pm ET at where I will hold a drawing every 15 minutes!

TWO new polls on my message board and I will hold a drawing from those polls.

A bonus contest. Name the car billionaire Alex Megalos drives in BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN and enter the drawing for a prize pack for what every billionaire’s girlfriend should have: a key ring to his car, a sterling silver anklet with a crystal studded star, and sunglasses by designer Betsey Johnson!

In the meantime, since I’ve gone drawing crazy, I’d like to do one here with the good folks at Fresh Fiction. I will send a prize to one of the people who enter my ONE Day Blog Contest. How about that?

Leanne
http://www.leannebanks.com/
BILLIONAIRE’S MARRIAGE BARGAIN Available NOW!

Allie Pleiter | I think I have a writing disability.

Well, perhaps disability is too strong a word, except that I do truly feel “differently-abled.” I feel somewhat hampered by it, like I stand out more than I already do by being six feet tall. And at gatherings of writers and readers, like here at the Romance Writers of America conference in San Francisco this week, I feel my “freak flag” flying especially high.

I’m an extrovert. A raging, card-carrying, put-my-photo –in-the-dictionary-next-to-the-definition extrovert. And introverts—not extroverts--populate the writers world by a huge majority.

Why is that a disability? Well, it sets me at a disadvantage. All you thoughtful introverts are watching, observing cunning truths of human behavior, carefully selecting your contribution to the dialogue, and I’m…well I’m yakking away like that crazy uncle everyone tolerates at Thanksgiving. I’m on my ninth story, mistaking all your quiet for consent when I’m now rather sure you all were saying to yourselves (or maybe even each other) can’t someone rein this gal in? Take her volume and drama down a notch? I’m trying—perhaps too desperately—to pull you into conversations when you all would probably rather have a root canal than make small talk with the likes of me.

Really, I’m starting to think I’m coming off rather badly at these things. I’m missing a gene. Most of the writers I truly admire don’t have this psychotic impulse to go meet new people and make them talk to me. Perhaps I need to start counting to ten before I engage another person in conversation. Or find a support group. Perhaps I am the exception that proves the rule. Perhaps I serve some useful social function, saving introverts from having to create conversation—or…gulp…giving them an oddity they can all talk about like the bad boss that unites an office by giving all the workers a common enemy.

Pipe up! Chime in! The internet is the water cooler of introverts! Tell me what you think of the oddities of extroverted writers…or extraverted readers…or tell me to please hush up and go home….

Allie Pleiter
www.alliepleiter.com/

Megan Kelly | Pursuing the Dream

Thanks to Fresh Fiction for having me today. I’ve had a terrific weekend with the release and signing of my second Harlequin American Romance, The Fake Fiancée. One question I’ve been asked at book signings that tickles me is, “Why did you keep writing?” (I hope the person asks this before they’ve read my work!) If you aren’t familiar with my story, I started writing when my kids were toddlers and didn’t get published until after they became teens. During this time, I finaled in several “prominent” Romance Writers of America chapter contests, had requests from editors to whom I pitched my work at conferences, and even landed on the senior editor’s desk. All to no avail. I guess it could be called a “lucky” thirteenth year when I sold.

So why did I stick with it? Stubbornness? Blind faith that someday I would sell? Well, maybe the first explanation. Because for six years, I’d lost the belief I’d ever see my work in print. Those were dark times. It wasn’t until one day when I had “people” in my head again that I realized the characters who usually inhabit my waking hours had been AWOL. Even my family commented how much happier I seemed. I made up stories for people I’d see on the street (bank robber, runaway bride, demon in disguise…) and realized I hadn’t been doing that either. My everyday creativity was back from its hiatus.

To paraphrase author Barbara Scott (Cast a Pale Shadow), when you have a block you just have to bulldoze through the wall, which in my case meant: keep writing. That’s what I had done. Without believing I’d sell, I wrote. Without characters or imagination, I wrote. (Gee, I wonder why nothing sold during that period!) Without creativity in my everyday life, I wrote. Eventually, I broke through the wall--which made the sell of my first book, Marrying the Boss, to Harlequin all the sweeter.

I doubt my story is unique. Think Man of La Mancha or The Little Engine That Could. I often say my most valuable writing advice came from Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never give up.” Please visit me at http://www.megankellybooks.com/or at the Harlequin American Romance authors blog, www.harauthors.blogspot.com/. And if you have something you really want, really NEED in your life, keep striving for it!

Megan Kelly

Tara Taylor Quinn | Black and White; Right or Wrong; You Tell Me

My favorite colors are…non-colors. And that’s so me. So TTQ. I’ve never been a joiner. Hard to believe from someone who was president of a large writer’s organization, huh? You’d think a person had to be part of the ‘in’ crowd to get to such an elevated position. Except that the position wasn’t elevated, and when I entered the board room for my first term of service, I didn’t know anyone well. And only two people by name. I hadn’t run for office, and had no idea how the current president had ever heard of me or why she thought I was the one she wanted to appoint to a vacated position. After eight years of service, I came away knowing a lot more names, but only a handful of people personally.

It’s not that I like being alone. Or that I don’t want friends. I’ve just always been alone. I grew up with my nose in a book. Literally. By the time I was fourteen, I was reading a Harlequin romance a day. Throughout high school I attended class, did my homework, worked in the nursery at a bowling alley and then at Wendy’s, and I lived for those moments every day that I got to escape into my books – even when those moments had to come in the wee hours of the morning. I graduated from high school never having attended a single party or having gone on a single date.

And this is pertinent today only because I’ve come face to face with myself – with a few major differences. This mirrored image is a loner, too, no close friends, doesn't know how to socialize, spent high school reading on the computer instead of books, but still reading. The differences? The person I’m facing is only twenty-three years old. And male. His name’s Ryan Mercedes. He’s Sara’s Son. Ryan isn’t like any other twenty-three year old guy I’ve ever heard of. When he presented himself almost two years ago, the twenty-one year old son of a woman who’d been raped at sixteen, I told him to go away. He came back. He told me that his mother had to meet her rapist. I told him he was nuts. And sent him away. He didn’t go. He just stood there. Silently for a long time. I wondered how he could wait so long without getting tired. Eventually, of course, he won. Because that’s Ryan. He doesn’t believe in losing. He doesn’t believe in giving up. He’s hard headed and stubborn and when he’s sure he’s right, he’s sure he’s right. Period.

And now we’re back to my favorite colors. They’re black and white. I’m wearing them today. I wear them many times a week. I have many many renditions of black with white shoes, white with black shoes, white shoes, black shoes, blank and white shoes – and purses – and jewelry to match. I have at least seven white button up blouses, and more black and white other shirts than I can count. I have at least five black cardigan sweaters. Three-quarter length sleeves, long sleeves, long body, short body, heavy, light. I have a black sweater for every occasion. (I get cold a lot!) And Ryan, darn him, showed me that I AM the clothes I wear. Or he is.

A long time ago someone told me once that ‘Life is not lived in black and white. It’s lived in shades of grey.’ This was not someone I knew well. It was not someone I particularly liked. And I liked the message even less. I want things to be clearly delineated. I want there to be right and wrong. One right and wrong meant for every occasion. I want to know that there is a right, best choice that fits every situation (just like my shoes and shirts are made for my black and white days) and I want to do my best to make that best/right choice every single time. Ryan again. That’s him. Exactly.

Only difference is, Ryan’s more than twenty years younger than I am. He has the ignorance of youth to bolster him. I, on the other hand, have enough years of experience to know that that person I didn’t like all those years ago, that message about life being shades of grey, was pretty accurate. Life isn’t black and white. For every situation there are multiple sides, multiple layers, multiple people with multiple needs that will be effected, and multiple choices that serve different goods. There isn’t one right answer waiting to be found. Or one best choice, either. Rather, life is a learning experience, and a choice that might seem ‘wrong’, if it teaches us a lot, could then be deemed the best choice we could have made. If we grow and progress and get a tiny bit closer to ultimate joy and happiness with that learning, to being able to bring it to others, then how can we pronounce the choice wrong?

I posed the question to Ryan. He argued with me. Adamantly. He stood again. For a long time. Staring at me from the back of my mind. But I’d learned. I knew him. I stood, too. For longer. It was an eternal stalemate. Except, somehow, while Ryan and I stood stubbornly, refusing to budge, we ended up creating Trusting Ryan. (He came up with the title, not me.) See, Ryan orchestrated a meeting between his rapist father and his biological mother in my July ’07 Superromance Sara’s Son. They went behind his back and fell in love. He couldn’t accept that. At all. And he was blaming me.

Readers, on the other hand, thought I did a good job with Sara and Mark, but they were not happy that I’d left Ryan hanging around. They couldn’t leave him behind. They wrote clamoring for more. Ryan, with an unsmiling nod, took this in stride. While he challenged me to give him his own book – his own forum to have his say. Let’s just say, the end result wasn’t quite what he’d been expecting. At all. And now, in just a few short days, you’ll all have a chance to see what happened when he and I met head to head. Trusting Ryan, the sequel to Sara’s Son, a 2008 RITA finalist, is a July ’08 Superromance.

Some say I made wrong choices when I gave my high school years to books. I missed a lot. I never learned to socialize. Or make friends. (My best friend was a girl I met when I was five who lived two states away!) I didn’t go to a single dance. I never went to prom. Or even to a movie with a guy. Bad, bad, bad, wrong choices. Yet…all of those years of reading romances instilled in me a need to spend my life with Harlequin books. I was driven to give to the world that which had been given to me. To that end, while others scoffed, or humored me, regarding my ambition to write for Harlequin, I put pen to paper. And then fingers to keyboards. For years. Over and over. I wrote many stories. Opened many rejections. And, like Ryan, I was sure about what I was sure about, I didn’t quit believing. I have no idea why. Ryan could probably tell you. I just knew that I was a writer and I was going to write for Harlequin and I had to write. And now here I am, fifty published novels later, giving you my story. Oh, wait, I mean Ryan’s story. (He made me say that.) Did I mention, Ryan’s a cop?

Anyway, we hope you’ll pick up a copy of our joint effort. And that, if you do, you’ll write and let us know what you think at staff@tarataylorquinn.com. And right here, right now, tell us…black and white? Or shades of gray? What do you think?



Tara Taylor Quinn

Cindi Myers | Research and The Writer

I started my career writing historical romances for Berkley and Kensington, under the name Cynthia Sterling. I’m a history buff and I loved researching the backgrounds for my books — figuring out what kind of clothes everyone wore, what they ate and what they did for entertainment. Those kinds of details are why I love reading historical novels as well.

Then I switched to writing contemporary romance. I thought this would require much less research, so I was shocked to find out I was wrong. Yes, I seldom have to look up specific historical detail, but if I send my hero and heroine to a restaurant for a meal, I end up browsing menus of real restaurants for ideas. Many of my books are set in real cities. For example, my current release, A Soldier Comes Home, from Harlequin Superromance, is set in Colorado Springs. Many times while writing that book, I pulled out a map to find the name of a street or location of a landmark so that I could describe it accurately.

While you can get away with fudging minor details in a historical novel, it’s much tougher to fake it in a contemporary book. Too many people will spot your mistake. You have to get name brands right, regional differences correct, and describe automobiles and clothes accurately.

A Soldier Comes Home is about Captain Ray Hughes, who receives a Dear John letter while he's serving in Iraq. He comes home to an empty house and a three-year old son he scarcely knows and has to pick up the pieces of his life again. He meets Chrissie Evans, the young widow next door whose husband was killed very early in the war. They're attracted to each other, but each has to get past their own private pain in order to love again.

Researching this book started when I was first forming the idea. The Rocky Mountain News ran a series or articles about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I clipped those articles and saved them and that became the beginning of my research. One of the articles was about soldiers who received Dear John letters. I thought their stories were heartbreaking and I really wanted to make things better for them. I couldn’t do that in real life, but I could give one soldier — Captain Hughes — a happy ending in the pages of my book. Other articles in the series were added to the file as more research into the lives of soldiers and their families here at home.

The Internet has really revolutionized research. I spent time on blogs written by soldiers and their families. I also emailed former and current military personnel. I visited the Fort Carson website, which had links to all kinds of great resources for soldiers and their families. I pulled up pictures of Colorado Springs to inspire me as I wrote.

I thinking getting these details right adds so much to a story.

My question for you is — do you notice mistakes more in historical or contemporary novels?

Cindi Myers

Kate Walker | Swamped by Spaniards

As I write for Harlequin Presents, I often have to decide on the nationality of my hero. And part of the fantasy of Mills & Boon Modern/Harlequin Presents is the fact that the heroes are more often than not Mediterranean men – Italians, Spaniards, and those so very-very popular Greek Tycoons. The Greek Tycoon books just fly off the shelf but I can’t always be writing a Greek hero – that would bore me, and my readers – and besides sometimes it seems that everyone else in the world is writing Greek hero story.

There are characteristics that fit some nationalities, and some that are more suited to others, and so I need to take these into consideration when I’m choosing my hero. And that’s what I’m doing at the moment – starting work on a brand new story. My latest titles (my 54th) has just been accepted and my editor is ringing me this week to discuss future plans so I have to have some ideas to talk over with her. So right now I have just the seed of an idea.

My hero won’t be a Greek though. I wrote a Greek hero the books before last and he was such a strong character that I’ll need to wait for a while before I can think of writing another of his fellow countrymen. And the new man won’t be Spanish either. I love writing Spanish heroes, they have a power and an passion that creates a wonderful hero, one who strikes sparks of his heroine and turns the book into an emotional tango – all fire and burn. But at the moment I have rather too many Spaniards to deal with – as the title of this blog says, I’m swamped by them.

My newest book is out in June. Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife is the title – so that gives away the hero’s nationality. And the book I just had accepted (Cordero’s Forced Bride) also has a sexy sensual Spaniard as its hero. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I have Spaniard from the past coming back to join me all over again. Back in 2004, I wrote The Alcolar Family Trilogy – and this year those three books are being reprinted in a 3 in 1 By Request edition in July in the UK and an ebooks ‘Bundle’ on eHarlequin next month. Even the special short story I have in the Mills & Boon Centenary Celebration Collection has a Spanish hero!

One of the reasons why the Mediterranean hero is so popular is that he comes from a warm country - in the past they would have seemed much more 'exotic' before easy and frequent travel abroad brought Spain, Italy, Greece etc into our holiday plans so frequently. Warm countries, so the belief is , create hot-blooded men, men who are passionate, sensual, more 'alpha', less inhibited, less 'stiff upper lip' than the average British male. They are also it is believed more likely to woo the heroine, to indulge in romantic gestures. I don't necessarily think this is true - I think it maligns the poor British male (I married one after all!) - but it is in a way a sort of shorthand for the exotic passionate stranger who sweeps the heroine off her feet.

So a romance novelist isn't trying to create an absolutely perfectly realistic Spaniard or Greek or whatever. But neither do you want to create someone who is so much a stereotype that he appears almost a caricatures.

The thing I always remember above and beyond anything else is that my hero, whatever nationality he is, is a man. This sounds so obvious but it's important that he's a man first and then his nationality affects him second. There are certain characteristics that fit more strongly with certain nationalities than others - think of Italy and you think of style, sophistication, families. But Sicily has more of an edge, a sense of danger - you think of vendettas etc. Greece always bring with it the idea, for me, of that Greek word 'hubris' - that overweening excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance. And the many Greek islands all have a character of their own, some busy, sophisticated, some rural, even wild in atmosphere. And that can give the hero a raw edge, a primitive streak that underlies his sophisticated veneer.

So what hero will I choose this time round? Most times it’s the plot that helps me choose in ways I’ve described already. But this time it was a chance ‘serendipity’ moment when I came on an article in a magazine. It showed a wonderful, beautiful house set on a tiny private island on the Italian lakes . It was actually a small hotel but it would work perfectly for my hero’s private house. And I haven’t written an Italian hero in a while.

Now all I need is a name – and a heroine for him – and a plot . . .

Kate Walker

Thanks so much for inviting me over to blog on Fresh Fiction! I'll keep coming back to see what's new here. If you want to know more about me and my books, please visit my web site at http://www.kate-walker.com/ or my blog - http://kate-walker.blogspot.com/

Natalie Anderson | Being Fearless

Everyone has dreams and ambitions, don't they? At least, I hope everyone does because dreams can be one of the most fun things in life - there is nothing like sitting somewhere (anywhere) and indulging in a daydream. You can dream about anything - let your mind wander and suddenly you can do whatever, be whatever... then, when you've come up with a really good one - you can try to write it down... Cue the start of the author's nightmare!!!

Seriously though, if we didn't dream, we couldn't achieve things right? And often to make your dreams become reality you have to be brave.

It can be terrifying to throw in the good, stable job to chase the career in the high risk area you dream of, it can be damn scary letting your mum read the love scenes in the novel you've written, and I figure it'd be frightening when you've saved every cent you can so you can go jump out a plane at however many thousand feet - just because you've always wanted too ... what were you thinking??!!!!!

I think sometimes, to be able to realise our dreams, to be fearless, we need the help and support of someone else. This is a theme I love to explore in my writing. It doesn't necessarily have to be a lover of course - it might be a coach, mentor, mother or father - just that person who doesn't scoff but who says 'you can do it' - who picks you up when you're down and believes in you. She or he is the bridge to get you through the moments when you've lost belief in yourself (and who might give you that much needed boot in the backside!).

I've two books out soon - PLEASURED BY THE SECRET MILLIONAIRE (in the UK in June) and HIS MISTRESS BY ARRANGEMENT (in the US in June) and the heroine in each of these books is working on achieving her dreams - one secretly and one not so secretly. They're very different characters with very different goals but both have those dreams turned upside down when they meet that certain guy... Of course these women are completely capable of being happy and whole alone, but when they meet that hero they're destined for, then they're spurred on and supported and so go on to become the best they can be. And in turn, the hero develops and achieves too. It's that 'sum of the whole being greater than its parts thing' - Oh yes - I'm a hopeless romantic - and I make no apology about it.

My husband once said to me (regarding me being able to revise a book in the week I'd just given birth to premmie twins) that 'nothing is impossible'.
He was right.

What about you - is there someone in your life with whom you share your dreams and ambitions? Do you think having the support of someone like that enables you to do more than you thought you could? Or do you keep those dreams to yourself and let no one in on them?

Whichever is the case, I hope you soon turn them into reality!!!

Happy dreaming,
~Natalie

www.natalie-anderson.com/
www.natalie-anderson.blogspot.com/