April Reads

Spring is here. I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready for a little sun. Though, I'm not so ready for the summer in Texas. That's why I'm loading up the iPad with great reads that will keep me in the nice cool air conditioning.

I wanted to let you know that the charity anthology SPIRITED is in print now. It's 13 ghost stories and the proceeds from the sales of the book go to the literacy charity 826 National. All the authors donated their stories, so this is about helping kids from 6-18 to learn how to read. Please buy a copy to help out the kids.

Now it's time to chat about some fun books coming your way this month.

Gerry Bartlett's April release, REAL VAMPIRES HATE SKINNY JEANS, is number eight in her Real Vampires series. In this one her heroine, Glory St. Clair, has to deal with a pregnant demon on her doorstep who claims Glory's best friend is the father. While sorting that out, Glory discovers that, before she became vampire, she had a past she doesn't remember. This news will change everything for the vamp who was bloating when she was turned in 1604. Yes, Glory hates skinny jeans, but she also hates surprises. Too bad they just keep coming and not in a good way."

"Set in immediate post-Katrina New Orleans, ROYAL STREET was inspired by my own experiences as a New Orleanian when the hurricane struck in August 2005, and was begun as a way to work out some of my own lingering post-traumatic stress," says author Susanne Johnson. "I wanted to use the urban fantasy/paranormal genre to explore the very human issues of love and loss faced by those of us returning to a city, to homes, and often to family and friends that we either lost or came close to losing. It also gave me a chance to pay homage to the culture of New Orleans and some of the people who have called it home, so the pirate Jean Lafitte, voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, jazz great Louis Armstrong--they all show up as characters in the book. In the end, Royal Street became my love letter to New Orleans (except that, unlike my heroine, I am not a wizard!)."

The glamorous life of a writer is what helped inspire some parts of Marchella Burnard 's ENEMY MINE. "While I was writing the story, one of our cats fell ill. I rushed him to the vet and discovered he needed emergency surgery," says Burnard. "He came through just fine and we went home the same day. He required around the clock care. As unsexy as it was to have a drugged up cat in my lap oozing nasty wound-goo all over me while I wrote sex scenes, that was reality for ENEMY MINE. Come to think of it, that may be why there's bloodshed and a body count in that story...Anyway, the cat is 100% again. Since I'd taken the night shift for nursing duty, the story I finally turned in to my stellar editor at Berkley had some highly entertaining typos. I hope to heaven we caught all of those. . ."

I'm a big fan of firemen, and evidently so is author Jennifer Bernard. "A friend invited me to a firehouse dinner," Bernard says, "which she'd won at a bachelor auction. We had such a great time chatting with the firemen, listening to their stories about life in the firehouse, the jokes they play on each other, the fires they'd fought. I left with a whole new respect for firemen -- not just their heroic qualities, but the bond they share, their sense of fun, their protective instincts. I fell in love with the idea of a fireman romance hero. My starry-eyed admiration evolved into Captain Brody, hero of THE FIREMAN WHO LOVED ME. Writing him was pure deliciousness."

"In PET'S PLEASURE, I indulged my love of tall men," says author Zenobia Renquist. "Some women like hair, some like firm bodies, some go for the charming smile, but I always see a guy's height first. And since the men in PET'S PLEASURE are aliens, that meant I could make them as tall as I wanted. That came with it's own issues since I had a hard time imagining certain things, like where the heroine's head would be if she was sitting on the hero's lap or if it would be awkward for the hero to hold her with one arm and so on. To help me with visualization, I turned to artist manikins -- wooden articulating figures usually shaped like humans that artists position to help them draw different poses when a model is absent or unable to hold a certain pose for very long. I bought four of them. The tallest is twelve inches and the shortest is four inches. I figured I might need references for other books (there's a giant in my future) so I bought a variety, just in case."

"The inspiration for THE REASON IS YOU a story about returning home to face a hidden past—honestly," says author Sharla Lovelace, "was the hot vampire Mick St. John on the long gone "Moonlight" television show. If you ever watched Moonlight, think about it. Think of the blue-eyed, gorgeous vampire always in black, with the sexy smile and snarky wit, that was basically forbidden for Beth to be with. And there you have it. My Alex Stone."

"Being a military brat and former Navy myself, I wanted to write a book with a military hero ever since I was first published with Harlequin," says author Christyne Butler about her new book HAVING ADAM'S BABY, "exploring what happens when military life ends and a new life begins...literally!"

"I started thinking--What if someone went back to a high school reunion only to have every skeleton she'd shoved in her closet come tumbling out?" says author Sandy James about her new release RULES OF THE GAME. "Maddie Sawyer was born, and I started writing the story of her finding a new love as she exhumes the life she thought she'd buried so long ago."