Hollywood Awards and Books in February

It’s a big month for Hollywood. What’s the best thing about this year’s Oscar’s? So many of the Academy Award Best Picture nominees are based on books. WINTER’S BONE, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, 127 HOURS, TRUE GRIT and The Fighter was inspired by Bob Halloran’s book IRISH THUNDER: THE HARD LIFE AND TIMES OF MICKY WARD. Halloran served as a technical advisor on the film.

Now, as movie critic for the day job, I’m supposed to pick winners. But I’m
saving my picks for some very special events coming up. But honestly, two of my
favorite films of the year, "Black Swan" and "King’s Speech," weren’t based on
any source material. Still, it’s cool that so many of the nominees were. Go
printed word!

Let’s see what my friends have coming out this month:

I love me some Geralyn Dawson and her latest looks like a great one. "ANGEL’S REST is the first in Emily March's new Eternity Springs series about a very special mountain town where broken hearts find healing," Dawson says. "The town’s quilting bee, the Patchwork Angels, has inspired Emily to take her Angels beyond fiction and help a new nonprofit, Project Pink, Inc. fund college scholarships for children who have lost a parent to breast cancer. She invites all quilters who’d like to make a table runner for Project Pink to become a Patchwork Angel by contacting her at Angels@emilymarch.com ." "Since I conceived the idea of the Wild Ride to Love series and got to know a bit about the third sister, Jenna, I was dying to write her story," says author Susan Fox says of HIS, UNEXPECTEDLY. "She’s one of those people who comes across as totally happy with who she is—which, in her case, is a free spirited "butterfly" who doesn’t believe in settling in any place, at any job, or with any man. We all envy those people who seem to have life all figured out, don’t we? Except, often they really don’t; it’s just a façade, and sometimes they’re even deceiving themselves. I love "journey" stories, so I enjoyed setting Jenna on a road trip up the Pacific Coast with the one man who could not only give her mind-blowing sex, but who could really get under her skin and make her admit to, and come to terms with, her deepest fears and insecurities." Rebecca Zanetti has a new release, FATED, this month. "The book is about two characters figuring out how to fall in love and stay there," she says. "The plot includes a powerful vampire race being threatened by a tiny virus, and I wrote it because the idea of vampires and biological warfare intrigued me. The thought of the immortal, so dangerous a race, having to turn to human science to save themselves seemed interesting. The hero is a vampire leader and the heroine a scientist determined to go her own way. He, of course, is determined to keep her." Samhain author Jody Wallace says her latest, ONE THOUSAND KISSES, is a sequel to another book, SURVIVAL OF THE FAIREST. "In the first book I had a couple of off-hand mentions of a possibly magical cat," Wallace says. "Now some folks don’t this, but my cat, Meankitty (meankitty.com) is a lot more famous than I am, and used to be even more popular back before Twitter, Faceboook and LOLCats reformatted the Internet. Anyway, Meankitty was not happy with me at all that I merely mentioned a cat in the first book. In the new one, I was instructed to make sure that cats played a much larger role. So I have them saving the world – as they should." Julia Justiss is another one who has a sequel, SOCIETY'S MOST DISREPUTABLE GENTLEMAN, based on a secondary character in another book. Some people like to explore why bad things happen to good people, but she’s more interested in what happens to some of the bad people. "In this case, the hero, Greville Anders, is the brother of Joanna Anders Merrill, the heroine from the last book. Dismissed from her governess job after advances made by her charges' lecherous father, she used her last resources to journey to the small estate overseen by her brother, arriving at midnight to find that Greville had been fired for incompetence and possible embezzlement. Her story proceeded from there...but as I wrote through it, I kept wondering what happened to Greville. Where had he gone after being fired? As I wrote Joanna's story, I eventually figured out that though Greville had been neglectful, the embezzlement was perpetrated by the army subordinate who returned with him after Waterloo and became his farm manager. When Greville confronted the man for his misdeeds, he was knocked unconscious and sold to a press gang. As Joanna's story ends, Greville is out somewhere on the high seas. I knew I had to figure out and tell his story. In the serial nature of stories, there's a rebellious female cousin in Greville's book who may someday need to get her own story..." THE PRODIGAL BRIDE is the third book in Beth Cornelison's Bancroft Brides trilogy for Silhouette Romantic Suspense. Youngest sister and free-spirit Zoey wraps up the series. When writing book, Beth loosely based the scene where the heroine loses the hero's 5-year-old niece at the mall on personal experience. "There's nothing quite like the panic of turning around and discovering your child is missing," she says. "I found my son, who was two at the time, relatively quickly (he'd gotten tired of waiting for me to take him to the mall rides), but I was amazed at how fast he'd wandered away when I wasn't looking." Those across the pond should check out MR. BISHOP AND THE ACTRESS, which author Janet Mullany says won’t be available in the U.S. for a while.