Saralee Etter: Holiday Traditions

Ahh, the holidays! Every year at this time, we travel several hours for an extended-family potluck dinner. It's great to see the kids growing up, and catch up on everybody's lives. Someone brings a turkey or ham; Aunt Joan makes her famous deviled eggs, and there are lots of side-dishes. I like to bring dessert—my chocolate cream pie usually gets rave reviews, which is nice to hear, but there are never any leftovers to take home.

So let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Traditional Regency romances are light and sweet, just perfect for curling up in a comfy chair with a cup of tea or cocoa by your side.

My traditional Regency romance, A Limited Engagement, begins at a dinner table. Not a holiday meal, just a family-style dinner at home. In a few hours, Miranda Luce will make her debut on stage, and she's a little bit nervous. Little does she know that she will soon meet a man who will change the direction of her life!

Miranda joined her brother-in-law Edward's acting troupe when her father's death left her penniless. She is ready to embark upon her new life as an actress. But after her stage debut, Edward is taken to debtor's prison. Miranda and her sister Mary have to find a way to pay his debt, or the theater will be closed down and they will lose everything.

Lord Justin Devereux needs a fiancée right away, so his uncle will give him access to his inheritance. But he doesn't want to get married, especially not to his aunt's protégée, a predatory little beauty named
Lettice Tenley.

So he hires Miranda to play the role of his betrothed. They have it all worked out: After her one-night appearance, his "fiancee" will be conveniently called to a distant sickbed, never to be seen again. Miranda will be able to pay her brother-in-law's debt, and Devereux will be free to carry out his dream of buying land far away from the brittle, unsatisfying London social scene. But when Justin hired Miranda, neither of them expected to fall in love….

I hope you enjoy reading Justin and Miranda's story as much as I enjoyed writing it. And I hope your holidays are full of all the love and laughter that make the season memorable.

I've heard so many good holiday stories from my friends. One woman made her "special recipe" every year for twenty years, even though it was a nuisance to make and she didn't really like to eat it, either. Finally, she told her sister-in-law the awful truth.

Shocked, her sis-in-law replied, "But we only asked for it because we thought you liked it!"

What traditions do you enjoy in your family? What are your most memorable recipes and events of the season?

Saralee Etter

Stories so charming and disarming, it's alarming!

A Limited Engagement
Cerridwen Press - Cotillion Regency romance
ISBN 978-1419911590

Karina Bliss: Kids and Romance?

Kids and romance...do they mix?

When I began writing romance I swore I’d never put kids in one of my books. Kids and romance – oil and water.

Two things reinforced this view:

1. Motherhood (but isn’t the baby’s supposed to fit around our lifestyle?)

2. Reading books that shoehorned a kid into the story to show how caring the heroine or hero was without the hero or heroine actually having to do any work.

My son was three months old when I threw a book against the wall because the heroine had twin babies who went down like angels at six p.m. and slept twelve hours. After which she dressed in pre-baby clothes, served her new love – the hero – a three-course dinner by candlelight and engaged in passionate all-night sex. Yeah right!

Then I started writing and a kid sneaked into my first book, forcing my hero to stop being cool and urbane and demonstrate a little ineptness, a little uncertainty. Dragged my hero (and me) out of our comfort zone.

In my next romance, my hero was very good with kids. In fact he had such a special bond with his former girlfriend’s child (wait a minute, what’s a kid doing in this book?) that it really hurt him to do the right thing and encourage the boy’s relationship with his real father. The heroine fell in love with him. So did I.

Determined to stop the tide I pulled back on the kid thing in the third book - after all, it was a very sexy premise - but somehow a smart baby and a sharp-tongued delinquent sneaked in anyway.

This book I stopped fighting my destiny and wrote Second-Chance Family (Superromance November 08) - A guy inherits custody of three kids with his ex wife. Yep, three. You can read an excerpt on my website.

And I made the kids real (in fact I stole some of my son’s, nieces and nephews quirks and best lines). And I made the kids sad and funny and needy in a way that forced my hero and heroine to dig deeper, hurt more, love more and make sacrifices. Be heroic in a very real and powerful way. Pretty much like good parents do all the time. I made these two really earned their happy-ever-after.

So now I’m begrudgingly admitting that sometimes kids can work in a romance.

What’s your view?

Karina Bliss

Melissa MacNeal: Beach Lover

Put me on a deserted stretch of beach, and I don't have to die to go to heaven. Most likely, it'll be daybreak–or, as in this photo taken at Hug Point, north of Manzanita, or we pulled over to take in the view and loved it so much we decided to look at homes here.

Meanwhile, I was already conjuring an idea that became a series proposal: the Oregon shore became the setting for a whole cast of characters who augment their psychic/spiritual gifts by living in a fictional town near the sea.

Atmosphere–the way a place makes you feel–can influence your life and writing in big ways!

This isn't the first time I've been so affected by a sense of place. Back when we vacationed in Colorado a lot, it was a chance drive along the winding, unpaved Phantom Canyon road that inspired my very first published novel. Even then, in the late '80's, I realized that "working vacations" were my best inspiration for stories: touring historic homes in Hannibal inspired a book, and digging around in local museum bookstores everywhere I go has provided more fascinating research than I'll ever be able to use in my writing lifetime.

But it's being there that starts the story rolling in my mind. It was wandering the side streets the French Quarter in New Orleans, musing about what went on in those third-story apartments over the dilapidated buildings, that led me to write one of my Black Lace books.

Sitting in the bow of a fishing boat, off the map in Canada on a river so clear we could see the fish all the way to the bottom, while eagles soared over the cliffs around us, I suddenly knew this was where the hero of my WIP had to go to escape the U.S. marshals who were tailing him. Changed the whole last half of the book–but it was the right thing to do!

Several of my contemporary erotic novels take place on cruise ships or exotic islands, inspired by those vacations–and by private tours of the ships' jails, morgues and captains' quarters, where I was invited as an honored guest because I was a writer! Talk about a good feeling!

It occurs to me that I've lived in mid-Missouri for more than twenty years and have yet to set a book anywhere near home…so I guess I'll keep traveling for my story inspiration! We leave for the Oregon coast in a week. Already I hear the steady undercurrent of the waves and feel the damp mist of those forests on my face, and I'm eagerly anticipating the new images and sensations that will lead me to more stories! Maybe to a second home!

Tough job, but someone's gotta do it.
Melissa MacNeal

Julie Miller says "Happy Holidays!"

In all my years as an author--and I just finished #36, so I've been doing this for a while--I've never written a Christmas story before. But I finally got that opportunity with this month's release, Kansas City Christmas. It's the fourth and final book in my bestselling Precinct: Brotherhood of the Badge miniseries for Harlequin Intrigue. I've always wanted to do a story set in Kansas City at Christmas time because it's such a beautiful city at that time of year--let me tell you, the folks down on the Plaza have known for decades about how to decorate up a fancy party for the holidays.

I'm sharing some pictures from the Plaza area, just south of downtown Kansas City. The J.C. Nichols Plaza was one of the very first shopping "mall" districts in the U.S., if not the first. It is designed with striking Mediterranean style architecture, and bears a resemblance to Paris, France with its many public fountains, bridges, walkways, sculptures and works of art. You'll find many nationally and internationally famous stores there, as well as some classy boutiques and specialty shops. Plus, it's a
Mecca for entertainment, playing home to theaters and a wide variety of restaurants from top notch elegance to eat with your fingers casual dining--including, imho, the best barbecue place on the planet!

While it's truly a beautiful city any time of the year, come the holidays, Kansas City does it up right. With well over a million lights, the Plaza is lit up every year on Thanksgiving evening, giving the place an ethereal holidy glow. Every rooftop and and building is lit up with a string of lights (that stay up year round--whew! maintenance is time-consuming enough--can you imagine that project of taking down and putting up that many lights every year?). The lights then are on every night throughout the holidays. Stores stay open late and, of course, you can enjoy the nightlife of entertainment, or take carriage rides (they even have a Cinderella pumpkin carriage for the most romantic of you). You can enjoy it simply by bundling up and walking the wide sidewalks and checking out the amazing store window displays, then step inside for a hot toddy or cup of cocoa. Yum.

So, like I said, Kansas City Christmas is my first Christmas themed novel of romantic suspense. And, because the Plaza and the lights are so much a part of what I associate with the season, I made a point of having my characters, Det. Edward Rochester Kincaid and M.E. Dr. Holly Masterson, stop down on the Plaza. Edward has a real thing against Christmas because of traumatic events in his life--he's a dark and tortured hero if you like the type. Holly, on the other hand, sees Christmas as a way to celebrate life and honor her family (she's endured some trauma, too). This isn't just a story about finally catching the bad guys and healing a wounded family, it's about discovering the power of love and the strength it sometimes takes to love again.

In my family, besides the Plaza, Christmas decorations are a big deal. My mother has a Santa Claus room, decorated for Christmas year round with just about every type of Santa and Christmas ornament--including some rare antiques and handmade ones from kids and grandkids. My hubby has a Star Trek tree. As long as we've been married, his November birthday has been easy to buy for--he wants whatever Star Trek ornament Hallmark is releasing that year. Now we've gotten so many space ships and Tribbles and captains, that we had to get him a tree of his own. Growing up, too, I was allergic to pines and other Christmas trees, so my dad built a Scandinavian cross-bar tree with hooks for all the ornaments. My mom and brothers and I decorated it with paint and ribbon, and over the years it has truly become a work of art. It stays up in the Santa Claus room year-round, too. It'd be sort of like taking down all those Plaza lights if we tried to change it.

So what do holiday decorations mean to you? Autumn colors at Thanksgiving? Lights at Hanukkah? Colorful presents under the tree? A special collection of ornaments? A neighborhood competition to see who can use the most wattage and electricity? A special town or neighborhood?

I hope you enjoy Kansas City Christmas and the rest of my Brotherhood of the Badge books from Harlequin. And I hope you have a safe and wonderful holiday season, decorated just the way you like it!

Best wishes,
Julie Miller

Coming soon:
Out of Control, Harlequin Blaze, April 2009

Christmas--in 3-Part Harmony- Justiss, Burrows and Brisbin

My Favorite Christmas Carol by Terri Brisbin

I tend to like the old traditional carols best. “Silent Night” sung during Midnight Mass always gives me the chills. “O Holy Night” does the same thing. I can even remember standing on stage, in the third row (because I was tall for my age), in my berry-red skirt and white blouse during the fifth grade Christmas play singing harmony in “O Holy Night” and just feeling the excitement and splendor of the Season.

I still love that carol, especially Josh Groban’s version of it, but. . . a little confession here….I also like the South Park version of it! Yes!! It’s terrible but I laugh all the way through it as Cartman tries to sing the right words and his ‘friends’ shock him when he doesn’t. I also like “A Christmas Wrapping” by the Waitresses, “Christmas Eve in Sarajevo”, “Wish Liszt” and “Wizards in Winter” by TransSiberian Orchestra. And pretty much anything on a Wyndham Hill Christmas collection, especially music by Nightnoise.

So, yes, I’m torn between traditional and modern. But one place and event when those two come together is in Walt Disney World at Christmastime. Every year, they present the “Candlelight Procession” in Epcot and it includes professional singers and musicians as well as high school and college choirs. The process onto the stage and are led through the story of the Nativity by a celebrity narrator and the show includes all the best traditional carols as well as a few modern ones, too. The most rousing song in the show is an old song called “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy” and it was made even better when I watched the sign language interpreter expressing the song in wonderful gestures and smiles.

If you want to take a peek, here’s a link to a video of it on YouTube. What’s your favorite Christmas or Holiday song? Traditional or modern?

No matter which, I hope you enjoy it as you celebrate this coming Holiday Season!

Terri Brisbin

Christmas--in 3-Part Harmony- Justiss, Burrows and Brisbin

Julia Justiss: Thoughts on a Carol

The theme of my Christmas story is miracles—the original title was “Merry’s Christmas Miracle”—though this refers not so much to supernatural happenings as to having something wondrous occur long past the time when one has given up all hope of it. Meredyth Wellingford, who lost her chance to wed when her fiancé was killed in India, believes it impossible to find again a love like the one she once knew. But as all true romantics know, miracles do happen—especially at Christmastime!

I have to admit, the real reason my favorite carol is my favorite is because it has beautiful harmony and a wonderful alto line. Having sung in choirs since I was six years old (and thus probably holding the world record for the number of “d”s sung in a lifetime—fellow altos, you know the note I mean) I was thrilled to discover the interwoven melodies in the old German carol, “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.”

Incidentally, the song just happens to feature miracles, beginning with a “floweret bright” blooming “amid the cold of winter.” (Yes, I’m a passionate gardener too.) Even non-gardeners know roses do not bloom in the snow, yet the lyricist has us believe that God’s love allowed the rose, Mary—a virgin no less, another miracle--to bear a midwinter child who would “from Sin and Death now save us/and share our every load.”

I find unison melodies boring, preferring the complexity of interwoven chords. Which probably explains why secondary characters are so important in my stories; I like my heroes and heroines to reveal themselves not just in relationship to each other, but by interacting with a range of people who add richness and depth to their character.

Love, human as well as divine, truly is a miracle that can help us bear all our burdens, illuminate our lives with joy and spur us to acts of unselfish heroism of which we would never have believed ourselves capable. May you find and cherish such miracles at Christmas and always!

Julia Justiss

Christmas--in 3-Part Harmony- Justiss, Burrows and Brisbin

Annie Burrows's Favourite Christmas Carol

One of the things I like best about Christmas is singing all the seasonal hymns of celebration that you just don’t get to hear at any other time of the year.

I love ones that evoke the weather, such as “In the Bleak Midwinter”, even though I suspect it is a highly inaccurate depiction of the nativity. Do they have snow in winter in Bethlehem?

I love the slightly bizarre tale of “Good King Wenceslas” and his hapless little page boy, being dragged out in all that snow to deliver food and wine to “yonder peasant”. At the church I used to go to when I was little, the congregation always used to split into parts, with the men taking the words of Wenceslas, and the ladies and children the little page boy.
But my all time favourite is “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!” John and Charles Wesley, who headed a great revival in England, made sure that they encapsulated the full gospel in the words of that hymn. I sometimes wonder why it is never sung at any other time of the year, but is, inexorably associated with Christmas time.

The tune itself is stirring, particularly when you get to the verse where you can have a go at singing the descant part. (In my case, to the detriment of anyone’s ears in the near vicinity.) And so it was, that when I was asked to write a story to go into a Christmas themed anthology, I found myself wandering round the house, singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” with great gusto. Well, while everyone else was out, anyway, so that they could not complain.

And the line that particularly inspired me was, “God and sinners reconciled.” I soon found myself wanting to write a story about reconciliation, and second chances.

That, to me, is what is at the heart of what people truly celebrate at Christmas, be it in a cottage in Regency England, or now, in the glitzy twenty-first century.

Annie Burrows

Bonnie Vanak: Oh those uber Alpha weres...

My November Nocturne, Enemy Lover, is true shifter book. It shifted so many times while writing it that some days I felt like a werewolf clawing at the keyboard. Or a floating fairy flying the story to a new stratosphere. You see, I started out creating Jamie, the heroine, as a flying fairy. I wanted her to be pixy-like, a kind of Super Fairy. That didn't work out. So instead Iendowed her with superpowers she doesn't know she has until halfway through the book. She can teleport, play "floater basketball," and has the power of telekinesis. In one scene in the French Quarter, she physically hurls Damian, the hero, and a rival werewolf into the air to prevent them from killing each other.

Flying werewolves! It fit, and seemed cooler than flying monkeys. Enemy Lover pairs an old-fashioned, powerful Alpha Draicon werewolf with a young, hip woman who is his very reluctant destined mate, Damian is a protective, aggressive Alpha who would give his life for his pack and especially for Jamie, his mate. He's sexy and dynamic, but as overpowering as he is, she is equally strong. Jamie tried killing Damian with a poison kiss because she believes he murdered her brother. She also happens to be a computer geek who is into World of Warcraft and she's dying of a spell turning her into stone. Damian is faced with searching through New Orleans to find an ancient book of magick to save her life, figuring out what Jamie means when she calls him an "uber Alpha" and fighting the Morphs, the enemy that want them both dead. Then he finds out she's got a whole boatload full of psi powers he's never before encountered. What's an Alpha to do, let alone an "uber" Alpha?

When I created the Draicon werewolves for my first Nocturne, The Empath, I decided to have them search for their destined mates, who contained the missing half of their magick. They needed an enemy to fight, so I invented the Morphs, former Draicon who turned evil by killing a relative to gain power. Morphs can shapeshift into any animal or insect form. In Enemy Lover, they shift into a swarm of hornets to attack Jamie and Damian.

But for Enemy Lover, I wanted the Draicon to have a more powerful weapon in the Morph war. Jamie possesses the ability to become that weapon, which is ironic because she regards all Draicon as her enemy, especially Damian. Damian must convince her to trust him, and gently coax her into becoming his lover and his mate. It's a challenge he never anticipated, especially when he discovers she can turn him into a flying werewolf. Jamie gradually turns to him, enlisting his help in harnessing the magick she's longed for all her life. Yet the use of her new powers expedites the stone spell, changing Jamie's internal organs into granite and turning her hair and nails gray. Damian and Jamie must race against time to find the magick book before Jamie is forever turned into stone.

Each of my Nocturne books can be read alone, even though they are connected.

I hope you enjoy Damian and Jamie's story of courage, strength and how two strong-willed individuals learn to set aside the past to forge new beginnings formed from love and understanding. You can read an excerpt of Enemy Lover on my website.

Happy reading!

P.S. An interesting bit of trivia — part of Enemy Lover was written on location in the French Quarter at the Hotel Provincial. The hotel, a former Confederate hospital, was recently named one of the top ten best haunted hotels by AOL Travel. Maids have reported seeing bloodstained sheets appear and vanish. I didn't see any ghosts, bloodstained sheets, or even flying werewolves while staying there. However, I did have a great view of the Ursuline Convent from the bathroom window. The convent is rumored to be haunted as well. That particular ghost story inspired a funny scene in Enemy Lover.

Kathleen Long: The Power of Hope

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the idea of hope. Perhaps it's the recent election and the atmosphere of change hanging in the air, perhaps it's the way I look toward each day with a big smile thanks to my toddler daughter and her views on the world. To her, every day is full of new and wonderful experiences. Every day is full of hope.

Perhaps I've been thinking about hope because I write romance and let's face it, romance is full of hope. And not just the promise of hope, but the promise of a happily ever after.

After all, what other genre guarantees that at the end of each book the reader will walk away with a sigh, a smile and the knowledge that true love conquers all?

As a writer, hope is the theme that carries through whatever I'm working on, be that straight romance, romantic suspense or romantic comedy. Hope lights my creative writing fires and keeps me coming back to my stories again and again. As a reader, hope keeps me turning page after page, often into the early morning hours.

No matter how scarred, how desperate or how wounded a character might be, there's hope things will get better, mysteries will be solved and hearts will be healed. There's hope love will conquer all, and even the most stubborn of heroes or heroines will find redemption and wholeness in loving another.

We may differ in the things that ignite our hopes and keep our hopes alive, but I'd venture to say we all agree that hope is one of the things—if not the main thing—that drives us forward. Hope is the thing that leads and inspires our thoughts, our actions and our dreams.

One of my favorite quotes follows:

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer." –Albert Camus

People often ask me when I started writing and why. The short answer is that I started writing when I was in second grade and never stopped. Yet, I didn't get serious about my writing until the summer of 2001. It was then that I knew I had to write.

My transforming moment came several months after our first daughter died. I picked up a book—a romance—by Barbara Delinsky. For the first time in a very long time, I was transported away from my broken heart. My grief fell away. I lost myself in the pages of that book and found a wonderful, safe escape.

I found hope.

I vowed then and there that if my writing might someday provide a similar escape for a reader, I had to try. Hope, after all, is an incredible thing to find between the covers of a book.

These days I can point to a spot in each of my books where a character realizes there's hope, be it hope for the future, hope for survival or hope for true love. In my newest release, Christmas Confessions, hope pervades every aspect of story and characterization.

My heroine, Abby Conroy, hopes she can find a way to ease her guilt through her work at her confession site, Don't Say a Word. Yet when a killer uses her site to confess his crimes, her hope becomes focused on uncovering the truth, on trusting the hero, on surviving.

Abby realized her only hope of survival now was a Christmas miracle…named Jack.

(Christmas Confessions, Harlequin Intrigue, November 2008)

For my hero, Jack Grant, hope died years earlier with the brutal murder of his sister and the killer's acquittal. Now, with the anonymously-made confessions, Jack has hope of finding justice and closure, not just for himself but also for the families of four other victims. Yet as the story progresses, Jack's hope shifts from the past to the present, narrowing to the hope of saving Abby, no matter the cost.

He was a brother who had lost a sister, a detective who wanted justice, and a man who wanted the woman he loved to live to see the years of life ahead of her.

For them both, the hope of love and trust and healing hovers at the edge of every move they make, every look they share, every moment they spend together.

She still held on to hope Jack might show up on her doorstep one day. For Abby, Jack Grant had unlocked far more than a case. He'd unlocked her heart.

That's the beauty of romance. The power of hope. The promise of a happy ending.

Just for fun, share what you're reading now. What genre gives you your favorite escape? And what hopes keep you turning the pages late into the night?

Until next time, happy reading!

Kathleen Long
Christmas Confessions
"...a first-class mystery with a wickedly surprising ending."
-RTBookReviews

Laura Hayden: I'm not Maggie Shayne

Nope, not in my wildest dreams am I Maggie Shayne, no matter how much I might like to be. Maggie had a slight scheduling problem so I'm stepping in to say that we'll be rescheduling her blog shortly.

In the meanwhile, hey, how about those politics? How about that Presidential election? Heady stuff, eh? That's about as political as I'll get because I don't do politics.

Well, actually I do. I do fictional politics. My "America the Beautiful" series kicked off in March 2008 with the titular book, America The Beautiful. What if a woman was running for President? No, not her. The candidate I'm talking about is Emily Benton.

Emily's been groomed for the office since birth, raised in a powerful political family. She's served in a series of positions, escalating in power and the Presidency is the next natural step. Her rise in power is chronicled by her best friend, campaign director and eventual White House Chief of Staff, Kathryn "Kate" Rosen.

Kate's biggest problem is that she and Emily, although great friends and allies, have differing values. Kate is a woman of faith and Emily? She believes in herself and that's pretty much all. In the first book, when the campaign takes a soiled turn, Kate has to determine just how far will she go to help put her friend in office. How far is too far?

The next book in the series, Red, White and Blue, will come out this next March and continues the saga of Emily Benton's bid for the Presidency, picking up on election night and continuing for the first 100 days of office.

It's interesting, writing a book about an election during an election year. Each book covers a period of political time that currently exists. In the first book, the bulk of the book took place during the primaries, the national conventions and then the head-to-head race for the office. To be true to the process, I had to do extensive research and literally create a Presidential campaign from the ground floor up. The upcoming book covers the election, the flurry of pre-inauguration work, and the first few months in office as America and the world learns more about their President. In this book, I had to create the political machinery around a newly installed President.

All of this forms the framework I used to examine the relationship of friendship, faith and family and how they intersect.

I'm running a contest on my website. Read the excerpt and answer the question. As an added bonus, if you add a comment here, I'll include you in the contest twice and double your chances of winning.

Maggie Jagger's Regency Debut

Every Midnight is my first book. I knew this book was odd, strange, to say the least. It shows the Regency world as it really was, with a syphilis epidemic raging.

Dare I say it is comedic in tone? Surely not! Who would dare write funny things about that? The humor is in the voice and the attitudes of the characters--or only in the mind of the author. Lizzie is afraid of catching syphilis because her mother died of the disease. She will do anything to make sure the man she is being forced to marry does not do wicked things with harlots and return to infect her. She insists on making a pact with him. Her offer of sex once a month is soundly rejected.

Lizzie held her head high and lied like a Felmont. “I shall never marry you if you insist on a mistress. As for your appetite for sin, I might consent to endure it occasionally. Once a month is all I offer. Surely you can live with that--it isn’t as if you find me the least bit attractive.”

Lizzie saw him try to quell his laughter as he signaled his refusal of her offer.

She slid into her chair before she spoke again. “Then once a week, if you are going to insist on being depraved.”

Poor Lizzie has to settle for every midnight, and she must pretend to love him during the day. Every midnight came back to haunt me as I wrote the book. Like Lizzie, I would cry, it can’t be midnight again! I began to wish she had insisted on once a year. The only person happy was the hero, who appeared behind my chair as I typed to remind me it was almost midnight. It made me very conscious that every day had to be filled with action and seduction, and some strange funny bits, before the next midnight loomed.

To my surprise, Every Midnight became a fictionwise.com bestseller. My publisher, New Concepts Publishing brought it out in print in October. I am thrilled to find my odd story about syphilis has been bought by so many readers. I hope they enjoyed it and didn’t just buy it to find out how weird I am.

My next book is a medieval called, Perfect Obedience. It will be a December release from New Concepts Publishing. I can only hope that the artist took no notice of any of my suggestions for the cover. To reassure the nervous reader, there is absolutely no mention of syphilis in Perfect Obedience. I am sure a little mild bondage is perfectly acceptable, isn’t it?

I return to the Regency for a few more books, with some characters from Every Midnight having stories of their own. If you have read Every Midnight--yes, I am writing about Angel and how he falls in love, and if he manages to lose his virginity.

Happy Reading, Maggie

Mallory Kane says: Reunions can be deadly.

I have a book coming out in December from Harlequin Intrigue called High School Reunion. Since it's an Intrigue, the tag line reads, naturally, Reunions can be deadly.

That tag line has also been my attitude about reunions. I swore years ago that I'd never attend my high school reunion. My recollections of high school are of embarrassment, tears, longings, frustrations...you get the idea. I was the geek, the bespectacled bookworm, the gawky late-bloomer.

Oddly enough, so was Laurel, my heroine in High School Reunion. Laurel became a forensic specialist with the FBI. An old friend tries to talk her into returning to her home town for her tenth year reunion. She refuses--until a snapshot from graduation night makes her think a student who supposedly committed suicide that night was actually murdered.

Laurel goes to the reunion, figures out what really happened, nearly gets herself killed in the process, and finds happily ever after with her high school crush, who's now the Police Chief.

I went to my reunion, had a much better time than I ever thought I would, renewed some friendships, and for a brief moment, was a celebrity, because I write books. Oh, and didn't solve a single murder.

My friends are all over the map on their opinions of reunions. I have friends who were the cheerleaders, who dated the football captain, were class favorites. And I have friends who were more painfully shy than I was, and that's saying something. But at my reunion, I discovered that I had a lot more friends in high school than I remembered having.

It was hard for me to go to that reunion, but I'm glad I did. Who out there gets hives at the very mention of revisiting high school days? And who thought high school was the best time ever?

Mallory Kane  (Visit her MySpace page.)
     Available now: Solving The Mysterious Stranger
     Coming in December: High School Reunion 

Barbara Bretton asks: Do you believe in ghosts?

I think I do but until one of them taps me on the shoulder and says hello I can't say for sure. Over the years I've gone out of my way to put myself in the path of random ghosts but so far to no avail. Haunted inns, ghost walks up in Maine, hanging around old houses that are supposedly riddled with ectoplasmic activity. You name it, I tried it without so much as a cold chill or a tiny whisper in my ear.

I open myself up to the possibility. I clear my mind. (Not that hard to do . . . ) I try to project the image of a congenial hostess, eager to show the spirits that, horror movies notwithstanding, we really can all get along just fine. But nothing happens. Nobody appears. No wraithlike woman in flowing white garments. No angry guy with a machete. Just me and my belief that sooner or later somebody from the other world is going to take pity on me and drop by to say hello.

Now before you think I'm totally crazy, let me give you a little background information: my mother was psychic. Not foretell-the-end-of-the-world psychic or 1-888-I'LL-MAKE-MONEY-OFF-THIS psychic. Just the everyday, scare-the-pants-off-her-daughter kind. She knew things she shouldn't have known, saw things nobody could have seen, predicted family deaths that were so random and unexpected as to be downright shocking. Maybe because I grew up with it, I never gave it much thought but lately I've been thinking a lot about something that happened to her and to her father before her not long before they died.

My grandfather lived 100 years, the last eight of them blind. About ten days before he died, he told us that a woman had come by the hospital to visit him. A plump, happy woman in a bright blue dress who talked with him, and laughed, and had a dimple in her right cheek. She said she'd be with him through it all. Which was just great except Grandpa shouldn't have been able to see that bright blue dress or that dimple. My grandfather was sharp right up until the end and when we asked, "How is that possible?" he shrugged and replied, "I don't know, but it happened." And, to be honest, I believe it did.

Three years later my mother dreamed that a big, round woman in a bright blue dress came into the bedroom she shared with my father, sat down in the rocking chair near the window, and started to knit. She had a sweet face, a happy laugh, and a dimple in her right cheek. The dream didn't unnerve me until my mother told me about the time her dead paternal grandmother came to visit her. She wore a bright blue dress and (you guessed it) liked to knit.

None of which is all that scary except for the fact that my mother died three months after that second visit, less than forty-five days after a cancer diagnosis we never saw coming.

Ghostly visits? Precognitive dreams? I don't have any answers. I wish I did. All I can say is beware knitters in blue dresses.

Have you ever seen a ghost? Do you believe they're out there? I'd love to know.

Barbara Bretton
CASTING SPELLS – on sale now!

Jessica Andersen says: Make every mistake going forward

Greetings, Noveltalkers! This is bestselling Harlequin Intrigue and Maya 2012 doomsday paranormal author Jessica Andersen. Thanks so much for spending a few minutes with me. Here in the US of A, it's voting day… so let's get out there and ROCK the VOTE!

That being said, I live in a household of politics divided, and would thus rather not talk about the issues of the day. Instead, I'd like to talk about moving forward, whether it be in writing or in life. My motto? Make every mistake going forward.

I'm a New Englander, which by definition means I drive way too much in the snow. Which means slipping, sliding and skidding, sometimes on the edge of control. What do you do then?

Well, let me tell you from experience that 'hit the brakes' usually isn't a great answer. You're way better off steering into the inertia, and either pausing a second… or hitting the gas. If you hit the gas, you might go flying off the road, you might break the skid and continue on your way, or you might do something in between those two extremes. But if you hit the brakes, you're probably going to wind up spinning in place.

Personally, I'd rather make a mistake going forward than keep spinning my wheels, going nowhere. When I'm faced with a choice, whether in my writing career or my life, I try to make the active decision. It's not always the right choice, but it's a choice, dang it.

Jonah Fairfax and Chelsea Swan, the protagonists in my latest Intrigue, Manhunt in the Wild West (Harlequin Intrigue 10/09), make mistakes in their quest to prove Fax's innocence and foil a horrifying terror plot in Bear Claw Creek, Colorado. . . but they make each of those mistakes going forward, trying new things and striving to change things around them.

So today, how about you challenge yourself, and take the risk of making a mistake while going forward. And if you feel like it, let me know how it goes. Or tell me about a recent forward-moving decision that worked…or didn't. Tell me--how did you hit the gas and power your way out of a skid?

Jessica Andersen
Dawnkeepers, coming in January from Signet Eclipse
Nightkeepers & Manhunt in the Wild West (both available now)

The Daring, Adventurous Gail Barrett

I like to think of myself as a daring, adventurous person, someone who can travel to exotic places and stare down danger -- much like the heroines of my books. To be honest, though, I’m really not that brave. I’m more at home sitting with my dog in front of my computer than tramping through jungles or other primitive lands. And I never start a day without drinking my favorite coffee, taking a long, hot shower, and washing and drying my hair.
So you can imagine my family’s reaction when I announced that I was heading to Peru to research the second book of my Crusaders miniseries, To Protect a Princess. They were even more stunned to learn that I wasn’t taking a tour or sticking to the main tourist destinations. I was joining a group of medical missionaries and heading into the remote villages high in the Andes Mountains. Despite my family’s incredulity, I got my vaccinations and medication for altitude sickness, packed two-weeks’ worth of clothing and toilet paper into one small athletic bag (and yes, the travel hairdryer fit!), and off I went.

First, the negatives: As soon as we flew into our base town at 13,000 ft., I got altitude sickness, a case so bad my lips turned blue and my blood oxygen dropped to 71%. All the Diamox and coca tea in the world didn’t help. Unlike one of the doctors in our group, I escaped hospitalization (barely), but for the entire time I was in Peru, I staggered around, out of breath and suffering badly. I also got the dreaded Montezuma’s revenge (or whatever they call it in Peru), which kept me sidelined the day we visited Machu Picchu. In fact, I lost ten pounds on the trip. Add to that the cold, dribbling showers, freezing temperatures, brutal high-altitude sun, the joy of wearing the same clothes for days on end... Well, let’s just say this was not exactly Club Med.

The positives: Oh. My. God. Mud huts and alpacas. Sheer mountain drops and ancient ruins. Women wearing bowler hats, babies strapped to their backs with blankets, and multiple layers of skirts. Hundreds of types of potatoes. Pigs and sheep in the streets. Laughing children with those darling ruddy cheeks. Villages so remote the people didn’t even speak Spanish.

It was the trip of a lifetime. Not only did I get tons of realistic details for my story, but I met an amazing group of medical professionals who truly could be the heroes or heroines of my books.

And despite -- or maybe because of -- the hardships, I’d love to go back. I discovered that I like visiting off-beat places. I like stretching myself, yanking myself out of my comfort zone, seeing how people in other countries live. I like feeling that I’ve helped someone and done some good in the world. And maybe I’m not as adventurous and stalwart as my heroines are, but I like knowing that I can live simply for awhile -- even if I did cart a hairdryer through the Andes.

So what about you -- have you ever roughed it on a trip? Would you like to go on a trip like this, and if so, what would be the one thing you couldn’t do without? Where would you like to go?

If you’d like to see photos of my trip and learn more about To Protect a Princess, the book that launched this life-changing journey (out right now!), please visit my website.