I emerged from my winter hibernation to attend ConDFW in a snowy Dallas the weekend of February 12 through 14. I didn’t come across any late-breaking or astonishing publishing news or book industry gossip, but it’s always fun to get together with other authors and talk about our work. I ended up as an emergency fill-in on the Fantastic Realms: Trends in Fantasy panel. The thing about trends is that they can change in a heartbeat, so it’s not something aspiring writers can really look at and plan their careers around. By the time you get that book written and submitted, the trend will have changed. It does seem like the dark, edgy urban fantasy that has a lot in common with paranormal romance is currently dominating the market — you know, those books with tough-looking women in black leather holding big weapons on the covers (though now the women are more likely to be looking at you instead of keeping their backs turned). But who knows what will start striking editors’ fancies next. One difficulty in spotting trends is that the books may be shelved all over the store. With blended genres, books can fall into science fiction/fantasy, mystery,…

Murder 101 Mystery #3November 2009On Sale: November 3, 2009Featuring: Alison; Bobby Crawford352 pages ISBN: 0312376766EAN: 9780312376765Mass Market Paperback$6.99 Mystery Amateur Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Quick Studyby Maggie Barbieri She thought that dating a good-looking cop would be exciting and involve lots of riding around in cruisers and putting away sleazy crooks. So why hasn’t NYPD officer Bobby Crawford ever invited English professor Alison on any high-speed car chases or stakeouts? Life on the sleepy college campus just north of Manhattan may not have changed all that much with Alison’s new romance. But things are about to heat up when an man named Hernan Escalante asks Alison for a favor: Can she help locate his nephew, an illegal Ecuadorian immigrant named Jose, who has mysteriously gone missing? Always up for a challenge, Alison agrees to help Hernan—and begins her investigation by asking Bobby for some expert advice. Turns out Bobby already knows about what happened to Jose, since he’s the one who pulled his corpse out of the Hudson River a few days earlier. With this case, it seems Alison’s still got a lot to learn… Excerpt “I don’t know who you are, but I love you!” The voice was deep,…

About a week ago I experienced winter in a way that I haven’t had to since we moved to Texas. Our area had a record snowfall of 12.5 inches, and while I realize that’s nothing compared to the rest of the country, for Dallas it’s paralyzing. All that winter weather got me to thinking about books with winter or some other season in the title. Off to Fresh Fiction I went searching, and found The Edge of Winter by Luanne Rice. I read this when it first came out and was unfortunately less than impressed, but Luanne Rice is still one of my must read authors, and I have several favorites by her including Cloud Nine which is what my friends call a weepy read…so if you decide to read it have the Kleenex handy. The opposite of winter is summer…so I went searching for titles that have summer in them, and was amazed at how many there were, and that I needed a list to remind me of one of my favorite books, The Summerhouse by Jude Devereaux When I read this book it spoke to me on so many different levels, and if I were a keeper it…