Music is one of the keys I use to unlock the heart of a character. I don’t listen to music when I write, but when I’m driving or cooking the tunes are always cranked. There are times when the melody and the song’s emotions strike a cord that reminds me of one of my characters. I can’t explain why a song works, but I know when it does. Eva Rayburn, my heroine in SENSELESS was a tough character to get to know. In SENSELESS she is closed and guarded and only reveals herself to the hero and others in the book very carefully. Without even realizing it, I started to notice songs that were “hers.” Songs and playlists are so personal and so I decided to create a playlist for Eva. After I bought the songs, I made my own CD and when I was having trouble with an Eva scene, I’d listen to the CD. The songs unlocked emotions I couldn’t articulate at first. But once I felt the emotions through the songs, I could create the right scene for Eva. So what were the songs that caught my attention while I was writing SENSELESS? Eva’s Playlist Second Chance…

It’s a new year and I don’t know about you but I’ve had to increase my book budget to handle all the cool releases coming out this year. Even with grad school I have a goal to read at least three books a month that are non-school related. For me, with my day job as a TV and Film critic, books are my last escape. And I noticed last year that I was lucky if I read a book a month. That’s crazy. We have some great releases from some of my pals this month so let’s get going… Writing THE PERFECT DISH was an exercise in rebellion for author Kristen Painter, who is one of my favorite people in the world. “At the time, the older heroine, younger man scenario just wasn’t being done,” Painter says. “In fact, I was told not to write it that way because it wasn’t marketable, but I’m stubborn and telling me not to do something rarely works. I also felt like a heroine of forty-four wasn’t in any way old – I know a lot of women who are forty and older that are amazing in every way. Why don’t those women deserve…

December 2010 On Sale: December 1, 2010 Featuring: Abby Donovan; Mark Baynard 224 pages ISBN: 1439188157 EAN: 9781439188156 Trade Size $15.00 Add to Wish List Women’s Fiction Contemporary, Romance Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros absolutely dazzles in this quick-witted, laugh-out-loud funny, and highly moving love story that will set readers’ hearts atwitter. Abigail Donovan has a lot of stuff she should be doing. Namely writing her next novel. A bestselling author who is still recovering from a near Pulitzer Prize win and the heady success that follows Oprah’s stamp of approval, she is stuck at Chapter Five and losing confidence daily. But when her publicist signs her up for a Twitter account, she’s intrigued. What’s all the fuss? Taken under the wing of one of her Twitter followers, “MarkBaynard”—a quick witted, quick-typing professor on sabbatical—Abby finds it easy to put words out into the world 140 characters at a time. And once she gets a handle on tweets, retweets, direct messages, hashtags, and trends, she starts to feel unblocked in writing and in life. After all, why should she be spending hours in her apartment staring at her TweetDeck…

Thank you so much for having me today to discuss FATAL JUSTICE, book 2 in my new Fatal Series. I thought it would be fun to talk about some of the ups and downs of writing a series featuring the same hero and heroine in every book. Each time I come up against how really difficult it can be to write the same characters book after book, I remind myself I only have one person to blame for these challenges: ME! After all, it was my big idea to write a romantic suspense series featuring the same couple in every book. Luckily, with three books written, a novella under way and a fourth full-length book contracted, I still love Sam and Nick, my D.C. homicide detective and U.S. Senator who are trying to make it work in the Washington fishbowl. After I finished the third book in November, it became clear to me that I need a series “bible” with a list of all the characters, what book they appeared in, etc. In addition, I needed to create “character sheets” for each recurring character that include everything I know about them. To give you an idea of how involved this…

Ex Trophy Wives #1 December 2010 On Sale: December 7, 2010 Featuring: Campbell Barker; Maxine Cambridge 368 pages ISBN: 0425236994 EAN: 9780425236994 Trade Size $15.00 Add to Wish List Romance, Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com Get in the mood for a romantic comedy You Dropped a Blonde on Me by Dakota Cassidy She was the perfect party-planning, haute-to-the max trophy wife. Now Maxine Cambridge is broke, unemployable and living with her mother and teenage son in a retirement village, with her self-esteem kicked to the curb. Until her geeky former classmate Campbell Barker returns, all grown-up- and off-the-scale smokin’ hot. Campbell refuses to believe Max isn’t that smart, funny girl he’s crushed on since high school. The more Max tries to show him he’s wrong, the more she rediscovers her long-retired mojo. Now, she’s ready to throw down some payback on her ex-life and fight for what she deserves. ‘Suck it up Princess’ should be every woman’s mantra Previous Picks

One of the hardest things about writing a story about magic is to have a story. See, when you have magic, it can do anything. Magic can make all your problems literally disappear. So how do you have something threaten your characters when one blink of her eyes (or flick of her wrists) can make it all go away? That was what I was faced with when I sold my genie series to my editor. I pretty much sold the idea on, “I have this idea of a story along the lines of I Dream of Jeannie meets Indiana Jones.” That was it; that was all I had. I knew the genie, Eden, had been sentenced to her bottle for 3,000 years, got out early, and then I heard the Indiana Jones’ theme music. That was it. So, yay! I sold a trilogy. Now I had to write it. And I quickly found out that like genie wishes, magic is not all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, it sounds good, but if the bad guy is after you, poof! make yourself invisible or take a long vacation to the other side of the world. If the guy you’re in…

One of the challenges of writing paranormal romance is finding a way to build a really different fantasy, yet get the readers to buy into it. After all, everybody’s doing handsome leather-clad vampires and cheeky monster-slaying tough girls. Readers love that kind of thing, but they’ve also seen it before. Repeatedly. It’s a lot more fun if you can find a way to turn the concept on its head, surprising readers and creating a whole new world for them to play in. Besides, I’ve got ADD, and I’m easily bored. I love leather clad vampires, but I have no interest in doing the same thing everybody else is doing. That’s no fun at all. Here’s one of the secrets of writing you don’t hear about: it’s fun. Shocking, I know. Everybody always talks about how much work it is being a writer, and how we get paid peanuts, and how the publishing industry is imploding. All of that is true, but it’s also true that creating a universe and moving into it for 400 pages is the best fun you can have with your clothes on. I love coming up with weird ideas and playing with them, like: What if…

I write about vampires, immortals. So I got to thinking about what a New Year’s Eve might mean to them. Not much actually. Of course they notice the passage of time. But in big gulps, not in nibbles. Take Glory St. Clair, my vamp in the Real Vampire series. She was turned in 1604. Now she’s coping with 2011. Hmm. The girl’s seen some serious changes in her long lifetime. Think about it. As a woman, she’s gone from an illiterate chattel to an independent business owner. Now that kind of change could give you whiplash if it had happened overnight. Fortunately she’s had over four hundred years to get used to high heels and a checking account with her name on it. Luckily she was smart enough to survive and thrive. That’s the fun in writing about paranormals. I can put myself in the fantasy and imagine what it would be like to have lived that long, done so much, and, best of all, known so many hot guys. Speaking of… What about the men who are just as ancient as Glory? We’ve all known men who we think of as macho chauvinists. But one who actually wore a…

MARY BURTON CELEBRATES 2011 WITH  BACK-TO-BACK ROMANTIC SUSPENSE New York Times best selling author Mary Burton unleashes a memorable cast of characters in her back-to-back romantic suspense novels SENSELESS (just published) and MERCILESS (arriving January 25th). They include Homicide Detectives Deacon Garrison and Malcolm Kier(DYING SCREAM), convicted felon Eva Rayburn, and her half-sister, attorney Angie Carlson. And, as always, Burton’s signature attention to forensic detail and law enforcement procedure are in evidence. In SENSELESS, Eva’s part-time job at a shelter brings her to the attention of Deacon Garrison when an explosion destroys the building. The search for evidence uncovers the body of a woman who has been tortured, murdered and branded. Enter journalist Connor Donovan. He’s desperate to resuscitate his flagging career when he gets a tip about the case and its similarities to the Sorority House Murder, the investigation that brought him fame and sent Eva to prison. As Donovan drags Eva back into the media spotlight, Garrison, certain she’s connected to  the murder, is determined to find out how. In MERCILESS Burton ratchets the suspense up even higher when Kier and Angie come up against a psychopath who leaves behind the perfectly preserved bones of his victims. Kier—and…

January 2011 On Sale: January 3, 2011 Featuring: Lizzie Bea Carpenter; Dante Giovanni 406 pages ISBN: 0446561991 EAN: 9780446561990 Paperback $7.99 Add to Wish List Romance Buy at Amazon.com How Sweet It Is by Sophie Gunn Dreams can come true… Life in the small town of Galton, New York sure is sweet. At least it was until single mom and diner waitress Lizzie Bea Carpenter gets a letter from her first-ever love. He’s coming back to town Christmas day to meet Lizzie’s daughter, the child he abandoned way back when. Lizzie needs now more than ever to protect her daughter, and herself, from men who show up out of the blue, promising to grant a girl’s every desire. So when a sexy, mysterious stranger appears because he overheard her wish for a free handyman, she wants him gone. Now. At least, the smart part of her does. The other part starts to wonder if he’s the only man who can help her face her past, and get back to sampling the sweetest things in life. ExcerptCHAPTER ONE For over a week the envelope sat on the dining room table unnoticed, buried under a stack of bird-seed catalogues and household bills…