EVERY CHILD HAS A GIFT and A PASSION The great thing about being a kid is that you have to learn when to NOT go for something, because we come out of the womb ready to jump at any chance life throws out.   Like every child, I was born with a gift, but I was fortunate to also have a passion for using that gift and found encouragement along the way in the moments that counted. The only downside?  My gift was the ability to draw and paint photo-realistic portraits of anything I saw.  Why was that a downside?  Because art was never considered a viable way to make a living when I was growing up.  If you’ve read any articles about my past, you know that I lost my mom when I was 17 and that I moved out on my own right after that. What you may not know is that I give a lot of the credit for my art and writing success to my mom. My mom, like many moms, spent hours helping her five children with homework and class projects, but she and my father differed on one point.  My mom appreciated my gift of…

August 2010 On Sale: July 27, 2010 Featuring: AJ Ashe 288 pages ISBN: 0061430994 EAN: 9780061430992 Hardcover $8.99  Add to Wish List Young Adult Paranormal Buy at Amazon.com Save the world and plan the prom! Love Sucks! by Melissa Francis AJ Ashe may have gotten rid of her vampire stalker and her evil ex-teacher, but things are hardly back to normal. For one thing, she still has to maintain a strict look-but-don’t-touch policy with Ryan, her hot ex-boyfriend-turned-stepbrother. For another, she has to learn to control her vampire superpowers—which means more than a few dates with Lex, mind-reading professional vampire trainer and too-sexy-for-his-own-good bad boy. And as if that’s not enough, she happens to be the key to her father’s plans to take over the world . . . and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants. All this and she’s still got to plan the prom. Being a teenager is tough, but being a teenage vampire just flat out sucks! Teen angst complicated with paranormal abilities provides lots of surprises and tension. Previous Picks

Without a doubt it was the taming of Quinton Cameron. Oops…sorry, had to duck and run there because that big, highland earl didn’t take too kindly to me announcing that he’d been tamed. Now Deirdre found it rather amusing. The curse of being a writer is that your characters are always with you and not always at the end of their story. HIGHLAND HEAT was a fun book to write. But it was also stressful. Both Deidre and Quinton were hard nuts to crack. They’d both loved and lost, through bitter betrayal. The sort which leaves a painful scar across the heart. More importantly, neither wanted to trust their tender affections to another again. Those are points I often find myself pondering when I write a historical—trust and affection. These people lived vastly different lives than we do today. Marriage was a business first. A matter for level headed consideration and not because women were chattel. That was certainly part of it, but think about it for a moment… You have a daughter and the average life span is less than fifty. There are few good employment professions for women so that leaves you knowing you will not be around…