Readers everywhere fell under the spell of NATURAL BORN CHARMER last week, including our special author guest Tessa Dare who shared with us her fondness for the SEP title (and an inside look at her pajama party with SEP and Eloisa James!). Now we’re starting week three of the read-along with AIN’T SHE SWEET? and we’re so excited to get started! Later this week, Sarah MacLean will be joining us for a special guest post, so get ahead and start re-reading AIN’T SHE SWEET? today! And don’t forget to take this super fun SEP quiz to find out who your SEP hero would be! About AIN’T SHE SWEET? Ain’t she sweet? Not exactly. The girl everybody loves to hate has returned to the town she’d sworn to leave behind forever. As the rich, spoiled princess of Parrish, Mississippi, Sugar Beth Carey had broken hearts, ruined friendships, and destroyed reputations. But fifteen years have passed, and life has taught Sugar Beth its toughest lessons. Now she’s come home — broke, desperate, and too proud to show it. The people of Parrish don’t believe in forgive and forget. When the Seawillows, Sugar Beth’s former girlfriends, get the chance to turn the tables on…

Everyone knows how important first impressions are, aye? Grant MacQuarrie, the hero of my recent release HERO OF A HIGHLAND WOLF, wants badly to make a strong first impression on my heroine—he wants to scare her off! Colleen Playfair wishes to claim her inheritance, a Scottish castle in the highlands. But she is an American, what could she possibly know about managing such a large estate. Grant knows. His people have been taking care of the land for generations. As far as he’s concerned, the sooner Colleen leaves, the better. And here you thought he would try to make an impression to woo the lass! Nay, just the opposite. And so, Grant has it all worked out with his Highland wolf pack. They will get all greased up, bare-chested, swing hefty swords, and wear kilts—voila! The lass will take one look at all the ferocious fighting and she won’t last long. Problem solved. Everything can go on as it has for centuries. So this is the plan: Grant’s triplet brothers, Enrick and Lachlan, joined him as they watched the men gathering in the inner bailey. Everyone was dressed in kilts and no shirts. Grant had figured they would look even…

A question that writers get asked a lot is about where we get our inspiration. When making up dozens of in-depth stories doesn’t come naturally to someone, it’s hard for them to fathom how we can possibly come up with so many characters and plots and details. This is no different from my inability to fathom how song writers can create dozens of new melodies and lyrics and hear it all in their head before they ever get it down on paper. The obvious answer is that we’re really good at playing make-believe and weaving it seamlessly with details from our life experiences and people we’ve met. As kids, we were the ones instructing our friends on what we expected from them in our imaginary worlds. We offered backstories and character motivations as though directing a Metro Goldwyn Meyer film and not simply running around in our backyard. Future writer: …and then the bad guy comes in and tries to capture you, but I fly in on my gigantic eagle who picks you up with his feet and we escape. Future accountant: But the eagle’s claws would poke me and kill me! FW: No they wouldn’t, because my eagle was…

It’s wonderful to be back on Fresh Fiction!! Last time I visited, I talked about my muse. Well, she was out while I was writing ENTICING MISS EUGENIE VILLARET, book 5 in The Marriage Game. Although I live in St. Thomas, where the book is set, finding any information between the end of the Napoleonic war and the mid-19th century is difficult to say the least. The pirates had, for the most part ceased to be active and life had become a lot calmer. During the war, England had twice taken possession of the Danish West Indies, but gave it back in 1815. In 1816 St. Thomas had one of the few protected deep water harbors in the Caribbean. It was made a free-port and had attracted a number of different nationalities. It wasn’t until the middle of the century, when the island was hit with a triple whammy, hurricane, disease, and the advent of steamer ships, that it lost its position of power. Believe it or not, most people living here had no idea of that it had been a popular port. As I was pouring over really old books with a friend, a refrain kept repeating it’s self…