Hi! I’m Delancey Stewart – if you haven’t met me before, I write contemporary romance. I’ve set my books in small towns, but most are set in big cities because I favor them in my real life. I’m a military spouse, so the last fifteen years of my life have pretty much been set in small towns no one’s ever heard of, but prior to that I lived in Los Angeles, New York City and San Diego. And my last three books? So weird—they’ve been set in Los Angeles, New York and…you guessed it – San Diego! WITHOUT WORDS comes out this month, and that’s the one set in San Diego, which is less of a big city and more of a collection of little towns that each have really distinct personalities. The book is set in Ocean Beach, which is a funky little beach community with a weekly farmers’ market, lots of unique shops and a huge pier that extends way out into the water. The first kiss in my book is set on that pier, but I’m not telling whether I’ve done any kissing out there myself… Okay, of course I have. Here’s that kiss from the book:…

The title and story of my new novel was a gift. The wind of spirit—inspiration—whispering as I sipped tea in my favorite coffee shop, scribbling down ideas for my next book. Outside the window stood an old tree, a weeping cedar with its sturdy branches and dangling leaves that ballooned like a giant umbrella over the people drinking coffee and tea below. In my mind’s eye, I saw two German children—the best of friends—playing high among those branches. In a tree house. They were in danger, though at the time I didn’t know what threatened them. I just knew the boy and girl had to run. And the girl would be lost along the way. The story slipped between past and present, slowly unfolding on my paper. The boy and girl separated during the war. A man who spent a lifetime trying to keep his promise to find her. A British noblewoman who sympathized with Hitler and a tenacious journalist in London who can’t resist a good story—a journalist with secrets of her own. My research for this novel took me on a journey north of my home in Oregon to the misty San Juan Islands, across the Atlantic to…