I really love all the characters in this conclusion of my Men of Legend series but I have to say my favorite is Josie Morgan. She’s had a rough life but it’s given her the toughness she needs to survive. Josie grew up above her mother’s saloon so she’s seen the best and worst of humanity. Because of the various types of men who frequent the saloon, Josie’s mother taught her to shoot and she’s developed quite an aptitude for it. That comes in handy. I just love her ability to take what’s thrown at her and make the best of things. As the story opens, she has amnesia. Everything has been stripped from her. I often think of how scary it would be to wake up and not know who I was or where I lived. People in that state have no starting point or nothing to relate anything to. I can’t imagine. But Josie somehow keeps her sense of humor and stays optimistic for the most part. She trusts the outlaw Luke Legend and feels safe with him. As pieces of her life slowly start to emerge, she falls deeper in love with Luke. It’s at that point…

You can’t control them. You can’t guide them. They simply birth their way onto the pages, pulling you in so many directions that you wind up going grey and gaining fifteen pounds by the time you’re done writing the book. (TRUE STORY, by the way.) BUT, every once in a while, these characters do something so freaking fantastic, so swoony, soooo hilarious, that you remember exactly why you wanted to write about them in the first place. This, to me, was my relationship with Maxwell Martinez—the hero in The Right Kind of Reckless. Let me start by saying that in Reckless Hearts, book one, Max was labeled (AND WORE THAT LABEL WELL) as a certifiable douchebag. He was a little chauvinistic, a whole lot degrading, and kind of annoying and immature, if I do say so myself. He’s flawed, bottom line. And I have no regrets writing him the way I did in that book. To me, though, Max is more than just those things I mentioned above. He’s a guy with a broken past. A guy with a whole lot of love to give for a woman he’s wanted for years, but can’t have. He’s goofy and playful and…

Many blue moons ago I had the great pleasure of having High Tea at the Helmsley Palace in New York City. Or so I thought! Much to my surprise, I was mistaken in my assumption that it was called High Tea. In fact, the proper name is: Afternoon Tea. Fascinated with the ritual of “tea time”, I explored the history and found that Afternoon Tea, aka High Tea, originated among the wealthy social classes in England in the 1840s. By the end of the nineteenth century, Afternoon Tea developed into its current form and was observed by both the upper and middle classes. Teatime for the working population was always much later in the day, usually after 6 pm, and accompanied by a pot of good, strong stimulating tea. At the Helmsley Palace, Afternoon Tea consisted of delicate savory cucumber or egg and cress sandwiches, bread and butter, scones with clotted cream and jam, and occasionally cakes and pastries along with a bracing pot of tea. Sandwiches always had the crusts removed, and were cut into small segments, either as triangles or fingers, aka tea sandwiches. The waiters dressed in formal attire, starched collars, black vests and black pressed trousers….