Wow, what are the odds I would have a military romance novel out and a blog to write on the one day a year reserved to honor military spouses?  Crazy coincidence!  And very cool!  For those of you who don’t know,  I am a military spouse.  My husband served in the USAF as an aviator for over twenty years – nine moves, multiple war deployments, and many, many TDY days away from home. Without question, the role of military spouse is demanding, requiring lots of independence (I’ve snaked more than my fair share of the kids’ Legos out of the toilet.)  But I’m incredibly proud of my husband’s service and hope I have supported him to the best of my ability.  While his accomplishments are his own, I do appreciate that the sacrifices made by spouses are recognized on this special day. In 1984, President Ronald Regan was the first to proclaim a Military Spouse’s Day on May 23.  The day was later standardized as the Friday before Mother’s Day.  I could list all that goes into being a military spouse, but the following summarizes the lifestyle far better than I ever could: “The Military Wife” author unknown The good…

I’ve been asked a few times why a Goblin prince would have wings (of course if you read the book you’ll find out:-). To clarify: No, Dai is not an angel, far from it. He’s been a Celtic prince, a Roman slave, a mage, a monk, a scholar, a soldier—never an angel or any other winged creature. Okay, but why does he have wings on the cover? Well, when writing the story they kind of appeared, and once they were there they couldn’t be shaken off and they developed a life of their own—by feeding off Dai and his hatred of Rome. So what are the wings? Excellent question! While Dai has plenty of magical tattoos and marking, the wings are more than ink or magic, they are worse, much, much worse. The wings are a ghostly manifestation of his hate and his refusal to forgive and move on as it feels wrong. He wanted vengeance and was denied. It takes an innocent child to point out the danger he is in and once he sees the wings he understands the full extent of the damage he’s holding onto, of course getting free is a whole other battle. ~~~ Brigit…

It isn’t easy to write a contemporary novel with serious subject matter and still keep it light and moving quickly.  I had my work cut out for me with Liza McKnight and Dare Barron because the event that links them in the past is a party where a teenage boy died.  That night caused both of their lives to change and ultimately is what brings them together as adults.  Dare and Liza want to be good people.  They live their lives trying to do the best they can and think about others before themselves, while Liza’s brother, who lied in the past and caused the boy’s death, is wallowing in pain, guilt and alcohol.  So Liza enables him while Dare arrests him and tries not to be like him. Light moments? You’d think there aren’t any.  And yet I don’t think of KARMA as a dark story.  Liza and Dare – to me – are so perfectly matched. I find his caring for her charming.  I find her search for love, and allowing herself to be loved, disarming. So at heart, I think this story more than most, needed balance between light and dark.  And I hope, in bringing you…

“Challenge?”  I noticed someone saying recently in a discussion of Amish fiction. “What’s challenging about that—just put a woman in a bonnet on the cover, throw in a horse and buggy, and you’re in!” If only it were really that easy! Despite the number of Amish books I’ve written, I faced what was for me a unique challenge in my latest book, HANNAH’S JOY, the sixth book in the Pleasant Valley Amish series. Hannah, I decided way back in the planning stages, was going to be a Mennonite whose family had drifted away from the faith. This would allow Hannah to be an Army widow who returns to Pleasant Valley after life on a military base, which gives an immediate and I hoped striking contrast between military culture and the non-violence of the Plain groups. And since I grew up around a number of Old Order Mennonite families, I should be able to write that aspect of the story without difficulty. Needless to say, I was wrong! I had forgotten more than I realized about my childhood friends, and to make the story real, I not only had to nail all of the tiny details of differences among Amish, horse-and-buggy…

When I wrote ONE NIGHT FOR LOVE (1999), I meant it to be the first book in a trilogy–for Neville Wyatt, Earl of Kilbourne, his sister Gwen, the widowed Lady Muir, and their cousin, Lauren Edgeworth. However, I changed editor after the first book, and my new editor would not let me write Lauren’s story because she did not like her in the first book. I had to wait for an editor who would let me write her story–reader favorite A SUMMER TO REMEMBER (2002). That book, however, introduced the very haughty aristocratic family, the Bedwyns, and off I shot at a tangent and wrote the six SLIGHTLY BOOKS and then the related SIMPLY quartet. Poor Gwen languished as a minor character in a number of them. She was noticed, however. There was a mystery surrounding her. She limped heavily, as the result of a riding accident during her marriage–the same accident that caused her a miscarriage. And a year later her husband died after a fall in his own home. Readers wanted her story, and I wanted to write it. Finally the job is done! She finds her happily-ever-after in THE PROPOSAL, out in hardcover May 1, 2012. The…

As romance authors, we’re often told to “Torture the hero!” Make him a deeply conflicted, wounded (irresistibly attractive) fellow, and spend the next 376 pages having the heroine drag him, entice him, lure him and goose him toward love and healing. I thus considered it required research to ask a bunch of guys how to bring a man to unbearable pain. Most of them looked at me like I was nuts, but my brother Dick—a hero in my eyes if ever there was one—said, “Make him choose between the competing demands of honor.” I think he got it in one, and his advice has been tremendously useful. With LADY MAGGIE’S SECRET SCANDAL, I more or less knew what to do with my hero. Benjamin Hazlit has been living half a life, traveling under a nom de guerre to hide from a family scandal, hiding his parliamentary responsibilities, and hiding, generally from his right to pursue happiness. Benjamin feels responsible for the things that have gone wrong in his family, and has dedicated himself to making sure other families’ potential scandals are diffused quietly. And for his sins, Maggie Windham does, in fact, drag him kicking, screaming (and occasionally, um, kissing)…

That got your attention, didn’t it? 🙂 I mean, who wouldn’t want a naked man in their kitchen? Well, provided he looked like Todd Best, the hero of my new release, BEAUTY AND THE BEST, that is. If he didn’t, I could certainly understand the complaints. But Jolie, the heroine, isn’t complaining. She’s wondering why, of course, as would any of us, but she’s definitely not complaining. The thing is, nudity isn’t exactly Todd’s M.O. when welcoming new employees to his home, but he’d had kind of a difficult night and well, there might have been some downer emotions and an old bottle of Jim Beam, and well, one thing led to another, and voila! Naked in the kitchen. On her first day on the job. One of the things people have been sharing with the release of this book is their on the job “horror” stories (sorry, I’m not calling Todd being naked a horror story). I have a few of my own; my favorite (?) being the ex-con who used a different middle initial and slightly different spelling of his last name and thought no one would figure it out. Ah, the internet, it Knows and Sees All……

A big thank you to Fresh Fiction for having me as a guest on their blog today! I have a confession: when I first started writing, I had a hard time creating an alpha hero. All of my heroes were more on the beta side. The overbearing, macho man didn’t appeal much to me. I wanted a softer, gentler version. Certainly not a wimp, because I do appreciate when a man can take charge, but I didn’t want some jerk bossing me around… Whoops. Sounds like I was taking this alpha hero thing awfully personal. Anyway, as time has passed, I’ve come to realize there’s something infinitely appealing about those alpha males. At least, in the fictional worlds we create or read. Living with one in the real world might be another story, but writing and/or reading about those sexy, strong heroes rushing in to save their heroines, I love it. And when they get all possessive and growly and say things like, “You’re mine,” or “You belong to me,” well. I love that even more. So I’ve deemed this the year of the alpha hero for me. I have not one but two new series chock full of them….

Confession time. I’m a music whore. Any and all types—I can’t get enough. I write songs for a local band, have a fully loaded Zune that goes everywhere with me, and over 100 different playlists. I can look back to almost every major life event and tie it to a specific song or album. I can be standing in line at the food store, or driving down the road, and think, huh…this is totally a <insert appropriate song here> moment. The same goes for my characters. Some writers pen intricate back stories full of dates and places for each of their characters—mine are all musical. A lyrical map of their past, present, and future. At the start of every book, each of my characters gets their own playlist (in addition to the playlists I have for each book). Take my heroine, Dez. Her personal playlist consists of a lot of Pink and Powerman 5000. Stuff that, like her, has tons of attitude. Kale on the other hand, is mostly instrumental and acoustic pieces—at least for this book. It changes a bit in book 2—for both of them. (Cue evil, taunting laugh) I also have songs for each major scene. The…

I’m so happy to be here at Fresh Fiction today! I love this site! Even though my series, Kismet Knight, Vampire Psychologist, (first book, THE VAMPIRE SHRINK) is primarily about bloodsuckers, it also features psychics, wizards, witches and . . . ghosts! In fact, in the new second book in the series, BLOOD THERAPY, Kismet deals with many incorporeal apparitions. Working on edits for that book made me think about my own experiences with the specters. Communicating with the dead is a tradition among my female relatives and ancestors. During my childhood, I remember hearing my mother chat with people who weren’t there as she washed the family laundry. Of course, I would have written that off as nutty if I hadn’t had my own experiences from an early age. Unlike my mother, who attracted no-longer-living siblings, grandparents, etc., I seemed to be a magnet for strangers – my “imaginary friends.” The longest ghostly visitation I’ve experienced was from a beloved aunt (eventually I shared my mother’s tendency to draw relatives along with anybody else who wanted to drop in!), who stayed with me for years. She was as frisky in death as she’d been in life. Her favorite activities…