Hello, everyone! I’m happy to be here today to talk to you about my new release, A LOT LIKE LOVE. Last week I found out that the book has gone into its second printing after only two weeks (whoo-hoo!)—and I’m thrilled the book is connecting so well with readers. For those of you who’d like to know more about A LOT LIKE LOVE, haven’t read any of my books, or are wondering, “Who is this Julie James person, anyway?”, here’s the scoop: A LOT LIKE LOVE is about a wealthy wine store owner who agrees to pose as the girlfriend of an undercover FBI agent—as part of a sting operation—in exchange for her twin brother’s release from prison. There were two things I knew when beginning to outline the book.  First, that the heroine would not be a lawyer (unlike the heroines in my first three books).  I guess I wanted to prove to myself that I could write something different.  Second, I knew the book would somehow involve wine. The wine idea began fermenting in my mind (yes, pun intended) after my husband and I took a trip to Napa Valley.  Wine and romance seemed, to me, like such…

Since I’m here at Fresh Fiction, I’d like to talk about fresh heroines. These sorts of female characters are out of the ordinary, unconventional, interesting, spirited, bold, strong, and do things you might not expect. Alana, the heroine of my new Carina Press release, LAIRD OF DARKNESS is just this sort of heroine. She’s also entertaining. The story takes place in late medieval times in a Scotland filled with magic and mythical creatures. But this young noblewoman isn’t a virgin as young ladies of the time were expected to be. She’s not a prostitute, either. She’s simply a girl who had a tryst with a handsome stable lad of her own choosing when they were both teens. Why would I break with convention and create a sexually experienced lady? I wanted Alana to be a bit different from the heroines you normally find in historical romance. I wanted her to have an interesting past and memories she could draw upon when she is tempted by the hot dark Highlander, Duncan, who takes her hostage. It turns out she isn’t as afraid of him as he’s hoping she’ll be. In fact, she sees through his harsh, dark façade to the vulnerability…

Dear Readers, I’m giving birth to a new baby today.  Its name is HUMMINGBIRD LAKE it is the second book of my new Eternity Springs series.  This baby was conceived around fire pit with some writer friends over two years ago, and I carried it for six long months.  Now, with older sibling  ANGEL’S REST a month old, it’s time for the new offspring to join the family. Right now I’m in the transition stage of labor.  The hard stage.  The one that makes a girl want to glare at her keyboard and declare “I’m never touching you again!” That’s because now it’s time for me to talk about the book. I’m supposed to engage readers’ interest so they will go out and buy it.  The problem is that I find this part of the job more painful than watching my beloved Texas Aggies lose in the first round of this year’s March Madness.  They tell us to come up with a one sentence sales pitch, a high concept, an elevator sales pitch.  Yeah, right.  I spent 400 manuscript pages telling this story, and I’m supposed to condense it down to a sentence?  Aargh! Sage watched a tall man dressed…

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…

2011 has been a year of changes for me. I realize we’re not very far in, but I’ve had a rollercoaster ride already! I didn’t set any resolutions and tried to set goals instead. Am I moving towards my goals? HMMM…good question. Professionally I would say yes. I got a promotion and going back to school for a few business courses so that I can be better at my job, and earn a professional childcare director certificate. I’ve increased enrollment at my center, but still have a way to go. So yes, I think things are on track professionally. (Especially if I learn to conquer my new version of word!) Personally my goals are not quite within sight, but I’m confident I’ll get back on track! I want to do some things to my house, and I’m determined that even though I’ve said that for years, this is the year! I’d like to lose some weight, and It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog. I had a blog written, but because I have a new computer with a new version of Word (that I’ve not a clue how to use) I lost the whole thing! I wish…

My book, AN UNLIKELY COUNTESS, came out at the beginning of the month and it’s great fun to see it do so well. It will be #17 on the New York Times bestseller list on Sunday, and the Sunday after, it’ll be #13. Onward and upward! The reviews have been mostly great, too, both from review sites and from individual readers. Some quibbles have surprised me, however. I want to make clear that I never resent negative opinions about my books. Of course I want readers to love them, but I know I can’t please everyone, and I respect differing opinions. In the end, a novel is a creation of both the author and the reader, and each reading is valid. But all the same, I sometimes don’t quite get the problems a reader expresses. A few readers find Prudence a snob. For those who haven’t read AN UNLIKELY COUNTESS, at the beginning Prudence Youlgrave has come down in the world and is living in a slum on very limited money. You can read the second excerpt to see what I mean. (I also have the opening scene here, of you want to read both.) As you’ll see, she doesn’t…

I’ve been writing a long time. My first published books were historical romances. Then I wrote books for young teens and middle readers. Now I’m writing historical fiction again but this time for the inspirational market. ANGEL SISTER is my twenty-first published book. Several more of my books are in the publishing pipeline and then, I regret to say, some of my manuscripts are stuck away on my “nobody loved the stories but me” shelf. That’s a lot of story ideas. At times I worry my story well might run dry. Especially when I need a new idea and I’m stumbling around in the dark of my mind just hoping I’ll bump into something to light up my imagination. Sometimes that new idea was right in front of my eyes all the time. A part of my life. That’s what happened with ANGEL SISTER. I’d written some stories with a setting based on my growing up years and had fun with that. So when I started trying to grab hold of a new idea, I recalled all my mother’s stories about growing up during the Great Depression. Wonderful stories of going to school barefoot, roller-skating on the highway, and taffy…

Thank you so much for inviting me to guest blog today at Fresh Fiction. St. Patrick’s Day has always been a special day in our family. My grandfather was extremely proud of his Irish heritage. His father came over from Dublin, Ireland June 19, 1871 when he was 8 years old. I recently discovered the passenger’s list on Ancestry.com and found out that he was a passenger on the ship Calabria. I wanted to add a special twist to the characters in all of my books, by using family names and my Irish heritage. The heroine in my first book, THE MARSHAL’S DESTINY, was named after my great-grandmother, Margaret Mary Flaherty. Three generations of the feisty Irish-American women in our family: Garahan, Flaherty, Daly and Purcell, with their sharp tongues, hard heads and big hearts have kept our family strong and definitely helped influence the creation of the fictional Margaret Mary Flaherty. My latest trilogy from Sourcebooks: The Secret Life of Cowboys begins with TYLER, the oldest brother’s story. I love writing trilogies and series, that way I don’t have to suffer through withdrawal when I have to say goodbye to the characters who have kept me company while I’ve…

One of the biggest challenges for me in writing the novels of my Messenger series is world building, mainly because I don’t. Well, I thought I didn’t. I almost always pick a real place in my very own contemporary time period in which to set my novels, paranormal or not. If I have to make up a place, I tend to base it on a real one and change the names to protect the innocent and/or guilty. That way, I don’t have to create it. I can look at maps. I can read about it. I can visit and check it out. This has, of course, occasionally backfired a little. Like the time I was shooed out of the Pocket neighborhood in Sacramento by the police. I hadn’t thought what it would look like to have someone cruising slowly up and down the residential streets of a fairly affluent neighborhood, peeking into backyards and taking pictures of the houses. Anyway all’s well that ends well, right? I didn’t even have to call anyone to go my bail. I am, surprisingly to some of those who know and I hope love me, a fairly methodical writer. I plot. I outline. But…

“So tired of the straight line And everywhere you turn There’s vultures and thieves at your back And the storm keeps on twisting You keep on building the lies That you make up for all that you lack.” Angel – Sarah McLachlan Such a sad song. But so inspiring, so uplifting. I have strange affinity for this song. According to sources, Sarah McLachlan wrote it in response to the heroin overdose of Jonathan Melvoin, from Smashing Pumpkins. He was only thirty-four, another life cut short by addiction. It’s a fitting eulogy for a friend. Oddly, Smashing Pumpkins song Disarm inspired my very first attempt at a novel, so I find the symmetry agreeable, to say the least. As I was beginning to write SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH, I heard Angel. I must have hit repeat fifty times. I knew, immediately, that this was how my main character, Taylor Jackson, was feeling. In a word, she’s miserable. And misery isn’t a normal state of being for Taylor. The story was conceived after I heard the song, and those particular lyrics. The words just spoke to me, the tone of the song overwhelmed my senses, and I knew exactly how…