This weekend HarperCollins will be running their first ever digital Romance Festival, in conjunction with some of the world’s best known publishers of romance, to bring you two days of discussions, tips and giveaways for writers of romance and fans – all focused around some of our best loved women’s fiction authors! The line-up has now been announced on the festival blog here, authors include J. Lynn/Jennifer L. Armentrout, Lori Wilde, Eloisa James, Jay Crownover, Kerrelyn Sparks, Molly McAdams, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips,among many others, but for full timings and schedules of discussions, please register for free at the link below: Register for FREE

Earlier this week, I asked the following question on twitter/facebook: What catches your eye more on a cover of a sexy contemporary romance – a hot guy or a couple (man/woman)? I’ll use two of my books, TAKE ME and LOVE ME, as examples. TAKE ME, which was released as a trade paperback five years ago, has a couple on the cover. Do they look like the characters in my head when I was writing the book? Sort of. The hero, Travis, definitely looks like the model in the picture. Big, hunky, gorgeous. But the heroine? Well, considering TAKE ME is a book about a full-figured woman who finally finds her HEA with the man she’s been in unrequited love with her entire life, then, no. I’m afraid she doesn’t really look like the version of Lily that I have in my head. To me, Lily is smaller, curvier, softer. That being said, the art department at Pocket did go back to the drawing board several times with this cover (probably because I freaked out when I saw the initial cover and she looked like a size 2. Barely.) and ended up with this model on the cover. She isn’t…

What are you guys thinking about the new season of “True Blood?” I like that executive producer and creator Alan Ball takes liberties with the story. And what did you think of “Eclipse?” I’m a fan of the film franchise and the series of books. I feel like director David Slade did a great job with pacing in the film. There’s angsty romance, but it’s mixed with some stellar action. He took the best elements of the books made some twists here and there, and created what may be my favorite of three films. In fact, I liked the film better than the book. There are several other books made into films this summer including BEEZUS AND RAMONA BEASTLY, EAT, PRAY, LOVE, SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD and “The Switch”. It’s always interesting to see how the adaptations work. Out of all the films coming out this summer, I’m most looking forward to “Eat, Pray, Love.” I really hope they don’t screw it up. One series I wish they would turn into movies or a television show is Annette Blair’s Vintage Magic. The third installment is DEATH BY DIAMONDS. “I was having a discussion about my second mystery with my…

Hot Shots: Men on Fire #1 May 2009 On Sale: April 28, 2009 Featuring: Maya Jackson; Logan Cain 352 pages ISBN: 0440245001 EAN: 9780440245001 Mass Market Paperback $6.99 Add to Wish List Romance Suspense, Romance Erotica Sensual Buy at Amazon.com Wild Heat by Bella Andre Addicted to risk-and to each other. Danger doesn’t get any hotter than this. He’s a hotshot firefighter addicted to risk. She’s the sultry beauty he never saw coming. Maya Jackson doesn’t sleep with strangers. Until the night grief sent her to the nearest bar and into the arms of the most explosive lover she’s ever had. Six months later, the dedicated arson investigator is coming face-to-face with him again. Gorgeous, grinning Logan Cain. Her biggest mistake. Now her number one suspect in a string of deadly wildfires. Risking his life on a daily basis is what gets Logan up in the morning. As the leader of the elite Tahoe Pines Hotshot Crew, he won’t back down from a blaze—or from beautiful, lethal Maya Jackson. She may have seduced him with her tears and her passion, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before Logan lets down his guard again. But when Maya’s life is…

My mother and I don’t always see eye to eye, but the one thing we always have agreed on are romance novels. We absolutely love them. One of my main memories as a child was going to the library with my mother every Sunday, where she’d exchange her stack of hardcover romances for a new stack of books. As soon as I was old enough to have run through the Judy Blume books, I made my way over to romances. And was hooked. Little did I know that I would be writing them one day. (And that my mother would be reading them. But that’s another article, entirely!) Like many writers, I took the long way around to becoming an erotic romance author. I graduated from Stanford with an Economics degree in 1994, but really, I knew I was never going to become a management consultant. No, I wanted to be a rock star. So I recorded 4 CDs, played 1,000+ shows throughout North America, had a turn at being a star in Brazil, and then said, “Okay, what’s next?” Somewhere along the way when my bank account was looking worse for the wear, I worked as a Director of…

Have you ever read a really great book and asked yourself, “How’d she come up with that fantastic idea?” I know I have. Which is why I thought it’d be fun to ask myself the same question. Here goes: TAKE ME (in which a full-figured heroine gets the guy in Italy): I had a dream about a woman who had lusted after a guy her whole life, but he’d never noticed her. And then one day, the tables turned completely, and he had to chase her. Once he caught her, while in a very passionate embrace, he said, “You’re mine, all mine.” MINE, ALL MINE was the working title of the book – and the title I sold with. The dream gave me the theme. From there I had to figure out characters and plot. TEMPT ME, TASTE ME, TOUCH ME (three women on a road trip to the Wine Country find love with three local men): I had just finished watching the move “Sideways” with my husband when I turned to him and said, “Wouldn’t it be interesting to flip that movie on its ear and make it a girl’s road trip through the wine country instead?” RED HOT…