Thank you to Sara Reyes and the gang at Fresh Fiction for inviting me to blog with them this month! I’m honored. Today, I’m going to be talking Harlequin Intrigue. Since Intrigue is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, I thought it’d be fun to share some Intrigue covers, and show how the look of our beloved romantic suspense novels have changed over the years. 1. Here’s where it all started, with THE KEY by Rebecca Flanders. 2. Then we went through a “white” period–I discovered 43 Light Street series by Rebecca York in this phase–read bunches of the white covers in college. Click here to read the rest of Julie’s blog and to comment. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

I had every intention of writing a blog about my latest release for Silhouette Romantic Suspense, SAFE WITH A STRANGER (the first book in my new trilogy called The Safekeepers.) The Safekeepers is a series of suspense novels about bodyguards for children–with the fun addition of Mexican witchcraft and a family curse. Or maybe I could’ve blogged about connected books. That seems to be my thing lately. My last series for Silhouette was six books long! I just don’t seem to be able to write single books anymore. I like fleshing out characters over several books and really enjoy revealing a series-long connection inside each book. But as I was sitting here at my desk, my mind wandered off (as it usually does,) and I began thinking about why I write at all. As I have said before, I hate to write. Really I do. Oh, I love telling stories. I love getting into the heads of my characters. I love doing research. And I love finding just the right word to make a sentence sing. But the process of sitting my back end into a chair and shoveling out the words makes me want to cringe. In fact, right…

I want to thank everyone here at Fresh Fiction for inviting me to blog today. I was sitting at my computer this morning trying to settle on an interesting topic for today’s blog. My new series? My future plans? My typical writing day? Instead, I found myself thinking about the gift of writing—or should I say gifts, plural. Writing has brought so many layers of good to my life—new friends, new challenges, new skills—that describing those gifts would take all day. Then, the best “gift” of my life announced she was awake for the day. That was the moment I realized a toddler’s chattering was the perfect place to begin—and focus—this blog. Did writing bring about my two-year-old? No, but my writing career taught me to work hard and chase my dreams. In life, just as in writing, there aren’t any shortcuts. Our daughter came into our lives after a ten-year pursuit of parenthood, and I wouldn’t trade a single moment of the journey. After all, each step brought me to this wonderful moment filled with alphabet songs and questions and belly laughs. My writing journey has been no different. Writing—like life—is about doing the legwork. Writing is about believing…