I loved reading Lisa Plumley’s Christmas Confessions a couple of days ago…so much of what Lisa said is exactly what I’ve vowed to do for my Christmas this year. Downscale. Make sure the things that really matter remain priorities. So often the rush up to Christmas is the final push up a loooong hill after a year of Busy Busy Busy. Only last week I realized that it’s been several months since I’ve spoken to several great friends. Sure we sometimes email jokes and inspirational sayings around (and that hasn’t been as often as usual because I spent a chunk of this year with NO email…grrr). But email isn’t the same as TALKING to each other and connecting. One of these friends lives in Africa, another in Australia and a third—wait for it—lives in the next road! No excuse for that! Available 12/9 As all our lives have grown busier—our kids take precedence—our work takes over—traffic congestion erodes into precious free minutes. Time passes until it’s a shock to realize how long it’s been since I last connected with those fabulous friends. For me this Christmas will be about celebrating joy with my family and also about catching up with…

I wasn’t thinking about Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale when I first started to write MISTAKEN MISTRESS. But when I conceive of a story one of the first things that I have to decide is where to set the book. For me, the atmosphere of the setting will permeate the entire story. The Saxon Brides is about a family who run a vineyard, Saxon’s Folly. So I knew I wanted the homestead to have a sense of family history and go back at least a couple of generations. I had a great deal of fun researching the locations where I could possibly set the books. My first thought was of the Napa Valley. I’d read about it, but because I like to be able to visualize the place where the story takes place my big stumbling block was I’d never visited the Napa and I wasn’t going to have time to go stake it out. Next, I considered the Barossa in Australia. It’s awesome. Named for the Battle of Barrosa which Colonel Light, Surveyor General of the day, fought in during 1811, it boasts some of the oldest existing Shiraz vines in the world. And then of course there is…