I love spring, love everything about spring.  The warm, steady rain, the temperatures that are neither too hot nor too cold (which in Texas is really saying something), the flowers that seem to pop up everywhere and the birds that sing outside my window while I work. I love taking my boys to the park and playing basketball or football or simply watching as they swing and climb and generally act like the sweet, funny, slightly insane children that they are.  I love the fresh fruit that has suddenly come back into season—and working in the kitchen with my boys to turn it into fun desserts.  I love walking in the rain with my youngest son and working in the garden (or what we hope will one day be a garden, LOL) with my husband. I love daylight savings time and the long, lingering afternoons where I can sit by the window and write or go for a long walk and admire the way everything is blooming, coming back to life after the long, dormant winter. And this spring, particularly, I love all the fun things that are happening to me career-wise—in April and May, I have three books out…

I have to admit, I can’t believe 2010 is drawing to a close.  I’m absolutely astounded that we are in December and that Christmas is right around the corner!  But since we are in the last month of the year, I thought I’d take a look back at some of the new authors I’ve discovered this year and the books that I’ve loved. I know she’s been around for a few years, but I found Kristan Higgins this year and absolutely fell in love with her spunky, down-on-their-luck heroines.  Contemporaries are back in a big way and Kristin’s latest book, ALL I EVER WANTED, was absolutely awesome.  I’m most of the way through her backlist and loving that as well. Patricia Briggs’s Mercy series is another set of books that absolutely blew me away.  I’m a huge paranormal and urban fantasy lover anyway, and I picked up the first book on a whim.  I went back to BN the next day and bought the following four and am currently waiting, with bated breath, for book number six in the series. I also picked up Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampire series on a random trip to the bookstore and really got sucked…

I’m so thrilled to be here today, talking about my first book as Tessa Adams, Dark Embers. The first novel in the Dragon’s Heat series, Dark Embers tells the story of Dylan MacLeod and Phoebe Quillum. He’s King of the Dragonstar clan, desperately searching for a way to save his people and she’s a human biochemist with a dark past who is frantically looking for funding for her own research into curing Lupus. To introduce you to DARK EMBERS, and the world I’ve created for these modern day dragons, I thought I’d interview Phoebe, so you can see this strange world through her eyes. 1. Phoebe, if you had to use three words to describe what its like being in love with a dragon, what words would you use? Fascinating, Dangerous, and Sexy—of course, those words could apply to Dylan himself, as well 😉 2. What’s the hardest thing about being part of Dylan’s world? At first, the hardest thing was simply accepting that shapeshifters exist. I’m a scientist and I’ve spent my whole life dealing only with facts, so when Dylan showed up at my lab, I had a hard time buying into what he was selling. Of course,…

Writing my newest novel, Tie Me Down, was a bittersweet endeavor, because it took me back to a city I know intimately well, a city I love and miss and despair will ever be the same. I went to New Orleans when I was twenty years old because a tug deep in my belly told me that that city was where I was meant to be. I’m not usually one to change my whole life around on a feeling, but no matter what I did, the niggling sensation wouldn’t go away. It kept bothering me—all spring and into the summer, until finally a letter came from one of the grad school’s I’d been accepted to offering me a last minute teaching assistantship that paid all of my tuition and gave me enough to live on. That was the sign I needed and I sent a letter to the grad school I had originally decided to go to asking to be removed from the list of incoming students, packed up my car (with the help of my dad) and headed to New Orleans to take the university up on its very generous offer. And I have never, once, regretted it. Within…

A couple months ago, my husband and I were interviewing prospective agents to list our house as we thought we were going to have to move to Dallas for my husband’s job. I bring this up because, as we talked to the agents, all of them asked what we did for a living. My husband is an electrical/environmental engineer and I, of course, am a romance novelist. When we told them this, they all oohed and aahed over my husband’s job (he’s a green guru/save the environment guy/energy efficiency kind of guy) but when it came to my career, two of them—both men, I might add—laughed. “So you write those books?” one asked. “What books?” I responded, more than a little annoyed by his condescending tone. “You know, those trashy books about …” His voice trailed off. “Love?” I inquired sweetly, though with bared teeth. “Life? Family? Happily Ever After?” “Yeah. And, umm—“ The guy was such an idiot he hadn’t yet figured out that it was offensive to refer to my career choice as “trash.” “Oh, you mean sex?” I filled in the blank for him, much to my husband’s embarassment. “Why, yes, real estate agent moron (names have…

When I sat down to write A Christmas Wedding, I had a lot of different things in my head that I wanted to get across to my readers. I wanted to create a super-strong female character who wasn’t afraid to take on the establishment—and win. I wanted to tell a story about horseracing and the world of thoroughbreds. And I wanted to tell a story of love—with all its ups and downs, a story that showed how difficult marriage can be sometimes, but also how worthwhile. But as I was writing the book, something else worked its way into the pages, and it became not just the story of a relationship between a man and a woman, but the story of that woman’s—of Desiree’s—relationship with her father and husband and children and the very male-dominated world in which she lives. It became a story of old and new, of borrowed and blue. Of hanging on to old traditions and making new ones—something I think is particularly apropos to the holiday season beginning to unfold around us. For Desiree, keeping old traditions and making new ones was often a matter of necessity—playing hardball in a man’s world often requires a blending…