Gena Showalter | What If?

Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if one thing in your past were different? Just a single thing? Like the movie Sliding Doors, what would your life be like if you’d missed the train home one day? Invariably that thought process always leads me to think about what my life would have been like if I hadn’t pilfered that first romance novel from my grandmother’s house. Silver Angel by Johanna Lindsey. That book changed my life. I remember staring down at it, intrigued by the cover – the heroine had long blonde hair, something this dark haired girl had always desired – thinking, Should or should I? I was about fourteen and if I got caught with it, I would have been in big trouble. But in the end, I did it. Snatched it up, and devoured it in a night.

Before reading it, I was a girl who hated to read. A girl who was behind in every subject at school. A girl who had to be held back a year just to catch up. After reading it, I improved in every subject (my mother would insist I add: but math). I read every spare moment. Relationships (in every form) suddenly fascinated me. First awakenings, the journey to happily ever after, the complexity that is known as Man, I couldn’t get enough. I was hooked. (I’m still hooked!)

And that love of reading eventually blossomed into a love of writing, of weaving my own tales. So here I am, awaiting the release of my Lords of the Underworld trilogy – featuring immortals warriors who opened Pandora’s box and are now cursed to carry a demon inside themselves – and enjoying my career more than I could have ever imagined. All because I picked up that first book. I always shudder to think about what might have happened if I’d decided I shouldn’t.

To learn more about New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter and her sizzling new trilogy about immortal warriors possessed by demons (and the women who love them), visit http://www.genashowalter.blogspot.com/.

Anne McAllister | No Such Thing As A Loose End

Thanks so much, Fresh Fiction, for inviting me to come and blog with you today. I love reading all the various blogs and getting to know writers (and thus adding to my TBR pile) in the process.

I've been writing romance fiction since the mid 80s and am currently working on my 61st book. For quite a few years I would amuse myself on long car trips by seeing if I could name the books and the heroes and heroines in order. Then I started seeing if I could name them in any order. Now I just write the books and think fond thoughts about all those lovely men in my past.

Sometimes, though, there's one who doesn't get his happy ending in one of my books and he turns up, rather like a bad penny, demanding one of his own.

That was what happened with Flynn. Six years ago Silhouette published a single title of mine called The Great Montana Cowboy Auction. It was part of a series of books I'd been doing for them since the mid-90s called Code of the West. TGMCA ran to 97,000 words, which should have been long enough to give everyone in Montana a happy ending.

But sadly, the heroine's daughter, Sara, who had a brief life-shattering fling with a footloose Irish journalist called Flynn Murray, got pregnant in the book. But she didn't get her happy ending. She came back in a later book and we knew she was doing fine as a single mom, but there was no Flynn in her life. Nor was there anyone else.

I went back to writing Harlequin Presents and wasn't writing Code of the West books anymore (it's what happens when you write as slowly as I do -- they make you pick a place to be since you'll be spreading yourself to thin if you're both places. That's the theory anyway). So I wasn't doing those books anymore.

Try telling that to Sara and Flynn.

They wouldn't let up. They kept coming around asking when was it going to be their turn. I said, figure out how you can be a Presents, and you can have a turn.

They're nothing if not resourceful. They did. Flynn managed to stop being quite so footloose, got himself saddled with a 500 year old castle that is crumbling around his ears, and an earldom which he really doesn't want any part of, but is obligated to shoulder because, well, he is the earl. Sara, of course, knows nothing of this. She hasn't heard from him in six years.

And then one day, Flynn got a letter out of the blue. . .

That was basically the way they told the story to me. I told it to my editor. Said, "Sound like a Presents to you?" She said, "Give a shot." Of course I had to. I owed it to them. They were quite right -- they deserved more than to be a 'loose end' in someone else's book.

I'm delighted to have written it because it took me back to my roots. And I got to revisit places and characters I didn't realize how much I'd missed.

That's one of the really lovely things about writing so many books -- especially linked books -- there is a whole other universe out there with these people in it that I can dip into now and again, stop back in and check on. It's like getting Christmas cards from them -- only better. Every once in a while they invite me back into their lives and let me share them with you.

And if you haven't read The Great Montana Cowboy Auction and are thus worried that you won't have a clue about the people in One-Night Love Child, let me assure you that I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, so every book absolutely has to stand on its own!

How do you feel about linked books? What are some of your favorites? I never mind adding more books to my TBR pile, so suggestions for great reads, especially linked reads, are very welcome!

One-Night Love Child is a March 2008 Harlequin Presents and an April 2008 Mills & Boon Modern. If you want to read an excerpt, please click on the link.

Anne McAllister

http://www.annemcallister.com/

Amanda Stevens| Legend or Folklore

I’ve always had a fascination for the macabre, so I suppose my foray from romantic suspense into what I call 'creepy, southern thrillers' was a natural (or unnatural!) progression for me. I grew up in the foothills of the Ozarks, an area steeped in legend and folklore, and the stories I heard as a kid still give me goose bumps to this day. That same sort of breathless, shivery dread is what I hope to evoke with my own stories.

My latest thriller, The Devil’s Footprints, was inspired by one of those old legend. On the morning of February 8, 1855, the townsfolk of Devon, England, awakened to find a series of hoof-like marks in freshly fallen snow. The U-shaped tracks continued throughout the countryside for over a hundred miles, traversing over houses, rivers, and haystacks—even through stone walls—as though no barrier could stop them.

Panic and paranoia ran rampant through the area, and armed with pitchforks and clubs, some of the townspeople set out to track down the beast responsible. Various newspapers, including The Times of London, covered the story extensively, and as a result, numerous theories soon evolved, the most bizarre being that Satan himself was roaming the countryside in search of sinners.

Wow. I mean, that’s good stuff, right?

For my purposes, I moved the tale to a little town in southern Arkansas, and the prints first appeared in a farmer’s cotton field in 1922. There, the legend was all but forgotten until the prints reappeared some seventy years later near the mutilated body of Rachel DeLaune.

If you have a favorite legend or folklore, I’d love to hear about it. I’ll be featuring a different story on my website (http://www.amandastevens.com/blog.html) every Tuesday during March. Also Marked by Evil, an online prequel to The Devil’s Footprints, will run every Tuesday and Thursday at http://www.eharlequin.com/.

Amanda Stevens

Anne Easter Smith | Research

I've just come off my first book tour and for the most part it was a blast! The weather was my only real complaint. What a thrill to meet readers and hear first-hand how my two books have impacted them.

As an historical novelist, the aspect of authoring that seemed to interest people and provoke the most questions was the research. “How much research do you do?” or “What percentage of your day goes to research and what to writing?” or even “Do you enjoy researching?” were common questions I was asked.

Yes, I love the research – especially when it takes me to neat places like Lisbon, Bruges, Edinburgh and London. I usually spend two or three weeks before starting to write in Europe—you know, if it's Tuesday it must be Belgium (and in my case that happened a lot for “Daughter Of York”)--and I have to confess it is tiring following in the footsteps of my characters. But without seeing the cities, churches, castles and landscapes that my characters would have seen, how can I give you a good idea of what it was to live there in those times? I need to look out of the third floor window of Louis de Gruuthuyse's house in Bruges and see what he could see. I loved peering down through the leaded panes of his little oratory room window and at the high altar in the Church of Our Lady next door. He built a bridge over a side road between his house and the church so that he and his family need not leave the house to join the Mass! I have Margaret shown the room by Louis in “Daughter of York” when she visits him. I love those little details in other good historicals I have read, so I was determined to include them, too.

But it takes time and perseverance to find what you need. I spend hours in libraries and archives looking for letters, drawings of palaces and castles, and medieval maps of the city or town I'm in. I've met with town historians and university professors who have given of their time to help me. Then there was the time in Mechelen (in Margaret of York's time it was more often referred to as Malines) when,one morning, I was snooping around the stage door of the theater there which is all that remains of Margaret's palace and found an unlocked door; so I snuck in. Halfway up the stairs I was confronted by a woman who was most indignant that I was trespassing. When I apologized and explained why, she identified herself as the artistic director of the theater and took me into the Green Room, which was once half of Margaret's great hall. How wonderful was that! It gave me goosebumps to be standing in Margaret's home. It pays to be bold, I guess.

While at my computer in the writing phase, I never stop researching and find I cannot continue halfway through a paragraph if something comes up that I am not sure of: like whether I could say that my protagonist in the third book reminded her friend of a wren. I grew up loving those sweet little birds in England. But something nagged at me and I went into my Observer's Book of British Birds and found out that the wren is actually an immigrant from North America. This is 1485 and Columbus has not yet sailed the ocean blue! So I had to use a sparrow instead—a native but not so perfect a species for my purpose. Boo! Also, things like how long a ride in a carriage would have taken from London to Canterbury, or where did the medieval road take you through. Sometimes I wonder why I chose this genre—surely it would have been simpler to write about today and what I know!

But no, this is truly where I belong—after all there had to be a reason why I spent all my daydreams as a child in a long dress, wandering through Gothic cathedrals, down narrow dirty streets, or through meadows of wild flowers searching for my knight in shining armor!

Anne Easter Smith, author of “A Rose for the Crown” and “Daughter of York”

http://www.anneeastersmith.com/
http://www.anneeastersmith.bookvideos.tv/
http://www.simonsays.com/

Joanne Rock | Hunger for Historicals

It’s a good time for historicals. Or at least, it should be. I’ve seen more historical shows and movies in the last few years than at any time in the last few decades. The Tudors. Rome. Cate Blanchett’s turns as Elizabeth. Not one, but two versions of Beowulf. It’s a historical writer’s dream. But what about for a fan of historical stories? Are we seeing the trend carried out in our books? Certainly I see the trend in more mainstream-y fiction. The fabulous success of Philippa Gregory’s books tells me interest is there for readers. But I’m not sure the new popularity has fully touched the ranks of romance given the percentage of new historical romances available.

My first clue was that some of historical romance’s brightest stars have gone on to write contemporary books. Lisa Kleypas in recent years. Before that, readers witnessed a rash of historical author defections—Elizabeth Lowell, Iris Johansen, Julie Garwood, Pamela Morsi. Other authors, like Amanda Quick, maintained a larger presence on the contemporary side while still writing historical books. I miss their historical offerings, don’t you?

Likewise, when Pirates of the Caribbean exploded in popularity, I thought for sure we’d see some renewed interest in pirate books. A diehard fan of Miranda Jarrett’s Sparhawk series, I couldn’t wait for this to happen. But how many pirate books have we seen in the last decade? Not nearly enough. Remember Susan Wiggs’ Charm School? I could read many, many more books like this.

Of course, it’s hardly all bad news for historical romances. Authors like Madeline Hunter have tapped into the wealth of readers hungry for historical books. And a few years ago, Harlequin Historicals debated discontinuing the long-running series and then decided against the move after readers and booksellers proclaimed their appreciation for the line. Since then, I’ve seen Harlequin Historicals become more open to a wider variety of time periods, and I think that’s a good sign.

What about you? Are there enough historicals in stores to suit your reading appetite? Or do you wish there were more? If so, what time periods do you enjoy and would you like to see an expansion into others?

Finally, I’d love to hear what you think of the historical movies and series in our media. Do you adore The Tudors as much as me? Enter my One Day Only blog contest, I'm giving away signed copies of A Knight Most Wicked to two lucky winners.

Joanne Rock

http://joannerock.com/

http://myspace.com/joanne_rock