The winner of IMPROPER GENTLEMEN by Mia Marlowe is Chelsea B! Chelsea, email me at shana@shanagalen.com with your address, and I’ll send it on to Mia.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess we had a little flub today, and I wasn’t supposed to be blogging. But today’s blog is my responsibility, and I needed to get something up fast! So I grabbed this fun blog that originally appeared on September 23 at Love Romance Passion. If you’ve already seen it, sorry for the repeat.

In my new historical romance, Lord and Lady Spy, both the hero and heroine have secret identities. He’s secret agent Wolf, and she’s secret agent Saint. The fun thing is that while Sophia and Adrian have been married five years, neither knows of the other’s secret. And how the sparks fly when the truth is revealed!

I love stories with secret identities. This isn’t my first secret-identity book and probably won’t be my last. Why are secret identities so sexy?

1. When you have a secret identity your secret self can do things your public self never would. As Lady Smythe, Sophia would never tell her husband what she wanted from him in bed. But as Agent Saint, she’s more than happy to give a few orders.

2. Secret identities mean lots of midnight rendezvous and clandestine meetings. Sometimes these dark, furtive meetings can lead to more than simply spy business.

3. Secret identities mean dressing the part. A dowdy lady of Society can dress as a sexy siren when she’s playing her role as spy.

4. Secret identities mean secret scars. How much fun to compare battle wounds, especially when they’re in interesting places!

5. Secret identities mean you have an excuse for slipping away from a boring ball or house party. On business—or pleasure!

6. When you have a secret identity you have the chance to meet your spouse all over again for the first time. Who wouldn’t want to experience that initial spark of attraction again?

7. A secret identity as a spy means Sophia and Adrian have to come up with lots of explanations for prolonged absences when they’re working on a mission. But they also get to travel the world.

8. Secret identities mean secret talents. Sophia has skills with a dagger, and Adrian’s a crack shot with a pistol.

9. Secret identities mean you don’t get much share of the applause for your accomplishments. On the other hand, your accomplishments often bring you into contact with the most powerful men and women of the day. Why, yes, prime minister, I would like to come to dinner!

10. And, finally, secret identities are sexy because it’s a secret we the reader know and the characters don’t know. At first. I love to guess how the hero or heroine will realize the secret and how he or she will react. I think this scene in Lord and Lady Spy is pretty sexy and exciting.

Do you like secret identity stories? What makes them sexy? Our JQ friend Mia Marlowe is offering a copy of her latest, Improper Gentlemen, to one random commenter!

Quilt Lady and Lorelei, you’re also winners of PJ Sharon’s book. Email her at pjsharon64@gmail.com and thanks for stopping by!

Molly, congratulations! You’re the winner of PJ Sharon’s debut novel, HEAVEN IS FOR HEROES. Email your snail mail addy to pjsharon64@gmail.com.

Thank you so much, Kristan et al, for having me today. I’m honored to be here with the Jaunty Quills. I’ll be giving away a free e-book copy of my newly released Contemporary Young Adult Romance, Heaven is for Heroes, to three of your lucky commenters.

Since this is my debut novel, I’m as excited and nervous as a new mother sending her first child off to kindergarten. I’m wondering if I’ve done all I could to make my baby successful and if anyone out there will love it as much as I do. That might be asking too much, but every mother looks forward to those wonderful reviews of what a fabulous child she’s raised. The reality is, just as with children, each book has a personality and not everyone will find it charming, fabulous and wonderful. So I’m following the advice I’ve given to my children—expect the best, but prepare for the worst.

In order for me to tell you about my book, I first need to fill you in on why I, a mother of two grown sons, chose to write for young adults. I’ve been writing romantic fiction for about six years and it took me until I’d written my 500,000 words of practice to discover that my “writer’s voice” was in the young adult genre. People have asked what my inspiration is for my stories and I guess I would say that I follow the old adage and write what I know. My teen life was memorable and anything but ordinary. “My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue”—that’s a line from an old Carol King tune that fits me perfectly. I have had a very colorful life with lots of drama, twists and turns.

My stories are my way of using my life experience to let teens know that no matter what awful things happen in their lives, they aren’t alone and that there is a hopefully ever after if they are willing to fight for it and choose it. It’s also my way of re-writing history a bit. I can create characters that I wish had been there for me, build worlds where my heroes and heroines can win the day, and share with others all the lessons and emotional journeys that have brought me to where I am today—happy, healthy, and hopeful.

In Heaven is for Heroes (HIFH), Jordie Dunn is a seventeen year old girl whose brother, Levi, dies in the war in Iraq. I had a brother who was a Marine. He enlisted when I was eight years old and got out eight years later when I was sixteen. Even though there was ten years between us, and even with all the years we spent apart, I loved my brother dearly. I wrote him letters, anticipated his visits home, and prayed every night that he would not have to go to war. He didn’t die in combat, but his death by suicide affected me profoundly when I was twenty-two.  Levi’s character is modeled after my brother.

In recent years, with the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, much attention has been paid to the tragedies of war and how the losses affect spouses, children, and parents of soldiers who die in combat or return home injured and devastated by their experience. But not much is said about how siblings are affected. I wanted to show that connection and bring to light the brothers and sisters who are suffering as well. We have a whole generation of teenagers who have lost someone they love or have had their world shattered by war. I wanted to give voice to their experience.

Since I also love romance, I gave Jordie a dreamy but challenging guy to test her patience. Alex Cooper was Levi’s best friend and a fellow Marine. The three grew up hanging out together, until Jordie realized in the ninth grade that there was more to Alex than a gangly computer geek hiding behind braces and glasses. When Alex returns home wounded and believes that he’s responsible for Levi’s death, Jordie sets out to prove him wrong and help him in his recovery. What she doesn’t understand is that Alex has more than a guilty conscience or a physical disability to overcome. Her quest for the truth and Alex’s quest for peace, at times put them in direct opposition.

Because the focus of the story is the tenuous romance between childhood sweethearts, Jordie and Alex, with the underlying plot of a family’s search for peace in time of war, I think HIFH will appeal to adult readers as well as older young adults. I’ve added a challenging mother-daughter relationship, and entertaining secondary characters like Brig, Jordie’s grandfather, who is a retired Brigadier general. I personally, think Brig steals the show.

I hope those of you who read the book enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It’s always hard for us writers/moms to let go of our children, but we have to trust that we’ve done our best and move on to whatever comes next. In my case, it’s my second release, On Thin Ice, coming out in December of this year. Yikes…must get on those revisions.

In ON THIN ICE, Penny Trudeau deals with issues like teen pregnancy, her mother’s cancer, date rape and an eating disorder. I know! Right? Crazy stuff, but all part of my teen age experience. That’s why I write Extraordinary stories of an average teen age life.

If you could re-write your own history, would you have been rich? Married Tom Selleck? Gotten a pony when you were eight? Maybe you would have been an astronaut. With writing, the sky’s the limit. So tell me, if you could re-write your story, what would be different?

Visit www.pjsharon.com for more information on PJ’s books.

I’m very excited to welcome my friend and co-Kensington author Tina Gabrielle to the Jaunty Quills blog today. It’s even more special because this is Tina’s VERY FIRST EVER BLOG! Wooohooo! So, please give a warm HUZZAH to Tina as she tells us about writing her wonderful Regency historical romances.

  First let me thank the Jaunty Quills and Terri Brisbin for inviting me to blog. It’s wonderful to be here!

I was a late bloomer. My transition from middle school to high school was…how politely can I phrase it?—awkward. A combination of genetic factors were against me—braces, a stature of five foot zip, and yes, there was that scoliosis brace. I hid beneath baggy clothes and often had my nose buried in a book. It didn’t help that I had two older sisters who were both very pretty and who never had to wear any type of brace, orthodontic or orthopedic. Boys called the house all the time, just not for me.

To my great relief, sophomore year brought change. Both braces came off, for the teeth and the back, and I had a perfect pearly white smile and straight posture. As for being petite, I reached the great height of five foot two inches, but I soon learned that being a petite female has its advantages. Self-esteem came in the form of sports, friends, and academics. Boys called, and this time for me!

Years later, I credited my difficult adolescence in making me not just stronger, but more compassionate toward others. My love of academics remained, and I went on to obtain a B.S. in mechanical engineering and a law degree. I used both my legal background and my life experience when writing IN THE BARRISTER’S CHAMBERS.

My heroine, Lady Evelyn Darlington is the daughter of a barrister and an Oxford professor. She goes through her own awkward adolescence, with her nose buried in legal treatises, pining away for her father’s charming student, Jack Harding. She is a funny-looking girl who follows Jack around like a lost puppy.

Years pass, and Jack is now the top criminal barrister in London. Evelyn has grown into a lovely, mature woman who has a passion for the law. She believes she has found the perfect husband in Randolph, one of her father’s University fellows. But things go terribly awry when Randolph is accused of murdering a Drury Lane actress, and Evelyn finds herself on the hunt for the best barrister to aid him.

When Evelyn shows up in Jack’s chambers, he is stunned to learn the beautiful woman standing before him is little Evie, the professor’s daughter. At first Jack is reluctant to take on Randolph’s case. Jack’s a smooth talking barrister, a jury master, who never mixes business with pleasure. His career is of the utmost importance to him, and although he enjoys the ladies, he has no desire to marry. But Evelyn is persistent, and Jack eventually takes on the case.

Our reluctant hero soon has his hands full trying to handle a murder case and battle his desire for Evelyn. As they travel throughout London investigating the murder, Jack grows to admire Evelyn’s intelligence and tenacity, along with her beauty. Eventually he realizes he wants Evelyn’s heart, not just her body. And for the first time in Jack’s life, he has to convince a woman that he’s the right man for her.

It was a pleasure to write the first book in my Regency Barrister Series about four sexy barristers and the women who wreak havoc in their chambers and steal their hearts. And yes, I loved writing about the ugly duckling that turns into the beautiful swan.

So tell me: What was your most awkward adolescent experience?

To celebrate my Jaunty Quills blog, I’m giving away a signed copy of the first book in my Scandal Series, LADY OF SCANDAL, to one commenter. Contest limited to US/Canada. Good luck!

Tina Gabrielle, an award-winning author, is an attorney and former mechanical engineer whose love of reading for pleasure helped her get through years of academia. After multi-publishing for a prestigious Law Journal, she fulfilled her dream of writing fiction. She is the author of In The Barrister’s Chambers, Lady Of Scandal, and A Perfect Scandal from Kensington Books. The second book in her Regency Barrister Series is scheduled for release by Kensington in 2012. Visit her website at www.tinagabrielle.com

Yesterday was beautifully sunny in the Midlands of the UK and I couldn’t resist putting the top down on my convertible as I drove around doing errands. I save them for Monday because then I don’t have to do them on the weekends when my boys are home.

I’ve always had this vision of myself as a European women with dark sunglasses and a scarf around my neck driving around in a sporty little convertible listening to some arty music and as luck would have it La Vie En Rose came on my playlist as I was driving. It was for me a perfect moment. I didn’t have the scarf on, I still looked like me but I just had to laugh at the pure joy of a moment that would seem like nothing to someone else but to me was on my bucket list.

Another one for me is hearing my favorite songs back-to-back on the radio. My son will sometimes groan and say “oh no, all of mom’s favorite songs” as I sing loudly along with them. But there is a simple joy in those moments that somehow refill my well.

And I love it when a song comes on the radio that my kids and I all love and we sing it together. Sometimes we even just sing the wrong words or make them…who can understand all of the words that Billy Joe Armstrong sings?!

Do you have any moments like that? Things that are on your bucket list but don’t involve sky diving or seeing Machu Picchu.

Kathy

I read a statistic the other day that kids who play sports at the high school level have a 0.03 chance of becoming a professional athlete. I myself am not a professional athlete (surprise!). I never have been. I never will be. I exercise grudgingly and sporadically. I have yet to find a form of exercise that I truly love and seek out.

I live in a town where kids are enrolled in soccer while still in utero. You don’t play football by the time you’re six? Sorry, kid, your career is over. Once I went to enroll my daughter in softball, and the guy said, “Who was her coach last year?” I said she hadn’t played last year. “What?” he gasped. “Why not?”

“Um…because she didn’t want to?” I answered

“She’s gonna have a hard time catching up,” he said.

“These kids are eight,” I said. “I have faith.” For the record, she changed her mind and didn’t want to play. I was fine with that. Both kids are the “run and play” variety. We have a pool. They take karate. But sure, team sports teach something important. Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of invaluable things to learn as part of a team. “Someday,” I told both my kids, “you will have to spend at least a year on a team sport. If you haven’t found anything you like by seventh grade, it will be cross country running.”

Thank God for cross country. It is, to the best of my observations, the only sport in which no one is going to get blamed for missing the goal, flubbing the pass, committing the error.  Once, when my son played t-ball at the age of four, we witnessed a father screaming at his son for not hitting the ball far enough. The kid. Was. Four. I’ve even heard of coaches saying that if a kid isn’t good enough, he or she should just quit, just go home.

Horrible, isn’t it?

But in cross country, the kids simply run. Some are fast. Some are not. And for an inexplicable, wonderful reason, no one seems to care that much.

Last week, my son had a meet in a nearby town. Immediately, the tone was set: as my son’s team approached the course, the home team stood up and applauded, calling out the name of our school, our town. Wow. Welcome? Welcome to our home field?

The home team was far better than our school, but our faster runners did well enough. Everyone on my son’s team did respectably. In cross country, “respectably “means “finishing.” But here’s what I want to tell you about. The last few runners probably take three times as long as the fastest kids. The very last boy of this race was rather chubby, probably running because he or his parents knew he should get some physical activity, and there he was, trotting slowly along, his expression angelic and serene, his thighs chafing, his pace a crawl.

“Here he comes!” bellowed the home team coach. “Come on, everyone, here he comes!” Everyone else—our team, his team, all the coaches, all the parents—everyone gathered along the home stretch and cheered that kid home. His trot turned into a run, and a smile came over his pink, round, adorable face. He was welcomed at the finish line like an Olympic champion. Not like a slow kid. Not like a kid who should go home.

For that home stretch, he was a hero.

So here’s to those of us who won’t be the next Derek Jeter, the next Kobe Bryant, the next Mia Hamm. And here’s to the coaches who understand what really matters. Determination, sportsmanship, effort, and, for one or two shining moments, the chance to feel like a star.

Barbara Elness!  Congratulations, Barbara!  I sent you a note privately, and as soon as I hear back from you, your copy of LUCKY GIRL will be on the way to you.   Thanks to everyone who left a comment, and keep checking back at the Jaunty Quills site for more chances to win books.

Let’s give a big Jaunty welcome to my friend, Diane Kelly! Note that if you comment you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a FREE BOOK!

People often ask me how I became a writer. My answer? Because I worked for criminals.
I know what you’re thinking. What the heck?

Although I enjoyed writing projects in English class and was commended on my writing skills by my teachers, becoming a novelist wasn’t something I planned on when I was young. Sure, I wrote stories, poems, and song lyrics in spiral notebooks kept hidden under my mattress and dreamed about being a writer, but in a very abstract, theoretical way. After all, novelists were cool people with interesting ideas and great clothes and hair who grew up in intriguing places, right? They weren’t nerdy, flat-chested suburban spawn with braces, bad acne, and a cashier’s job at Kmart (sea-foam green smock provided free of charge!).

So I ignored my inner yearnings and did the practical thing. I went to college and majored in accounting. Then, because taking the three-day CPA exam wasn’t enough masochism, I decided to go to law school and take another grueling test, the bar exam, so I could become the ultimate nerd: a tax lawyer.

One of my first jobs after law school was working as an assistant attorney general at the State of Texas Attorney General’s office. This was back in the early 1990’s when the tobacco company lawsuits were in full swing. (Nicotine? Addictive? Who knew?!?) So there I was, working my then-skinny butt off to honorably and zealously represent Uncle Sam – well, Uncle Tex – to the best of my abilities, and come to find out the state AG was falsifying documents in order to fraudulently divert settlement funds to his cronies’ law firms. He later pled guilty to criminal charges and spent some time in the slammer.

My innocence tarnished, I then took a job with one of the major accounting firms, proud that such a prestigious outfit would hire little ol’ me. Well, I actually wasn’t so little anymore given that I was pregnant with my first child. But I digress. After cavorting – inadvertently and unknowingly! – with criminals at the AG’s office, I was thrilled to now be among fellow nerds who were surely too straight-laced to engage in criminal activity. I had the privilege to work on occasion with one of the nicest, most polite, and intelligent guys on the planet. His white dress shirts were always perfectly starched, his ties a classic red-and-blue stripe, his hair neatly cut and combed. He looked like a conservative and more sophisticated version of Pee-wee Herman. Lo and behold, this partner was later indicted for tax shelter fraud. Pee-wee Herman was also arrested, though on much different charges.

Was there no one I could trust?

Worried I’d find myself in jail as an unwitting accomplice to my next employer’s criminal deeds, I decided self-employment would be a good idea. I also realized my experiences with white-collar crime made excellent fodder for light and fun mystery novels. My fingers hit the keyboard and thus began my “Death and Taxes” series.

Got an unusual on-the-job story? We’d love to hear it! All of those who post comments will be entered in a drawing to win a free autographed copy of Death, Taxes, and a French Manicure, book #1 in the Death and Taxes series, upon its release November 1st. The winner will be announced at 9:00 pm central time on Sunday, September 25th. For more information about my series, please visit me at www.dianekelly.com.
Thanks for stopping by! And thanks to Cindy Kirk for inviting me to guest blog!