Happy Halloween, readers! Since childhood this has always been a favorite holiday for me and my family. My sisters and i trick-or-treated through high school and as soon as our kids were born we had them in a costume and knocking on doors. I think to be honest it was the lure of candy. My mom was very strict when it came to sugary consumption when we were growing up and the only time during the year we got any was Halloween…I’m happy to report I’ve made up for that in my adult life!

My favorite Halloweens have been as a mom watching my kids search for the perfect costume and then getting all excited about the amount of candy they received when we got back home. My favorite Halloween memories are of a blustery Halloween in Chicago when my son was four and his Peter Pan hat kept blowing away and when my daughter was five and it was her brother’s first Halloween–she told each house we went to that he was just a baby and she’d probably have to eat his candy for him.

What’s you favorite Halloween memory? I have a treat for two blog participants today a copy of my latest release from Harlequin Desire THE REBEL TYCOON RETURNS.

Happy Halloween!
Kathy

Happy weekend, my fellow romance lovers!

Yesterday I turned in the final final final final edits (I say this so many times because it seems like I’ve been on a perpetual deadline for the past two months) for my third NAL Penguin book which will come out in May, MY LADY RIVAL. I cannot even begin to express how excited I am. I might even go to sleep one night before midnight sometime soon just to spoil myself. I’m certainly looking forward to having a chance to respond to all the reader email which I haven’t been able to get to (unfortunately, email is one of the first things to go; otherwise I get sucked in and am good for nothing else). I’m also looking forward to reading some amazing romance novels! (First on my list: the new Kristan Higgins book and the new Joanna Bourne book–yes!)

But I have to tell you the truth, and this might make me sound like I’m simply a glutton for self-punishment. I’m also *really* looking forward to starting in on writing a new book or two. I have so many characters and ideas running around in my head, and they’ve been getting very impatient while I’ve spent so much time with Alex and Willa, the characters in MY LADY RIVAL.

You’re the first ones to know what I’ll be working on next (seriously–even my writer friends don’t know this). First, there’s the love story between Joanna and Ethan, two secondary characters from SEDUCING THE DUCHESS that readers have been asking me about ever since SD came out. (I’m so happy to be able to write their story!) And I’m also thrilled (when I say “thrilled”, I mean I’m giddy because I get to conduct a lot of research, which just goes to show you how much of a dork I am ) to announce that I’m also going to be working on a new romance series set in 1920s Long Island (likely with a spin-off series in 1920s Chicago). It was very difficult to decide on these two projects when I have so many ideas, but they’re the ones knocking on my heart the loudest right now and I hope you’ll love them when they’re done.

And if I eat an extra piece (or ten) of Halloween candy this weekend, just know that it’s all in my plan to party first. I am nothing if not a disciplined hedonist.

As you can see, writing really is a passion for me. As soon as I finish with one book, I’m off to the next! What are your passions? And what other romance books do you think I should add to my TBR list after Kristan Higgins and Joanna Bourne? Hope everyone has a great weekend!

I’m not a fan of Halloween.  I’ve never liked the creepiness factor.  Those ghastly, contorted plastic masks that look like they’re straight out of Edvard Munch’s The Scream?  Shudder.  The skeletons that appear to be crawling out of the ground in peoples’ yards?  Cringe.

Yeah, you guessed it, I’m a wimp when it comes to anything scary.  I can’t watch horror movies because I get so terrified, even though I know what I’ve watched is fiction, I can’t sleep at night.

If you ask my parents, my fear of skeletons and corpses originated in my childhood, when they took me to the British Museum in London, England.  I’m sure the experience was meant to be educational.  However, when touring the rooms on Ancient Egypt, I came upon the glass case containing the shriveled, desiccated, five-thousand-year-old mummy formerly named ‘Ginger‘—one of the most famous mummies of all time–and freaked out.

I’ve been back to the British Museum since then; it’s one of my favorite places to visit in London.  My husband and I have also taken our daughter there.  Unlike her scaredy-cat mom, she thought the mummies and skeletons were “neat.”

The last time I stood in front of the glass display where Ginger lies–where he’s been since 1901–I no longer had that overwhelming terror.  But I can understand why as a child I was upset.  It’s a real body in that case.  He was once a living, breathing person with hopes and dreams and people who cared about him.  Did that poor man have even the slightest inkling that thousands of years after his death, someone would discover his remains in the desert sands and eventually, enclose them in glass and put them on display for millions of people to see?  If he’d known, would he have wanted such immortality?  It’s a lot to think about.

Back to Halloween.  For years, I disliked it, despite the fun aspects of dressing up and trick or treating.  And then, sixteen years ago this Halloween, my life changed.  I was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and having strong contractions as well as other complications.  As I lay in the hospital bed, hooked up to beeping machines with my worried husband and nurses hovering at my bed, I silently swore I would not have a baby on Halloween.  A little pumpkin?  Ha!  So not happening.

I read a bittersweet news story earlier this week. It was about a couple, who had been married for 72 years and how they died within an hour of each other… holding hands.  Even their kids said that while they were sad to lose both parents, they couldn’t imagine one living on without the other. Sounds like a love story, doesn’t it?

Apparently, a lot of people believe in the power of true love…or at least that true love exists. Nearly 90,000 people responded to a poll that accompanied the news story. It asked if they believe in true love. A whopping 63, 411 people (71%) said, “Yes, I’ve found it;” 19,781 people (22%) said, “Yes, I’m still looking;”  2,206 (2%) said, “No, I don’t believe;” and 3,386 (4%) said they weren’t sure.

Here at the Jaunty Quills, talking about true love is sort of like preaching to the choir. Still, even though we’re all fans of romance, how would you have answered that poll? Do you believe in true love?

I attended the New Jersey Romance Writers Conference last weekend and had a wonderful time. Inevitably, published authors chat about what’s going on in the publishing industry and talk comes around to effective methods of promoting ourselves and our work/books to readers and potential readers (AKA you!).  Over the last couple of years social media like Facebook and Twitter have been increasingly growing and authors are being told to be there and to have a presence so that we can meet and ‘friend’ readers, fans and potential readers. Some publishers even give tutorials about how to use these social media for those authors among us who just are not comfortable being in the public eye and at interacting with the public at the fast pace of the internet.

   Interestingly, a tidbit of information shared in one of the discussions was that social media and an author’s presence there does not bring about sales of books.

Apparently, posting and following and tweeting doesn’t seem to sell books or cause readers to run out and buy them — for other than the very biggest of the big-name authors. The rest of us get lost in the mix. Although readers like to chat with us on FB and Twitter, and follow us through our days and share our posts and photos with others of their friends, they don’t go out and buy our books due to seeing us there.

As a reader and a fan,  it was interesting to me. I do follow some of my favorite authors, but those are authors whose books are already on my auto-buy list. I don’t read anything on FB that makes me buy those authors, I follow them because I already enjoy them and their work. But surely, not all readers do this too? LOL!

So……that brings me to my question of the day — do you follow authors you already enjoy or do you begin to try new authors through their FB or Twitter postings? Do an author’s posts make you try out their work? Or are the authors you follow your auto-buys? Let me know what you think and I’ll pick two posters and give them each a $10 giftcard to Amazon or iTunes for sharing!

   Terri is working hard to get her time travel romances (previously published by Berkley/Jove’s Time Passages line) ready for republishing. She hopes to have them re-released in the next few months with the first one, A LOVE THROUGH TIME, coming out in early November! Visit her website for more info about those and about her upcoming new releases! 

Barbara Elness, come on down! You’ve won a signed copy of MY ONE AND ONLY! Send your snail mail addy to k.higgins@snet.net. Thanks to everyone who left a comment and all your lovely warm wishes today!

xox

Kristan

Jaunty P. Quills here, having a chat with Kristan Higgins, who has rectified her mistakes of the past and finally written a porcupine hero. Kristan, welcome.

Kristan: Thanks, Jaunty!

JPQ: UNTIL THERE WAS YOU hits the shelves today, and I understand it features a certain smokin’ hot porcupine named Liam, who has returned to the town where he once rendered women helpless with love.

KH: Yep. Except that Liam is a human.

JPQ: Excuse me? I—a human. Oh. Well, Posey’s a porcupine, right?

KH: Yeah…no. All the characters are people. But really interesting people, Jaunty.

JPQ: Is that supposed to make me feel better?

KH: So yes, it’s the story of the return of the bad boy and the woman whose heart he broke a long time ago. Except that Posey and Liam never back then…she was a scrawny, awkward kid, and he was the bad-boy king of testosterone. But Liam remains the only man who’s ever broken Posey’s heart, and she’s less than thrilled to see him back in town again…with the same effect he had on her back then.

JPQ: I understand Liam has a daughter. Is she a  porcupine, at least?

KH: Well, sometimes, in the way that most teenage girls can be prickly.

JPQ: Great. Another metaphor. I’ll just make a noose here…don’t mind me.

KH: You bet, Jaunty. One of the things I wanted to do with this book was look at the Bad Boy classic and maybe twist it a little bit. We women love the idea that we can tame the Bad Boy and make him into a perfect husband, that true love can change the most difficult, wounded hearts. Sigh! But Liam’s tried that already. He really loved Emma, the golden girl of high school, and truly believed that he’d found his happily ever after. Didn’t work out the way he thought it would.

JPQ: So what about Posey? What’s her deal? Oh, sorry. I’m not at all interested. I’m busy hacking at my little porcupine wrists.

KH: Great question! Posey always feels a little…second best. Her brother’s a doctor, her cousin is a celebrity chef, which her restaurant-owning parents view as a Loaves-and-Fishes type miracle. She knows she’s grown up a lot since high school, but she’s not sure Liam’s any different from the playah he was back then. She thought she’d glimpsed a secret side of him, but his actions kind of erase that notion. Then again, maybe not.

JPQ: Go ahead. Give us an excerpt. You know you want to.

KH: I do! Thanks, Jaunty! You’re the best! Give us a kiss, will you?

JPQ: Absolutely not. And no hugging either, Higgins. Jeesh.

KH: Have it your way. So prickly today! Okay, to set the scene, here’s Posey, age 15, learning that Liam, age 17, will be working in her parents’ restaurant.

And then came that miraculous day when she tore into the kitchen of Guten Tag for her after-school strudel fix, and he was there. Him! Liam Declan Murphy! Was here! In her parents’ kitchen! She could smell him…oil and soap and just the slightest hint of something warm and spicy, like pumpkin pie.

Posey managed to close her mouth, abruptly aware that it was hanging open. Her backpack slipped from her limp fingers, alerting her mother to her arrival.

“Oh, hi, sweetheart! Liam, this is our daughter, Cordelia,” Mom said. “But everyone calls her Posey.”

“Niih,” Posey breathed. This was amazing! God so loved her!

“Hey,” he said.

“Liam will be working here in the kitchen,” her father said. “Washing dishes, cleaning up.”

“I…that’s…hi,” Posey said. Working here? Unbelievable! They’d become friends, she could see it immediately. They’d hang out, Liam would grin and talk about those dumb popular kids. They’d become BFFs…then, yes, she could see it so clearly, they’d fall in love. High school would be a dream of happiness. Prom queen, okay? No more invisibility, no more slinking through the halls. He’d wait for her to graduate, then they’d head off for the same college. Get married, have a house on the water, make out every single night. Oh, Elvis Presley, they’d sleep in the same bed!

JPQ: Okay. I admit it, I can relate. I once loved a certain beautiful porcupine from afar back in Minnesota, and we—

KH: Thanks for having me, Jaunty! Oh, and I’d love to give away a prize to someone who leaves a comment…how about this cute mug and a copy of MY ONE AND ONLY, in which I specifically use the word “porcupine.” Thanks, gang!

Kristan

www.kristanhiggins.com

www.Facebook.com/KristanHigginsBooks

To buy UNTIL THERE WAS YOU from Amazon, click here

To buy from Barnes & Noble, click here

To by from a local, indie bookstore, click here

I love fairy tales.   Love the grandeur and the magic of it all.

There is nothing quite as riveting as the classic theme of good vs. evil, with good always prevailing.   They speak to our wildest dreams and scrape talons over our deepest fears.

They encompass a beautiful pallet filled with danger, passion, romance and of course, the happy ever after ending.  My love of fairy tales is one reason why I was so drawn to writing romantic fiction

As an author, I am the god of my own mythical world. I can dream up my characters, their setting, their clothes, their journey to find the one element missing from their lives while forcing them to face and triumph over the thing that terrifies them most.

Now I’m not a big TV watcher.  But when ABC came up with the idea to base a TV show on the Disney-esque fairy tales I love, well I could hardly wait to see the premier.

Once Upon a Time trailer.

Once Upon a Time takes the fairy tale characters most of us know from their enchanted world of happily ever afters and plops them into Storybrooke, Maine.    Oh, and they don’t remember their world or who they really are.

So tell me did you watch?   What show have you looked forward to seeing this year? Have you been pleased or disappointed?

Anna is the randomly chosen winner of Vanessa Kelly’s My Favorite Countess. Anna, check your Inbox or email me at shana@shanagalen.com

I’m so happy to be visiting with the Sisterhood today, and a special thanks to Shana for having me on the blog.

One of the best things about writing historical romance is that I get to do a lot of cool research. My books are set during the Regency period, so my research is focused on British history from the late 1790’s to about 1820.

And what a time it was! If there was one thing the aristocracy knew how to do back in those days, it was party. Actually, most Brits seemed to party fairly hard back then. Beverages included ginger beer, ale, punch, gin, fortified wines like sherry or port, brandy, negus (mulled wine), cordials, and lemonade for the Regency misses. And, of course, everyone loved champagne.

And then there was the food. The upper classes in particular could really pile it on, often serving two or three courses that had up to twenty dishes in a course. Some of the favorites were roast chicken, stewed or boiled game birds like partridges, ragout of beef, stuffed goose, mutton, pastries, soups, fish with sauce, puddings, custards…well, you get the picture. No wonder so many people had gout!

Research isn’t all fun and games, though. My latest book, My Favorite Countess, features a doctor hero, who spends quite a bit of time in the slums delivering babies and caring for pregnant women. I had to do a fair amount of research on women’s medicine during the Georgian and Regency periods, and I can use one word to describe it—gruesome. Trust me, having a baby back in the 19th century wasn’t for the faint of heart.

I did get a few laughs, though, from period illustrations of Regency doctors—dressed like Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice—discretely groping under the dresses of fashionable ladies. Touch but don’t look seemed to be the way many examinations were conducted.

I also did research on London slums. Also gruesome and disturbing, but fascinating in terms of social history. One of the interesting things about the Regency period was how frequently the upper and lower classes jostled up against each other. The worst slums of the city were only a few blocks from the luxurious mansions of Mayfair, and it was very common for wealthy young bucks to cut loose in the more unsavory districts of London. Mayhem, as you can imagine, was often the result.

Doing this kind of research is both fascinating and fun, but the part I like best is incorporating the really interesting bits into my story in a way that enhances plot and character. My Favorite Countess has the glitter and glamour we’ve come to expect in Regency-set novels, but I also included a riot, some dramatic scenes in the slums—an attempting kidnapping and murder, for one—and a birth that could go tragically wrong if my hero doesn’t arrive in time. Whew! That’s one of the great things about writing historical romance. You can use all those interesting, true-to-life elements to ramp up the drama and conflict.

But My Favorite Countess is first and foremost a romance, and I do have a lot of that good stuff too—including a very sexy scene between the hero and heroine in a deserted ruin in the woods. I won’t give you the details, but I will say that it takes place on a hot summer day, and that things get a whole lot hotter before my hero and heroine get out of there!

There’s always a lot of talk about period accuracy in historical romances. How much accuracy do you like to see in your romance fiction? Do you like lots of history and the nitty-gritty detail of what life was really like? Or do you prefer to keep the nasty bits out of your reading? One person who comments will win a copy of My Favorite Countess.

Named by Booklist as one of the “new stars of historical romance,” Vanessa Kelly writes Regency-set historical romance for Kensington Zebra. Her second novel, Sex And The Single Earl, recently won the Maggie Medallion for best historical romance. Vanessa also writes contemporary romance with her husband, under the pen name of V.K. Sykes. You can find Vanessa at www.vanessakellyauthor.com. She also blogs at www.vanessakellyauthor.wordpress.com.