What Might Have Been

I'm so excited! My newest Blaze, What Might Have Been, is on the shelves now. This book was a labor of love in many ways. I've been working on it for a very long time. And in fact, if you've been on the Playground for awhile you might be familiar with our term "the book has been peach farmed". This is the peach farm book.

For those that aren't familiar with the story, it was originally set at a nudist resort. My editor thought that might be an issue so I made an emergency phone call to the Playfriends and amazing author Rhonda Nelson for some help in fixing the problem (because moving it from the nudist resort kinda killed most of my plot and character arc). We were throwing out ideas. It was late. PC went outside for...three minutes at the most. She comes back and suddenly the book is set on a peach farm in the middle of Georgia. And there's a secret baby. And a past relationship. Needless to say, the book was completely different. In three minutes.

But it turned out absolutely fabulous. I know I'm not supposed to say that a book is my favorite. It's sort of like saying you love one of your kids more than the other. But...it totally is. The entire story just tugged at my heartstrings and writing it was a complete joy. Trust me, that doesn't always happen.

And, as if that wasn't enough, the wonderful, amazing and talented Linda Howard gave me the most awesome cover quote! I had a serious Sally Field moment when I saw the quote. She really did like it.

So, What Might Have Been should be on shelves at a store near you right now. If you pick it up (and I hope you do), let me know if you loved Ainsley and Luke's story as much as I did.

For the writers out there, have you ever had a story turn on a dime like that? Completely morph into something else? For readers, have you ever read a book and wished it was set somewhere else? Or you would have changed some specific thing about the book?

Instigator

P.S. Robertsonreads is the winner from PM's "Getting to Know You" blog. Email your info to playgroundmonitor@writingplayground.com to arrange for your prize.

Free Book Friday - Launch Party Edition

This month, we're combining Free Book Friday with the book launch of Kimberly's new book - Magnate's Mistress... Accidentally Pregnant! This is partly because of my faux paux last month in leaving her out of the Presents Giveaway (which I may never hear the end of) but mostly because the book is awesome and we wanted to share it with all of you.

And don't take my word for it - Magnate's Mistress... Accidentally Pregnant! has been #5 on the Walden Books Bestseller List for two straight weeks and... wait for it... just hit the USA Today Bestseller List at #93! All those people can't be wrong. A big congratulations to Kimberly!

Magnate's Mistress... Accidentally Pregnant!
by Kimberly Lang (AKA Problem Child)

Pregnant by the wild and wicked billionaire!

Ally Smith might have dumped her cheating fiancé, but she refuses to waste her non-refundable honeymoon in the Caribbean!

Trying to embrace her freedom, Ally meets sexy stranger Chris Wells… Not recognizing him as the famous thrill-seeking tycoon, Ally throws caution to the wind and allows Chris, with his hot body, to sweep her into an even hotter summer fling!

But back home Ally realizes that, unlike her tan, memories of their wild night will never fade… Oh-so-sensible Ally is expecting the playboy's baby!

Click here to order on eHarlequin!

So today, we celebrate the new book's release and her Bestseller List success with the traditional Playground party elements - chocolate, alcohol and Cabana Boys! (How do other people celebrate without these critical pieces, I often wonder?) I've fired up the chocolate fountain and Raoul is behind the bar mixing up celebratory Teeter Totters for everyone. Let's get this party started.

Since it is Free Book Friday, we're also going to be giving away a copy of Magnate's Mistress... Accidentally Pregnant! to one of our commenters. To enter, comment with the phrase "I want a hot summer fling ...uh... I mean, read!" Also, for fun, share your best vacation souvenir. Not everyone can come home with a billionaire's baby, but maybe a nifty snow globe or something. My favorite is a pair of Swarovski crystal champagne flutes that I bought at the Swarovski factory in Innsbruck, Austria. They're absolutely beautiful and one day I hope to use them at my wedding.

SP

PS. We also have some winners to announce! Liza is the lucky winner of Cristina Lynn's fab CD - From All Sides. Please email problemchild@writingplayground.com to claim your prize. Also, Valerie Peck is Wednesday's winner of Last of the Ravens by Linda Winstead Jones. Please email playgroundmonitor@writingplayground.com to claim your prize.

Release Party for THE TIMESTONE KEY by Pamela Hearon

Finally!!!!

The Timestone Key is available today!

The Playfriends are thrilled to host Pamela Hearon’s first release party! I realize I’m a bit biased because Pamela is my Fabu CP, but I’m so excited that her first book is now available from Lyrical Press.

This was the first manuscript Pam sent me when we started critting back in the Dark Ages. I knew right then, this book was something really special. It had everything – including the Arthur legend – and it’s written in Pamela’s flowing, lyrical, evocative style (that even after all these years I still fall short of emulating…).

Here’s the blurb…

Can a modern heart entwined with an ancient mystery prevail against a terrifying future?

When she was three, Halley Winsted was given a mysterious family legacy and told to follow her heart. But now that she’s thirty-three, love and commitment don’t come easy, even in the arms of sexy Tom Rutledge. A trip to England seems the perfect chance to sort out her feelings, and to indulge her obsession with the Arthurian legends.

But the legends are true. Arthur is alive in Avalon, teetering on the brink of madness, unable to fulfill his role in mankind’s terrifying future. Can the legacy Halley bears heal Arthur’s mind in time? Can she trust her heart to lead her to her destiny?

Tell me that doesn’t sound awesome. You can’t. Plus, you can take my word for it that this book ROCKS in all kinds of fantabulous ways.

And now, I cede the floor to the author herself...

First of all, I want to thank the Playfriends for throwing the launch party for my debut novel The Timestone Key, released today by Lyrical Press. I’m not sure what I did to deserve finding Kimberly Lang as a critique partner, but as Rogers and Hammerstein so aptly wrote: “I must have done something good!”

When I was 22, I was in my first “real” interview for my first “real” job, an English teacher position at the local high school. The superintendent asked, “What do you see yourself doing when you’re forty?” I realize now that the definitive answer would have been something that mentioned still being a teacher at that school. Instead, in my naiveté, I answered, “I hope to have written the great American novel.”

Well, it isn’t exactly THE great American novel, and I didn’t make it by the time I reached 40, but today is certainly the fulfillment of a life-long dream for me. And I’m thrilled to be here, celebrating with the Playfriends and YOU!

The Timestone Key is the story of my heart—a romantic Arthurian fantasy conceived while on vacation. Stonehenge. Camelford. Tintagel. Glastonbury Tor. The places themselves conjured a story in my mind. I couldn’t rest until I had written it down.

What is it that drives us to tell our stories? Where does the compulsion come from? In her famous diary, Anne Frank wrote: “I want to go on living even after I die.” Poignant words from a writer lost to us well before her time should have even begun. But I get what Anne was saying, and I think her reason is part of this compulsion for me. I want my children and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren to know who I was and what made me tick. It’s a way to touch immortality at some level.

So, today, we’re celebrating life and dreams that come true! Bring on the cabana boys and teeter-totters!

Share with us what compels you to write—or read.:-) I’ll be giving away a free download of The Timestone Key to someone who comments.

Now, who’s pouring the drinks? My glass is only half-full!

P.S. I got the teaching job :-)

Many congrats to Pamela! This is just the first of many great books!

The Launch of Tasteful Tuesdays -- and a book!

As part of our themed week, the first Tuesday of the month will be “Tasteful Tuesday.” I’ve got a bit of leeway with what’s “tasteful”—it could be recipes, it could be jewelry.


Today I’m defining “tasteful” in the best possible way – with a party for my new release! After all, the heroine of The Millionaire’s Misbehaving Mistress is an etiquette expert. She should know what’s tasteful and what’s tacky. And good manners are always tasteful. This book came out in the UK in April, and I’ve been waiting impatiently for its US release. Now it’s finally here! Here’s the blurb:

Perfect, polite… and passionate!

As Dallas’s most eligible bachelor and heir to his family’s fortune, billionaire Will Harrison knows how to handle the paparazzi – but his little sister Evie is a worry…

Miss Behavior, etiquette expert Gwen Sawyer, has only three weeks to work her magic on Evie before a society ball, and so moves into Will’s luxurious penthouse. However she discovers too late that etiquette is the last thing on devilishly handsome Will’s mind…

Coffee Time Romance gave MMM 5 cups, Blue Moon called it "fresh and charming," and CataRomance said it "entertains with witty repartee and sizzling passion." (They also called me talented -- squee!)

When I say I love this book, I’m not kidding. I know I should love all my book children equally, but there’s something about these characters that makes me smile every time I think about them. I hope you fall in love with these characters too, because I’m currently working on Evie’s story (tentatively scheduled for a late 2010 release)!

So to appease my etiquette-expert heroine and stick with the Tasteful Tuesday theme, we’ll have a very polite and tasteful party today. Break out the good china, tell Capt’n Jack to behave himself, and hold your pinkies up while you sip that Teeter-Totter.

I’ll give away a copy of the book to a commenter today, so party on!

With decorum, of course. ~grin~

Browse this book

Add to your site

Buy this book

SPANISH MAGNATE, RED-HOT REVENGE

by Lynn Raye Harris

Available NOW from Harlequin Presents



Nobody messes with Alejandro de Ramirez. He doesn't suffer fools, and certainly has no time for manipulative wantons. Rebecca Layton was both. Five years later, Alejandro's life is still in turmoil—and he's more merciless than ever. The Spanish magnate wants retribution….

Unusually, and frustratingly for Alejandro, his plan doesn't go smoothly. Surely Rebecca wasn't this alluring before. And did his body always respond in this way—with such passionate fury? This is no longer just revenge…this is red-hot and dangerous!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Hello, Playfriends and Honorary Playfriends! I’ve been a visitor to this blog since I realized in early 2006 that I was moving to Alabama. I remember going searching on the web one day for the RWA chapter closest to where I would be and somehow stumbling upon this site. The Playground quickly became a favorite stop on my morning blog tour, and I began to feel like I’d found friends even though no one here knew me yet.

When I arrived in Alabama in November 2006, the Playground Monitor emailed to ask how I was and to introduce me to the Instigator, who worked in an office close to where I was staying at the time. I quickly met up with Instigator for lunch, and felt just as welcome as I’d known I would when I still lived 5000 miles away.

Fast-forward nearly three years (really? Three? OMG, how time passes!) and the Playfriends are my friends in truth. From the moment I arrived at my first Heart of Dixie meeting, I knew I’d found a home with wonderful, welcoming, and crazy women just like me. (Not to mention I’d landed in the Mecca of Shoe Fabulosity!)

So when it was time to have a blog book launch party for my very first book, SPANISH MAGNATE, RED-HOT REVENGE, there could be no other place to celebrate than with my friends on the Playground (and that includes all you Honorary Playfriends too!).

It’s been a long journey getting to this point. It’s been filled with tears and frustration, but it’s also been filled with laughter and joy. There’s nothing better than seeing that book on the shelves finally. Nothing better than getting reader mail or receiving a great review.

Writers spend so much time laboring in isolation and waiting for the day when their work is available to the reading public. It seems rather surreal that my day has come. Just yesterday, in fact, I learned that my book debuted at #7 on the Borders Bestseller List for series romance. You may think I jumped up and down and called everyone I knew.

But I didn’t. I sat there looking at that list and remembering the journey that brought me to this point. I quietly told my husband. A bit later, I decided to share the news on my Facebook page and on Twitter.

It still seems unreal to me, you see. As if it could all disappear if I blink too hard. It took so long to get here that surely, surely it’s a dream.

But my friends assure me it is NOT a dream. I’ve seen my book in stores, I’ve signed copies, and I’ve talked to readers at the Literacy Autographing in Washington D.C. last month. It’s real, my book is real, and this day here with all of you is real.

So let’s get this party started! I’ll have Smarty Pants bring out all the Moan-Day hotties and get them busy serving the official Playground cocktail, the Teeter-Totter. (Because she’s super-organized like that.) They’ll also be serving whatever drink your heart desires, and they’ll be providing massages and bringing you unending supplies of chocolate. (We hope to see Captain Jack today, but he’s been a bit busy sailing and plundering the seven seas.)

I’m in such a happy, party mood that I’m going to give away not one, but two signed books to commenters! So get your party hats on and, for fun, tell me who your favorite romance hero is and why. (Or your favorite inspiration for a romance hero if you’re a writer.)

Postscript from the Playground Monitor:


I started reading this book at home, then brought it along to my mom's house and finished it on the beach. See?

Today I toured the Millionaire's Village on Jekyll Island, Georgia. It was begun as a hunting club for the uber-wealthy and a few of the "cottages" are open for viewing. These cottages are anywhere from 8000 to 15000 square feet and were only used for two to three months each year. I imagine Alejandro might have had a house on Jekyll if it were still a thriving hunt club today.

To go along with the books Lynn is giving away, one additional person will get my copy of the book, which is a little shopworn from the trip and may still have sand in the pages. Plus I'll throw in a little sea turtle paperweight and some sand I scooped from the shore on Jekyll Island, where real-life Presents-type heroes used to sun