Harlequin Intrigue Group Author blog

I was a teenager when I started reading Harlequin books.  I cut my teeth on Harlequin Romances, which my mother deemed safe enough, and my only source at the time were used books from a paperback trade store that was one of my favorite places in the world.  (I could do a whole blog post about used book stores and my current ambivalence about them now that I'm a published writer, but that's another story).

Over the years, as I've had to decide which books stay in my limited storage space and which ones have to go, I have found myself keeping authors more than specific books.  So I thought I'd share some of my "keeper" list of Harlequin and Silhouette authors and books and invite you to share some of yours.

In no particular order, here are my top five "must read/keep" Harlequin/Silhouette authors, and some of my favorite books from them:

I am sick of winter. Every morning I wake up to snow and cold. The oldtimers say this is normal winter.

I'm ready for an abnormal one then. Four years ago we moved farther north (almost to the Canadian border.) I came up to look at the old two-story stone house the lst day of March. There was no snow, I was wearing Birkenstock sandals and I even had to put the car window down because it was so hot.

I could not understand why everyone kept saying, "You're moving there? It is soooo cold up there." Yeah right.

Well, this year it has definitely been cold. The temperature hasn't been above freezing since Dec. 1. We have lots of snow, roads are snowpacked and icy and there is always another storm on the horizon.

Sometimes, especially writing category-length books, we have to delete whole scenes from our books after they're written. Usually, it's a case of the scene not really moving the story along, or interrupting the pacing of the story in some way.

But I don't usually delete those scenes altogether. I save them in a file of their own, in case I need to go back and recover some element of the scene that I need later. So, as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to blog about today, I thought I'd share some of my cut scenes from my books. If you've read the books, you might enjoy seeing what didn't make it between the pages. And if you haven't read them, maybe these snippets will pique your curiosity. 

I wonder if residents of Cumberland, Maryland, spotted the car with the 43LIGHT license plate last week and wondered whom it belonged to. I was in the western Maryland town scouting out locations for my next Intrigue, working title FUNHOUSE. It’s the story of a woman who dreams of events that turn out to be true.

"He's a young George Clooney."

"Think Gerard Butler in a waistcoat and cravat."

"She looks just like Amy Adams, only her hair is darker."

Like a lot of authors, when I write a book, I usually "cast" my hero and heroine. I search the Internet, magazines and catalogs for the actor/actress or model who best fits the picture in my mind of what my characters look like. I'm a very visual person, and I like to have something to reference when the theater of my mind plays out while I'm writing.

On a recent trip to Seattle, I learned something about my writing process.

Vickie McGrew of Mississippi is the winner of my random drawing for December. Visit my web site at www.joannawayne to enter  for a chance to win a free Joanna Wayne book in the January contest.

• My friends are pretty much evenly divided between those who never watch 24 and those who celebrate its return. Those who celebrate have been waiting for tonight's episode ever since the series last concluded.  I just watched it myself, and I'm already hooked by the new story.

On Tuesday night, I went to the MidAtlantic Chapter of Mystery Writers of America to hear Peter Earnest speak. He’s now director of the International Spy Museum in Washington, D. C. (Next time you’re in town, put it on your
schedule, because it’s a fascinating place if you’re interested in real-life suspense and danger.) Peter had a long career in the CIA, where he had some harrowing experiences. Like the time he excused himself from the dinner table to go to the men’s room in a private mansion. Instead, he slipped into his host's office, took off the listening device strapped to his leg, and used a silent drill to install the bug behind a panel under the desk. Then he returned to the dinner party. Or the time he was "taken for a long ride in the mountains" by foreign agents who wanted him to know they were on to his operation. He got the message. I love hearing about real-life spy exploits like that because it helps ground my Intrigues in reality.

Congrats to Laney4 and JanieC for winning a copy of The Sheriff of Silverhill.  Please email your snail mail address to me at:  ceric@socal.rr.com

Thanks to everyone who dropped by and shared amazing stories!

Last week, I posted a Q & A with Hannah Cooper, the heroine of my January Intrigue, CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING.  This week, it's her hero's turn.  Riley Patterson is a Wyoming cop, son of a rancher and a grieving widower--all facts you can glean by the end of the first chapter of the book.  But let's find out a few things we didn't know before about Riley.

Q: Your parents owned a ranch.  You and your friend Joe used to go on cattle drives when you were younger.  Did you ever sing cowboy songs around a campfire?

A:  Not if we didn't want to cause a stampede.   

Q:  Do you even know any cowboy songs?

A:  Does "Rhinestone Cowboy" count?

Q:  No.  New topic--you decided not to go into ranching, choosing police work instead.  Why?

I don’t typically write paranormal elements into my Intrigues.  However, in my Jan. release, The Sheriff of Silverhill, I included a little paranormal action.  The heroine is half Southern Ute, a Native American tribe in Colorado, and she has a special gift.  These powers brought nothing but trouble to the heroine’s mother, so the heroine doesn’t readily embrace them…until she has to so that she can rescue her daughter and catch a killer.

Forgive my title, but I'm in the throes of the whole New Year resolution thing--not that I've made a specific resolution to work on my waistline, but just to be healthier in general.  (Anyone else as bad as I am when it comes to exercising in the winter? I'm guessing shoveling snow doesn't count for much unless I do it daily.  Wait a minute... I HAVE been exercising! )

But this post is my regular update on my writing.  Thus far, the book still has the same title, PROTECTING THE SOCIETY PRINCESS.  Maybe this title will stick through publication?

Sometimes, when I'm just starting a book and don't quite know what to do with my characters, I interview them.  I ask questions I would ask of anyone I'd just met, along with some questions it might be too rude to ask a stranger, in order to get to know my characters better.

With CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING coming out this month from Harlequin Intrigue, I thought y'all might like to get to know Hannah a little better, too.  You can read her story, of course, but there are things you won't learn about Hannah within the pages of the book.  So consider this an extra, like director's commentary or a blooper reel.

Congratulations to Valri and Maureen.  I decided to give away two books this week.  Please send your snail mail address to my email at:  ceric@socal.rr.com

 I'm blogging next week as well and will give away another couple of books.

Happy New Year!

Instead of being all virtuous and listing my New Year’s resolutions, of which I have many, I’m going to blog about all those pesky bad habits that I just know I’ll be giving into by the end of January!  So instead of resolving against them, I’m just going to embrace them...

    I've been reading a lot more lately.  Well, not actually reading.  Listening. I'm really enjoying books on disk.

One of the first romances I ever read was a marriage of convenience story.  It was MARRY IN HASTE by Jane Aiken Hodge.  It's been a long time since I've read it, so I remember only snippets, but the one thing I do remember is that it fueled my love of marriage of convenience stories.  So much to enjoy about a good marriage of convenience story--the forced proximity, the pretend intimacy that leads to real intimacy, the reluctance to admit it when you've fallen in love with your husband or wife, because doing so breaks the contract you made...

But there's a flipside.  It's darned hard to write a good marriage of convenience story in a contemporary setting.  It's an old-fashioned concept, easier to sell in periods of history where marriage was more of a contract and less of a love match to begin with.

I love this time of year. Seriously. It is time to make my New Year's Resolutions! And boy am I good at them. Probably because I tend to make the same ones year after year.

I know. It makes no sense. But I am such an optimist that I think maybe this the year. It could be, you never know.

...is when you get something for free, right?  (Did you think I meant something else? )

To celebrate this holiday season, I've decided to give away up to 10 copies of my November book, TRUSTING A STRANGER

The other day, I wrote the first kiss between the hero and heroine of my September 2010 book, BACHELOR SHERIFF. I have to admit, I hate writing intimate scenes. It's so intimidating! I don't want a kiss to come off like a "how-to" video--"The woman places her hand on the man's shoulder and steps on tip-toe, angling her face approximately 25 degrees to the right..."

All I want to say is Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings. I hope all of you are getting to do exactly what you want during the holidays. I'm spending the holidays with family, and I can think of no better way to celebrate this season of giving.

I hope you also have a wonderful and prosperous New Year.

Best wishes to you all!

Mallory

If you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping and are looking for a perfect gift for those on your list who love mysteries, then I have just the ticket.

So are you getting all your Christmas shopping done? Got that tree decorated, Christmas cards in the mail, gifts wrapped? Um…me neither. My tree is up, but I’m terribly behind on everything else.

I was reading another news story online when I came across this article about a missing girl who disappeared in 1971: http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/kathy-gloddy-murder-break-hampshire/story?id=8946409

As some of you may remember from last year, my brother Tom and I have an annual tradition of bashing bad Christmas carols*. Some people bake cookies together. Some make holiday crafts. Some volunteer at a shelter or soup kitchen. Tom and I listen to horrible music and then spew bitter, holiday-themed invective on public blogs. This is probably a sad commentary on our states of mind, but there it is.... 

So, putting the fun in dysfunctional, as the saying goes, we present our 2009 edition of the Worst. Christmas Carols. EVAH. 

This summer I blogged about the challenges of trying to write a spooky, spine-tingling story while surrounded by heat and sunshine.  Luckily, my current work-in-progress is more seasonally appropriate.  I'm working on a Christmas-themed book scheduled to be released by Intrigue next year.  

The other day someone asked me why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving. It's the same reason that some people have oyster dressing or sweet potatoes or green bean casserole on Thanksgiving. It's more than tradition.

I get it. There are certain foods I have to have during the holidays to make my season bright.

I know all about the inescapable ties of family.  After my father died, my mother, my sister, her two kids and I all decided to live together and pool our resources.  I had lived on my own since my twenties before that, so there were, shall we say, some adjustments to be made.

Yummy!  This is the way to do research.

There are a lot of reasons to love December. In Montana we have white Christmases, snowboarding and craft shows.

I'm not sure what it is about craft shows that I like so much. I think it is seeing people letting loose of their creativity.

No, I'm not talking about Christmas lights or toys that require assembly, although I'll have to face both very, very shortly. I was thinking about books. Sometimes I play the take apart/put together game with books and movies that I really like.

Everybody loves a hot hero, myself included. I was thinking about that when I wrote Bravo, Tango, Cowboy. I knew I had the basic ingredients-a cowboy and a Navy SEAL-but that was only a start. I wanted to create the kind of hero that any single woman in her right mind could never resist. Hawk Taylor, the hero of Bravo, Tango, Cowboy,  became that man for me.

I'm writing this quickly, as the servers keep going down in our area, and I'm not sure how long I'll have access to the Internet and email (frustrating! ).  I apologize if any typos slip through.

Since it's a holiday weekend, and I'm full of turkey and squash dressing, I'm going to skip the serious blogging and just share an update about my kittens.  (See my previous post - http://community.eharlequin.com/content/nameless-0)

Some books write themselves. This is true.

Others don't. I just finished book #49, Twelve-Gauge Guardian. It's part of the Whitehorse: Winchester Ranch series that comes out in June. It didn't write itself.

I don't know even after this many books which ones are going to give me trouble. Often I will start a book and think "This is going to be easy."

My holiday has already begun. Last week, I spent five days in Santa Fe and environs. Santa Fe is one of my favorite destinations for two reasons. I love the setting, the people, the artwork, the jewelry, the colors, the food–okay, everything!–and love to use all the details I can gather in some of my Intrigues.

Before I get to the 1 minute of sexy men, thought I'd share the cover of my Jan. Intrigue, The Sheriff of Silverhill.  I think that cowboy qualifies as sexy, don't you? 

In conjunction with People's Sexiest Man Alive announcement (Johnny Depp for the second time), they also released their One Minute of Sexy Men video.  Wow!  It's really hard to identify them all, especially the ones that flash by so quickly. 

This week I am finishing up the third book in the six-book Whitehorse: Winchester Ranch mini series that comes out starting next spring – and getting anxious for the holidays.

I just got back from the beach... The beach in November...In a Nor-Easter... Rain and wind and gloomy skies... 

Who's for turkey?

Here's a snapshot of the glamorous life of being a writer. (insert tongue in cheek here)

A few months ago I blogged about my then-upcoming move.  I’m happy to report it’s now been completed.  It’s been a crazy few months as I moved from one side of the country to the other, crossing the nation by car and plane several times, but I’m finally settled.  New city.  New apartment.  New possibilities.  It’s not just my traveling over the past several months, but my overall journey, that’s brought me to this point, this place.  This move is something I’ve want to do and have been working toward for a long time, something that sometimes seemed like it would never happen.  Now that it has, I’m hopeful and excited to see what comes next. 

I'm taking a break from my writing process blog series today (I'll be back on Friday to update everyone) to say thank you to all the men and women who serve and have served in our armed forces.