Lord Marcus Everret


I got to beta read for this one. It’s a bit hotter than I usually read, but Jennifer Leeland is always good at providing a great story that keeps me reading along! If you like hot & spicy historicals… you should love this one! Congrats, Jen!

What’s on My Shelf?

This week my accountability group is blogging about what our bookshelves are like and which authors have influenced us. Last week’s post on Hobbies is also part of our How I Write series.

My husband and I are bona fide bibliophiles. Movers hate us because we have so many books. We just lost a large built-in shelf at the old house last Spring, so we’re in the process of converting the majority of our shelving into double-stacked shelves where you can read both spines. We bought 4×4′s at Home Depot and had them cut to length. Not the prettiest in some places, but functional and needed.

Photo of a crazy bookshelf house. No walls, just shelves.
We so need a house like this!

I think we’d be quite happy with a house like the one on the right (BTW – You can click on any of the images to enlarge them!). As it is, we have covered 2 windows with bookshelves and turned the common wall of the dining room and family room into one long shelf unit for books, movies and games. We keep joking that we need to find a library branch that’s closing and tell them don’t move anything, we’ll just move in around the existing shelves and books. Needless to say, after a couple of moves, we’re tired of not being able to put our hands on a book easily. We have roughly 76 – 40″ shelves and 45 – 20″ shelves full. This works out to 3940 linear inches or 328 linear feet of books! No. We have no idea how many individual books that comes to.

A photo of my Historical Romance Shelf
Historical Romance Shelf

But let’s take a closer look at my romance shelves. These I have separated out and organized. I’ve put all my Historical Romances which are set mostly during the Regency on a 40″ bookcase. If we wanted to name favorite authors, there are quite a few: Victoria Alexander, Mary Balogh, Shirlee Busbee, Suzanne Enoch, Galen Foley, Karen Hawkins, Eloisa James, Sabrina Jeffries, Lisa Kleypas, Stephanie Laurens, Amanda Quick, and Julia Quinn. I’ve also picked up some new favorites: Tessa Dare, Anna Campbell, Joanna Bourne, and Anne Gracie.

I love authors with big sprawling series like JQ’s Bridgertons, SL’s Cynsters and Enoch’s books which have a few token characters who return on the fringes book after book. Love the inter-connectedness that makes it feel like a coherent society.

A photo of my Contemporary & Paranormal Shelf
Contemporary & Paranormal Shelf

The Contemporary Romance & Paranormal Romance books are on a 20″ bookcase. Janet Evanovich amuses me, both with her old contemporary romances — it’s fun to see where she was practicing with certain characters — and the Stephanie Plum series. I’m so not sold on who they picked for Ranger in the movie either. Anyway…my other go to authors for contemporary are Suzanne Brockmann, Jennifer Crusie and Louisa Edwards.

For some reason, all my Lynn Kurland time-travel books seem to be on the historical shelf, instead of with the contemporary/paranormal ones. I think this is because they scream historical to me even if the couple ends up in modern times at the end of the book. I know where to look for them anyway.

I also read a lot of YA in hopes of getting my daughter interested in ones beyond what’s just wildly popular (She hated Twilight, LOVED Hunger Games) and I’ve had limited success with that since she’s crazy into anime and manga. On the other hand, I’ve had great success in finding fun and entertaining authors for myself like Rosemary Clement-Moore and Tera Lynn Childs. DH is the one who reads SF/F so has introduced us to Cory Doctorow (Little Brother) and Scott Westerfeld (The Midnighters Series, Pretties/Uglies/Specials and Leviathan/Behemoth/Goliath) and he’s had some success in getting me and our son to read them. The boy is happily reading a string of 19th century stories and novels like Frankenstein. Don’t think I can sell him on Jane Austen though.

My "To Be Read" Shelf
My TBR Stack: Can you spot the duplicate?

I’m also falling behind in my reading. While I was tracking on GoodReads, I was reading about 2-3 books a week. I should go back to doing that again, it was fun to see everything back-to-back in a list like that. But from this shelf, the proportions are fairly well represented: mostly Regency set historicals, 3 other. What you can’t see behind there are craft books (read) and some reference books (most read).

I hope you enjoyed this little tour of my books.

YOUR TURN: Who are your favorite authors? What do you recommend that I add to my TBR pile now that you’ve seen what I like?

And if you’d like to read about what the rest of my group does when they’re not writing, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Angeleque Ford * Danie Ford *
* Emma G. Delaney * Kimberly Farris *

Fan Girl Moment

Suzanne Enoch and Teresa Medeiros at Romance World in El Cajon, CA on 8/3/08.
Suzanne Enoch and Teresa Medeiros
at Romance World in El Cajon, CA on 8/3/08

On Sunday, I dragged my kids with me down to El Cajon to the Romance World bookstore. Two of my favorite Avon authors, Suzanne Enoch and Teresa Medeiros were signing their newest books, Before the Scandal: The Notorious Gentlemen and Some Like It Wicked. After attending the Janet Evanovich event here at Borders, I was a bit apprehensive, but we set out and got there when the store opened. And yes, I took my camera this time!

The kids were predictably bored. Especially the boy. Their kids section was limited and they only had 2 Star Wars books, one of which we own. DD did much better and I think she ended up with more books than I did.

There were maybe a dozen people in the store including the staff. So it was nothing like Janet Evanovich’s event. Although I hope their Borders event later this week is as well attended as that one!

I love the books these ladies write. I got about 9 books signed and managed to get thoroughly tongue-tied and not manage very coherent sentences. Suzanne did remember my name when I mentioned I was the one who blogged about England’s Perfect Hero (Lessons in Love, Book 3) being one of my “comfort reads” back in April.

My daughter impressed Teresa with her love of reading and ability to speak better than her mother. She even wrote down the names of two of the authors my daughter recommended. When she found out DD had written a story for my birthday, she encouraged her to keep up with her writing. DD came home and wrote two pages of a new story. Sad to say that’s more than I accomplished yesterday.

And, Suzanne? A full resolution copy of this picture should be in your inbox as promised.

Hot Contract Now Available

I haven’t done this before but I can’t keep quiet about this one. Jodi’s book just came out over at The Wild Rose Press and I’ve been waiting for this one. Now, I haven’t finished it yet, so this isn’t a full-fledged review. However, lemme tell ya, I’m lovin’ what I’ve read so far! I’ll be back to rave later this weekend, I’m sure… but for now, check it out for yourself!


Hot Contract

by Jodi Henley

When Jen Stalling, chief geologist on a new magma-based power plant known as the Pele Project witnesses the murder of a fellow scientist, Project officials don’t want the negative publicity of a murder investigation. “An accident,” they say. Jen knows better. So does her father, billionaire Art Stalling. But having pushed Jen away years ago, he can’t now reveal his interest without exposing her to danger. He hires DalCon, a Seattle-based security group to watch over her.

Keegan Dalfrey has his own problems. Four days ago, during a routine mission gone wrong, his brother was captured by South Pacific extremists. They want two million in ten days. Keegan can make that in nine days by neutralizing the threat to Jen. It’s an all or nothing gamble with his brother’s life in the balance. He never expected to fall in love.

Read An Excerpt or Buy it now!

Rose (220 pages) Spicy

PRINT ISBN 1-60154-208-9 Also Available In Print Sep 2008

Contrary to Popular Belief…

Ships sailing off the edge of the world -- a flat Earth.I have not fallen off the face of the earth. Real life has intruded and decided to complicate life further. Nothing bad, just I have more than one person should have to do at once. The number of demands on my time, my attention, and my car are quite high this week.

My in-laws are coming this weekend so trying to get the house in shape for that is a Herculean effort. Hey, why can’t they send me a demi-god to take care of all this? I’d be tempted to reroute a river to get rid of the clutter but unfortunately, our stable sits at the top of a hill and I don’t think it would work.

I don’t know why I feel so overwhelmed lately. The weather has changed from sunny and in the low eighties to cloudy/foggy in the mornings and settling in the upper sixties during the day. Usually I thrive in that temperature range.

I think the lack of colorful fall foliage has a lot to do with my fall downturns. I grew up in western Maryland near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lots of color there. There was a huge red maple at the foot of our driveway. Giant leaves would turn a brilliant golden, shift to a fiery orange and finally turn a flame red. When the calendar claims it should be fall and everyone else is talking about the fall colors and the frost and everything else, for the last dozen years I’ve sat surrounded by people wearing shorts.

I haven’t had time to do more than my daily journals this week. I did pull out a set of index cards and printed off my spreadsheet layout of what are essentially digital index cards to work on adding emotional notes on the back of them. Unfortunately, the kids had other ideas and needed too much help with finishing their homework.

I need to come up with a set for the other two stories that I’ve been working on lately: the food critic and the spinster who’s going to the masquerade ball. I think not knowing the exactly sequence of events and then what emotional state the characters are supposed to be in at those various points along the plotline are making themselves into a convenient excuse not to work on them. If I exhaust every excuse I can come up with, I think I’ll have a better shot at working past all these self-erected obstacles.