Making Other Plans

I realize that I said I would post Ellie pix this week. Actually I think I said, "tomorrow," a few days ago.

But while I was planning to do that, life was making other plans.

My cousin has come to visit and we've been going places and doing things -- as you do when you have a life and not only a book -- and today we are going to visit the old home of our grandfather and the cemetery where his parents are buried.

Then we're going to visit our almost 100 year old cousin (June 1 is the Big Day!).

We discovered we bought her the same birthday card because, actually, how many cards do you suppose Hallmark makes for 100 year olds? And don't they realize that when someone reaches that amazing milestone that lots of people will buy them cards -- AND THEY WILL INVARIABLY BE THE SAME ONE?

Well, we hope she enjoys the symmetry of it.

No word from the ed yet, which is good since I have no time to do anything about any 'tweaking' of Seb she may want. Seb thinks tweaks are beneath him, but I've assured him they aren't.

I'm quite taken with the Greek with the chip on his shoulder and the taming of the shew notion set in San Francisco that lots of my fence painters on the Pink Heart blog were suggesting for a follow-up to Seb.

The Greek with the chip has a name. I think the heroine is coming into focus. She may have a name. She definitely has an attitude. No story yet, but the people are getting sharper.

Weekend Wind-down Winner!

A little alliteration never hurt anyone, right?

So, the winner of last weekend's wind-down on the Pink Heart blog is Debora. Congratulations, Debora. Gunnar picked your name from the treat-covered slips of paper to win a copy of The Boss's Wife For A Week.

If you will email me from the contact Anne tab on my blog with your snail address, I'll send you a copy this coming week.

Thanks so much to everyone who gave me their choices. You had some great ideas. I'll be considering them and will let you know what I come up with. In the meantime it sounds as if some of you have good ideas for books of your own based on that list.

I have finally downloaded the granddaughter photos and will be posting the high points of my R&R this week. The last three days I spent cleaning my house for an impending visit from a cousin. He is here now -- and very impressed (so he says) with the spotlessly clean guest room he's inhabiting (never mind the upside down lowboy in the corner. It's decorative -- and it has a bum leg and until we can get it fixed, there it stays).

Of course my office is in worse shape than ever as the overflow from the guest room moved -- guess where? Why are there never enough book shelves in my house?

I'll have to show you my beautiful roses, too. Daughter and family sent lovely roses for mother's day. Actually son-in-law is responsible. (I am very fond of him). Tomorrow I will show you. Tonight I'm going to crash.

If you haven't been to Michelle Reid's newly revamped website, give it a look. I will try to post the link tomorrow (having trouble doing it tonight), but if you go to Kate Walker's blog (link in sidebar) you can get to Michelle's website from there.

Birthdays!

Back!

Wonderful trip. Hope you all had a great time without me. Sorry I only missed you a little, but the granddaughter more than made up for all the great people here. When I get the pics downloaded, I will bore you with a few.

In the meantime, it's birthday celebration time! While I was gone, I missed Michelle Reid's. So, very sorry, Michelle, but you were thought of. And I'm glad you got your revisions finished and are taking a deep breath and -- I hope - resting between books.

And happy birthday to Mitch who was FIVE yesterday (and no, not months, though sometimes he acts like it!). We'll celebrate today, Mitch!

Also, happy birthday today to my wonderful daughter-in-law Marie who made me so welcome these last few days. She and son and granddaughter gave me a memorable vacation with them. I wish I'd been there to babysit tonight so the adults could go out to dinner and the granddaughter and I could hang out (except she goes to be with the chickens, so I wouldn't get to play with her much in the evening -- unless I was corrupting her! -- and I wouldn't want to do that because she's a very good sleeper and her parents have worked hard at it.

And a special and wonderful happy birthday to my dear friend Kate Walker who shares Marie's birthday and thus proves that May 7th must be a stupendous day to be born. Kate, too, just survived the revisions process and is recuperating. So enjoy your book-free days, my dear. Though I know you are still very very very busy!

Anyone who wants to leave birthday greetings for them here, I'll be sure to pass them along -- and they may get here to see them themselves. Certainly Mitch will!

Hop, Hop, Hopping along

Well, you know frogs. They don't do rows.

But they're gone!

Wrangling Frogs

The ducks were easier.

But only because they're finished. It's while you're rounding them up that they seem so difficult. Now I sit back and think, "Ducks? Get 'em in a row? Easy. Piece of cake."

Frogs? Different story.

The chapter eight frog -- who took his own sweet time showing up -- was an absolute angel when he got here. It's chapter nine who is cutting up rough and making me nuts. So I've taken him to task and we've had a long chat.

I even brought in a frog counselor to discuss his errant ways with him. Now we've figured out his issues -- he has to learn to trust -- and I am hoping we can go on from here.

Actually I'm confident we can go on from here. I have my airline ticket to prove it. So excuse me while I go finish the book. I'll be back when I have.

In the meantime, think positive things about frogs on the march.

Not quite Missing-in-Action

He's here!

Chapter Eight has put in appearance and I know why he was gone. He's The Love Scene. And of course he was a little embarrassed to be doing his thing in public, as it were.

So he very circumspectly waiting until I, too, discovered what was going to happen in Chapter Eight -- and then he deigned to show up.

Today we've been finishing up Chapter Eight and both the frog and Seb and Neely are pleased. Little do they know that Chapter Nine will send everything sliding right downhill again. As it does, of course, when the Black Moment arrives.

Chapter Nine, eager to be of help, turned up early to prove to me that all was not well that seemed well (provided S&N actually got that far). And justified, he's now gone out to lunch while Eight and I get things sorted and polished up. Ten, of course, is rubbing his flippers together and saying, "All's well that end's well," and other such platitudes.

Except I'm inclined to agree. Not only that, but it looks like they'll be packing their bags and heading off to Richmond right on time. Bless their amphibious little hearts.

I'm packing my bags, too. Though I must say that I was a bit annoyed today when the airline sent me an email telling me that if I wanted to take a second bag it was going to cost me $25 extra dollars.

What's up with that? First they take away food. And now they charge us more for luggage? Not that I was planning on taking two bags anyway -- I'm only going for four days -- but it's the principle of the thing.

These are the same people who, when we were coming home from our son's wedding, couldn't see fit to send a second crew to our departure airport when they knew the first crew who'd arrived the night before were required to have eight hours off before they could fly again and that all of us would miss our connections.

Remind me again why I'm flying with them? Oh, yeah. Cheap airfares. Well, not so cheap apparently.

Or maybe I'm just testy because of my almost but not quite finished book which is in the throes of The Love Scene (and while Chapter Eight did his bit by showing up, now I have to do my bit and write the blinkin' thing). Ah, but there is the granddaughter at the end of it.

Definitely at that point all will be well.

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If you haven't already been to The Pink Heart blog for Temptation Tuesday, stop by. I'm blogging there (it's already up because it's Tuesday in half the world already). Post a comment (you guys know how to do that). Win a copy of Spence and Sadie's book.

Or just say hi and tell me where you'd go to "get away from it all."

You all know where I'm going!

GBGA -- This Week's Winner

This week's winner of the Great Book Give-Away is Lidia!

Congratulations, Lidia! And thanks to all the rest of you who commented this week!

Lidia gets the five books promised, but if Dina, Ellen, KimW, Mads, Mags, and Christa will also go to my website, hit the "contact Anne" tab and send me a mailing address, I'll send along a book for each of you as well. Some of you have won earlier, but all of you have been faithful in the extreme. Thank you for that.

So, send me your address and I'll send you a book from the GBGA bag.

Today I went to my genealogical conference which was excellent. Colleen Fitzpatrick spoke on "forensic genealogy." It's fascinating and she has a really interesting website if you're interesting in taking investigative skills and such to the genealogical and local history front.

I'm blown away by some of the information she can get out of a photograph or a database.

In life on the writing front, tomorrow the MIA Chapter Eight frog will be making his appearance at last.

I know now why he's been missing so long. I don't want to spook him, though, so I'm not commenting until he's here and things are under control.

Gunnar says thanks for the treats to everyone who entered. He hopes we'll do it again -- soon.

And I hope you'll keep coming back and commenting anyway because it's not as much fun talking to myself.

They're predicting a 50% chance of snow tonight. Good grief!

The Last of GBGA IV

We're most of the way through the bag of books now. I have some that will be more appropriate come Christmas, and a few others that I'll give away as time goes on, but this will be our last week of the Great Book Give-Away for now.

In June I'll be away for a week, so maybe I can do my posts ahead of time and give away books that week.

Anyway, for now, the last, but certainly not the least of the Great Books is Ginna Gray's In Search of Dreams, a Silhouette Special Edition. I tend, you may have noticed, not to read a lot of category series books.

Well, I read some, but mostly I try to read outside the field I write in. But I have long made an exception for Ginna Gray. Ginna writes from the heart. Her characters always touch an emotional chord for me. Plus she writes about the west, and that's always a draw.

In Search of Dreams tells the tale of J. T. Conway and Kate Mahoney. It's been so long since I read it that I can't tell you the details at all. But I know it touched me because I've hung onto it for nearly eight years!

So there you have this week's group:

• Morrigan's Cross by Nora Roberts
• Charming Grace by Deborah Smith
• Four In Hand by Stephanie Laurens
• Promise Me Tomorrow by Candace Camp
• In Search of Dreams by Ginna Gray

Make a comment sometime this week and Gunnar will find a treat with your name on it. If you are the first one he picks, you get the books.

He thinks we should keep this going indefinitely. He says there are still waaaaaay too many books in this house and he'd be happy to find them new homes -- particularly if treats are involved.

I say, enough. For now.

I need to focus on Seb and Neely's frogs this week. The missing in action Chapter Eight is about to hop into view (I hope). And tomorrow I'm going to a genealogical conference which should be fun -- and instructive. So I need to focus.

Stay tuned. Gunnar will be back tomorrow night with the winner.

Long Time Favorite

Back in the dark ages -- well, the 1980s -- when I was first getting started reading -- and writing -- romances, I found a few authors whose books were automatic reads.

One of the earliest among them was Candace Camp, who at the time was writing historicals as Lisa Gregory and contemporaries as Kristen James. It didn't matter what she wrote, I read it. And I loved them all.

To my way of thinking her Kristen James book, The Sapphire Sky, is one of the best contemporary single title romances of all time. I read it often, and it never loses its intensity or its charm. And Nick, ne'er-do-well that he is, is one of my favorite heroes.

And her Rainbow Season, written as Lisa Gregory, is probably in my top three all-time favorite historicals.

Dynamite books, emotional blockbusters, both of them. She's well worth watching out for. And she's now written fifty or so more terrific books.

One of them is Promise Me Tomorrow. Writing now under her own name, Candace Camp, she tells the story of beautiful thief, Marianne Cotterwood, and Justin, Lord Lambeth, the man who is trying to figure her out.
Promise Me Tomorrow is a delightful book of engaging characters and secrets galore.

Do you have favorites from years ago that you go back to? Which are they?

Regency Romp

I love regency novels. Of course Jane Austen is a favorite -- particularly Persuasion and, of course, Pride and Prejudice, though I've never felt the same warmth for Emma.

I'm also extremely fond of Georgette Heyer and have a collection of the new Arrow editions of her books (which are not in my bag of 'finding new homes for'). Sorry about that.

But today's book is a delightful regency romp by talented, clever, witty NYT-Bestselling author, Stephanie Laurens, called Four In Hand.

And no, she's not referring to horses.

The title refers to the four stunningly attractive, perfectly delightful Twinning sisters -- including the irresistible Caroline -- whose guardianship it befalls Max Rotherbridge, the Duke of Twyford, to inherit.

Max, a regency rake of the first order, is not given to "guarding" women's virtue. He would very much like to bed, not wed, the delectable Caroline. But even a rake like Max knows that isn't in the cards.

On the contrary, it's his duty to protect her from men such as himself. It's his duty to protect all the Twinning sisters from unprincipled men and bad alliances. Max has his work cut out for him.

I found Four in Hand to be absolutely delightful. If you like regency romps, I'll bet you like this one.

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Lovely HM&B medical author Margaret McDonogh has just sent me a picture of a frog she stumbled across.

She says that, given the look on his face, he could be my Missing In Action Frog #8.

Margaret has a good eye for resemblances. It is my frog indeed. Though why he also reminds me of Jack Nicholson, I'm hard pressed to say.

Oh, and IF I get my book done by May 1, I get to go to visit youngest grandchild who is now crawling like a Marine from room to room. Such a talented girl.