The People You Meet . . .

In the interest of clearing out the attic (a project near and dear to The Prof's heart), we have been going through old piles of records and tossing them out.

Some of them need to be shredded because in the Good Olde Days credit card numbers were on everything. So I'm shredding. And that means I have to open things before I shred. And a good thing, too, or I'd have missed a letter that got filed with the 1998 tax stuff.

It was a sad letter in some ways because it about about the death of a good man. But it was a joyful letter because if ever there was a man ready to get on with eternity it was the Reverend William J. Kitto.

I knew him as Bill. And I only knew him because I wrote books.

Back in 1993 I wrote a novella in Harlequin's Valentine anthology, My Valentine. Mine was called "Simple Charms" and it was about a 2nd grade teacher named Jane Kitto who got a charm for a charm bracelet every year on Valentine's Day from a "secret admirer." As romance novels are, it was about love and hope and finding the right person who completes your life as you complete theirs.

And because of that story, I got a letter from Bill Kitto. He'd been given the book by one of his daughters, he said, because of the heroine's last name. We corresponded a bit, and then we moved to phone calls. And while we talked about last names (Cornish last names in fact! I have a Kitto line of my own) and family history and all that, what we ultimately ended up talking about was love.

The love of Bill's life had died not long before. They'd been married over 40 years and he was quite a bit older than she was and had very much expected to be the first to go. He was pretty disappointed that he hadn't been. He was finding life without her lonely. But he never gave in to that loneliness. He cherished the years he had with her. He relished the memories and was delighted to share them.

He thought books celebrating the finding and cherishing that sort of love were wonderful. And he was glad that my story about Jane and Zack witnessed to the beginning of that love. I was glad he bothered to write and share his life and his story and his love with me. He was one of the world's real life heroes.

Bill passed away a bit over ten years ago. I still think of him often. I have several notebooks of his poetry that he sent me which I still dip into. The letter from his daughter, sent on the occasion of his passing, included several I didn't have.

They remind me again of the power of words to reach out and touch our lives even when the people who have spoken them are no longer with us in person. Their spirits, like their words, remain to sustain us, encourage us, give us joy.

Bill was just one of many people whose lives have intersected with mine since I began to write. I cherish them all.

If you drop in here and read my words, thank you. If you comment or write me an email, thank you. If you read my books and find something in them that speaks to you, I'm delighted beyond anything I can say.

I love writing. I love the people I've met through my vocation. I can't honestly call it work -- not every day. It only seems like work when Christo and his friends are making trouble!

wordle courtesy of wordle.net

Wild About Harry

I love Anne Gracie's books. Never met one I didn't like, want to hang out with, read from cover to cover, then go back again and start all over.

I'm particularly wild about Harry, the hero of her new book, His Captive Lady, which just came out this month.

Harry Morant is the half-brother of Gabriel Renfrew, hero of the first of Anne's Devil Riders series. If Gabe's childhood was difficult, Harry's was well-nigh impossible. He's past it now. Grown up. A man of his own making -- but still something of a work in progress.

And the man Harry is going to become is in large part due to what happens when he meets Nell.

As the back cover tells us, "Harry Morant's tough exterior hides a badly scarred heart. Home after eight years at war, Harry is planning a practical, unemotional marriage. But his careful plans are threatened by an unexpected passion for an unknown lady.

"A lifetime of lies has brought Lady Helen Freymore to the brink of ruin. Forced into a marriage she never thought to have, she soon finds herself powerfully drawn to this deceptively gentle soldier... and increasingly worried about his reaction once he discovers her secret."

Oh, yeah. Wounded hero. Unexpected passion. Mysterious heroine. What's not to love?

Brooding, intense Harry captured my heart. And as she always does, Anne tells his story with equal parts deep emotion and gentle humor.

Her characters are wonderful to know. I fell in love with Harry when I read him in rough draft form. And he's only improved with polish.

And Nell? Nell is the last woman Harry would ever have imagined himself falling in love with. He fights it. So does Nell. But love is more powerful than fear, than bitterness, than the past.

Harry and Nell's love -- in spite of themselves -- is what makes the story so special.

Thanks, Anne, for another great read. Now get back to the computer, hurry up and finish Rafe's book! Your public is waiting.

Deep in mid-book

After Christo having led me a merry chase for the past month, during which he has gone down the beach and I have gone after him, and he has gone surfing and left me to fend for myself, he's back -- with a vengeance.

Finally.

And now he seems to be waiting for me to catch up. So I've grabbed my notebook and pen and I'm following him and Natalie into the kitchen where they are deep in discussion -- one that she wants and he'd just as soon avoid.

But then, as I pointed out, if he'd cooperated a month ago, we might be well past this now and he could be having a good time instead of having his world turned on its head.

Poor Christo.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy!

Knitting and Character Development

I don't knit.

Well, I do. Or did. Badly.

I tend to increase. No matter how many stitches I start out with in the beginning, there are always quite a few more at the end whether there are supposed to be or not.

When I was first learning (or should I say, when I began to try to learn before it was determined that I was hopeless), my friend who was teaching me said, "We'll just start with a square."

I think she meant a rectangle, but no matter.

What we ended up with -- or what I ended up with -- was a trapezoid. And no matter what I did with it, no matter how many times I unraveled it and began again, I still had more at the end than I did at the beginning.

The question soon changed from, could I knit? to could I count?

Well, math was never my strong suit, either.

And, sad to say, character development is a lot like that. It seems straight-forward. Christo seemed perfectly straight-forward when he breezed into my life, tried his darnedest to knock Seb out of the way and muscle onto the page.

Hold on a minute, I said. Wait your turn.

And he did. He cooled his heels, muttering a bit. But he seemed to be perfectly clear about his story. I only had to write it, he told me. How hard could it be? He and Natalie. Meant to be. Piece of cake.

Yeah, right.

Turns out it isn't quite like that. It never is, of course, but they sucker me in every time. They promise me easy chapters, words that will flow like honey, completely transparent backstories that will make my life -- and theirs -- easy-peasy.

Ha.

Can't trust 'em. None of them. Well, except maybe for Aidan Sawyer, nearly twenty years ago, who did exactly what he said he'd do in The Marriage Trap. And Austin Cavanaugh in Marry Sunshine who might have driven Clea crazy, but to me was the soul of cooperation.

Was I living right twenty years ago? Or were the fates just on my side for once?

Because, as far as the rest of them go, Cooperation Rn't Them.

And Christo is no exception. He who seemed transparent when he was a test pilot, turned in his test pilot badge before we ever got out of scene one.

Now he's a lawyer. A rat of a lawyer, if you ask me. Why didn't he tell me the truth? Why did he say he was a test pilot, then make me nuts trying to figure him out before he told me the truth.

And what about the girl in his bed?

What girl in his bed? I demanded.

He shrugged. Didn't think it was important, he said finally when I twisted his arm. Wasn't going to happen again.

Oh, really?

Who's writing this book, anyway?

Sneaky hero.

He doesn't even look like he used to look! He's edgier. Smoother when he needs to be (like I said, sneaky), but submarines could get lost in this man's depths.

He looks a lot like Hugh did in Erskineville Kings. I noticed that as I was hunting up Hugh photos for the Hugh Jackman tour. Especially when he (Christo) started talking as I stared at the picture. Hmm.

Wonder what else he's hiding from me.

Right now, he's making the knitting needles look tempting. Not to start knitting with -- to poke him where it will do him the most good.

Business as usual mid-book, in other words.

Argh.

Hugh!

There are exactly 15 minutes left of September 1st where I live.

So I'm not late. Really, I'm not.

Slow, maybe, but not late, to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of The Pink Heart Society blog and, of course, Kate Walker's and my very own Hugh-in-a-towel.

Because Hugh is the 'mascot' or inspiration of whatever you'd like for Pink Heart heroes -- and certainly plenty of mine -- every year we celebrate Hugh Jackman Day at the Pink Heart and on our own blogs today (or what's left of it).

So celebrate with me. And get ready to go see Hugh in Australia when it comes out in November.

Drop by the Pink Heart and check out the comments for other blogs celebrating Hugh's day.

Tell me who would be your inspiration for a hero and you might win a copy of In McGillivray's Bed -- which purely coincidentally has a hero named Hugh.








































Who needs a towel?

Caught by a sheikh

It is rare that I am caught by a sheikh and can't put him down. Sheikhs are not my fantasy. Never have been. Never will be.

Except Liz Fielding's Fayed.

Fayad al Khalifa is the hero of Chosen As The Sheikh's Wife, which is Liz's contribution to 100 Arabian Nights, an anthology (with Kim Lawrence and Meredith Webber) that is out in UK now.

It may never see the light of day in the US or anywhere else except maybe Australia and New Zealand (though it might). But don't despair. I know how you can get it.

But first, let me tell you why you should.

Fayed is fantastic hero. He is strong, powerful and, of course, drop-dead gorgeous. More than that he's responsible, dutiful and determined to drag his nation into the 21st century without destroying the best of the past. He is also wounded. Deeply. Life has not been kind to him -- but he surviving.

Still the last thing he needs is an ancient knife -- a khanjar known as The Blood of Tariq -- to show up and complicate his life. Even less does he need Violet Hamilton who just happens to have it in her possession.

Violet doesn't want it in her life any more than he wants to deal with it in his -- for entirely different reasons. Oh, sure, it could maybe save her from being tossed out on the street when her home is repossessed. But there's a downside to the Blood of Tariq -- and it doesn't take Violet long to figure that out.

It would be hard to imagine two more different people -- the all-powerful Arab prince and the English working girl. And on the surface, that's true. But on the level where their hearts and souls meet, Fayed and Violet share a destiny.

If you want a little taste to whet your appetite, Liz has provided an excerpt on her website.

It hooked me. I went right out and ordered it. Fayed and Violet arrived in my mailbox right before lunch yesterday. I was planning on spending the afternoon with Christo and Natalie.

Fat chance.

Fayed swept me away. He didn't even have a camel. He just swooped in and transported me, first to London and then to his kingdom. It was a magical afternoon. My only complaint is that it wasn't long enough.

Liz's books are never long enough when they're 190 pages or so. This one, as a novella, was less than that. I wanted more.

I still want more. Liz is celebrating the publication of her 50th book this year. But I would like a hundred at least -- so I hope she's got her nose to the grindstone and her fingers on the keyboard.

Fayed and Violet were delightful and their story will live in my mind and my heart forever.

Lucky UK readers can just nip down to the local bookshop or wherever it is they buy books and get their own copies off the shelves. Or they can order it from M&B, I guess. The rest of us have to go to Book Depository and order online.

This is not such a hardship as you might think because dear dear Book Depository will ship 100 Arabian Nights post paid. So all you have to pay for is the book. It will come air mail. You should have it in a week or so.

It's definitely worth it -- even though it made my daily quota for Christo and Natalie fall behind. I'd do it again in a minute.

In fact I will do it again the next time Liz has a book out!

The Name Game

I ended up writing about names today over on Tote Bags 'n' Blogs.

It was a topic in the forefront of my mind this past week because I was still aware of Natalie and Christo and how they came to have their names (two of my cousin's grandkids sport those names as a matter of fact, and I thought the name Christo suited my hero, and my cousin's descriptions of Natalie made me think she'd definitely be A Force!)

But after that, I kept thinking because my friend Anne Gracie bullied me into writing up two more ideas for books because she kept saying, "What if --" and "I like that. I think you could get more out of this if you only -- " and so pretty soon, there I was, looking for more names.

They were heroine names because I already had heroes -- two of the Savas brothers, Demetrios and George -- and I needed heroes equally as strong as the men in question.

And, as luck would have it, I got both women's names wrong the first time around. Adriana is right -- but her nickname I thought would be Addie. Turns out it's Annie. She won't answer to Addie. Interesting.

Even weirder is Sylvie -- but I think I owe that to Liz Fielding. She had a Sylvie not long ago and I could see the picture of her Sylvie as being rather like George's heroine. But my fingers knew better. They've been typing Sophy ever chance they get. No question now but that she's a Sophy.

Makes me wonder what my fingers know that I don't.

Titles and Possessives

I think there is a trend in titles (at least in MY titles) toward possessives.

It goes back a long way -- maybe the mid-90s -- when I wrote Finn's Twins, shortly thereafter followed by Fletcher's Baby and Gibson's Girl.

Not to be outdone, the cowboys in my Code of the West series started getting possessive, too.

They went from titles like Cowboys Don't Quit and The Cowboy and the Kid to A Cowboy's Tears and A Cowboy's Secret and A Cowboy's Pursuit.

Not long ago back in Presents, I had Nathan's Child and McGillivray's Mistress as well.

And in October I have a reprint in a book called His Child (with Sharon Kendrick and Catherine Spencer). I don't know which story it is, but presumably the hero has a child (Nathan again? Or maybe my very first Presents, Lightning Storm, which also had a hero with a child, who is old enough, come to think of it, to be a hero now in his own right!).

His Child (whoever he is) will be followed immediately in UK and slightly later in the US by two more possessive heroes.

Antonides' Forbidden Wife (that's Elias's brother PJ's story) will be out in November in UK and January in the US. And then sometime next year we will see Savas' Defiant Mistress, which is what they are intending to call Seb and Neely's book.

This is all news to me.

I don't even try to come up with titles anymore. I just use heroes' names. It's easier. It's just their book.

I suppose the possessive angle makes it his book for marketing, too. And then they add on a couple of buzz words.

Do you think? Or is there more to it than that?

Whatever. It seems to work -- or they say it does. And sales seem to be improving (thank you, all of you). So who am I to quibble with them.

Though I did find admitting to having written something called One-Night Love Child a bit, er, dicey. I'm sorry but I generally still call it Flynn's book.

Flynn's book means something to me. But I realize it's not likely to get anyone to pick it up.

And hard as it is to admit it, Savas' Annoying Roommate doesn't have quite the same ring as Savas' Defiant Mistress, does it?

Meet Christo

This is Christo.

He moved in last week. He's raided the refrigerator and has generally made himself at home. At least at home as he's likely to be anywhere.

He's been filling me in on his back story, and the woman in his life -- who is not Natalie.

Well, give him time. He'll figure it out eventually.

Keep good thoughts for us. We'll be working together this week while I'm in Missouri visiting friends and going to an art retrospective.

Stay tuned.

My new box

Those of you who have been here a while remember when I was reading Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit.

I blogged about it a lot and probably sold quite a few books for her along the way. I still find myself going back to it again and again, thinking about the current book or about the books to come or just about being creative.

As Seb has now gone on his merry way, I needed to go back to the beginning -- to ideas and inspiration and suchlike -- the flotsam and jetsam out of which, eventually, a story will appear.

Often that starts with characters. Sometimes with a situation. Rarely with a plot (sometimes there never is a plot, or so it seems). Occasionally with a place.

This book started with names. In a conversation about our family history that I had with my cousin a week ago, lots of names appeared. Most of them disappeared again back into the family pictures and stories and whatnot, and will doubtless appear again when next we talk.

But two stayed. Two said, "I have a story." They weren't the people we'd been talking about at all. But they shared their names. I wondered if they would stay around, tell me their story, or if they would drift off again. Some do.

These aren't going anywhere. They've moved in, settled down and are raiding the refrigerator even as I write. He's every bit as hard-edged as I need him to be. His mother's Greek. His father's missing. But he wasn't Greek. He might have been Portuguese. My hero has a soft spot for only one woman -- the heroine's mother. He doesn't know the heroine exists. Yet.

The heroine knows he exists. She's never met him. She's bound to run into him. Our house isn't that big -- and we only have one refrigerator. And then there's her mother who has plans of her own.

The new box is filling up. I don't have a location yet. Some big city. Maybe SF. Maybe Seattle. Maybe NYC. Maybe London. Maybe LA. I haven't done an LA story in years. Still thinking. I think I'd like an ocean nearby. LA is sounding more and more likely.

This actually is fun.

Check back in the coming days and you can meet my hero.

Cleaning Up

I've had a busy week. My cousin's visit meant I spent a lot of time with him and not so much time with you (apologies, but I did enjoy his visit a lot).

Now I am faced with MY OFFICE which is beyond awful, because I cleaned out our bedroom to paint, and then I cleaned out the guest room to make sure he had plenty of room and somehow all of the excess ended up in my office. So there are STACKS and STACKS of books and papers and whatnot (it's the whatnot I'm particularly concerned about) that I need to go through and sort and get rid of or file or figure out what to do with. And it's not like I have a spare bookcase or a spare filing cabinet just sitting around looking hopefully for STUFF to fill it.

Sigh.

Anyway, that's my job this week unless Seb reappears for revisions. We shall see. For the first couple of weeks after I finish a book I feel relieved and glad not to see him. But by this time he's beginning to feel like another shoe about to drop -- and I wish he would so I can deal with him and get on with things.

I don't multi-task as well as I used to, and I don't like having him hanging fire while I'm actively trying to think about characters from another book. I spent a while last night in search of a hero. I think I have found a pic of him. Just need to let him 'simmer' a while and see if that's really him or not. I thought I knew who Seb was, and he turned out not to be anything like, so I had to do a new search halfway through the book.

So . . . today I look for more pics in between shoveling out the office. Tough work, but someone's got to do it!

Alpha heroes

There's a lot of talk about alpha heroes in romance novels.

They are often accused of being cruel, arrogant, haughty, and downright nasty -- until, of course, they understand how wrong they were about the heroine and then have a metanoia sort of conversion somewhere around page 186.

Far be it from me to deny they can exist. Though I wouldn't necessarily call all the men who behave like that "heroes."

But I suppose really, it depends on what your fantasy is. If you like those guys described above, that's what works for you.

It doesn't work for me.

My alpha hero doesn't do 'cruel.' And he doesn't do 'mean' or even 'downright nasty.' Arrogant, yes. Haughty, sometimes. Silently judgmental? He can.

Oh, yes, he can. (Ask Seb). He can even be judgmental out loud.

He can also be wrong. (No surprise there).

But when he is, he has to be honorably wrong.

If he's going to make judgments, he's got to have a believable reason for it. He's got to have a backstory that predisposes him toward such a belief. He's got to think he has evidence for it. And he's got to be believing it in service to a higher good.

He doesn't jump to conclusions just because he's the hero -- especially wrong ones -- just so he can repent in the end.

And if he's a McAllister hero, even if he believes the worst, he doesn't do anything that would make the heroine rightfully hate him. If he did that would simply prove he has no right to be her hero.

I'm spending a lot of time thinking about this because I am dealing with that issue in Seb's book.

I'm also thinking about it because I just re-read Jane Donnelly's story The Man Outside. Last Thursday on the Pink Heart Society blog, I wrote about Jane's books and, especially, her heroes.

To do so, I got a stack of JD's keepers off my shelf and began to re-read them. Several of them have heroes who believe the worst of the heroine. Not always -- not in my favorite, Behind a Closed Door, in which the heroine believes the worst of the hero.

But in The Man Outside, Piers Hargreaves gradually opens up to Polly's interest and then learns the truth -- but not the whole truth -- that she was dared to try to reach him. The implication is that her interest is a sham, that she is manipulative and doesn't care for him at all.

He could react cruelly. He could do his best to destroy her because he does have all the power and influence an alpha hero should have.

But he also has the honor that allows him to absorb the pain, and the intelligence to look for the root cause of it (that would be the jealous other man who has told him this 'truth'), and to recognize who is really telling the truth.

He doesn't displace his anger. He does something constructive with it -- because that's the kind of man he is. And over the course of the story he has learned from Polly how to reach out to other people, how to risk his emotions, and ultimately how to demonstrate his love.

So when circumstances might allow him to be cruel, he is anything but. He is remote, he is standoffish, he is quiet and self-contained. But he is honorable. And because he loves Polly, he has a long range plan that will turn the tide his way.

As the end approaches and Polly fears all is lost, we readers trust that it's not.

We know that she has loved him well, that she has seen the man inside Piers Hargreaves -- and that her love has helped him find the means of expressing who he really is.

He is strong and steadfast, intelligent and powerful, relentless and singleminded in his pursuit of her. But he will do it in a way that proves to Polly he's every bit the man she believed he was -- an honorable man, a determined man, a commanding man with an inner core of gentleness that will never allow him to hurt the woman he loves.

For me that's a real alpha hero. It's the man I want to find inside Sebastian.

If you haven't read Jane Donnelly, seek her out. Discover that the alpha hero often gets a bad rap. He isn't at all what his detractors make him out to be.

Holding out for a hero

I wrote about researching heroes on my guest blog at Tote Bags 'n' Blogs today. Naturally I flashed a pic of Hugh-in-a-towel. There would have been screams (notably from Kate) if I hadn't.

And I also put up a pic of the man who is becoming Sebastian. Or who Sebastian is becoming.

As I said there, he's no longer the guy I thought he was. He's more buttoned-down, more serious, more intense. He's one of those guys who thinks he has all the answers. More this guy.

Ooops.

Well anyway, I needed a pic that expressed the harder-edged, buttoned-down-ness of him, the unsmiling intensity of him. And because Kate was wrestling with Santos (not a bad pastime if you ask me) I said, "Who is he? Let me see him."

So she showed me a pic.

Not this pic, mind you -- but this man. And we decided he needed further research. And the more research I did, the more I found pix of a man who was everything that my Sebastian was becoming -- Intense. Unsmiling. Hard-edged.

A real Presents hero? Good grief. My editor might die of the shock.

I said, "I think I need him."

So Kate, dear friend that she is, is sharing.

Her Santos has his own incarnation in this guy. He will be no more like my Seb than any of our other heroes are alike. We just found visual inspiration in the same place -- and she was nice enough to share.

This means of course that I will have Mr Smiling Shaggy Hair standing on my doorstep looking for his own book now. But that's not precisely a hardship. We'll see what we can find for him.

And speaking of heroes -- here's one of my very favorites (Favourites? he would say. And then he would say, Favourite, dear lady. Singular.) Well, he would. He's that sort of cat. He has a starring role (by his definition) in One-Night Love Child.

He hopes you'll read it and send him fan mail. You will, won't you?

Oh, and happy St Piran's Day to all my fellow Cornish all over the world.

Growth Spurts!

Those who were here six months ago remember me taking off to visit my son and daughter-in-law and brand-new granddaughter Ellie.

I shared a pic of her then. I thought I'd share another one now -- an updated 6 month old Ellie, wearing a shirt which came to her mysteriously by an unknown donor (can't imagine who!).

She's grown a lot.

So has another young lady -- Ms Flora Floozibelle Walker -- feline daughter of Kate.

Flora is posing alongside the Easter card we sent her. She wrote me a thank-you note for it just this morning.

Ellie often writes me thank-you notes, too.

I'm very impressed with the manners of this younger generation!

While you're out wandering around the internet, check out the Tote Bags 'n' Blogs site on Wednesday where I am extolling the virtues of yet another sort of research.

You might even see someone you recognize there! And he might be wearing a towel.

And then on Thursday I'm blogging at Fresh Fiction. Drop by and say hi if you have a chance. No towels there, but some reflections on linked books and loose ends.

And be sure to come back here for a pic of one of my absolute favorite heroes on Wednesday.

RITA books

I just finished reading the last of my RITA contest books.

It's always intriguing to open the package from Romance Writers of America every January and find out which books I get to read for the contest. Sometimes they are by authors whose work I am familiar with. But often they are books I don't know the first thing about by authors I've never heard of.

Because we can't, of course, judge books in our own category (for me that is short contemporary or whatever they are calling it now that it and 'traditional' have been lumped together) I don't know the names of as many of the authors as I do among the books similar to mine.

So it's always an adventure to read the long historicals or the witty regencies or the super-short novellas or big thick single titles. And nearly every year I discover an author whose voice delights me, whose characters fascinate me, whose plots make me keep turning the pages.

It's so much fun to find someone new to watch out for. Sometimes it's a first book. When I'm lucky it's someone with a backlist so I can go find all her earlier books and read and read and read (well, when I'm not writing).

I wish I could tell you whose books I read this year. I definitely found one I will be checking back lists for.

On another topic (one that I am nervous of addressing for fear it will jinx things), Seb is cooperating nicely right now. He's had two good days in a row. This is perhaps not a record, but it is a good sign. I have very low standards when it comes to Hero Performance in a Book, as you can tell.

The Bride's Baby

I've mentioned Tom, Liz Fielding's groom in The Bride's Baby whenever I've mentioned our Here Come the Grooms! contest. Tom has even done a bit of blogging on Liz's site.

But mentioning Tom and reading his blog isn't the same as having read his book.

Last night I finished reading his book.

Of course I was expecting another warm, wonderful Liz Fielding read. Does she do any other kind? Well, yes, she does funny and moving and soul-touching and sometimes ironic, but you know what I mean. They are always worth waiting for -- and worth reading whenever one comes along.

But Tom -- what can I say about Tom?

He's a great hero. He's the quintessential 'wounded' hero. He has wounds so deep and so lasting that you wonder if he's ever going to make it past them.

Of course, at first he simply thinks he won't have to bother, that he can 'go around' them and get what he wants without having to confront his past head-on.

Bad idea, Tom. You should know better.

And, of course, being a Liz Fielding hero, he learns. Mostly he learns from Sylvie, who is an absolutely wonderful heroine. A woman with wounds of her own, she hasn't had the perfect life Tom imagines she's had. But she hasn't let it stop her, either. Mostly.

In The Bride's Baby Tom and Sylvie have awareness and passion to begin with. But before it's over, they have something more. They have helped each other grow, have given each other the strength to confront their respective pasts and move on -- together.

I loved this book. I didn't want it to end. Thank you, Liz -- and Tom and Sylvie -- for giving me so much pleasure as I read The Bride's Baby.

The Bride's Baby will be coming out as an April book in both the US and UK.

Now, what I want to know is: when's the next Liz Fielding book hitting the shelves?

Those Ocean Movies

I was a kid when the first -- aka 'real' -- Ocean's Eleven came out.

It wasn't in my top ten films of all time. It might not have even made the top twenty or top fifty. But it was a fun film. I like caper movies and I like movies with a twist at the end -- and this one was good for that.

I saw the 'new' Ocean's Eleven hoping for the same reaction.

I didn't get it. I actually got confused by it. And I left the theater feeling disgruntled and irritated and I wondered why I'd bothered.

Well, perhaps George was why I bothered, but he didn't save the film for me.

So I wasn't desperate to go see Ocean's Twelve when it came out. In fact I didn't go see it. And for a long time I didn't even rent it. But finally it rolled to the top of our Netflix rental list and appeared on our doorstep and, well, what can I say?

I watched it.

I found that I liked it better than Eleven. There was a bit of warmth to it. Not just cutesy capery stuff. Well, there was plenty of that. But there was Brad getting Catherine Zeta-Jones together with her dad at the end . . . (oops, was that a spoiler? Sorry. I thought it was a point in its favor.)

I liked that. What can I say? I'm a sap for a happy ending.

So I rented Ocean's Thirteen. And tonight we watched it.

And I like it best of all. It had all the same capery elements of the earlier ones, but it had something that I didn't really see in the first one and only caught a brief glimpses of in the second one, but which finally came into its own in Thirteen.

It had heart.

It was based on heart - on friendship. On what a group of men will do for each other when one of them is down and out. You could call it a revenge movie. But it's not a bloody revenge movie. It's a funny revenge movie. It's a movie of sharp wits vs sneaky wits. Of cleverness vs power. Of cunning vs ruthlessness.

And, of course, the good guys win.

They break the rules. But they outwit the Bad Guy -- and the pretty bad guy. At the same time they get teary-eyed at Oprah, make sure that the 'little people' succeed, and end up making the pretty bad guy look good against his own inclination.

It gives us heroes to root for who are not in the slightest conventional. They do everything illegal they can possibly do. And we are on their side the whole time. Not just because they are George Clooney and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon -- though admittedly that helped. We are on their side because we appreciate what they are trying to do.

We'd go to bat for our friends, too. We identify with them. We care about they people they care about. The movie works because the heroes in it have heart.

They make us care.

The best heroes do.

Of course, it doesn't hurt if they look like George and Brad and Matt, too.

Heroes?

Well, in some peoples' lives they were.

The man on the far left is my great-grandfather. And this is his saloon in Sumner, Iowa. The photo was taken in 1899 by his son, my grandfather, then age 18, who was working for a photographer that winter.

I don't know who the other men are. I'd love to know. So if you have family in Sumner, or know someone who did, show the picture around and see if we can identify some of them.

In case you're wondering what on earth I'm doing with this -- I'm trying to pull the threads of my life together. I'm taking a terrific online course from Ed2Go on using Photoshop Elements 5.0 (which I took so I could finally figure out how to do something with the software I'm supposed to be using to put photos on my website). And every week I get two lessons.

I did lessons 9 and 10 this morning (and this afternoon) and then I went off to mess with some of my own images. The guys in the bar just seemed a natural to practice on.

What? You thought I was going to mess with the perfection of Hugh-in-a-towel?

I'm in Neely's head at the moment and she's messing with the interiors of some condos she's working on. So while she messes with that -- using my software and hers -- I can mess about with the guys in the bar.

All I can say is, Must've been a cold winter in Iowa that year.

Kind of like this one.

Happy Valentine's Day

Naturally, I'm late. Valentine's day has about an hour or so left where I live. But I couldn't get here to do anything before now.

So I hope you have all had a wonderful day with those you love.

I did.

A year ago I was sitting on the Mezzanine in Bewley's on Grafton Street in Dublin drinking tea and watching as an impressive number of Irish men bought flowers for their ladies. This morning I toasted them all with a cup of tea and a bowl of lovely Irish oatmeal and hoped that I would get back to Ireland someday.

The memories still make me smile.

Speaking of things that make me smile, I've got the Friday Film Night blog on The Pink Heart Society for this week -- which means that since it's already Friday in a good chunk of the world -- including GMT -- the piece is up now.

Stop by and check out my pick for this week.

• It starred Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford
• Kevin Spacey had a bit part
• Alec Baldwin had a slightly bigger part
• It had a great Oscar-winning song
• It's still a fun film -- even after 20 years

Know what it is?

Of course you do -- it's Working Girl!

And because I promised them there that we were discussing heroes here, I'd like to toss out a question -- what is it that made Harrison Ford such a good hero in so many films?

He generally wasn't your traditional 'alpha' hero. Not really. I have my own theories, but I'd be delighted to hear yours.

Tomorrow it's back to the houseboat. Tell Seb he needs to get his act together. We have a book to write!

The Repressed Hero

We were talking about heroes last week and the week before, and I don't think we've said all there is to say.

In fact I know we haven't.

And while I was trying to articulate the problem my current hero, Sebastian, is having with the woman who is turning his world upside down, I discovered that Pam Rosenthal had done it for me.

A Rita Finalist this year for her long historical, The Slightest Provocation, the talented and insightful Pam wrote a wonderful blog piece about Jane Austen, Mr Darcy, Colin Firth and repression (which I am not going to link to here because it's on an over-18 blog and this will doubtless be the day my teenage grandson decides to visit granny's blog!).

In it she quotes Colin Firth who, as we all recall, created a Darcy for the ages in the 1990s BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

When asked how he got into the character, Firth said, "I thought to myself: 'This is where he wants to go across the room and punch someone. This is where he wants to kiss her. This is where he wants sex with her right now.' I'd imagine a man doing it all, and then not doing any of it. That's all I did."

He repressed it.

And with that, I knew that Pam -- and Colin -- had nailed Sebastian's dilemma.

Like Mr Darcy who didn't want to fall in love with Elizabeth Bennet, Sebastian doesn't want to fall in love with Neely. Fall in love? He doesn't want to be anywhere in the same universe. She is everything he distrusts in a woman. And he's sure she's about to destroy the life of the man who has been his mentor for years.

And yet, even as he is convinced that she was the last woman on earth he would ever want anything to do with, he finds her getting under his skin.

He can't stop looking at her. He is always aware of her. If she's in the room, he knows exactly where.

He wants her. Wants to touch her. To kiss her. To go to bed with her.

And at the same time, damn it, he doesn't want to want any of it!

Like Mr Darcy, Seb is mortified by his attraction to this wholly unsuitable woman. And at the same time, he can't quite stay away.

Well, the fact that they're sharing digs makes it difficult anyway, but he can't get away from her at work either and that makes his life even more difficult.

Then there's the inkling that perhaps she isn't exactly what he thought . . .

Perhaps there's more to her than that. Or perhaps he's misjudged. But how was he to know? And now that he thinks he does know . . .

Well, life will get more complicated before it gets less. Poor Seb.

Poor Mr Darcy.

But we, as readers, Pam points out, love the repressed hero, the mortified hero.

"And we especially love it," she says, "when the author has first introduced him in all his smug, hunky, thoughtless toughness and now shows his inner writhings and torments."

Indeed we do.

And we want to be there to witness him stick his foot in his mouth, then have to extricate it, regroup, rethink, and know, all the while, that he deserves the very torment he is experiencing because he once spurned the woman he has come to love. We want to see him grow, change, and learn to value her as she deserves to be valued.

I just hope Seb is hero enough to do it.

Thanks, Pam, for giving me the words to articulate what Seb is going to be going through in this book.

I told him to take notes. I wish he could take a master's acting class from Colin Firth. On the other hand, this won't be an act. It will be his life as I write it.

What do you think about this 'repressed hero' idea?

We get very used to expecting heroes to 'go after what they want.' And of course they must. But does it alway have to be overt? Jane Austen seems to prove that it doesn't. And Darcy certainly convinced me.

Do you remember other similar 'repressed' and 'mortified' heroes? Of which books? By whom? Tell me. I never mind adding great books to my TBR pile, and I definitely want to read more Darcys.

And if you want to read the article from which Pam quoted Colin Firth, you can find it here.

How I Met Sara

Flynn Murray here.

I don't think we've met.

But I understand from Anne that I've got a contest going on. Something about Here Come The Grooms! -- which she says is in its second year.

And someone is going to win my book and find out how I finally got Sara to say YES.

But I also understand that Anne has asked a question you're supposed to answer -- and said it was MY question. And the truth is, it isn't.

I would have asked you something about Sara, not about what I was doing when I met Sara. Sara's what's important -- not that. I would have asked you what Sara intended to do with her life. Answer: go to med school. Or idealistically: save the world. Or I would have asked: "What colour are Sara's eyes?"

They're brown. Except when she's angry -- and then they sort of flash gold. They did a lot of flashing in our book. She was pretty peeved.

But Sara, annoyed, is pretty exciting. And certainly tempting. Not that I wouldn't have settled for her just falling into my arms.

She didn't. In case you want to know. She took a LOT of convincing.

Well, you would, wouldn't you (this is Sara, by the way) if some here-today, gone-tomorrow Irish journalist knocked you off your feet, chatted you up, turned your world upside down, acted like he loved you -- did actually make love to you -- then went his merry way?

It wasn't like that. It was a matter of honour. Of doing what was best for her. I had nothing to offer her then --

And you do now, I suppose?

I'd say so, yes. Marriage. A home. Family.

Ha. You live in Ireland!

People do. You like Ireland. Beautiful country. Very green.

On account of the . . . ?

All right. So it rains . . . A lot. You had three feet of snow on the ground in Montana when I first came here six years ago. And now there's more!

We've been saving it for you.

See? This is what she's like. She fights me every step of the way. And most of the time, believe me, what we're fighting about is not the weather!

I'm not fighting. I'm only saying. And you don't have to come in here and complain to Anne's readers. You get your way in the end, you know.

It's YOUR way, too.

Well, yes, but, just tell them what you were doing here six years ago when you came to Montana, so they can answer the question.

I was covering The Great Montana Cowboy Auction for Incite Magazine. But then I met you and other things were a lot more appealing like . . .

Flynn! We are not doing Public Displays of Affection on Anne's blog!

No? Why not? Doesn't she permit it? We could go to Kate's . . . I hear she's running a dating service for cats.

So that's where Sid ran off to. I wondered. No, we're not going to Kate's. Not unless she invites us. Anyway, she has Raul and Alannah to deal with -- and Sid and Lola.

We're not cats. And we're not going anywhere.

We're helping Anne this month. She's signed you up to write for her blog, and that's what you're going to do.

Yes, Sara. Whatever you say, Sara.

He acts like this when he wants his way. I'm warning you, Flynn! Flynn! Put me down! Anne, get this hero under control! Anne!

Oh, good heavens. Well, don't mind us. We'll be back. Flynn has been looking forward to blogging ever since he talked to Theo and Spence. I'm sure he'll have something to say when he isn't . . . distracted.

Flynn!

Whatever you want, Sara . . .

Here Come The Grooms!

Remember last year when Liz Fielding, Kate Walker and I had books out in February and they were all about brides?

We got together and had a Here Come the Brides! contest, run by our lovely heroines.

Only our heroes, Theo, Max and Dom were not to be outdone. Before we knew it they'd organized a "Here Come the Grooms!" contest and basically took over. Well, they're men. What do you expect?

This year we decided to harness all that energy right from the start. So this year while the brides plan their weddings, my Flynn, Kate's Raul and Liz's Tom are going to be putting on a "Here Come the Grooms" contest, part II.

Who are these guys?

Well over the next few days, we'll get to that. You can meet each of them here, one by one. Or you can -- and I hope you will -- drop by Liz's blog and Kate's blog or websites and meet Tom and Raul there.

In the meantime, you've all seen the cover for One-Night Love Child (or if you haven't, scroll down to the entry below). Now let me introduce you to Flynn.

When Sara (and I) met Flynn Murray, she was nineteen, he was twenty-six and I was old enough to be writing my forty-ninth book. It was called The Great Montana Cowboy Auction, and the heroine was Polly McMaster, Sara's mother.

It was a single-title and there were a lot of characters -- most of them Polly's children, as I recall -- and the oldest was Sara.

Sara was a wonderful foil for Polly. Polly multi-tasked in her sleep. She had to. She was a widow with children, dogs, cats, a widowed mother, and an inability to say no to good ideas. Sara was organized, straightforward, focused, idealistic. She was going to go to medical school and save, if not the world, at least her little corner of it. She had Plans, Ambitions, Goals.

And then she met Flynn.

The first time they met she knocked him off his feet. Literally. And he returned the favor, figuratively and literally both.

Glib, charming, Irish to his toes, Flynn Murray was a journalist covering a story. He was a here-today, gone-tomorrow sort of guy. In fact he stuck around three days. Something of a record for a guy like Flynn.

And he was as enchanted with Sara as she was with him. Something between them just clicked.

But it was the wrong time. The wrong place. And he was the wrong man.

Flynn knew that, even if Sara didn't.

He wasn't a settling down sort of guy. He had places to go, things to do. And he was honorable enough to have left her untouched. Or he would have been if she hadn't showed up at his hotel room that last night and, in her honest Sara way, challenged him about what had been happening between them.

A man only had so much self control.

And that night Flynn reached the end of his. It was wrong, and he knew it. She'd hate him, he knew that, too. But how was he supposed to resist the woman who wrapped her arms around him and told him she wouldn't hate him at all?

Well, he didn't.

But he did leave. He had nothing to give her. And besides, Sara had goals and dreams of her own. He wasn't a part of them. He had no right to upset them.

But faced with Sara's idealism, he found the determination to find goals and dreams of his own.
And when he left he didn't look back. He spent the next five years covering stories from hot-spots all over the globe.

Fast forward six years and, just like John Lennon promised, life happened to both Flynn and Sara while they were making other plans.

Flynn, raised as the spare, suddenly became the heir and just a few months ago, the ninth Earl of Dunmorey.

And Sara -- well, Sara was almost as good a multi-tasker as her mother as she raised her five year old son.

Their paths might never have crossed again -- if a letter Sara letter wrote years ago hadn't finally caught up with him, and Flynn hadn't discovered he had a son.

# # #

To enter the Here Come the Grooms! contest, you will need to answer three questions, one each from Flynn, Raul and Tom. Then go to each of our website contest pages (here's mine) and send us the answers. Or you can send an email to me through the 'contact Anne' tab on the sidebar of my webpage if you have trouble making the send en