Category: Writing Life

If the Slipper Fits…

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Photo: "Cinderella," Disney, 1950.

OK, so those of you who keep in touch with me via Facebook and Twitter know I’m all kinds of aflutter over selling my Suddenly Cinderella Series to uber fab digital-first publisher, Entangled.

Even so, there comes a time once deals are struck and contracts are inked that as writers we must descend from our swirling pink clouds to terra firma and well, write some stuff.

But before the writing, mes cheres, comes the research and depending on your subject, that can be the very best part. In the case of my Suddenly Cinderella Series, the plot device that connects all three books is shoes!

1930's vintage velvet peep toe heels from Saks Fifth Avenue. Photo: Etsy.com.

Behold my very own take on Cinderella slippers, late 1930’s vintage red velvet evening shoes from the legendary Saks Fifth Avenue. In the spirit of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” these princess worthy heels will be passed among my three heroines, starting with women’s magazine editor, Macie Graham of OPERATION CINDERELLA, coming this October ’12, then going to fashion photographer Francesca St. James (PROJECT CINDERELLA) and lastly to plus-size personal chef Stefanie Stefanopoulos (THE CINDERELLA CAPER).

How can one pair of high fashion heels fit all three heroines? Well, for starters, they’re magical shoes. (In the words–word–of ever-eloquent actor Charlie Sheen, “Duh!”) Secondly they’re strappy, not enclosed, so there’s more wiggle room, so to speak. Lastly, if we can suspend our disbelief and accept that a single pair of jeans–jeans for gosh sake–can be worn by multiple women, shoe sharing should be a snap.

For now, join me in playing dress up!

Hope

Suddenly Cinderella Series: It’s Official!

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Who doesn’t love a good Cinderella story? (Note: not really a question).

I love the Cinderella story so much that writing one such themed book wasn’t going to be enough for me, not nearly. So, instead, I’ve signed on to write three of them!

My “Suddenly Cinderella” Series (Operation Cinderella, Project Cinderella & The Cinderella Caper) will be published with Entangled Publishing starting this fall 2012. As per the deal report on Publishers Marketplace:

“Three unlikely Cinderellas are helped along by uber-cool fairy god friends and princess-worthy red stilettos as they meet their matches in these contemporary re-tellings of the classic fairytale beginning with OPERATION CINDERELLA, wherein a goth-girl editor is paired with a sexy conservative radio talk-show host, to Stacy Cantor Abrams at Entangled, in a nice deal, in a three-book deal, for publication starting in fall 2012, by Louise Fury at the L. Perkins Agency.”

Bonus: the books’ digital releases will be followed by audiobooks with Dark Desires Audio, my wonderful audio publisher for Tempting! I’ll be sharing sneak peak snippets from the series in the coming months, so please check back. For now…

Huzzah to Happily Ever After!

Hope

Lady Jane’s Salon & Press Goodness from USA TODAY

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The Monday, June 4th Lady Jane’s Salon (7-9PM at Madame X) is proud to welcome the attendees of this year’s Book Expo America (#BEA12) held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center here in Manhattan.

In town for BEA or just plain in town? Please put Lady Jane’s on your after-party roster. Click here for deets on the Salon night program including our four great guest readers. Hint: they include regular Salon attendee and now fully minted author, Beatriz Williams!

Earlier this week I chatted about the Salon to Joyce Lamb of USA TODAY’S Happily Ever After blog. Please check out my interview and, if you can, take two ticks to Like it and/or leave a comment here.

Hope

The Joy of Being Popular: Lady Jane’s & The Popular Romance Project

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Last June ’11, we at Lady Jane’s had a very special group of visitors, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, Laurie Kahn and her crew with The Popular Romance Project.

With grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mass Humanities, Romance Writers of America, and the Tavris Fund at Brandeis University/Women’s Studies Research Center, The Popular Romance Project seeks to “explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction, taking a global perspective—while looking back across time as far as the ancient Greeks.” The website, mere months old, has already received hits from 80 countries!

Please take two ticks to watch (and hopefully “Like”) the video short of Lady Jane’s Salon. The less than four minute video is packed with interviews and readings from our guest authors that night: Sarah MacLean, Karen Rose, Carrie Lofty, Dianna Love, Leanna Renee Hieber (Salon co-founder), and Eloisa James as well as brief behind-the-scenes interviews with the Lady Jane’s Salon Team including Yours Truly. 🙂

http://popularromanceproject.org/behind-scenes/1997

Sherry Jones, author of THE JEWEL OF MEDINA and THE SWORD OF MEDINA guesting at Lady Jane's Salon in May.

Lastly, if you’re in the New York City area, please join us for our next Salon on Monday, May 7th, 7-9PM at Madame X. Guests are Suleikha Snyder, Zoraida Cordova, Kate Cross, Alethea Kontis, and Sherry Jones!

Admission is $5 or one romance novel. Net proceeds to benefit a New York City based women’s charity.

Hope

 

Book Week in Review: Barbara Vey, Lady Jane’s & the RT Con

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With PW Blogger @BarbaraVey at the RT BOOKLovers Convention Book Fair.

This past week was rather…full. Or better yet, replete with lots of great opportunities to meet and interact with fellow writers and readers in both Milwaukee and Chicago.

Kicking off the fun fest was PW blogger Barbara Vey with her first Annual Readers’ Appreciation Luncheon in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. More than 200 readers and 38 authors including Cathy Maxwell, Roxanne St. Claire and Yours Truly congregated at the Oak Creek Community Center for a lovely catered luncheon. Heather Graham gave the fun keynote talk, regaling us with true tales far stranger than any fiction.

Tempting cupcakes by author Dianna Love.

More than 38 author-donated raffle and door prizes were awarded including my “Tote of Tempting Treats” filled with an ARC of the Tempting audiobook and other goodies. Lastly, the guest authors signed our for sale books. Didn’t make it this year? No worries. Barbara’s already set the date for next year’s luncheon: April 27, 2013, location TBA. Indeed the sell-out event was so successful that next year’s will require an even larger venue. Way to go, Barbara!

 

Then it was off to Naperville, a Chicago suburb, for my guest reading at our satellite Salon, Lady Jane’s Salon Naperville. Founded by romance authors Tracey Devlyn and Adrienne Giordano in February 2012, the Salon is held every other month in the loft of Le Chocolat, a lovely local chocolate patisserie and coffee bar in downtown Naperville.

My table at Barbara Vey's Luncheon.

Just a few months’ old, the Salon already boasts a robust following of romance readers and writers. The April 10th event hosted five guest authors: Laurie London, Traci Hall, Tracey Devlyn (reading her romance debut, A Lady’s Revenge, Book #1 in the Nexus series), Cherry Adair, and yes, me, reading from Tempting. To learn more about the Naperville satellite and “Celebrate Differences,” the recipient charity, visit their website.

 

Another Tempting tote was a charity raffle prize at Lady Jane's Naperville.

Last but in no way least came the RT BOOKLovers Convention. Highlights of the con included the Thursday E-Book & Graphic Novel Expo, workshops and panel talks by authors representing every Shade of Gray (so to speak) of romantic fiction, a mind boggling array of theme parties and costume events, and of course the renowned giganormous Saturday Book Fair, open to the public as well as convention attendees.

But there is indeed no place like home. After a week of glamor–or at least makeup, “real” clothes, and daily hair washings–I returned home to New York on Sunday evening pleasantly weary and wonderfully… replete, happy and blessed to be back to this writing life of sweat clothes’ wearing and copious cat cuddling and sitting down every day to write the books of my heart.

At the RT Book Fair with @LenGunnModel, Mr. Romance 2011

April Lady Jane’s Salon

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Join us for our next Lady Jane’s Salon as we welcome spring with guest authors Alaya Dawn Johnson, Cara Elliott and Suzanne Brockmann reading from their latest releases. Event sponsor: Little Black Dress Vodka.

Admission: $5 or one donated romance novel. Net proceeds support an end-of-year donation to a NYC women’s charity.

Lady Jane’s meets on the first Monday of the month unless otherwise noted, 7-9PM, at Madame X (Top Tier).

Guest authors’ books available for sale and signing on-site.

Please note our new website at www.LadyJaneSalonNYC.com.

Never been to a Lady Jane’s Salon!?! Check out our latest press goodness in STARRING NYC.

 

March Lady Jane’s Salon

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Join me for this Monday’s Lady Jane’s Salon on Monday, March 5th, 7-9PM at Madame X. Along with hosting, I’ll be reading from Tempting and sharing the Salon stage with three great guest readers Lisa Dale, Kate McMurray, and Sarah MacLean.

Admission: $5 or one gently used paperback romance novel to benefit a NYC women’s charity.

Cash bar with $5 drink specials.

Salon ends at 9PM.

Amazon, IPG & My Men of Roxbury House

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Earlier in the week, Amazon and the Independent Publishers Group (IPG), a Chicago-based book distributor that provides print and electronic books to retailers such as Amazon, broke off contract negotiations. The sticking point has to do with the terms impacting profit margins for e-books. Those who care to can read more about the situation as reported by the New York Times blog.

Amazon has removed all its Kindle order links for e-books distributed by IPG, including those for my Men of Roxbury House trilogy: Vanquished, Enslaved and Untamed.  Note: the print versions of all three books remain available for purchase on the site.

But as in any good romance novel, all is not lost, not unless we let it be. You can still purchase  my trilogy e-books through Barnes & Noble’s Nook Store, Apple’s iTunes, Google Books, Sony’s Reader Store, and other online retailers. And Kindle Fire users can download the titles by using almost any e-reader app and purchasing the EPUB and PDF editions from the aforementioned retailers. Below are the direct order links:

Vanquished for Nook

Vanquished for iTunes

Vanquished for Google Books

Vanquished for Sony

***

Enslaved for Nook

Enslaved for iTunes

Enslaved for Google Books

Enslaved for Sony

***

Untamed for Nook

Untamed for iTunes

Untamed for Google Books

Untamed for Sony

And of course, Tempting, republished this month as a digital-first book, remains available everywhere. 🙂

Some days we have to work a little harder for our Happily Ever After but the rainbow at the end remains just as bright.

Hope

New Contest! Victorian Goodness Galore

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To celebrate the digital release of my Victorian-set TEMPTING as well as February as Valentine’s month, I am launching a new contest now through February 29th.

To qualify, you must:

–Purchase one ebook copy of TEMPTING, currently available on Kindle, Nook, Smashwords and ARe for just 99 cents.

–Leave a comment here (as in this original blog post, not on Facebook etc.) with your ebook order confirmation number for TEMPTING included. A simple, “Just bought it!” with the order confirmation number will suffice although longer comments are of course welcome. 🙂

Prizes: one signed copy of one of my back list paperback romances (winner picks based on availability) and a signed copy of my buddy and fellow Lady Jane’s Salon Co-Founder, Leanna Renee Hieber’s delicious Gaslight Era New York City-set paranormal YA, DARKER STILL.

Other deets: Contest closes on February 29th at 12:00 midnight EST. One prize winner will be randomly selected and announced on or close to March 1, 2012. Books will be mailed out as soon as I receive your mailing address information (off-line, of course!) and verification of TEMPTING e-book purchase.

Happy Month o’ Hearts & Flowers,

Hope

Tempting’s Second Chance at Love

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Anyone who’s read my romance novels, historical or contemporary likely knows how I adore second chance at love stories. The opportunity to get things right the second time around, what’s not to love?

First published by Berkley/Jove in 2002, TEMPTING was nominated for a RT BOOK Reviews Award for Best Unusual Historical and was featured on NBC’s Today Show. I also received a lovely cover quote from Susan Wiggs, one of my favorite authors. It was…quite a year!

It is with the greatest pleasure that I release the “new and improved” digital-first version of TEMPTING. I say “new and improved” because I’ve had the leisure—and additional decade of writing experience—to edit the book so that it more closely reflects what I always meant for it to be.

The book of my heart.

To celebrate February as the host month for Valentine’s, and to thank my readers for more than a decade of loving support, I am offering TEMPTING for just 99 cents now through February 29th. The book is available for purchase on Kindle, Smashwords and All Romance Ebooks (ARe). (Nook version coming soon!)

I hope you enjoy TEMPTING, Christine Tremayne and Simon Belleville’s unusual love story. Please look for their very special cameo appearance in VANQUISHED, the first in my Men of Roxbury House Victorian-set trilogy. For now…

Happy Month of Hearts & Flowers,

Hope