Great Book Give-Away Week 4

Hey,

Anne is still busy playing with Sol, but she's given me a list of the books that are up for grabs during Week Four of her 25th anniversary Great Book Give-Away.

They are:

Anne McAllister, Antonides' Forbidden Wife

Kelly Hunter, The Maverick's Greek Island Mistress

Nora Roberts, Face The Fire

Liz Fielding, Her Desert Dream (this is Kal's book, by the way!)

Lucy Gordon, Beauty and the Boss

Stephanie Laurens, A Rake's Vow

Candice Proctor, Midnight Confessions

To enter the drawing for one of this week's books, send Anne the answer to the following question (and include your name and snail mail address so she can send your book if you're one of the winners):

Anne wrote a Harlequin American called The Eight Second Wedding, about rodeo bull rider named Channing Richardson and PhD candidate Madeleine Decker who went down the road together from rodeo to rodeo for a couple of months one summer. It was a pretty desperate thing for them to do. Why did they do it?

Remember that even if you don't win a copy of one of this week's books, your entry makes you eligible to win a book any time in March. If you win, please give others a chance and wait an enter again in April.

Our Here Come the Grooms! contest ends tonight. Mitch and Micah and I (and Natalie) will be picking the winner of our part of the contest tomorrow. Stand by!

Great Book Give-away Update!

Hi,

I've stolen my blog back from Christo (and Natalie, apparently) just briefly to say that I've sent off the books to the winners from weeks one, two and am just finishing up week three.

If you commented on a blog piece in week three, you should also just hit the 'contact me' link at the bottom of the page and send me your name and address. Some people put them in comments, but if you would prefer not to (and I generally would prefer not to) sending it to me via the contact link means I will have it. Otherwise, I don't get your email address, so I have no way to contact you to ask you for it so I can send you a book.

The response has been really good -- and I'm delighted to be supporting the US postal service sending out all these books. I hope that those who receive them will enjoy them and maybe will find a new author they like or at least a book they will have enjoyed.

I'm getting the finishing touches on the cleaned-up house prior to Sol's arrival. All things knee-level and below have been vetted for chew-ability and put up high if they don't pass muster.

Also doing the line-edits and copyedits of George's book which have to be returned next week. As if I'll be doing them when I could be playing with Sol. Maybe Christo would like to do them, too, along with standing in for me here! I'll have to ask him.

Christo -- again

Hi, Sorry I've been neglecting my job taking care of Anne's blog. I thought she'd try to sneak back in here and write something because she's sort of a workaholic when it comes to writing. But apparently she meant what she said and I get the blog for the rest of February.

I don't know what Kal and Nikos are up to. I've been up to my ears working. I'm a lawyer in case no one told you. That's how I met Natalie, in fact. I was working for the firm where her father is a partner. She was a summer intern there after her first year of law school.

I noticed her -- who wouldn't? She's bright and funny and a hard-worker -- and beautiful, besides. But off limits. I don't get involved with co-workers.

I didn't get involved with Natalie. Not really.

There was one kiss. Yeah, I admit it.

But only because I was so damn happy when we won that case. It was just a spur of the moment thing. Didn't mean anything. She knew that. Or I thought she knew it.

But then one night I found her in my bed!

I can't tell you any more about it than that. Anne would kill me if I did. She'd say that you have to read the book to find out what happened then. Anne has a flair for the dramatic.

Nothing happened! Nothing!

Excuse me! Hi, Natalie here.

I was going to be quiet and just let Christo talk. But he's out of his mind if he thinks nothing happened!

Something certainly happened that summer. Something happened that night. Not what I wanted to happen. It was the most mortifying night of my life.

I hated Christo Savas after that night! No one would blame me for hating him, either. That summer was the start of my whole life being turned upside down. Not all of it due to Christo, admittedly. But he was a big part of it.

He certainly taught me not to trust my instincts . . .

See? That's Natalie all over. She rushes in where sane people fear to tread. She gets a notion and she just runs with it. She doesn't trust me to tell the whole story.

I don't want him to tell the whole story! Anne already told it! He's just trying to make himself look kinder and more human at the start. He wasn't! Well, he was -- deep down -- but his humanity was so buttoned-down he didn't even know it was there.

I did so!

Did not!

Did so!

I love it. He never used to argue like this. He'd just close up and do whatever controlled dutiful responsible thing he thought needed to be done. I've humanized him!

Sheesh! I can see there's only one way to stop this. She'll shut up if I kiss her.

Wanna bet?

Yep. C'mere.

No! I -- well, just for a -- ahhhhhhh...

Christo Here!

Hey, I'm Christo.

Anne has given me free rein with her blog for the rest of the month so she can take care of her mother and so I can talk about my book and Natalie and give you a chance to win three great books (mine, of course, being one of them) in the 4th annual Here Come The Grooms contest.

So let's get business out of the way and then we can talk.

Business:

• What the contest is: a chance for you to win a copy of Anne's book about me and Nat and also books from Kate Walker and Liz Fielding. That's a pretty good deal, if you ask me.
• What you have to do: go to all of their websites to find the answers to three questions. Answer them in an email to each of us -- three answers in each email. That means you find all three answers and send them to Kate, to Liz and to Anne. Then sit back and wait.
• When the contest starts: now
• When the contest ends: March 1st the winners will be announced. So get your answers in before that.

• One entry per person, please, at each email address, which gives you three chances to win if you send all three of them an email. Also a pretty good deal.

• KAL'S QUESTION (from Her Desert Dream): Of which literary character did Kal remind Lydia? (apart from Prince Charming!)
• CHRISTO'S QUESTION (From One-Night Mistress, Convenient Wife by Anne McAllister)
  Why is Natalie staying at her mother's house?
• NIKOS'S QUESTION (From The Konstantos Marriage Demand by Kate Walker)
  What name did Sadie use so that Nikos would not know his 10 o'clock appointment was her?
  
  Good luck!
  

Okay? If you have any questions that I didn't answer, email Anne or Kate or Liz.
Don't ask me.

I'm just the hero of a book. I don't know anything about the contest beyond what I've just told you.

So, business is out of the way, yes?

Now we can talk . . .

Got questions about the book or me and Nat -- I can answer those. And I'll be back soon to tell you more about how this all got started between Nat and me. She scared my socks off, if you want to know the truth.

Talk about temptation. . .

But I don't want to get ahead of myself. So for now I'll just say, have a happy Valentine's Day.

Nat and I are celebrating the birth of a very special someone who has made this the best Valentine's Day ever. I'll tell you about him later, too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, it's that time of year again!

I wish you and your beloved the happiest of valentine's days. Me and mine are having cake with our 86 year old neighbor to celebrate. Also taking flowers to my mother who is in transition from the hospital to wherever she goes after she gets out of skilled nursing.

I'm going to be busy over the next couple of weeks because of that and because Sol, my youngest grandson, is coming to visit! He's bringing his parents, too, but he's the main attraction, as you might imagine. He'll turn 8 months while he's here and he's on the verge of crawling.

As the physical therapists I've been talking to ad nauseum lately say, "He has all the motions." Yes, but does he put them together? Not yet, my son says with a sigh of relief. But it's coming. And it may be here by the time he is. So I'm scrambling to make sure the house is baby-proof again.

So it's a really good thing that it's also time for the 4th annual (can you believe it?) Here Come The Grooms contest that Liz Fielding, Kate Walker and I have been doing every February since 2007.

Liz has kept track. Kate and I know just that we've been doing it for a lot of years.

And so later today Christo Savas will be taking over my blog for the next couple of weeks while I deal with other stuff.

Christo, you may recall, is the hero of One-Night Mistress. . . . Convenient Wife. He's a charming guy -- for a lawyer -- and he's absolutely one of the most honorable men I've ever written about. He's also been seriously tempted in his life -- by one Natalie Ross. He . . . well, never mind. I'll shut up and let Christo tell you all about it.

Also, speaking of prizes, the second week's Great Book Give-Away is wrapping up today.

Winners will be notified by email. If you don't hear from me by tomorrow, you didn't win this week, but you might win next week. Your entry is good for the month of February. But I'd love to have you drop by and comment this week (and get another entry that way!).

Week three is posted on my contest page if you click on the 25th anniversary link. Heather will be removing lists one and two and moving three and four to the front sometime this week (she has a life, too).

In the meantime these are the books for week three and what you need to do to be in the drawing.

Week Three:
Comment on my blog this week (any post, but the post must be one I've made this week) and you could win a book! One of the following books will be sent to the winner (one book per winner):

• Anne McAllister: The Santorini Bride
• Janet Evanovich: Naughty Neighbor
• Marie Ferrarella: Cavanaugh Heat
• Elizabeth Rolls: Lord Braybrook's Penniless Bride
• Kathleen Long: Undercover Commitment
• Julia Quinn: What Happens in London
• Jennifer Ashley: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Please Note:

Easy Entry

To enter most of my 25th Anniversary Celebration Contests, send an email containing the correct response(s). Be sure to include your name and address so, if you win, I can send your book.

Rules, Regulations & Deadlines

The great book give-away contests will run for the entire year. While there are few rules, there are some things to note.

Prize wins are limited to one per person per address per month. That means in an effort to be fair once you enter, your entry will be good for 30 days but if you are a winner during 30 days you can only win one book. So there's no need to enter more than once, multiple entries will not insure you win.

Unless otherwise noted, the prize winners will be chosen in a random drawing by various esteemed members of my crew (Mitch, Micah, the dogs, the dh, etc.).

Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery of your prize. Winners outside the U.S. might take longer.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

# # #

Okay, so there we are.

Christo will be along later today. Check back. Talk to him. He's charming. Handsome. Smart. Honorable. And not quite as fierce as Natalie remembers him. But they have a history . . .

We Have Winners!

Micah and Mitch have picked the winners for the first week of my 25th anniversary Great Book Give-Away. Winners have been notified.

If you didn't win a book this week, you can submit a new entry with the answer to week two's question. And your old entry will continue to be active all during February as well (so you have two chances to win a book).

If you did win, I'd be delighted if you want to answer the questions this month, but I'm trying to spread the goodies around, so if you have already won a book in February, you're eligible to win again in March.

I would appreciate your including your snail mail address with your answer so I can address the packages as soon as M&M pick the winners. Thanks!

I've been out of commission this week as my mother has been ill and in and out of the hospital. She is currently 'in' which means I have time to address envelopes. I hope she'll be out and on her way to improvement early next week. Worrisome times.

The books for next week's contest are:

• Anne McAllister — Savas' Defiant Mistress
• Loucinda McGary — Treasures of Venice
• Linda Taylor — Falling into Place
• Christie Craig — Weddings Can Be Murder
• Cara Lockwood — I Did (But I Wouldn't Now)
• Robyn Donald — A Ruthless Passion
• Nora Roberts — A Little Fate

The question you need to answer is:
In what state do most (not all) of her series of Quicksilver books take place?

Send your answers to me via my contest page.

Thank you!

My first book to be published (the second book I wrote), Starstruck, came out in February 1985. That's 25 years ago. And I had no idea then what an amazing 25 years it would be.

I've met so many interesting people, written about lots of other interesting people, gone places and done things I never would have been able to do if I'd continued on my pre-publication life.

I have a lot of people to thank for where I am today. Going way way back, I want to thank my mother who, not a reader particularly and not a writer certainly, still supported my interest in telling stories. She even has -- in her safe deposit box, no less -- the first 'real' story I ever wrote.

And there was my mother-in-law, too. You know how mothers-in-law are supposed to never think you're good enough for their dear son . . . well, mine might have felt that way, but she never showed it. And she made a point of supporting my fledgling efforts at writing fiction to the extent of buying me an IBM Selectric (in those days before computers, IBM Selectrics were the holy grail of the typing writer) as I was working on my second book.

The first one I didn't really tell anyone about because I didn't know if I could actually finish it or not. But when I had, I said I had -- and as I started number two, she said, "I have something for you to make your work easier."

Boy, did it! And I wrote books number 2-6 on it before I invested in a computer that only did word processing (no graphics card even) to write number 7.

There were others, too. My husband, The Prof, who supported my quest for publication and breathed a sigh of relief when I actually had an advance to help pay for groceries and the pediatrician, was a great help. I feel sorry for any writer who has a spouse or significant other who feels the dream of writing is somehow in competition with their relationship. I never had that happen, but I know people who have. It isn't pretty.

My kids have been wonderful -- particularly memorable was the five year old who told my editor he was going to grow up to be a romantic hero. He has, too. More or less!

And my friends -- writers and non-writers alike -- listen patiently and discuss the motivations and personalities of people who don't exist. You know who you are, but greater more specific thanks will be coming in future blogs.

And thank you to all my editors, copyeditors, editorial directors, my agent and especially to my readers who have enriched my life with their letters and comments and, incidentally, helping me put my kids through college by buying my books. You are stars -- all of you.

The Great-Book-Giveaway will begin this month. Heather (thanks to Heather, too) will be putting up the specifics. Watch my contest page -- and this space -- when she tells me what I'm doing!