Tote Bags today

I'm writing the blog at Tote Bags 'n' Blogs on Sunday. So stop by and say hi. Share a memory about your high school days.

Or if you don't want quite such a big audience, share it here!

Facebook has brought high school back into my life. It's a strange experience. And it's reminding me of all kinds of things I didn't realize I even remembered.

Christo's book, One-Night Mistress . . . Convenient Wife, benefited from those emotions because it is all about unrequited first love and what happens when you meet the right person at the wrong time.

George's book seems to have something of a similar theme, though the stories are quite different. Do you suppose my subconscious is trying to tell me something? Or is it just one of the main thematic mountain ranges in what my former editor Patricia Smith calls "my emotional landscape?"

What do you think? Do you see themes in your own writing or your own life that you address in different ways over and over? If you do, do you know where it comes from?

Inquiring minds are curious -- even though they should be thinking about George.

Where I've Been . . .

Nowhere interesting, believe me.

I've been holed up in my office writing George. And writing an article. And creating a Power Point presentation on immigration trails.

George has been the most fun part of my life, which ought to tell you something.

At least I'm not battling him to a standstill the way I did Demetrios. He's actually turning out to be entertaining -- right now -- before revisions and deep in the middle of the first draft.

How often does that happen?

Not very, to be honest. But sometimes it does, and so I'm just enjoying it. Nice to go to work every morning for a change.

I've done a little Christmas shopping, too. And I'm struck, when I do it, how much of it I do online these days. What about you?

I started doing it online when I was looking for things for the older grandsons when they were little -- and I got tired of dragging from store to store to find that what I wanted wasn't there. Or it was there at a price I couldn't bring myself to pay.

So I started looking on the internet and, wow, what a time saver. Money saver, too.

Have your shopping habits changed like mine have?

I'll be back tomorrow when, I hope, George will make it into chapter six, and I will have something new to write about -- a reprint or two (well, that's not new, but it's exciting). I'm just trying to get the information sorted.

In the meantime, if you see Christo hanging around a bookshelf anywhere, do me a favor and put him up at eye level. He was gone at my Target when I looked last week. I was happy about that.

Also happy about the review on the Pink Heart Society where Julie Bonello said, "Anne McAllister never fails to come up with the goods and One Night Mistress...Convenient Wife is one of her best books yet! Funny but poignant, tender but sensuous and moving and utterly engrossing, One Night Mistress... Convenient Wife is a spellbinding Harlequin Presents novel readers will just devour.

"With a spunky heroine, a gorgeous hero and oodles of love, passion and laughter, One-Night Mistress... Convenient Wife is the perfect book to cuddle up with on a cold autumn's night!"

How nice is that? If you want, you can read her whole review here. Thank you, Julie.

Once upon a crush . . .

Once upon a time when I was young and emotional, I was in love.

Or thought I was.

I don't know what the object of my affection thought -- if indeed he thought about it at all. I doubt that he did because I never actually saw him run screaming in the other direction. So chances are he remained oblivious.

But I was sure (not fairly sure, not reasonably sure, but absolutely positively sure) that if the stars aligned properly or fate so decreed that he would notice, we would live happily ever after.

We didn't.

But it doesn't stop me thinking about it and remembering it -- all the angst, all the emotion, all the deep unrequited desire -- now and then.

And when Christo Savas popped into my head carrying a surfboard and talking on a cell phone, I was reminded of those days. He's exactly the sort of guy I would have looked twice (or maybe several million times at).

So did Natalie, my heroine.

But Natalie was far more, er, pro-active than I was at her age. She made things happen -- or tried to.

It was a disaster, of course. Sometimes the time and the place aren't right, even if the people might have been. That's what happened to Natalie and Christo the first time. The second time is what I wrote about in One-Night Mistress...Convenient Wife.

And crushes are what I'm blogging about Thursday on the I Heart Presents blog. So stop over and check it out. Leave me the tale of your own crush there -- or here.

Whoever makes me laugh, cry, cringe or sympathetically shake my head will win a copy of Christo and Natalie's book

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Tote Bagging On Thursday

I'll be talking about 'going home again' and all the bits and pieces that go into writing a book when my blog piece turns up at Tote Bags 'n' Blogs on Thursday. So check for it over there, please. Say hi. Be friendly!

I'm up to my neck in George, but I'm happy to report that Gunnar my dearly departed flatcoat retriever has come to my rescue. He told me this morning that George needed a dog. Boy, was he right.

And so, George got a dog. A dog named Gunnar. A flatcoat.

Imagine that.

And alll of a sudden it's so much more fun to write because I get to spend time with Gunnar every day. And Gunnar is making George come alive. Well, he's not yet because George is still in the hospital having had his near encounter with the truck.

But the fact that Gunnar is at George's house means that George has a very definite human side to him that wasn't quite so evident in the physics lab.

And his presence is requiring certain responses from Sophy. And she's seeing a whole side of George she's never quite believed in.

It's lovely.

And I owe it all to Gunnar. Somehow I'm not surprised.

If you haven't met Gunnar, but you want a retrospective, please go back to December 2008 on my blog and scrowl down to December 8th.

He's worth the trip.

* * *

I see by Amazon that One-Night Mistress . . . Convenient Wife is being shipped. And a friend in England tells me it's available there. And Kate Walker says it's out at eharlequin.

You can read a bit more about the background of it on Tote Bags Thursday. So, check it out!

Christo's Cover

I finally had a few minutes this evening to prowl through more than email. And so I looked online to see if I could find the cover for Christo's book.

Remember him? And Natalie?

I do. Barely.

Mostly I remember them as having spent far too long in my house over the holidays last year. They were like guests who had long since worn out their welcome before they finally decamped after revisions. Frankly, I'd blotted them out.

But recently several Presents authors with books out the same month as mine (that would be November 2009) were saying they hadn't seen their covers yet. Obviously I hadn't either.

Then I remembered that Kate Walker sent me the cover of PJ's book when she found it online before the Powers That Be ever sent me a copy. So I decided to go look.

Christo and Natalie's book, called One-Night Mistress...Convenient Wife (don't get your expectations raised over that, either) wasn't on the US site of amazon.com, but oddly, the US Presents cover was already posted on the UK site, amazon.co.uk!

So here it is.

Does he look like Christo? No.

Does she look like Natalie? Not at all. The hair color is even wrong.

The setting? Nope. It takes place mostly in a house on The Strand in Manhattan Beach -- or on the beach. Or in Brazil. Or . . . well, suffice to say there's not a lot of OFFICE in it, but clearly the artist was told to send the message: OFFICE ROMANCE.

There is a bit of the office thrown in -- in revisions. They asked for it. I did it.

But I walked a very narrow line the whole way. You may recall me whining that The Prof's cousin, a lawyer, kept vetting the lawyerly bits of it and ringing me to ask if I wanted to get Christo disbarred!

Er, no. I didn't, thank you very much.

I suppose that would have made an interesting story, but it was not the one I had in mind. And definitely not the one editorial hoped I would write.

Anyway, it's not the worst cover I've ever had (Snow White,and the Axe Murderer was probably that. Or maybe Jay Leno and Jimmy Cagney's Death Mask). But it's not the best, either. It's okay. No Axe Murderer. No Death Mask.

I'm counting my blessings.

What do you think?