Happy New Year!

There are grandchildren everywhere.

I consider this a good sign for the coming year. I tripped over three bodies in the middle of the living room this morning while trying to get to the kitchen in the dark (hey, it was 4:45!) to make tea before we took daughter and granddaughter to the airport. And there were grandsons scattered all over. They looked like a pile of puppies.

Why -- when there are perfectly good beds upstairs, not to mention two perfectly good air mattresses in the dining room -- they all prefer to sleep on the rug or on the sofa or wherever they drop, is beyond me. Actually I think they must sleepwalk.

But I'm glad they are here -- even if they did create an obstacle course in the dark of earliest morning.

We have been to the airport now -- and returned home -- and the daughter and granddaughter are now in Chicago, where they practically arrived before we got home. (The puppies are still in the living room on the sofa, having moved from the floor).

* * *

Now I'm gearing up for the new year.

I expect George and Sophy to resurface sometime in the next week or two, doubtless requiring revisions of some sort. I hope they are not extensive, but mostly I hope whatever the ed suggests makes it a better book. Usually her revision ideas help. My editor has a good eye -- and a good sense of story.

In the meantime, I'm getting ideas for a new book, which is nice.

I rather like having had a couple of weeks to just be a real person without a book in my life. It was a nice change. I was actually surprised when the ideas began bubbling up for a new story. Not a lot there yet, but it is coming. I hope I get enough to discuss with my editor by the time I've got George back and gone again.

This year is my 25th anniversary of publication. Starstruck, which was my second book, but my first to see the light of day as a published novel, came out in February 1985.

So to celebrate the event, I'm going to begin giving away a book a day starting February 1st. Some of them will be my books. Some will be other peoples' that I've enjoyed. It seems like a good way to celebrate a career in romance fiction -- giving away copies of good books.

Stay tuned and I'll be posting more about the Great Book Give-Away soon. Also Liz Fielding and Kate Walker and I will, I believe, be running our annual Here Come the Grooms! contest before long. I might have to find a copy of Starstruck as a prize in that contest as Joe, the hero, was my first groom. I wonder if there is still a copy back in darkest reaches of my attic.

Will have to go check. If I don't reappear, send search parties.

Speaking of which, The Prof has gone out to look for the daughter's cell phone where they went hiking and climbing yesterday and the cell phone disappeared. It's about 10 below zero this morning, so if he doesn't get back in an hour or two, I'm sending out search parties for him.

Merry Christmas!

From the middle of the stormy, snowy, sleety, rainy midwest (as in "Is this the ice bowl?" "No, it's Iowa."), I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best in the coming year.

Thank you for joining me here on my blog and on my website. I'm so glad to have had your companionship over the past year and I look forward to another year here, sharing books and ideas and heroes (especially, but not exclusively, Hugh-in-a-towel) with you.

If you have questions or suggestions for making this a better place to visit, please share them.

Blogs aren't one way streets. It helps me to hear your ideas and learn about what you want to read about, too. Let me know and I'll see what I can do.

Take care and have a wonderful holiday season!

From all of our family to all of yours,

Merry Christmas
and
Happy New Year!

Celebrations

This weekend I am posting over at the Pink Heart Society about Holiday traditions. It's a post inspired by our upcoming Thanksgiving in the US.

I think Thanksgiving has been my favorite holiday ever since I moved away from home. While I was growing up, it didn't measure up to Christmas. But once I left, I began to see its potential.

It became for me a holiday of infinite potential. It made me remember all the people I'd shared it -- and my life -- with in the past. And it connected me to those present sharing it with me now and those who would share it in the future.

I use recipes that belonged to my great-grandmother. I have shared them with by daughter and my sons, and I know that they are passing them along as well. I like that about it. I like the sense of handing things on, being a part of something that has meaning and stretches into the past and the future both.

Of course there are plenty of other holidays that you can say the same thing about. But I'm fond of Thanksgiving because while the sense of thanksgiving in general can be shared with people around the globe, Americans have a historical identity tied up with its celebration as well.

We are immigrants -- even those of us with American Indian ancestors -- and our ancestors, even those so far distant in time that we don't even know who they are, came here with hopes and dreams and determination. We share that sense of being able to make a new life in a new place. We share a sense of gratitude for the opportunity. We share hope for the future. And we share connections to the past, to the present, and to each other.

As a writer I celebrate connections -- to my wonderful readers, to so many fantastic writers who have come to be my friends. I share with all of you the joy of story, of hopes and dreams and happy endings.

Thanks for being here this year. Stick around. I hope we will share many more.

Happy Easter!

Hope everyone is having a happy Easter -- or whatever you happen to celebrate at this time of year.

We didn't dye eggs this year. Not much point with just the two of us here. The twins are coming tomorrow, but they will already have done the Easter egg hunt at their house, so I'm off the hook on dying eggs.

I seem to be off the hook on fixing dinner, too, since fixing dinner for four year olds and their father is something of a useless exercises. Especially if they'd rather have pizza. I love fixing Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas dinner, but I've never been all that excited about Easter meals. So pizza is fine with me if it's fine with them.

More time to work on Demetrios.

He finally appeared today -- for the first time -- in the first scene. He's been waffling around poking his nose in various scenes trying to help me sort through the story, but he'd never officially "made an entrance" until today.

Holy heck. That man certainly does know how to make an entire room stop and stare.

I had no idea.

Maybe it's the "Presents hero" in him. He's pretty determined to live up to the chatter. He's heard mutterings about Seb being an "Iceman" but a softie underneath. And he's not sure he likes the notion ofbeing under the microscope of a lot of perceptive females.

He's a very private guy, our Demetrios.

I've promised to allow him to keep his protective shell ("Armor, damn it," he just said to me. "It's not a shell. You make me sound like an egg.") for a while. But I'm warning him that Anny is going to get under it.

He just said, "We'll see about that," and stalked out of the room.

I just love a reluctant hero.

Happy Easter to all of you, from all of us (that's me, the Prof, Seb and Neely, Demetrios and Anny, the twins, their father, Micah and Mitch the golden guys, and anyone else who happens to drift through the office in the next few days)!

Valentine's Day Wishes -- and Fixing Glitches

Happy Valentine's Day to you all. I hope you get to spend the day with the person you love the most! I am.

We're even going out to dinner tonight with old friends he used to teach with years ago. It will be fun to see everyone. Not your romantic dinner for two, but a wonderful way to celebrate the years -- and the people we've spent them with.

In case you have been by the new website -- which I hope you liked -- and tried to leave a comment, Liz Fielding kindly pointed out to me that the comments link under my post has not been working. Apparently neither is the contact Anne link at the bottom of each web page! Yikes!

I just checked the comments page and it's working again now. So I guess it was a Blogger issue, not ours. But the contact Anne page is definitely 'our' issue and when Heather gets back from having a life, I'm sure she'll sort it out.

In the meantime, try to leave a comment (and we'll see if it keeps working). If you want to write me a note, use the contest page link for the time being, and send me a message from there. And while you're at it, match the titles and their characters and enter to win.

While you're poking around, if you see other things that need fixing, please use the link and let me know. We'll get on it as soon as Heather gets back.

Enjoy your day!

Happy New Year!

I could look back at 2008 and talk about what has happened, because certainly good stuff has. But enough other stuff that happened is no place I want to dwell, so I think I'll take a page out of my middle son's book and say, "Time to move on."

And having done so, and thinking positive, I will toss out a few resolutions as well.

1. Get the revisions done. This is a no-brainer. They need to be in next week. They will be. Christo has finally got his act together. It's just a matter of me getting it on the page now. Or, the rest of it on the page.

2. Enjoy winter. Sometimes easier said than done because often hereabouts winter is a pain. But as my stepdad would have said, "It's better than the alternative." By this he meant, not summer, but being dead. My stepdad dealt in basics. And winter is definitely preferable.

3. Finish two books (Christo's doesn't count; it is finished, it's just being tinkered with).

4. Go visit the grandkids. Pretty sure I'll be able to keep that one!

5. Use the 'bird by bird' approach to getting my office cleaned -- one box at a time.

I'm going to stop at five because I don't want to overload the circuits. And I do want to have a reasonable chance of keeping them.

What about you? What resolutions are you making? Or do you make any at all?

Have an Eggcellent Easter!

If you're celebrating Easter today, as we are, I wish you the very best of the season. I'm celebrating as well by NOT having to cook Easter dinner for a change. Or writing much on the blog.

Seb, however, will get a bit of attention because he's finally doing something and I'm not giving him the day off. He's had a week off -- or more!

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Every year I send my son Patrick the card about St Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland while they kick and punch and swat each other in the backseat of his car and say things like, "He hit me!" "I've got to pee!" and "How much farther is it?"

I love that card. I've driven snakes -- and children -- out of a lot of places in my life. The children, at least, keep getting back in!

There are none here at the moment, though, and I miss them. We took the dogs for a walk just as school was about to let out (school here never having spring break and even less so this year when we've had 11 -- count 'em -- snow days). It reminded me of all the years of waiting for them to hurtle down the hill and bang into the house. Much quieter now.

Except for when the postman arrives. The children didn't make nearly as much fuss about the postman as the dogs do. Wonder why.

Seb and I have come to terms. He's working. My Jane Donnelly piece for The Pink Heart, which will go up on Thursday (or late Weds if you live in North or South America). It was such a treat to re-read her books in preparation for writing it. They never get old.

I will be talking about some of my favorites later this week. If you have a favorite Jane Donnelly book, please drop by and share it. If you haven't read Jane Donnelly, you ought to. For me she's the quintessential romance writer.

Everyone has their favorites. She's mine.

Happy St David's Day

No, I'm not in Wales where I could say that and not get odd looks.

But before I got married I had a reasonably common Welsh surname and a father who insisted that somewhere, generations back, we really were Welsh (what part of us wasn't Choctaw, French, Scottish, German and English).

And I do like daffodils. And the name David -- gave it to my eldest son, actually.

So I figure I'm entitled to celebrate.

I'm also celebrating because I did a guest blog at Liz Fielding's the other day (Liz lives in Wales) -- and it's still up so you can go visit and check out an excerpt from the new book (yes, I know it takes place in Ireland, but you can't have everything; besides Ireland was lovely).

I'm happy to report that Seb's book is coming along nicely at the moment. A whole 10 days of well-behaved hero . . . hard to believe. I do sense a bit of white water ahead (though hopefully not a waterfall). It's a matter of figuring out the 'dramatic structure' now.

Not my forte.

Not the planning of it, anyway. Gut reactions, yes, I can do those. So I guess I'll go try to come up with some stuff that I can have gut reactions to and either keep it and work on it or throw it out. At least I'll be getting somewhere.

The contest is over. Flynn will be picking the winner today -- unless Gunnar manages to convince him that he should do it instead. Stay tuned!

And many thanks to all of you who entered.

Hoppy New Year!

I'm trading in the ducks in a row for things that hop this year. I'm hoping for great leaps forward.

Ever the optimist, that's me.

I wish I had a Maine Coon kitten to introduce as a new family member (the dogs don't wish this at all). But I'm happy for those who do have, and I look forward to meeting both of them when I go to England again this summer.

In the meantime I'm not doing resolutions, but I'm hoping for some quiet progress in a variety of areas -- like organization, a semi-clean desk every once in a while, overcoming a few brick walls on the family history front, continued good writer-editor communication. And, especially, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for terrific heroes to show up and make writing their stories a pleasure this year.

I'd also like to meet some of you who read this blog. While we may not get it done in person, if you would just leave a comment and say where you're from and anything else you'd like on the blog today or later this week, I'd appreciate it.

Sometimes I wonder who's out there (if anyone -- besides Mads, that is, and Sadie, my godcat, and Sid, my feline hero across the pond, and Kate his transcriptionist). I look forward to waking up in the morning and reading some comments.

Hoppy New Year!

Christmas -- a movable feast

Missed me? I missed you guys. But there was just no time to blog this week.

First, of course, there was Ellie and her parents. That was time-consuming enough. And better time was never spent. Of course I'm prejudiced, but she's such a cheerful, pleasant, happy baby. She reminds me of her aunt, my daughter. They have the same 'what's not to love about me?' personality. They expect the best to happen and, generally, they get it.

Ellie's dad is like that, too, come to think of it. Boundless energy and boundless optimism. Nice to be around.

The twins came, too. They're three now. Busy doesn't begin to describe it. They've had haircuts and are beginning to look like individuals rather than clones of each other. That said, it still takes a long look for Grandma to tell them apart. And what fun they are! I'm sorry the older boys weren't able to get here as well.

Thought I'd provide a pic of the dogs to say Merry Christmas to all of you!

Can you tell we had a good Christmas?

And it isn't even officially Christmas yet!

Still . . . it was lovely and I'll have no problem celebrating 10 days early every year. We did that with Thanksgiving one year when the middle son came home in October. It's a movable feast anyway. So we moved it to celebrate when he could be with us. Great fun.

So I took them back to the airport on Monday night to catch a before dawn flight Tuesday morning, then stayed there with my mother to take her to an eye doctor appointment the following day at the major university clinic nearby. She had a corneal transplant last year. She sees better than I do! (Not that she admits it).

And then yesterday we drove home through FOG. Like that stuff that prevented us going to Texas when we tried to get out two days before Thanksgiving. It was thick and soupy and generally impenetrable. I was glad to get home safe and sound.

Now I've heard from the ed that the tweaks were all that PJ and Ally needed and they are in the 'Modern' schedule for next November, and the Presents schedule is "TBA" and the title is, I think I may have mentioned, Antonides' Forbidden Wife. November seems like a long way off. I presume that means hardback in September, though. We shall see.

I'm supposed to start thinking about books and dates for next year's delivery. Hmmm. Got any ideas????

Tweaked!

Well, PJ and Ally have been tweaked and sent winging their way back to England. Whew.

It wasn't difficult -- not like rewriting the basic premise of Spence and Sadie was. Not like a few books I remember less than fondly who seemed to need wholesale gutting and restuffing. No, PJ and Ally were far easier.

I liked the revision letter. It told me that my editor understood them and was on my wavelength. A nice place to have her, believe me. So her suggestions were, as they say, 'spot on.' She understood what I was trying to do, and helped me do it even better. So, thanks, Ed. I hope you enjoy them 'tweaked' as much as I enjoyed tweaking them.

Now I've got Christmas to see to. And a tree to trim and baking to do. And housecleaning. Oh, my, yes. And snow shoveling because for some reason the weather hereabouts (all snow and ice and freezing rain) has decided it likes it here and is planning to stay.

All I have to say is, "It better not be here next Saturday." Next Saturday it better be wonderful and clear -- here and in Denver and where my son and daughter-in-law and the world's most wonderful four month old granddaughter live. Because we want no hitches getting them here.

Cross your fingers, okay? You can still wrap presents and bake cookies and sing carols. But you need to keep your fingers crossed while you do it. I'll cross mine for you and yours, too.

A Baby For Christmas

I wrote a book called A Baby For Christmas a few years back. It was all about the unexpectedness of a baby on a doorstep -- or a veranda in this case -- and what happened next.

It was a lot of fun to write, and at this time of year I get nostalgic for babies at Christmas -- even fictional ones.

I hadn't planned on having one of our own.

And technically, we don't. But that's only if you define Christmas narrowly, as in "December 25th."

We're not narrow constructionists. Around our house Christmas is expandable.

And to our delight our newest granddaughter, Ellie, is coming in 10 days for a holiday visit!

It was a serendipitous spur of the moment sort of thing. We certainly hadn't planned it. We'd expected we wouldn't see her or any of the out-of-state family this year. Then we got one of those 'weekend fare' emails that announce flights from nowhere to nowhere.

Only this time they had a flight going from Somewhere to Very-Nearly-Here! I couldn't believe my eyes. Not only that, but affordable, too.

And so Ellie -- and her parents -- are coming for Christmas (actually from the 15th to the 18th). But that works for us. We can hardly wait.

I'll have to have the revisions done by the end of the week so I can put up the tree and start getting the house ready for the early Christmas holiday!

Christmas Recipes

In my current book-free state I have been contemplating Christmas recipes. This began when Anne Gracie asked me about which recipe I thought she should make for a certain occasion.

It snowballed from there.

Well, here it snowballed. In Australia, I gather, it would be sizzling instead. Even I, who grew up in California, have trouble imagining a Christmas where things routinely melt. We never melted at Christmas. Though it wasn't ever really "cold" on the coast, it was often damp and shivery all the way to the bone.

Anyway, the discussion of recipes, and the arrival of two of her best for me to experiment with, has led me to contemplate my own favorite Christmas recipes.

There is a date bar recipe of my mother's I'm very fond of (and which the family story reminds me that when my mom sent them to my stepdad's grandmother for Christmas the first year they were married, she got a lovely note back thanking her for the little meat pies). Then there's her lemon bars recipe. And the spritz recipe from the spritz maker gizmo, and the cut-out Christmas cookies with the bit of orange peel and mace.

And just last week we made the orange-cranberry cookies which I suggested to Anne would make brilliant Christmas cookies, only to discover that Australia doesn't do cranberries. At least not fresh ones. Poor deprived people. I don't suppose they get the same effect using Vegemite.

So . . . this brings me to a question.

What are your favorite Christmas recipes -- for cookies or for whatever else you habitually make at this time of year?

I need to start thinking about getting these things done because soon there will be revisions. And I should take advantage of the time I have now. I'll be making my traditional cookies and breads and other goodies. But I like to broaden my horizons.

So share your best recipes, please. I could use some great new ideas to add to the ones I make year after year.

Free Time

I can't remember the last time I had any 'free time' -- that lovely unstructured resource that I love so much. But I have some now.

At least until tomorrow morning. Or whenever my editor comes back to me with revisions, suggestions, comments or, God forbid, "this sucks."

So I'm relishing being free to clean my office if I want (and whether I want to or not, the office needs it), paint our bedroom (ditto), bake Christmas cookies and freeze them, go shopping (once or twice, but mostly online), have a friend or two over for tea, take the dogs for longer than usual walks, and read books.

The TBR pile (that's to-be-read for those who don't have one) is sky high. But I just got to read the Regency Christmas anthology from Signet and enjoyed the stories there. That's a yearly ritual. I'm looking forward to a re-read of Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels when it comes out next week. I, among others, adore that story. But my copy went to someone else to read and hasn't ever come back. So I'm getting a new one. I have several more I'll talk about as I finish them, provided I have time to.

It's good to be home. Thanksgiving in Texas was terrific. We never ran into crowds at the airport (once we stopped being fogged in). We had great connections, great games of monopoly, a great gingerbread house, some relatively painless Black Friday shopping (always interesting as long as you're not in a hurry), lots of good football (Go, Packers!), and a fabulous dinner, not to mention plenty of quality time with daughter and son-in-law and Glowkid.

We even decorated the Christmas tree before we left because they did it early this year so we could be part of it -- and they are going to swim with dolphins the week before Christmas and then to Missouri for Christmas with the other side of the family, so getting the tree at home early seemed like a good idea so they'd have time to enjoy it. And we got to enjoy it, too.

I think we should have carved a pumpkin and dyed a few Easter eggs, too. But in general a good time was had by all.

Couldn't have been better (even the fog didn't cause problems really because we then went to a different airport, got a non-stop and had no hassles at all).

When You're Making Other Plans . . .

Fog, that's what happens.

So we are still here -- waiting to go there -- along with literally millions of other people.

Now we are scheduled to go tomorrow afternoon from another airport about 2 hours from here.

That's the downside. The upside is that it's a non-stop to DFW, so provided the plane flies we will not be bogged down in a hub someplace -- or if we are it will be because we've been diverted and that will be a whole new downside we aren't even contemplating at this point.

My theory about airline travel (and any other sort for that matter) is that it's a whole different sort of time entirely. I suppose it's like "dreamtime" -- though not meaning the same thing. It's a sort of "time" which you step into when you leave wherever you're leaving from, and until you get off at the other end, you're in "travel time" and "real normal time" as we know it ceases to exist.

What is "travel time?" Time when you have no control, you can't plan, you are herded about like a sheep (Eamon, where are you?). And all you can do is take along a good book and go with the flow.

Generally I have no problem with this. Today, for example, it didn't bother me a bit to be told we couldn't go. Any idiot could see we couldn't go.

When I get annoyed is when it's clearly a matter of choice for the airline to muck up peoples' lives. Ordinarily they don't.

But last year they did when they knew perfectly well that a three hour late arriving flight the night before was going to mean that the crew couldn't fly at the very early scheduled time in the morning (there's a rule that says they have to have 8 hours between these flights to sleep). So everyone who had a connection missed it.

The airline people knew this the night before. But they didn't bother to tell anyone not to come at the regular time. They also didn't bother to start booking people on new flights until we'd reached Denver where we sat for 16 hours as flight after flight was already "full."

There were any number of ways they could have made things go more smoothly. They didn't bother. And they didn't even seem to care. Fog doesn't bother me. Disservice to customers does. I don't fly that airline as often as I used to. And it's never my first choice. I'm sure they don't care, but I'm sorry they don't.

But I'm not flying that airline tomorrow -- and it's still going to be a good Thanksgiving.

Life After Book

There is indeed a life AB (after book).

In fact, it's quite a lovely life for the most part. There are things to do that have needed to be done for aaaaagggggeeeeessss. And I'm beginning to get some of them done. There are books to read -- I'm getting one or two of them read. There are places to go . . .

I'm leaving for Texas tomorrow.

When children spread themselves around the country, the chances of ever getting all of them in one place for anything short of a wedding are pretty much nil. So we have been taking our chances, getting one here and one there. And generally we've been spending Thanksgiving with friends and neighbors and people we find without a place to go.

But this year we are going to Texas to visit our daughter and her husband and GlowKid. We did it four years ago and had a great time with them. One of our sons came then, too. He won't be there this year. But I just saw him in Washington state.

We're looking forward to the visit. I'm taking cranberries. In a bag. So I can make the cranberry sauce when I get there. I might bake some pumpkin bread tomorrow if I have time. I'm busy changing the sheets on the bed so the dog sitter can have a place of his own uncovered by dog hair (for the first instant anyway). And I'm going to enjoy kicking back and relaxing while I'm there.

I'm not exactly looking forward to the trip -- flying on holidays is not my favorite pastime. I rather feel like my youngest son does: I love being different places. I just don't much like having to get there.

Oh well. It beats staying up all night to work on the book.

I wish you all a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. May you, even if you don't celebrate the holiday in your country, at least stop and reflect on the things you have to be thankful for.

Among my many blessings, I'm thankful for all of you.