Love Across the Pond is Coming Soon!

Love Across the Pond

Archer Family Series

The next, and last, book in the Archer family series of Regency romances is in the hands of my editor and will be released in July! This book closes the circle on the Archer family, although there may be spin-offs since I've had readers request John Archer and Lady Victoria's story.

The series started with The Unwanted Heiress about Charlotte Haywood, an outspoken American Heiress who is orphaned and sent to live with relative in England with disastrous results. Her difficulties only increase when she catches the attention of a duke and together, the two of them must outwit a murderer.

The circle has now come around to Edward Archer, the brother of an earl. In Love Across the Pond, Charlotte sends Edward back to her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, to resolve a legal problem with one of her properties. It seems someone has taken up residence in Charlotte's old home and claims the house is hers! Edward steps right into the den of a lioness when he arrives and is soon at odds with Charity Stonewright.

Not only does Edward have a legal tangle to unravel, but he is soon enmeshed in several mysteries including a decades-old murder and a hunt for a lost treasure. It doesn't help when he finds himself falling in love with the woman he's supposed to evict!

So the original heroine came from Charleston and went to England to find her duke, and the cousin of that duke now travels back to Charleston to discover the love of his life, Charity Stonewright--assuming she doesn't just bar the door against him.

And cat lovers note, I couldn't resist a tribute to one of our cats who recently passed away: Psycho. He was a marmalade cat who insisted everyone love him, including our Jack Russell, Daisy. He was an absolutely crazy animal who just showed up one day and insisted on being adopted. Our dogs initially went nuts, but he just completely ignored them except when he wanted a nap on something warm (much to their horror). He was toothless, cross-eyed, and frankly not very handsome, but if you sat down, he was in your lap whether you liked it or not.

I can't tell you how many times he'd drape himself over the edge of the stairs, head and front paws dangling, until he overbalanced and fell to the floor, usually landing on his head. Never seemed to bother him. His sense of balance was definitely missing, but the vet said he was okay and he lived with us for fifteen years before he passed away. We miss him dreadfully--he was such a playful and loving animal.

As a tribute, he appears in Love Across the Pond, as Nodcock, the orange cat.

I hope you will enjoy the newest, and last, book in the Archer series!

Lightning Strike

You know how your parents always warned you not to stand under a tree during a storm? You know how you always scoffed? Well, it turns out, they were right. You should never be anywhere NEAR a tree during a storm and I have proof. If you read this blog and look at the pictures and still run to shelter beneath the spreading branches of a tree during a storm, well...you're an idiot.

About a week ago, we had a terrible storm during the night. At 4:00AM we heard a loud boom that rattled the entire house. We live in a log home and have actually weathered hurricanes and trees hitting the house with only the merest thump. This time, the house really did shake so we knew there had to have been an explosion of some kind. We figured lightning had struck somewhere close, very close, and were afraid it was our power line. Thankfully, this was not so.

The next day, we checked the trees around the house to make sure none of them had been struck for fear the tree would die and then come crashing down on the house. All the trees in the immediate vicinity appeared fine, however.

Then today, we were taking the dogs for a walk through our woods and found the lightning strike. The sight was awesome in the sense of "awe inspiring." I had never seen anything like it in my life. A huge tree had been struck and literally exploded into fragments, some of which were littered as far away as 100 feet. Many of the jagged, spear-like fragments were stuck in the ground and you can only imagine what would have happened had you been foolish enough to be within 100 feet of that tree when it exploded.

From examining it, we saw the charred area about four feet off the ground where the lightning hit. The heat of the strike immediately boiled the moisture in the tree and the steam created so much pressure that it blew the tree apart, as if the tree had been a pressure cooker without a safety valve. It looked like someone had stuck an explosive into the tree and set it off. The thick trunk was split to the ground and the top was blown completely off and landed next to what remained of the stump, still upright and leaning against the shredded remains of the trunk.

So the next time you even THINK about taking shelter anywhere near a tree, I encourage you to think again. Most experts tell you to take shelter in a building or a car (cars have rubber tires, after all) and I think that's pretty darn good advice at this point.

The really amazing thing to me is how a previously healthy, mature tree was so completely split apart into matchsticks. (Okay, they are giant matchsticks, for sure, but the fragments scattered everywhere in the woods did look like matchsticks.)

I am also pleased that this happened before birds started nesting this spring. We did not find any "bodies" of any critters, which was a relief to me (although evidently a disappointment to the dogs).

One must never forget the power of nature. Lightning is obviously nothing to "fool around with."

On a cheerful note, I'm watching my latest book, The Unwanted Heiress, creep up the Amazon ebook charts and it looks like it is a success to me. :) That will give me some bucks to do some planting and I think a few more trees may be in order.

Shooting Craps

Publishing is really a crap shoot - you just never know what will catch reader's attention and what will just slip away into oblivion.

This weekend has been one of my best, ever, with the exception of three months in 2011 when my books were literally flying off the shelves. About two weeks ago, The Unwanted Heiress, a sweet Regency romance was released, or rather re-released as it had previously come out as I Bid One American. The cover for The Unwanted Heiress was redone by a professional cover artist, Amber Shah, based on a photograph by Jenn LeBlanc, and the results were terrific.

The book had always done well and attracted the interest of two agents, so when I got the rights back, I re-edited it and got it re-released.

The results have been everything I could have hoped for. Back in 2011, several of my Regency mysteries did very, very well (The Vital Principle and the Regency romantic mystery, A Rose Before Dying) but I had never been able to crack that "2,000 in all Kindle books" bestseller barrier. This time, I did. On Saturday, March 23, I got a ranking of 1,995 in all Kindle books!

How did I finally break the barrier? Beats me. In fact, I've done absolutely nothing other than mentioning the book on my author page on Facebook a few times and tweeting about it a few times. Like many others, I read Konrath's blog about publishing and he's pretty well clueless, too, about what suddenly attracts readers to a book (and hopefully, an author), except for a few basics:

• A great cover - this is what catches the attention, first
• A great blurb
• A great title

The funny thing is, this reminds me of my first research into publishing when I began seriously writing (for the second time, after college) back in the late 90's. What I kept hearing, especially from unpublished authors, was that publishers kept telling them they wanted, "Something that is the same, only different." What the heck does that mean?

It means a book that fits comfortably into a genre that readers know and love, and yet is somehow different while it remains within the bounds of that genre. Now some writers can break through and establish entirely new genres, e.g. Georgette Heyer or Stephen King, but for the most part, if you want to sell, you need to write a book that readers can "place." That means, that readers know/understand what to expect. Oh, not that they know what to expect in every detail, but in general terms, like knowing there will be a happy ending.

Writing a book that fits within a genre, of course, doesn't guarantee sales, but it will generate more sales than writing a mishmash, e.g. a Frankenstein-meets-Gone-with-the-Wind-in-Space. If readers can't wrap their heads around a concept, it's going to be hard to find readers unless, of course, you're the next Stephen King. And while most writers think they are not only the next best thing to King, but actually better, I'm afraid the reality is: probably not.

So I'm grateful that readers are discovering The Unwanted Heiress and I hope they enjoy the sweet Regency romance. It fits nicely in the Regency genre, but as so many editors requested, it is the same, only a little different.

Happy Reading!