Would you like this in your house?

Wallpaper by Hermes; via Helen Warlow on Twitter

What do you think she’s reading?

Dans la Bibliotheque, by Auguste Toulmouche, 1872

Very honored to be interviewed for the Kirkus Romance blog! In which I discuss my writing journey, the evolution of You May Kiss the Bride, what I’ve learned from my characters along the way, some of my favorite books of 2017, and more. Click here to read! 

For more about You May Kiss the Bride and my other books, click here.

I can’t say I’m a fan of murder mysteries, yet lately I’ve found myself happily engrossed in a great fat volume of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories. What a wonderful character Jane Marple is! So demure, so self-effacing, yet so coolly brilliant and discerning.

She’s definitely one of those characters I’d love to meet in real life. It would be such fun to sit down and have a cuppa with her. :)

. . . on Facebook, as I did in my last post, here are two more groups you may want to check out — and join. First, there’s the recently formed Avon Contemporary Romance Readers group. Very lively and fun!

Second, there’s the brand-new League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Authors, featuring a powerhouse crew including Lenora Bell, Kelly Bowen, Kerrigan Byrne, Valerie Bowman, KJ Charles, Piper Huguley, Sophie Jordan, Sarah MacLean, Vanessa Riley, Maya Rodale, Cat Sebastian, Joanna Shupe, and Sherry Thomas. It’s launching this Friday at 3 pm EST with a party hosted by Lenora Bell, with book chats, giveaways, and more. Sounds like a blast!

What are your favorite places to hang out on Facebook?

. . . about this nifty Facebook group for book lovers like me — and you, too, perhaps?

Last year I was lucky enough to participate in the annual Read a Romance Month event hosted by journalist, book devotee, and romance advocate Bobbi Dumas, and I’ve recently learned that Bobbi also cohosts the very fun Romance of Reading group on Facebook where you can hang out with fellow readers, talk about great books, and enter to win book giveaways, too.

And check out the lively Read a Romance month page on Facebook, too!

Uncannily accurate.

Here’s a place I’d love to visit: the Tianjin Binhai Library in China, so massive that it could ultimately house over a million books (!).

. . . would I invite to a holiday party? All of them, of course. It would certainly be — as Austen herself might say — vastly amusing!

Speaking of Austen — one of my favorite all-time authors — I recently wrote a fun little post for Bookish called “How Jane Austen Continues to Inspire Romance Authors.” Click here to check it out.

Really enjoyed the recent BookPage interview with the wonderful Mary Balogh. One of my favorite questions has to do with the marriage of convenience trope, as it’s something I’ve explored, in differing permutations, in my own books. Interviewer Savanna Walker asks Mary why she thinks it’s such an enduring one. 

“I think it is at least partly because the couple has to cope almost from the start with the intimacies of marriage, even if they hold off on the sex, while gradually building a friendship and, of course, falling in love,” answers Mary. “Everything is happening at once and the story is likely to be full of emotion and passion with a new couple in close contact with each other all the time. And it is always lovely to see a relationship that seems so unpromising at the start blossom into an enduring love story.”

Mary’s got a new book out, Someone to Wed, which I can’t wait to read. Check out the gorgeous cover!

Would you like to read the full interview? Click here. To visit Mary’s website, click here.