Rakkutta ja lapsionnea

A rainy day got sunny when I found a nice surprise in the mail today. It was a little box from Harlequin--two copies of Rakkutta ja lapsionnea.

No, I’m not playing dancing digits on my keyboard. Rakkutta ja lapsionnea is Daddy in Waiting in Finnish.

One of the most fun things about being a Harlequin author is receiving copies of foreign editions. When I pulled this one out of the box I had a bit of a déjà vu experience because I remembered being paired with the incomparable Holly Jacobs before. Hmmm. I had to pull out my box of foreigns and my last royalty statement to realize that one of the copies was a direct sale copy and one was a retail copy. Not that it matters...I’m just happy to be in the game.

You may note that there are different covers on the books. The one on the right is my original cover and the other is Holly’s. In the baby cover sweepstakes, both are winners.

I once had a sister author tell me I was lucky that I got such a cute baby. She said that Harlequin babies usually look like space aliens. Hey, I’ve seen some of those babies, and my friend was right.

So, if you’re in Finland this summer, look up a copy of Rakkautta ja lapsionnea. If you miss it, it’s probably available at Amazon.com for a penny.

Happy writing.

Flowers for You

These sweet dianthus (some call them Pinks) greet me each time I go in or out my front door.

In this same pot I've had zinnias, azaleas, a rose (didn't make it a week), a hibiscus (had to water it twice a day) and some primroses that survived against all odds and retired to the little woods behind my house.

I love flowers. In my stories the heroes are forever giving the heroines flowers (Daddy in Waiting), taking the heroines to wildflower meadows (The Cowboy Way), and sneezing because they're allergic to flowers (Untitled, at this point).

I hope you have lots of flowers (both real and figurative) in your life.

Happy weekend.

Hungry?

I bought a new colander today.

The old one (emphasis on the old) was plastic and broke because I had it sandwiched inside the stockpot between two sets of stainless steel mixing bowls. It was a tight squeeze and the old colander gave up the ghost last week.

At the store, while I was holding that miracle of technology, the stainless steel and mesh colander, in my hands I suddenly asked myself, do my characters ever cook?

I couldn’t remember! In category romance, unless the plot is food related (chefs, caterers, restaurant workers, etc.) there’s not a whole lot of time or word count to devote to what the characters eat. Yes, they go out on dates to restaurants and eat, often pizza, but you rarely, if ever, get a blow by blow description of the food. Characters rarely, if ever, go to the supermarket.

In Daddy in Waiting (Silhouette Romance, June 2005) my hero, Matt, was concerned that the pregnant heroine, Jenny, wasn’t getting enough to eat, so he gave her a caterer. Not only did the caterer go to Jenny’s office every day to prepare lunch, she dropped off care packages to her over the weekends. (Not that it applies here, but Matt also gave Jenny a chauffer and car—Matt was just a tad obsessive).

In the first of a series of contemporary cowboy books I’m working on, one of my favorite scenes takes place in the heroine’s vegetable garden. Then, there’s a cute cookies-and-milk scene at the kitchen table that I love, also.

Come to think of it, the second cowboy book takes place at a guest ranch in Texas, and there’s a dining hall there—but the hero and heroine never cook—just eat good old cowboy food. The hero has a thing for peach cobbler and hand-cranked ice cream (and the heroine).

So yes, in spite of my momentary memory lapse when it came to whether or not culinary matters figure into my books, the answer is yes.

And in the vernacular of the day, yes, the characters really cook, too.