Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Wishing you many blessings and I hope that your day is shared with family and friends.

We hosted our annual egg hunt on Friday evening, and had a wonderful time. Never able to depend on the weather, we hold the event in my husband’s shop. I’ve lost count on how many hundreds of eggs I fill with candy, toys, and change, but it doesn’t take the kids long to find each and every one of them. So we add to the fun with a scavenger hunt. Special eggs have letters on them, and once found, they are placed on a sheet of tag board spelling out each child’s name. Once every one’s name is complete, and all the eggs are found, each child is given an envelope with a rhyming clue as to where their next envelope is. Everyone gets five clues, with the final one ‘suggesting’ where they will find their baskets. Old and young love the challenge of this, and I’m challenged each year coming up with new rhyming clues.

This year our three-year-old grandson’s basket was hidden inside the deer feeder, which he loves to fill with Papa every time they visit. After finding his basket with the help of his mommy and daddy, he came running up to me and said, “Grandma! Look! The deer left me this basket!”

While the children are collecting eggs, their parents have their own goodies to find. Hidden high

above all the eggs are bottles of adult beverages, and our three sons are as competitive as ever to find more than their brothers.

We always buy a couple fun games or things for the kids to keep at our house to play with, and this year that included one of those blow up costumes. This one is a dinosaur and the kids had a great time playing dinosaur tag, which they incorporated to include their squirt guns. It certainly was a fun time, and considering we had twenty-two people at our event this year, I’m glad I baked two hams!

On the writing side, THANK YOU for purchasing The Cowboy’s Orphan Bride. It’s been on best selling lists all because of you. I so appreciate your support and I do hope you enjoyed Garth and Bridgette’s story. 

Next up will be the first book in The Mail Order Brides of Oak Grove Series. I had so much fun collaborating on these stories with Kathryn Albright. Surprise Bride for the Cowboy and Taming the Runaway Bride will be released on June 1^st.  Winning the Mail Order Bride will be released on September 1^st and A Bride and A Baby for Christmas will be released in October in the Western Christmas Brides anthology. 

Stay happy and keep smiling. Life is good.

Easter!

We love Easter. Celebrating the resurrection, the hope and love, and of course, that crazy bunny. He makes a great show at Grandma and Grandpa’s house every year. The girls are still amazed that he’d climbed way out on a tree branch a couple of years ago to hang up their tree swing. Last year he included a scavenger hunt with special eggs and prizes—and he’s busy trying to come up with something unique again this year. He also has to make a trip to the store to buy all the treats and tiny gifts to fill the 400+ eggs in the upstairs closet. The long term forecast looks like rain on Sunday, so the egg hunt will be in Grandpa’s shop again, which, in truth is easier—all can be done the night before. 

As you can see from the picture, painting the front of the freezer door with chalk board paint has been a hit. It has turned into a message board the kids rush to see what is on it every time they visit—and then create a message of their own before they leave.

On to writing news….In celebration of the wonderful 4-Star review A Fortune for the Outlaw’s Daughter received from RT Reviews,I hosted a couple of giveaways over on facebook last week. Congrats to Di, Joanne, LaVera, Jan, and Colleen. They all won early copies of A Fortune for the Outlaw’s Daughter. More giveaways will happen before the May 1^st release date over there, so please pop over and like my author page for your chance to participate in future ones! 

 

This week, from April 1 to April 8^th there is a special Easter Egg Hunt going on at the Harlequin Reader Service Blog that includes prizes, so hop on over to read all about it! 

One final thing…I don’t have cover art to share yet, but I do have the back blurbs for two of stories in the Daughters of the Roaring Twenties series that I must share!  

The Bootlegger’s Daughter (coming in August)   

Of all the speakeasies, in all the world… 

Mysterious city slicker Ty Bradshaw might have won her father's trust, but everyone knows Norma Rose is the true boss of Nightingale's resort. And it'll take more than that charming smile to shake the feeling that Ty is not all he seems… 

He walks into hers 

Ty is a federal agent on a personal mission of revenge. But he hasn't figured on falling for a bootlegger's daughter. Suddenly, flirting with headstrong Norma Rose seems far more exhilarating than chasing gangsters!

 

The Rebel Daughter (coming in September) 

For every wild child… 

No more watching from the sidelines for Twyla Nightingale: her feet are firmly on the dance floor! She won't let anyone sour the delicious taste of freedom—especially not Forrest Reynolds, back in town after all this time. 

…there's a guy who thinks she's the bee's knees. 

Forrest didn't expect a warm welcome from the Nightingale sisters, not after their lives had been so dramatically upturned. But seeing the challenge in Twyla's eyes, Forrest takes this rebel for a wild dance she won't forget!


The Runaway Daughter (coming in June) and The Forgotten Daughter (coming in October) will round up this series.

Thanks for stopping by, and Happy Easter!

Happy Easter

We have 420 plastic eggs stuffed with candy and miniature toys, plus another dozen that will be used strictly for the scavenger hunt, ready to be hid Sunday morning. A fair amount of the wonderful—not—12 inches of snow we received on Wednesday is still covering the ground, so the egg hiding may all take place in Papa’s shop. He’s such a good grandpa and doesn’t mind his tool boxes and storage cabinets being used as hiding spots. The scavenger hunt will take place in there as well. Each egg contains a clue as to where to find the next egg until they find their final prize—the golden egg. It promises to be a fun time for sure! 

I send you all Easter Blessings, and hope amongst the eggs, bunnies, elaborate dinners, and family gatherings you have the opportunity to rejoice in the miracle the holiday is based upon. 

My agent from the Japan UNI agency sent me a lovely email this morning. The publisher who purchased the Japanese comic adaptation rights for Mail Order Husband has almost completed the Magna version. It will be so fun to see! I can only imagine how much work it takes to turn a complete novel into a comic. Some people are so very talented. I can barely draw a stick person.

The May first release date for Never Tempt a Lawman is just around the corner. Right now I’m working on the final revisions for the third roaring twenties story. The fourth story is coming along nicely, too. I’m going to miss these sisters when their stories are all done. 

I have many things to complete today, so must get off the computer and head to the grocery store. 

Happy Easter everyone, you are each a miracle and a blessing.

Edits

A book’s journey is never ending. In most cases it starts the moment an idea pops into the author’s head, and from there, it flows forward through months, or longer, of rewrites and edits, and all sorts of behind the scenes work. Years later, long after it’s been published, it continues on, in the hands of readers. I think that’s pretty cool, and must say, there’s really not a part of that process I don’t enjoy.

Some parts are more intense, when I’m connected more passionately with the book, and other times, I have to concentrate to remember the characters and their journeys. I say this because Harlequin will be publishing two of my stories in August, in their UNDONE line for a western themed month, and I received the edits on both books this month. These stories were two or three books ago, and I had to reread each one in order to gain insight on the characters and what they wanted out of life, as well as how they achieved it, before I could work on the edits. That’s not unusual, and I don’t mind in the least, and had to chuckle last night when my husband remarked, “You wrote it, how can you not remember it?”

It’s amazing to me, too, all the file cabinets we have in our brain. How when we start reading, a drawer opens up and all those memories come flowing out. Like when we start watching a movie we don’t remember seeing, but then one pivotal scene happens, and everything clicks. That’s when I normally say, “I have seen this before—the ending is great!” That too—when I do it—drives my hubby crazy.

All that said, Slow Dance with the Rancher and Rescued by the Ranger will both be released in August. Both are fun, short stories. In “Slow Dance”, Rancher Garret McCoy places a bet he can get Rory Boyle to dance with him, even though, Rory—the preacher’s daughter—is none too fond of him. And in “Rescued”, Texas Ranger Trace Edwards returns to Montana to investigate stolen cattle—which also means he has to face Annie, the woman he’d left behind.

It’s a wonderful day for writing, considering it’s SNOWING again! I was hoping to take my Mustang out of storage this weekend. That’s obviously not going to happen.  Papa and I will be going to the Wild Turkey Federation Banquet on Saturday. We are taking two granddaughters this year. The oldest has gone with us the past few years, and now that her sister is four, she’s invited along, too, and overly excited from everything her older sister has told her.  

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog, so I’ll mention we had a fabulous Easter—as I hope you did! My brother and his family drove up from Nebraska, and two other brothers and their families joined us too. The Easter Bunny was good to everyone, besides LOTS of candy filled eggs scattered all over Papa’s garage because the yard was too full of snow, one granddaughter received a live bunny, another a bike and the other a pink BB gun. You can imagine the chaos of all that on your own.

Be good to one another, throw some goodies out to the spring time birds flocking home despite the weather, and give someone a hug for no reason other than you love them.