Everyone seems to be talking about politics and protests these days, so the release of The Power and the Glory may seem like good timing on my part. After all, the Marshall series involves a powerful political family, and Brady’s story is set amid his father’s Senate reelection campaign. Aspyn, the heroine, accidentally starts a protest movement. Flip on any news channel and this book seems very timely indeed.

I promise, though, that this is all entirely coincidental.  Really.

When I first started the Marshall series, I thought Brady’s heroine was a journalist who’d be doing some kind of story on the Marshall family. Then I wrote Ethan’s story (The Privileged and the Damned), and got to know Brady better in the process. I quickly figured out that my original idea for Brady’s story just wouldn’t work. Brady was so buttoned up and responsible, he was headed for curmudgeon territory unless I could stage an intervention. A journalist just wasn’t what Brady needed. I like to shake my characters up a bit – and annoy them when I can – and Brady most definitely needed someone to annoy him. I didn’t know who or how or why, but I knew that’s what Brady needed – not only for him, but for me and the readers, too. This journalist heroine wouldn’t be all that much fun or interesting. I felt like I was setting Brady up on a blind date that would fail in the dullest way possible.

Plus, I kept having this vision of buttoned-up Brady handcuffed to a flower child activist. It wouldn’t fit into the story I had planned, but I knew it belonged in the book. Once I realized Brady was handcuffed to his heroine, it all fell into place. Even before I could think about how they’d clash over culture and values and all that other stuff, I knew that Aspyn’s Birkenstocks and jangly jewelry would drive Brady crazy long before then.

Oh, yeah. That was the story I wanted to write.  Imagine me rubbing my hands together in evil glee.

(I owe my editor a big hug for not strangling me when I turned in a book that bore absolutely no resemblance to the book I told her I was going to write…)

I can’t tell you how much fun I had with this book. I like the “opposites attract” hook – after all, I’m living it every day of my life. My Darling Geek really is a geek – Star Trek, Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, advanced mathematics – all things that just make me look at him with a furrowed brow like he’s just a little off. Heaven knows the poor boy looks at me the exact same way. We may not get a lot of things about each other, but we certainly get each other.  Brady and Aspyn get each other, even if they don’t quite understand why. They’re okay with that and so am I, because it made writing their story so much fun.

Are you and your darling opposites? Do people look at the two of you and say, “Really?” Or are you two peas in a pod?

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I have a book out this month. THE SAVAKIS MERGER is a November Presents Extra release. Yay! I’m so pleased as I’ve had quite a bit of mail from American and Canadian readers about when it would cross the Atlantic.

When I considered what I’d tell you about the book, what came to mind instantly was the snap and sizzle of energy and high emotion that was a hallmark of the story from the moment I conceived it. It opens in the middle of a love scene (what can I say? Callie and Damon are a very passionate couple) but the fireworks don’t end there. Even when they’re at loggerheads, especially when they’re at loggerheads, the energy levels keep rising.

I loved writing the dialogue. The characters took control and charged off, sparking off each other in a way that was a joy to write. Fortunately they charged in a direction that enabled me to corral them towards a happy ending. Personally I tire of books that are never-ending arguments where the characters simply snipe at each other. With Callie and Damon I believe even the arguments reveal facets of their character and circumstances that help them move their relationship forward.

And who could blame them for a grievance or two? After being railroaded young into an arranged marriage and suffering years of a constrained, celibate life tied to a controlling husband, Callie is free at last. Who could blame her for being miffed when she finds the sexy guy who’s just swept her off her feet has arrived in her home not for her, but to take her shy, unwilling young cousin in a business deal marriage like the one Callie’s just escaped?

As for Damon, after a lifetime pursuing his goal of righting past wrongs, he’s on the verge of success, only to be distracted by a woman who slices straight through his plans. Discovering she’s there as part of her uncle’s stratagem to save the family fortune means she’s played Damon for a gullible fool and he’s all too ready to play her at her own game.

Put two strong-minded, independent characters at odds and of course there will be sparks. But for me Callie and Damon’s story is about far more than the sizzle of passion and the electrically-charged atmosphere. It’s about two people who both hide scars from the past and who work stoically to move on with their lives. It’s about people who’ve made mistakes and are determined to learn from those. Most of all it’s about a couple who have to open their eyes to the possibility of love. They need to move past the snap and sizzle of tension and learn the give and take of a relationship based on respect, common interests and genuine caring. For me, that’s where the aww moment came in – when I saw that their relationship had grown to something richer than high octane passion. That’s when I believed they shared a love that lasts a lifetime.

How about you? What ingredients do you think go into making a love that will last forever?

If you want to read more about THE SAVAKIS MERGER, or any of my other books, pop by my website where there are excerpts, news updates and even a contest.

Happy reading,

Annie

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I’m a huge — HUGE — Pride and Prejudice fan. The Colin Firth/Jennfier Ehle miniseries came out when I was 10 and made quite the impression. I eagerly gobble up any and all adaptations of. I’m not such a fan as when other people try to write Austen’s characters, but I do love when stories are inspired by P&P and retell it (with new people) in a different way.

That’s why I  was excited to see that Cathy Williams’s October Harlequin Presents Extra, In Want of a Wife?, was inspired by Pride and Prejudice. And you’ll probably recognize the title comes from P&P’s famous opening line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” In this version, Mr. Darcy is businessman Louis Jumeau and Elizabeth Bennet — rechristened Lizzy Sharp — rides a motorcycle.

In Want of a Wife? is the newest North American release in The Powerful and the Pure series — all books inspired by a classic literary romance. Other books in the series include:

The Forbidden Wife by Sharon Kendrick (Jane Eyre)

The Matchmaker Bride by Kate Hewitt (Emma)

The Return of the Stranger by Kate Walker (Wuthering Heights, also out next month)

Poll time! Which other classic novels do you think would be good inspiration for a Harlequin Presents? And please share other suggestions in the comments!

Cole Porter did it.

So did Helen Fielding.

The sublime Mr. Porter took The Taming Of The Shrew and turned it into the feel-good musical, KISS ME KATE while Helen’s BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY is a whacky take on the classic, Pride And Prejudice.

I know that some people like things to be the way they’ve always been. Which is probably why traditional Christmas puddings out-sell the chocolate variety every time.  Why tamper with something which is already brilliant, I hear you ask?

Because it’s human nature to want to push boundaries and to test yourself – to see whether the essence of a story can be conveyed in a different setting and during a different time. Which is how I ended up writing a version of Jane Eyre for Harlequin.

This book came about when I was asked to take part in the prestigious Cheltenham Book Festival which was a huge honour, mainly because it meant sitting on a panel with the elegant actress and conservationist, Virginia McKenna – in front of an audience of 250 book lovers.  We were discussing romantic heroes and ten great novels.  Oh, and lots of half-dressed butlers were handing out pink champagne.  You don’t believe me?  Then see here.

The only problem was that I hadn’t read some of the novels and, more importantly – hadn’t read Jane Eyre – which is many people’s idea of the perfect romantic novel.  I felt like a student again as I worked my way through Wuthering Heights and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

But Jane Eyre blew me away.  It was everything a book should be – passionate, insightful, tender and harsh.  The sense of frustration and despair and the fear that they might never get together completely gripped me.  So much so, that when I was talking to one of our editors about it, she said that they had been thinking for some time of doing a modern slant on classic love-stories – and would I like to have a go at Jane Eyre?

Reader, I said yes.

And thus began a story which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to write (you don’t say!).  For a start, they wouldn’t let me call them Jane and Edward – so Ashley and Jack were born.  Moving the story to the present day presented some practical difficulties.  I thought it unlikely that Ashley and Jack wouldn’t sleep together.  And I also thought it unlikely that Jack would have a mad wife locked upstairs.

But the mad wife is just a device to enable a forbidden love to flourish.  A love perhaps more powerful because it is forbidden.  I hope I have managed to convey some of the heroine’s quiet intelligence and the fierce and frustrated passion of the hero.

I blush now to think I had the nerve to try – but I really hope you like THE FORBIDDEN WIFE.  And just so you know – it can be read as a stand-alone and you don’t need to have read the original to enjoy it.

Do you think that a sense of what is forbidden makes emotions run higher?  And what is your favourite romance novel of all time?

Just to change the mood completely, why don’t we end with a version of the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald, singing TOO DAMN HOT from that great musical KISS ME KATE…..

Edited to add: p.s. I should have said that I read all the novels BEFORE I discussed them on the illustrious panel!

Today we have a special treat on I Heart Presents — a contest! I have a set of the six new releases for June 2011 that I will give away to one lucky commenter (print books). See below for contest details and rules!

The books are:

• For Duty’s Sake by Lucy Monroe
• Taming the Last St. Claire by Carole Mortimer
• The Forbidden Wife by Sharon Kendrick
• One Last Night by Melanie Milburne
• The Heir from Nowhere by Trish Morey
• The Secret She Can’t Hide by India Grey

Bonus fun factoid: all six books are written by USA Today bestselling authors!

To enter, comment on this blog post with your answer to the question below by 5:00 pm EDT on Tuesday, June 7. We’ll draw a winner randomly and announce it on the blog. Sorry, international friends, but only entries from the U.S. and Canada are eligible to win. For full contest details, please click here (we are following the official Harlequin Blog contest rules).

Question: What is your favorite Harlequin Presents “hook”? (e.g. secret babies, alpha heroes, reunion romance, etc?)

The contest is now closed. Please click here to find out who won!

Everybody makes mistakes. Even me. Actually, I make a few more than I’d like to confess to making but hey…I’m human.

Some mistakes are fixable. Like when you leave the peanut butter on the edge of the counter and your toddlers finger paint all over the kitchen with it. (ahem…who would do that? Clearly not my children, they are too angelic. See picture for proof.) Peanut butter paint is at least cleanable. Yeah, it’s messy, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s just an accident.

But then there are big mistakes. Ones that have lasting, far reaching, and seemingly impossible to endure consequences.

That’s the kind of mistake Alison and Maximo have to deal with in An Accidental Birthright. This isn’t a peanut butter mess. This is a permanent mess. And the mistake wasn’t even theirs.

Due to an IVF clinic mix-up, Alison, who was counting on being a single mother by choice, and Maximo, who had given up on having children after the death of his wife, find themselves bound together by a baby.

Around the time I started writing this book, there were two very high profile cases of mix-ups at IVF clinics in the news, one in the UK and one in the States. And it was just mind boggling to me, the life-altering choices people were forced to make all because someone had been careless at their job.

But for Alison and Max, it’s not the mistake that defines them, but how they deal with it. They’re faced with an impossible situation that isn’t truly of their own making. They don’t even have that common bond of physical attraction that two people might have after a one night stand. They’ve never even met.

And yet they have to face the fact that they are having a baby together. But the question is, do they meet it head on? Does one of them have to give up a future with their only child? Or do they set aside all of their plans to deal with the new life they’ve been given. A new life that started out as a mistake.

In the end, it might just be the best accident that’s ever happened to them.

Do you have any happy accidents in your life? Things that seemed insurmountable, or just annoying (a la peanut butter finger paint) that turned out to be something great?

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Most of my life seems to flow gently along without too much sudden change, but occasionally I am caught in the crossroads and something big happens in just a few minutes or even seconds. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it is difficult, but either way it has a big effect on my life!

One such moment I’ll always remember is when I caught sight of my future husband after not having seen him for many years. He was my brother’s best friend when we were children, but then he went away to college and after that to California, and so we didn’t see each other for nearly seven years. Then, at a Christmas Eve church service when I was 21 and finally all grown up, I caught sight of him chatting to someone and tapped him on the shoulder to say hello. He turned around, and we both looked each other in a sort of surprised delight. Looking back, it was a defining moment for both of us as we saw each other in a whole new (and romantic!) way, although we didn’t actually start dating for two more years–much to my disappointment at the time!

Some defining moments of life, sadly, are unhappy ones. Moments of loss or grief or pain that alter us perhaps forever. The hero of my current Presents, The Undoing of De Luca, had such a moment in childhood when he came face to face with his father for the first time at fourteen years old. The meeting lasted maybe a minute, but it had a huge impact on Larenz and kept him guarding his heart well into adulthood–until Ellery Dunant proves to be his undoing!

Another defining moment occurs between Ellery and Larenz towards the end of the book–a happy one, but one I don’t want to give away! You’ll have to read The Undoing of De Luca to find out…

Can you look back on your life and recall any defining moments, happy or sad? Do you ever wonder what your life might be like if that moment had gone differently or not happened at all? I leave you with the result of the defining moment between my husband and me fifteen years later, and I hope you enjoy The Undoing of De Luca!

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When I was asked to write a book set in the 60′s with a modern day heroine for Harlequin Presents, my first thought was, wow, how incredible. I love that era. The fashions and music were nothing short of revolutionary, while the ‘so called’ sexual revolution made possible by the pill before the shadow of aids had been identified, was said to liberate women. It was an era of compelling figures who would open our eyes and our hearts, and technical advances that were both fast and thrilling. And, most crucially for my purposes, women were fighting for equal pay and rights with men.

Women might have been moving forward, but there were some men who had not caught up with the times, and I found the idea of pitting a modern woman against a man like this irresistible.

My second thought was — write a contemporary romance set in the 60′s — how does that work? That’s up to you, I was told.

Brilliant — A blank canvas with no rules. And so Gray Quinn was born.

I must admit Steve McQueen was a huge influence as I wrote this book. And, yes, being a motor bike fanatic he rode a ‘monstrous throbbing machine’ just like my hero, Gray Quinn!

I had my modern woman meet Gray Quinn in the current day. Magenta then falls asleep and dreams that they have both been transported back to the sixties.

The fun and games begin when Magenta starts to assert herself in this sixties dreamworld. Needless to say, Quinn is not amused. Nor is falling in love with chauvinist Quinn part of Magenta’s plan, but fate has other ideas.

Waking up from a deep sleep can be wonderful — Sleeping Beauty receiving that magic kiss, for instance. But when Magenta wakes up in the modern world without Quinn or the baby they were expecting she is thrown out of her beautiful dream into a nightmare.

Will fate be kind to Magenta just one more time?

What’s the best dream you ever had — and did it come true?

I have a signed copy of Gray Quinn’s Baby to give away for the best answer.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Happy reading!

Susan

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What would you find hard to forgive in a relationship? (Just for now let’s exclude minor crimes such as hoarding the remote control and not knowing the location of the washing machine)

In my latest release, One Night….Nine-Month Scandal, my heroine Kelly has a difficult decision to make – whether or not to resurrect a relationship with a man who failed to turn up on their wedding day.

Would you forgive him? On the face of it, I’m not sure I would.  Not if you present me with just the bare facts and no more.  After all, what’s to stop him changing his mind again? But we writers know that behind every ‘what’ (not turning up on the wedding day) is a ‘why’ (the reason he didn’t) and sometimes the ‘why’ can change the way you view the ‘what’.

In this case, Alekos didn’t leave her on their wedding day because he wanted to hurt her or because anyone else was involved – he left because he was in a state of panic, which is quite something for an alpha male accustomed to being in control of every aspect of his life.   He left because he was scared – something else that’s hard for him to admit because in every other way he’s a strong, powerful man.  Kelly is no doormat, so to forgive his actions she first has to understand them and, in order to convince Kelly to trust him again, Alekos has to understand her.

Sometimes when we watch other people making what we consider to be questionable decisions we wince and think they’re clearly deranged/ drunk/delusional – but unless we’re in their shoes, living their life, can we really understand what motivated them to make that decision?  It’s all about the ‘why’.

I’d love to know what you think. Do you think the reasons behind someone’s actions can sometimes make that action easier to forgive?

Love

Sarah

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On Sunday, I found myself watching an old black and white film called Notorious (GREAT title!).  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring the urbane Cary Grant and luminous Ingrid Bergman – it had the power to suck you into an age where elegance seemed effortless and emotions were dealt with in a lots-of-stuff-going-on-beneath-the-surface-but-we’re-darned-if-we’re-gonna-show-it kind of way.

There’s a scene where Ingrid is getting increasingly tipsy (never drunk; those old-time movie sirens were always a ladylike “tipsy”) in the ditzy  portrayal of the time.  Makeup unsmudged, yet barely able to stand, she lurches for her car-keys and tells Cary Grant that she’s about to drive.

CUT!

Cary, in firm alpha mode refuses, right?  Manfully wrests the keys from her delicate fingers and takes over the powerful sports-car himself?

Wrong.

Not only does Cary light up a cigarette, he proceeds to smile (urbanely) as Ingrid puts her foot down and the car veers dangerously from side to side on the road, thus showing her that he doesn’t “scare.”

Funny how some things date, isn’t it?  And when I heard that Harlequin were releasing two of my earlier novels in their Special Releases series – I wondered if my hero and heroine would be as relevant and as contemporary today, as when they were first issued.

Hand on heart, they are.

In FINN’S PREGNANT BRIDE – it’s bad enough when Catherine goes on holiday to Greece and has a passionate fling with heart-throb Finn Delaney.  Worse still is when she lets the world know about her steamy encounter with the notoriously private Irish property tycoon.  And then Catherine discovers that she’s carrying Finn’s baby, a man who makes no secret of the fact that he despises her….

THE PATERNITY CLAIM shows a different aspect of love.  It’s about Isabella, who has always loved the sexy and experienced Paulo from afar – even though he views her as nothing but a family friend. But when Isabella unexpectedly falls pregnant, it is Paulo she runs to – and  Paulo who offers to claim paternity of her child.  This is the story of a man governed by responsibility, who finds himself taking on more than he ever bargained for.  And it’s about two people getting what they least expect….

The great thing about Presents novels is that, like all the very best stories – they can always be enjoyed, no matter how long ago they were written.  Good books are always relevant.  We’re writing about love, passion and emotion – and those things never change.  If they did, then Shakespeare would have passed his sell-by date a long time ago!

Has the past taken you anywhere interesting recently?

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