Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

How to Rescue a Rake , the third in Jayne Fresina’s Austen-inspired Book Club Belles series, comes out this January! For all of you Jane Austen fans, this fun new release is based on Persuasion and it’s a book you don’t want to miss. To celebrate her latest release, our heroine is here to give our readers a tip on how to rescue their own rake and to share an excerpt with us. Tips for Capturing a Rake's Attention: By Diana Makepiece (Or How to Stay Calm and Capture a Rake)  A tongue-in-cheek guide by one old maid, who has lost her bloom, has let her last chance for happiness pass her by and is now, at twenty-seven, half way to death (according to the parson's wife)... and not at all bitter about it, thank you very much. Tip: Recognize the fact that nobody is perfect. (Not even you). That is why we have love to make us look beyond the faults. And everybody—even the world's wickedest rake— deserves love. *** “I sent you a message the morning I left, Diana,” he sa...

One of the reasons I love reading and writing historical romance is because it gives me the opportunity to enter the past. I grant you, I do not enter the nitty gritty of the Regency era...there are no Luddites in my novels and very few wounded veterans. But there is something beautiful about Regency England that has called to me since I first picked up Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. As I sit at my own computer, and dream my romantic dreams, I sometimes think of Jane Austen, who was a good deal less romantic than I am, and who always had her eye on the financial dealings that came with any marriage. Though her characters married for love, they also married for comfort and wealth, something she was striving for with her own work. As a genteel woman, Miss Austen had very few options for earning her living, and her time at her desk was well spent, and earned her family much needed funds. Still, in spite of her thoughts on money that entered into every novel she wrote, I like ...

              In my newest release Sinfully Ever After the hero and heroine encounter each other during a snowy Yuletide in the small fictional village of Hawcombe Prior. As is often the case for authors, I worked on this story six months before it was due for release, so as I enjoyed the first balmy days of summer and listened to the purr of the air conditioner, I was writing about country lanes whitened with frost, cozy fireplaces, rum punch and plum pudding.             Oddly enough, it wasn't difficult to get into the mood at all. I played one of my favorite Christmas CDs "To Drive the Cold Winter Away" by Loreena McKennitt (whose music I always find inspirational, no matter which story I'm working on). I also thought a lot about my own childhood Christmases in England, walking with my sisters through the first crisp fall of snow with the street lamps glowing,...

In Once Upon a Kiss , Justina and her fellow members of the Book Club Belles Society are in the midst of reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, when a handsome, arrogant bachelor named Darius Wainwright comes to their village. Naturally, it's not too long before he's being compared to the haughty Mr. Darcy and while that's good news for some of the Book Club Belles, it's not appealing to Justina. She's been waiting eighteen chapters for Lizzie Bennet to give Mr. Darcy a firm set-down and then run off with the delicious Mr. Wickham. Oh yes, she's already decided how that book ought to end.             Imagine her distress when she begins to find her own life following the actual plot of Miss Austen's novel— rather than any of the far more exciting and somewhat lurid plans she had in mind for herself.             Since Jussy likes to write in her diary every ev...