Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

by M. L. Buchman Wait, the 4th? As in July 4th? Yep! For authors, holidays start months ahead of time. Christmas books are released in October, which means they're written over the sweltering summers. Valentine's Day stories make some sense, written in the dark of winter about the hopes of, well, not spring, but at least February. And for my second Independence Day romance, the novel started well before that. For the fun of it, I thought I'd trace back through my notes for the origin of this one. Huh! Okay. In a way it started three years ago when I released my first July 4th romance: Frank's Independence Day . Now Frank Adams, head of the Presidential Protection Detail, has turned out to be one of the more popular characters in my Night Stalkers series, and not just the Night Stalkers White House series either. Of course his wife, Beatrice Ann "Beat" Belfour might have something to do with it. Two years ago they figured prominently in the Preside...

by M. L. Buchman Who doesn't love the 4th!  Well, okay, the bad, bad aliens in Independence Day for one. And maybe, just maybe they blew up the White House before being destroyed, but as I said, bad, bad aliens. And after all, they were trounced so thoroughly that it took them 20 years to come back for a sequel (which we'd like to think was a record for Hollywood, but sadly it isn't even close. I just saw the trailer for the remake of The Magnificent Seven... which I can't wait to see.) Of course it is hard to complain about Hollywood filming in series when I write in series. Especially when I have so much fun doing it! I counted today and in my Night Stalkers series alone, there are four main series and a couple of minor ones. Uh-huh! Uh-huh! The reason this is cool is that one of my series within the Night Stalkers series is the Night Stalkers White House Holiday series. (If this isn't making sense, you can always check it out on my newly rebuilt w...

by M.L. Buchman Which out here on the Oregon Coast means that we just had four days in which we more inches of rain fell than there were days. (One blast dropped almost 2 inches in less than six hours. During that time the winds were gusting up to sixty, eighty in the hills. I know that it's weird to think this way... but it's kind of wonderful to have real weather again, even when it is a little foul tempered. (We don't count it as really obnoxious until the four inches falls in one day and it falls sideways because the winds are gusting high enough that it tends to break the anemometers.) Yep! We're weird on the coast, but that's what the holiday season looks like on the coast and we welcome it. Quarry Cove by Rhiannon Boyle (Flickr cc) Along with the wind we also get immense beauty, like these 30'+ waves that can roll in for days after a good storm. This was shot just south of where I live (not by me). Me? I'm busy in a corner writing and I must s...

by M.L. Buchman I started out as a Science Fiction fan. (Okay, caught me, I still am.) I came to romance quite late in life, when the publisher of my first novel (a quirky fantasy that would eventually launch my Deities Anonymous series) dragged me to a romance convention in 1996. My first ever writing conference was the Romance Writer's of America National Conference. I learned several things: The 1,800 women who attended were very serious about romance and the business of romance. Being one of the 7 men to attend left me standing out in the cold quite often. Despite being published, there were agents who wouldn't even talk to me. Despite the "Sale" sticker on my name tag, they just assumed I was only a boyfriend. Romance was a heck of a lot of fun! I read my first three romances at night during the conference (because who needs to sleep at a conference) and I discovered they were a blast. There are no short fiction romance markets. Say what? Coming fro...

by M.L. Buchman The last time I was bored, I was 12. (I'm nowhere near 12 anymore, just sayin'.) We had moved right at the end of the school year. Shy new kid in new community that had no forum (like school) to meet new kids. I spent the summer watching "The Galloping Gourmet." Yep! Graham Kerr and I bonded deep at the age of 12. And yes, while I love to cook, that's not the point of this post. I was bored to tears, literally. At the end of that summer, I swore I would never be bored again...and I haven't been. There are times since when I sort of wished I had a boring summer...or month....or even a boring day but nope! Instead time just fills up with all of the fun things I've found to do. Sometimes I have months that are exceptionally NOT boring,  And July 2015 has certainly been one of those. I think it started with our first vacation in FOREVER! Due to a few small circumstances (like having a kid in college during the recession, the business ...

by M. L. Buchman You know that insulation that you squirt in and it just sort of expands?  Yep! My Night Stalkers series just keeps doing that to me. So I've spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to explain to myself (never mind my readers) just what the heck is going on in my world of danger and true love among the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). I think I finally got a handle on it mostly. What made me really think about it was that I had two recent releases (April and May), both in that world and neither in the main series(es). That makes an author spend some time thinking. THE NEW RELEASES This great anthology (in many ways, 472pp) of 8 original military romance novellas by a stunning cast of authors is to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. All profits are going to this great charity to aid disabled veterans. Buy it for that reason alone if no other. In my story NSDQ  (short for the Night Stalkers unofficial motto: "Night ...

by M. L. Buchman The Night Stalkers universe has just grown one more size. It all started with Emily Beale, Mark Henderson, and The Night Is Mine. Then it grew! There have now been six (6) primary novels released by Sourcebooks in the Night Stalkers world (with more to come, I promise).  But the world was so rich, so deep, and I loved these characters so much, that I added more to the sides. Then short stories came into being! And there are a whole bunch of them. (Visit my website or your favorite retailer for more information about those. Here's the latest one, Emily Beale's backstory.) There was a spin-off that gave birth to my on-the-edge (and sometimes a little over) wildland firefighters (Firehawks Hot Point is coming in August). They in turn had a smoke jumper series spin-off (the "Wildfire" books) and even more short stories. But it still felt as if there was a story untold. So, on April Fools Day (but I really did it...

by M.L. Buchman Click here for more It's funny when you first write a memorable character, you have no idea that you were doing it; at least I didn't. Colonel Michael Gibson appeared in Night Stalkers #1 The Night Is Mine  as a small character intended to tell us that the heroine Emily Beale was really good at what she did. No other character, other than Emily herself, has elicited as much fan mail, not across a dozen titles! So here, at long last, is Michael Gibson's story of his path to true love. Michael, of course, does nothing the way anyone else would. He can't even do a meet-cute like anyone else, but then neither can helicopter pilot Claudia Jean Casperson. ----- The landing zone was a total shit-storm, about like a typical training scenario except this time the bad guys were trying to kill the good guys with live rounds. The air was a thick with the hail of small arms fire as Claudia swung her helo wide to clear the streamers of fire that p...

by M. L. Buchman I have to admit, I love release day for a new work. I remember in 1997 holding my first novel in my shaking hands. I can tell you exactly how my wife and I were standing when we held my first indie release in 2010 and my first Night Stalkers novel in 2012. Thirty novels and over a dozen short stories later, the feeling hasn't flagged in the slightest. I've tried to describe this moment to non-writer's many times. The best I've ever come up with was the day I bought my first house. It was old (1911), run-down (it had been a rental for 20+ years), and I was totally enamored of it. (The fact that it took me 7 years to fix the beastie up to look like this a whole  different story that starts with an amazing view from the 2nd story...back before I added the second story.) The feeling though, at that moment when the door swung open, before I crossed the threshold, was a moment of such joy and anticipation and hope and fear that I never expected to f...

by M.L. Buchman I've been discovering one of the great joys of the Christmas season that comes with being a writer. Throughout the year I work at my craft, I develop my novels, I consider where I want my series to go. And, because I'm a research hound, I plunge off into the world of research to learn about attitudes, practices, equipment, world events, etc. etc. etc. And then comes Christmas! Christmas comes early for a writer. In July or August, we start to consider what story we want to tell. What character wishes for a cheery holiday season. Which one wants to just cut loose and find a holiday romance. Will everyone else (at least north of the equator) is sweating it out, writers wander off to far cooler climes. Through August, September, even October (and occasionally November because after all we're writers and schedules can be a severe challenge when a book takes far longer than you planned), we delve away on Christmas tales. It is a splendidly merry time of ...

by M.L. Buchman This is the fifth book in my Night Stalkers series and I have to say that one of the really fun aspects of this series is having both the hero and the heroine right in the fray. A lot of military romantic suspense isn't that way. It's the military guy and the lady he's saving, rescuing, helping, freeing...not, of course, realizing that she's the one saving him. But with them both in harm's way by choice, I find both of them very exciting to write and to watch. Lieutenant Trisha O'Malley of the U.S. Army's 160th SOAR definitely has some attitudes and preconceptions about our hero: Even as Trisha pulled up to hover in a guard position fifty feet in the air, she could see people running from that building, being herded by a man carrying a rifle. The briefing had warned them there was an embedded friendly doing the inside setup. If there hadn’t been, they’d have had to bring more choppers loaded with more Special Forces. But this guy...

by M. L. Buchman On September 2nd, my characters Trisha O'Malley (short, Irish Boston, feisty, uppity, red-head, fantastic attack helicopter pilot) and Bill Bruce (tall, Scottish, Detroit, linebacker wide, stone silent, Navy SEAL) will collide head on in Light Up the Night! Available Sept 2, pre-order now! I won't say that I didn't have fun, because I did. Immense fun! Sometimes a romance couple is MFEO (Made For Each Other). They have challenges they have to overcome. They have trials and tribulations, personal histories and panic attacks (as much as one of my alpha heroes or heroines ever does). Trisha and Billy the SEAL (as Trisha calls him), not so much. They're more like a head-on collision gone good. First, she rescues him when he really doesn't want to be rescued: “ Get out of here! You’re screwing me over!” “ There are two technicals coming in from the south and west,” the pilot shouted as he kept the blades at near takeoff, the chopper ac...