Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

Do you remember your first big crush? I do. I had the biggest crush on this boy in my middle school named David Wald. I thought he was so cute and funny and he had an awesome bass singing voice (we were in choir together). Every time I saw David in the halls at school, my heart would pound and I'd feel all flustered and fluttery inside. I'd wave to him and he'd give me sort of a what's up with his head. You can tell I meant a lot to him. I wasn't even worth him making the effort to lift a hand and wave. To complicate things, David had a best friend named Grant who had a huge crush on me. We were in this three-way love triangle where Grant loved me, I love David, and I don't know who David loved, but it wasn't me. David tried several times to "set me up" (if you can set someone up in middle school) with Grant, but I just wasn't going for it. When I was writing my new release, Sapphires Are an Earl's Best Friend , I thought back to ...

AKA the If You Give a Rake a Ruby Launch Party My mother reads my books, but she’s pretty conservative. She’d rather I didn’t write about S-E-X so much. I think she skips those parts. In any case, she never mentions them. We can have a lengthy discussion about my new book, and you’d never know there was a love story in there. So you can imagine my sense of foreboding when I started a new series about three Regency courtesans. How was I going to pitch this to my mother? I got around it for a little while. When you’ve written a few books, you can talk about your work in generalities. No one is all that interested in what the story is about. But finally my mother realized I had sold a new 3-book series, and she asked what it was about. I mumbled, “It’s about three glamorous Regency mumble mumble who find true love.” “Courtesans?” She looked a little pale. “Aren’t those prostitutes?” “Not really. They were independent women. They chose their own lovers and could be hi...

I’m not picky about my gems. I’ll take rubies, sapphires, emeralds, even cubic zirconia! But when I was brainstorming a sobriquet for my three courtesan heroines in When You Give a Duke a Diamond , only one gem would do—a diamond, of course. One of the popular cant phrases during the Regency era was diamond of the first water . A woman or man referred to in this way was of the highest quality. He or she was simply the very best. That’s why my heroines are called The Three Diamonds. They are the most notorious, most sought-after courtesans in London. Of course, not every man wants to be paired with a notorious courtesan. William Cavington, the sixth duke of Pelham would much rather not be associated with ladies of easy virtue. Unfortunately, the gossip magazines sell far more copies if they invent stories. Here’s a little excerpt featuring the moment Will realizes he’s been paired with Juliette, one of The Three Diamonds. Fitzhugh’s face remained impassive, but Pelham could have...

I was probably born to be a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher and my aunts were teachers and from as far back as I can remember, my mom would say to me, “you should be a teacher.” This was inevitably during a time when I was bossing my little sister around. Hey, some people just need more direction, right? I did become a teacher and taught for eleven years. There were definitely aspects of teaching I did not care for, but there were some I embraced without fail. The rules was one of these. Before my first year of teaching, I spent many hou rs thinking about my classroom rules—how many would I have (not too many!), how would I write them (as positive “Do” statements), and how would I enforce them (detention!)? I probably should have been thinking about what to do when a student cursed at me and threw his shoe at my head, but I was 23 and had no experience with inner city kids. The hero of my ne xt book, When You Give a Duke a Diamond , which releases September 1 st , has n...

When You Give a Girl a Hot Duke by Shana Galen I write about dukes and spies and pirates during the Regency era. The word “hot” as used in terms of sexiness wasn’t in use in my period.But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about what it takes to make my classic heroes hot to modern readers. Obligatory ab photo In my upcoming book, When You Give a Duke a Diamond , the Duke of Pelham is not one of my typical hot heroes. He’s not a spy or a pirate or any profession associated with hotness. He’s a duke. He has a lot of responsibilities. He takes them seriously. Perhaps a bit too seriously. But I hope that by the end of the book, you’ll see that even a stodgy duke can have some pretty hot qualities. For starters, he has really nice eyes. They’re blue, and my heroine absolutely cannot look at him without admiring his eyes. He also has a nice house, and he takes care of it. When I was in college, nothing turned me off faster than a cute guy who had a di...