Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

My five-year-old daughter had a major meltdown on the way to school this morning. We were walking fast because we were running late, and I’d been encouraging her and her brother to gallop their “horses” to each corner and wait for me to catch up. This worked well until we were a block or so away from school. Suddenly she was tired and stopped dead in her tracks. “Carry me,” she said. “No,” I said. “We’re almost there.” Not to be ignored, she laid down on the sidewalk and cried while I persuaded, cajoled, and counted to three—several times—to get her moving again. Ten minutes later, I finally got her off the ground and into class. As I was walking home, all I could think about was how I should have handled the situation differently. Being pushed for time, I tried to force her to keep moving rather than stopping, picking her up for a hug—on her schedule, not mine—and encouraging her to keep walking, staying open to her needs. Which made me think, isn’t that just l...

By: Alyson McLayne Ah…Christmas. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways: I love the confusion every year as I put the three pieces of our Christmas tree together and can NEVER remember which cord plugs in where to light up the whole tree. I love decorating the tree to beautiful Christmas music playing in the background—and by music I mean the tinkling of glass bulbs as they smash to the floor and the screeching of kids as they fight over the ornaments. I love the hours spent decorating sugar cookies when I’m determined to stay on my diet—and I can no longer lick the extra icing off my fingers. I love getting up in the wee hours of the morning because I’ve forgotten to change the placement of the elves who are watching the kids by day and flying back to report to Santa at night.  ;) I love the seemingly, never-ending line-up to take pictures with Santa every year because once you start, you can never stop.  I love shopping with my 5-year-old who wants...

It’s December already, and alas, my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) goals died with a pathetic whimper about mid-way through November—the best laid plans…   Which was the problem, really, because in terms of my writing process, I’m what is called a plotter (as opposed to a pantster) and by the time I’d finished HIGHLAND BETRAYAL, book 3 in The Sons Of Gregor MacLeod series, I didn’t have time to plan book 4, HIGHLAND CAPTURE, before NaNo started. My process looks something like this: first I mull on the story and let it percolate—I may look through Pinterest and find images for characters and settings that appeal to me or tap notes into my phone when they come to me in the middle of the night. Then I work on character profiles, interspersing those with writing down scenes in random order. And at some point I pull out my plot graph, which I use for every book.   This graph comes from writing guru Michael Hauge, although his version is much more detailed: ...

My debut book, Highland Promise, came out recently, and its book birthday was the same day as my puppy Jasper's first birthday! So I thought it would be fun to do several promo pics featuring my birthday boy with my birthday book. Jasper would cooperate and pretend to read and love Highland Promise.  Right?!! As you can imagine, it was a long day—hair and make-up, costumes, props, a wee prima puppy tantrum, and a big, exhausted sleep when the shoot was done. We started out looking at Highland Promise and deciding how best we wanted to feature the book. After a minute of just staring at it, we sighed, wiped up the drool, and decided full frontal would be best…I meant the cover, of course! Next we delivered Jasper to our hair and make-up peeps, Maddie and Cooper, to make sure he looked snazzy, then we looked at various options for costume, deciding that because Jasper was orally fixated and liked to eat things, simpler would be better. All wa...