Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

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 AN ENDING Take Over at Midnight, the fourth book in my Night Stalkers series and the 20th book I've written, completes the first round of the story. The helicopters featured in the first four books are a pair of Direct Action Penetrator Sikorsky Black Hawks. It is the most weaponized and lethal helicopter ever launched into the night sky. It has four seats, one book each. And in those seats, I have placed four amazing women and had so much fun finding the men they deserved. The Night is Mine     Captain Emily Beale -pilot, calm perfectionist     Major Mark Henderson -pilot, the commander I Own the Dawn     Sergeant Kee Smith -gunner, street tough, street smart, and deadly     Lieutenant Archie Stevenson -copilot, quiet, steady, well-born Wait Until Dark     Sergeant Connie Davis -master mechanic, brilliant, silent     Sergeant "Big John" Wallace -master mechanic, powerful, gregarious ...and n...

I was just thinking about this today for some reason, I've lived a lot of my life in one-road towns. When I was a little kid in Lexington Massachusetts, our street went on forever (it was just a mile long according to Google Maps, but I swear, it went on for-ev-er!). My girlfriend (I fell in love with an older woman, I was five, she was six -any wonder that I write romance) lived way far away, about 3/4 of a mile on the same street. It was the only road I knew or cared about. When I was six, we moved to a town that was literally a crossroads (had to leave my first love behind -though we are still in touch despite the decades [really no surprise that I write romance]). Cow towns in upstate New York are often defined by where two roads meet. I moved around a lot for a while, but one-road towns kept cropping up. Kingston, Washington (where I met and married the love of my life) has only one thru-street.(on which the one a big ferry boat poops out cars on every forty-five minutes s...

My parents and I went to visit my older sister when she was in college, I was about 15. Shortly after my arrival, she noticed my preoccupation with my new wrist watch. It even had one of those outer timing dials you could turn for purposes that were never quite clear, but I was deeply enamored of it. It also had that cool little AM/PM window where the "3" was supposed to be (the date window didn't come along until later). (And, yes, this was even before LED and other digital watches, waaaayyy before portable phones.) This is about the right age. (Cool shirt hunh?) So, the first thing my sister did after my parents weren't in the room was grab my watch and set it some random amount ahead (or way behind). "There!" She handed it back to me, quite pleased with herself. "That's Matthew time. You aren't allowed to calibrate it to real time, or anyone else's. Or explain what's going on for the duration of your entire visit." I soon le...

That was the chant of my best friend all through high school. We'd been reading "Julius Caesar" and, as he (Julius, not my friend) was killed on the ides of March (the 15th) and my birthday was the day before, it appeared as a doomsday threat. Which he never actually followed through on, but he really nailed the sepulcher voice with 2-3 weeks of practice for four years running. So, now I'm sitting in a very unique place. My 3rd SOAR novel came out last month. And it's been getting great reviews. Which then boosted the sales of my Christmas short novel in the series to well above its Christmas rate of sale... despite it being February. (Thanks to readers all.) And I just became a full-time writer, a dream I've been holding for nearly two decades and actively pursuing for the last five years. Now it is a dream come true. So, what happens? It's my birthday month and my family wants to know what to get me. Um... Beware the Ides of March minus one. ...

Some books just make you smile, and this one does that to me every time. I love my "Night Stalker" series. The first four books have been a challenge and an education (This is #3 and #4 is in final editing and coming later in the year). Two more have been contracted after that. But Wait Until Dark just makes me smile. Let's see if I can figure out why. "What? You don't already know?" Nope, I don't! That's one of the puzzles of being a writer. When you're in the creative space, the whole "What am I writing?" or even "Is this any good?" sort of goes away. I mean, sure, I think those questions, but when the writing is going well I sure don't care about those questions, I just care about the next problem, puzzle, challenge, scene, paragraph, sentence, word... Even when I know all the broad strokes of the book, the "writing" space is about what goes next on the blank page and nothing much else. Sure it has to fit...