Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

You can find many things in Pismo Beach: breathtaking ocean views, brisk winds and bracing, salty air, cliffs ablaze with flowering shrubs, and gorgeous sunsets. You can also find all kinds of engaging fauna, of both the domesticated and wild variety. Pismo is doggie heaven, without question, and at any given time you can find dogs running ecstatically along the beach, sniffing eagerly over every inch of the pier and boardwalk, or being fed and watered outside the most popular local eateries. Like this Golden Retriever, whom I first spotted licking out the remains of a bowl of clam chowder that its owner was holding.  A little unhygienic, perhaps, but who could resist this face? Cats are harder to spot, but the hotel we stayed at used to have a colony of semi-feral cats who lived in the bushes lining the clifftops and who emerged every morning to be fed on the outside deck of the hotel restaurant. And one of the used bookstores boasts a sweet-natured Maine coon cat who s...

    Notice the lion and his pride? The females are up on the rocks, wary, watchful. The male????  What a life, eh? One male for three females. Yep. He's one happy lion. But this would not constitute a happily ever after. Not for the females. Really, ladies, you have to share??? And then there were the fighting leopards. Doesn’t that sound like a sports team? It started out with the black leopard walking in front of the golden leopard. Then the next thing I knew, the black leopard got into the golden leopard’s space and you can see her/him growling at the other, mouth wide before he/she took a bite. And then there was all kinds of tousling, growling, angry noises….and the golden leopard was definitely the victorious one, the other the beta in the relationship. Here you can see the black cat’s back feet are pressed against the golden leopard’s chest, keeping that one off, while the golden cat’s mouth is wide open, teeth on full display. ...

Welcome to the launch party for The Cowboy's Christmas Baby! Christmas might really be two months away but think cold snow, the smell of sugar cookies baking in the oven, warm sweaters, crackling fireplaces, shiny ornaments on the tree, Christmas songs on the radio and holiday specials on television. Think Christmas parties and a big spread of all your favorite holiday foods...pecan tarts, that special punch with just a little bit of kick, pumpkin dip and southwest pinwheels. Natalie and Lucas welcome all y’all to Cedar Hill Ranch in Savoy, Texas. Population less than a thousand with friendly folks, ranches, sexy cowboys, sassy ladies, and a snowstorm promising the first white Christmas in nearly twenty years. Christmas is that time when love is in the air, as much or maybe even more than Valentine’s Day. It’s hustling about, cooking, and keeping secrets so that there can be surprises on Christmas day. It was the perfect time for Lucas to meet Natalie in perso...

The sounds  and animals of spring have always been considered ordinary in my small suburban neighborhood. I live in Michigan, just north of Grand Rapids. It's fairly normal by most standards. We have squirrels, chipmunks, robins, and rabbits, raccoons and the occasional opossum. The typical varmints. But a few new sounds have been popping up in my yard. There are some odd chirps, although I have to admit they aren't all together unpleasant. Just a little foreign. And it's not just birds. There are frogs--although it's safe to assume they've simply taken up residence in our still unopened pool. The most daring of my backyard wildlife is by far the squirrels. Even during the winter months. We had two unwelcome visitors to our fireplace. Some cute little squirrels dropped in for unexpected visits within two weeks of each other. The second  visit wasn't very pleasant for us, or the squirrel for that matter. The little guy avoided our live trap like the plague. ...

Still on the subject of abundance. Catherine Mann just blogged about abundant puppy love and it made me think of the abundance of animals I've had in my life. I so admire Catherine and others who do so much for animals. I did once, not in an official, but a very unofficial way. Like chasing a chipmonk who'd revived inside my car after I rescued him on my way to work, or challenging the cat ready to pounce on a baby squirrell who'd fallen from a tree onto a sidewalk, or giving my heart and soul to baby kittens who'd been born in a culvert pipe during a storm. Before I had kids, all my maternal instincts went toward animals. I've always loved animals and our family usually had dogs, but I've had some strange critters come and go. When I was young, my dad found two orphaned crows. Our property backed up to a National forest and we raised the crows. It was so cool to have them circling the sky and come down and land on our shoulders. Eventually they flew away and di...

By Christina Harlin, with creative assistance from Jake C. Harlin We’ve had many special guest bloggers this month in the form of our beloved animal companions. In that spirit I did a virtual unearthing of this story I wrote for my son when he was eight. We adopted our cat Magic from the local shelter and made a game of wondering what adventures he’d experienced before he came into our lives. This story was the result of our combined imaginations. Forgive me this little bit of schmaltz. There are two important things to know about cats. The first is that all cats are gossips. They talk to each other about everything and everykitty, passing stories along so every cat in the world knows what’s happening to every other cat. The second is that each cat knows at least one magic trick. I know one orange tabby who makes people laugh, one white Persian who makes cookies disappear, and a very slinky Siamese who causes books to fall from shelves. Our kitten was born in Colorado, to a fam...