Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

Let it Snow! http://www.celticbears.com A SEAL Wolf Christmas A SEAL Wolf Christmas By Terry Spear Copyright © 2013 by Terry Spear All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Discover more about Terry Spear at: http://www.terryspear.com/ Chapter 1 Amazon Jungle, Colombia Despite being deep in the jungle on a life-or-death mission, Bjornolf Jorgenson couldn’t rid himself of the refrain of Jingle Bells jingling in his head after hearing it played over and over again on an assignment in snowed-in Minnesota. For now, he was shadowing his favorite retired SEAL-wolf team and one female operative in action when anything Christmas should have been the farthest thing from his m...

By Mary Margret Daughtridge I have to smile a little whenever people congratulate me, in light of recent events, for having the foresight to launch my writing career around SEALs. Like I knew SEALs would take out Osama Bin Laden. Or their exploits would be in the news the same week SEALed Forever was released. I smile mostly because when I started the first SEAL book, SEALs were so rarely in the news, I often had to explain exactly what SEALs were. Well, I don't have to any more. Though people finally know how extraordinary they are, I cannot bask in reflected glory. Really. I didn’t create SEALs. Nor have I burnished their reputations. They did that on their own. I just took a stock romantic suspense character and asked, “But what happens when the operation is over and they come home?” I'm writing entertainment fiction, but I refuse to trivialize them. My biggest challenge is to depict how astonishing SEALs really are—I admit I clean them up a little; the uni...

By Mary Margret Daughtridge The other day, in reference to a promo blog I had written about SEALed Forever (coming in 2011) I received this from my editor: I changed "her house is haunted" to "a house could be haunted" b/c I don't want your readers to think there's a ghost--you can't go paranormal now. She's absolutely right. I don't write "paranormals," and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I do...but. SEALed Forever has plenty of "things that go bump in the night." It got me thinking, what’s “paranormal” anyway? The word was coined in 1920 as a neutral term intended to separate the legitimate study of psychic phenomena from spiritualism, the supernatural, and superstition. It was meant to give psychic phenomena a platform which made it susceptible to scientific investigation. It didn’t work. Thirty or forty years later, study of psychical occurrences had completely bogged down between extraordi...

by Mary Margret Daughtridge Beginning writers are often advised to “Write what you know.” Beginning romance writers are told to “Write the book you would love to read.” If that wouldn’t be a romance, you’re out of luck, according to Donald Maass. "Romance," he says, "cannot be faked."Fortunately for me, romance is what I love, and today I launch my third: SEALed with a Ring. A publishing contract usually specifies a number of copies of the book that the author will receive as part of the deal. Typically your author’s copies arrive a few weeks before the book goes on sale. It’s neat. You see it before anyone else does. You slit the brown tape on the box and are immediately transported by the heady zing of fresh ink, the clean, woody aroma of paper that hasn’t been touched. You slide your fingers over the cover, relishing the smooth slipperiness of plastic coated colors. And then you take the books out and line them up side, by side, by side, by side. You...

Our theme this month is love--appropriate for a bunch of romance writers, don't you think? Today, familial and intergenerational love is on my mind. A romance novel's happy ending always begins a new family, and sometimes renews an established family in the process. It's a cycle we never tire of. I thought I’d share with you this favorite photo of one of my families. (I'm rich. I have several.) We like to take our chairs and our drinks down on the surf's edge at sunset, after the heat of the day and before the mosquitoes. The empty chair is mine. I jumped up to snap a picture of a family in the act of enjoying... just enjoying...being a family. I look at it and I can almost feel the great cycle turing. And turn it has. The other day I braved the slush to mail a family heirloom baby spoon to our newest family member. Unlike me, JJ the heroine of SEALed with a Ring, though well-to-do, isn't rich in family. The lovely CEO barely has one, and too much on her pla...

Here I am at the pharmacy get a refill. Why am I here when I have a blog about romance writing to write? Why didn't I take care of this couple of days ago? I did. At least I tried. My insurance company wouldn't pay for them on that date though. They said I could have no more for five days. I had been given a thirty day supply. Thirty days had passed. What was the problem? The story goes back several months. I have a chronic medical condition which, fortunately, is well-controlled by medication. As soon as generic equivalent came on the market, I switched to it and did well for a couple of years. A few months back, when I refilled it, I noticed the pills were a different color. Not to worry, the insert in the bag said. It's still the same medication. But I checked an old bottle. It was a different manufacturer. Anybody want to guess why the pharmacy would buy from a different manufacturer? But by law it had to be the same, cheaper or not. In the first couple of days, I notic...

by Mary Margret Daughtridge It's been a strange week. Anyone who has watched any news at all knows there's been a huge turnover in popular culture icons. From the sublime Farrah Fawcett to the ridiculous Billy Mays to the bizarre Michael Jackson. Billy Mays' black bearded face smiling molar to molar on the screen was enough to make me reach for the mute button. I often wondered about the gadgets, glue, and gimmicky gee-gaws he hawked. Does anyone buy squares of cloth or pieces of plastic for $19.95? They must have, or he wouldn't have come back as tenaciously as crab grass. Still, he influenced popular culture. A friend and I have a running joke that begins "BUT WAIT!" Farah Fawcett had a hairstyle that defined a generation. Though she did other things, I can't actually recall ever seeing her in anything except Charlie's Angels. I wonder if she will become like Clara Bow of whom I know nothing except that she gave the world "bee stung" lips. ...

By Mary Margret Daughtridge Today, April 1, is the official launch for SEALed With A Promise . It's also my wedding anniversary. It was tradition in my husband’s family to raise toasts at whatever sit-down meal preceded the wedding. In our case that was the wedding breakfast. My husband’s uncle stood up in a salt and pepper tweed sport coat, a pin stripe shirt, and a bright cobalt blue tie. I don’t remember the toast, but I’ll never forget how he introduced it. “Mary Margret,” he said, bushy brows lowered in an admonitory look, “if you knew Everett the way we do, you wouldn’t marry him on April Fool’s.” Everybody laughed for a full five minutes. We all knew Everett. That’s the thing about wedding breakfasts. Not all the guests who will be at the ceremony later are not invited to it—only those who have fallen into the inner circle. They are the ones “in the know” at least on this one day. Now there’s a funny thing about inner circles and in-crowds. They’re fluid and it can be hard ...

by Mary Margret Daughtridge Verisimilitude. Don’t you love that word? I do. It means the appearance of being true. It perfectly encapsulates the goal of my research. I'm not a reporter. I write fiction. I don’t do research to make my stories accurate. I do it to make my stories seem true. Wherever facts and the needs of my story march together I choose facts—but anytime they don’t, I freely blend them with my imagination. Still, I often wonder, when I read another writer’s work, which are parts are real and which not. So here's a little background on the background of SEALed With a Promise . Sessoms’ Corner, NC where Aunt Lilly Hale Sessoms’ stately old ho me sits, is a product of my imagination that mingles many places I’ve been to in my life. Not populous or organized enough to be called a village, it is a cluster of farmhouses and perhaps a country store miles outside of “town.” The technical term (not that you probably care, but I need to show off my research) for such...

by Mary Margret Daughtridge To me, story ideas are like acorns. You cannot guess the mature size or shape of the story, or even see that the seed is a story until you see them sprout. That moment of story germination is what I call what if. The what if of SEALed with a Promise happened as a result of my research for SEALed With A Kiss . The reason I initially chose a SEAL was because I needed a military hero who was away from his family for long periods and one who wouldn’t be doing what he was doing if he didn’t love it. I knew no more about them than any romance reader—and truthfully, didn’t want to know much more. Here’s the deal. I didn’t want to write a “military” romance, and I certainly didn’t want to write romantic adventure/suspense. So when I sat down to do my research I wasn’t looking for the finer points of body armor or the difference between a Glock and an AK 47. I thought I’d get a few background details, absorb some lingo, and since the story wouldn’t be set on a ba...