Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

I live in the Northwest corner of the U.S.  I'm used to drizzle, showers, rain, downpours, deluges, and all other forms of precipitation.  This year has been a wet one--one of the soggiest seasons in recent memory.  So it was a bit of a shock when for a few hours the other day the weather turned.  I was driving to work, listening to the news when I heard this report, "This just in. The giant fireball in the sky has been identified as the sun." Yeah, it had been a while since that celestial object had made an appearance.  All us northwesterners crawled out of our homes like blind moles, blinking in the sunlight.  Spring had arrived!  Well, at least for a few hours until it started raining again.  Still, it gave me a chance to go down to the beach and remember why I live here.  Truly, it is a beautiful place--when not quite so water-logged.  Time to shave my legs, paint my toes, and get ready for the sun!  Here are a few of my favo...

A baby blue dasher (male) dragonfly  And a marigold popped up from seeds in the garden last year. I hoped the snapdragons would come back. I hadn't expected this! Flowers on a shrub. And my daughter's having her first baby--here we took pictures in the spring showers. Baby is due April 1st. This will be my first grandbaby. :) Mated cardinals. “See if she’s still there.” “Yep, still taking pictures. Don’t turn around.” Paparazzi can be such a pain. As Jade, in Billionaire in Wolf's Clothing can attest to!  Billionaire in Wolf’s Clothing (Book 20) July 2016 Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1492621897 Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Billionaire-Wolfs-Clothing-Wolf-ebook/dp/B01BX1PIRY Amazon Canada Amazon Australia iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/billionaire-in-wolfs-clothing/id1085850855 Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/billionaire-in-wolfs-clothing-terry-spear/1122684309?ean=9781492621898 Ta...

I'm in my new house, spring has sprung, and I have a blank backyard. So I'm having a blast with turning it into a whimsical fairy garden. And for the first time ever, I'm growing chives, curly parsley, bell peppers, and for the first time in a very long time, tomatoes. :) I already have 3! Added some wind chimes with glass baubles and a blue glass bottle for some interest. A sparrow jumped on the wind chimes, scared himself and jumped on the feeder while a house finch watched him. The fairy wind chimes didn’t scare them off. And then goldfinches arrived. These are the copper ones on the other bird feeder. The frog is protecting the 3 little tomatoes. And the fairies are watching over the chives. While Max is watching over the rose and lavender garden fairy. I’d forgotten all about my fairies, still waiting to be unpacked and find a home here too. I couldn’t decide, have everything blend in or be bright and colorful and whimsical? The fairy garden ...

bee eating jelly at a party It’s spring in Western Australia! Bees, magpies, snakes and all the other hideous thing that want to kill you are waking up and getting active .  snake spotted when I went for a run It also means flowers and sunshine and cleaning out the pool to get it ready for summer. Inside the house it means it looking at the piles of paper on my desk and thinking about sorting them out. The trouble is while working on a series I like to have all my notes to hand, which means when I’m working on more than one series I end up with lots of paper. Most of it is contained in a note book, but some series end up with an archive box full of old revisions and notes about main characters and minor characters and the world.   Sometimes though I just get lazy and I don’t pack away as often as I should so spring is an ideal reason to sort things out and throw things out. That is what I plan to do over the next month. Then I’ll start making plans for 2016. ...

by Amanda Forester Spring has sprung! I love the change of seasons. I enjoy winter, but by the time March rolls around I am very ready for a change. Here in the Northwest, we have enjoyed a mild winter, but I know in some parts of the U.S. folks are still digging themselves out of the snow. I'm sure the coming Spring is a welcome relief! When I think of Spring, showers of flower petals float through my mind. First the purple and white crocuses emerge through the frost, then the bright yellow daffodils, the fluffy, pink cherry blossoms, and finally the tulips. This year our tulips have been hindered by the two bunnies who have moved into our front yard. I occasionally see our new uninvited guests hopping across my lawn. My dogs go insane when they see them frolicking about freely where dogs are not allowed to roam. So wrong! I think bunnies are cute...until I find my tulip stalks nibbled to the ground. A few years ago I went out to the local tulip fields. It was a wond...

Lemon Tree...and Feline Guardian! Just as there are certain colors and smells that you automatically associate with specific seasons, so are there particular flavors. So if autumn tastes like pumpkin, ginger, and cranberries, winter like peppermint and chocolate, and summer like strawberries and peaches, spring--at least to me--tastes like lemons. And right now, with the warmer weather coming in, Southern California's lemon trees are putting out bumper crops of sunny yellow fruit! And enthusiastic cooks like me eye the laden branches with mingled speculation--and acquisitiveness! Because lemons are among the most versatile of ingredients, finding their way into all kinds of dishes: hot, cold, savory, sweet, liquid or solid. Whether it's avgolemono soup or lemon cream pasta or lemon meringue pie, lemon enlivens any springtime menu. Today I'm sharing a recipe for madeleines, those pretty scallop-shaped cakes that you can now find as overpriced three-packs at your loca...

Picture of clover taken at the Arboretum in Spring, Texas.   May the Luck of the Irish be with you!  Terry and her Irish roots of Kelly, Hawthorn, and Welsh wishing you all the best! www.terryspear.com

My uncle took the fabulous picture above. He takes awesome pictures. He should! He used to be the White House photographer. I don't know about you, but the spring bug hit me hard. And nothing says spring like spring cleaning. I know what you're thinking, but there were some things just bugging me. You know the feeling. I couldn't stand it any longer. How much longer could I possibly ignore my dusty drapes? Ugh. Believe me, I've tried. After dry cleaning all of my drapes at home (which look 100% better-Dryel works wonders), another project I tackled was my great-grandmother's hutch. My mom told me when she gave me this beautiful piece of furniture that the hutch was the only thing in our family that survived the Vandergrift flood of 1936. I love antiques with a story behind them. I also love the fact that when it's time for my daughter to have the hutch, she'll know the tale to pass down to her daughter. How cool to actually...

by Olivia Cunning When I moved to Texas last July, I knew that my winters wouldn't really be winters anymore--not by a Midwesterner's standards. Last winter, I still lived in Nebraska and this is the kind of thing I dealt with for several long, depressing months. I remember using this thingie a lot. Ugh! I hate this thingie. Driving was an icy, slick nightmare for three months. I had to dress in layers. I was always, always cold. And as someone who suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder, I would spend months trapped indoors feeling, well, sad . I even owned one of those fancy blue lights and sat in front of it for half an hour a day. It helped. A little. But it didn't do anything for my constant state of cold. I hate winter. I never understood the appeal of snow. To me, snow means a lot of back-breaking shoveling and dangerous driving conditions. Apparently, some people think it's pretty. It does cover the ugly dead landscape of winter. I'll giv...