Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

By: Marie Force Summertime is a pain the rear. There. I said it. Now I feel better. I live in southeastern New England, which means about eight to ten weeks of really pristine weather per year. That's it. So the pressure to make the most of it is enormous. It starts right around Memorial Day with weekly cookouts, beach trips, boat outings, summer sailing camp for the kids, and generally just go, go, go. All of which makes someone who is usually a daily writer quite cranky because days go buy in the chaotic mix of summer during which absolutely nothing gets written. Now those of you who are landlocked or sweating it out in one California valley or the other are probably singing the same song: cry me a river. I hear you. Believe me, I do. But when you live in a place with world-class beaches that people flock to from all over the world, when you live two towns away from the glorious wonder that is Newport, Rhode Island, when your father spends a mint on a boat that's too big to m...

I’ve been watching the Olympics, and like everyone in Maryland, and probably the rest of the U.S.A., I’ve been cheering for Michael Phelps, who won a historic eight gold medals. He’s an amazing inspiration. At 23 years old, he’s probably spent almost half his life in the water to get where he is today. I started thinking about the similarity between an Olympic athlete and a writer. Of course, writers don’t have to be in the same physical shape as Olympic athletes--thank God for small favors. Still, we work for years honing our craft, swimming along with everyone else in the hopes that someday, we’ll be chosen for the team. Unfortunately, our finish line is not so obvious, and if we think the judges made a mistake, we can’t lodge a protest. Like Olympic athletes, our training never stops. There is always the next competition for which to train. Even after we’re published, we have to do everything we’ve always done--the classes, the conferences, the workshops, the reading of our genre as...

Posted by Christina Harlin Wow! You can almost hear the crickets chirping lately here at the Casablanca blog, and that’s because so many of our talented writers are at the RWA convention. Personally I’m so much happier here baking in the Midwest and going to work every day . . . wait a minute, no I’m not! Nine-to-five work is tough! My fantasy of being a full-time writer hasn’t yet come true, and so I’m still out there earning a paycheck. Segue. Speaking of earning a paycheck, I spent a some time recently contemplating the jobs available to the modern romantic hero. We readers want our hero to have a job that oozes masculinity and hopefully lots of money (though this is no longer a must), that involves his brains, brawn, bravery (hopefully a combination of all three), and that holds a sexy bit of risk. This puzzle gets more complex if your romantic hero is a vampire, because the job market for the undead is really glutted right now and prejudice is rampant. But for the most part, emplo...