Sexy Ms. Takes

It’s been a long time since I had a book out. My last Blaze was MS. MATCH, out last October. I didn’t write for a long while after my husband died. Mostly, what I did during that time was read the Harry Potter books and I must have done other things, but it’s mostly a blur. I had already started a book, a Forbidden Fantasy Blaze, but you know what? I couldn’t do it. I tried. Hard. But that book, those characters, had too many memories attached, and I had to put it aside. Maybe someday I’ll get back to it, but I doubt it.

So what I did, when I was ready, was switch gears. The Encounters series had come into Blaze, and I thought, hey, maybe I couldn’t write a whole book, but I could write three short stories.

The idea for SEXY MS. TAKES came to me in a flash. I used to hang out with a bunch of crazy theater folk and I knew a lot about auditions and plays and rehearsals, and what it was like to dream those dreams. (Warning: name dropping about to happen) I’d spent a lot of time backstage with my friend Peter Frechette, a gloriously wonderful actor you might remember from his stint as Louis DiMucci in Grease 2, or his role as George Fraley in Profiler. He used to let me tag along to rehearsals for his Off Broadway and Broadway shows, lucky me. I loved the whole atmosphere of the New York theater scene.

Side tangent: One year, I went to see a play of his, and after opening night a whole gang of us went to a nearby restaurant/bar afterward. I was writing for Silhouette at the time, and Peter announced to the crowd that I was a famous romance novelist. (Yeah. Famous. He was such a sweetie pie.) Anyway, some of the guys decided they would do a live tableau of romance novel covers. In the restaurant. The guys in question were Ethan Hawke, Frank Whaley and a very young Wilson, Robert Sean Leonard. They posed in clinches as everyone (there were maybe a dozen of us) laughed and applauded. (We’d had quite a bit of celebratory liquor by then). It was a great night, and one among many that makes me nostalgic for those long ago days.

Back to the present: I thought a lot about dreaming big, setting your heart on something wonderful, and what happens when dreams don’t come true. My experience has taught me that often the best things in life come when we least expect it, when we’re absolutely certain that the world as we knew it has come to a crashing halt, and that nothing good could possibly come our way.

In SEXY MS. TAKES, three Broadway hopefuls are sidetracked on their way to the biggest audition of the lives. Each dream is lost in a split second. But, much to their surprise, something better comes along. Well, someone better. What was the worst day of their lives is transformed into an improbable dream come true.

Writing the book became an unexpected dream come true for me. I lost myself in these three love stories, and the process of telling these tales brought me out of my grief. The power of love never ceases to amaze me.

And now the book is here. I keep a copy on my desk to remind me that no matter what, there’s still hope, still the possibility of happiness and most of all, that love just keeps on going.

I hope you all have wonderful holidays, and that you take away hopeful messages of love and forever each time you pick up a romance novel.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Jo Leigh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.