My March Blaze KNOWING The SCORE comes out this week, the story of jewelry designer Ashley Craig and sexy polo player Beck Emery.

Excerpt:

“What on earth am I doing at a polo match? Ashley Craig muttered. She’d never been to a match before and wished someone had told her not to wear high heels to an outdoor sport played in lush grass.

Her friend Tisha overheard her. “Trying to save your career.” Tisha was staring avidly at the polo players. “But since your prospect is nowhere to be found, we may as well enjoy ourselves.”

Ashley plucked at her dress and forced herself to look around. The men strode about like masters of all they surveyed, wearing form-fitting polo shirts and snug white pants untouched by mud or grass, yet. Thick leather pads covered their knees.

“Chica, if their pants were any tighter, I’d think I’d mysteriously developed X-ray vision.” Tisha winked at her and Ashley gave her a small smile. She felt intensely out of place among all the sleek horses and even sleeker women. And her shoes had sunken into the turf.

“Why didn’t you tell me to wear my ballet flats?” She bent and fussed with the grass sticking to the red patent leather open-toed slingbacks she’d borrowed from Tisha.

Tisha elbowed her in the ribs, nearly knocking her over. “Stop messing around and look at that guy by the tent—he’s checking you out.”

Startled, Ashley looked up from her feet and her gaze zeroed in on the tall blond man staring at her. She straightened slowly and returned his stare. He was a good half foot taller than her own five foot nine and was dressed in a scarlet polo shirt. His pants were white-washed onto his muscular limbs and were tucked into knee-high burnished leather riding boots. His face was lean and sculpted, with firm lips and a cleft in his chin. But his eyes were most compelling, a whiskey-brown that glittered at her. She wondered if they darkened or brightened when he was aroused. And he did want to find out.

“I think he’s coming this way!” Tisha hissed. “Oh, my God, this is so exciting!”

“Shut up, Tisha,” Ashley muttered. The loudspeaker came on announcing the next match. To her crushing disappointment, the man stopped and glanced ruefully at the field. He lifted his gloved hand in a brief salute with his riding crop and disappeared into the crowd with his teammates.
Tisha groaned. “Too bad, Ash. I thought he was going to eat you up with his eyes.”

“Oh, well.” Ashley shrugged, with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “He seemed pretty arrogant anyway.”

“That, my friend, is called machismo. He’s got something strong and powerful between his thighs, and he knows how to use it.”

“Leticia!” Ashley burst into laughter.

“What? His polo pony, of course.”

I will be giving away some copies of KNOWING The SCORE to a couple lucky posters as well as some foreign language editions of my previous books. If you live here in North America, are fluent in Dutch, German, French, Italian or Greek and want a spicy-hot novel to read, post a comment in that language with the English translation under it to enter to win. I have WILDE KERSEN, NAAKT ONDER HAAR HANDEN, KUHLER MARMOR—HEISSE HAUT, LA BRULURE DES SENS, SECRETS D’ORIENT, FANTASIE IN DOPPIOPETTO, and my favorite title of all GYMNO MODELO (Naked Model—yes, that pretty much sums up my first book!)

To my dear Blaze co-authors and to all of our lovely readers,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

I am writing this Christmas Eve after a duckling dinner, overly long Monopoly game and have The Little Drummer Boy playing in the TV. As a musician, that show has been one of my favorite since I was young. As an adult I have thought about the drummer boy and how he loses his family, grieves terribly and becomes bitter to all.

Through the love of his pet lamb and a miraculous encounter with a certain baby, he is healed and is able to love again.

Looking back at the theme of all of my books, I think I can safely say that my major theme is that love gives redemption from grief and bitterness.

I think that my sister authors are all on the “same page” with me when I wish you all the joy and love of Christmas year-round!

All the best to you and your families!

Marie Donovan

Like you, I am very busy-my writing for Harlequin Blaze, a day job, family, some extra college classes and annoying things like meals, housecleaning (though not much of that) and laundry (too much of that—living in Chicago during cold weather guarantees at least seven loads a week).

So what did I decide to do this week considering my schedule? Take a yoga class, get a massage, hang out with friends?

Nope, I am getting a dog—just the thing to ease a tight schedule, right? Well, not really, but I’ve wanted one for a long time. I found her on Petfinder.com, and she looks like a real sweetie, a German Shepherd who has a much fancier pedigree than I do. We are driving out of state to meet her, and if the rescue lady thinks it is a good fit, we’ll bring her home.

I don’t know if any of you have ever adopted a rescue animal from a breed organization, but they seem pretty strict about just who gets a dog, which makes sense considering how hard they work rehabbing the animals and making sure they won’t take off somebody’s hand or pee on the rug every time the microwave dings. I haven’t worked this hard to impress somebody since my last job interview. In fact, I think I needed more personal references for the dog interview.

Her rescue lady said she would be a good tracker or search-and-rescue dog since she has an above-average sniffer for even a German Shepherd. I am sure she would find our house a virtual treasury of scents, except of course the illegal variety.

So what do you think, ladies? Am I certifiable for getting a brand new pet during the holidays when I have more than enough to keep me busy? Have you said “oh, what the hell” and done something similar? Do tell, especially if you have any good pet stories. If we are approved, I’ll post some pics. And Happy Thanksgiving!

Marie Donovan

According to that most authoritative of research sources, Wikipedia, October 25 has several interesting events associated with this date:

1415: The feast date of Sts. Crispin and Crispinian, featured in Henry V as well as the date of the Battle of Agincourt. This is the “Band of Brothers” speech by Henry rallying the men. I use it in Her Last Line of Defense as the hero Luc talks about the bonds formed with his fellow soldiers under the harsh conditions of war. In a weird footnote, these saints are the patron saints of leather workers and leather wearers—i.e. bikers. Glad to know somebody’s looking out for them considering all the bad traffic on the road.

1616: For our Aussie friends, Dutch sea captain Dirk Hartog makes landfall on, yes, Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australia coast.

1760: For our British friends, George III becomes King of England. For our American friends, George III eventually becomes Mad King George, whose “eccentric” reign encourages us to wave England a fond farewell.

1813: For our Canadian friends and editors (who are friends as well), the Canadians and Mohawks defeat the Americans at the Battle of Chateauguay. My father’s family are old New Englanders, and some of the children were kidnapped into the Mohawk tribe in the 1600’s. When their original family found them many years later, several of them refused to come back, and had been adopted into the tribe. Even now, many Mohawks have my same last name.

1861: Again for Canada, the Toronto Stock Exchange opened. Is Harlequin traded on this exchange at all? If so, can I buy some stock? Or is that insider trading? From what I hear, Harlequin is doing very well.

1938: For Dubuque, Iowa (because you’re not a Dubuquer if you don’t play euchre), Archbishop Francis J.L. Beckman calls swing music “a degenerated musical system… turned loose to gnaw away at the moral fiber of young people”, warning that it leads down a “primrose path to hell”. Although Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller don’t seem like demonic minions to me, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

1944: For our Filipino friends, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle in history. Also for my husband, the biggest World War II buff in history.

For this kind of information, Wikipedia can be fun and a great brainstorming tool. I looked up my birthday, my family’s birthdays and other various dates. Take a look at what you can find out about your favorite dates. If you find anything interesting, let us know!

Due to the fact I have offspring that are much more athletically talented than I am (a low bar, to be sure), I have been to several junior high cross-country running meets this fall. Watching cross-country is not what you’d call a fantastic spectator sport because the kids all take off running at the starting line, run across the field, and usually disappear into the woods. If you are fast enough, you can sprint diagonally across the field behind them to catch them at a corner, but after that they are out of sight.

Then you chew the fat with the other parents, watch your wristwatch and eventually the first few speed demons erupt from the woods and tear down the chute to the finish line while everyone cheers mightily for their excellence as the kids wipe off dead bugs and mud from their skin. After one race, mine looked like the grill of our car after a long road trip.

The other kids dribble in and get cheered, but there are always a few toward the end who struggle. One race had them running two laps past the spectators, and the winners passed the last girl, going twice as fast.

I am not the sentimental type when it comes to sports. My heart doesn’t beat faster when I hear “Bear Down, Chicago Bears” and I have never painted my face Illini blue-and-orange. And normally I hate the “you’re all winners just for showing up” attitude because I was an extraordinarily competitive girl when I played sports as a kid and thought it stunk if you didn’t win. (actually I still do).

But that one girl last Saturday made me choke up and glad I had sunglasses to hide my watery eyes. She absolutely had to know she was dead last, and after her first lap, I expected her to drop out and I wouldn’t see her again.

But here she came, putting one foot in front of the other. It had taken so long that the spectators had drifted onto the course (one goofball even had his bike in her way) and the coaches had to roust everyone off. And that girl got a huge cheer as she staggered up the hill to the finish.

I thought of Winston Churchill’s quote, “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in.” And I promised myself that even if I found myself plodding along dead last in whatever I had to do, that I would be as brave as that girl and just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Maybe we all can be winners just for keeping going. My September Blaze Her Last Line of Defense deals heavily with bravery and endurance under difficult conditions. Post what you think and you’ll be entered to win a copy of my Green Beret-themed romance.

When I was offered the chance to write about a Green Beret hero for Blaze’s yearlong Uniformly Hot series, I was excited but nervous at doing the Green Berets justice. My mother was a social worker at a Saigon orphanage during the war in Vietnam and knew several Green Beret soldiers herself. They were men of myth and legend, often disappearing and reappearing, and no one had the nerve to ask where they’d been or what they’d done. Green Berets are known as “force multipliers”, which means they live with indigenous populations and train them in methods of unconventional warfare.

After the war, of course, many stories came out about their bravery and dedication to the people with whom they lived. Doctoring people, doctoring precious water buffaloes needed to harvest crops, even sponsoring refugees from the tribes who had helped the Green Berets and were, and still are, subject to terrible persecution from the Communists after the war.

The Green Berets hit the news again during the war in Afghanistan, and that is where my hero Luc Boudreau comes in. He is weary from a tour of duty in the “sandbox”, the nickname for Iraq/Afghanistan postings. Before that tour, he spent a horrifyingly memorable time in the Amazon, and that is why he is picked to give jungle survival lessons to pampered congressman’s daughter Claire Cook. He unfortunately learned how to survive in the jungle alone for almost a month.

Claire has had a rough couple of years since her mother’s death and feels she has not lived up to her mother’s adventurous childhood in the Amazonian jungle. But Claire is not exactly cut out for life in the jungle. She blisters easily, hates bugs, is grossed out by worms and fish and doesn’t know how to pee in the woods.

Hmm. This is where the autobiographical part of the novel comes out. Ditto everything on that list for me.

But the most interesting thing I learned about jungle survival was not actually about what to eat (worms and grubs) and what to avoid (plants with white berries, milky sap, ants, stinging flies, basically most of the whole jungle). It was about the psychology of survival.

All of the books I found on the subject agree that the people most likely to survive any kind of extreme situation are those who have the most mental toughness—not necessarily physical toughness.

Those who want to survive the most. Fathers who need to seek help for their family. Mothers who need to return to their children. Soldiers like Luc who refuse to give up and let the jungle take them into an unmarked grave.

I am not planning to move to the jungle any time soon, but it gave me a lot to think about. What survival situations do we modern women encounter? Grief, depression, illness, divorce, miscarriage, dealing with difficult children/parents—I’m sure we could all add our own twist to the list of horrors.

You might not have scaled mountains or crossed rivers with a knife in your teeth (if you have, please let me know since that has to be an interesting story), but take a look back at your own life and I can guaran-damn-tee at least one episode where you were just as tough and strong as the beefiest Green Beret. I have to admit when I started researching survival, I was feeling pretty wimpy until I recalled a time several years back where I lost a baby, two uncles and had surgery twice within two months. I would have rather been in the jungle, but I survived—don’t ask me how.

Do you agree with the idea of mental toughness being more important than physical prowess? Let me know what you think, especially if you get a chance to read Her Last Line of Defense, out this week as a September release.

Marie

P.S. An interesting bit of trivia: during the filming of The Green Berets in Vietnam, the local Montagnards (hill tribes) gave John Wayne a brass bracelet as a symbol of devotion and brotherhood. They apparently loved cowboy movies. Wayne never took the bracelet off–you can see it in the rest of his movies, even the cowboy ones!

I am finally somewhat recovered from my first-ever trip to RWA Nationals in Washington, DC and I couldn’t believe how much fun I had.

Tuesday: My sister and I flew in from Chicago and it was not a happy flight for me—the last half hour it felt as if we were on a rumble strip.

Fortunately, I recovered quickly and we ate dinner at the Lebanese Taverna—eggplant, lamb, lamb meatballs, and something with chickpeas. We stayed in the vintage Wardman Towers part of the Marriott with the crystal chandeliers, gold-framed mirrors and fancy marble-topped dressers in the corridor. We tried to play Antiques Roadshow to guess if they were real antiques or not, but we thought the staff might object to us pulling the furniture out from the wall or flipping over drawers.

Wednesday: Up and out to the Washington and Lincoln Memorials. As an Illinois girl, Lincoln has always been my favorite president. I had forgotten how big the statue of Lincoln is. If you haven’t seen Night in the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian, you’ll get a laugh. The atmosphere in the memorial is very quiet despite the mob of people.

The Literacy charity signing was that evening, and it was packed. I sat between Susan Donovan, who writes romantic comedy, and Lucienne Diver, who now writes YA vampire love in addition to her literary agenting. Somewhere in the crush was a Washington Post reporter, who noticed MY SEXY GREEK SUMMER and mentioned it in her article on the conference. Thanks, Art Department!

Thursday: Janet Evanovich had a motivational keynote: there is no such thing as writer’s block, just lazy writers. Fortunately, I had an excuse not to run out and write because the Blaze Authors’ lunch was next.

I had such a great time at the Blaze lunch hosted by senior editor Brenda Chin. I sat between Brenda Jackson and Karen Anders and across from Jill Monroe and Kathleen O’Reilly. We talked business but also about interesting things like college, medical treatment during the fall of the Soviet Union (you’d be better off with a witch doctor), families and home. I just wished we’d had more time to visit since everybody is so interesting.

Friday: I met with my editor Kathryn Lye and we had a lovely visit. Once I finish my current project, KNOWING THE SCORE (3/10), I’ll be working on a proposal for a new Blaze series.

The evening brought the Harlequin party, and the cab driver took us to the wrong Ritz-Carlton. We walked into this very quiet Friday night hipster bar in our cocktail dresses and knew something was wrong. They sent us back across town to the other Ritz-Carlton, and we knew we were in the right place when we heard a steady thump-thump-thump coming up from the downstairs ballroom.

The party was a blast in every sense of the word—chocolate fondue fountain, huge cake and every bar station had its own decade theme—the sixties had whiskey stone sours and the 2000s had appletinis and cosmopolitans. The DJ played a great mix of dance tunes and the whole room danced to “I Will Survive” and “Thriller”, complete with claw action and everything.

Saturday: RITA Awards! Anne Stuart did a great job emceeing the ceremony with plenty of jokes and movie clips. At the reception, YA RITA award-winner Rosemary Clement-Moore let me rub her RITA for luck. Maybe next year in Nashville!

I am so excited—I am going to my very first Romance Writers of America National Conference in less than three weeks.

I made the decision last year to attend when I realized 2009 was Harlequin’s 60th anniversary year. That was one party I didn’t want to miss. I also have very fond memories of Washington, D.C. When we were kids, my mom found el cheapo plane tickets and said, “We’re going to Washington for Lincoln’s birthday weekend.”

February in D.C. is not the height of the tourist season, to put it mildly, so we had the place almost to ourselves. We hit all the high spots, including the giant pandas, which were the newest thing in the National Zoo, went to Ford’s Theatre, complete with black bunting in the Presidential box, and the First Ladies’ Dress exhibit in the Smithsonian. One of my favorite pictures is my sister Kate and I holding our special treat—a brand new stuffed panda for each of us.

I’m on the left, Kate is on the right.

I did more traveling when I was younger, but family and mortgages have a funny way of cutting into travel money. But this year, I started up an online saving account and dutifully socked away $25 a week and whatever else I could get my hands on. And my sister Kate is always up for a trip, so she signed on to be my roommate. She will be seeing the sights during the day and hanging with me at night.

Shopping for a formal dress for the RITA Awards was another hurdle. Try finding a dress that doesn’t scream either “Senior Prom” or “Mother of the Bride.” Since I have twenty years since the one and hopefully at least another fifteen years before the other, I was stuck. But after some fiddling with alterations and a trip to Nordstrom’s Rack, I have two long dresses and one cocktail dress.

I can’t wait to meet all my fellow Blaze authors whom I’ve only met online and get reacquainted with the ones I’ve met in person. Now all I have to do is figure out how much cash to bring for snacks, drinks—and a new set of stuffed pandas.

Marie
www.mariedonovan.com

P.S. As a fun summer reading giveaway, comment on this blog and I’ll pick one person to win a copy of my latest release, My Sexy Greek Summer. We may not be able to get to Greece this summer, but we can fantasize, can’t we?

I blogged on Friday over at our Sizzling Pens blog that I was going to horseback riding camp with the family and was unsure, to put it mildly, how the ol’ bod would cope with it.

We got back on Sunday afternoon and I am pleased to announce that I held up very well. I told the riding boss I didn’t care which horse I rode since I didn’t have my heart set on a white one, or a spotty one or one that looked like the horse in the book I checked out from the school library, etc., etc. So he takes me over to the absolute biggest horse in the herd and says, “You can have this one.” Okay, I am tall so I guess I need a big horse.

I hefted myself up onto the beast and said, “What’s his name?”

“Widowmaker.”

And the funny thing is that my first thought is, “Shouldn’t that be Widower-maker?” since I am a woman and grammatically correct as well. Not, “Help! Help! I’m going to die!” Then the rational part of my brain kicked in and I realized that a dude ranch would not saddle up a horse called Widowmaker.

So the cowboy and I had a good laugh. The horse’s name was actually Snookums or Sugar Pie or something cuddly like that. His name should have been Butt-Biter, because that was his little bad habit. He would tailgate the lead horse and then try to take a chomp out of its rump. Other than that, I could have been riding in a Barcalounger through the meadow for all the work I had to do aside from reining him in once in a while when he started to look hungry. Hungry for horse butt, that is.

I thought I might be nervous but I wasn’t. I did some trail riding when I was a kid and it came back to me quickly. The trick with a horse is that you can’t be wimpy. Not that you’re going to whipping your horse along like Paul Revere on his midnight ride or a Pony Express rider delivering the mail, but it has to know you mean business. “Please” and “pretty please” just don’t work. Otherwise you are either getting a detailed botanical tour called “Plants Your Horse Likes to Graze on Instead of Following the Horse Ahead of Them” or else you are finding out just how shatter resistant your riding helmet is as it scrapes you off its saddle on a low-hanging branch.

I think this is a good skill to have in everyday life, like with the car mechanic, your co-workers or your family. Treat them like horses. Let them know you mean business and don’t let them bite anybody in the butt.

Until a couple weeks ago I have not been to the movies in months, mostly due to a lack of interest in what passes for entertainment these days. The only show I regret not seeing on the big screen is Australia—Hugh Jackman, rowrr. Ever since I read and saw The Thorn Birds at a much too tender age (“Mom, what’s a French letter?”), I have been a huge fan of Australian epics, and ever since I saw the revival of Oklahoma! I have been a huge Hugh Jackman fan.

My husband and I recently saw Nicolas Cage’s “Knowing”, and the previews before the show were just terrible. I felt as if I had sat through the best parts of seven movies (which wasn’t saying anything, believe me). I turned to him and said, “I can’t believe they’re all crap,” and he said, “Really? I can.” But then he is much more cynical than I am, which I guess is why I love romance and he loves military history.

Even a supremely buff Hugh Jackman in the Wolverine preview was not enough to boost my spirits. The whole movie-going treat was extremely disappointing.

Despair, destruction and death were the going themes of the day and we had just paid for that. I can see that on the news for free. Hey, I just went to a wake last weekend!

But the experience made me think about what I want to see and what I want to write. If we flip around the previous life-sucks-and-then-we-die theme, we have hope, creation and life. Romance writers are especially suited to this. We write about the hope of creating a life with a special man. Even if our heroine is not looking for a guy, we all know she has a tiny spark of hope deep down in her soul that life is not a parade of drunken losers who spill beer on her and are under the mistaken impression that she has a sign around her neck saying, “Please talk to my breasts.” Not that I’ve ever experienced that (Sigma Pi house, ca. 1989).

Fortunately for our poor heroine, our Blaze word count is such that she immediately meets the One and actually doesn’t mind if he talks to her breasts since he is usually doing very gratifying intimate acts at the same time. Fortunately for their long-term happiness, they move beyond the body parts and learn to love each other as a whole person.

Although it took another four years of beer spilling and lack of appropriate eye contact, I managed to find my own special man and we will have our 15th anniversary this summer. It seems like a long time sometimes until I remember the wake I mentioned previously—my co-worker’s father, who had been married 72 years. That’s not a typo.

And for those of you nihilists out there, I say nuts to you! If you are brave enough to have loved someone for 15 minutes, 15 years or even 72, you will not be disappointed. Hope, creation and life is the way to go, and you may just go further than you think possible.

All the best,

Marie Donovan

P.S. My new book My Sexy Greek Summer is out this week and is a fun summer read. If you can’t afford to go to the Greek Islands this year (who can?), you can be an armchair tourist. No screaming babies and no jet lag.