So, I had this blog planned around Christmas trees — as in real vs. artificial trees. The bottom line is that I’ve never had an artificial tree. Most of the people I know have artifical trees — nuthin’ wrong with that. I’m just a hold-out. Hey, I figure someone’s got to keep the tree farmers in business. I like me a real tree — and yes, I do recycle it to the mulch pile afterwards.

Anywho, I had this blog planned but then something truly exciting and party-worthy happened — Romantic Times announced their nominees for Best Blaze of 2009!!! Hel-lo. Being the Blaze blog, how could we possibly bypass this opportunity to celebrate the nominees and party down?

So, the champagne fountain is flowing, the martini bar is open and chocolate-dipped fruit is available to all. Pick your toast of choice and join me in saluting the RT nominated Blaze Babes (y’all do us proud!):

A LONG, HARD RIDE
Alison Kent (Mar.)

MAKE ME YOURS
Betina Krahn (Jul.)

SHE’S GOT IT BAD
Sarah Mayberry (Apr.)

LETTERS FROM HOME
Rhonda Nelson (Jun.)

HOT UNDER PRESSURE
Kathleen O’Reilly (Aug.)

And a special toast to Blaze Babe Leslie Kelly for her RT Lifetime Achievement Nomination.

So, join me in the party and in offering congratulations! (And hey, I’m still interested in whether you do a real tree or not )

Harlequin and Silhouette authors fill out an Art Fact Sheet for every book we write. We grumble. Trust me. We grumble. But the art department uses the information we give them to get our covers right. For Blaze? They do an amazing job. The cover shoot in the video above shows my heroine Jamie sitting on a porch railing at my hero Kell’s hunting cabin. Though the models aren’t wearing the clothing the couple has on in the scene (Kell is wearing boots, jeans, and a Texas A&M T-shirt; Jamie is wearing a camisole and low riding cargo shorts), the background is perfect. And the models are spot on.

When I fill out my AFS, I include links to photos I’ve used to visualize my characters, and in some cases, links to photos of the setting. For this one, I wanted to be sure the art people knew that West Texas mountains don’t look like the Rockies or Appalachians. I have no idea if they look at the photos, but they got this one so right I’d be surprised if they didn’t. Either that, or my extensive explanations were wordy enough!

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And now, for the big unveiling, the final version of the cover that came out of the above shoot. This is an exclusive; I haven’t even posted it to my own Website yet …

Getting Rid of Bradley, however, *was* fun, and I thought, “A-ha! That’s what I want to write! A fun Harlequin Temptation!” So I did. I had a folder of magazine articles and news snippets I’d saved, all story fodder, and I pulled out a piece I’d torn out of (I’m pretty sure) a copy of Glamour. It was about a man and woman who’d made serious eye contact during a long flight, and when disembarking, the man handed the woman his business card with the words, “Call me,” scrawled on the back.

I submitted Call Me to Laura Shin at Harlequin in early 1995, and she moved from Temptation to Superromance while the manuscript was still in house. When I got the very cool call (complete with video) with the offer to buy, it came from Birgit Davis-Todd. Though she initially bought me, she then handed me off to Brenda Chin for revisions. Following revisions, I was unloaded onto Susan Sheppard who was my editor at Temptation and for my first two books for Blaze. (For those of you who are curious about how authors get shifted between editors, I was given to Susan Pezzack (now Swinwood) for my next two Blazes, and when she went to Mira, was given to Jennifer Greene for the three that followed. I went back to Birgit for the next few, then moved to Brenda again with Tex Appeal.) But back to the story of Call Me and Brenda’s revisions.

Oh, did I mention this story is about her?

Part of Call Me is set on a Central Texas ranch. When Brenda called to go over the manuscript, she said she would really like to see more of the place. There were a couple of scenes in the house there (with Gardner’s brother who got his own book) and several set in Harley’s antique shop with her assistant, but a lot of the scenes were the book’s signature phone calls between Harley and Gardner, i.e., plenty of dialogue but not much description to show off Gardner’s home. Thing is, *ranch* isn’t what I heard.

I heard that she would like to see more *raunch.*

I’m thinking that was the TRUE beginning of Blaze.

I was also thinking that it would be fun to give away copies of Call Me and Getting Rid of Bradley since I have originals of both sitting here collecting dust. Anyone want them? Comment by Sunday night, April 5, 2009, 8:00 p.m. CDT to be eligible AND give me your thoughts on Western set contemporaries. Do you like cowboys? Ranches? The Wild Wild West with all the modern conveniences?

And, really. How *do* you feel about raunch? Inquiring minds!