Once upon a time I read a book published by Harlequin Temptation. That book was called Getting Rid of Bradley by some author who went on to do the coolest of things. I loved that book. I’d been reading a lot of Silhouette Intimate Moments and Silhouette Special Editions, and hadn’t read a Harlequin Temptation for awhile. I’m so glad I did. My first book had seen very limited publication a couple of years before, and since that line had closed (my book was the next to the last), I was basically starting over. Not fun.

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!