The most typical question writers are asked is where we get our ideas. I've never really had a particularly good answer for it until... Well, until I wrote GRIN AND BEAR IT and created the character of Stacy Kavanaugh. Since then, my life has become as unrelentingly chaotic as hers. Seriously, it's the stuff of novels. And yes, it's all going into the next installment of the further adventures of Stacy and Crew.

Yes, by popular demand, there'll be two more Stacy books!! Titles and release dates... I don't know yet. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it and let you know.

I do know that the first of May this year will see the release of the first book of my next historical trilogy from St. Martin's Press. Titled HER SCANDALOUS MARRIAGE, it's the story of Caroline Dutton and Drayton Mackenzie, two people who never expected to find themselves elevated into the Victorian peerage, much less find a passionate love there. It was a fun book to write; an experimental departure from my usual historical suspense. I hope you'll give it a try and let me know what you think.

I'm almost done with the second book in the trilogy, HER WICKED WEDDING NIGHT. And will soon start the third, HIS RELUCTANT BRIDE.

Well, that's the plan, anyway. And you know what they say about plans.

My dear husband David--who, by the way, basks in all the reader thanks for pushing me to write Stacy's story-- has decided that we need to move. Both our home and his business. Ooookay. I'm a good sport. I spent my childhood in the army; I know how to move. I like an adventure.

In this case, the adventure is buying, gutting, and rehabbing two Victorian buildings in the downtown of a little berg in the Kansas Flint Hills. One was originally a bank and the other was originally a chicken hatchery. (I'm thinking I get major Good Wife points for going along on the hatchery deal.)

Of course doing all this requires that we sell the house we've lived in for the last twenty years. Let me tell you, they edit a lot of stuff out of that Designed to Sell show. And have you ever noticed that the people selling their house on that show don't have a 16 year old son accidentally flinging a lacrosse ball through the fancy glass of the front door two days before the house goes on the market? A fancy glass whose replacement has to come from Quebec! Strapped on the back of an apparently lame turtle!

Okay, deep breaths.

Aside from the residential upheaval... Well, I'll save it for the Stacy books. I've bought a laptop computer so I can write in the back of the Conestoga wagon on my way into the heart of the prairie. I'll let you know how it goes.

Keep the light on for me, would ya? I'd appreciate it.

Leslie

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Fall 2008

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