Summer 2005

Dear Reader,

What a spring and summer it's been! I can only hope that your lives aren't as over-full as mine has been lately. An unscheduled moment is a rare, rare thing for me these days. But since the son's lacrosse practice isn't until 6:00, the vet had to cancel my pack's vaccinations scheduled for today, and the latest round of prairie thunderstorms is a good twenty miles out yet... I thought I'd take the unexpected respite and catch you up on what I've been doing writing -wise.

At the moment, the work on the contemporary romance books goes briskly along. BLINDSIDED, in the Silhouette Special Edition line will be released in October 2005. This is the hockey book I set in my hometown of Wichita. I can only hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The other contemporary book, GRIN AND BEAR IT, is scheduled for release in December of 2005. It's in the Harlequin NEXT line and isn't a romance, but a women's fiction mystery. To say that I had a grand time writing it... I have never laughed so hard or so long while writing. Also set in Wichita, it's the story of Stacy Kavanaugh, a 30something woman whose husband left her for an "exotic" dancer. But as Stacy learns, there is no bottom to the pit into which her life has fallen. In the very last days of her divorce, her husband crashes his small private plane into a mountainside in Montana and... Well, it's all downhill from there for our ever resilient and irreverent Stacy.

My editor at Harlequin Silhouette has already asked for the Further Adventures of Stacy Kavanaugh so there will be at least one more book for her. I'll keep you posted as details become available.

Also in the pipeline is a contemporary mini-series for Silhouette's Desire line. Authoring with the incredible Kasey Micheals, the ever witty Mary McBride, and the Grande Dame of Romance Joan Hohl, our four books center around the romance that ignites following the anonymous philanthropic acts of a reclusive billionaire. We don't have titles yet, but we can tell you that the four books will be released in the fall of 2006, one a month from August to November.

And lest you think that I've abandoned the historical front.... I've just completed the first book in a new historical trilogy for St. Martin's Press and am getting ready to start the second. HER SCANDALOUS MARRIAGE is scheduled for release in May, 2006.

Set in 1880, Victorian England, this is the story of Caroline Dutton and Drayton Mackenzie whose lives are unexpectedly turned upside down and thrown together when Geoffrey Turnbridge, the fifth Duke of Ryland, chocks up his dissipated toes. Caroline is the eldest of his three illegitimate daughters and Drayton is the man's cousin, twice removed --which, to Drayton's thinking, isn't nearly removed enough . Neither one of them ever thought they'd be expected to step into and manage the manor for which they most definitely were not born. And neither one of them expects to fall in love in the process, either. Oh, well... That's how life goes sometimes. <bg> It's the unexpected that makes it interesting.

The other two books in the trilogy will be the love stories of Caroline's younger sisters, Simone and Fiona. At this point, I don't have release dates or official titles for their books. I'll keep you posted on these details, too.

And that's pretty much it on the writing front. Up to my eyeballs, pounding the keys just as fast as I can, and counting the days until school starts up again.

Hope you all are finding your respites where you can and enjoying them thoroughly. Until later.... Take care.

All the best,

Leslie

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