Linda S. Howington is a bestselling romance author writing under the pseudonym Linda Howard. She has written many New York Times bestsellers, including Up Close and Dangerous, Drop Dead Gorgeous, Cover of Night, Killing Time, To Die For, Kiss Me While I Sleep, Cry No More, and Dying to Please. She is a charter member of Romance Writers of America and in 2005 Howard was awarded their Career Achievement Award. Linda lives in Gadsden, Alabama, with her husband, Gary F. Howington, and two golden retrievers. She has three grown stepchildren and three grandchildren.
Geralyn Dawson is the critically acclaimed author of more than a dozen novels, including My Big Old Texas Heartache and My Long Tall Texas Heartthrob (both available from Pocket Star Books). A three-time RITA finalist, Geralyn has won numerous awards, including the National Readers' Choice Award and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times. She is an active volunteer for the Making Memories Foundation and lives in Forth Worth, Texas, with her family. Visit her website at www.GeralynDawson.com and watch for the first novel in her Bad Luck Brides series, Her Bodyguard.
Jillian Hunter has received several awards in the Romance Community, including Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. She lives in Southern California with her husband and three daughters.
Like most writers, I was a reader first, but I've also enjoyed
writing and story-telling since I was a child. After working many
years in public relations (which was a great background for
fiction), I decided to stop talking about that book I was always
going to write and actually do it. In 1990, when I was on maternity
leave, I wrote my first book, Steal the Stars (now out of
print.)
This was not as felicitous as it sounds. I was as fried as every
other new mother, but at least while I was staying up all night, I
was also writing. I didn't know how my book was going to end, I
wandered around through the viewpoints of every single character,
and my opening was so full of setting and backstory that I'm
surprised any editor could stay awake to read it. Fortunately, one
did, and with her help and understanding, I trimmed my manuscript
by a third, tightened the plot, and pruned the extra characters,
and duh-duh, on Valentine's Day, 1992 my first book was published
and my writing career born.
Born, yes, but not totally prospering. I dutifully went back to my
day job, writing at night, for another four years before I was
earning enough to be able to write full time. I sold my first
Fairbourne Family book, The Captain's Bride, to Pocket Books in
1996, and I've been happily writing for them ever since. My
twentieth book, Star Bright, will be published by Sonnet Books in
November, 2000, and I still can't believe I've come so far in eight
years!
One of the things that has set my books apart from most of the
other historical romances today has been the setting: colonial
America. I'm not sure why this isn't a more popular setting among
writers -- it's certainly one brimming with romantic possibilities!
-- but it's a time and place I already knew something about, and an
era that I especially enjoy. I went to college in Rhode Island, a
place where the colonial past is still very much a part of modern
life, and I'm sure that influenced me, too. I was especially
fascinated by how fluid society was in New England at the time,
with fabulous family fortunes made (and lost) in record time. It's
a time of bold, daring, larger-than-life men and women, and that
makes it a wonderful source for a writer.
With Starlight and Star Bright, I'm venturing back across the ocean
to Georgian England, seeing the old country" through my colonial
characters' eyes. This has been a new challenge for me, and a great
deal of fun as well. This is, after all, the time and place that
virtually invented the rake and the rogue! Visiting the London of
Hogarth and Tom Jones, dancing at the pleasure gardens on the
Thames and being presented at King George's court, wearing powder
and paint and silk gowns and finding love with the most dashing of
swashbuckling heroes -- what better vicarious fun could an author
-- and, I hope, readers! -- possibly wish for?
And I do love research, and finding the exact little-known fact to
bring a scene or event to life is one of the real joys of writing
for me. As much as possible, I depend on original sources -- books
written at the time, diaries, log-books, journals -- rather than
later historical interpretations.
One of the advantages of writing books all set more or less in the
same time and place means that, by now, I have a pretty good sense
of the details of everyday colonial life. For example, I don't have
to stop writing to look up what kind of underwear the heroine
should have under her gown; I already know she's got a shift,
stays, maybe a quilted petticoat or two, but nary a pair of
knickers or bloomers no matter how cold the winter!
I also volunteer at a local living history museum, an
eighteenth-century working farm and farmhouse. Dressed in period
clothing, hauling water from a well and cooking over an open hearth
has helped with the sorts of things books don't convey. Yes, the
water in the wash-bowl does freeze in your bedchamber in January,
and there's nothing like hefting an oak bucket full of water to
build up those colonial biceps.
As you can doubtless tell, I love to write, and each morning I wake
grateful for having such a wonderful way to spend my day (and
night), and such wonderful readers to share my story-telling
adventures with me and my characters. History and happy endings --
it doesn't get any better than this!
Please visit my website, www.mirandajarrett.com, or write me:
email: MJarrett21@aol.com
snail: PO Box 1102, Paoli, PA 19301-0792
Mariah Stewart is the award-winning New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous novels and several novellas and short stories. A native of Hightstown, New Jersey, she lives with her husband and two rambunctious rescue dogs amid the rolling hills of Chester County, Pennsylvania, where she savors country life and tends her gardens while she works on her next novel. Visit her website at MariahStewart.com, like her on Facebook at Facebook.com/AuthorMariahStewart, and follow her on Instagram @Mariah_Stewart_Books.
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