It has been a long, hard winter in Saskatchewan. We are all fervently hoping that we will be compensated with a long, hot summer. I will be back in the small town of Kipling from mid-April on, writing the fifth book of the Huxtable quintet, Constantine's story. I have heard from many readers who are already waiting for his book even though as I write this only the first book of the quintet is yet out. I'll try to make it worth waiting for!
The book news is much as it was when I posted my winter newsletter, with one or two minor changes. I have two book contracts under way, one for new books, one for old. And I have my publication schedule for the next three years--subject, as always to change.
First, the new books. In March, April, May, and June of 2009 there will be the first four books in the new Huxtable quintet--First Comes Marriage (Vanessa's story) in March, Then Comes Seduction (Katherine's story) in April, At Last Comes Love (Margaret's story) in May, and Seducing An Angel (Stephen's story) in June. The first three will be in paperback, the fourth in hardcover. Seducing An Angel will be out in paperback in May, 2010 and will be followed in June by Taming the Devil (tentative title) in hardcover. It is Constantine's story. That book will be out in paperback in May, 2011.
After that, there will be books for Gwen and Angeline, occupying spots in May (paperback of former year's hardcover) and June (new hardcover) each year. Gwen, Lady Muir, you may recall is a minor character in One Night For Love and A Summer To Remember, and I have long been meaning to write her story. I know many of you have been waiting for it too. Angeline, Lady Heyward, is the married sister of the Duke of Tresham and Lord Ferdinand Dudley in More Than A Mistress and No Man's Mistress, and her love story with Heyward begs to be told as a prequel to those two books. I have not yet decided who will go first--Gwen or Angeline.
And then there are the old books, and there is a whole pile of those scheduled for republication, most of them in 2-in-one volumes. A Precious Jewel, sequel to The Ideal Wife (republished June, 2008), will be out in December, 2009. After that the 2-in-1s start: Dark Angel & Lord Carew's Bride in March, 2010, The Famous Heroine & The Plumed Bonnet in October, 2010, A Promise of Spring & The Temporary Wife in February, 2011, A Christmas Bride & Christmas Beau in September, 2011, and A Counterfeit Betrothal & The Notorious Rake in January, 2012.
Whew! That is a lot of books. I'll give more details on each one, of course, as they come due. But for those of you impatient to find my backlist books, this will give an idea of when you will finally be able to get your hands on some of them. I hope more will follow when these are done. There are certainly plenty of them left!
And there will be a few novellas coming, though I have no exact schedule for them yet. There will be a Harlequin Christmas anthology this fall, in which my story "A Handful of Gold" will be republished along with novellas by Nicola Cornick and Courtney Milan. And there is to be a Harlequin anthology of paranormal stories based on four of the Jane Austen novels, entitled Bespelling Jane. It is the brainchild of Susan Krinard, who dragged me kicking and screaming into the scheme. I love reading paranormals but have never felt any burning urge to write one. Don't expect werewolves or vampires from me. Reincarnation is as paranormal as I can get, I'm afraid. But I hope my story, "Almost Persuaded" will be a five-hanky great love story, based on Persuasion. The other two contributors to the volume will be Colleen Gleason and Janet Mullany. Two of the stories will be historicals, and two will be contemporaries, an interesting combination.
And then, probably around Valentine's, 2010, there will be a small volume I have written for Vanguard Press, called A Matter of Class. It is longer than a novella, shorter than a novel. I'll give more detail later.