We have just returned to our summer home in the small rural town of Kipling, Saskatchewan, Canada. It is likely to be a busy summer, though I am hoping for plenty of sunshine and heat to soak up after a long, hard winter. I rather fancy sitting outside on the deck as I write, especially as I have recently acquired one of the new MacBook Air laptops, which is very easy to transport. And yes, the ads are quite right-it really will slide into a brown manila envelope!

I will be writing through the summer, starting as soon as I return from the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Pittsburgh in mid-April. This will be Book 4 of the Huxtable quintet. Books 1, 2 and 3 are already written and will be out in successive months in the spring of 2009-March, April, and May. They are First Comes Marriage, Then comes Seduction, and At Last Comes Love. They will all be in paperback. Book 4 will be a month or so later in hardcover-provided I can get it written in time, that is!

There will be interruptions through the summer. Our son is getting married in New York at the end of June and a largish number of our family will be going there to join the celebrations. Then in August I'll be going to Wales for my annual month or five weeks with my mother and other family members.

In October I will be in Saskatoon for the annual conference of the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild. I will be giving a talk there.

Some time in the fall I will be in Chicago for a few days autographing 6000 copies of my backlist books for Levy Home Entertainment, a giant book distribution company. They will distribute these books a month or so before the paperback release of Simply Perfect.

Do watch for the Avon anthology, It Happened One Night, in October. It should be a fun read with the four stories all having the same basic plot premise. We are toying with the idea of doing it again but involving readers this time in a competition to set us the plot idea on which our stories will have to be based. Watch for more information about that in the coming months at this site and on my fanlist.

And I have just agreed to participate in another anthology, this one the brainchild of Susan Krinard, who thought it would be fun to write paranormal novellas based on various Jane Austen novels. She had already recruited Colleen Gleason and Janet Mullany by the time she asked me. I was hesitant as I have never written anything paranormal, but I always find it difficult to resist a challenge, especially when it involves nothing more arduous than using the imagination. And so I have my sights set upon making something paranormal of the basic plot idea of Persuasion. The tentative title for the anthology is Bespelling Jane, and it will contain two historical and two contemporary novellas. You may watch for it some time in the future--if we can catch the interest of a publisher, that is!

Have a good summer. Relax with plenty of good books.