Whee, covers!

Short stories coming soon from EagleSong Books:

-- in which a banker's widow in 1900 England discovers it's never to late to go in search of the love of a lifetime.

and

-- in which a 16th century Cornishwoman has one chance to break free of her family's grisly legacy and seize her heart's desire...the dashing Mateo.

I loved writing both of these stories, and am very pleased they have a chance to see daylight once more. Yes, "Queen of the Ocean" is the same story as "Frances, Queen of the Ocean" that appeared in A Hint of Seduction ezine. The original title wouldn't fit on an ebook cover, so we scaled it down.

Along with the novel work, I'm also writing a third story for EagleSong, "The Hired Husband," this one set in Wisconsin and New York in 1852. Widowed on the frontier, Mariah, a city girl at heart, advertises for a new husband to take her back to her hometown of Germantown, NY. German immigrant Kurt needs a wife and he is planning to go back east -- all the way back to Germany. What better wife could he find than one who wants to live in a German town?

Stay tuned for details.

Still dealing with family health issues, but hope to have things in that regard settled soon.

One bright spot -- I've sold two short stories to Eaglesong Books. "Tommy" (subtitled Quest for a Lost Love) is a turn of the century tale of an English widow who decides it's not too late for second chances. "Queen of the Ocean" takes place in 16th century Cornwall, and follows the adventure of Frances, a wrecker's daughter, and Mateo, the half-Spanish sailor. Both stories are very special to me (and have great covers, too) and I am thrilled they will be available once more. More details as I get them.

Due to a downturn in my dad's health, I'm a little scarcer than normal, but still hope to get some posting done in the midst of everything else.

This file was on the hard drive of the puter that got virusified, under the filename "manifesto"

• I like beautiful heroines. Not that there is only one kind of beautiful, but I want her to have impact.
• I like blond heroes. Or red-haired. Or bald. I honestly do not have a preferred hair color, but please, for the love of creamed corn, if hair is "dark," say dark what.
• I like stories that play out over years instead of weeks or months.
• I like stories that sweep across continents.
• I like it when beloved secondary characters die in the course of the plot.
• But not the dog, cat or horse.
• I want someone’s heart to break.
• I like long separations.
• I don’t mind if the hero or heroine has other spouses after meeting their true love, as long as they wind up together in the end.
• I like heroines who disguise themselves as male, and I like when they have to work to keep from being found out.
• I like it when they finally are.
• I like it when they transition back to being girly again.
• I like when hero and heroine clash.
• I want the highs to be worth the lows.
• I want my history to be an integral part of the romance.
• I want it to do that without turning into a textbook.
• I like it when the mores of the time affect how the hero and heroine deal with their attraction to each other.
• I want books to be real; sympathetic characters do, feel, and say not so nice things. They can have moments of being selfish, mean, fearful, dense, etc, and still be a hero or heroine.
• I want to break the box, take the risks, do something new.

Do you agree with any of these, or do they push your hot buttons?