This Is It!

For months now, I've been anxious, eager, both uncertain and excited about what the future holds at

the same time. For three years now, every six months, I had to meet a deadline. It helped me focus, figure out my timeline and marketing strategy. Along the way, I've honed my craft, although my editor still has to remind me to avoid duplicating myself, and to be consistent in my message–things I should have learned by now.

People have asked me how I'll feel once the final book is off to the printer. The best answer I could come up with until now is "I don't know, since it hasn't happened yet, but I expect it'll be like becoming an empty-nester."

Yesterday, I was asked to pick the art for my final cover and it finally sunk in that This Is It. The final one in the series. It doesn't matter that I'll use some of the secondary characters in off-shoot books, or that I have many other books ratting around in my head, just waiting for the opportunity to break through when I'm not planning on it. There will never be another Cotillion Ball Series,
and there will never be another family like the Fitzpatricks. I've felt like an honored guest at their table each week and have rejoiced and cried with them during their struggles, loves and losses.

So, I picked the cover art and received a satisfying shiver of excitement with my choice. The farewell tour will be fun to get through, since I love both Saffron and Zeke, and my favorite of the brothers, Halwyn, plays a prominent role in her story as well.

And, as for a farewell tour, I seem to recall that at one time or another, Sher, Madonna, Tina Turner and Celine Dion all announced they were doing a farewell tour and they're still grabbing the spotlight. I fully intend to follow suit. Just need a long black wig now.

Here It Comes!

Expressly Yours, Samantha will be released tomorrow, March 16. It's been a long time in the making and I'm so excited to have it out there, finally. What do I mean? Don't I write two historicals a year in the Cotillion series? Why was this one so long in the making?

Because of my contract with Crimson, I had to write the synopsis for the last five books in the series long before I wrote them. That was a first for me, the proverbial pantser. But it worked, since it made me look further down the road than I had for the first few books. I was able to insert little nuggets into my stories which may have seemed like an aside at the time, but which were helping to set the stage for a later book. For instance, if you go back and look for it, you'll see Valerian had a love affair with horses for years before he got his own story. Dropping those little clues into a story makes the idea that all the youngest Fitzpatrick boy wanted to do was ride horses more believable. It is fortunate that his story unfolds when the Pony Express is starting up. Coincidence? That's for you, the reader, to decide.

In order to write this story, I had to do a great deal of research, including a cross-country trip. All I knew about the Pony Express was that it was a romantic page in American history, it got the mail from the east coast to the west coast, and it involved horses. I had no clue how it was put together, or why. On my trip, I stopped at every place where there was something to do with the Pony Express and picked up on some of the local flavor. I ended up with three great research books on the subject, rode through the countryside in the middle of winter, and took pictures. This is the first book in the series that can be classified as a western, and a horse on the cover makes sense. I couldn't be happier. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.