True story. Saturday night I was at a party and I got the right answer to this question: Who sang “Ballroom Blitz”? (Answer: below.) I also knew the answer to who sang “Don’t Pull Your Love Out on Me, Baby.” (Other answer below.) What this says about me I don’t even want to know.

And, since we’re talking about Ballrooms, TODAY marks the Great Debut on a brand new blog!

Six authors: Katharine Ashe, Sabrina Darby, Tessa Dare, Gaelen Foley, Sarah MacLean and Miranda Neville. One blog: www.theballroomblog.com This is what I am now officially calling A SuperBlog!!

So bookmark this today! And be sure to let them know what you think of their new venture. Their motto is “Daring ladies, dashing lords, and deliciously juicy gossip.” I think it’s going to be fantastically fun.

Answers: 1) Sweet; 2) Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Reynolds.

I’m beginning my official blog week by ordering everyone to get Impulsive–or, rather, to check out these July Avon Impulse titles.

Now, if I could figure out how to make this work, you’d get to see pictures of all three of these books. But WordPress has never been my friend, so you’ll just have to be content with the art from DIARIES OF AN URBAN PANTHER by Amanda Arista, which is so much fun I can hardly contain myself.

If you check out “wherever e-books are sold”, you can see the darling art for LINNETTE, THE LIONESS by Lavinia Kent. This is for you historical romance fans out there. We’re calling this one “The one with the fake baby.” If that doesn’t grab you I don’t know what will.

We’re publishing a book a week in Avon Impulse (and, no, since you ask, we don’t sleep). This is just the start of the July list!

And next, SECOND CHANCE AT THE SUGAR SHACK by Candis Terry. I had the pleasure of meeting Candis at the RWA convention this year. She was AWESOME and oodles of fun. And this debut romance is also fun–there’s a sexy lawman, but there’s also the ghost of the heroine’s mother, who follows her daughter around giving her unasked-for advice. Thanks, mom!

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennett is asked when she fell in love with Darcy. “I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” It’s my belief she was only half joking. Those gorgeous stately homes are enough to turn any girl’s head. Choosing real estate for my characters is one of the most fun parts of writing English-set historicals.

Much of The Dangerous Viscount takes place in three different English country mansions, each inspired by specific stately homes.

Keddleston House

The book begins at Mandeville House, the seat of the Duke of Hampton. Diana Fanshawe, a young widow, has set her sights on Lord Blakeney, the duke’s heir. Also in the house party is Sebastian Iverley, Blake’s nerdy bookworm cousin. Diana bets Blake she can make the shy and misogynistic Sebastian kiss her. The trouble is, Sebastian has fallen for her and when he finds out about the bet he is devastated. Mandeville is a vast eighteenth century mansion, somewhat inspired by Keddleston Hall.

Longleat House in Wiltshire, inspiration for Cain's house in The Wild Marquis

Sebastian intends to make Diana fall in love with him and then dump her. With the help of his friends, he gets an extreme makeover and turns into quite the fashionable gentleman. It turns out he was pretty hot underneath the spectacles and old fashioned clothing. His revenge plan comes to a head during a visit to Markley Chase Abbey, the home of the Marquis of Chase (hero of THE WILD MARQUIS). Markley Chase is an Elizabethan house inspired by Longleat House.

Seaton Delaval Hall near Newcastle-upon-Tyne became Sebastian's house, Saxton Iverley

Eventually the action moves to Sebastian’s own estate, a dark, sprawling mansion perched on a cliff next to the North Sea. Here we learn the secrets of Sebastian’s past. My inspiration for Saxton Iverley was Seaton Delaval, an amazing house in Northumberland.

Saxton is in serious need of redecoration and Diana takes on the job with full access to the great fabric and antique store of my fantasies. And that’s a subject for another day.

But that doesn’t mean the heroine isn’t important, especially not in Lord Lightning, because it is what the heroine brings to this book that sets it apart.

That’s because my heroine, Eliza, is an amateur astrologer, and it is her ability to read character from a birth chart that allows her to see beneath the surface of a man who has made it his life’s work to present the world with a dazzling–and very misleading–surface.

Her astrological charts alert Eliza to the pain he keeps hidden from the world, and it is her steady trust in the hidden goodness her charts have shown her that gives the man they call Lord Lightning the courage to break out of the self-destructive behavior patterns he has become trapped in.

But as readers of Lord Lightning will learn, Eliza herself is no serene wise woman. There are hidden, darker forces at work in her own personality that explain why she has chosen to stand on the sidelines, watching others, and commenting on their lives instead of living her own.

Her casual observations about Lord Lightning’s character unleash these forces, for he is proud of his unsavory reputation and does not take well to being understood. So when Eliza sets out to prove to him that he harbors a loving heart, this man whose greatest pleasure comes from thumbing his nose at society’s rules retaliates by showing her that, whatever arcane knowledge she might have mastered, she has a woman’s body.

In the end, Eliza’s struggle to accept what Lord Lightning teaches her about her real self is as important to the unfolding of the story as is the redemption of its tormented hero.

And that’s as it should be. A character who does not change and grow as a story unfolds is boring, and whatever else you might say about Eliza and the outrageous libertine who she sets out to tame, neither of them is ever going to bore you.

What’s the difference between a Viking and a medieval knight.

The answer:  Not much.

Really.

Readers who are avid fans of medieval romances often decline to try Viking ones, largely because they have a distorted view of Vikings as vicious rapers and pillagers.  But that is just a distorted representation perpetuated by the biased monk historians of that time period.

Both Viking and Saxon men of a certain class were committed to fighting for their leaders, whether they be kings or high-chieftains.  These were primitive times, and there was violence on both sides.  Both Viking and Saxon men had other responsibilities to families, servants and cotters.  Many of them worked the land or earned funds as traders.  Their clothing and battle gear, not to mention their language, were often similar.

But here’s the neat thing about Vikings.  Their women were given more independence than other females of that time. Although they had little  choice in a husband (marriages were arranged for gain or military alliance), they could own their own land.  Everything they brought to a marriage was theirs, including the dowry.  And if they wanted to divorce their husbands, all they had to do was announce before witnesses, “I divorce you.”

Even better, the Vikings…men and women alike…had a great sense of humor.  Their sagas were evidence of their ability to laugh at themselves.

My new book, THE VIKING TAKES A KNIGHT, is a perfect example of this, especially since the heroine of this book is the Viking, an independent Norsewoman with her own wealth and occupation, while the hero is a Saxon knight.

If you would like to know more about THE VIKING TAKES A KNIGHT, or my other books, to get free novellas or genealogy charts, check out my website at www.sandrahill.net.

And, as always, I wish you smiles in your reading.

From the moment he first appeared in book one, Jag has been trouble. He’s a jerk and knows he’s a jerk. And loves being a jerk. He has a bad attitude, a foul mouth, and enjoys nothing more than making the other Feral Warriors lose their cool and go feral, ripping into him with fangs and claws. Jag loves a good fight and loves getting a rise out of people, especially the pretty little redheaded Therian Guard, Olivia. The first time they met, she drove her heel through his instep at his crass welcome. The second time was in the war room at Feral House.

Jag leaned forward, willing Olivia to meet his gaze. “Whatcha say, Red? Be my buddy? We’ll have oh so much fun, Sugar. I’ll f*** your brains out when we’re not hunting.”

Olivia’s eyes flared with shock, and something more, something dark and hot.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her two men go tense as iron rods against the back wall, as if ready to leap to her defense. Against a Feral. Idiots.

Olivia’s hand shot toward the pair like a traffic cop’s, though her gaze held Jag’s.

Jag!” Lyon snapped. “You will show some respect.”

Jag leaned back in his chair, his mouth pulling up in a small, satisfied    smile. Ah, yes. He did so love to spread good cheer.

How do you make a hero out of a guy like this? That became the challenge of writing Jag’s story. I sometimes felt like I was walking a tightrope. Stray too far to one side and I risked forcing him to be something he hasn’t been in all three preceding books. There’s nothing worse than changing a character’s personality just because he’s been thrust into the role of ‘hero’. Protagonist or not, he still had to be Jag. But if I strayed too far to the other side, I risked him being too unlikable. Which was exactly what he wanted, troublesome shifter.

So where did I find that middle ground? The key was in understanding him, in digging deep into his psyche and understanding why he was the way he was. What made him tick. I’m not going to tell you what I discovered — you’ll have to read his story for that — but I will say that once I fully understood him, seeing the hero inside him was easy.

Of course, finding the hero inside him was only the first step. I had to make the reader see it. And the heroine. Fortunately, Olivia figured out Jag pretty quickly.

“Do you even know why you do it?” Olivia asked.

“Do what?”

“Annoy the hell out of everyone?”

Jag shrugged. “It’s just who I am, Sugar. Like I said, I’m not a nice guy.”

“See, I don’t believe that.”

Tearing his gaze from the road, he gave her an incredulous look.

She leaned her shoulder more firmly against the car seat as if settling in for a nice long discussion. Hell.

From the beginning, the biggest obstacle to making Jag a hero was Jag himself. He not only didn’t see himself in that role, but he didn’t want anything to do with it. I had to drag him there kicking and screaming the entire way. But he had it in him, I knew that. And when he finally realized it, I have to admit, Olivia wasn’t the only one who fell in love with him.

Some guys are born heroes. But sometimes the ones who have the longest path to travel are the most interesting. Watching Jag become what he never thought he could be, made all the trouble worthwhile.

This happened, of course. The sights and smells of the rural South, the feeling of summer air literally settling on my skin – all of this became very real to me. As usual, I found ways to bring the food I remember from growing up into the story so that I had the pleasure of letting my characters eat all the good stuff I now deny myself. (If you’ve never had a Moon Pie, go find one.)

But in the writing of this story, something unanticipated occurred, as well.

I was sixteen in 1976, the year the novel takes place. One of the characters in the book is Lola, a 16-year-old girl. Her character and the seeds of the story originated in a much earlier novel that was never published, and while I slipped into her skin as easily as before, I found that I identified more this time around with the main characters in the book — her parents, Rosalind and Roy.

My own parents are gone now, and missed every day. Rosalind and Roy are very different from Mom and Dad, but in visiting the narrative day in and day out, it was as if, for a time, I could become a contemporary of my own parents. I almost felt them as bystanders watching the story unfold. And, as Rosalind and Roy wrangled with all of the decisions they were forced to make in the book, I saw how my own folks agonized over their choices when raising us.

I’d always seen my parents as larger than life. This book brought the details and realities of their time to me on a human scale. It was a gift really. Almost like sitting in a room with them again, but this time, with a much greater understanding of their inner lives. I’ve often experienced the feeling of escape when reading a novel, but fiction can also serve as a way to engage, as well – to connect the dots from past realities to present ones.

I’d love to know if others experience these things when reading (or writing) works of fiction. When reading books with familiar settings, does the “home” of past days seem something other than a distant memory? Do you ever mesh your newly acquired adult perspective with things familiar from your past to come up with a new respect and greater empathy for the people who shaped your early life?

If you read Leaving Before It’s Over, I hope that whether it is an escape for you or a visit back home, you will experience a sense of discovery. It is, I find, the best argument for giving your time to a book.