By Mary Jo Part 1 of our Baltic cruise covered Stockholm, Finland, and Estonia. The cruise is called Viking Homelands, and many of the places we visited were founded as Viking trading ports. Now some highlights of the rest of our journey. Russia; St. Petersburg, Russia was the easternmost stop of our voyage, and it's a city with more than its share of glamour and drama. It was founded in 1703 by Czar Peter the Great as his "window on the west." At the time, the country was largely landlocked (Archangel, the only other port in European Russia, is far... Continue reading

The Heart of Northern Europe by Mary Jo I never thought much about the Baltic Sea until we decided to take a cruise called Viking Homelands, which meant cruising the Baltic. "Viking" is a general term for the Scandinavians who were great navigators, raiders and traders. Norwegian Vikings usually headed west across the North Atlantic, the Danes sailed south to harass Britain, and the Swedish Vikings traveled east into the Baltic, where the established numerous trading settlements. The Baltic, like the Mediterranean, is a marginal sea, meaning it's largely enclosed by land with only limited access to the ocean. For... Continue reading

by Mary Jo Holiday anthologies are fun to read and fun to write, so I was happy to sign on to this project with two other Kensington authors, both bestsellers and friends of many years, Madeline Hunter and Sabrina Jeffries. Seduction on a Snowy Night received a starred review from Library Journal, and is listed as one of BookPage's top Christmas romance reads. Publishers Weekly said, "Christmas touches appear throughout, and the passion is hot enough to melt a snow bank. This fanciful Regency anthology will keep readers warm all winter." Though the three of us all write mostly in... Continue reading

by Mary Jo One of the great pleasures of going to a conference in NYC is the opportunity to go to a Broadway show, by which I mean something generally fun and upbeat, with music. (Past choices have included HAIRSPRAY, BILLY ELLIOTT, and SOMETHING ROTTEN, all wonderful in different ways.) Since Pat Rice and I were rooming together, we looked at what was currently available and she suggested the Canadian musical, Come From Away which she'd seen in California and was willing to see again, which was high praise. I wasn't familiar with the show, but she said it was... Continue reading

By Mary Jo In June, I blogged about the cover evolution of my book Petals in the Storm, from its first appearance as a Signet Regency titled The Controversial Countess to the most recent incarnation. Here's the link if you'd like to see the cover changes over the years Petals is my only book with a first scene that was the last scene of the previous book, only told from this hero's point of view while in The Bargain, we watched the action through other eyes. It was that last scene that made me interested enough in Rafe Whitbourne, the... Continue reading

by Mary Jo I've loved Word Wench Anne Gracie's Marriage of Convenience series, and I pounced on Marry in Secret, which has just been released, along with an audiobook version. Today Anne is here to talk about the book and the series. MJP: In a brief recap of the series, Book 1, Marry in Haste, features Cal Rutherford, Lord Ashendon, an intrepid army officer who finds himself terrorized by a gaggle of uncontrollable young females for whom he is responsible. The book won the Holt Medallion for best historical romance, and won three awards from ARRA, the Australian Romance Readers... Continue reading

Mary Jo We Wenches are creatures of The Book, but we also enjoy stories in other formats. Here's a selection of what we've been watching and enjoying on TV/streaming/movies lately. From Nicola: I’ve been glomming on Killing Eve, which is a British spy thriller TV series where a female intelligence officer tracks down a female psychopathic assassin. It’s based on the Villanelle books by Luke Jennings which I haven’t read so I’m not sure how close the show mirrors the books, whether the book or the TV series is better, or whether it matters! The series has won multiple awards... Continue reading

by Mary Jo Petals in the Storm Last week I did a blog about the new release of my first full length historical romance, Dearly Beloved,and included the various covers the story has had over the years. there was interest in all the variations, I thought I'd do it again for Petals in the Storm, Fallen Angels #3, for which I've just done a new cover. Before I get started with that, though, HAPPY CANADA DAY to Canadians everywhere, especially our Canadian Wench, Susanna Kearsley, and our Canadian readers! It's the 152nd anniversary of the Constitution Act, and this year... Continue reading

by Mary Jo The Story Behind the Story: In this era of e-books, backlist books are widely available, but it's rare for an older book to get a major re-release by a different publisher. I started my writing career with the shorter, lighter Signet Regency romances, but after five books, I was champing at the bit to write longer, more intense stories, which might also pay enough to allow me to become a full time writer. Hence, Dearly Beloved. It was an edgy book when it was first published, and it's edgy still. It features themes that I return to... Continue reading

by Mary Jo Producing audiobooks from my back list is time consuming and not inexpensive, but I continue to do them because so many people really like listening to audiobooks. My current goal is to make audio available for all seven of my Fallen Angels books, and we're getting close! Several years ago I started with audio versions of Thunder and Roses and Dancing on the Wind along with the non-Fallen Angels book The Bargain. The economics of producing audiobooks changed dramatically so I put the audio program on hold for several years, but the marketplace is always changing, so... Continue reading

By Mary Jo and the rest of the Wenchly Crew Has it really been thirteen years since we cautiously launched the Word Wenches blog? Indeed yes, and so much has changed in the world, in publishing, and in us. We've lost beloved Wench sisters Edith Layton and Jo Beverley, entered into new genres and new forms of publishing, and we've expanded to having Wenches from Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US so we can truly say that the sun never sets on the Wench Empire! Here is the very first Word Wench blog post, also written by me. (I... Continue reading

by Mary Jo On Wednesday I talked a bit about museums I visited on my recent week long getaway in London, and they were great. Today I'm going to riff about the people and non-museum spaces, which was even more fun! (The very British shop window to the left was in the St. James area, about which more below.) A catalyst for the trip was the opportunity to take an interesting workshop, which I did and very interesting it was, but what made London special was the people. Firstly, I stayed with a writer friend at her home in Chelsea,... Continue reading

By Mary Jo I've always been an Anglophile. I'm not sure if it's my DNA or all the books I read with British settings and British authors. I remember being surprised in school when a world map showed me the actual location of the British Isles. So far north and so SMALL! But mighty in world history, and in my imagination. My interest in Britain and British history had a lot to do with living there for over two years in my 20s, when I was the art editor of a start up magazine about third World Development. I lived... Continue reading

by Mary Jo We Word Wenches love doing these posts because we always find new authors to try! Starting off with Pat Rice: One Plus One by JoJo Moyes I love the way romance has expanded into women’s fiction, and One Plus One by JoJo Moyes is a masterful example of how it’s done. It’s clear from the very first that we have a conflicted hero and heroine. Ed is owner of a software company about to go mega-huge. Jess is his housekeeper—and he doesn’t even know she exists because she cleans his vacation home, and he never takes vacations.... Continue reading