Greetings, dear readers!
I am writing this on April 1. No one has played any jokes on me yet. If someone does I won’t mind because the temperature has finally topped 60 and that puts me in a wonderful mood. I have spent March freezing, either here at home or when I travel. Those of you in southern climates don’t have this problem, but we northerners think winter should be done now, thank you very much, and I am thrilled to finally open my windows.
It was a hard winter in some ways, not just with the climate. My mother passed away on December 26. She had been ailing for a long time, and failing fast during her last few months. I was able to spend a lot of time with her, for which I was grateful, but it is one reason this site has not been updated much since the fall. Her name was Anna, and the book dedicated to her, The Protector, has just been reissued this month, which is a nice unintended tribute.
The heroine in The Protector is also named Anna, and in her strength and independence she embodied my nonfiction Anna’s character. Morvan, the hero, was one of those characters that readers discovered in another book and wrote to me about immediately, wanting his story. He was my very first hero and The Protector, in an earlier form, was my very first romance manuscript. I am still in love with him. (The story about how The Protector was written, and how it was published after books written later, can be found in my first ever letter, available in the archives of this page.)
The other reissue is Lord of a Thousand Nights. This is my Scottish medieval romance, set in the borderlands and revolving around a contested estate. The hero is Ian, a bad boy masking a deep inner wound, who finds purpose and direction and redemption through his protection of the lovely Reyna.
Other than dealing with “life happening” I have been writing these last months. My next book, Secrets of Surrender, will be released on May 20. It is the third book in the Rothwell series, and it is Roselyn Longworth’s story.
Roselyn was Alexia’s cousin in Rules of Seduction, the one who blamed Hayden Rothwell for her family’s ruin. In Secrets of Surrender she has learned the truth about that sorry episode, and that thread finds its final resolution. She has also embarked on a disastrous love affair that will alter the course of her life. An excerpt is up, and in it you will meet Kyle Bradwell, the self-made man who helps Roselyn rediscover herself and her true worth. This is a marriage of convenience story with a twist, and with conflicts both obvious and secret.
I am currently writing the fourth and (probably) final book in the series. Yes, it is Christian’s book! Readers have been writing to me about the unusual and compelling Marquess of Easterbrook since first meeting him. He has been an important secondary character in every story, and now he is getting his own. The tentative title has been chosen: The Sins of Lord Easterbrook. I can give a hint to readers of prior books— In Rules of Seduction, Alexia observes that it seems Easterbrook is “waiting for something.” As Sins opens, the waiting ends.
As always, the books in my series can be read out of order. I give away no secrets from earlier books when I write the later ones. That can get tricky, but I think that I pulled it off in Secrets of Surrender. Those of you reading the series in order will understand what I mean if you read it.
I hope that the season of renewal holds only good things for you. Thank you for visiting!
Madeline Hunter
