It has been a busy summer for me. I feel like I have been traveling nonstop since May. First I attended a family reunion. Then my husband and I took a vacation to the eastern Mediterranean and visited Turkey and Greece. (I loved every minute!)
Close on the heels of that was the RWA national conference in Washington, DC, where I had the honor of presenting the RITA for historical romance to Pam Rosenthal. I also helped host a party for readers there after the big literacy book signing, along with the other authors who participate in The Goddess Blogs.
Finally, I am home, writing like a demon every day, finishing up the second book in my forthcoming series.
The first two books in the series will be published back to back by Berkley in February and March of 2010. I am excited to be at this new publisher and also by the series itself. I am having a lot of fun writing it, and love the way the characters are developing!
Titled The Rarest Blooms, the series is projected to have four books. The series tag refers to a household of unrelated women who live outside London, where they have a business, called The Rarest Blooms, growing hothouse flowers for commercial sale. Each woman has a past that makes her of questionable respectability, and most of them are less than forthcoming about their histories. Their mysteries thread through the series and, one by one, they are revealed as the past catches up with them.
The first book, Ravishing in Red, introduces this loving but unusual sisterhood who live according to Daphne’s Rule. The Rule consists of agreed upon policies of behavior that govern how they treat each other. Foremost is the part that says they do not pry into each other’s past or business. My inspiration for their group and Rule was the beguinage of medieval Europe, a community of unmarried women who lived together communally without taking vows, who followed an order of living, and who often had employment outside the group’s household. These were numerous in the 13th and 14th centuries, and could consist of a small group, or, as in a famous beguinage in Ghent, communities of over a thousand women
Ravishing in Red opens with a bang. Literally. Audrianna Kelmsleigh, the most recent addition to The Rarest Blooms, brings a pistol to a secret meeting where she hopes to gain information that will clear her late father’s name of disgrace. Before the night ends, that pistol will shoot Lord Sebastian Summerhays, one of the men she blames with hounding her father to the grave.
I hope to have the cover up very soon, along with an excerpt. In the next month or so I also expect to post information about book 2, Provocative in Pearls.
I want to let you know that I am on Twitter as simply MadelineHunter, and that of course I continue to blog at www.TheGoddessBlogs.com. Our blog is lighthearted fun, and a nice break from work or writing, so give us a try. The entire group blog, or just my individual ones, are available as RSS feeds.
Madeline
