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.

Schließlich, 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!

Betitelt Die seltensten 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, Hinreißend 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, oder, as in a famous beguinage in Ghent, communities of over a thousand women

Hinreißend in Red opens with a bang. Buchstäblich. 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, Provokative in Perlen.

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

Gruß!

I am writing this in frigid weather, while I wait for a frozen pipe to thaw. I pray it hasn’t split from the ice. I am stressing on the mess that would make. On the other hand my heat is still working, and my mother always said to count your blessings. Neben, with single digit temperatures out there, what better opportunity to stay warm and to jot a note to friends?

I have some news to report. The Sins of Lord Easterbrook will be released on January 27, 2009. This is Christian’s story, and readers have been writing to me about him ever since he first appeared as a secondary character in Die Regeln der Verführung. He is one of those men, if you know what I mean. Reviews are beginning to come in, both formal (professional reviewers) and informal (early readers). I hope that their assessment—that I did well by Christian—will be yours too.

The Sins of Lord Easterbrook is the fourth and last book in my Rothwell brothers series. As always, all the books can be read separately.

This novel also includes my first ever Epilogue. I know some readers love them, but when a series is unfolding I prefer to show that later experience in the later books. With this final book, jedoch, I really felt it needed this Epilogue. Due to the story, I wanted to display these two characters, and the others from the series, a bit later in time. It also allowed me to tie up a couple of loose ends in the series, regarding some characters who did not play big roles in the plots but whose presence threaded through all the books.

I am hard at work on the next series. Currently I envision four books, with four connected but unrelated women on one side, and four connected but unrelated men on the other. The men are all aristocrats and the women come from a variety of backgrounds and all have ambiguous respectability and, in some cases, even ambiguous identities. I will share more details later, after I get deeper into the first book.

The first of these books, as yet untitled, is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 2010. Ja, a whole year away. That delay is the result of another bit of news. I have changed publishers for the first time in my career. That usually adds a few months to the publishing schedule for the first book in the new arrangement. Jedoch, I will again be working with the editor who first “discovered” me, so this change will not be as stressful as I can imagine it might be.

I have finally started blogging!! I was invited to join a group blog—Die Göttin Blogs—comprised of writers I admire and know. I will have a few blogs a month, which will not interfere with my writing. So come visit us, and if you like what you see, set up the RSS feed. There is also a forum and other activities.We don’t just talk writing. We gab about whatever strikes our fancy.

I am in the middle of a video for The Sins of Lord Easterbrook. Some readers love book videos, and some hate ’em. I enjoy making them so I do them for fun. The hardest part continues to be finding the “face” for the hero, and Easterbrook was a particular challenge. Thanks to the wonders of an expert in Photoshopping, I have a face to die for. Seriously. So keep checking back for when it is done and I upload it on the home page.

I want to sign off now with a personal thought. No one is untouched by this economy’s problems, and I know that some of you are very badly affected. My best thoughts are with you. I pray that the new year brings better things for everyone down the road.

Madeline

Liebe Freunde,

It has been an eventful summer for me and I have a lot of news to share.

Secrets of Surrender, my June ‘08 book, was a NYTimes bestseller on their main, published list. This was a career first for me. I have had books on their extended list before, but not the one with the top slots that is actually printed in the newspaper.

Secrets also was in the top, published 50 of the USAToday bestseller list, and on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list. I thank each one of you who took a chance on my story and helped me to achieve these wonderful milestones!

Then in July, Lessons of Desire won the RITA for best historical romance of 2007. The award was announced at the annual convention of the Romance Writers of America. The conference was in San Francisco this year and I was delighted to meet some of you at the Literacy Signing.

I also had a chance to meet some readers at the Romantic Times conference in Pittsburgh last April. I was impressed by the wide geographic range represented by the fans. I met readers from as far away as Australia and Thailand.

Of course I also spent the summer writing! The results are coming on January 27, 2009. That is when The Sins of Lord Easterbrook werden freigegeben.

This is Christian’s story. He is the eldest of the Rothwell brothers who have anchored my current series. Readers have been writing to me about him since the first book, Die Regeln der Verführung, was published.

Die “Sins” in the title refer to his, but also to those of his father, and the dark legacy from their parents that has shadowed the Rothwell brothers throughout the series. I hope that you will think I have done well by Christian, who is one of the most distinct and vivid male characters that I have had to grapple with. I say “grapple” because he truly wanted to take over a couple of the earlier books and I had to keep him in line until it was time for his story.

True to those previous appearances, in this novel he is mysterious, imperious, arrogant, but also at times endearingly thoughtful. Readers will also learn about the reasons for his somewhat eccentric habits, and the scars and vulnerabilities buried deeply beneath his confidence and authority. No, he is not mad, or even half so, as some in society whisper! As always with my books, you do not have to read the series in order.

On the personal side of life, the summer was also busy. Our family took a very relaxing cruise, visiting some Caribbean ports. I pretty much just rotted and came back rested and ready to work. My siblings and I also had the first of what will be regular reunions. I organized it and chose Williamsburg because there are a great variety of activities in the area. We could pursue our own interests by day and gather together in the evening. If anyone knows of other places like that—where you can keep the history/museum people happy as well as the shoppers or sports-oriented folks—please email me so I can put it in the “potential reunion site” pool.

On a very personal note, I send my best thoughts to all of you. As I write this we are in economically frightening times and I know that many of you are being affected, some severely so. I find myself seeking escape in a good book more often recently. I look forward to putting the crazy real world on “hold” for a few hours, and visiting one where someone seems to be in control!

Madeline Hunter