Greetings!
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. Besides, 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 The Rules of Seduction. 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, however, 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. Yes, 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. However, 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—The Goddess 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
Dear Friends,
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 will be released.
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, The Rules of Seduction, was published.
The “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
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
