I’m not superstitious. On any day of the week, I will step on cracks, walk under ladders, shrug at black cats crossing my path, and laugh at people who get panicky over a broken mirror.

Or I do until I want something really, really badly. And then, watch out because NO ONE can be as superstitious as me.

For instance, when my son’s football team was up for their regional championship, I became the Queen of Lucky Magicks. Every time I spilled salt, I tossed a pinch over my shoulder. Every time I saw a black cat, I made an invisible ‘X’ in the air. I kept my rabbit’s foot close and rubbed it every time I thought about it. And, just to be safe, I avoided all ladders, broken mirrors, and cracks in the sidewalk as if they could lash out and kill me on the spot.

If it COULD be bad luck, then I wanted no part of it.

His team won. It was the first time his school had beaten the other school in over 40 years, too, so I guess all of my superstitious actions paid off. Either that or it was the hundreds of hours that my son and his team mates put in during practices.

Nah. It was probably because of me.

There are two things I want really, really badly right this minute and, as I have no control over either, I can feel the itch of superstition beginning to tickle my ears.

First, I want the Packers to win the Superbowl. (Don’t laugh. Aaron Rodgers has come to save the Pack. He is the New and Improved and Younger and Less Egocentric Brett Favre.)

Second, I want my book, MUCH ADO ABOUT MARRIAGE (which is coming out tomorrow!) to be uber, fantastically, and magnificently well received.

Those are the two big things I’d love, love, LOVE to happen, so tonight I’m going to get out my two lucky horseshoes, a pressed four-leaf clover, and the anti-evil eye bracelet that Hot Cop bought me when we visited Istanbul, and I’m going to place those items in my purse so they can start spreading their positive vibes all over me and my hopes/dreams/and wishes.

I may leave my lucky rabbit’s foot in the drawer, though. He’s losing his hair due to all of the rubbin’ he’s been getting this week.

Are you superstitious? Do you use a rabbit’s foot? Avoid walking under ladders? Does it bother you to step on a crack? Is there anything you’re crossing your fingers about right now? And do you, like me, become more superstitious when you’re faced with something you can’t control?

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Fun Contest Saturday is here!

This month we’re celebrating the release of Karen Hawkins’s newest historical, Much Ado About Marriage. This is the prequel to Karen’s MacLean Curse series and her upcoming Hurst Amulet Series.

Much Ado About Marriage is a rollicking tale that traverses a mystical Scottish isle, a stormy sea, and lands firmly in a luxurious manse upon the banks of the Thames as the luckiest man in England is forced to wed the unluckiest woman in Scotland!

How would you like to win a Karen Hawkins’s prize pack? Up for grabs this month is the best of both worlds from Karen–one reader will win a signed copy of Karen’s historical novel, Sleepless in Scotland, and a signed copy of her contemporary, Lois Lane Tells All!

To enter, just tell me about your most memorable wedding moment. It can be from your wedding, one you attended or even one you read about in a romance novel.

The contest ends at midnight, Sunday, August 29.
One winner will be chosen at random.

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The other day, Mr. R and I were dreaming of all the wonderful places we’d go if we could just up and travel.  I thought about the beautiful places I’ve seen and would love to see again, then all the places I’ve never been.

Here are some of my favorite been-there-wish-I-could-go-back places:

1) Hallstatt, Austria – it’s a lake high up in the Alps, with a salt mine.  But the view from here is breathtaking and, I think, the most beautiful place I’ve ever been

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2) Bridger Bowl, MT – my first time skiing!  It was majestic.

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3) Mizen Head, Ireland – it’s the most SW corner of Ireland, and home to a lighthouse.  The view from the bridge is straight down – has to be 1000 feet or more.  The day I was there, it was stormy and windy and the waves crashed on the rocks like they were whipped up by the devil himself.  It was so amazing.  I want to go back.

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Then I thought about the places I can see anytime I want to -

4) The beach near my house:

There are places I haven’t been and would love to go – Hawaii, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand (thinking about the scenes from LOTR), Tahiti…

Finally, the most welcome sight when I’ve been on the road – my own front porch.  Because I know the people I love are inside.  (Country music fans, yes, I’m hearing Lonestar sing “Front Porch Looking In.”)

What’s the most beautiful place you’ve ever been?  What beautiful places would you love to see?  Where would you go if you could blink your eyes and wish?  Did you go anywhere this summer that was amazing?

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When I was nineteen, the thought of turning twenty freaked me out. It meant I was no longer a teenager. All of my life up to that point, I thought twenty sounded so old. Then when I did turn twenty, I couldn’t wait to turn twenty-one so that I could drink legally and gamble in Vegas.

When I turned thirty, I was ready. I had three kids and was settling into the whole soccer mom thing. I really enjoyed soccer games, dance recitals, and Optimist Football. I also sold my first book when I was thirty-five. I’d have to say that my thirties were pretty good years.

So, today is my birthday. I’m turning 40–again. I freaked out the first time I turned forty, but I have to say, that every time I turn forty, it gets easier. And I think I get smarter the older I get. I know who I am and what I’ll tolerate in my life. I like the stability I have found in my forties, but I could do without the wrinkle I found on my elbow.

Do you tell people your real age? What do you like about your age? What don’t you like? And doesn’t happy birthday sound so much nicer in French?

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My first foreign rights sale, the first year I was published, was to Norway. I was fascinated. Norway? It was also my first magazine sale. The largest woman’s magazine there runs condensed versions of novels, and they chose By Arrangement.

I remember receiving my author copies of that magazine. They had taken my novel, of over 100,000 words, and condensed it to about 15,000! Who knew I had so much fluff in the book.  Since it was in Norwegian, I could not read it either, to see just what they had done. Probably for the best. I did figure out, from the names and how they showed up, that they probably took one thread of the story, sliced it out, and used that. So the result was a lot different from the book.

Since then I have sold whole books to Norway, and 12 other countries. Sometimes I receive author copies, and sometimes I don’t. In every case I have seen, they used different covers from my American books. I thought I would share some with you, just for fun.

Some of these publishers do use American covers, just not mine. I think that sometimes the rights to old covers are licensed in batches to some foreign publishers. Then they mix them around. I figured this out when one of my books was published in another country with a cover that looked familiar to me. Sure enough, it had been used on another author’s book here in the U.S. about five years earlier.

Some foreign publishers are big on the clinches. This is true of my books published in Norway, the Netherlands, and Germany. Others used to be, but have moved to other types. My French books used to use clinches, but my recent edition of Lessons of Desire (seen at the top left) is not of that type at all.

I recently received a Portuguese edition of Secrets of Surrender (center left here  <—) that I love. Not only the cover, but the whole book. It is trade sized, maybe bigger, and beautifully produced.  The Turkish edition of The Sins of Lord Easterbrook (the one with the fan down there), also trade size, is another gorgeous, very high quality book.

The Japanese version of Lord of Sin is another favorite of mine. The whole format is different from any of the others. Different size, sort of small and squarish and compact. I think it is a lovely design. The Polish cover down below (the red dress)  is also interesting and different. No head, but no body either. The dress is on a dress form, which gives it an almost surreal look.

You can probably figure out that they often change the titles. My Italian publisher always asks for permission. Not all of them do.

One of the interesting covers is down on the bottom right. It is for the Czech translation of The Sinner, from my Seducer series. It is very similar in layout and components to the covers my publisher designed for that series.It even has the same swirly flourishes. Except—they changed the guy’s face in the upper right. Their guys look more . . . . “manly.” Tougher. It is an interesting window into marketers’ ideas of male beauty, and how that differs by culture.

If you saw covers similar to the non clinch ones here, would you know they were romances? 

What do you think of these different approaches?  Which do you like best?

Where do you stand on the clinch cover question? Are they fun, or embarrassing? Do they help you identify books as romances when you browse?

If you had the job of designing romance covers, what would your covers look like?

(By the way, that upper right cover is Polish, and on a trade paperback. All of my Polish editions have those vignettes, or still lifes. No people.)

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Today is the first day of school here in my corner of Florida.  A few years ago, I was a high school teacher and looked to the first day of school with anticipation.  Today I’ll kiss my baby goodbye as she goes off to the 11th grade.  Of course I won’t kiss her goodbye in public and I probably won’t even really kiss her.  It’ll be more like a blown kiss as she walks out the door, LOL.  Because she’s in the 11th grade.

School is a common experience that binds us together, no matter from where on the planet we hail.  We had first days and last days.  Great teachers and not-so-great teachers.  Many of us remember the smell of paste, the feel of Elmer’s glue drying as a second skin to be peeled off, the smell of freshly mimeographed sheets, the feeling of having a pencil case filled with newly sharpened No. 2’s.

Aaah.

I look back on school with a lot of fond memories.  I was one of those kids who pined for the end of summer so I could get back to routine, the library, and even the homework.  I had so many really great teachers, but today I pay homage those who are always with me:

1) The chorus teacher in the 5th grade whose name I can’t recall.  She allowed me to stay in her room during recess and clap erasers so that I could escape the trio of girl bullies who’d made my life a living hell for months.  She also told me I could sing.  I can still see her smile.

2) Mrs. Marconi, my 7th grade language arts teacher, who was the first person who told me I could tell a story.  Of course, they were all filled with angst and torment, even then.

3) Mr. Glover, my 8th grade history teacher who made a point of marveling at my knowledge of American History and gave the shy kid on the front row a reason to hold her head high.  All that summer reading had finally paid off!

4) Ms. Keene, my 10th grade World History teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt Senior High School in Greenbelt, MD, who made of point of telling me that I sucked at history, LOL.  I’d written my first essay and she gave me a D+!  A D+!  Never in my life had I received anything less than an occasional B!

I protested, vociferously.

“I don’t deserve this grade,” I declared.  I’ll never forget the way she looked at me.  Like what she was about to say really mattered.  “No, you don’t,” she said.  “But you’re too nice a kid to to give a D-.”  It was like a punch in the gut.  I stared at her until she said, “Would you like to know how to make it better?”  I stammered in the affirmative and she told me what she was looking for.  She taught me how to write.

My next essay earned a B, then after that, it was A’s all the way.  I look back with amazing fondness at the old bat, who wore all black on test day, still colored her hair jet black at aged 65, lived on canned tuna so that she could go on trips to Greece and Rome during the summers, loved cats, and often wore T-shirts with slogans like “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”  If she’s still alive, she’s quite aged by now as she was nearing retirement in 1979.  Thank you, Ms. Keene.  You made a difference.

5) Dr. Hearle, my 11th grade organic chemistry teacher, who did more for my self-confidence than all of the teachers put together.  I’d loved his class in the 11th grade and became one of his student aides in my senior year.  One day I was labeling the “mystery chemicals” for the identification lab (students had to use all the skills he’d taught them to ID their assigned mystery chemical).  I sniffed it and said, that’s — whatever it was.  Some iso-propyl-ketone or other.  He smiled and said, “You know, you’re really good at this.”  I beamed for weeks.  I wanted to be a chemist and a teacher because of him.  He was my last memory of high school.  We called him “Doc” and he was standing at the entrance to the big stadium as we filed in for graduation.  He smiled at all of us, and it was bittersweet – saying goodbye to him along with our childhood.  I hope he’s well and happy.  Dr. Hearle, you changed my life, so thank you, wherever you are.

What are your best school memories?  Who was your favorite teacher?  Which teacher made a difference in your life?

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Most of the historical heroes I write about are lords or sons of lords. They’re men who are allowed to have hobbies, but for the most part aren’t supposed to be employed. Working is gauche, don’t you know.

There’s a bit more leeway with second sons or nephews of dukes, etc., but that’s where another problem comes in. A historical romance is a fantasy, but it’s also historical. So what’s an appropriate occupation for a working historical romance hero?

Judith Ivory, in The Proposition, makes her hero a Cornish rat catcher. I think Mick’s kind of an exception to the rule, however. In After the Kiss, my hero Sullivan Waring owns a breeding stable. He does work for a living, but he gets to ride horses and be the best at what he does.

My November book, Rules of an Engagement, features Captain Bradshaw Carroway, a second son who’s made his way as a British naval officer. Very nice uniforms, too. I’ve made several of my heroes soldiers – or officers, more specifically – in King George III’s army. Beyond serving the country as an officer or a spy, or of course just being rich and unemployed, finding that perfect heroic occupation becomes more difficult.

I own a book called The Worst Jobs in History. Among the worst Georgian period jobs, it lists the Riding Officer, the guy who had to ride up and down the coast watching for smugglers. The locals all hated him, he had to provide his own horse, and smugglers worked on the murkiest, wettest, coldest nights. Another one was the Bath Guide. He (or she) helped visitors into the waters of the Bath spas. They wore canvas smocks and stayed in the hot water for 12 hours a day. The high iron content of the waters turned their skin orange. And the pee and…yuck coming off all the ill people who took the waters floated around them the whole time, until the baths were closed for the day and the Bath Guide had to stay and clean them up for the next day.

A man could also find employment as a professional Hermit. He would be hired to live in a cave on some lord’s landscaped properties to provide ambience and to remind the wealthy owner that life could be so much worse than it was. The usual term of service was seven years, and a number of them killed themselves before the contract was up. (By the way, when I googled “Crazy Hermit”, a photo of Obi-Wan Kenobi came up.)

Of course there were also jobs in trade, like Saddle Maker, Button Maker, Carpet Weaver, Baker, Cooper, Potter, and Ship-Builder. Or Castrato – which wouldn’t make for much of a romance.

What’s the most unusual historical occupation you’ve seen for a hero? Do any of these “worst jobs” sound like they could be a hero’s employment? What’s the worst job you can think of in all of history?

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