Tag Archives: historical romance

The Cover for The Taming of Mei Lin

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The Taming of Mei Lin - SEP 2010 undone-lowres

The cover for THE TAMING OF MEI LIN (excerpt), my September Undone release is here! First of all it’s gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. The colors are beautiful and the backdrop is sweeping.

Let the cover kibitz begin:

  • I think the hero looks a bit like Daniel Dae Kim from Lost, don’t you? I do love a nice strong jawline.

daniel

  • Time period: the clothing and hair isn’t Tang Dynasty. They had to take some liberties with that. The Undones are digitally published and so they create the covers from the Harlequin art bank, which leads me to the best part of the cover…
  • The heroine and hero may look very familiar because they also graced the cover of my favorite Harlequin Blaze, THE CONCUBINE by Jade Lee. Perhaps her lovers had met before in a previous life hundreds of years earlier in the Tang Dynasty? They were simply fated to meet again and fall in love eternally…

cover_concubine

Cover models get reused all the time. I’m just tickled pink that Jade’s models reappear on my cover. I’ll always associate them with THE CONCUBINE, which is sitting proudly on my keeper shelf.

I'm dreaming…I'm dreaming

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first_flowers_blogI’m in one of my moods and when I get there, I always get introspective and there’s usually some blubbering.

Take a look at my flowers! My lovely chaptermates at MORWA gave them to me today to commemorate my first sale, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. They arranged for something better than the Golden Heart® and the contract put together. (Okay, maybe not better than the contract.)

Remember how I was gushing about meeting Jade Lee at Nationals? She shows up today at the Crestwood Barnes and Noble for the meeting. I guess that’s not too weird. She’s a romance author and the ladies at MORWA seem to know everybody. But when Kimberly Killion announces my sale, who comes up to present me my first flowers? Jade Lee…who also announces that she finished Butterfly Swords last night and is giving me a cover quote!!!

Let me go total fan girl for a moment. (I thought I played it pretty cool by not bawling all over Ms. Lee’s shoulder at the meeting) Four years ago, I found Hungry Tigress at a rest stop in Barstow. I had just started writing “Dragon Court”, just stumbling around trying to learn, and I wasn’t even setting it in Asia. I was going for a fantasy world based on China. But I read the rest of Jade Lee’s Tigress series and was so inspired, I committed to the Tang Dynasty.

Then I sought out more Jade Lee. I read Devil’s Bargain. I read The Concubine and brought it to Nationals to get it signed. You know the Crimson City series? I actually only read Seduced By Crimson and none of the others. What kind of nut only reads the middle book in a series?

I don’t know who in my chapter thought to do this for me, but I am simply overcome. Just to think, a year ago I had nothing to show but hope and now my freakin’ idol has read my book.

At this moment, I don’t care if Butterfly Swords only sells one copy to my mother. This is a dream come true and I’m so very happy.

This is a good moment.