In addition to being a writer, I also narrate audio books. It’s a fun job – perfect for me, since I’ve loved reading aloud all my life.

Normally, recording an audio book is one of my favorite things to do.

Not today.

Today the neighbor dogs are barking non-stop. I can’t record – not even one sentence – without their barking landing right on the recording with my words.

Am I frustrated?

YES!!!!

I just got my cover art for my upcoming contemporary romance novel, A Second Dance.

What can I say? I love them! It makes getting published feel real.

Here it is:

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is one of my favorite times of year. I’ve completed the shopping, cooking, cleaning and sneaking around the holidays seem to require of a mom of four, and I’ve slept off the post-Christmas morning brain-fog.

I spend this week planning for the year ahead. I journal, make lists and charts, accumulate magazines and art supplies for a collage get-together with friends that’s turned into an all-day affair each January.

I walk in the woods, lounge on the sofa, contemplate the lights of the Christmas tree, take long, hot soaks, and daydream, daydream, daydream. It is the quiet before the storm, my way of gathering up strength before hurtling myself back into a round of work, writing, edits, family, responsibilities and general insanity.

Today I’m planning a four-book series aimed at The Wild Rose Press’ Last Rose of Summer line. I can’t wait to get started.

I can’t wait for 2010.

As a child, I spent all my summers at my family’s cottage by the shores of a lake in the foothills of the Adirondacks. On hot, lazy summer afternoons my sister and I would lie out on the dock, or put the seats down in our motorboat and recline in the sun reading romance novel after romance novel.

We bought them at a quaint old antique store housed in a red barn in the nearest town. There was a tiny shed out back packed full of used books, literally thousands of romances selling for ten cents a piece.

They were a guilty pleasure. We were brought up on literature of the highest caliber and my mother shuddered when she saw what we were reading. But she never forbade them; I think she knew they spoke to a primal need in women to have a fantasy life to lean on when real life isn’t all that exciting.

I’ve always been a writer, but for some reason it never occurred to me to write for anyone else’s eyes until a few years back. I started off with Young Adult fiction – easily my favorite genre – but in a moment of frustration I started a romance novel.

And it felt like coming home.

Women love romances and we need them, too. They prime the pump, so to speak, re-kindling our desire when bills, housework, jobs and stress threaten to stamp it out for good.

I’ve stopped questioning why romances are so much fun to read (and to write). I’m beyond the need for explanations.

And finally, my own story has looped around and now my first romance is set to be published by the Wild Rose Press in the spring!