by Eve Silver, author of Sin’s Daughter and the Otherkin trilogy to be released starting in August with Sins of the Heart

I write dark. Sin’s Daughter, the e-prequel to my upcoming Otherkin trilogy, opens with the hero’s death (no spoiler there. You find that out on page one.) Sins of the Heart, the first book in the trilogy opens with—

No. That would be a spoiler. I’ll let you read it for yourself.

Funny thing is, I started out with the goal of writing light. The first manuscript I ever completed was for Harlequin’s Love and Laughter line way back in the 90’s. It was called The Cat’s Meow, and it’s buried in the back yard where it belongs. Sadly, it was anything but funny. (Actually, I wrote, and submitted, my first book when I was nine. It was the story of an unwanted teddy bear that found a new and loving home. But that’s another story altogether). Next, I tried my hand at a historical romance. It was supposed to be a light, humorous romp laced with subtle repartee. By the time I finished writing the scene with a moldering corpse in an ancient rotting tower, and the maggots and the…

Well, you get the picture.

Flash forward to spring 2008. I had the seeds of an idea, a dark, gritty series based on villains who are heroes and tough, strong heroines, a world laced with the mythologies of ages past—including Egyptian, Japanese, Greek, Norse—and Underworld gods of incredible power. Sins of the Heart. Sins of the Soul. Sins of the Flesh. And the prequel: Sin’s Daughter. The stories and characters were alive and breathing. The question was: how to write these books? Where would the emphasis be? The external plot? The romance?

There’s a fine line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance, and sometimes it’s tough to differentiate between the two. Generally, urban fantasy has strong world-building, and while there may be strong romantic elements, if the romance was removed from the pages, there would still be a story. On the other hand, in a paranormal romance, the plot centers on the romantic relationship—without it, there’s no story. There are other elements that differentiate: the satisfying ending for the romantic relationship versus the  unresolved-happy-ending, the first person versus third person point of view, the grittiness of the tone, the continuing character arc.

The thing is, no matter how detailed my world-building or how dark my writing voice, I’m the eternal optimist. I love my happy ending and the satisfaction of love found. I couldn’t give that up.

So I didn’t. I matched my enigmatic, sexy heroes with incredibly strong heroines and put them in a dangerous, gritty world of Underworld politics and a very real threat to the world of man. I wrote stories where there’s a strong romance with an equally strong urban fantasy feel. I wrote dark. And I wrote from the heart.

by Shirlee McCoy, author of Running Scared (Love Inspired Suspense July 2010)

As I wrote the proposal for Running Scared, my husband and I were getting ready to travel to China to meet and adopt our seven year old daughter. I’ll never forget the moment she walked into our lives. We were in the lobby of the civil affairs office, and she walked around the corner carrying a strawberry ice cream cone, her white hair cut short and nearly glowing, her clear blue eyes filled with the same anticipation and fear that I felt. She was a stranger. A child who had lived seven years of her life without us, who had a history and experiences that didn’t include us.

And, yet, she was our daughter.

I thought of that moment often while I plotted Kane and Eli Dougherty’s journey. Here was a man who’d nearly given up believing his missing son would be found, a man who’d almost lost hope that a miracle would happen. Five years after his four year old son’s disappearance, he would meet his child again.

His son, but a stranger, too.

As compelling as that moment of meeting would be, I knew that I had to begin their story after the phone call that brought Kane to Deer Park, Washington, and after his initial meeting with his son. Their story, after all, had to be about Maggie Tennyson, as well. It had to build the mystery and romance and the faith that grew as all three characters learned to trust each other. That’s why I was thrilled to be given an opportunity to tell readers more about Eli’s journey and the days that led up to his reunion with his father. My online read, Dangerous Secrets, does just that.

Shauna Trenton is Eli’s teacher and Maggie Tennyson’s friend. She grew up in Deer Park, and her life is as easy and uncomplicated as Maggie’s is difficult and filled with secrets. Levi McCleary is her high school sweetheart, a guy whose big city dreams and need for adventure pulled him from Deer Park and from her life. Now, years after he said goodbye, he’s back.

And Shauna’s not sure she’s happy about it.

She’s given up her dreams of happily-ever-after and is content with life in rural Washington, but even small towns have their secrets, and when danger threatens, Shauna finds that she has no choice but to rely on the one man she swore she’d never trust again.

Enjoy!

by Eleanor Elliot, Director of eHarlequin.com & Internet

Did you know that eHarlequin.com has been around for over ten years? I started working at Harlequin just before eHarlequin.com launched—it’s hard to believe ten years can go by so quickly.

Over the years, the site’s look has been freshened up a few times—but we haven’t had a real makeover since 2005, so it was time! We’ve been working behind the scenes since the Fall of 2009, and we’re almost ready to flip the switch to the new look. Coming at the end of the month, you’ll see our new design, but I thought it might be fun to give a quick sneak preview…

You’ll see that the site is now organized into 4 sections: Book Store, eBook Store, Harlequin Extras and Community.

Each of those buttons opens into a drop-down menu so you can find exactly what you’re looking for.

Our goal with this redesign was to make our books the ’stars’ of the site—and I think the color scheme really allows the vibrant artwork to shine through. I hope you’ll agree!

We haven’t removed any features—you can still find all the Online Reads, Writing Resources, and Contests in our Extras section, and of course, our Community is still the best place to connect with other readers just like you!

And we wouldn’t be eHarlequin.com without a great sale to go along with our makeover, so stay tuned at the end of this month for our new look, and our Makeover Sale!

by Anne Stuart, author of The Wicked House of Rohan and Ruthless

Beginning with The Wicked House of Rohan (a FREE online prequel to my Fall 2010 historical romances) I pose this question.

Answer: It all depends on who blinks first. I tend to specialize in dark heroes—men who kill and women who love them—but they tend to show up in my contemporaries, not my historicals.  Dangerous spies and assassins have a good excuse for their darkness, what with saving the free world and all that.

But how do you carry off a decadent aristocrat who’s rich, gorgeous, and fabulous in bed, but is still bad, bad, bad?

I’ve done it before, looong ago, with a couple of out of print romances that still get mentioned by some as standouts in the genre.  But more recently my historical heroes were charmers, rakes and knights.

But then came the House of Rohan. Thoroughly bad men who are nonetheless irresistible.  First comes Alistair in The Wicked House of Rohan, lounging in Venice, seducing a down-on-her-luck governess and helping to form the notorious Heavenly Host, my take on the Hellfire Club.   He’s a bit of a charmer and sets the Rohan lineage down a path of excess and notoriety that will have repercussions for generations (and books!) to come.

Next comes Viscount Francis Rohan (Ruthless, August 2010), the survivor of Culloden and thoroughly decadent exile in France, whom I didn’t think was all that wicked, despite Publisher’s Weekly’s horror. (So read the RT review instead—they think it’s wonderful!)

As for Adrian, Francis’s son (Reckless, September 2010), he’s just an overgrown, naughty libertine, not particularly caring whose life he ruins in the pursuit of pleasure.

By the time we get to his daughter (Breathless, October 2010), some of the wickedness has run out.  The infusion of solid, loving women into our heroes’ lives is bound to improve things.  But the Rohans are still a bit headstrong, and Adrian Rohan’s daughter is bound to get in trouble.  Her hero, a thoroughly wicked gentleman known as The Scorpion, makes the Rohans look like perfect gentlemen, but a Rohan knows how to handle a Scorpion.

So how bad are these heroes?  Francis Rohan is known as the King of Hell.  He runs orgies, kills men in cold blood and blackmails the heroine into sleeping with him.

Adrian is more straightforward.  His heroine comes to observe an orgy, thinking she’ll be safe, and he carries her off, keeping her captive and introducing her to all sorts of delicious wickedness, then abandoning her.

Whereas the Scorpion, scarred and dissolute, is out for revenge and considers Miranda Rohan to be the perfect vessel for that revenge, and he doesn’t care how much he hurts her.

Whether these men manage to be redeemed is a matter of opinion.  How bad they truly are is also a question of perception.  I’ve always figured that the badder they are, the harder they fall, and my bad, bad heroes fall very hard for my strong heroines.  In the end it makes the redemption that much sweeter.  If you can handle a dark hero in the first place.

by Marie Ferrarella, author of Finding Happily-Ever-After (Silhouette Special Edition, available for pre-sale July 1)

The above words occurred to me (my head is a mass of swirling trivia) when I went browsing through Amazon as I do periodically when I run out of energy to do anything else.

As you might remember from your childhood fairy tales, “seven with one blow” got the bragging little tailor in trouble and pitted him up against a fire-breathing dragon (he got the princess in the end, so all was well). But what do those words have to do with me? Well, they lit up my heart because, according to Amazon, on June 21st, they released twenty-seven of my out-of-print books on Kindle, where those books, in virtual form, will go on to infinity (and beyond, to steal a phrase from a current, extremely popular movie franchise).

This is cause for dancing around and singing (which I do with only the dog to bear witness; she’s fairly closed-mouthed) for two reasons. One is, of course, that the more books out, the merrier and the second is that there is something humbling about immortality. Let’s face it, somewhere out in cyberspace, these reprints, along with space debris, will continue far longer than I will. It’s like being told your family line will go on forever.

I love each and every one of the books I have written. Writing is a labor of love for me. It’s also very much like a birthing process (where, unlike with my kids, I get to decide what color hair and eyes and what kind of a personality each of my characters will have). I regard each and every one of the books I have written as my children, fruit of my imagination as opposed to the other end.

The sad downside of writing series books has always been that their life expectancy is limited to around thirty days on the shelf and then, three to six months later, poof, they’ve disappeared from the warehouses and can only be found in second hand book stores, their little covers beat up, their pages dog-eared, bent and fading. Now, they’re lovely and fresh, just as they were when they sprang off the presses, full of promise and hope.

Yes, I am a touching person (in oh, so many ways…) and I like to touch the pages of a book when I read. I have to admit that I still prefer the real over the virtual (in books and in husbands). But there is something grand about knowing that you are carrying around Shakespeare’s entire collection of works (along with as many of your own books as are out there) in your purse and you are not building up to the mother of all hernias.

And, with more of my older books available in e-book format, I’d like to think that, just possibly, a reader who has discovered me for the first time might want to pick up a few more books and can have that option at their fingertips rather than leaving it up to fate and the availability of the closest used book store.

Isn’t technology grand?

Don’t miss Marie’s next release, Finding Happily-Ever-After, available for pre-sale from Silhouette Special Edition on July 1st!

Private investigator Jewel Parnell doesn’t believe in fairy-tale romance. What she does believe in are low-risk, short-term flings and ignoring her mother’s constant matchmaking attempts. But her newest clients—a solemn, sexy professor and his grieving little nephew—might just give Jewel the lesson in love she so badly needs!

Christopher Culhane hires Jewel to locate his deadbeat ex-brother-in-law, never intending to fall for her or build a family of his own. Yet drawn by her beauty, Christopher is soon determined to prove to Jewel that she can find happily ever after…with him. Even if he has to do it one kiss at a time…

By Emma Cunningham, Production Coordinator, Digital & Internet

Oh, Summer. Long days, warm weather—is there a better way to enjoy the heat than lounging with a book by the pool or on the beach?  If you can’t tell from our brand-new Harlequin Blog Summer layout, we don’t think so.

At Harlequin, we’re all crazy bookworms who spend our working and pleasure time immersed in books and romance (we know you’re super jealous, and no, you can’t have our jobs!) We frequently get sidetracked from producing books by talking about recent releases we love.  We were doing exactly that when we got the idea to put together a list of our favorite Summer 2010 books. We picked some old favorites that we’re reissuing and a bunch of fresh, new voices, and wound up with an eclectic list of contemporary romance, paranormal, and everything in between. And so Big Summer Reads was born.

Now that we had an exciting program like Big Summer Reads, we had to think of the best possible way to get it out there.  And you know what we love besides reading outside in the sun? Bloggers. In fact, we love them so much, that we’ve put together a massive and still growing database of book blogs and we’re sending out a selection of ebooks from our Big Summer Reads list for review. Some lucky bloggers will even get some fancy prizes to help readers enjoy their summer reading experience even more!

Here are some of the Big Summer Reads books that we’re e-mailing out to bloggers:

Linda Lael Miller – McKettricks of Texas: Garrett

Susan Andersen – Skintight

Marie Ferrarella – Finding Happily-Ever-After

Brenda Jackson – Star of His Heart

Victoria Dahl – Crazy for Love

Susan Mallery – Almost Perfect

Susan Grant – Sureblood

Kristan Higgins – All I Ever Wanted

Debbie Macomber – Orchard Valley Brides

Debbie Macomber – Orchard Valley Grooms

Susan Wiggs, Susan Mallery, Sherryl Woods – Summer Brides (The Borrowed Bride, Fireside, Harbor Lights, Accidentally Yours)

Robyn Carr – The House on Olive Street

Just a sample of what you can find in the Big Summer Reads program

So, to sum it all up, look for the Big Summer Reads featured on your favorite blog soon. And if you’re a blogger yourself, don’t hesitate to give me a shout and I’ll happily send some free books for review your way, too.

by Amy Wilkins, Assistant Manager, Digital Content and Social Media

Last month, Jenny Bullough filled you in on all of Harlequin’s efforts to convert our MASSIVE backlist into ebooks. This month we have another round of titles coming out–191 to be exact! Click the link below to download an excel document listing these new releases, as well as the authors, imprints, and miniseries they belong to:

June 2010 Harlequin Backlist eBooks List.

Here are some highlights, many of which were in response to reader demand:

• Catherine Mann’s Wingmen Warriors series
• Kate Hoffmann’s Mighty Quinns series (including the spin-off single titles) from Desire, Kathie DeNosky and Emilie Rose
• The oh-so-prolific Christine Rimmer (including more of the Bravo Family)

All these titles can now be purchased at the Harlequin eBook Store and anywhere else Harlequin eBooks are sold.

Check back next month when I’ll give you the list of more backlist ebooks released in July! Including some of your authors like Teresa Southwick, Maureen Child, Justine Davis, Merline Lovelace and more.

Do you have other authors, miniseries, or books you’d like to see released in ebook? Leave your request in a comment!

~Amy

By Stefanie Buszynski, Marketing Coordinator, HQN Books

Do vampires entrance you? Do shapeshifters make you want to howl at the moon? Are you willing to sell your soul for a little demon love? If your fantasies lean towards the paranormal, HQN Books has a story for you, and we’ve launched a brand new Web site to let you browse our offerings!

Stop by TwiceAsHungry.com to sample our selection of delectable paranormal romance that will send chills down your spine—and yes, I mean the sexy kind!

On TwiceAsHungry.com you can:

* Sample excerpts from our hot new paranormal romance releases

* Read exciting bonus material from the authors of your favorite books

* Discover your own paranormal alter-ego name

* Visit Harlequin’s Paranormal Romance Blog for more

Satisfy your cravings today and share the site with all your friends!

By Lori Devoti, author of Zombie Moon (Harlequin Nocturne, July 2010) and Zombie Midnight (eHarlequin.com FREE online read)

I’ve written five full-length Nocturnes, one novella and two Bites. I’ve written about witches, vampires, hellhounds, and wolf-shape-shifters. But in my current eHarlequin.com online read and in my July Nocturne release, I tried something completely different: zombies.

That’s right. Zombies.

Zombie Midnight, my online read, is the story of Lexi Thompson, a woman desperate to save one of her students from the drugs she thinks have taken over his life. In the process, she runs into Bryce Menard, a man unlike any she has met before. He is strong, determined and magnetic. He is also a vampire on a mission to find and destroy another vampire, the zombie maker. Together they traverse dark underground sewers, discovering new truths about her student, themselves and an attraction neither can push aside.

In Zombie Moon, my July Nocturne (available on eHarlequin.com June 1), Caleb Locke made a choice twenty years ago that changed him forever. After his family was killed by zombies, he became a werewolf. His werewolf skills and personal determination have made him into a legendary zombie killer and that is all Caleb cares about: killing zombies. Until he meets Samantha Wagner.

Samantha’s best friend is missing, and Samantha has come to believe the impossible: that zombies are real and they have her friend. Samantha will do anything to save her–or thinks she will, until she gets to know Caleb and realizes she has more to lose, more to fight for, than she had ever believed.

So, two, count ‘em, two stories with zombies. No, neither has a zombie hero or heroine, but I think the zombies add a real level of danger, intrigue and yes, fun, that no other villain can.

I hope you will check them out and give zombies a try!

by Jenny Bullough, Manager, Digital Content

Ever read a book you loved so much you wanted to run out and buy 10 more just like it? Ever discover a new author and want to read everything she’s ever written? Ever pick up a book, get halfway through and find out it’s part of an ongoing miniseries and want to read all of them, in the right order, immediately?

These reading emergencies have happened to all of us on the digital team – which is why we launched our backlist ebook program! (For those who don’t know, “backlist” is a publishing term used to refer to anything published in the past; “frontlist” is the current year’s new books.)

Sure we’ve published a lot of ebooks since we started doing things digitally in 2005 (around 6,000 – not that we’re counting!) – but as we all know, Harlequin has been around for a lot longer than that (over 60 years – again, not that we’re counting!) and has published more books than anyone can count (and yes, we’ve tried counting)!  We want to take that backlist and turn it into ebooks, so that readers can find whatever they need – whether it’s backlist from a beloved author, or a newly discovered series, or a complete miniseries.

That’s our backlist-into-ebook strategy in a nutshell. With potentially tens of thousands of books to turn into ebooks, it can be hard to know where to start! In 2010, we’re focusing on:

— Great series like Harlequin Presents with lots of older books not yet in digital formats
— Authors with lots of older titles
— Miniseries ahead of their time like Tales of the Sea from Silhouette Romance

Of course, our goal is to eventually have every Harlequin (or Silhouette, or MIRA, or HQN, or Steeple Hill…) book available in all ebook formats – but nothing is ever that easy! As with any big undertaking, there are major challenges – mostly to do with legal rights and digital files. For anything published pre-2000 it’s a challenge to find the digital files, if there are any, for the text and cover. Sometimes they’re in arcane formats and have to be converted to PDF before they can be converted into ebook formats. For anything published pre-1995, the electronic rights are not usually spelled out in the contract, and unless the right to publish electronically clearly belongs to Harlequin, we don’t publish it in ebooks.

We want you to know that if there’s a book you love or need that you haven’t found in ebooks, or an older book that you’ve suggested that hasn’t made it into the program, it’s probably because we’re still sorting out the rights situation, or trying to find the electronic files for the text or the cover in the archives of one of our 3 Editorial offices.

That said, there are a TON of books that we have the rights to and the files for and we just don’t know about them yet! We are always open to suggestions from readers, and we are always happy to hear from authors who want to see their books in digital! So if you have a recommendation for a book or series of books you’d like to see available in ebooks, let us know in the comments!

Check out the eHarlequin eBook store monthly for all new releases in both our frontlist and backlist.  Now’s a great time to stop by—you can get 20% off all selected titles in our eBooks Backlist Bookshelf. And come back to the Harlequin Blog in June for an inside scoop on new backlist releases from Amy.