Historical romance author Jade Lee is trying to kill me! Okay, not really--my Recipe for Love spatulas are useful, but probably not sturdy enough to threaten a life. But she did her best at Readers 'N Ritas this weekend in Dallas! Check out Barbara Vey's PW blog for the full report--and a truly hilarious picture of me with Jade.

Basically, it was a great time--really good ratio of readers to authors, the panels (at least the two I was on) were truly all reader oriented and focused, and I met so many funny, delightful women interested in discovering new-to-them authors. And I have to give props to the Hilton Garden Inn in Allen, TX--the food wasn't half bad, either!

A big thank you to the Fresh Fiction ladies for including me, giving me the chance to talk to readers about contemporary romance, stay up late gabbing with authors Candace Havens, Jaye Wells, and Ann Aguirre (they told me ghost stories and nearly scared the pants off me!) and sell some books. If the timing works out, I'll definitely be back next year.

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 11:17 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Readers 'N Ritas

I don't know about y'all, but my favorite way to celebrate our veterans is to read one of the many fabulous romances that feature military heroes and heroines. My perennial favorites are Suzanne Brockmann's Troubleshooters series. And she just posted an excerpt from the next in the series, Breaking the Rules! How cool is that?

But right now I happen to be right in the middle of Roxanne St. Claire's newest, Edge of Sight, which has one of the hottest ex-Army heroes I've ever read. If you want a free preview of what the story is all about, check out her prequel novellita here. You will be hooked, guaranteed!

So your mission today, if you choose to accept it, is to go to the bookstore and find a fabulous romance read that pays homage to our real-life military heroes and heroines.

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 4:08 PM 0 comments  

Labels: Roxanne St. Claire, Suzanne Brockmann

Thank you so much to every single person who entered my Facebook giveaway yesterday! It was a lovely birthday gift to me to see so many friends commenting--I only wish I could share that bag of books I loved so much with every single one of you. But in the end, I had to choose a winner, and my random selection process came up with:

CATHY ESTABROOK PHILLIPS

So yay, congrats to Cathy, and thanks again to all the people who entered the drawing. Don't despair if you didn't win! I plan to do lots more of these, because the response was so phenomenal and fun. Keep checking back for more chances to win!

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 10:20 AM 0 comments  

Labels: book giveaway

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 10:48 AM 0 comments  

Labels: book giveaway

And I'll decide who gets the gifts! This year for my birthday, I wanted to give something back to all my lovely readers out there who've been clamoring to know what happens next with tough pastry chef, Violet Porter, and her strong, quietly sexy organic farmer, Jonathan Wildman.

So without further ado, here it is! Simmer Down, the third installment in my continuing free read series, is posted on my website. It will definitely make more sense if you read the other two parts of the story, Spring Fever and Too Hot to Handle, first. And Simmer Down takes Violet and Jonathan to a whole new level in their relationship (hint: it's a very steamy new level!) so this particular segment of their saga is definitely not safe/appropriate to read, say, at the office.

If that hasn't hooked you, I don't know what will! Go forth and read, my lovelies...

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 10:25 AM 0 comments  

Labels: free read

Now that Halloween is over, I'm distracting myself from my looming birthday by focusing on Thanksgiving. Sadly, I never get to cook Thanksgiving dinner because my husband's family always ALWAYS always gets together for that particular holiday. So I have a lot of frustrated turkey dinner plans in me.

This year, though, it looks like Christmas is going to be at my house--with both my parents AND Stinger's parents--so the menu is all up to me! And I'm already planning, because culling through cookbooks and recipes is half the fun.

And then this arrived in my email inbox yesterday, and gave me a whole new set of ideas. Smoked goose! Sounds so delicious. And no-fuss easy-peasy! Which isn't actually what I want for Christmas dinner (I kind of love making a big old fuss for that meal, doing something complicated and over the top) but there will be other nights this holiday season where I'll have a house full of guests to feed, different people in and out, and oh yeah...a book to write! So I'm keeping this little idea stashed in my back pocket for those days.

What about you? With the holidays coming up, do you start flipping through magazines and watching the Food Network to get new ideas for things to serve? Or does your mouth start watering for the old favorite dishes you have every year?

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 10:27 AM 1 comments  

Labels: holiday baking

Yesterday I tried to make a new recipe for a casual get together with friends, and it was a total fail. What I wanted to make was this Tipsy Maple Corn, a sort of grown-up version of Cracker Jacks with bourbon and maple in the syrup, plus crispy pancetta augmenting the salt of the peanuts. Sounds great, right? And I'm sure it is, if you can manage not to let the warm syrup shrivel your popcorn, and then burn the whole thing when you're trying to crisp it back up in the oven.

I, however, was not so skillful. My corn was sad. And a little nasty. But I had friends coming over to watch Clue! and Young Frankenstein (our traditional Halloween movies) and I had to serve them SOMEthing. Luckily I'd also planned to make Ina Garten's foolproof hit, a homemade French onion dip that always gets raves. (If you want to try that one yourself, I highly recommend it, but cut the oil and butter in half--you don't need as much as she calls for.) So once I cut up some cucumbers and washed the carrots and snap peas, we had savory snacks taken care of.

And for the sweet stuff, I decided to adapt the Tipsy Maple Corn into a sundae. Starting with the recipe's reduced bourbon, maple syrup, and butter concoction, I added extra sugar and cream to thicken it up. Then poured it over vanilla ice cream with the crispy pancetta and the dry-roasted peanuts as toppings. Success! Totally fun and delicious, I'd make this sundae again anytime. I'm almost glad I failed at the other recipe.

Anyone else have stories about salvaging a recipe screw up?

Posted by Louisa Edwards at 1:02 PM 1 comments  

Labels: recipe