I’ve had a wonderful time blogging with the Berkley ladies!  I wish each and all of you continued success! 

Best wishes!

Well, this is my last post, and it’s the only time I’ve been late getting it out. Maybe it’s because I hate for the blog to end. Very soon, we’ll be doing a special farewell post where all the Berkley Babes will offer final words of wisdom (or whatever!), so be sure to check back for the last post.  

Life is speeding by, with daily changes occurring at a mind-boggling rate. Now we have all kinds of blogs, and MySpace and myriad other chat rooms and events on the Internet. It’s almost too much to take in. Life in the fast lane for planet Earth.

Even our TV shows reflect the changes in our society. I’m amazed by the programming, the CSI shows, the police and medical dramas, the wide array of paranormal and science fiction shows, and the reality shows. Wow. People talk about how romance novels aren’t in touch with the real world, but if that’s true, neither is television. But what do the nay-sayers know? Do we want the real reality? Personally, I’d prefer to be entertained, and to enter a world (even if it’s make believe) where the sky is the limit.

I’ve always done that with romances, and now, to some extent, I can do it with certain TV shows. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV, but I’m definitely into Dancing With The Stars and American Idol. I’ve been glued to the TV when they’re on, and voting like a maniac when the show goes off the air. I also love Medium (cool woo-woo stuff) and House (snarly House, super melodrama, usually with a happy ending), and The Dresden Files (which appears to be off the air now) and CSI. Cool, cool stuff that gives me fodder for my books.

So, what cool TV shows do you like to watch?

~ Catherine  

I love traditions.  This is Mother’s Day, and I’m hosting lunch for the family.  I’m not cooking anything, because I don’t want to have to work.  Some of the guests are bringing food.  (We have a lot of desserts.)  And I’ve ordered a lot of good stuff from shops that make food fresh.  So I’m anticipating a good meal, a fun day, and a refrigerator full of leftovers.

Another spring tradition for us is a place called Brighton Dam.  I tell people that if they live around here and don’t go there in the spring, they’re crazy.  It borders a reservoir, and the water commission made the acres along the water into a wonderful park.  There are lots of natural trails leading through acres and acres of azaleas.   They’re fantastic now.  Many of the bushes are twenty or thirty years old, and they tower over you.  So you walk through a wonderland of natural beauty.  Or you can climb the hill and look down on a panorama of pink, salmon, purple, and white bushes.  The National Arboretum has similar trails.  But it’s farther away.  So we’re more likely to drive the fifteen minutes to Brighton.

A new tradition I’m going to miss is the BJ blog.  You know by now that we’re not going to be posting every day anymore.   So I won’t be writing you here.  But you can visit me at www.rebeccayork.blogspot.com.  Or at my web site: www.rebeccayork.com.  It’s being redesigned.  And it’s going to look fabulous.  But it’s not quite ready for prime time yet.

I hope to see you soon.
Rebecca

Annette Blair’s Breaking News:  I just accepted an offer to write a contemporary comedic mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime! They’re still deciding on a name for the series but think ‘Stephanie Plum meets Bewitched.’  Not that I’m Janet Evanovich (unfreakingfortunately) but it’ll have my own brand of humor and yes, "something witchy this way comes."

The series is about a psychic fashion designer/soon to be a vintage dress shop owner, named Madeira, Maddy Cutler, who gets vibes, and snapshots in her mind’s eye, from vintage clothes that help her solve murders. (She’s psychometric, like my heroine in SEX AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH.)  Maddy’s mother was a witch, and, yes, eventually, the heroine will realize she has power too. The first book surrounds her sister’s wedding, an antique wedding dress, and the murder of the woman who wanted to take the bride’s place at the altar. I’m jubilant, psyched, ready to dance . . . except for the part of me curled up in a corner saying, "What did I do? What did I do?" 

Jumping out of one’s comfort zone is not always easy. I learned that when I wrote my first contemporary, THE KITCHEN WITCH, after nine historicals, but it was a great move creativity-wise, plus it put me on the bestseller lists and turned me into a paranormal comedy writer, which I love. I trust that jumping out of my comfort zone again to write mysteries will be just as rewarding. Plus I still get to keep writing bewitching romantic comedies.  Yay!

Change is always difficult, but change can be good as well. Sometimes that’s a hard pill to swallow when change is imminent, like now, with the blog. But the fact is that the Berkley Babes are so talented, there’s always a deadline looming, and it turned out that we all needed to strike a better balance.  We’re not really leaving you, because we all blog elsewhere. As a proud member of the delightful and talented Witchy Chicks, I’m extending a warm invitation from all of us–Candy Havens, Yasmine Galenorn, Linda Wisdom, Lisa Croll DiDio, Kate Austin, Madelyn Alt, Terese Ramin, and me, Annette Blair, to drop in and say hello.  http://witchychicks.blogspot.com/

Don’t forget that in a few weeks, August 7th to be exact, my newest releast, the first in my Triplet Witch Trilogy, SEX AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH, will be available.  Harmony, Destiny and Storm were introduced in THE SCOT, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE, so you might already know them.  In SEX AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH, the first triplet story is Harmony’s: 

He’s her psychic pot of gold . . . In an archaic island castle haunted by a malevolent spirit, the magnetic attraction between a psychometric witch and a sexy powerful castle-owner leads to the fulfillment of unspoken fantasies, and a struggle for dominance, in and out of bed.

Hi, everyone! Remember my "Name that Kitty" post many months ago? Welll, you did name her!

I am pleased to introduce you to "Cleocatra" (She’s the one on the right of the cat-triangle, sitting on the television cable box with her sisters.)

The gray kitten is "Rebel," the longhaired cover-girl kitten on the left is "Bo-Bo," and we just couldn’t think of a name for the little one on the right.

Well, you all helped us out with many suggestions, and my husband and I chose "Cleocatra," among the many names suggested. Thank you Berkley Babe Blog readers! You have named our kitty, and I will always think of this blog when I call her name.

And now to *sniff* sadder news…as the other members will be posting soon, the Berkley Babes will be disbanding this month. This is one of my last posts. But it is only the end of the beginning of blogging for me (as Winston Churchill once said - not the blogging part, of course).

Anyway! I want to invite you all over to my new Website, which should be up by the end of June….

CoffeehouseMystery.com

Espressos * Lattes * Muffins * Murder

The site is going to be my own version of an internet coffeehouse. After five books published, I thought it was about time Cleo Coyle founded a place where fans of the series can check in, make comments, ask questions, and I can blog about coffee, crime, and generally blow off steam (excuse the pun)!

Anyway, I know enough about coffee and coffeehouses to start my own dang place for real, but I’m a full-time writer and don’t have the time, so I have to content myself with the internet variety.

I hope you’ll all check in to see if it’s your cuppa tea….or java! Cute baristo sightings welcome on the message board, as well as sharing of your thoughts, gripes, and recipes.

Luv, Cleo Coyle…author of the Coffeehouse Mysteries, where coffee and crime are always brewing…

#1 On What Grounds; #2 Through the Grinder; #3 Latte Trouble; #4 Murder Most Frothy; #5 Decaffeinated Corpse (coming July 2007 - just two months away!)…and stay tuned for #6 in 2008…French Pressed!

I have to admit, I luuuuurve reading (and writing) series. I like seeing favorite characters return and/or develop, love getting glimpses into their life post Happy Ever After, maybe see how things are going in a new chapter of their lives.

So right now, I’m a happy camper -there are lots of wonderful series around at present. But I know not everyone likes series. What about you guys? Which do you like - series or singles? Why?

I’m the most un-sportsminded person in the world, but I do know what the Triple Crown is, and I do watch, when possible, so today I was glued to the set to see the Kentucky Derby run, and –if you tivoed it, spoiler coming!–saw a great come from behind win!  An experienced jockey (but his first KD win!) put his horse in 19th place and then, when the time was right, urged him on to pass every horse but the single one behind him and passed them all, then won by several lengths, and wow, what a finish! 

Don’t we all love that kind of race, and don’t we all love underdogs and stirring last minutes wins!  I’m not that much of a racing fan, per ce, and I don’t bet, but I was the kind of little girl devoted to horses, read all the Black Stallion books, and similar books and series, and always wanted my own horse, but alas, never could fit one in my closet or our garage, as my military family made our frequent moves. 

As an adult, when I lived in Britain, I was able to take riding lessons from an expert to learn to ride with an English saddle, one of my  longtime ambitions.  Tho the lessons didn’t last as long as I wished, I relished every moment.  I try to make my use of horses in my Nicole Byrd historicals as accurate as I can–no mad love making on horseback as they gallop through a forest, for example. 

I did once (in Vision in Blue) lead into a nice love scene after the hero and heroine had, for direst reasons, spend hours on a frantic horseback ride across England–he is a seasoned rider and she is not–and after the ride, he tries to sooth her aches with a warmed oil massage, which leads to, um, some delightful passion.

Lots of nice things begin with horses!