I hope all you mothers out there had a fantastic Mother’s Day!

What a great response I had to the “Freebies Contest”! Congrats to Gina T. from Minnesota, who won a signed copy of A HINT OF WICKED! I’ll send out the freebies packets sometime this week.

Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by the blog and to everyone who signed up for freebies! The freebies are still available, so if you haven’t already signed up, go on over to my Bonus Features page and check them out!

Thanks again, everyone.

It’s Mother’s Day weekend, right? Which means surely, surely, I can take a few hours off to finish Jackie Barbosa’s upcoming release, BEHIND THE RED DOOR! Jackie was kind enough to send me an early copy of the book. I’ve read the first novella, and let me tell you, this is one steamy, romantic, and beautifully written anthology! I hope to have Jackie as a guest here on my blog sometime this month, and I’m hoping she’ll give away a copy of her book, too, so make sure to keep an eye out for that.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten a list of 15 more stops on my blog tour from my publicist. Yikes! I don’t think I’ve ever been so social (even internet social!) in my entire life!

AND…last but not least, I received a wonderful early Mother’s Day present from my publisher. Real, beautiful copies of A HINT OF WICKED! Wait…I have to go take a picture of myself holding one of these new and shiny books…be right back…

Here it is:

Because I’m so excited, I’m going to give away a free copy to a random person who signs up for Freebies! Just go to my Bonus Features page, and sign up to receive some freebie promo items from me and a bunch of my favorite authors (Anna Campbell, Kris Kennedy, Christine Wells, Emma Wildes, and Dawn Halliday), and one person who signs up before Sunday at midnight will receive a shiny new copy of A HINT OF WICKED!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY WEEKEND, everyone!

Hey, everyone! Please head on over to my bonus features page, where I’m giving away a free historical authors’ pack. This will include goodies (bookmarks, excerpt booklets, and more…) from myself, Dawn Halliday, Christine Wells, Anna Campbell, Kris Kennedy, and Emma Wildes.

Okay, so this is fun. Goodreads, where people can list and share the books they’ve read and post reviews on all of them. I just joined a couple of days ago, and lo and behold, someone has already read an advance copy of my book and posted a review of it! I’m gobsmacked!

Jennifer Haymore at Goodreads

A Hint of Wicked

reviews: 1
ratings: 10 (avg rating 4.50)

Anyway, I’m thrilled to be on Goodreads, and it seems like a very cool place to connect with other readers and authors, and learn more about the books I’m interested in reading.

First off, Happy New Year! I’m excited to be here, excited to have a new website, excited about my upcoming book…I’m just excited! I’m so glad it’s 2009, too. 2008 was a wild ride, and I need to rest for a while, I think.

I hope to jam pack this blog with all sorts of…um…interesting things. You see, in the course of my research for A Hint of Wicked, I visited Google Books quite a lot. Google Books is this massive archive of all kinds of books, from way back when to the here and now. I usually looked for books in the 1800-1825 range to search for information for A Hint of Wicked. The kinds of things I looked up were along the lines of “bigamy divorce annulment 1800-1825″ or “arm arteries stopping bleeding” or “opium overdose cure” (thus in A Hint of Wicked, you’ll find the solution of drenching an opium addict in ice water!).

As I slogged through countless works written in that time period, I came across some extraordinary opinions, writings, and facts. Things that were a very strong reminder that times have changed and that people aren’t the same now as they were in the early 19th century. Things that if I suggested I write about to my editor, she’d probably dismiss me as the biggest lunatic of a writer she’d ever worked with.

I’d like to share some of those things here, because I think they are not only interesting, but funny, enlightening, and sometimes frightening. I hope you agree, and I hope you’ll come back to visit me again!