Dear Reader,

During the years my husband I and the kids lived in Austin, Texas, it snowed only twice—and melted the next day in both cases. So you can imagine our excitement our first winter in North Carolina when we learned a major snowstorm was on the way. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have been less prepared. We had no rock salt or sand for the sidewalks, no shovel to clear them, and perilously few supplies.

Gamely, we ran out to get milk, bread, and a bag of rock salt. (We didn’t get a shovel because we didn’t think we would really need one.) We put our eldest daughter on a plane back to college, and settled in for a few inches.

The “few inches” turned into the Blizzard of the Century-- as the local news reports took to calling it—delivered in three separate back to back snowstorms that closed schools and businesses for a week. During that time, as my family and I struggled to dig our way out of the driveway with a garden shovel, a hoe, a rake and other assorted garden tools, I found myself doing plenty of daydreaming. What if a runaway bride, a schoolteacher on a field trip and a young mother with her baby got stranded by a snowstorm, at the worst possible times in the best possible places, with the men of their dreams? The result? A trilogy entitled Blizzards, Brides & Babies, featuring three romantic comedies—SNOWBOUND BRIDE, HOT CHOCOLATE HONEYMOON AND SNOW BABY.

And while two of the books are now available only in libraries and at used book stores, I am thrilled to announced that SNOWBOUND BRIDE has recently been reissued in both paperback and made available on e-reader as well.

Happy reading and best wishes,

Cathy Gillen Thacker
(who now has two shovels and a bag of rock salt, “just in case.”)

Dear Reader,

Christmas inspires us all.  There is something about the month of December that encourages people to give of their hearts, their time, and their money.  For causes, big and small.  And to the benefit of friends and family and the people in their lives that they love most of all.  But what do we do when a child asks for something we just can’t give?

Travis Carson is in that predicament.  His daughters, four and a half year old Sophie, and three and a half year old Mia, want a mommy for Christmas, and they expect Santa to bring them one.  Travis explains this isn’t possible.  And because he wants his two little girls to be happy, begins looking for other ways to give them more of the feminine influence they need in their lives.

His best friend and neighbor, Holly Dawson, does not have that problem.  Her three and a half year old twin sons, Tucker and Tristan, have never really known the father that deserted them shortly after birth, and they don’t seem to particularly want a daddy, either.  The problem is, their dad is suddenly interested in seeing them again.  And Holly isn’t sure if this is a gift, or a calamity-in-the-making. Travis and Holly tackle these two problems the same way they approach every other challenge in their single-parent-families—together!  And before they know it, the Christmas season is bringing them one very wonderful gift, too. Happy holidays to you and all your loved ones! Cathy Gillen Thacker

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Dear Reader,

Guys like to help each other out.  Whether it’s by fixing a car, working together on a business deal, or providing moral support.  When they are friends, they are there for each other. 

The Lone Star Dad’s Club is one of these unofficial yet highly effective groups.  The five Fort Worth, Texas men have known each other for years.  They’ve seen each other through accelerating careers, good and bad marriages, and divorce.  They share a love and concern for each other’s kids.  And figure there is no problem they can’t handle together….

Dan Kingsley is the architect of the group and the kind of guy who likes to find solutions to life’s thorniest problems by thinking outside the box. 

Emily Stayton is a personal chef, with a baby on the way. The single-mom-to-be has learned the hard way to leave work at work, and never get too involved with a ‘client’. It’s a promise she has no problem sticking to, until she meets the sexy dad, and understands the complex nature of his problem. Emily accepts Dan’s challenge to bring peace and tranquility to mealtimes at his house—with the caveat she will be moving on as soon as the job is done. She doesn’t count on getting close to his three kids, or having him take such an interest in her baby. And she really doesn’t count on what happens between the two of them! Happy Thanksgiving-- and happy reading! Cathy Gillen Thacker

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"It was a dark and stormy night," as my favorite character Snoopy says perched upon his red doghouse, thinking of something, anything to write. It's those same words that my mother seems to live by, sitting on her own doghouse (an old, ratty office chair), using a computer that pre-dated PCs (she's now upgraded to a more modern laptop), sometimes soliciting advice from her good pal Woodstock (in this case, me).

Every writer has their muse, their Woodstock, so to speak, and I seem to be my mother's. I don't mind, I actually enjoy developing plot lines, charting character development, discovering just what motivates everyone and everything. I just can't seem to fit that title on my resume anywhere. And, boy, have I put in the hours to deserve it.

I get calls at 7am on Saturday mornings, sometimes when I am sleeping in after plugging away long hours during my law school weeks. I get these emails describing these problems in great detail, so much so that if anyone ever wants to know any detail of my mother's books in advance, I'm the person to pay. (Just a warning: since I am now attending graduate school, I must up my rate significantly to off-set the costs of school and because my information is much more valuable.)

According to my mother, I am available 24/7 for whatever plotting issues she may have. Or she thinks she has. Or she's not sure she has. If in doubt, call Sarah. It's to the point, that my father even will occasionally grumble to my mother during particularly bad moments in my mother's writing process that she "should call that English major daughter of hers." I wish sometimes that my mom would get me confused with my other sister, the music major, since English and Music are both "arts", one is liberal and one is fine. Same difference to me. Alas, that trick has never worked.

To get an idea of what a typical conversation is like with my mother about these issues, just imagine having a discussion with someone when you know going into it you just cannot win. It's not that they are smarter or better or any more well-versed than you are on the subject. Instead, the conversation is geared towards making that other person convinced that what you are saying is the key to the castle, the answer to their prayers, that extra layer of icing on that homemade chocolate cake. My mother will present me with one of her problems in excruciating detail (because that's what writers do, focus on the little, inane details of every situation), even if she has given me all this detail before, if not just prior to this rehashing. And I had better pay attention because if I mix up one detail, I get to hear the whole scenario all over again.

Then comes the worst part. She argues with me. No matter what I say, what I do, she argues. I can say nothing and she'll argue with the dead air. For mom, the argument is what gets the problem solved; for me, the argument is what drives me nuts. I just can't win. Even though the problem usually gets solved with the combination of heads plotting away (excuse the pun), I always leave the conversation exhausted, confused, and ready for a nap while Mom is energized, her creative impulses restored and ready to work.

Yet, I'll never turn down the chance to help my Mom solve one of these problems. Not many people get to be a muse, even if I don't play the full part. But I do have to make my Mom admit that some books, she just couldn't do without me. (Not that I write any portion of the book or completely plot an entire novel - just that I do significantly help her during certain portions of the writing process.) And, usually, that admission alone is enough to keep my brain churning as my mother's very own Woodstock.

Dear Reader,

It’s no secret—Harlequin is celebrating sixty years of romance!  Think about it.  Sixty years of heart-warming fun, love, passion, danger, and intrigue.  Sixty years of glorious escape and rollicking good times!  Sixty years of knowing that a spellbinding story was only the turn of a page away….  And while I haven’t been around quite that long—I have been writing for Harlequin long enough to be able to say that for romance there is nowhere I’d rather be.  And because I know many of you dear readers feel exactly the same way, for the Diamond Anniversary, I’ve written a very special book, MOMMY FOR HIRE.

Grady McCabe is the son of Josie and Wade McCabe, from WILDCAT COWBOY.   Grady lost the love of his life, shortly after she gave birth to their daughter, Savannah.  And now, as her kindergarten year comes to an end, his little girl needs a mommy in the worst way.

Enter matchmaker extraordinaire Alexis Graham.  She’s been given the task of finding a woman who will be a wonderful mother to Grady’s daughter, and a proper wife to Grady.  Easy, right?  Well, maybe it would be if Grady were open to love again.  But he’s not. And therein lies the dilemma.  Because while Grady is resolutely guarding his heart, Alexis is looking for love.  She’s had the best.  And she wants it all again…. It would seem they are on a collision course.  Until five year old Savannah steps in…  Happy reading! Cathy Gillen Thacker

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Dear Reader,

We all want to belong, never more so than in our own families.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.  Sometimes it is an act of fate that separates us from our loved ones.  Other times it is a choice or a differing point of view.

Hannah Callahan wants a child and a family of her own.  With no husband on the horizon, she decides to adopt a baby girl from Taiwan.  Her father wants her to wait and marry and have a family the old-fashioned way.  When Hannah refuses, a rift is created that seems unbridgeable.

Joe Daugherty was orphaned at age eight.  He went to live with relatives, and never quite fit in.  He could, however, briefly blend in with strangers. Destiny brings Joe to Summit, Texas for the spring and summer.  He is researching a travel guide, and will soon be leaving.  So when Hannah Callahan catches his eye, he ignores his desire.  Until the day she needs him to accompany her to Taipei to meet and adopt her new daughter.  Joe agrees to go, but only on the stipulation that he not become involved in any of the family stuff.  Family is not his forte. Hannah concedes, but baby Isabella Zhu Ming Callahan has other ideas, right from the start.  A cuter matchmaker could not be found.  But could she make their love last…?

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I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And, as always, best wishes,

Cathy Gillen Thacker

Dear Reader,

We all want to belong.  We all want a family to call our own.  And most importantly, we all want to be loved.  But what happens, I wondered, when all of that seems completely out of reach?

Thad Garner lost his mom when he was a kid and never really connected with his emotionally aloof father.  As an ER doc, Thad was awesome.  As a man looking for true love, he was equally determined, but not nearly as successful.

Michelle Anderson grew up with unending expectation and very little parental affection. She longed for enduring love and a happy family of her own, too.  She didn’t know where or when she would find that, but she was certain she would not find it with the sexy doc who lived across the street.

Until the morning she heard a baby’s cry and saw firsthand what a natural Thad Garner was with babies.  Thad was a lot more compassionate than she realized, a lot more hands-on.   When he asked her if she would use her lawyerly expertise to help him figure out where and to whom the abandoned newborn baby belonged, Michelle readily agreed.  Little William was darling.  He deserved everything the world could give.  And so, she began to realize, did Thad....   I hope you have as much fun reading this story as I did writing it. Until next time! Best wishes, Cathy Gillen Thacker

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Growing up, I had the good fortune to have a mother who stayed at home to raise my brother, my sister, and me. She made cookies and cakes and read us bedtime stories at night. She resolved disputes, ran to your side when you split your lip open (something I can recall doing only once, which was enough), and drove us kids around to band practice, piano lessons, and basketball games among other things. When I got to be a little older, she would tape soap operas for me and as soon as I got off the bus or out of the car, she would have the tape all ready for us to view with some snack on the counter. My parents took us kids to movies and dinner every Saturday, regardless of our plans, making us all stop our busy lives so we could have a few hours together as a family.

All in all, you could say I had a pretty decent time growing up. That is until people found out my deep dark secret: my mother writes books.

I know, I know, it's pretty scary, worse than those insane, schizophrenic, murdering, crying, compulsive marrying women on soap operas. When people discovered this secret, the one my brother, sister, and I tried to keep under the rug, people went nuts. Before we knew it, my mother had scheduled meetings with teachers so she could do presentations for our classes; she signed books for friend's moms who begged me endlessly, sometimes showing up on our doorstep just to meet this local celebrity; later on, she began autographing books for my friends. My mom's writing made my whole family little famous people inside our schools and jobs and lives. It was a very tough role to play.

Stories were legendary about my mom, the romance writer. I mean, she must lead some great, wonderful, romantic life all day every day. Truth is, at least from my point of view, she was just a stay at home mom who fought with her husband, her kids, and the dog like any other stay at home mom I knew. But she had an office. With sliding wooden doors that creaked when she was shutting them. When you heard that noise, all better be quiet, because the writer was at work. To our family, mom's writing was really nothing special, it was her job, her contribution to the family's budget, and something we never wanted to talk about in public.

I remember the persecution all us kids faced when someone discovered the secret. Some people gasped, some people's eyes got so big you feared if they didn't blink they would fall right out of the sockets. Others, especially kids in middle school, would shrug their shoulders, as if it was no big deal, all the while listening to every single word you wanted so desperately not to sputter about it. Teachers would go out and buy your mom's books and then tell the entire class what they thought about them. One teacher even said the name of the book she read, I believe it was How to marry.One Hot Cowboy. The class had a good ole time with that one. I was completely mortified. Let's just say I never got along well with that teacher after the incident.

My brother endured the worst degradation. His came during his junior year in high school, when one of his fellow classmates began reading one of the "romantic scenes" out loud during chemistry class. My brother has always been overly sensitive to any public humiliations, and I don't think he ever got over that particular one.

The hardest part about having this legendary mom was the questions and comments, the endless discussions that you never knew how to handle but that you needed to deal with politely. My favorite line began with, "I always meant to write a book someday, I just haven't had a free afternoon." Everyone says that. Everyone. It's hard not to laugh, knowing what I do about the effort that goes into making a book.

When those kinds of statements came out, I sweetly explained that in my family, Mom's job was a full time affair, she worked at least 40 hours a week. When she had ideas at 3am, she wrote at 3am. She lost sleep over approaching deadlines, struggled with finding new ideas, and battled writer's block. Sometimes, you could find mom yelling at the computer for losing her work or not doing what it should. When it came time to print a manuscript, let's just say that printing was an all day task. It took at least 5 hours to print one copy. And no one could go near the office lest you bend one page or ruffle one paper out of place. I can't tell you how impressed we were when mom upgraded her old dot matrix printer to a laser jet contraption that weighed about 100 pounds and printed one page every 20 seconds or when she got a new computer with little floppy disks, finally tossing out those big 8.5 inch disks that also could function as plates, Frisbees, and/or hats.

The best part about it, about having this renowned mom who wrote books, was that I had someone to proofread my papers in middle school, high school, and for a little while in college. She could also type quickly too. So when someone was in a jam, Mom would come to the rescue, taking her children's horribly handwritten drafts and firing them out on her keyboard. One time, she even typed a paper in German for my brother, while he paced around and behind her, correcting mistakes as they went (and she doesn't even know German). Now that's dedication.

Honestly, though, I had a typical family. My mom didn't go around lighting smelly candles (unless she cooked bacon) or running off to exotic locations to feel romance. She cooked dinner, ordered pizza when she didn't want to cook, went shopping to look at all the things she couldn't buy, constantly dieted yet ate the chocolate cake anyway, secretly held my father's hand (which, by the way, did make all us kids very nauseated), and cried when her son and two daughters moved away from home.

Yet, to this day, I cringe when I have to write my parent's occupations on forms or when someone asks me what my parents do. I try to dodge the question as best I can, saying "dad - program manager; mom - self-employed." When that fails, when further explanation is warranted, I say, "Yes my mom writes books. Yes, she has been published, in fact over fi

For aspiring writers, my best word of advice is to write as often as possible, and finish whatever you are writing, whether it be short-story or novel, before moving on to the next project. You learn a lot by taking a project through from beginning to end.

Classes are available at local writing guilds, community colleges, and universities. Some writer's groups--like The Romance Writers of America, of which I am a Charter Member, do not require you to be published when you join, and they have lots and lots of information on the how-to's as well as the business of writing, available to their members.

If you aren't interested in joining a group, or do not have one near you, you can still teach yourself the writing craft, just as I did, by reading everything you can get your hands on. Writer's Digest Books publishes many books on all different topics. I have many of them in my personal library. TECHNIQUES OF THE SELLING WRITER, by Dwight V. Swain, University of Oklahoma press, is perhaps my favorite how-to-write book. You should also read as much as possible in the genree you wish to be published--romance, mystery, western, etc.

When you have a project ready to submit for possible publication, the reference librarian at your local library can help you find the names and addresses of publishers in The Literary Marketplace. The most important piece of advice I have is to keep going. If you are a writer, if the stories keep coming, even when you try and shut them off, then keep writing, keep submitting, keep learning, and don't stop believing in yourself. Writing is a craft, like any other art. It takes time to develop it, but it's well worth the effort, the first time you see your work in print.

Dear Reader,

There is fiction, and there is real life, and when the two come together-- these days--, it is called ‘reality TV’.  Like many of the rest of you, I have watched programs dealing with survival, business, home decorating, and romance.  But it’s the programs centering around romance which fascinate me the most.  Can someone really find the love of their life on a semi-scripted TV show?  Or is it all about the money and achieving the fifteen minutes of fame we are all supposed to have at some point in our lives?

I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I do know it was a heck of a lot of fun creating my own reality television show, BACHELOR BLISS, and imagining what would happen if the ultimate Texas cowboy/ladies’ man, Brad McCabe, somehow got roped into signing up to appear on one.

I figured he wouldn’t find romance there—that would come later—after the experience of chasing fame and fortune had wrecked havoc on his life.  And I knew it wouldn’t be easy, either.  True love never is.  Which is why I paired Brad with an old high school classmate he had barely known existed.  Someone with ambition of her own, journalistic ambition.  For a private guy like Brad, that’s a worst case scenario.  How did it all end?  Well, to find that out, you’ll have to turn the page…. I hope you enjoy reading this romantic comedy as much as I enjoyed writing it.  If you’d like to know more about this and other books, I invite you to visit the book list and series guide. Happy Reading! Cathy Gillen Thacker

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