One-Click Buy: January 2009 Harlequin Blaze

A lifelong romance reader, Hope Tarr dreamt of being a writer ever since she first touched the bright orange keys of her Fisher Price typewriter. That dream has weathered a master's degree in psychology and a Ph.D. in education, as well as a seven-year stint as a research consultant in Washington, D.C. One day in 1993 after writing one too many technical reports, she sat herself down to face the cold, hard truth: she didn't want to analyse people or teach them. What she wanted was to write about them! Setting is an important aspect of Hope's books. It's A Wonderfully Sexy Life (Harlequin Blaze, December 2006), Hope's Blaze debut, takes place in her native Baltimore, Maryland, home to steamed hard-shell crabs, neighbourhood enclaves like Little Italy and Highland Town, and wonderfully quirky characters who hail strangers and friends alike as "Hey, hon." For more than five years Hope lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the downtown historic district served as the setting for her paranormal romance, The Haunting. Hope's heroine, Dr. Maggie Holliday, just happens to buy a historic house that looks a heck of a lot like her creator's former turn-of-the-century Victorian. A second-chance-at-love story set in New York City and Belize, Every Breath You Take is the first book to be written from Hope's new home: Manhattan. In the style of Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City, the novel offers a rich panorama of Hope's favourite spots-Union Square, The Strand bookstore, The Roosevelt Hotel and Sardi's. Hope adores chatting with readers. She is a frequent guest blogger on romance-fiction forums, maintains an active presence on social networking sites such as Facebook and posts regularly to her author blog at www.hopetarr.com, where she also runs monthly and special contests.

Prior to realizing her dream of becoming a writer, Lisa Renee Jones owned and operated a multistate staffing agency with sales as high as sixteen million a year. She was recognized by many publications including the prestigious Entrepreneur magazine. In 2003, she sold her business to focus full-time on her writing. Since then, she has sold books to four major publishing houses in multiple genres. You can find out more about her busy release schedule by visiting her website.

When native West Virginian Jule McBride was a preschooler, she kept her books inside her grandmother's carved oak cabinet, to which only she had the key. Everyday, at reading time, she'd unlock the cabinet-and the magical worlds contained in the books inside. Only later did she realize the characters she'd come to love weren't real, and that's when she knew she'd one day be a writer herself.

When asked why she usually writes comedy, Jule had this to say, "I've written romantic suspense novels and love them, but I probably love to write humor because laughter truly is the best medicine. Besides, ever since I can remember, funny things happen to me.

Once, in first grade, I bundled up in my coat for recess-only to discover the hem hit my ankles, my arms were swallowed and my belt dragged the ground. Doing the logical thing, I fled home, convinced I was shrinking. (Mom's sleuthing-she was a great solver of conundrums-uncovered that I'd donned a sixth grader's identical coat.) Nevertheless to this day, I, like everybody, feel sometimes confused by life's little mysteries. Because of that, I love to create heroines who are in some kind of humorous jam when they meet their prince."

A lover of books, Jule graduated from West Virginia State College with honors, then from the University of Pittsburgh where she also taught English. She's worked in libraries and as a book editor in New York City, but in 1993, her own dream to write finally came true with the publication of Wild Card Wedding. It received the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award for Best First Series Romance, and ever since, the author has continued to pen heartwarming love stories that have repeatedly won awards and made appearances on romance bestseller lists.

Today, after publishing nearly 30 Harlequin titles, Jule writes full-time, and often finds the inspiration for her stories while on the road, traveling between Pennsylvania, where she makes her home, and her family's farm in West Virginia.

Isabel Sharpe was not born pen-in-hand like so many of her fellow authors. After she quit work in 1994 to say home with her first-born son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing. Yes, she was the cliched bored housewife writing romance, but it was either that cliche or seduce the mailman, and her mailman was unattractive. After more than twenty novels for Harlequin and the exciting new direction of women-focused stories for Avon Books, Isabel admits that her new mailman is gorgeous, but she’s still happy with her choice.