Guest Blogger - Faye Hughes

Please welcome my friend and critique partner, Faye Hughes. Faye's a lot of fun; you just don't want to be with her in a dark room at night if you're afraid of ghosts. (Don't ask.)

All writers are different, especially when it comes to how they became writers in the first place. Now me, well, I think I've always been a writer. When I was a little girl growing up in Mississippi, before I even knew how to read (or write, for that matter,) I was a storyteller. Of course, the stories I told usually got me into a lot of trouble. ("Um. No, ma'am. I didn't eat the cookies you'd made for the church bake sale," I'd say, quickly wiping away the cookie crumbs from my face while avoiding all eye contact. "That must have been my invisible friend Becky." I'd wrinkle my brow in concentration. "Or . . . or it might have been a cowboy named Hank. His horse loves cookies." I'd flash a clever smile as I got braver. "No, wait. I think it was a pirate who swiped the cookies. Yeah. Definitely a pirate.")

Lucky for me, I got a lot better at swiping cookies . . . and telling my stories. Of course, being Southern, telling stories is something we come by naturally, sort of like the accent and a fondness for iced tea and sweet potato pie. And when I wasn't making up stories, I was reading. More times than not, you could find me snuggled into an old swing at my grandmother's house reading a book I'd gotten from the local library. I soon developed a fondness for stories that had a bit of a mystery to them. I liked the Hardy Boys more than I did Nancy Drew and then I discovered gothic romances by Victoria Holt. By the time I was in junior high, I'd glommed onto Elizabeth Peters and I was hooked on humorous romantic suspense. Still am. And that's probably why the romance novels I write have a little mystery and humor in them.

Now, one of the downsides about being a writer, though, is that our books usually have a short shelf life, especially in a genre like romance. I wrote five classic contemporary romances for Bantam Loveswept back in the 1990s, and now those books are only available in used bookstores, assuming you can find dog-eared copies of them. But the Internet, and the popularity of e-book publishing has changed all that. E-books never go out of print, and I'm happy to say that my backlist is making a comeback in e-book format.

Now, one of the best parts about being able to bring back my previously published books is that I get a second chance to edit them. Don't get me wrong. I loved writing for Bantam Loveswept. Everyone from my editor to the cover artists did a great job. But I'd always seen the heroines of my books as friends with connected stories, which I hadn't been able to do when I wrote the original books. Now that I'm releasing them as e-books, I can make those changes. The result is a new series called Circle of Friends, which opens with my first revamped Loveswept, Can't Fight the Feeling.

Gotta Have It is the second book in the series, and that should be coming out within the next month or so through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. The rest will follow every few months. What's more, I plan to write a completely new book for the Circle of Friends series. I'm really excited about these books, and I hope you'll enjoy reading them as much as I've enjoyed writing, and revamping, them.

Here's the book cover and a blurb about Can't Fight the Feeling:

Fate brought them together . . .

Six years ago, while working on his doctoral thesis on literary genius E. J. Tremayne, Justin Stone had fallen hard for the deceased author's daughter, Morgan. After a whirlwind courtship, filled with poetry and passion, they'd eloped . . . only to fly to Costa Rica nearly a year later for a quickie divorce. When Justin finds Morgan sitting on the desk in his office at the Hamilton-Davis University in Santa Barbara — looking more beautiful than he'd remembered — all of the old emotions come tumbling back. Justin still wants her, but he knows giving in to his feelings this time could destroy them both. And then Morgan drops a bombshell — their quickie divorce didn't exactly take, and they're still married.

Or they will be for the next ten days until her attorney can file the right paperwork.

. . . And then Fate gave them a second chance at happiness.

Morgan feels the same magic, the same attraction when she sees Justin again. She wants him back, and she intends to do everything she can in the next ten days to make him see things her way. First, she convinces him to let her stay in his spare bedroom. Then his department chair — who just happens to be one of her father's old friends — asks her to work with Justin on a symposium he's heading on her father's work. And her plan works — she and Justin can't seem to keep their hands off each other. But then Morgan discovers that somebody's forged one of her father's manuscripts, which sidelines their rekindled romance . . . maybe even forever.

If you'd like to read a sample of Can't Fight the Feeling, you can download the first chapter at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Smashwords.

Happy Reading!

Faye

Faye Hughes is a Mississippi native who traded moonpies, Ole Miss football games and the smell of magnolia blossoms in the springtime for the pristine beauty of upstate New York’s picture-postcard-perfect four seasons.  She only regrets the decision in the winter when pranksters steal her snow shovel and the snowbanks creep to her second floor bedroom window. In addition to her romances and mysteries, she writes non-fiction with her partner Christie Craig.