Here Come The Grooms! : : Anne McAllister

Four years ago, Kate Walker, Liz Fielding and I all had books out in February. All of them one way or another had to do with brides, and so we decided to a Here Come the Brides contest to celebrate our books.

Being the easygoing egalitarian writers that we are, we even magnanimously allowed our heroines to come and blog while we took a little time off.

We should have known better.

Two weeks into our contest, three heroes announced they weren't about to be upstaged by their brides and so launched their own Here Come The Grooms! contest. They sweet-talked the heroines into relinquishing time and space on our blogs and next thing Kate and Liz and I knew, these guys were running the show -- or trying to.

It turned out that they had a lot of rapport with readers and the next year our current heroes wanted a contest of their own. Their heroines were busy planning weddings and the three of us authors had plenty of things to do that didn't entail running a contest,so we said, "Fine, Go for it. But don't expect us to run it."

So they did. It was a big hit. "We told you so," they said.

Now, after four years, the Here Come The Grooms! contest has become an annual event. It is celebrated on all three of our blogs and our websites. Each of our current grooms -- that would be Christo in my case (that's him on the right), Kalil in Liz's (that's him below on the left) and Nikos in Kate's (he didn't show up for his photo -- maybe when Kate gets back from Wales!) -- has taken over our respective blogs for the rest of the month. Well, Kate and Liz might be back on theirs, but Christo has given me the rest of the month off while he holds forth -- and runs his part of the contest.

To enter the 4th annual Here Come The Grooms! contest you have to answer the three questions posed by our grooms. Send those answers to Christo, Nikos and Kalil through the contact links on our websites (Christo's is on my contest page) and you have three chances to win.

The prizes:

• Christo is giving away a copy of his book (my book, I tell him, but he just rolls his eyes): One-Night Mistress . . . Convenient Wife.
• Nikos is offering a copy of his book, The Konstantos Marriage Demand.
• Kal has decided to give away copies of the new wonderful absolutely huge Romance Novelists' Association anthology, Loves Me, Loves Me Not (in which Liz has a story -- see details on her blog)

The questions they have asked are:

• KAL'S QUESTION (from Her Desert Dream): Of which literary character did Kal remind Lydia? (apart from Prince Charming!)
• CHRISTO'S QUESTION (From One-Night Mistress. . . . Convenient Wife by Anne McAllister)
  Why is Natalie staying at her mother's house?
• NIKOS'S QUESTION (From The Konstantos Marriage Demand by Kate Walker)
  What name did Sadie use so that Nikos would not know his 10 o'clock appointment was her?

Answers can be found by checking our blogs, websites and excerpts. The contest began on Valentine's Day and ends the end of February. Winners will be announced March 1st.

So stop by my website, Kate's and Liz's. Enter all three contests.

And while you're there, visit our blogs and harass Christo, Nikos and Kal a bit. Keeping heroes on their toes is a Very Good Thing.