What's for Dinner?

by Joanne Rock

Available now!

When I was writing historical romance, I was frequently frustrated by the lack of texts handed down

by women. There are a few notable pieces from medieval times, spiritual writings or diaries, penned by powerful nuns or queens who could afford the expense of preserving their thoughts and who were well educated enough to write them down. Some of the more mundane texts by women that have survived the times are recipes, cooking instructions and ingredients lists that sometimes contain amusing asides about potential preparation hazards.

I am not surprised that at least a few of these writings survive given the necessity of cooking in everyday life and how much it has dominated feminine time for decades. Even now, when we can throw dinner in an “Insta-Pot” we still need to share recipes and idea for how to best use the tools available, and there is no escape the endless rounds of shopping for ingredients. Cooking take time. Furthermore, with studies showing that kids who take part in regular family meals are more well-adjusted, happier, higher achieving, you name it, we are called upon to make a ritual of eating. That means more thoughtful planning, table setting, shopping. If we’re lucky, there will be wine.

I have a binder full of recipes that I’ve acquired since getting married. My favorites are written in loved ones’ handwriting. My grandmother’s scrawled notes on cheesecake. Beloved dinner meals from my youth that my mother wrote down for me. My mother in law’s bonus notes on choosing cuts of meat after I confided that I was often flummoxed at the butcher window. I feel the love when I read those notes.

Available April 1st

But there are other personal recipes that call to me, too. I have a handful of emails from my critique partner, Catherine Mann, from the crazy years when we were both trying to sell our first books, writing constantly while raising lots of kids. Cathy’s asides are all about how to make things better, faster and tastier, how to adjust a main meal for the younger set so that there’s less time spent on prep. Like every other arena of my life, my cooking efficiency benefitted from her friendship.

In a life filled with books, my recipe binder is one of my most important. When I move houses during the year, it’s one that always goes with me. I can understand why medieval women made sure their cooking notes were well protected throughout their lifetime. Long after my latest romance novel is out of print, I hope my granddaughters will find something to smile about in the cooking adventures of their granny Joanne.

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Friends, my husband brought home a rice cooker for me this week. Any hints? Fav recipes to share for a writer still looking to make the kitchen work faster, easier and tastier? I’d love to hear any and all dinner suggestions! I’ll give one random poster an advance copy of my May Harlequin Desire, The Magnate’s Marriage Merger. In the meantime, I hope you’ll look for the prequel book, The Magnate’s Mail-Order Bride, available April 1 from Harlequin Desire!

Sexy Athlete Alert: Football and Romance

 by Joanne Rock

After writing baseball players, hockey players and even a Formula One race car driver, I guess I’ve developed a passion for sports heroes in my romances.

So I was really thrilled to sell a series to Harlequin Desire where the heroes are football players or guys otherwise attached to the sport—an owner, a coach, a couple of competing QBs. Meet the Bayou Billionaires this winter when my good friend Catherine Mann and I kick off our first joint series for Harlequin Desire.

For me, the sports arena recreates the medieval battlefield that I love so much. Athletes are a new breed of warrior, their battles a different kind of fierce. But I admire the heart and soul that go into the competition.

The desire to win fuels alpha males from all walks of life—from the boardroom to the playing field to the battlefield. In the Bayou Billionaires series, Cathy and I get to explore that hunger to win from a variety of perspectives. Her first hero, the owner of our fictional NFL team, is a former athlete who channels his knowledge of the game into strategy that helps him acquire the right weaponry to win. It’s up to Gervais Reynaud to combine the best personnel to get the job done in Catherine Mann’s His Pregnant Princess Bride.

Set in the Big Easy, the Bayou Billionaires books are all available for pre-order… perfect timing for that Amazon gift card you got for Christmas, right? I hope you’ll consider checking them out and seeing what kind of series Cathy and I created. In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite athlete heroes—real and fictional!

Bobby Tom Denton- if you haven’t read Heaven, Texas by Susan Elizabeth Phillips…. go grab it right now.

Cal Bonner- I’ll never forget that Lucky Charms scene in Nobody’s Baby But Mine—also by the phenomenal Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Wade O’Riley – Jill Shalvis can’t write a bad hero and her baseball guys are no different… check out Slow Heat in her Pacific Heat series.

Tyson Reed- I didn’t know how much I’d love MMA until I read Jennifer Snow’s new Beyond the Cage series, and in particular, Tyson’s book- Fighting the Fall. This is a new author to watch!

Harley Handleman- Lori Foster made me a fan with her Buckhorn Brothers and I haven’t stopped reading her since. Check out her SBC Fighters series, especially Hard to Handle.

Luc Martineau – See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson shows a hockey player in all his sexy glory.

Other favorites- Dierdre Martin, Elle Kennedy, Jaci Burton, Tracy Solheim and Kat Latham…. All must-reads for me!

What about you? What books are you looking for with your Christmas gift card? Share with me on the blog today and I’ll give one random poster a BONUS Amazon gift card for $5 so you can snag yourself an extra book!

My Friend, My Co-Author

By Joanne Rock

Catherine Mann & Joanne Rock at RWA

I’m so excited to be writing a book with my critique partner, Catherine Mann, this month. We’ve worked together—reading every sentence one another has penned—for almost eighteen years. I can always keep track of the date since I’d just had my second son the first time I went over to Cathy’s house for lunch and we embarked on the coolest partnership and friendship. The baby I’d been rocking over that lunch turns eighteen in April and my critique partnership with my fabulous friend has spawned a fun new creative direction—writing a series together.

Like all great ideas, it seemed to jump from our brains simultaneously. We might have been talking about the pressures to write more and faster in the current marketplace. Or we might have been discussing stories we’d love to write and hadn’t found the time. But something prompted the spark of an idea—what if we co-wrote some stories for fun?

Snapped this pic on a long ago road trip 

Because at the heart of the business still rests the creative joy of writing. It's a tricky balance when you turn your creative outlet into your work. New pressures are applied. Deadlines become important, looming beasts. “Productivity” enters your vocabulary and makes you wish you’d never heard it. So it’s important to peel away the work environment around our beloved craft sometimes and remember why we started in the first place—for the sheer joy of telling a story and entertaining a reader with the effort.

Before either Cathy or I sold our first books, we dreamed about what it would be like to have readers who sought out our books. We worked hard to tell the best stories possible—to make our writing engaging and our storytelling unique so that an editor had to buy our manuscripts. We’d share fun books we’d read and dissected what made them great. But over the years, as we’ve each pursued our writing dreams, we have less opportunities to call one another and blurt out a story premise because it’s so new and exciting. Part of that is because we've each been blessed to find readers and audience so we blurt out fun ideas to them! But it’s also because our storytelling fell into a rhythm and pattern.

That’s good, of course. Yet it’s always fun to mix things up as a creative person. To dig deep. To reinvent yourself—if only a little facet of yourself—and see what else you can do. To try a new process and find out what it yields. Working on a story together has done all of those things for me. Cathy called me yesterday and the ideas she brought to the work-in-progress were so exciting. She took the story in new directions, added fun levels I hadn’t thought of, and forced me to up my storytelling game. Even eighteen years into our professional partnership, she’s teaching me things. I hope I’m inspiring her right back.

All of this is to say, I’m really excited about the new Runaway Brides series Cathy and I are rolling out on April 7^th (would you believe that’s my middle son’s birthday? Kismet!). Tule Publishing is working on gorgeous covers for us that we’ll share soon. But first, we have some finishing touches to put on a series that has pulled from the very best of us and given us a chance to savor the creative fire of something new.

***Have you ever had the pleasure of working with a good friend? Or has your work led you to important people in your life? Share with me today on the boards and I’ll send one random poster a copy of my upcoming Harlequin Superromance, NIGHTS UNDER THE TENNESSEE STARS!