Winners, and DA BWAHA bribe post

So, first of all, thank you all for voting both THE GOVERNESS AFFAIR and THE DUCHESS WAR into the Sweet Sixteen round of DA BWAHA. The other books out there are truly amazing, and it’s a huge honor to be chosen.

But in the next round, things are going to get real. THE DUCHESS WAR is up against Tessa Dare’s A LADY BY MIDNIGHT, and THE GOVERNESS AFFAIR is up against Ruthie Knox’s ROOM AT THE INN.

For those of you who haven’t surmised, Tessa Dare is a good friend of mine–a very good friend. So good that we room together every year at RWA Nationals. So good that she knows all my deepest, darkest secrets. (I know hers, too, but her deep, dark secrets are ridiculously adorable, and so I have no ammunition. None whatsoever.) Plus, A LADY BY MIDNIGHT is a ridiculously wonderful book.

Plus, Tessa is offering her fans bribes–she’s offering to write a scene where Colin teaches Thorne how to dance.

Well, two can play at that game. If THE DUCHESS WAR beats Tessa’s A LADY BY MIDNIGHT,  you will get a scene that I deleted from THE DUCHESS WAR–the scene where Minnie’s “maiden” *cough* aunts have “The Talk” with her just before her wedding. There was really no place for it in the book, and it got deleted before I even had what I called a first draft, but trust me, you want to read this scene.

Then there’s Ruthie Knox. I really, really like Ruthie’s books, and I really like Ruthie, too. Her books are amazing. She wrote the best scene involving hot sauce that I have ever read in any book. And ROOM AT THE INN is no slouch. It’s a reboot of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and the heroine is the girl who gave a kidney to the hero’s mother. (And there is a lot of great sex. Did I mention the sex?)

Ruthie Knox is offering up bribes, too–scenes from her first unpublished manuscript. I looked at this and said, “Hey, I have an unpublished manuscript! Maybe I can use some of this as a bribe, too.” So I whipped out my copy of my first book and started reading.

It was so bad. It was so bad I started laughing, but not the good laughing. The kind where I was cry-laughing because it hurt. That manuscript was ridiculously, painfully bad.

Do you want to read the first chapter from Flight of Fancy, my (thankfully) unpublished manuscript? No, no you do not. Nonetheless, that is what you’ll get if we beat Ruthie Knox’s ROOM AT THE INN.

And finally, as promised, I’m picking winners from my last post:

Jill Shultz and Katrina T: winners of A LADY AWAKENED.

SarahA-B and Rhonda: winners of A GENTLEMAN UNDONE.