The Duke of Shadows was the winner of Gather.com's First Chapters Romance contest. I was still somewhat in shock at having won when this chat was held. An excerpt from the chat: You know, I'd imagined "the call" many times, as I suspect most of us aspiring writers have. But what I didn't realize was how... shocking... it would be. Seriously. After five minutes in which my heartrate skyrocketed and I started to shake, I suddenly got very, very calm. Preternaturally composed. Seriously, I think I went into shock. After I got off the phone with Kristen and Lauren McKenna from Pocket Books, I called my parents -- and could barely muster monosyllabic responses to all their excited questions! It actually took several hours to regain my ability to string sentences together. It was quite an experience -- I don't think anything has ever rendered me speechless before!
...In which I wax poetic over Judith Ivory and Laura Kinsale, recall a brutal palm-reading, and describe the totally random chain of events which led me to enter the Gather contest (among other things).
