I swear I will post last week’s winners tonight. In the meantime…

Barbara Monajem wrote her first story in third grade about apple tree gnomes. After dabbling in neighborhood musicals and teen melodrama, she published a middle-grade fantasy when her children were young. Now her kids are adults, and she writes paranormal and historical romance for grownups. She lives in Georgia with an ever-shifting population of relatives, friends, and feline strays.

Barbara’s latest release is NOTORIOUS ELIZA:

Patrick needs a respectable new wife to be a mother for his daughter.

Notorious Eliza paints nudes to support her young son.

They should resist the attraction. (They don’t.)

They dare not fall in love. (They do.)

They must not marry… for one day Eliza’s most scandalous secret will surface and destroy them all…

Today Barbara is giving away a $20 gift certificate from Amazon or Barnes & Noble – your choice. Simply answer this question: What is the title of my paranormal romance that will be released in April?

Welcome, Barbara!

Whoa! Stop right there. The widowed heroine of Notorious Eliza, my historical short story from Harlequin this month, has most of the qualities of the ideal English housewife (as described in a little book published centuries ago from which the above quote was taken). She’s courageous, patient, witty, diligent, loyal, and so on…but definitely not chaste of thought.

Why? Well, it’s really, really hard to think chastely when you support yourself and your young son by painting nude courtesans. Eliza’s unchaste mind – as well as her artistic skills – make her the perfect choice to disguise the naughty murals on a country house’s ballroom walls.

And the perfect temptation for Patrick, the hero, who needs the murals painted over so he can find a respectable lady to be a mother for his daughter. Not that he’s having much luck in the wife hunt – all the women he finds are frivolous, selfish, heartless, boring… and, of course, virgins. He’s really not keen on starting from scratch.

Patrick wants one last fling with lusty, experienced Eliza. She yearns for just one passionate affair. And as long as Eliza’s darkest secret hangs over their heads, it can’t become anything more.

Question:

I write in two genres, historical and contemporary paranormal, and my writing styles for the two genres are very different. As a reader, is that a problem for you? Do you prefer it when a writer uses different pseudonyms for different genres, or doesn’t it matter?