Happy New Year! 2009 marks Harlequin's 60th anniversary--and Intrigue's 25th! This year, our newsletter questions will celebrate all that's suspenseful and wonderful about Harlequin Intrigue.

This one is especially for aspiring Intrigue authors (or anyone who thinks getting deeper into characterization is fun).  Here’s some insight into how Intrigue characters think. Let’s say you’re the hero or heroine of your current/upcoming/favorite Intrigue novel.   Where would you go on summer vacation?  What would you do?

Julie Miller: My December Intrigue, Beauty and the Badge, is a true Beauty & the Beast story, with big, bad, bull-dog faced detective, Kevin Grove, as my hero.  He’s a diehard cop who’s seen the darkest life has to offer, and still comes back fighting.  But he’s pretty much a recluse in his social life because of a wicked witch from a previous relationship who made his villainous looks and gruff persona seem like a real curse.  When his pretty next door neighbor gets attacked in her own home in the middle of the night and runs to him for help, it’s about the first time he steps out of his comfort zone and lets someone who’s not a part of his work into his life again.  So, getting Kev out of his house for a vacation won’t be easy.  But… if Beth (the girl next door) agrees to go with him, I might be able to get Detective Grove to go to some secluded place for a long weekend escape.  Maybe a cabin up in the mountains where the wide open spaces and lack of guests and bad guys would let him breathe easy.  Or, I could see the two of them on a cabin cruiser out on the Lake of the Ozarks where they could share some quiet, quality time enjoying a sunset, or below decks, enjoying something else, altogether!

Ann Voss Peterson:  If I were the hero of my September Intrigue, Reed Tanner from Covert Cootchie-Cootchie-Coo, I would spend my vacation sailing.  Actually I'm not sure that would be called a vacation for him.  He sails for a living, taking tourists out on the San Francisco Bay in his catamaran.  After growing up on a Texas ranch, he has finally realized his dream career--until the discovery of a baby in his sail boat pulls him back to his cowboy past.

Patricia Rosemoor: While Tiernan McKenna and Ella Thunder (Stealing Thunder, Aug 09) are going to settle down in South Dakota, they would definitely honeymoon in Ireland, where they'd visit all Tiernan's McKenna relatives, especially his brothers Cashel and Aidan. Tiernan would introduce her to the Thoroughbreds his brothers train and they would ride from coast to coast, from the Irish Sea to the Atlantic and the Cliffs of Moher. They would stay in Ashford Castle for a few nights, and ride in the horse-drawn jaunting car in which John Wayne courted Maureen O'Hara in the movie The Quiet Man. And if that isn't romantic enough, they would picnic by moonlight at an abandoned castle, where they would make love under the stars.

Joanna Wayne: The heroine of Cowboy to the Core, my August Intrigue release, is a stunning psychic, a single mom and a buyer for women's formal wear.  She might choose New York or Paris for a vacation, or if she were taking her pre-teen daughter along, she might wind up on my favorite beach--Orange Beach near Gulf Shores, Alabama. The one place she definitely wouldn't choose is a Renaissance Festival, not after her recent vision where she sees a woman in an Elizabethan gown murdered by an evil knight. Of course, in Cowboy to the Core, the Texas Renaissance Festival is exactly where she turns up, and then the danger and highly sensual romance with former Navy Seal Marcus Abbot begin.
 
Gotta love those Navy SEALs as the Special Ops, Texas series continues. The military taught them how to do everything except fall in love.

Mallory Kane: Matt Parker, the hero of my September, 2009 Intrigue, His Best Friend's Baby, has just found out that the baby of his best friend's widow has been kidnapped. He's on a mission to save the baby, protect his friend's widow, and by the way--stop a terrorist. He and Aimee are searching for the baby in the snow-covered Black Hills, one of Matt's favorite places on earth. So when everything has calmed down and Aimee and her baby are safe, his plans are to ask her to marry him. Where will they go for their honeymoon when the danger is over? Matt loves the Black Hills, but he's probably got his eye on a nice, lazy tropical paradise where they can laze around on the beach, and the coldest thing around is that icy mojito.

B.J. Daniels: My heroine Dulcie in my next book in the Whitehorse: The Corbetts series (Smokin' Six Shooter out in Sept.) could have had a wonderful vacation in Montana when she goes there to sell some property she's inherited. Sounds peaceful enough, huh.

Until she meets a long, tall cowboy (Russell Corbett) and realizes she isn't who she thought she was.  In fact nothing in her life is like she thought it was. Oh yeah, and someone wants her dead.

So much for a Montana vacation.

But Dulcie is no shrinking violet. She's a woman who believes she can handle anything--including Russell Corbett and a creepy old murder house, a rainmaker and at least one crazy woman.

Rebecca York: If you're the hero of an Intrigue novel, you've probably just survived a near-death experience.  Bad guys have been chasing you and the woman you love, and they almost killed you in some particularly nasty way.  Take the hero of my August Intrigue, More Than a Man.  Mystery man Noah Fielding and his new wife, Olivia Stapler were almost blown up in a massive explosion.  But they escaped at the last possible second.  Now they've earned the reward I always give my hero and heroine.  They get to enjoy a long happy life together.  Noah has a ranch North of Santa Barbara where he can shut out the world.  But he and Olivia need some time away from his usual environment.  So they're going off to a beautiful little luxury cottage on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, where they can lie on the beach, swim in the turquoise water and spend as much time as they want in each others arms.