I woke up to a flurry of tweets informing me that Publisher's Weekly had posted a starred review of One Dance with a Duke (releasing May 25)!

One Dance with a Duke Tessa Dare Ballantine, $7.99 (416p) ISBN 978-0-345-51885-9

This standout Regency romance, the first in Dare’s Stud Club trilogy, matches an unlikely heroine with an arrogant, secretive duke. Plump, plain, and poor, spinster Amelia d’Orsay is astonished when Spencer Dumarque, duke of Morland and a famously handsome and wealthy bachelor, literally sweeps her off her feet and out the door at a London ball. The news of a friend’s unexpected death leads them on a significant detour, and Amelia returns home at dawn. Deciding others will believe Amelia compromised after a night in his company, Spencer asks for her hand, leading to a hasty, often conflicted, and deeply passionate marriage. Amelia’s imperfections endear her to both the reader and her husband, while Spencer’s complexity of character sets him well beyond the typical aristocrat and a little bit of a murder mystery adds the perfect finishing touch. (June)

I can't tell you how unbelievably happy this makes me.   Little stars, be they gold or red, never lose their thrill, from preschool onward.   Also, I know a positive review in PW gives cash-strapped librarians a little extra motivation to order the book for their collections, and that is good for cash-strapped readers.

My weekend was also great.  I spent Saturday at the Literary Orange event at UC Irvine.  Along with the pleasure of sitting on a Romance panel with Super Librarian Wendy and HelenKay Dimon, I got to hear several other authors and illustrators speak, including keynote speakers Karen Joy Fowler and Dean Koontz.  (It's always so comforting to hear authors in other genres and at various points in their career fessing up to their various creative and life challenges.  We all fear the blank page!  It's not just me!  whew.)   I also got the chance to reconnect with several former coworkers in the librarian world, and meet some wonderful readers.  An excellent day, all around.

Hope your week is off to an encouraging start!

A Lady of Persuasion is in stores today!  This is the final installment of the trilogy, and I'm so excited to send Toby and Bel's romance out into the world.  RT Book Reviews named it a Top Pick, citing “wry wit, endearing characters, laugh-out-loud moments, sensual interludes and poignancy."  Please do stop by my blog today for a release-day party with friends, old and new.  You could win autographed books for yourself and a friend!

Well, this is going to be a mighty exciting weekend for yours truly. Not only do I have the honor of speaking and signing books at my local RWA chapter, I get to share that honor with the amazing Linda Howard. Seriously, Linda Howard. The topic of my craft presentation in the morning is pacing. It wasn't until I started seriously preparing my talk that I realized I'd set myself a real challenge. Nothing could be worse than a talk on pacing that dragged or ran over time! Talk about pressure! But my chaptermates are very friendly and forgiving, so I will just do my best.

A little roundup of links:

Two more review sites recently gave high marks to Surrender of a Siren!
Review at All About Romance
Review at The Romance Reader

And if you click here, you can read an in-depth interview about writing Siren that I did for Rhapsody Book Club.

Don't forget - the release of book three, A Lady of Persuasion, is coming up September 29! I've got plans in the works for a great big launch party right here on the blog, with prizes galore. Stay tuned for more details!

I got two copies in the mail this morning from my editor's assistant. (You can click on the picture for a bigger view.) I have since accomplished very little besides gazing into the shiny gold foil and fondling the embossing. It's real! It's really real! There are 384 pages inside, and my words are on each and every one!

Goddess of the Hunt got some lovely bloggage this week. Michelle Buonfiglio listed it as a Top Ten Beach Read over at BarnesandNoble.com's "Unabashedly Bookish" blog, and on Barbara Vey's "Beyond Her Book" blog at Publisher's Weekly, Stacey gave it a fabulous writeup (scroll down to the bottom). I'm in the process of writing up all sorts of promo letters, interviews, and guest blog posts for the coming month. Prepare to get sick of me.

AND - I had awesome news yesterday in the form of an email from my editor. Rights to all three books in the trilogy have been sold to publisher IKAR, for hardcover Slovak-language editions. I'll be in translation! I can't believe it.

Needless to say, it's been a great week. I hope it's been great for you, too. Have a wonderful holiday weekend, for those who live in the USA!

Thank you so much to everyone who posted (or tweeted) congrats on the Library Journal review!!

Well, the Dare family is back from vacation. We dug for dinosaur bones, saw the (great!) movie UP, visited a living history farm, and ate and ate and ate deliciously artery-clogging and therefore ironically named Heartland fare. Most importantly, we spent a lot of quality time with our family--it's not every day you get four generations in one place! We had a great time. Now we're home, and the laundry is (mostly) done, and the refrigerator is cleaned out, and the groceries are restocked, and the darelings are (bless them) back in school. Time for me to update the blog and website!

And what an exciting day to do it, because I woke up to two more great reviews!

The first was another starred review from Publisher's Weekly! You can read the whole and see the actual star here, if you scroll down a ways.

Here's what it says:

Dare’s sparkling Regency romance debut introduces a cunning and instantly likable tomboy heroine. Lucy Waltham has been besotted with her brother’s friend Toby since she was 11. Now 19 and determined to get Toby away from ladylike, well-dowried Sophia, Lucy decides to practice seduction techniques on another family friend, Jeremy Trescott, earl of Kendall and 10 years her senior. Their innocent trysts become a sizzling affair that leads abruptly to the altar, after which Lucy must use all her considerable wit and intelligence to transform herself into a countess without ever losing the wild spirit that Jeremy finds both daunting and delightful. Dare seems to have fit all the best of romance into one novel, from sensuous interludes and crafty humor to endearing multidimensional characters. Readers will eagerly anticipate the two sequels due in the fall.

And then I found my Romantic Times review, which gives GOTH 4-1/2 stars and a Top Pick for the month!!

With a daring debut, the first in a back-to-back trilogy, Dare is on the path to stardom. From the hilarious opening to the poignant climax, Dare uses wit and wisdom, humor and sensuality to relate a tale of tangled love that reveals her ability to touch hearts with her appealing characters, from a dotty aunt to a prideful urchin and everyone in between.

I'm so thrilled and honored and, quite frankly, rather dazed by it all. I'm especially delighted that the PW reviewer called Lucy "instantly likable". When she showed up in my imagination, I liked her instantly, too. But I'm biased.

If you would like to win an advance copy of Goddess of the Hunt, here is your last chance! My dear friend and critique partner, Courtney Milan, is giving away her personal copy. Details of how to enter are on her blog.

The Dare Family is here in the balmy Midwest on vacation, but I just had to share this exciting news.

Goddess of the Hunt has received a starred review from Library Journal! You can read the whole review here. A snippet:

This is an exceptional debut novel, from the first hilarious "practice" session to the gradual melting of Jem's outward reserve and Lucy's maturing realization of whom she really loves. VERDICT: A beautifully crafted tale that captivates with sassy wit, a lush, sweetly intense sensuality, and an abundance of beautifully articulated, appealing characters.

I'm so very excited by this, because not only is a starred review a tremendous honor, but because this is Library Journal, and I'm a librarian. Aside from the thrill of a great review, I know an LJ starred review means a lot more libraries will buy my book, and that makes me so happy. More copies of GotH out there in the world, freely circulating amongst the public! Hooray!