Thankfulness Guest Blog

I was invited to blog at Romance in the Backseat recently. They're doing an entire month on thankfulness. Here's what I wrote. You could win a copy of my book ALL IN if you comment. :)

Real Life Imitates Art

Wow! I'm checking my email today and I see a headline, "21-year-old becomes youngest WSOP champion ever." I immediately click on the link because, if you look at WSOP and scratch your head in confusion, it stands for World Series of Poker.

I know. You're probably still confused. So, Kate's into poker. So what?

Well, in my very first Be-Wished book, All In, the hero was a pro poker player, but when I was researching I couldn't really look up the average salary of poker players. I had to just look at the winning pots and speculate. I watched a few hours of the WSOP and was surprisingly engaged. So today, I read the article. Most of it was a summary of the head to head combat between the two lead players throughout the tournament, but the cool thing I found out is that Joe Cada "chose cards over college." And that's kind of what my character did too, despite a full scholarship to Stanford. And the pile of chips Joe Cada ended up with? EIGHT POINT FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. Yeah. My hero, Tucker, could easily afford the lifestyle I had him living.

It's probably not any big deal to anyone else, but I was tickled.

Recently, I offered as a prize the opportunity to be a character in one of my books. A woman named Amanda won. :) So, in Leap of Faith there is a character named Amanda, a noble and brave woman who attempts to save the hero. The real Amanda emailed me yesterday to tell me how exciting it was for her to read the book, waiting to see what I had done with her name. The fictional Amanda doesn't appear until about three quarters of the way in, so she had to read almost the whole story. Still, she seemed pleased.

I'd definitely offer up a character naming as a prize again. It was fun.

WINNERS!

Congratulations, Fallon and Jeanette Murray! You two have won a free e-book from my backlist. Choose your title and email me at kate_willoughby at yahoo dot com. Thanks for participating. :)

My Pants Are on Fire

Okay, I lied. I'm sorry. I didn't get the names up. It was my mother's birthday yesterday and my sister and I were cooking a Chinese feast all day long. Literally. Chopping up stuff all over the place. Ten courses. The works. I completely forgot about the blog.

I apologize.

I have a long shift at the day job, so will post winners tonight.