First things first: let me say, “Happy Birthday, Momsie!” And because I always do things at the last minute, I'll confess that I mailed your gift only yesterday.

Isn't that the way of so many things? We wait and wait and wait and then the procrastination catches up with us.

In my November release, NOT THE MARRYING KIND, Harriet P. Smith finds out just how painful putting off truth-telling can be. Harriet P. Smith knows she should track down her high school crush Jake Porter and share the secret she's kept from him for sixteen years. Yet she doesn't, just as we postpone and close our eyes and hope our problems will somehow magically disappear.

Another confession: there's a lot of me in Harriet!

But isn't that true of everything we write? When I'm asked the classic question, “Where do you get your ideas?”, I have a standard response. My character comes from whatever issue I'm working out in therapy at that moment. After Hurricane Katrina, people joked that everyone in New Orleans was on anti-depressants. Maybe I should have joined the majority, but my answer was to cry a lot and to retreat into dreaming up another story in which lovable but imperfect characters find that they can create a world in which they can truly love and fully live.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of NOT THE MARRYING KIND and share Harriet and Jake's journey. They helped me to heal from the personal losses of Katrina.

I am pleased that the book has already brought joy to readers. In Romance BookPage, Barbara Samuel begins: “Hailey North's NOT THE MARRYING KIND is that rarest of delights--a straight contemporary romance. No dead bodies, no dripping fangs, no neckclothes or horses or ghosts. This is a romance novel, with all the delicious complexities and delights that entails.”

Jeri Neal of The Romance Readers Connection writes: “...one of the most delightful, witty, well-written books I've read in a very long time. This author absolutely nailed the experience of cosmopolitan, urban professionals returning to the small town of their roots.” She goes on to say more, but enough about me.

As I write this entry, the Writers Guild of America is on strike. Their decision to strike took a lot of courage and determination. One of the issues in contention involves webcasts or digitally distributed media of television shows. If you log onto a station's site and watch a television sitcom online, you see commercials. Advertising revenue is generated but under the existing contract, the writers do not share in those proceeds.

If it weren't for the writers--those crazy, brilliant, witty, and brave souls who have the ability to dream up characters who become icons in our world--there would be no show to webcast. I am not a member of the WGA. Novelists work without a union. But I urge you, for as long as the strike continues, to show your support of writers by not visiting any websites that redistribute television shows.

If you begin to suffer withdrawal pains from missing UGLY BETTY or PUSHING DAISIES (the two favorites of our home's teenager), pick up a copy of NOT THE MARRYING KIND. It's not crossing the picket line and it's a way to support both writers who work without and with a union.

Until next time...
Hailey North