Welcome Spring

Spring? I'm sure y'all are thinking I'm a little late here. Supposedly Spring came to North America several weeks ago. According to the calendar, the vernal equinox was March 20th. According to my nature-watching friend, Spring arrived with the first robin in her yard in early March, while another claims Spring popped up with the first purple crocus.

But for me, Spring officially arrived on March 31st with the first pitch of the Cardinals baseball season. aahhh The smell of the grass, the sun on the field, the thud of the ball hitting leather gloves, and the crack of the bat. Those signal the end of winter to me.

I even played hooky from doing my line edits (shhh) to go to the game yesterday. But don't tell Johanna, okay?

I've been tempted many times to write a baseball book, or two, or several. :) One of our American authors put one out a few years ago, so I know the editors wouldn't automatically turn down the idea.

I'd love to combine two of my favorite things, a love story and baseball. So I'm wondering... Do you readers like books with baseball players as heroes? Would they be interesting or would you see "baseball" and feel reluctant to read it, or maybe even downright uninterested because of the setting?

Thanks for the feedback. Play Ball!!

Megan

Megan Kelly The Marriage Solution, May 2011

www.megankellybooks.com

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April Recipe - an Easy Favorite

I love a good, tasty, easy recipe I can make in a hurry. I also like a recipe I can make without turning on the oven, but in this case, I'll make an exception. There's nothing to compare with cheese melting and potato chips toasting on top of a bubbly casserole. My friend Kara Lennox (http://www.karalennox.com/) spent the weekend with me in Texas after attending the "Dreamin' in Dallas" conference. Kara wrote numerous books for Harlequin American and moved to California over a year ago. She now writes for Harlequin Superromance. We took a drive to the lake with another writer friend, Rebecca Russell, and then it was time to come home and fix some dinner. Sunday night I made Paula Deen's Hot Chicken Salad, a delicious casserole type dish that is a snap to mix together and bakes in only 20 minutes. I usually have all the ingredients I need in my refrigerator and on my shelves. I'd like to give you my version of the dish, since I modified it for (1) a single can of chuck white chicken, and (2) eating for two and maybe a little left over.

Victoria Chancellor's Version of

Paula Deen's Hot Chicken Salad

1 - 10 oz. can of chuck white chicken, drained
3/4 c. diced celery
1/2 c. sliced or slivered almonds
2 T minced onion or 2 t dried minced onion
3/4 c. reduced fat mayonnaise
2 t. lemon juice
salt & pepper to taste
1 c. shredded cheddar cheese
3/4 c. (more or less) crushed potato chips (I use Baked Ruffles.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl mix together the first seven ingredients. Spoon into a 2 quart (approximately) casserole OR into three small individual casserole dishes. Sprinkle cheese, then potato chips, on top. Bake for 20 minutes, until cheese melts and potato chips are toasty. The hot chicken salad will remain a little crunchy from the celery and almonds. Note: You can also make this with panko bread crumbs rather than potato chips if you prefer.

Enjoy!

MARCH WINNER!!!

CONGRATULATIONS Shawntelle Madison! You’re the March winner. To receive your free autographed books please contact Pam Stone and Barbara White Daille through their Web sites. To enter the contest simply leave a blog comment and your name will go into the drawing. Simple and painless. And FREE BOOKS. So check back often and be sure to leave a comment. Good luck!

Help! Something ate my computer

Why is it that writers are so rarely tech-savvy? With a few exceptions, writers of my acquaintance muddle along trying to figure out why their toolbars keep disappearing and how to design a simple email flyer that doesn’t resemble a child’s attempt. Actually, most children these days do a better job.

So please forgive me for forgetting to post my blog last month. I have a good excuse: my computer died.

I loved that computer. It was old (1999, I think). It was outdated (anyone ever heard of Windows ME, which stands for Millennium?). Microsoft, Flash and Adobe refused to support it any more.

I couldn’t shop on Amazon, because my computer froze. My project of reissuing out-of-print books, including my half-dozen Regency romances, on Kindle depended entirely on the good graces of my not-quite-as-decrepit laptop.

Yet I worked happily along on Word 2000 and Windows ME, writing my Safe Harbor Medical miniseries for Harlequin American. Coming next: Falling for the Nanny in June 2011, followed by The Surgeon’s Surprise Twins in October.

And then, splat. The thing refused to boot up. A sector on the techno-blah-blah had failed. A virus? Old age? Or possibly a household curse – my husband’s laptop went kablooey a few days later, although for different reasons (overheating). The only saving graces were 1) I back up my data, so I didn’t lose anything important and 2) my laptop still functioned.

Anyway, there we stood in Fry’s Electronics, with a scary assortment of screens blinking at us. Thank goodness my husband wasn’t intimidated, because I felt like Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. I can report that we bought a computer and a monitor and brought them home. I immediately went back to work on my laptop and left them to blink at me from across my office.

That was a month ago. Since then, we’ve gradually configured the new computer. I have no idea what Word 2010 is all about, because the geeks moved everything around. My husband managed to copy my programs from the laptop onto the new computer using something called Parallels, so now I have Word 2000 installed. The only problem is that it copied over the files for Word Starter 2010 (don’t ask what that is), which has disappeared. And my pictures migrated to an entirely different program, as did my email. For all I know, they're wandering around the neighborhood, frightening the pigeons.

I’m still working on my laptop. I swear, I’ll move to the new computer before my next post, a month from now.

But don't count on it.