2T Repeat Performance - Big Heart = Baking a Bigger Pie (chocolate silk?)

I've done a number of blog tours over the years, posting on different sites. Now I'm bringing them to you!

Originally published March 13, 2010 for ARRA

Hello, ARRA! Thanks for inviting me to guest blog today, and huge thanks for Bite My Fire’s nomination, an honor and thrill.

What a lovely blog and website you have! I admit to a special delight in the ARRA logo. The way the Rs combine to make a heart really tickled my fancy…and inspired this blog.

ARRA. Australian Romance Readers Association. Well, I’m a US gal but my hubby has relatives in Australia, and I studied conducting under Geoffrey Simon—can that count for a bit of a connection? I’m certainly a reader of romance. Great swaths of it, Sherrilyn Kenyon, JD Robb, Anne Stuart and now Stephanie Laurens to name a few.

So many romances, so little time! (Ninety award finalists alone, all amazing authors.) And yet we find time, don’t we? Time to read, to water the seeds of love in our hearts, our lives. Despite our busy days and nights, we somehow find time to absorb stories of the sweet joining of two people in heart, body and soul.

ARRA nurtures that love, and not just through reading.

When Maggie notified me that Bite My Fire was a finalist in the Favourite Erotic Romance category, she also mentioned an opportunity to guest blog.  I emailed my interest, thinking that with all those finalists (did I mention there were ninety?) I might get a spot sometime in 2011. Instead Debbie mailed me back that extra blogging spots would be opened up during voting.  That’s plain exceptional.

See, there’s a lot of competition out there. A lot of writers, a lot of great books. As an author it’s easy to feel lost in the sheer volume of spines on the shelf.  Easy to feel you have to scrabble and grab for your little slice of the pie (mmm, lemon meringue).

But ARRA demonstrates the secret of love in action. When faced with feeding the multitude, instead of diminishing the portions, ARRA just baked a bigger pie. (Maybe pecan.)

I have to admit—I still scrabble and have to work hard not to grab. It’s fellow Samhain Publishing author, the awesome Vivi Andrews, who taught me what a big heart is. Just walking among the stars expands me. Makes my pie a little bigger.  (Strawberry-rhubarb. Or maybe chocolate silk after all.)

Thank you, Gentle Readers, for nominating Bite My Fire for Favourite Erotic Romance—for allowing me to walk among your author stars. It is an honor I hold to my heart, which is just a bit bigger today.

Please visit me at Mary Hughes Books!