First Time on the First- Knights in Shining Armor &Boys of Summer

What were my first encounters with historical romance? My mind started down this direction when one of Historical Romance’s great writers, Jo Beverley, passed away recently. I didn’t know her personally and had never met her in real life- just a few brief engagements on line, but yet she was a huge reason that I took the plunge into historical romance as an adult reader after a few decades’ long hiatus. She lit my fire for medieval, Georgian, and Regency Romances and made me see the fun in series that featured family connections and bands of friends.

My first encounter with historical romance was her Dark Champion. I picked it up at a library sale. I had only read historical fiction and historical mysteries up to this point so this impulse to read a medieval romance was quite out of the blue. I was enchanted and immediately re-read the book then I looked up the back list and my heart fluttered to see that there were three more related books.
I devoured those and pulled the first of her Malloren series off the library shelf and so on and so forth.
Have you read Jo Beverley’s books? What was your first?



And my other first time is something fun. Someone asked me about my writing the other day and wondered about my first story. I chuckled and said did she mean my first story ever since I’ve been writing and journaling scraps of stories since I was a child, but no, she wanted to know what my first adult story was. Well, I’m rather private about my writing, but thought I’d share just this once. My first story written as an adult was done on a dare.
I worked in an office of other family case-workers like myself. Two of my co-workers enjoy reading hot vampire romance- yep, those ‘scorch your britches off’ kind. They talked about their favorites and storylines and characters while we were all on lunch. I didn’t contribute much because at the time, I had yet to read a paranormal romance or urban fantasy so had little to say. Apparently, they thought my silence was in the form of disapproval (which it wasn’t- just silence- not one to judge about folks reading habits) and before I knew it, I was challenged with ‘if you think you can do better…’.
Well I went home and proceeded to hammer out my first story since college writing class. Had no idea what the rules for paranormal world building was or the structure or anything like that. My vampire story was fun to write and a challenge and it gave me a thirst to write more- not necessarily vampire stories though I think I could dig it. Haha! My sister in law is now the lucky lady who possesses that story about a Spanish Conquistodorean Vampire and a Native American magic wielder.
I guess the moral of the story is don’t dare me because I am incapable of not taking that dare. Haha!

And I'll leave you with a picture from my first time seeing my favorite team play in over twenty years. Huzzah for the boys of summer!

San Francisco Giants' catcher, Buster Posey at bat