Welcome to Leslie Carroll's new blog address!

Well, it's been a wild ride this fall! I've been juggling so many projects and deadlines that I feel like one of those circus performers who keeps a dozen plates spinning in the air. But would I trade it all to end up back in day-job hell? Hell, no!

So, what have I been doing with myself? Putting the finishing touches on my January 2008 release from Avon "A" -- CHOOSING SOPHIE, a contemporary story about Olivia ("Venus") deMarley, a former burlesque dancer who stands to inherit her late father's scrappy (and colorful) minor league baseball team, the Bronx Cheers, if she and Sophie, the twenty-year-old daughter she gave up for adoption right after her birth, can reunite .

Doffing my baseball cap to don another hat, this time a tricorn, I've also spent this fall getting my next work of historical fiction ready for publication in February, 2008.

ALL FOR LOVE: The Scandalous Life and Times of Royal Mistress Mary Robinson is my fourth title under the pen name Amanda Elyot. Amanda writes historical fiction. Leslie writes the contemporary stories. They're both me. It's an open secret.

Mary Robinson was a fascinating woman who kept company with some of the greatest luminaries of the Georgian era: the actor David Garrick, the playwright and theatre manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the firebrand politician Charles James Fox, and the glittering Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the crusading feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and the opium-addicted romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As a teenager, Mary was London's most celebrated actress. In 1780, she caught the eye of the Prince of Wales and became his first lover. I won't give away too much of the plot, but as the years went on, she became a poetess, novelist, and feminist herself and carried on a passionate 15-year affair with the dashing war hero Banastre Tarleton.

I've also been scrambling to meet the revision deadline for my first work of historical nonfiction. ROYAL AFFAIRS: A Lusty Romp Through the Extramarital Affairs that Shocked the British Monarchy will be released by NAL next June, just in time for your summer vacation. Sexy and sizzling and full of real-life dangerous liaisons, it's the perfect beach read, or the perfect companion to pass the time with during the airline flight to your destination of choice. Just don't leave it in the seat pocket in front of you!