Familiar with any Strangers?

My latest release is showing up in stores this week! You can find it wherever Harlequin/Silhouette series books are sold. When I was trying to come up with a title I wanted to use the word Familiar, since my heroine is one. When I typed the word into Google, it brought up a page on familiar strangers. The concept is cool, and it's something we've all experienced.

Have you ever noticed, perhaps in the grocery store, or Target, or even at the movie theater, that you've seen that person before? You don't know the person, but you recognize them. They are familiar to you. You've never had a conversation with them, but if you saw them somewhere other than the usual place, you would be like 'hey, I know them'. That's what a familiar stranger is, those people we know, but don't really know and have no direct interaction with. There's a whole website devoted to researching this phenomenon.

But that's not what my book is about. :-) I just liked the title.

This is the first book in a multi-author 4-book series. Want to know the cool part? All four of us (the authors) are friends. We were brought together in 1995 through an online critique service. We didn't know each other; we were spread to the four corners of the US, communicating only by computer. We sent chapters back and forth, and critiqued religiously for many years. When we first got together none of us had published. Now? We've 40+ books between us. We've met in person only a few times at RWA conferences (though Nina and I did go to Paris together last year). We are: Nina Bruhns, Cynthia Cooke, Michele Hauf, and Pat White.

How cool is that that we got to work on a series of books together? We actually created this project ourselves. Together we designed a world where demons and faeries and vampires and werewolves really do exist. We needed a hermetic order to study the otherworldly entities and learn from them. They are The Cadre. And we wanted a rival organization; a black-ops section of MI-5 called P-Cell. We peopled our world and shared characters between the books. It was an amazing experience. We grew as writers. We grew as friends. And we now have a pretty good idea how, exactly, one would go about capturing and interrogating a demon. (Not that any of us are going to try. I'm just sayin')

We named the series Dark Enchantments, and we are giving it to you, our readers. We hope that you'll read them all, because we want to introduce our own fans to the other authors' writing.

Now, we also have a blog. Actually, I think it belongs to the characters. They've been posting (yes, the characters), and they seem a little surprised that a bunch of romance writers have actually written books about them. Though, Raskin, (the faery—sorry, former prince of the Black court) does seem more than pleased about the whole deal (though a little upset the stories do not star him. But if you're interested, do stop by the Dark Enchantments blog. We're holding a contest through November, with a basket of prizes to give away. You'll find details at the blog.

And since I'm just all about giving stuff away this week (see my blog for my contests) I'm going to give away a copy of FAMILIAR STRANGER here today. At the end of the day, I'll draw a random winner from all the commenters. (Do check back on Friday for the winner's name) I'll throw in a beaded bookmark, and...a handy-dandy demon-capturing device. [Author is not responsible should the winner actually capture a demon. You're on your own with that, baby.]

So what about you? Do you have any familiar strangers in your life? And what about multi-author series? Do they interest you? If you read the first book, and enjoy it, does that compel you to check the next in the series?

Michele