Summer/Fall 2007

Once again, I have to apologize to you readers — and take the blame — for not updating the site in such a long time. Tammy prompted me months ago, as a good webmaster should, but I've been a bit preoccupied and just didn't get her the info she needed.

Sorry! I promise I'll try to do better next time, and make sure the site is updated a bit more often than once a year. Maybe twice a year. ;-)

In the last newsletter, I explained that I had been living in my dream house just a few months and was still settling-in and taking care of finish details. Well, here it is more than a year later, and I'm still settling-in. The window treatments for my master suite were installed barely a week ago. I swear! (So nice that the rising sun no longer floods my bedroom with WAKE UP! light much too early for this natural night owl.) The last two pieces of furniture my study needed were put into place only a couple of months ago, and at least three areas of the house continue to await the custom cabinetry planned for the spaces.

And I still haven't even started on the basement "entertainment level" of the house.

However unfinished, the house has begun to attract notice; if your newsstand or bookstore stocks it, take a look at the current (2007) issue of Classic North Carolina Design Elements magazine, which features not only a 5-page article on the house and its pet-friendly design, but photos of some areas, pets included. (Bandit is a star!)  My master bathroom won the Editor's Choice for Best Bathroom of 2007.

And during the last year, while I was becoming accustomed to this wonderful new space, more changes occurred in my life. I've become far more socially active and civic-minded, and have been working with a dedicated group of my fellow citizens to design and build a Community Pet Center to replace this area's tragically outdated and inefficient animal shelter. We hope to realize that goal and attend the ribbon-cutting of the new CPC within the next year. (See www.rutherfordpets.org for information and details of this project.) That work convinced me that I can and should give back to my community, and though there are many worthwhile causes to support, my heart has always been in efforts to promote animal welfare and education/literacy. So, I've decided to form a charitable foundation to promote those causes, a foundation that will operate out of this dream home of mine.

Stay tuned for more details as we get The Kay Hooper Foundation up and running.

On the career front, I have to apologize once again. We've been tinkering with my schedule, and as some of you already know, the first title in the next trilogy in the Bishop/SCU series, Blood Dreams, has been pushed back to late December. My fault entirely; I simply underestimated how long it would take me to adjust to a totally new and different workspace (after more than 20 years in my old study!), and my writing schedule suffered because of that.

But I'm back on track now, and very excited to be able to tell you that this new "Blood" trilogy is the first in the series to actually be a true trilogy: there is a story arc that begins in Blood Dreams, continues through Blood Sins, and concludes in Blood Ties. Each of the three titles will stand on its own, as every book in the series does, but I thought it was time to also tell a bigger, three-part story entangling not only Bishop and his SCU, but also the new civilian organization of gifted investigators Bishop himself helped found: Haven.

So there are new characters as well as familiar ones, and the stakes for Bishop and his people are higher than they've ever been before.

I hope you'll be patient with me, and wait for Blood Dreams to come out in hardcover after Christmas.

I do still plan (Honest!) to continue the Thief series as well; Quinn and Morgan are very much in my mind, I suspect planning their stories somewhere in my subconscious, and I doubt either will be quiet much longer. I will definitely keep you updated on that front; as soon as I have any concrete information about when you can expect the third installment (After Once a Thief and Always a Thief) of the series, I will update the site and send out a special breaking-news bulletin - or maybe hire a sky-writing plane or something. 

In the meantime, Sleeping with Fear is out in paperback, and spent several weeks on the bestseller lists; I hope you'll pick up a copy if you haven't already. I'm also happy to announce that I've come to an agreement with Bantam concerning my backlist Loveswept romance titles, and those are even now part of an ongoing reissue program. Four titles will be reissued this year, with plans to reprint at least two titles every year until we get them all back in print. Please check the reissues page for details.

Finally, I want to thank all you readers. I so appreciate your loyalty and support, and I very much enjoy hearing from you. I am, of course, chronically behind in replying to mail — but if it helps, that's mostly due to the fact that I've so far refused to hand-off that responsibility to my PA. So if it takes a little (or a lot!) longer to hear back from me, it's because you'll be hearing from *me* rather than receiving a canned response from a list of replies to FAQs.  I hope that counts for something.

Again, I will do my best to have the site updated more often than I have so far, and thanks again for your patience!

Hope you all have a great rest-of-the-summer, and Happy Reading.

Kay

Archived Newsletters

Spring/Summer 2006 Newsletter — From Kay's Desk
Summer 2005 Newsletter — From Kay's Desk
Spring 2004 Newsletter — From Kay's Desk