That's the Power of Love

My first book with Cerridwen Press releases one week from today! This particular book is dear to my heart for a variety of reasons. I'll write more about them in the next few days.

My working title for this book was DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH, which emphasized the quest for the diamond but also alluded to Jake. Yeah, he may appear to be a scruffy loser who may be just a tad too close to his buddy Jack Daniel's. But Rebecca sees the good in him. Not easily certainly, but when was love ever easy? But CP already had a book with that title, so I had to come up with something else. I struggled with it a little bit, trying to think of a way to keep the Diamond reference and still allude to the romance. That's when I came up with TOUGHER THAN DIAMONDS.

Way back in the Eighties, the first romance I ever wrote was about a rock star in seclusion on a small island off the coast of Florida. While this book didn't sell, it got a fair amount of praise from a couple of editors and was the springboard for my first published work with Silhouette. All the time I was writing that rock star hero, I had Huey Lewis in mind. I had pictures of him all over my bulletin board above my desk. SPORTS was hot on the Top Ten and I played it constantly. I even got to see him in concert when he was promoting his next album, FORE. Also, MTV was fairly new at that time, and Huey was all over it, being very easy to look at.

So for Valentine's Day this year, my Prince took me to see Huey Lewis and the News at a local venue. They rocked the house that night! A few weeks prior to the concert, I loaded the player in my car with all of Huey's CDs. I was traveling at a high rate of speed, top down, singing along at the top of my voice to "Power of Love," when I coulda smacked myself upside the head with a two by four.

I hadn't realized why the phrase TOUGHER THAN DIAMONDS had been floating around in my head, but there it was! "Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream."

Well, thanks, Huey. I guess you did finally show up in one of my books after all.

And that's the Power of Love.

Have a great day!
Delia