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DELANEY FAMILY SERIES:
Once upon a time, three writers who happened to be friends were
going to attend a writer’s conference in Arizona at the same time.
Blithely, we all decided – Iris Johansen, Fayrene Preston, and
myself – that maybe we could all "get a book out of it." The fact
that we all wrote at that time for the same series romance line,
Bantam’s Loveswept, was not something that concerned us. We
all fell in love with Arizona, did some exploring and research, and
when we came home did indeed come up with an idea that excited
us – and seemed to solve the problem of having three Loveswept
writers turn in three books set in Arizona at about the same time.
We’d collaborate and deliberately connect the books.
And so the Delaney family was born.
I won’t get into the madness that tossed three literary agents
and a reluctant publisher (collaboration among writers having been
known to result in troublesome and temperamental fireworks) into
a months-long struggle to get all the contracts ironed out; to the
three of us, it was an exciting concept, a new challenge, and we
threw ourselves into the learn-as-you-go business of collaboration
and writing the books. (And, yes, we were still friends at the end
of what became a years-long collaboration, and still are to this
day.)
The books were finished before the contracts were, if that
gives you any idea of the legal complexity of what we were doing.
As for the creative complexity, that too turned out to be
much more complicated than we had expected, and by the end of it
we had a stand-alone "prequel" written by Iris (This Fierce
Splendor) two contemporary trilogies, The Shamrock Trinity and
The Delaneys of Killaroo (set in Australia), and two historical
trilogies, The Delaneys: The Untamed Years I & II, and a
collection of novels by each of us bound up together in The
Delaney Christmas Carol – our final collaboration. We borrowed
an idea from Dickens, and wrote Christmas Past, Christmas
Present, and Christmas Future.
We collaborated in our own way, what worked for us, and
ended up with what all of us feel was some of our best work. We
were also among the first to collaborate as we did (earned an award
or two for innovation in romance). In the end, though, what we did
was something that, for me, was practice for work that would come
later: worldbuilding. We built a world, a dynasty, and stretched
back into history and ahead into the future.
I like to believe we did a good job with that, and I hope
some of you unfamiliar with the project will take a look (all titles
are available as ebooks) and see for yourself. I, for one, will
always be proud of our Delaneys.
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Full Delaney Family Series
Publication Order Printable File (PDF)
Stand-Alone Prequel to Series
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This Fierce Splendor |
Contemporary Trilogies
Shamrock Trilogy
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Rafe the Maverick |
York the Renegade |
Burke the Kingpin |
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Delaneys of Killaroo Trilogy
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Adelaide the Enchantress |
Matilda, the Adventuress |
Sydney the Temptress |
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Historical Trilogies
"The Delaneys: The Untamed Years I" Trilogy
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Golden Flames |
Wild Silver |
Copper Fire |
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"The Delaneys: The Untamed Years II" Trilogy
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Velvet Lightning |
Satin Ice |
Silken Thunder |
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The Delaney Christmas Carol
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The Delaney Christmas Carol |
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