As you (hopefully) know, I am a romance author. My publisher, Crimson Romance, has published two of my books so far, Holding Out for a Hero and Angel Without Wings. Crimson Press is a new venture for F&W Media, and on June 4, it will be one-year old. In honor of this occasion, I wanted to do something special, so I came up with three little poems.

First up, a haiku. I wrote this one while lounging on my deck. To my neighbors eyes, it looked like I was talking to myself and counting on my fingers. Of course I was trying to achieve the perfect 5-7-5 syllable scheme that makes a haiku a haiku. So here it is:

Passionate love burns
Bright on the Crimson pages
Warming the cold night.

Next up was a rhyming ditty like the ones we used to inscribe in autograph books. An autograph book (in case you are too young to know about them) was a bound book with blank pages that your friends wrote little poems or messages in, such as “When you grow old and cannot see, put on your glasses and think of me.” My mother actually wrote that in my autograph book when I was not looking. Anyway, here’s my happy anniversary ditty for Crimson Romance:

Love stories floating in my head,
Whether awake or in my bed.
Across the page I feverishly scrawl
For Crimson to bring to all.

Finally, in honor of all my Irish relatives, a limerick:

There once was a writer named Mari,
Whose heros were all a bit scary.
Her heroines were not,
Which thickened the plot
But in the end he and she did marry.

I know, I know. You’re groaning. Anyway, Happy Anniversary to Crimson Romance. I wish you many, many more.