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The winner of today’s drawing is Jessica Faulkingham of North Carolina. Congratulations, Jessica! I’ll get the book in the mail to you this week.

I’m finishing a new book this week and eye infections and other life annoyances have me running a few days behind, so I’ll post a new blog entry and the new contest details within the next few days. Please check back! In the meantime, if you want to be entered for the July 1 drawing (prize to be announced soon), send an email to me at gina.w@live.com by June 30. Click the Enter to Win! tab for official rules.

The morning news-and-features program I usually watch while I eat my oatmeal had a discussion today about Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the top 500  (rock) songs of all time.  The new edition of the list will be released Friday, but they discussed the top five this morning, conceding that the choices would be hotly debated over water coolers, coffee cups and dinner tables. As for myself … I wouldn’t have put any of those songs into my personal top five, but I could see the argument for each of them being there.

I’ve mentioned before that music is a vital part of my life. The little songs my mother sang when I was a child. The hymns we sang in our little country church, and the  choruses our church youth group  performed for the congregation. The pop and rock songs that played from my transistor radio and stereo record player when I was a young teen, from the 8-track, cassette, CD and MP3 players as technology and I matured.

Most days I turn off the TV as soon as the morning program is over and turn on my music player in its stead. I write to music. Music plays in my car between home and the grocery store or the mall. Our children played piano and violin and guitar and tin whistle as they grew up, and all three sang in high school choir.  I miss hearing their practices and performances. Our son-in-law is also musical — he’s playing the guitar in the photo above. Music is one of the many common bonds that have drawn him and my daughter together.

Our middle child, Kerry (the one married to the guitarist), has often mentioned that one of her cherished memories of childhood is riding in the back seat of the car on late night trips home from some visit or vacation, dozing with her sister and brother and listening to the music playing from the car speakers while her dad and I talked quietly in the front seats. I can identify with that memory; hearing certain songs from the late 60s and early 70s can send me straight back in time to summer car trips with my own parents and three brothers, often to Branson, Missouri or Galveston, Texas. I cannot imagine a world without music, nor do I want to try.

As the program concluded this morning, the on-air personalities were asked to name their all-time favorite songs, and I found their choices interesting. They mentioned yesterday that they would be doing so, and I’ve thought about it on and off since, wondering what I would name as number one on my list of favorite songs. I have a favorite gospel song, How Great Thou Art, and a favorite Christmas song, O Holy Night (followed closely by the secular White Christmas), but favorite pop/rock song was harder to choose. There are so many, some with deeply personal meaning, some I simply love to hear or to sing in the shower. Some that evoke special memories, others that can bring me to tears.

I’ve decided to try to compile a list of my top 25 favorite pop/rock songs sometime, just to see what others think the list says about me. I can already name a few of the songs that will pop up — When Doves Cry, Stairway to Heaven, Old Time Rock and Roll, I’ve Done Enough Dying Today, Cherish, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, I Still Burn, From Where You Are, The Dance … oops, that list is already growing. It would be somewhat easier for me to name my top 25 favorite bands/singers — there are so many wonderful songs! But what would be number one for me?

I think it would have to be In My Life by the Beatles (I was pleased to hear someone else name that one this morning, after I’d already chosen if for my own number one). I was just a little too young to be part of Beatlemania back in the day, nor do I listen to their music often now, but this song has always spoken to me, more so as I grow older. Every time it pops up on my work playlist — the newest of which includes 539 songs — I have to stop, close my eyes, and just let the memories and emotions flow.

What does this choice say about me? I think it illustrates that I’m sentimental, nostalgic and have a weakness for simple melodies and harmonies. What songs would be on your life’s soundtrack? Which would be your number one, and what does that say about you?

Until next time — may your days be filled with the music you love most.

I learned a new medical term last week. Blepharoconjunctivitis. The basic definition is inflammation of the conjunctiva (the membrane lining the eyelids and covering the eyeball) and the eyelid.

I wish I could say I learned the term while doing research for my current medical-themed book for Silhouette Special Edition. Unfortunately, I heard it from my doctor when I went to see her last Wednesday with my right eye blood-red, swollen almost closed, and leaking tears and goo (sorry for the image — I actually tried to understate how bad it was). She prescribed an antibiotic ointment I’ve used before that’s so thick I’ve always compared it to smearing axle grease in my eye, which makes it interesting trying to see through the resulting film.

I have to admit my eye bothered me for a full week before I saw the doctor. I have a chronic problem with my right eye being irritated and developing styes, so I just assumed it was my usual and treated it with eye drops I keep on hand. By the time I broke down and went to the doctor, it was pretty nasty – and it got worse during the weekend. I missed the monthly meeting of my local Romance Writers of America chapter that I was really looking forward to, and I spent the weekend whimpering and feeling sorry for myself.

Would it have gotten to that point if I’d seen the doctor earlier? I don’t know, but I suspect I waited a few days too long to go. As the mother of three medically-inclined offspring, I have an odd aversion to going to the doctor. Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while know that I occasionally veer into rants about taking care of yourself — having your regular mammograms, physicals, colonoscopies after 50. Let me add a new piece of advice: see your doctor promptly when you develop a problem that needs intervention! I should start paying a little better attention to my own advice (and the long-distance counsel of my exasperated physician daughter — sorry, Kerry).

I did get a little writing done last week, peering through my one good eye and the hazy slit of the other at the computer screen I had to darken quite a bit for comfort. It was nice to have my fictional world to escape into since I couldn’t physically leave my house for a few days. My doctor heroine would be as exasperated as my doctor daughter if any of her patients were so hesitant to seek treatment, I’m sure.

As promised, I have a title and publication date for you for this story about the workaholic couple — a busy surgeon and a single-dad attorney — trying to find time in their schedules to fall in love. THE M.D. NEXT DOOR will be on the shelves in January, 2011. Before then, you can find THE DOCTOR’S UNDOING in July and PROGNOSIS: ROMANCE in September. (Click the Books Available Now tab for details on upcoming titles).

Don’t forget to enter your name in the June 1 drawing! Click the Enter to Win! tab for details.

Until you visit again — take good care of yourselves!

The winner of this month’s drawing for two baby-themed books is Lydia Cheatham from my home state of Arkansas! Congratulations, Lydia, I’ll get those in the mail to you this week.

We had a scary weekend of storms and power outages, but today is simply beautiful here in central Arkansas.  My prayers go out today to those who lost their homes and to the families of the two people who lost their lives here in this state during the weekend, and to the thousands now dealing with flooding across the South.

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The prize for the June 1 drawing is detailed on the Enter to Win! page. Don’t forget to send me an email to let me know you want to be included in the drawing.

The hero of the book I’m writing now for Silhouette Special Edition (title and publication date to be announced later) is a single dad of a thirteen-year-old girl. I love writing about dads and daughters. There are so many intriguing angles to explore of those relationships. My husband is simply nuts about our two girls (our son, too, but that’s another type of bond). He has worried about them, over-protected them, battled with them and guided them during their lifetimes, but mostly he has loved them and taken such pride in their amazing personalities and their accomplishments. It has been especially hard for him to see them grow up and leave the nest — and his protection. It was particularly difficult for him to accept that time when he had to let them go on to lead their own lives so far from home.

I’m fortunate enough to still have my own father. I have very special memories of times with my dad. Camping and cookouts. The times when he and my uncle took me fishing (with three younger brothers, I always enjoyed being the center of Daddy’s attention). Walking me down the aisle in a ruffled, brocade tuxedo he absolutely hated (and rightfully so — what was I thinking? Oh, yes, it was the 70s). Always being there for me to call when I need him.

It’s fun for me to put myself into the head of my single-dad hero and explore his pride, his worry, his bafflement and his love for the little girl who’s growing up all too quickly. Adding a romance to the mix makes the whole adventure even more fun, especially when the heroine is a workaholic surgeon who never imagined herself becoming an instant mom to a teenager. I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know them, too, when the book is published early next year.

In the meantime, the next installment in my Doctors in Training series, THE DOCTOR’S UNDOING, will be available in July. If you’ve missed the first two books in the series, check eHarlequin.com to see if they are still available, or check with me at the email address given on the Contact Me tab above. All the stories stand alone, so you won’t be confused if you miss one or read them out of order.

Don’t forget to sign up for this month’s drawing for two baby-themed books (in honor of spring). Click the Enter to Win! tab above for details on how to enter.