51 Query Contest

Dear Ms. Meadows,

Stone Kissed, an 85,000 word paranormal romance, tells the story of how a witch who brings statues to life finds love with a treasure hunter who has a heart of stone.

Delia Forrest talks to statues--and they talk back. She is forced to abandon her business in restoration, cleaning and placement of marble and granite statuary when her ancestral home is damaged by arson, with her father inside. The Forrests can't afford to pay for either his medical care or the reparations to the historic house. When Delia's childhood fantasy returns as very real man with an offer to buy Steward House, he seems like her only hope. Delia's heart and power are seated in the house. To this dismay of the stone faces, marble busts and granite graveyard statues that make up her adoptive family, Delia commits herself to do anything she can to keep the estate--anything Grant Wolverton wants.

Wolverton has a knack for finding the rough diamonds and the treasures in the trash heap. He has built his family's antiques concern into one of the largest auction houses in the country. In Steward House Grant sees a haven for his younger sister and him to retire and find stability. The eccentric and innocent Delia Forrest is an added bonus: To gain her love and trust, he simply must pretend to believe her outrageous claims that the statues of Stewardsville are coming to life--walking in the night, singing in chorus and even making love.

Grant and Delia aren't the only ones vying for control of the Steward Estate. Delia's distant cousin Cecily has dark powers of her own. The succubus will lie, cheat, seduce and steal to possess the Steward Estate, hoping its unlimited powers will remove her need to seduce men to death.

In 1995, I completed the coursework for an M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Arizona. Since then I have been writing professionally: In addition to grants and other contract work, I write fitness and wellness articles for my own business, Radiant Fitness. Through my membership in the Ohio Valley chapter of Romance Writers of America, however, I have found the support and education to tell stories of the power of love.




"Yes. Right there, again, please!” The marble satyr moaned his pleasure as Delia gently scraped away bits of lichen from the groove of his outer thigh.

“Just shut up,” she said, smiling as she reached for her boar’s hair paintbrush. She had been cleaning the lewd little flirt for two hours now, and he was relentless--as were most statues, she had found. This satyr was four feet tall with beautiful lines. He had been sculpted mid-leap, his arms outstretched for the nymph who stood on her own pedestal five yards further around the turn in Mrs. Hansdorf’s garden maze. He was doomed to chase the nymph forever, and her voice taunting him through the hedge didn’t help matters.

“Hurry, Delia. I’ve got an itch,” the nymph called back, forever giggling over her right shoulder.

“You shut up, too,” Delia laughed and returned to the task at hand. The enormous task: from what she could remember of sex, this fellow was disproportionately large. Where Mrs. Hansdorf had found these particular reproductions she didn’t know, but Delia suspected she had commissioned them privately. They were less than forty years old, but already showing the signs of damage from the elements. She knew it would ruin the lines of the maze, but she simply had to convince Mrs. H. either to move them indoors or to build a pergola to shelter them. Delia could get most of the streaks off, but the silver-gray marble was more fragile than it looked.

When her cell phone rang out Mozart’s “Minuet in G” it took Delia a moment to answer.