About Annette |
Former prep-school
administrator and award-winning
author Annette Blair owes her comprehensive theme of "Magic with
Heart," to Salem, Massachusetts. The national
bestseller writes single titles for Berkley Sensations
and Vintage Magic Mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime. Her
historical backlist can soon be found on an e-reader near
you.
In
her thirty plus books, she’s explored nineteenth-century Amish
Country; Regency and Victorian Britain; and madcap, modern Salem
Mass, where bold women follow the Celtic faith with heart.
There, she fought dragons, and fell in love with an angel. More
recently, she’s solved mysteries beside Connecticut’s Mystic
River. Wherever Annette’s landed, she's thrived. An adventurer
and storyteller at heart, she’s proud to be a second generation
American with French Canadian roots.
Her
Paranormals include her Accidental Witch Trilogy, Psychic
Triplet Witches, Works like Magick Novels, and her Vintage Magic Mysteries.
Annette's work
has garnered multiple Romantic Times TOP PICKS, Reviewers’
Choice Awards, and HOLT Medallion nominations. A triple Golden
Heart Finalist, she's also finaled in the Golden Leaf, the
Lauries, the Golden Quill, and the National Readers' Choice
Awards. She’s won multiple Booksellers Best Awards, LORIES
Awards, Laurel Wreath, Blue Boa, Aspen Gold, RIO, Southern
Magic, More than Magic, Orange Rose, Winter Rose, PRISM, Beacon,
Colorado Awards of Excellence, Write Touch Readers' Choice
Awards and an Orange County Book Buyer's Best Award. With SEX
AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH, Annette took home three Anne-Bonney
Readers’ Choice Awards out of four.
VAMPIRE DRAGON,
her third Works Like Magick Novel, a "B&N Jules's Pick Must
Read" and a "Night Owl 5 star plus TOP PICK" hit stores in April 2011.
SKIRTING THE GRAVE,
her fourth Vintage Magic Mystery, hit stores in July 2011.
Recent re-prints include: Jacob's Return, an
Amish Historical, a Kindle US & UK TOP 100
Bestseller (formerly titled Thee, I Love) also
contracted as an audio book; The Butterfly
Garden, another Amish Historical, and Scoundrel
in Disguise a Victorian Historical, both
due before the end of 2011.
To see
a list of Annette's present, past, and future releases, click:
Booklist
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Left: Annette raising money for Mount St. Charles Academy, Woonsocket RI.
Right: Remember the annoying boy who sat next to you in the 7th grade? Well, Annette remembers the one who sat next to her, because she married him. |
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Above: Annette, left, Liette,
middle, and Paulette, right. SISTERS... SISTERS...
This is how we dressed for Christmas without consulting each other. |
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Annette, at a booksigning and tea party at Some
Enchanted Evening, Spencer MA,
the greatest New Age Shop you'll find. |
Annette's Smile Makers
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Annette's long-time hero and the new little hero she didn't know she couldn't live without--Travis
Annette can't decide which one's cuter! |
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Click here to see more pictures of Travis and his adorable new baby sister, Kelsey. |
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 ANNETTE LAGUE BLAIR COMES FULL CIRCLE
When I was about ten, I discovered that the pretty little building next to the playground (left) was filled with books. I went in to investigate and left with my first library card (#2036) and the max number of books allowed. I'd walked a mile to the playground, and after I discovered the Crompton Free Library, I walked that mile twice a week, taking the max amount of books each time. The librarian told me which shelves I could choose from, and I do believe I read them all.
Soon I moved to the higher shelves and discovered the Brontes and Jane Austen and I fell into an amazing new world. My love for reading continued into my adult life, during which time I wrote plot ideas on corners of envelopes, index cards, and paper napkins, and threw them into my nightstand. One day my, daughter, to whom I'd passed my love of reading, challenged me to write a book of my own.
I accepted, raided my nightstand, and some time later, I began selling my work. Today, I'm a National Bestselling Author, and The Crompton Free Library is the Pawtuxet Valley Historical Society where my picture hangs on a wall above a display of my novels.
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The beautiful sixteen-year-old in the chair is Annette's cousin, Ninette Bousquet, and Annette is the one-year-old sitting on the arm. Many years and two countries later, thanks to her daughter, Jaclyne, they reconnected through the internet. |
The Vintage Magic Mysteries
by
Annette Blair
Madeira Cutler's vintage dress shop, Vintage Magic, home to ghost
Dante Underhill, was taken, history and all, from the building,
pictured below:
Maddie's former morgue turned funeral chapel carriage house is real. My
husband and I rented this building for twenty years.
Formerly the Kent
County Morgue, it later became the Read Funeral Chapel Carriage House in
Coventry, Rhode Island--and later home to my husband's business. Yes,
there were horse stalls for the horses that pulled the hearses, and caskets
plus upstairs when we moved in. While we rented it,
we happened to visit the Henry Ford Museum and found a horse drawn hearse listed
as coming from the Read Funeral Chapel Carriage house in Coventry, RI. :)
The side (shown right or bottom depending on the size of your screen) where the horse stalls are has small windows
inside each stall...stalls which, in my books, are now Maddie's dressing rooms.
I took the bottom floor windows out of her
shop in the mysteries, but I left a front door, sealed one set of double
doors in the front, and one set of double doors to the side.
The upstairs doors are where Maddie has
windows--in the storage room--from which she watched the
theater/playhouse burn down in LARCENY AND LACE.
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