All That Matters

by Elizabeth Mayne

Cara Mulvaine was the last of her clan, and doomed to live out her days on the rugged, Irish coast, until the fateful night the restless sea delivered her a man with secrets to rival her own.

Gordon McKenna was a man who thrived on adventure, but his thirst for intrigue had finally landed him in the heart of danger, with none but a slip of a girl to save him from the hands of his deadly enemies.

Genres: Historical Romance

354 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1995

About the author

Marietta Kay(e?) Garcia is a native San Antonian, who knew by the age of eleven how to spin a good yarn according to every teacher she ever faced. She's spent the past twenty years making up fo r all her transgressions on the opposite side of the teacher's desk, and the last five working exclusively with troubled children. She particularly loves an ethnic hero and married one of her own eighteen years ago. But it wasn't until their youngest, a daughter, was two years old that life calmed down enough for this writer to fulfill the dream she'd always hadof becoming a novelist.

Reviews

[Naksed · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never a good idea to make the OM more likeable than the hero. And the OM had plenty of villainy. Also, what kind of hero HANDS his wife into the hands of her abducters promising that he will come back for her somehow? What a limp noodle! Thank goodness the heroine was clever and strong enough to pull herself out of many horrible situation cause the hero was worthless. Author leaves us with the supposedly romantic ending where heroine gives birth to their son and heir, never mind the hero spread his seed around and already had two by blows from the "comely" OW who was a lot more his type than the heroine that he considered a skinny gray mouse. No romance at all grrrr...

[Elizabeth Mayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cara Mulvaine morphed out my head fully grown, trapped in the wildest county in Ireland, Antrim on the Giants Causeway, following the Spanish Armada's utter failure to defeat England's rag tag navy of bounders on rowboats, pirates on barqes, privateers with brigantines and noblemen with swords and gunpowder. I knew Cara had to have this great monster of a dog that I met on the boardwalk of Savannah, Georgia during a Romantic Times Writers Convention.

The dog was an Irish Wolfhound and it bowled me over with its gentle loving eyes, patient acceptance of my overwhelming curiosity. He was the biggest dog I'd ever laid eyes on and he was perfect for my lonely, unloved, trapped Cara Mulvaine. I knew Cara's hero was going to come crashing out of the raging waves and land literally at her feet to rescue her from her ruthless and brutal grandfather.

And I knew the minute I touched that Irish Wolfhound in Savannah, that real hero on the rocks of Dunluce, Ireland was going to be the biggest dog ever bred. He was the only animal strong enough to pull an exhausted shipwreck survivor from the unforgiving Irish Sea. Skinny Cara could help, could make her horse go down the rocks to help, but the Irish Wolfhound I named, Mimms, had to be the hero of the day.

I wasn't published then. I couldn't get an agent. I couldn't get a query letter past the mail room of any New York publisher. I had a contemporary manuscript submitted to the Romance Writers of America annual contest for unpublished writers. My mentors in San Antonio especially our local president, Emma Merritt kept encouraging me to write more. Submit more. They SARA lady writers were relentless in weekly critique groups, cutting down to the bones and meat of scenes I brought to readings.

Emma began reading the first chapter of All THAT MATTERS and after five minutes of our core groups reading of the same chapter threw her copy on the coffee tabled and shouted. "that dog will not die in this scene, Kaye, I won't read another word until you tell me that dog isn't going to die."

All four of us, Evelyn Rogers, Martha Hixs, Emma and I sat there hearing her words reverberate off the cathedral ceiling of Emma's fine house.

I swallowed and said quietly, "Its okay, Emma. The dog doesnt die. The dog's the hero that brings Cara and Gordie together. The dogs my DEUS MACHINA, my hand of God, the fates bringing two unlikely people together to make the story work."

"Well," Emma humphed. "All right then, but I'm telling you if you kill that dog, I will never read another word you write."

Suffice to say, Mimms made the opening of ALL THAT MATTERS more compelling and believable. I would have never finished writing that book if I hadn't gone to Savannah and met that wonderful beast on the boardwalk. I wanted to take him home with me. I wanted his puppies. It was love at first sight.

Meanwhile as I was slogging away writing the whole book, the contemporary script I'd sent to Romance Writers of America came home to roost. VIXEN, TOO got the notice I'd been seeking for so many years. It was a finalist in the unpublished authors Contemporary Suspense Category. So all of us ladies of the San Antonio Romance Authors, packed up our best clothes, our high heels, make up and jewelry and headed off to Convention in Chicago to see who would be the winners of the RITA award would be announced from the podium and the winners of the hopeful wannebee published writers found out who won what and in which catagory.

I got to meet all of my fellow finalists that year. VIXEN, TOO was out there in the matrix making the rounds, peeps were reading, commenting and thinking. Was Chicago my miracle town?

Nope. It was a great town for my mentor, Emma Merritt, she received the life time achievement award that year. You'd have to know Emma to know what a classy, beautiful, driving force she was behind the Romantic Writer of America. Now the lifetime achievement award that's given at convention each year is called the Emma Merritt Award. God love her, I still miss her so very much.

VIXEN, TOO didn't get me a book contract. But the book I was working on at that convention did.

VIXEN, TOO got me an agent. Pattie Steele-Perkins called my house out of blue one day not long after that convention ended and was raving about the manuscript she'd read, ViXEN, TOO. She thought that was the most exciting manuscript she'd ever read and by the way, do you have anything more?
And will you send any other proposals and synopsis you have for me to consider working with?

I polished up my first fifty pages and whittled down the synopsis of ALL THAT MATTERS and sent that off to New York with prayers, fingers crossed and novena promised if heaven would look my way soon.
After she read the proposal and the fifty pages, Pattie called again, asking cautiously, is the manuscript finished. How long is it? How many pages.

Five hundred fifty pages is a daunting number to any busy overworked agent. Pattie bravely asked me to send it to her with the promise that she'd get back to me and we'd talk about possiblities after she'd read the whole manuscript. Christmas came and went, Easter came around and passed, Fiesta was on in San Antonio. Pattie finally called for a third time. She wanted to be my agent, she wanted me, little old schoot teacher, Marietta Kaye Garcia as a writer under her wing. She wanted to shop both books around and needed so many copies etc etc etc and lets meed this year at convention and get to know each other, okay?

We finally met each other at the next RWA convention in St. Louis the year of the five hundred year flood. Pattie was everything I wanted to see in an agent, blond, beautiful, energetic and very ambitious. What else are you working on was the first thing she asked me. I rattled off a handful of title names and plot lines and was rewarded by her brilliant smile. We parted happily, me to home and writing, Pattie to home in New York a selling.

Come September Pattie had an offer for ALL THAT MATTERS. Harlequin editor, Margaret O'Neill wanted to buy it. Did I still want to sell it.

You bet I did.

The rest, my friends, is history.

Now the rights to ALL THAT MATTERS have reverted back to me. I have rewritten it and have published the revised book on Kindle at Amazon.com. All of my Harlequin books are now available thru Amazon's Kindle.com They are available a lot of other places, too. Barnes and Nobles, practically anywhere that sells the ebook editions.

All this all for the love of a dog. Pretty cool, eh?

Oh, and yes, I did sell Vixen, Too as well, but that's another story. It's published title is the Sheik and the Vixen. Silhouette Intimate Moments bought it.

Enjoy reading and we'll talk again soon.

I hope that any of you that have read the first edition

[Priscilla · Rating 1 out of 5]

A heroína, Karen, resgata um naufrágo que mais tarde revela ser um lorde, Brian.

Essa seria a premissa a ser desenvolvida, mas no final há uma avalanche de personagens que aparentemente são de outros livros, mas sem uma explicação da autora ou da editora.

Confuso.