HQN Is Hot

by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 8/9/2004

Harlequin's latest imprint, HQN Books, lands two books on the national bestseller charts from its debut list. At #15 on the hardcover fiction list is Diana Palmer's Renegade, with 110,000 copies. Carly Phillips's Hot Stuff also takes #15, finishing off the mass market list; initial printing was 513,000 and HQN has gone back for another 51,500 copies. Both authors were at BEA to launch the imprint and they were also at the Romance Writers of America's annual conference in Dallas, July 28–31. At RWA, Palmer signed at the conference's annual literary signing (which featured just about all the 450 authors at the meeting and raised a record $61,000 for literacy), plus she did a seven-city TV satellite tour and had tea with her Dallas/Fort Worth reading group. Both authors were also at Harlequin's gala party at the Dallas Women's Museum. Palmer's long relationship with the house began in 1982 with her first novel, The Cowboy and the Lady, published by Silhouette; she turned in her newspaper reporter credentials and went on to write 100 novels. Phillips's Hot Stuff is the first volume of a trilogy about three orphaned sisters who move in with their sports-lawyer uncle as kids; as adults they work in professional sports. Phillips gave up her career as an attorney to pen romances and, since 1999, has written 20 novels.