Much has happened lately. I've had several new book released, and I've begun touring for my latest, IF YOU WALKED IN MY SHOES. So far, the tour has been wonderful, for many of my readers have come out to greet me. However, the weather here in the northeast has made moving about less than pleasant. I participated in my first Kwanzaa Fest at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York on December 11th, signing LAST CHANCE AT LOVE, my August 2004 release for BET Books. My big surprise there was the large number of poets who read a different kind of poetry that was very exciting.

Kensington Publishing Corp/Dafina Books published IF YOU WALKED IN MY SHOES, my eighteenth full-length and third Mainstream novel, in December 2004 to rave reviews and sent the book back to press for its second printing before the month was out.

Literary critic and author Robert Fleming said this of the book: "If You Walked In My Shoes is the Gwynne Forster book we've been waiting for. She is at the top of her game, giving us women and men seen from angles rarely viewed in contemporary fiction. This is her best work to date."

The Romance In Color internet review said, "IF YOU WALKED IN MY SHOES is an excellent read, almost impossible to put down …Great story telling!"

On January 8th, The United Sisters Book Club joined with Nubian Heritage's new and very elegant bookstore at 2037 Fifth Avenue at 125th Street in Harlem to launch IF YOU WALKED IN MY SHOES. In spite of the abysmal weather, a large crowd turned out, and my hosts served them wine, cheese, crackers and assorted dips and crudités. Raffles and door prizes delighted the guests.

In February, BET Books will release AFTER THE LOVING, a romance and the first sequel to the immensely popular ONCE IN A LIFETIME. In it, you will meet again Russ Harrington, the middle Harrington Brother, as he shows Velma Brighton that his love is blind to girth and dress size, and she repays him with loving that confounds and bedazzles him.

RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (internet) stated, "Gwynne Forster has developed a rich storyline of not just romance but other human emotions. …The dramatics, insight and understanding the characters bring to the pages can be classified as romance at its best."

In August, Kensington Publishing Corps/Dafina Books will publish WHATEVER IT TAKES, Gwynne's fourth mainstream novel. In it, one twin sister has always wanted and always gets whatever her twin sister has until she wants her sister's fiancé and discovers that she had gone too far. She'll hesitate at nothing to get what she wants, but does sisterly love has its limits?

September will see publication of LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, the final book in the Harrington series that began with ONCE IN A LIFETIME and continues with AFTER THE LOVING. It's the story of devastatingly handsome, charming and charismatic Drake Harrington, youngest of the Harrington brothers, who fights to be taken seriously as a man, in his profession and in his relationship with women and not to be treated as a shallow pretty boy, the stud that many women expect him to be.

I have signed with Dafina Books to write a novella for an anthology tentatively titled, Destiny's Daughters. The book will be published sometime in 2006. Other authors are Donna Hill, Parry Brown and Monica Jackson. More about this in my next newsletter.

My agent has just negotiated a two-book deal with Kensington/Dafina for mainstream novels to be published in 2006 and 2007. It boggles my mind to think that far ahead. I have also obligated myself to write another romance for BET Books, but I haven't decided the title or the plot.

Thank all of you who have made IF YOU WALKED IN MY SHOES a hit. I hope to meet you on one of my book signing ventures. Check my website for an updated list of tour stops.

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