Black Roses was the quickest book I ever wrote. This was for the Flower Shop Series, which I was not part of. An author dropped out late and a slot needed to be filled. My publisher asked me to help, and I wrote a 25K novella in about 20 days. Again, this was mostly a romance series, so I called the main characters Dale and Cynthia Darling to make it sickly sweet, and then put them through absolute hell.