My good friend Kathy Bennett and I met nearly seventeen years ago at a writers’ conference in Dallas and we’ve kept up with each other as we worked to publish.  A retired police officer, Kathy writes great novels which draw on those experiences.   

On her blog, Kathy has an interesting interview technique.  She questions us in her interrogation room, then writes a police report about her guests.  It’s really creative and lots of fun.   She invited me to be questioned and I had a great time.   Sadly Kathy doesn’t archive these so it’s gone forever. 

I write the sweet books, the books where hero and heroine feel an attraction and kiss, but that’s it.  In my books, the characters never take off any article of clothing except hats, coats and shoes.   As far as the reader knows, my hero may shower in his pajamas.

The day the blog was up, I publicized it on Facebook and Twitter.   Later that evening, I went on Facebook to check my announcement and discovered it  was accompanied by the sexiest cover I’ve ever seen:  a well-shaped, curvy female body in almost no clothing and what wisps she wore were were red and lacy.  I flipped out.  Remember, I write the SWEET books in which everyone is fully clothed.  I could only imagine what my readers would think!  And my editor!  And my church friends.  Oh, my!

First I attempted to delete the picture but couldn’t because the little delete arrow didn’t show.   With that failure, I sent a hysterical message to Kathy and begged her to take that picture down.    Kathy leaped into action and tried to delete it but she didn’t have the button either and one of her pretty covers–with no nearly-naked people–showed on the page she could see.  

As always, Kathy was lovely and did everything she could from California while I worked hard in Texas but we never figured it out.   She felt terrible about it.   After I calmed down, I assured her we’d laugh about this–some day.  And I do not blame her.  I blame a Facebook glitch.

Little by little, that cover dropped down the page, shoved lower by new messages.  In fact, as small as the thumbnail was, I’m not sure anyone saw it.  No one wrote me accusatory letters or even mentioned the cover judgementally. 

Oh, wait, not true.  I just got a couple of emails.  One was from Roy, a friend from seminary and a minister.  He said he’d seen the cover a couple of times.  Fortunately, he was not incredibly shocked and still seems to be speaking to me.  My friend Marylin wrote she was sorry to have missed it.

What happened?  I don’t know.  My guess is that somehow a glitch on Facebook changed the image but we’ll never know.  Fortunately, it’s so far down the list, no one will see it now.  I hope.

Unless you go all the way down to that date (which I’m not mentioning) on the Facebook page.  Please don’t.