Our book club author for September was Jerrilyn Farmer and with a book entitled The Flaming Luau of Death how could tropical not be the them for dinner?! Jerrilyn writes the Madeline Bean culinary mysteries, but her talents do not stop at writing. She actually started out, and continues to be, an accomplished comedy (some of Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” sketches) and game show (Jeopardy! and Supermarket Sweep) writer. After college, Jerrilyn moved from Chicago to LA and got involved in comedy writing and game show writing. She wrote for several Saturday Night Live comedians and took writing courses through UCLA and was inspired to write a book. Problem? Living in the LA area and working in the television industry, naturally her first impulse was to show her book to some of the people she knew from the TV industry. Unfortunately, they kept looking at the book from the perspective of turning it into a movie. Jerrilyn then sent out copies of her book to several agents, as most aspiring authors do, and was successful in finding an agent. When it comes to promotion for her Madeline Bean books, Jerrilyn does not go the same route as other authors of…

I wrote my first book when I was nine, the story of an unwanted teddy bear that found a new and loving home. Poor teddy! I guess even at the age of nine was a little dark, LOL! Years later, I tried my hand at romantic comedy (an abysmal failure). My next attempt was at a lighthearted, fun historical, the kind I loved to read. Only problem was, no matter how hard I tried, I just wasn’t funny. Everything that flowed from my imagination was creepy and dark and moody. So what is it with me and dark books? Whether I’m writing historical gothics or sexy, contemporary paranormals as Eve Silver, or speculative romance as Eve Kenin, everything I write is dark, dark, dark (with the occasional quirky humor thrown in). What is it about a dark, tortured hero that is so appealing? And why does the heroine love him when he’s so hard to love? In my historical gothics (DARK PRINCE, HIS DARK KISS, DARK DESIRES), the heroes are secretive and a little sinister. Terrible things have happened to them, and they’ve done terrible things in turn. Yet, the tortured hero captures the love of the heroine and the…

Why an eBook? I get that question a lot since I decided to publish Annabelle’s Courtship with Samhain Publishing. My first reaction is: Why not? 🙂 But seriously…Samhain Publishing is such an impressive entity to me that I really wanted to work on a project with them. It started with two Inspirationals I’d written before I discovered that my fit as a writer leaned much more heavily toward sexy romance. Samhain doesn’t have any of the limitations on publication for an Inspirational that the larger presses do and luckily for me, they were interested in publishing my books. Meagan’s Chance came out under the LC Monroe name in July and Miss Fixit will be out later this year with a co-author. I also had a historical I’d written early on that Berkley had not yet purchased and I saw this as a golden opportunity to do something with Samhain as Lucy Monroe. Berkley very generously allowed me an addendum to my contract to make this possible and voila…Annabelle’s Courtship was published! Not only has Annabelle’s Courtship come out as an original eBook, but it and Meagan’s Chance will be released in print (available in all major bookstores – and some…

After 21 published novels, and numerous reprints of my old titles, I’m getting ready once again to contract with my publisher to write some more books. It’s always an interesting time for me, because I get to pick new characters, new plot twists, and new storylines. As I go through this process, I’m interested in what readers think. I’m renowned as “The Queen” of erotic romance, as well as “The Queen” of villains, so I write a story that’s very different from mainstream romance. My books are very plot driven. By this I mean they’re very fast-paced, with a focus on action and dialogue. They’re also very passionate and very dramatic, with extremely evil villains. If you’re one of my fans, and have read some (or all!) of my novels, I would love to hear what you enjoy about them. For example, is it the macho heroes? The great sex scenes? The heartbreak? The drama? The villains? What do you relish the most? Also, what could I leave out or tone down? The answers to these questions help me pinpoint the direction my books should go. If you haven’t read my books before, I’m curious as to why not. Is…

Ahh, another day in the life of a romance novelist, spending long hours fantasizing about a lingering kiss–that all-important first kiss scene, to be exact. It’s a tough job, but if I need some assistance, I can always find a bit of inspiration on film.Clark Gable bidding Vivien Leigh farewell on a bridge outside Atlanta, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint seducing each other on a train–I love to sigh over kisses that hint about forever and last nearly as long. In Learning Curve, I splurged on an I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this-but-I-can’t-help-myself first kiss scene that spread across ten pages.Do I want to add a touch of go-for-broke passion to that first embrace? In Moonstruck, Nicolas Cage gets his message across when he upends the kitchen table before grabbing Cher. My hero in Maybe, Baby may not have knocked over the kitchen table, but he sweeps everything on it to the floor, pushes the heroine down on its surface, and sprawls over her before helping himself to a greedy gulp of a kiss. I love Bacall’s sass in To Have and Have Not when she kisses Bogart and then tells him, “It’s even better when you help.” Because my hero and heroine share…

So You’re the Writer I get asked that a lot. By everyone. My doctor. My dentist. Neighbors. Friends to my extended family. I’m not “a” writer. I’m “the” writer. Like there’s only one. Or it’s so odd, it deserves special definition. Most times I keep the writerly part of myself private. Only with other writers and among readers who know I’m published do I relax about my profession. But somehow, everyone finds out. And it’s always embarrassing. I’M not embarrassed to be a writer. No, never that. I LOVE being a writer. But some people have these interpretations, or just things they say, or maybe WHEN they say them, or HOW they say them, that can make it very uncomfortable. I recently attended a neighborhood block party, and lo and behold, the topic of my books came up. I’m NOT the one who raised the subject. A woman said, “You’re the writer!” And a male neighbor – a nice guy, but still… told me that, given what his wife reads of my work, he expected me to be a hottie. I’m positive that I disappointed him. 🙂 Not too long ago, I was sitting at a high school sporting event…

I’m often asked how an airline pilot/ex-USAF jet jockey ended up writing romance. “Easy,” I say. “Too little time on the ground coupled with way too much time to think!” Trust me, nothing aids plot-hatching and character-developing like fifteen straight hours stuck in the cockpit with lukewarm coffee and a sky so black you can see every star in the Milky Way. I do six to eight Pacific crossings in a month. On any given day, you can find my body clock hovering somewhere between Tokyo and Sacramento. Ouch. Perpetual jet lag. But on the up side, the sights, smells, and tastes of the exotic locales I visit, and the conversations I have with people I’d never normally meet, provide the most amazing material to weave into my stories. With a little imagination, a dank high-walled alley in Taipei, ripe with the stench of sewage, garlic, and moped exhaust becomes the lower deck of an ill-maintained 19th century sailing ship. A Chinese restaurant where I nibble on pickled jelly fish, stir-fried fungus, and sautéed morning glory transforms into dinner-for-two on a distant planet.Okay, so I’m a hopeless daydreamer. Only I don’t publicize that fact – I mean, the last thing…

My new book No Time For Goodbye comes out in North America in less than a week, and while this is my fifth novel, in many ways it feels as though it’s my first. My four previous works of fiction have been about an obsessive-compulsive, well-meaning, but generally pain-in-the-ass character named Zack Walker. He made his first appearance in 2004 in Bad Move, which was followed by Bad Guys, Lone Wolf, and Stone Rain. While I consider these books legitimate mystery thrillers, they were also intended to be pretty funny. (I know, from writing a humour column the last 14 years for the Toronto Star, that even when you intend something to be funny, plenty of readers will go, “Huh?”) No Time For Goodbye marks a significant shift in tone for me. After finishing the fourth Zack Walker book, I wanted to do something more ambitious, and darker. And not particularly funny. All I needed was the right idea to get me started. I awoke one morning at five, thinking about what it would be like if one day you got up and discovered your entire family was gone, vanished into the night. No Time For Goodbye was born. The…

A great party, like a great mystery, needs to provide a few surprises and even a twist. I have given a good deal of thought to both parties and mysteries because I write about Hollywood event planner/caterer Madeline Bean, and it is her job (when not dodging murderers) to make sure every party guest has a good time. Pulling off a remarkable party isn’t a snap, but it helps to start off with the fun concept. Think vices! Do your friends enjoy imbibing? Try a wine tasting evening. Are they into gluttony? Make sure you feature gourmet goodies. Would they like to gamble? Have an Academy Awards party and keep a tote board to track each guests predictions in each category–perhaps surprising the group with a cool prize for the highest totals. Or try a casino theme. Now if your girlfriends are like mine, they don’t mind flirting, so by all mean pick a theme where everyone dresses up so the women can let their necklines plunge. In my books, the larger-than-life Hollywood types require the Godzilla of all party concepts–from a wedding held at the Natural History Museum’s Hall of Predators (KILLER WEDDING) to a Black-and-White themed charity ball…

It all began when I was five or six years old and saw a boy peeing on a tree. I remember being outrageously jealous. Not because he had something down there that I didn’t, but rather because he could pee standing up and I couldn’t. I know this for a fact because I tried, and trust me, it wasn’t easy having to explain to my mother why my shorts and socks were wet when I went in from the neighborhood playground. I never tried to pee on a tree again, but I did grow up playing with matchbox cars instead of Barbie dolls. By the time adolescence rolled around, I could outrun and out-climb all the boys my age. So when the idea for SOUTHERN FATALITY came to me, I decided to relive my tomboy days by writing from the first person male point of view. A mystery, tough guy action adventure, it was so much fun to write as I tried to think and talk and fight like a guy. But then something strange happened. The character woke me up in the middle of the night and told me she was a woman. So I gave her a sex…