The heroine of my latest release, ROULETTE, is very buttoned-up in some ways and very daring in others. In her work life, Miki Durand is a statistics professor and burgeoning businesswoman. In her free time, she loves ambitious sports, including surfing, rock climbing, and long distance swimming. I’ve done a little bit of all those things, but very briefly and, as Lizzie Bennet would say, very ill. My friend Mary Turner, on the other hand, is the real deal. Mary is the Deputy Editor of Outside magazine and she embodies the adventurous spirit of my plucky romance heroine, come to life. So, rather than dream of what it would be like (which is what I normally do!), I decided to ask Mary to share her favorite (real life!) adventures. Click on the photo links to see the gallery. Fasten your seatbelts…here’s what she had to say: I’m glad you think I’m adventurous. I used to be at least! Now my idea of a good adventure is a nap on my couch watching football 🙂 But here are my top (seven!) adventures: -Biking across the U.S. one summer, 3600 miles, from Seattle to New York City -Trekking in the Himalayas, Nepal’s…

THE HIGHLAND DRAGON’S LADY, in retrospect, involves just a vast amount of people running around in the middle of the night. On occasion they change it up and sneak around, but still: everyone sensible is sleeping, and Reggie or Colin will be wandering down roads or climbing up trees and getting into trouble. When I was writing, I didn’t quite realize how often that happened, but I’m not really surprised to find it as I look back. My previous couple novels didn’t really allow for that kind of thing, the settings being what they were—and, middle age and its unfortunate need for sleep aside, I have always loved that kind of thing. When I was a kid, we’d generally start our family vacations before dawn—I’m not sure whether this had to do with traffic or whether my parents just hoped that my sister and I would fall asleep for most of the journey—and it was the coolest thing ever: getting up when everything was still dark and going on a trip, especially a trip away from school and normal life and rules. (Half of those trips were for Christmas, which was the other big get-up-before-reasonable-hours event. I still remember hearing…

What is it about Italy? I’ve been lucky to have visited the nation of la dolce vita three times in my life-Rome, Florence, Milan, and Venice. Italian was also my minor in college. When I’m in Italy, I feel beautiful, both inside and out. Just being in Italy is food for the soul. For these reasons, I chose Italy as one of the settings in my Davison & Allegra series, starting with Venice and Naples in BREATHLESS FOR HIM and Milan and Lake Como in DEVOTED TO HIM, as well as making my heroine, Allegra Orsini, of Italian heritage. To me, all of Italy is romantic, so choosing the Top 5 Romantic Escapes in Italy proved to be quite the task, except for choosing the #1 destination. I should also state that I’ve only been to my #1 choice, and the rest are on my bucket list, though I imagine I’m there whenever I watch the movies that I mention for each to-die-for area (Capri, alas, has not been featured in any film as far I know). 1)    Venice-I first visited Italy as a junior in college when I did the Eurailpass trip college kids do with two of my…

So there I was. Staring at the computer screen around 4:30 am and wondering who would be the heroine of my next book. I already had a wonderful (hawt!) hero, who was a secondary character in my debut release, THE SMUGGLER WORE SILK.  I knew this hero, this spy named Angel. I also knew his family history, the way he looked, what occurred during his tenure as a spy, and the tortured musician in his soul. I needed a strong heroine…but I knew no woman who could match him. Until I started reading about women during the Napoleonic wars. Some British women followed the drum, a.k.a. followed their soldier husbands across the English Channel, over mountains and plains on the Continent, through bitterly cold winters and hot summers. The rigors of soldiering cost many men and women their lives—and even their children’s lives. It was a struggle to survive every single day. I admire those women and their hardships, and every step they took on the dusty and snowy roads is something to celebrate. I read an account of a Spanish lady who, when an artillery sergeant was killed, took the lighted match from his hand and fired a twenty-four…

We all love him. You know the one – the hero who likes to whisper things that make both the reader and the heroine melt. He always knows the right thing to say to set panties aflame, and he’s doesn’t hesitate to go the extra mile to take you there. The man should really walk around with a warning attached to him, because his heroine isn’t going to stand a chance once he starts talking. Up until this point, I’ve only ogled him from afar in other authors’ books. I was so sure I could never pull off that kind of thing without my hero sounding like a fool. And then I met the hero of MISTAKEN BY FATE, Garrett Reaver. He’s big and has a striking resemblance to a certain Norse god, and he’s got a whole lot to say—most of it X-rated. Really, really X-rated. I’d be sitting there, writing, and suddenly things would start coming out of his mouth that had me looking to open a window and get some cold air circulating. I’ve always kind of laughed it off when people ask me how a character I created can surprise me, but Garrett did. The man…

“I once stared down a bull that got free of its rope in a crowded souk. I’ve climbed a banyan tree— barefoot in a monsoon— to rescue a litter of stranded kittens, and I helped a lady give birth in a flood-trapped barouche while the men around me flew into hysteria….I don’t like too many bows on my bonnets or sugar in my tea, and roses bring me out in a rash…So that’s me for you. Now might we proceed? I’m in rather a hurry if you don’t mind. I’ve got a pair of abandoned breeches to rescue from a stray bathing machine.” ~ Miss Rebecca Boudicca Sherringham introduces herself to Colonel Luke Wainwright. In SINFULLY EVER AFTER Rebecca Sherringham has lived a busy life traveling with her father— a major in the Army— and rescuing both him, and her rakish brother Nathaniel, from various scrapes. By the grand age of twenty two, she’s had quite enough adventure. Now her father is retired, she’s delighted to settle with him in the quiet village of Hawcombe Prior, where she can finally make lasting friendships and take a well-earned rest from all the excitement. But despite her desire for a tranquil life,…

Mind you, I’ve never done this before. Write a series, that is. Not intentionally, anyway. I tend to discover secondary characters along the way as I write and realize they need a story. But that isn’t how it happened this time. This time I set myself up to write a trilogy about three women who become friends under the most trying of circumstances, The Battle of Waterloo. It was to be called The Three Graces, and I had it all plotted out. Well, I did until the second book, NEVER A GENTLEMAN, when Diccan, the hero, returns to his apartment to find eight other men draped over his furniture enjoying his brandy. You know that part about discovering secondary characters who need stories? Yeah. It was then that I realized that Drake’s Rakes, the informal group of aristocratic gentlemen I’d casually put together to protect England(I love nefarious spies), needed their own stories. Nine of them—well,  eight by this time. One, Jack was already taken in BARELY A LADY. I’d set out to write a trilogy about women and ended up with a—what is a group of ten, a decatet? What did I do now? The first thing I did…

As an erotic romance author, one of the first questions I’m asked is if I’ve “done” every sexual scenario I’ve written about…Umm…No. The really funny thing about that? I’m also a mystery writer but no one ever asks me if I’ve actually killed someone. Gives the person asking the question something to think about 🙂 In the Mastered series, in BOUND, UNWOUND and SCHOOLED (a novella out December 2nd) my two main characters are Ronin Black and Amery Hardwick. In addition to being an 8th degree black belt in jujitsu, Sensei Ronin Black is also a kinbaku rope master. What does that mean exactly? Well, he likes to use rope on women as an artistic and sexual expression of beauty. I’ve read lots of books where the hero is very much into rope bondage, but my starting point for the series wasn’t a male character’s need to immobilize sexual partners as a measure of control, but the fact kinbaku and shibari were borne out of hojojutsu—the traditional Japanese martial art of restraining a person using cord or rope. I wanted to explore rope bondage from a different angle. Which meant lots of research. My favorite type of research is the…

A guest blog from Laura Childs, author of the Cackleberry Club Mysteries, Tea Shop Mysteries, and Scrapbooking Mysteries. As I fuss about my writing studio, stumbling over sleeping dogs and gazing at Christmas presents I’m trying to keep hidden, my thoughts seem to naturally drift back to Christmases past. I have a hazy memory of a Christmas party I attended when I was three years old.  This was back when moms didn’t work, but baked cookies and fudge and congregated with their toddlers in each other’s homes.  While us kids played with train sets and fuzzy bears under a twinkling Christmas tree, our moms sipped coffee and talked.  As the day slipped into a blue-black winter evening, fathers would arrive from work, stomping snow and wearing hats and long coats, ready to gather up wives and children.  It was magical and lent a feeling that all was safe and right with the world.  And I miss that feeling terribly. When I began writing my Cackleberry Club Mysteries, I tried to capture that magical, innocent, fifties-feeling.  Though the mysteries are set in contemporary times, they offer a raft of small-town characters that make you yearn for simpler times.  At the top…

About halfway down the coast of California stands a grand estate on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Called San Simeon, or Hearst’s Castle, it is, indeed, much more than house. It was commissioned by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper heir, and built by the amazing Berkeley-based architect, Julia Morgan – a bespectacled woman who, at 4’11”, ran her own construction crew at a time when women were told to stay home, mind the children, and leave public life to the menfolk. As a native Californian, I toured Hearst Castle as a child. The estate is a Gothic/Italianate/Spanish revival wonder, a mix of styles and resources and artwork. With Hearst’s almost unlimited checkbook, Morgan took trips to a war-torn Europe and bought entire rooms – paneling, ceiling medallions, corbels, built-ins – and whole stone staircases. She purchased ancient Roman birdbaths and medieval tapestries. She imported mural panels and dismantled small stone houses to be rebuilt in the garden as guest accommodations. Also, Julia Morgan designed two swimming pools: one a Grecian wonder featuring massive columns, and the other a subterranean fantasy of cobalt blue and brilliant gold. It took me years to get over that sparkling grotto – in fact,…