I’ve always been a writer—for as long as I can remember, I’ve been putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and writing little stories. In this early days, it was a very sad rip off of Sweet Valley High, my favorite series to read at the time. When I was in middle school though, I decided I wanted to write a novel. At this point, I’d never read a romance novel, and I didn’t know they existed as a genre. But I loved the Little House in the Prairie series, and Little Women, I’d devoured the American Girl books and the Sunfire series. I was totally and utterly enthralled by this Sweet Valley edition that was the generational saga of the Wakefields (seriously), and went back in Jessica and Elizabeth’s family tree—telling the story of lost (and found) loves. So, the first time I tried to write a novel, I set out to write a sweeping generational saga about the lives and loves of one family from the late 1880s to present day. I sketched out each story, I wrote beginnings of each. It’s been something like twenty years and I never finished any of them, but some of…

I blame pets for my love of romantic comedies. When you grow up with cats and dogs, you fall in love at an early age, and you laugh at an early age. Allow me to explain. Cats are just funny — and, please, I mean this with great affection for felines, but is there anything funnier than a cat falling off a windowsill, a couch, a shelf? That’s comedy gold, my friends. As for dogs, well, quite simply, they teach you how to love. As an aficionado of pets from an early age, I was clearly destined to love romantic comedy. I love watching rom-coms, I love reading rom-coms, and I sure as heck adore writing them. Usually with a dog by my side. Some of my favorite romantic comedies released this year, and some are tried-and-trued favorites. Here are five rom-coms I love. ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS by Stephanie Perkins — This is the swooniest, sweetest, most romantic book about two seventeen-year-olds falling in love in Paris. It’s pretty much romance perfection and is bursting with witty moments too, alongside the heartfelt ones. CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET? By Sophie Kinsella — I laughed out loud, for days…

Angela Love is new on the scene for me. She is my alter ego, my little bit of bad girl seeping out. I’m having fun with these shorts about vibrators gone wild and had these covers designed to reflect the humor and light-heartedness I tried to capture. Candy Keane is a somewhat experimental girl who gets herself into trouble. I’ve said it before, she needs a Navy SEAL. Well, she’s going to have to go through some mishaps first. The storyline came to me when I posted on a blog some six years ago. I inquired about a certain item that writers were talking about. I’m not a prude, but I wasn’t as familiar as I am now of toys used for fun in the bedroom. I’m loving the research! I went online to one of “those” places, and got a customer service rep who asked me, virtually, what I liked. Though the Avatar was that of a woman, it could have been a male. How would I know? I’m keeping this very PG here for general consumption. It gave me the idea for The Stimulus Package. The other two books, Buzz Words and Road Rage, were borne at a…

THE SEDUCTION OF KINLEY FOSTER is a book that gets into full swing when the heroine ends up on a plane full of individuals who sell guilty pleasures. You know – those sex toys you have stashed in a drawer near your bed. What? You don’t have one of those drawers. What are you waiting for…get yourself some toys. No – you are not too old for such nonsense. I promise. Now that we all have the same drawer, or are in the process of getting such a drawer, I thought I’d share with you my top ten guilty pleasures in life. Calling in sick on a rainy day and reading a book from my to-be-read stack. I feel luxuriously sinful sitting by a window and listening to the rain and thunder while reading an awesome book on a day I should be at work. Not that I would ever do such a thing. Having an evening at home alone and no one to cook dinner for. I don’t mind cooking, but deciding on what to cook day-after-day-after-day wears me down. So any day I don’t have to decide what to cook is blissful. Dark Chocolate Dove bar every evening…

I’ve been skinny—or even average-sized—a vanishingly small proportion of my life. For a couple of decades, charitable observers might have called me chubby. In more recent years, though, chubby no longer suffices. I’m big. Fat. Plus-sized. Call it whatever you want, but I’m not the sort of woman who can simply stroll into a random store at a mall, pluck something off a rack, and expect it to fit. I’m also not the sort of woman who shows up on the covers and in the pages of most romance novels. But growing up, that didn’t stop me from searching desperately for heroines who resembled me. I hoarded the rare Silhouettes, Harlequins, and other books with plump lead characters. I didn’t always love the way their weight was addressed, but I was so desperate for any fictional representation of myself that I didn’t really care. Those books reassured me that I too deserved a happily ever after. I too would find love and have lovers—ones who wouldn’t simply overlook my weight, but find me beautiful. So I read and reread my stash of plus-size romances compulsively, hoping in their pages I’d find the certainty I lacked in real life. Over time,…

Sometimes (usually) when I sit down to begin a new mystery, I literally freeze. “Breathe,” I remind myself. So I do, slowly. In and out. That blank computer screen is sometimes as terrifying to me as rewatching The Shining. And that’s where I am these days—staring at the screen, trying to remember how I started MURDER AT LAMBSWOOL FARM (the newest seaside knitters mystery) as I begin the next one. What came to my mind first as I began writing MURDER AT LAMBSWOOL FARM? The murderer? The motive? The victim? The answer came to me with a start. It wasn’t any of those things. In the case of the Lambswool Farm book, it was an article I read about an organic farm that hosted dinners in a beautiful field, the well-set table groaning with the farm’s fresh produce. It had little to do with a murder, but was rather a place where I’d be happy to spend the months I would devote to writing the book. So I began creating the farm itself, its fields and lambs and a barn turned into my dream kitchen. Without a murderer. A victim. A motive. It’s the way I write: scene by scene,…

I’m actually not kidding. I was trying to write my first romance, but I came to the genre much later than to any other. I discovered action adventure with CALL OF THE WILD and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY at age eight. I first read science fiction at ten and THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES by the time I was twelve. NARNIA and THE HOBBIT opened up fantasy for me in my teens. I was hot on the trail of Ludlum and Follett from their very early books. Classics consumed much of my twenties. I didn’t read my first romance until attending RWA’s National conference in my mid-thirties. I chewed my way through a dozen of them before I was handed Susan Wiggs’ THE CHARM SCHOOL and Laura Kinsale’s THE PRINCE OF MIDNIGHT. That launched me into Nora’s Born in trilogy and I was gone. I already had written and sold a couple of science fiction and fantasy novels by that point and wanted to try my hand at a romance. But I’d also been dying to tackle a thriller. What I was waiting for was the right idea. I wrote a light-hearted foodie thriller entitled: Swap Out! It has a love…

Why did you decide to write your mystery series in the Hamptons and not a fictional location like many authors do? I love the Hamptons, especially Montauk, because it has it all: celebs, sandy beaches, fabulous restaurants and a rich history. Each book in my Hamptons Home and Garden Mystery series takes place in one specific Hamptons town–or should I say each murder. In book one, BETTER HOMES AND CORPSES, the murder takes place at the fictional Seacliff estate in East Hampton. Book two, HEARSE AND GARDENS, takes place in Montauk. In my third book, the mystery takes place in Sag Harbor. The setting for book four will be either Bridgehampton or Southampton, I can’t decide which. My protagonist, Meg Barrett lives in Montauk. What is it about Montauk that you love? I live on Long Island and Montauk has always been my favorite getaway spot. I may be prejudiced, but I think Montauk is one of the most beautiful spots in America. When I first vacationed in Montauk and climbed to the top of the Montauk Point Lighthouse (commissioned by George Washington) that sits on a rocky cliff next to the Atlantic on easternmost point of Long Island, I…

New York Times bestselling author Kate Carlisle is a native Californian who worked in television production for many years before turning to writing. It was a lifelong fascination with the art and craft of bookbinding that led her to write the Bibliophile Mysteries, featuring Brooklyn Wainwright, whose bookbinding and restoration skills invariably uncover old secrets, treachery and murder. Visit Kate online at www.KateCarlisle.com. Have you ever browsed through the old books at antique stores or flea markets or estate sales and wondered about the stories those books could tell? Not just the story in the book, but the story of the book. Who owned it? How did they acquire it? What did it mean to them? What sorts of people bought the book and then safeguarded it for 100 years or more? That very intriguing idea is what prompted me to create the Bibliophile Mysteries. At the center of each mystery is a rare book being restored by preeminent bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright. As I craft the plot, I echo the themes of the rare book, but with a modern twist. I think of it as a puzzle within the mystery, a bonus gift to my readers. In RIPPED FROM THE…

I’ve always had a fascination with the paranormal, so it’s really no surprise to me that I started writing witches, psychics, and empaths… My early love of I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and more recently, my slight addiction to Long Island Medium have all have influenced me. But alas, I’m not a witch. Or a genie. Or a psychic. Instead of writing what I know (a common phrase in fiction writing), I simply write what fascinates me. Beyond pop culture influences, I’ve also had some personal incidents in my life that have made me take note of the paranormal. When my twenty-two-year-old son was three, it was early morning when I heard him talking in the other room, having a full conversation with someone I couldn’t see… When I asked him who he was talking to, he said quite seriously (yet calmly), “The man.” Spooky, right? It was for me too—at first. But my grandfather had died the week before, before he’d had a chance to meet my son… I like to believe that they were getting to know each other. For years, I’ve noticed that when I get into my car, my rearview mirror is tilted. If I run…