I oddly enough know the exact day I became a writer, almost the exact hour. I had no intention of writing fiction, not in the 35 years proceeding, nor in that moment. My total creative writing efforts had included two terrible short stories and my resume. In the meanwhile, I had climbed the corporate ladder until I was flying to three cities a week and my little two-person company was consulting to the Fortune 100 on IT-infrastructure redevelopment. I had it all, until the moment when I had nothing. In four months I lost the business, the career, any desire to continue in the career, my house, and finally my furniture and car. Actually I sold the last three because I’d found the solution to my burn-out mid-life crisis. The solution was to set off around the world on a bicycle… Okay, well, it made sense at the time. Four months had seen me from having two houses, four cities, and all that noise, to sitting on a bicycle. Suddenly I could pick up my life with one hand, tent and kitchen included with nowhere to sleep that night but somewhere down the road. Four more months saw me on…

No matter what the subgenre, research is necessary when writing a book. For some of us, research is just as much a passion as getting our words onto the page. Over the years, I’ve done a lot of research for my books. However, some research isn’t found in books. Sometimes a writer visits a place to experience its sights, sounds, and sensations. It helps them translate that experience onto the page for a reader. Experiencing research first-hand is amazing. One such moment for me occurred in April 2007 when I fulfilled one of many life-long dreams. I toured the King Tut exhibit. When a writer experiences “word fail” when trying to describe something, it’s a sure sign it’s a phenomenal moment. Writers rarely have “word fail.” We might occasionally get writers block, put words down in the wrong order, or despise our words, but “word fail” is something monumental. It’s our way of saying we’ve come up against something magical. Even now, almost five years later, I still find it difficult to come up with the right words to describe what I saw. For a large number of people, research is a dark library with tall stacks of dry, musty…

So I’ll be the first to admit, I watch a fair amount of reality TV, and I’ve been doing so for years. Initially I filed my slight obsession under the character-study category. I’m a writer, so by watching real people live their lives on TV, I was doing research. That was way before I realized how scripted reality TV was, also before all of the fighting started breaking out. Why some reality shows insist on showing that behavior among adults just baffles me. I’m sure the women on these shows who get sucked into behaving that way regret their actions later…more sooner than later. Now I’ve cut back on the number of reality shows I watch, but I haven’t given up on all of them: Welcome to Sweetie Pies, Braxton Family Values, and Real Housewives of Atlanta are three shows I still tune into. My latest novel THE ONE features a reality show in the backdrop—a show more on the lines of The Bachelorette, only different. It’s a new show, and the premise is to take one woman around the world to explore ten romantic destinations and meet ten eligible bachelors. By the end of the season, she’s supposed to…

For the last few years, I’ve blogged about Romance on Valentine’s Day.  Makes sense for a Romance writer.  But there’s something else that defines Valentine’s Day and I don’t know how I’ve missed it until now.  CHOCOLATE.  🙂 There are many different kinds of chocolate: Milk chocolate (my personal favorite) Dark chocolate Bittersweet chocolate Semi-sweet chocolate White chocolate And those are just the basic kinds! We can go a step further, too.  There’s the fancy kind: Godiva Belgian Chocolate Roche Ferrer Ghirardelli Sees And the simple, inexpensive kind: Hershey’s Cadbury (Easter bunny, anyone?) Nestles Russell Stover Now I don’t know about you but I don’t think expense defines a gift.  I think a gift from the heart means more than a gift that costs a lot of money.  A gift remembered is more special than a gift reminded, I wouldn’t turn down the expensive kind of milk chocolate.  But I’m cheap n’ easy.  give me drug store bought, milk chocolate red foil covered hearts any day.  Besides, Valentine’s Day is the one day of the year we can eat chocolate and not feel guilty. (Okay there’s also Halloween, and your birthday …) So what do you think? How important is…

Sometimes you get a small taste of a book and you just MUST HAVE MORE, well, here’s a little nibble to get your reading antena quivering and if you’re like me, put you in the mood for some tasty tex-mex! Seriously! Setup: Tom and Lexie are at a Mexican restaurant in Corvallis, Oregon. Lexie hasn’t spoken to Tom in three days, and she’s anxious to break the silence between them, but she refuses to be the one to lose their silent battle of the wills. So she challenges him to a hot-sauce eating contest. Here, the heat is starting to get the best of her . . . and she’s finding herself far more attracted to Tom than she bargained for. The paint-stripper sauce was incendiary. As soon as it touched her tongue, Lexie broke out in a sweat, sucking air into her lungs and squirming in her seat while she chewed, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of squealing Omigod omigod omigod, even though she wanted to. She did bounce up and down in the booth a little bit, but only because she’d have passed out otherwise. Chew, chew, chew. Jeezy Pete, this was the world’s largest chip,…

Hello everyone. I’m thrilled to be here today at Fresh Fiction as I recently celebrated the release of my first novel, SECRETS OF THE KNIGHT from Crescent Moon Press. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, my second favorite holiday of the year. It’s the holiday that celebrates love and romance. And it often involves chocolate. What’s not to like about a day like that? What I really find romantic is a good paranormal love story. Many of my friends celebrate the day by popping in their idea of a classic Valentine’s Day movie.  Maybe Love Actually. Or perhaps Casablanca. But my tastes run more toward the supernatural themed romance. See, I’m much more inclined to dig out my DVD’s of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I happen to think Buffy contained one of the best love stories of all time. It had all the elements – forbidden love, bad boy hero, dangerous liaisons. I couldn’t wait to turn it on every week, not so much to watch Buffy kick demon-butt but more so to see how she and Angel were going to overcome all the obstacles that were keeping them apart. It really bums me out now that she’s on a show playing…

You can never predict where your interests will take you, or what path they will provide for you to follow.  Love for my husband and his Mexican culture led me to create the Lola Cruz mystery series (BARE-NAKED LOLA, book 3, comes out in April). I never imagined I’d write a second series, and I certainly never imagined that learning to sew when I was in elementary school would factor into the concept behind that second series. I learned to sew in elementary school.  It takes determination, fine motor skills, patience, and sheer will to learn to sew, especially when you’re young.  And I had those things.  I was  a homebody, even then, and sewing quickly turned into one of my favorite things to do.  If Project Runway had been around then… watch out! Fast forward to post college.  I spent hour after hour making the bridesmaids dresses for my wedding–and I had 7 bridesmaids in a very traditional Catholic ceremony!  A few years later, we were having kids and I sewed and dressed my children in homemade wonders which makes them burst out in laughter over now.  “Mom!  We looked like clowns!” True. I’m not inordinately skilled at sewing,…

The Story Garden is about friendship, but friends can disagree, right? So, I’m Jo Beverley and I’m coordinating a discussion on Georgian v Regency as setting for romance novels. Read the arguments and have your say. We’ll pick randomly from among the interesting comments and send the comment writer THE DASHWOOD SISTERS TELL ALL, by Beth Pattillo;SCANDALOUS VIRTUE, by Brenda Hiatt; RUTHLESS, by Anne Stuart; and A LADY’S SECRET, by yours truly, Jo Beverley. First, what’s the difference? Technically “Georgian” is the stretch of British history covered by the reigns of kings George first to fourth — 1714 to 1820. George IV, however, was the Prince Regent until his father died, hence the Regency period — 1811-1820. In general usage, Georgian is the 18th century, and Regency is the first 2 decades of the 19th. The Regency period is the age of Jane Austen’s novels. The Georgian could be typified by novels such as Tom Jones and Clarissa Harlow, and plays such as School for Scandal and She Stoops to Conquer. So, here’s my argument in favor of the Georgian Age. I started out writing Regency romance, principally inspired by Georgette Heyer. However, Heyer too, wrote both and in fact…

Hello to everyone at Fresh Fiction, and thank you for having me here to celebrate the release of STUD, the eighth book in my Cat Star Chronicles series! To get things started, allow me to tease you with a little excerpt… Tarq smelled her before he ever laid eyes on her—a glorious, delectable aroma that curled through his head and shot straight into his bloodstream. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply as the effect of her fragrance hit him like a pulse blast, obliterating his every thought with the instantaneous ecstasy of an erection so hard it made his head swim. He glanced away from his menu, taking in the shape of her legs out of the corner of his eye—what he could see of them, that is. Her baggy trousers and apron concealed everything about her legs except the fact that she had two of them. “Hi, my name is Lucy, and I’ll be your server,” she said. “Do you already know what you’d like, or do you need more time?” Tarq smiled to himself as he shook his head. No, he didn’t need more time. He knew exactly what he wanted. “You,” he replied. “I’d like a full…

Hello! Thank you for asking me to blog today! Since this is an open topic, I’ll give you a preview of THE DUCHESS DIARIES and then answer any questions you might have. THE DUCHESS DIARIES is the last book in the Bridal Pleasures Series and it basically continues the Boscastle family saga. This is Miss Charlotte Boscastle’s story, which she would hasten to reassure you is a dignified and virtuous one, despite rumors to the contrary that are spreading across London. Unfortunately, as they say, “Where there is smoke, there is usually Boscastle” and from what I’ve read of Charlotte’s private diary, she has created an unspeakable scandal that’s about to blaze out of control. Naturally, Charlotte wouldn’t dream of confessing to society that she is secretly infatuated with a notorious duke. It’s bad enough that her best friend Harriet, the Duchess of Glenmorgan, knows that Charlotte has fallen for a widowed peer who barely knows she is alive. Gideon is in the market for a mistress, the more improper the better. He doesn’t need a schoolmistress telling him how to behave. The situation changes dramatically, however, and not for the better, on the night of the graduation ball for…