Trick or Treat! I’m disguised as a blogger today. Usually I look like a science fiction romance author, which means I look a lot like a middle-aged woman in rimless glasses, cropped sweatpants, a ratty pink t-shirt emblazoned with MY NAME’S NO, NO BAD CAPTAIN, WHAT’S YOURS?, and lime green Crocs. But today, in honor of Halloween, I’m disguised as a blogger. Meaning I’ve switched out the lime green Crocs for my fuchsia pink ones in the Mary Jane style. As you can probably surmise, there’s not a whole lot of difference in the costume. Nor the author. You see, for most people Halloween is the one day they get to dress up and be someone else. For me, every day I get to be someone else on paper (or my computer’s screen, more likely). Authors live in a perpetual Halloween state. Scary, no? This past month I’ve been (mostly) Captain Chaz Bergren. She’s a gutsy gal, late thirties, dealing with being court-martialed for a crime she didn’t commit, and dealing with the love of her life being someone—and something—she never expected. She’s making a return appearance in my 2008 release from Bantam, SHADES OF DARK. Those of you who’ve…

I’m on the road. I just arrived in beautiful Salt Lake City on not such a beautiful day, but what incredible scenery. It’s my second time out west this year. In June, I was in Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas touring for ABANDON, my most recent book, with side trips to Sedona and the Grand Canyon. In between these two trips west, I’ve scooted off to Dallas, New York, Maine and Toronto. Fortunately, I can write pretty much anytime, anywhere. I spent the first three hours of the flight to Salt Lake working on THE ANGEL, which is due out in hardcover in late April. I love this story, so it was easy to drag out my laptop, put on my iPod and dive in.Not everyone can or likes to write on the road, but for me it can be fun and energizing. Some writers I know like to hole up in a hotel for the last week or two they’re working on a book. Total immersion. No distractions. It’s something I’ve never done, but I can understand the appeal—especially if it’s a nice hotel! I wrote part of THE WIDOW, which is due out in paperback in a few…

When I was asked to do this chat I politely requested some subject ideas. The ladies at Fresh Fiction very kindly hinted that most writers talk about where they got their latest book/plot idea. Well, my plot ideas usually start with something vague, and then I pull from the myriad of images and happenings that we call life. My latest, “Eye of the Beholder” was inspired by my new neighborhood, the one I’m working on now, as yet untitled, sprung from the loins of a conversation with an old modeling friend in Atlanta, where I grew up. But I do have a subject that I’ve had to sneak up on, set traps for, and hope I capture my elusive prey. Fictional men. Where do we get our male characters and how true are they? For that matter, how true do we want them to be? In one of his fabulously witty books, the British humorist P. G. Wodehouse has one of his characters married to well-known Romance writer Rosie Banks. Rosie’s been asked to write a column for a ladies’ paper about her husband and he exclaims in great distress, “Believe me, or believe me not, Bertie, when I say…

The heroes of Bonnie Vanak’s Egyptian books stood outside their creator’s house. Jabari of The Falcon & the Dove gave the door a blank look. “What’s wrong?” asked Graham of The Panther & the Pyramid. “I do not know what to do,” Jabari admitted. “I live in a tent.” Kenneth of The Cobra & the Concubine rolled his eyes. “You knock, you bloody fool.” “Do not call my father a bloody fool,” warned Tarik of The Sword & the Sheath. “You once lived in a tent.” “Do you think we should formally announce ourselves?” asked Ramses of The Tiger & the Tomb. “After all, she is not writing and may not want to see us.” The men exchanged glances. “You’re right,” said Thomas of The Scorpion & the Seducer. “We should just walk in and surprise her.” They went inside, walked down a hallway and entered a bedroom. Bonnie was sorting through laundry. Shock dawned in her eyes. “Not you guys again!” “We came here to recharge your creativity,” Thomas explained. “You haven’t written since my story was finished. I’m not published until next May, so you have time to write your next Egyptian historical.” Bonnie laughed. “What time? Come…

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…

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…

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…

A lot of readers have written to ask if Virgin River is based on an actual town, because they’d like to move there. Unpack those boxes – the town lives only in my mind, although I have heard from people who claim to live or have lived in such a place. They don’t usually say where. It might be all in my head, but I’ve been living there for a long time. I’m committed to delivering four more Virgin River novels. I’m not sure the actual release dates for these books yet, but when I know for sure, I’ll post them on my website. Meanwhile, I couldn’t ask for a better home. I get up in the morning, fire up the computer, and settle in with my old friends. When nothing much is happening with them, I bring in some newcomers who have their – uh – issues. I knew what it was about the town that appealed to me, and it didn’t take long for me to hear from readers what appealed to them. It goes without saying, my readers have fully enjoyed the strong, handsome, virile men of Virgin River; they’ve admired the beauty, inner strength and intelligence…

It’s not my fault. I swear, I wasn’t the one who killed Kelly Ripa’s book club. Sure, I know it looks suspicious. In 2002 she was rockin’ along with her anti-Oprah picks, six of them, and didn’t we love it? Books with happy endings were getting on a TV talk show! Carly Phillips made it! Romance writers had a shot! More important – it was all about me – I had a shot. I figured Nerd in Shining Armor might make the grade with Kelly. Then she went on maternity leave and Reading with Ripa took a short break. But the book club message boards were still up, and no one was throwing in the towel, least of all me. Time marched on, however. My book came out the end of April, 2003, and no word from the LIVE folks indicating the book club would resume. It seems Kelly was home nursing her baby. I ask you, where were her priorities? Had no one suggested that she could nurse a baby and read a romance at the same time? In May, Kelly returned from maternity leave, and I held my breath. I held my breath for a very long time,…

One of the questions I get asked most is whether it’s difficult to write in different genres. The answer is absolutely not. I love genre jumping. In fact, I think it would make me insane if I were to write in only one genre. Perhaps that’s because I’ve been writing in multiple genres since I started writing. It’s impossible for me to stick to one…flavor. I love so many. When I first started writing for Ellora’s Cave, I started in contemporary, then branched out into paranormal. Then I got this great idea about faeries so I started a fantasy series. Then came futuristics and…well, you get the idea. I can’t seem to stay with one genre, and I’m fine with that.Several years and multiple publishers later, I’ve pretty much settled on mainstream paranormal romance and contemporary erotic romance…mostly. And that was because I was given the wonderful opportunity to write for Bantam Dell and Berkley, and each contracted me for something completely different, which was like a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to write paranormal romance, and my writing roots were in erotic romance. Now I can do both. And I also write for Samhain Publishing where I can…