When I was plotting my Kelly Brothers series, I jumped at the chance to write a “geek” romance. I’m true geek myself. I mean, the pick-up line I used on my husband was, “Want to check out my anime collection?” (And just for clarification, we didn’t end up watching anime. We watched The Princess Bride instead. That’s when I knew he was a keeper.) Geek cons are fascinating things. They are some of the few times where dressing like a Storm Trooper could score you a date and being a red shirt doesn’t automatically equate to death sentence. They are places where the “un-cool” kids are suddenly cool, and you’re surrounded by people who get your jokes and understand what you’re talking about when you wish you had a sonic screwdriver. So it was no trouble for me to come up with two geeks who meet at San Diego Comic-Con and fall in love in my latest release, THE HEART’S GAME. The big challenge was toning down all the geek references. There are D&D references. There’s a continual debate over Star Wars vs. Star Trek. There are even electrical engineering jokes. But alas, if I could go back, I’d have…

THE ALCHEMY OF DESIRE (originally titled, Once in a Coyote Moon) was my NaNo 2008 project. For those of you not familiar with NaNoWriMo, it’s where a bunch of writers get together in the month of November and try to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in a month. It’s fun, it’s crazy, and it borders on insane at times. But it’s doable if you have a story that’s driving you forward. I use NaNo to “play” with different ideas. In the case of THE ALCHEMY OF DESIRE, I not only got to play with a new genre (Steampunk), but I also got to play with an atypical hero. That’s right, ladies and gentleman – Diah Reynolds is not your typical alpha male. He’s the good son, a gentleman, and — dare I imply it? — a virgin. Or at least he was in the original draft. My editor asked that I tone down Diah’s naivety in the bedroom, but I tried to keep the changes to a minimum. I know most romance novels feature an alpha male as the hero – or as I like to call them, “man whores”. And don’t get me wrong — I…