I’m pleased to give up my day today to Harlequin Executive Editor Marsha Zinberg who is currently on her Famous Firsts blog tour. Welcome, Marsha!

Executive Editor Marsha Zinberg is touring the blog world to talk about Harlequin Famous Firsts – first series novels written by today’s superstars. She queried New York Times bestsellers like Debbie Macomber, Carla Neggers, and many more to share their creative process. You’ll see their approach to writing is as varied as their voices. Between them, these multi-published authors have written hundreds of books since their very first publication by Harlequin.

It is fascinating to compare how different individuals approach a major task. Many competitive athletes perform a certain set of rituals before they start their event. Actors put themselves into character while waiting in the wings before their entrance. I’ve even watched Bingo fanatics who wouldn’t dream of beginning to play their cards before all their specifically colored markers and talismans were lined up just so.

How do your favorite authors sit down to a blank page and begin the creative process that results in an unforgettable story?

Carla Neggers declares that she has never been a linear writer. Once she has a premise and a set of characters in mind, she takes them in hand and plunges in. When they start coming to life on the page, she retraces her steps to figure out the story, which she prefers to inject with a mixture of romance and suspense. And she credits her luck at being one of the first writers working within the newly formed Harlequin Temptation line for granting her the freedom that helped her find her voice as a writer.

For Debbie Macomber, the writing process has changed little, though the peripherals have expanded significantly. Debbie still prefers to plot all the way through the story, and use the plot outline as a working tool. When she’s writing, she is “in the zone”: she sets herself goals for each day, and doesn’t leave her desk until the required number of pages is completed. Of course, at this point in her career, Debbie works from her own office outside her home. She will read up to 500 letters and e-mails a day, and feels that the contact and communication from her readers is so important to her that she employs an office staff to help her manage it all.

A home office was tried and rejected by Joan Johnston. She found herself wanting to write at three in the morning, and was not about to trudge out to her office to do it. Many times, she marvels that she wakes up in the morning and the story is there in her head, waiting to be told. She has been known to fill paper plates and napkins with jottings when an idea comes, or pull over when driving, because she is a thorough believer in paying close attention to the muse, and capturing those precious thoughts while she can. She also tries to stop writing when she comes to a possible fork in the story, so that she can resume when she is sure of the direction she will next take. She does this for economy’s sake: it’s too hard to throw away a scene that didn’t come easily in the first place.

Anne Stuart writes more slowly now than she did in her early, rigorous 15-page-a-day phase. Nowadays, she finds herself revising and polishing more day to day, and trying not to burn the candle at both ends.

Lindsay McKenna, like Carla, also declares that her characters come to her first, and they dictate where her plot will lead, though she knows there will always be an element of danger or suspense in her stories, and they frequently veer toward those realms that most entrance her and heroes and heroines: telekenesis, shapeshifting or perhaps telepathy.

You’ll find more on the creative process tomorrow at Romance Junkies. My previous topics include: Ideas for Their First Books at Bookbinge and How Technology Has Changed for Writers at Plot Monkeys.

As a special treat we have provided 1 nostalgia Harlequin tote bag and some Famous First novels to giveaway to one lucky reader who posts a comment by Friday, June 5, 2009, 9:00 p.m. CDT.

Don’t forget that you can enjoy 16 free Harlequin novels by downloading them at www.HarlequinCelebrates.com. And the Harlequin Cover Art Show in New York runs May 30 – June 12th at the Open House Gallery, New York City (201 Mulberry Street in Soho).

What is your creative process?

A lot of you may know that ABC’s Nightline recently did a profile on Harlequin’sr 60th anniversary. They spoke with CEO Donna Hayes, author Gena Showalter, had readings from several novels published throughout the last sixty years, and profiled a cover shoot. It happened to be a Blaze cover shoot, and it happened to be mine! I thought I’d share.

Harlequin and Silhouette authors fill out an Art Fact Sheet for every book we write. We grumble. Trust me. We grumble. But the art department uses the information we give them to get our covers right. For Blaze? They do an amazing job. The cover shoot in the video above shows my heroine Jamie sitting on a porch railing at my hero Kell’s hunting cabin. Though the models aren’t wearing the clothing the couple has on in the scene (Kell is wearing boots, jeans, and a Texas A&M T-shirt; Jamie is wearing a camisole and low riding cargo shorts), the background is perfect. And the models are spot on.

When I fill out my AFS, I include links to photos I’ve used to visualize my characters, and in some cases, links to photos of the setting. For this one, I wanted to be sure the art people knew that West Texas mountains don’t look like the Rockies or Appalachians. I have no idea if they look at the photos, but they got this one so right I’d be surprised if they didn’t. Either that, or my extensive explanations were wordy enough!

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Once upon a time I read a book published by Harlequin Temptation. That book was called Getting Rid of Bradley by some author who went on to do the coolest of things. I loved that book. I’d been reading a lot of Silhouette Intimate Moments and Silhouette Special Editions, and hadn’t read a Harlequin Temptation for awhile. I’m so glad I did. My first book had seen very limited publication a couple of years before, and since that line had closed (my book was the next to the last), I was basically starting over. Not fun.

Getting Rid of Bradley, however, *was* fun, and I thought, “A-ha! That’s what I want to write! A fun Harlequin Temptation!” So I did. I had a folder of magazine articles and news snippets I’d saved, all story fodder, and I pulled out a piece I’d torn out of (I’m pretty sure) a copy of Glamour. It was about a man and woman who’d made serious eye contact during a long flight, and when disembarking, the man handed the woman his business card with the words, “Call me,” scrawled on the back.

I submitted Call Me to Laura Shin at Harlequin in early 1995, and she moved from Temptation to Superromance while the manuscript was still in house. When I got the very cool call (complete with video) with the offer to buy, it came from Birgit Davis-Todd. Though she initially bought me, she then handed me off to Brenda Chin for revisions. Following revisions, I was unloaded onto Susan Sheppard who was my editor at Temptation and for my first two books for Blaze. (For those of you who are curious about how authors get shifted between editors, I was given to Susan Pezzack (now Swinwood) for my next two Blazes, and when she went to Mira, was given to Jennifer Greene for the three that followed. I went back to Birgit for the next few, then moved to Brenda again with Tex Appeal.) But back to the story of Call Me and Brenda’s revisions.

Oh, did I mention this story is about her?

Part of Call Me is set on a Central Texas ranch. When Brenda called to go over the manuscript, she said she would really like to see more of the place. There were a couple of scenes in the house there (with Gardner’s brother who got his own book) and several set in Harley’s antique shop with her assistant, but a lot of the scenes were the book’s signature phone calls between Harley and Gardner, i.e., plenty of dialogue but not much description to show off Gardner’s home. Thing is, *ranch* isn’t what I heard.

I heard that she would like to see more *raunch.*

I’m thinking that was the TRUE beginning of Blaze.

I was also thinking that it would be fun to give away copies of Call Me and Getting Rid of Bradley since I have originals of both sitting here collecting dust. Anyone want them? Comment by Sunday night, April 5, 2009, 8:00 p.m. CDT to be eligible AND give me your thoughts on Western set contemporaries. Do you like cowboys? Ranches? The Wild Wild West with all the modern conveniences?

And, really. How *do* you feel about raunch? Inquiring minds!