I live on the top floor of a crowded 3-story apartment building. It’s an old building, built sometime during a frugal period in the 1960s when insulation was apparently considered a frivolity. For what it lacks in amenities like insulation, it makes up for in lovely views. I’d like to think of myself as a good neighbor, but now that I’ve seen 3 families (and counting) in the apartment below mine come and go, I’m starting to fear otherwise.

First, there is the fact that I have two small children who consider flailing about on the floor, stomping in fury, and galloping around like horses all a normal part of the day. As a family, we tend to wake up early (and noisily) and go about a day punctuated by lots of talking, instrument playing, and sibling battles. Also, there is the fact that I have rabbits who reside half the time on the outdoor balcony, where they can bask in the sun and happily race around in the fresh air. Their hay and fur tends to blow about and end up on other people’s balconies.

My last downstairs neighbor was highly offended by all of this and more. He complained to me, he complained to the apartment manager, and he left numerous angry notes on my door. I was apologetic. I tried to reduce the noise, hay, and rabbit fur. I felt terrible to think I was making someone else unhappy in his own home. But he only got angrier, and ultimately, he moved out. Traumatized by all of this, I begged the apartment manager to find a family with small children to move in below me. She did, and now I get to hear happy family noises coming from down below, and while they probably find all the noise we make annoying, I’m ever hopeful that they might find the sound of a badly played trumpet at six in the evening an endearing sort of sound. Maybe even charming.

My September Blaze, Made You Look, was released this week, and it deals with neighborly relations of an entirely different sort. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything nearly so interesting happening through any of my own neighbors’ windows as what the heroine of the story sees, but as always, I’m ever hopeful.

How about you? Are you a good neighbor, or like me, one who wishes to be good but falls short due to noisy children and furry rabbits? What’s your favorite strange neighbor incident? Have you ever seen anything wildly interesting through a neighbor’s window?

Answer any of these questions and you’ll get yourself a chance to win my current Blaze, Made You Look, or any one of my previous releases (search my name on Amazon for a complete list of titles). Oh, heck, how about three winners? I’ll randomly pick three winners from your responses.

I have a friend whose husband is a devoted kilt-wearer. This is endlessly fascinating to me. He likes kilts so much, and he likes running so much, he even invented a running kilt: http://www.runningkilts.com. (I’m disappointed to report that the running kilt isn’t commonly worn commando-style. Oh, and, why a kilt for running, you ask? To reduce chafing on long distance runs, of course.)

Yes, nowadays, there’s a kilt for every occasion. Check out the utilikilt: http://www.utilikilts.com, for some interesting photos. And don’t miss their mock-u-mercials to see videos of kilt-wearers in action.

Apparently, there are even kilt-wearers’ conventions. Aforementioned friend and her husband went to one and reported to me many interesting stories about the experience. Imagine a whole convention full of guys in kilts. Now imagine if that convention took place at the same time and in the same hotel as the Romance Writers of America conference.

Why do some men love kilts? Any devoted skirt wearer should know the answer to that question. They’re more comfortable, for one thing. Less confining. Not to mention ease of access… There must also be the appeal of feeling so at ease with one’s masculinity that putting on a skirt—er, I mean, kilt–isn’t at all threatening. Rather the opposite, it’s freeing.

One side note—it wasn’t easy finding an appropriate photo to accompany this blog post. Perhaps I should have dug up some historical romance cover art. But Google images? Try searching “men in kilts” and you’ll get a bunch of pictures that are:

A. ridiculous
B. even more ridiculous
C. weird
D. silly
E. all off the above

In a few weeks, I’m going to Scotland, home of the kilt. I will report back my findings. I will also take pictures.

How do you feel about men in kilts? Do you think your guy would wear one in public? How about other items of clothing that many deem feminine? The man purse, for instance? I personally am launching a campaign to get more men in high heels, makeup, and complicated hairdos, because I think we should all share the pain equally.

Among the questions people ask me about being a writer, I often hear “How do you name your characters?”

Fortunately, naming fictional characters is more fun than naming real, live children. There are no worries about real-life consequences like lovely Ariella hating her name because in high school Anatomy class everyone notices the similarity of her name to “areola” and she must suffer through the rest of her high school career with an unwanted nickname.

No, instead, I can name my fictional heroine Ariella, and maybe she hates her name for above reason, but in fiction we’re actually supposed to torture our characters. So the unwanted nickname can become part of her backstory.

Okay, but back to the question… The truth is, I have no method for naming characters. Often, as I’m brainstorming, an appropriate name will pop into my head. I try to give characters’ names that reflect their personalities in some way. And if I don’t, there’s a reason. Maybe the heroine’s overly boyish name serves to make her more feminine–that sort of thing.

Occasionally I name a character for humorous purposes. One book featured a secondary character named Buck Wild. He was an aspiring rap star with a much less flashy name on his birth certificate. And I sometimes give my hero and heroine very romance-novelesque sounding names, because I think such names are deliciously evocative of our genre. Also they’re fun.

But I’m not above flipping through phone books and searching internet name sites to find the perfect name. Sometimes my characters will have to try out several names during the writing of the novel before I settled on The One.

A good character name is memorable. Who could ever forget the name Scarlet O’Hara, for instance? It’s unique, and it gives you a strong sense of what kind of woman the character is, without knowing anything else about her. And how about Hannibal Lecter? I can’t think of a more perfectly named character.

Do you have any pet peeves regarding fictional character names? Do you find certain kinds of names distracting or particularly appealing? What’s your favorite fictional character name? And finally, if you were going to pick out names for the hero and heroine in a romance novel, what names would you give them?

I cancelled my Facebook account yesterday with no small amount of glee. I never could figure out why people sent me invitations to online Easter egg hunts or asked me to fill out surveys about the ten things I last ate for breakfast.

I lost interest in Myspace years ago, soon as I settled on a wallpaper for my homepage. I’ve tried to do away with that account too, but for reasons I cannot fathom, the mysterious powers in control of the company requested that I send them a photo of myself holding up a sign with my name on it in order to cancel my account. Seriously. I’m not kidding.

I’m a spotty blogger at best, and I’ve dabbled in Twitter, but without any lasting enthusiasm. Friends will tell you I’m not even good at keeping up with email (you might get a reply from me right away, or you might never hear from me until one day a few years from now when I finally clean out my email inbox and realize I’ve failed to answer your message).

It’s not that I don’t see the value of social networking. I do. Sort of. (Okay, not really.)

I like to hear from my friends, but to be honest, I’m a bit of a hermit. ‘Socially gregarious’ is not a phrase that’s ever been used to describe me, and all the possibilities for networking with people online make me want to take a nap.

In spite of the hermit tendencies, I have a bit of a Jeckyll and Hyde relationship with my blog/Twitter account/whatever. I’ll be wildly enthusiastic about posting for a while, and then I’ll start to hate the responsibility and vanish. It usually happens when I’m overwhelmed with a deadline. When the impossible workload has been conquered, I’ll sheepishly come out of my cave and post again.

How about you? Do you have a favorite social networking medium? Do you Facebook or Twitter? What do you love or hate about them? Can you explain to me what the surveys and Easter egg hunts are all about? Here’s your chance to convince me of what I’m missing out on.

You can follow me/friend me/whatever on the following links, but don’t be surprised when I disappear. And if I never hear from you at all–don’t feel bad. I understand completely.

My blog: http://www.jamiesobrato.com
My Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/jamiesobrato

While visiting a friend-of-my-boyfriend’s house recently, I was presented with a horrifying scenario. It was a warm, sunny day, and the friend in question had a swimming pool and hot tub. I had not come prepared to immerse myself in any body of water, so the wife of the friend immediately coaxed me into a bedroom and began pulling bikinis out of a drawer.

“This one will fit you!” she declared, waving at me with a tiger-print scrap of fabric.

I eyed the swimsuit in question and cringed. Sure, it might fit technically, but it was one of those Euro cut numbers designed to cover approximately 1/8 of the behind.

And I hadn’t even been mentally eased into swimsuit season yet with the obligatory torture trip to a department store dressing room to regard with sober despair the results of a winter spent writing and consuming pastry products.

Before giving me a chance to argue for a bit more modesty, it was decided by the wife that I would indeed put on the tiger-print micro-bikini and present myself to a small crowd of people already waiting by the pool. She hurried me into a bathroom to change, and a few minutes later, I was staring at myself in the mirror, horrified to find that the tiny sides of the bikini bottoms virtually disappeared beneath a newfound set of love handles.

Never one to be called a bad sport though, I pulled my summer dress on again over the offending bikini and headed for the pool, praying I’d have a good excuse not to do the big reveal. The water would be icy, I was sure, and I would be able to lounge poolside with a glass of wine without ever having to show any serious skin.

And no, I didn’t have to get in the pool, but I did take a dip in the hot tub later (shrugging off my dress only when no one was looking, then doing a mad dash into the water), where I sat regarding my newly expanded waist and promising myself I’d run six miles a day for the rest of the spring and summer.

I haven’t quite gotten around to that running-six-miles-a-day resolution. Too many writing deadlines at the moment. In the meantime though, I’d like to suggest to pool owners everywhere, if you’re going to keep extra swimsuits on hand for guests, please, please get the full coverage kind. No bikinis bought while visiting the topless (and apparently virtually bottomless) beaches of the Greek Isles.

I’m also posting this story as an official warning to those of you, like me, who’ve failed to notice swimsuit season creeping up on us. It’s almost here. My resolution is to lay off the donuts and, okay, probably not run six miles a day. But I’m going to do something physical most days of the week. Yeah. That sounds good.

How about you? Do you dread the first big reveal of the season? Do you have a strategy for getting into summer-wear shape? And have you ever been forced to wear someone else’s tiger-print micro-bikini, or is that just something that happens to me?

Twelve years ago, I began writing my first novel. I was fresh out of college, having studied to be an English teacher. I still had my teaching internship to do in the fall, and I was terrified. I knew student teaching was going to be difficult, especially for a shy, awkward girl with a monotone voice and the stage presence of a cucumber.

I thought I should do something easy in the meantime to distract myself, something like, you know, write and sell a 300-page novel. I was sure I could do it. After all, I had a bunch of college essays under my belt.

I wrote a book in about six weeks, and I was thrilled when I held in my hands that hefty manuscript (a bit of trivia: the title of the book was Desert Rose). I packed it up and sent it off to a publisher. The same day, I also went to the library, thinking, hmm, well, while I’m waiting for the publisher to send me my first check, I should study up on writing a bit so that my second novel will be even better than the first.

I checked out a stack of how-to-write-fiction books, and I hadn’t made it through chapter one of the first book before I was overcome with dismay. In the author’s description of all the glaring mistakes first-time novelists make, I saw my own beloved novel. I’d made every beginner’s mistake, and I suspected I’d even invented a few new ones.

I didn’t have to wait long for my belief to be confirmed by a second opinion. Less than a week after I’d mailed the manuscript, it came winging back to me with a form rejection letter attached.

I wasn’t shocked at the speed of the rejection. By that point, I’d read all the how-to-write-fiction books, and I could tell by re-reading the first page of my novel—the first paragraph even—that it sucked. I knew the editor was right. I had to start over from scratch.

Which I did. Many, many times.

I went on to do my teaching internship, but afterward my then-husband’s job transferred us to a rural town in Germany for the next five years. I couldn’t find work there as a teacher, so I had lots of time to write.

After four years of frustration, rejection, and self-doubt, I got my first hint that I might not completely suck as a writer—I was a finalist in the Golden Heart contest. Then I got my first agent. And five years from the time I started writing Desert Rose, I made my first sale to Harlequin Temptation and my second sale to Blaze.

The moral of the story? I’m not sure. The stupidity of youth can pay off? Writing leads to lots of frustration and angst? It’s important to read the how-to manual before you write the 300-page novel?

What did you do when you were young and stupid that you’re most glad you did, because you might not have had the guts to try it once you knew better? I’ll send copies of my first two published novels, Some Like It Sizzling and Pleasure for Pleasure (or winner’s choice of any other two), to the person who posts my favorite answer to this question.