I’m following in Isabel’s footsteps this morning, and there’s clearly no way I can compete with her lyrical tribute to her editor via Barry Manilow. LOL. (Brilliant, Isabel!)

In fact, if I did attempt such a tribute, my own editor would run away screaming . . . I’m imagining myself singing such a thing, and it’s not pretty! I can see my dogs with their paws over their ears. I can see the windows shattering. And I can see my husband holding twin toilet plungers over his own ears. So let’s not go there.

I’m very excited that Borrowing a Bachelor is out—it’s the first book in my All the Groom’s Men series for Blaze. It’s a sexy romantic comedy, featuring an accidental stripper who cold-cocks a medical student when she pops out of the cake at a bachelor party.

It’s one of the most fun ‘first meet’ scenes I’ve written, and I’ve written a few by now! I can’t believe I just turned in my 22nd book. (25th if we count the three ‘practice’ manuscripts I never sold.) Hope you’ll enjoy this series! It revolves around three groomsmen in a wedding, and how they meet their own matches at the bachelor party, the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.

Like Joanne, I’m still recovering from the holidays, and part of that involves cleaning out my office. Not a very exciting thing to blog about, I know! But I’m writing about it because I’m also having to clear some overflowing shelves and piles of books . . . and it’s so hard to part with them. Like saying goodbye to old friends.

I was talking to a critique partner about this process, and she had a much more positive take on it: rather than saying goodbye, I’m introducing them to new readers who will love them just as much as I did. I’m widening their social circle!

Speaking of critique partners, I’m off to my critique group now . . . to witness the birth of more wonderful stories. Happy New Year to you all, and happy reading.

Karen Kendall

 Turkey Day approaches.  The relatives are coming, so you do have to fix that panel on the oven door—the one that fell off in July. You have to fix the toilet in the guest bathroom, so that your mother-in-law doesn’t get an ocean of ick washing over her toes after flushing. And yes, you do need to replace the rug chewed up by the dog, before Uncle Ernie gets his Birkenstocks caught in the holes and goes down flailing.

The cobwebs must go, and the dings, gouges and black marks on the walls . . . because you want your dysfunctional family to think that you live in a magazine, right? I’m not sure why most of us get into this frenzy of preparation, but we do. And then everyone arrives to create chaos. 

Little Irwin spills grape juice on your couch. Susie drops her Barbie doll onto a hot burner on your stove, and shrieks to the heavens when her sequined-clad butt grafts to it permanently.  (Barbie’s, not Susie’s, thank God.) And to top it all off, your cousin, who talks with her hands, sweeps the pumpkin pie off the sideboard as she tells a story. Splat! Um, ice-cream, anyone?

The oven door may be fixed, but a hinge on a cabinet door will malfunction, leaving it hanging drunkenly just in time for pictures. The toilet may now flush, but the coffee pot will die. And the new rug looked a lot better without burnt-orange smears all over it.

Are you feeling thankful? I am.

I’m thankful that my dogs have already gotten mud all over the deck that I slaved for hours to paint last weekend. I am thankful that the outdoor cushions I scrubbed are already re-growing mold. I’m thankful that the new plants I put in the front beds are hanging out with the wrong crowd: weeds.

Murphy and his Law like to laugh at people before the holidays. What can you do?

Seriously? Be thankful. For your family, your home, the blessings you’ve been given, and for the opportunity to have people mess up your house! They’re there because they love you . . . and everyone knows that you don’t live in a magazine. Get real!

Wishing you the very best for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday–chaos and all,

Karen Kendall

I was eleven days from my last deadline when my home phone rang at an ominously late hour. Half asleep, I barely registered that the phone was ringing, and I certainly didn’t answer it.

Then, even more ominously, my cell phone began to ring. “Okay, okay,” I muttered, scrambling out of bed and hurtling through the dark towards my handbag. I tried to open the cat, instead. Needless to say, the cat did not appreciate my actions.

At last I retrieved the phone from under a mountain of receipts, gum wrappers, grocery lists and stale candies escaped from their wrappers. I squinted blearily at the number, and determined that it was a dear friend’s. I called back.

It was not my friend who answered, but her husband. “I’m leaving Jane,” he announced. (Not her real name.)“Will you call the house again in ten minutes so that she has someone to talk to?

Huh? Evidently he wasn’t done destroying her world, and needed a few more minutes. 

The next day, he put my practically suicidal friend on a plane to come see me . . . evidently he didn’t want to deal with the fallout. Nice. 

Let me tell you, it is difficult to write romantic comedy when one has a raging, sobbing, suicidal man-hater in one’s guest bedroom. Yet these are sometimes the challenges of a romance writer’s life, since real men don’t always behave like heroes.

Here’s a sample. 

Friend: “I’m going to Bobbitt him!”

Me: “Oh. Um. Good idea . . . now where was I in that steamy sex scene? Noooo. It won’t work in the absence of a certain organ. And now all I can picture in my mind is a sort of bloody stump. Thank you, Jane. More wine?”

Friend: “Romance was invented to fool women into a lifetime of domestic slavery!”

Me, typing away: “Yes, indeed. I couldn’t agree more. Now . . . how am I going to structure this happily-ever-after scene? Dang. All I can see on the page is my formerly chic heroine, dressed like a slattern with hairy legs and pink foam curlers in her hair. She’s screaming like a fishwife at the hero while opening a can of spam. More chocolate, Jane?” 

Friend: I’m going to kill myself!

Me: “Give me that knife, Jane. I don’t mean to sound callous, but I have to write 15 pages today, and I simply don’t have time to clean gallons of  your blood off my kitchen floor. Do you know how hard it will be to get it out of the grout? And really, it will be very distracting if you haunt me during revisions . . .” 

Yes, I’m being facetious. No, I didn’t get any writing done during poor Jane’s visit. She’s doing better, by the way. And somehow I met my deadline—though I’m glad that I won’t be a fly on my editor’s computer when she reads the draft!

Karen Kendall   

It’s been a loooooong time, baby, but I’m very excited to be writing for Blaze again! Way back in 2006, I had an idea for a series about several men in the same wedding party, which I called ‘All the Groom’s Men.’  As readers, we see a lot of stories about grooms and even best men . . . but what about the other sizzling hot guys in tuxedos, all waiting near the altar? This, it seemed to me, was a road not often taken.

So I put on my thinking cap—yes, I really do have one! It’s tie-dyed velvet and very goofy-looking—and I dreamed up some real guys’ guys who knew each other well and had supported each other through a lot of life’s ups and downs.

First there was Adam, a sexy medical student who’s already screwed up his life once for a girl, and will never do so again. Then there was Dev, a former rocker turned bar-owner who’s struggling with what loss of the spotlight has done to his identity. And finally Pete came strolling into mind, an account exec for a major luxury hotel whose job has made him too much of a yes-man.  

Though I write romantic comedies for Blaze, my editor insists on emotion and depth of character (go figure) and so I’m still in the process of understanding these men and what makes them tick. I’m revising and clarifying and weaving story threads through the manuscripts to the best of my ability. And it’s occurred to me that I’ve come full circle as a writer after all these years—not that I won’t go around again!

I’ve found that while revisions on my first few books struck terror, and occasionally resentment, into my heart, I now (sssshhhhhhhhh!) enjoy them. Revisions are cool. Revision means getting to flesh out the stick people in your manuscript. Or put clothing on the naked people. LOL.

Revisions allow you to paint in the background scenery if it’s missing, and move around the set pieces if you’ve left them in inconvenient places. They remind you that the difficult mother in one book is the helpful older sister in the previous book . . . and make you question what it is about her character that causes her to behave so differently with her daughter than with her sibling?

Finally, revisions allow an author on deadline to PLAY, instead of work. She’s freed up from the drudgery (just getting those black and white pages cranked out) and allowed to use crayons, stickers and glitter.

So imagine me, happily sitting cross-legged amid three-hundred or so  manuscript pages,  breaking out the paint-brushes and watercolors. I’m happy to be revising . . . and honestly overjoyed to be writing again after taking a break.

Karen Kendall