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

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   

I will never call anyone a bird-brain again. Imagine finding out, after at least (ahem) 29 years on the earth, that birds are very intelligent? Apologies to the bird-watchers among you, who already know this.

Here’s the thing: when I’m on deadline (like now) I get very anxious . . . my husband might even call it spastic. I have to look for ways to calm down, and one of the best ways for me to do that is to go outside and sit on the covered patio and look out at the water.

But lately we’ve had bird issues. Now, I like birds as much as the next person. I think they’re little aerodynamic miracles, and I’ve even envied them their freedom upon occasion—though not their diet. Go figure, but I’ve never been partial to worms or grubs.

However, what I don’t like is their elimination process, and specifically not when they insist on leaving their little bird turds on my patio. It’s gross. And this morning, when I peacefully took my tea outside to indulge in a couple more chapters of Kate Morton’s The Distant Hours (wonderful!) I found that a bird had left me a present on my favorite chair. Not cool.

The birds insist on populating the patio because I have two greyhounds who are picky eaters and leave kibble in their bowls. For some unknown reason the blue-jays, in particular, enjoy Science Diet—and they swoop in to steal it, even when I’m sitting 3 feet away.

So this morning I got the bright idea to dump the leftover dog food in the basins of the non-functional fountain (don’t ask) in another part of the yard. And within 3 minutes, the bird party had moved. My patio is suddenly passé.

I’m so happy that I may even leave them a shot-glass of tequila!

And now back to the manuscript . . . xo,

Karen Kendall