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   

Harlequin party

few days each year, we actually get out and interact with other writers and our editors.  During those few days, we’re Cinderella at the ball.  I went to the top of the Empire State Building, looked out on Times Square from my hotel room, assisted in a workshop on

l to r: Mary Dickerson, me, Kristin Hannah, Connie Brockway, Christina Dodd, Theresa Medeiros, Emily March, Jill Marie Landis, Susan Kay Law, and Lisa Kleypas

Victorian underwear (no, I did not model), ate at a cool Scottish restaurant with Cara Summers and my editor, Brenda Chin, and went to see Sister Act with a group of writer friends.  And then there was the Harlequin party at the Starlight Roof of the Waldorf Astoria.  Utterly fabulous!  All good things must end and I arrived home, exhausted, to roses from my hubby!  I almost forgot that I have a book out this month–KEPT IN THE DARK, the last book in the 24 Hours Blackout series.

Now it’s back to work.  But first, who has been to New York?  What did you do and did you like it?

So why is it that all I seem to do at conferences is EAT?  There’s coffee at Starbucks, because God knows I can’t function without that.  And I’ll have coffee meetings because I’m certainly not the only one who needs the caffeine hit and so that’s usually the first meeting of the day.  Then I go from Starbucks to breakfast, supplied with our conference ticket.  That’s continental breakfast and when I sit down with perfect strangers to talk books.  Heaven!  But I also eat a muffin and another coffee while I’m sitting there.  You can’t chat without something in your hand.

Then there’s the 11:00 meeting with agent or editor or web designer.  Not to mention the video person or PR somebody or the other authors with whom you’re writing a continuity.  Gotta hang with them.  And you can bet someone brings a snack.  It’s always a great time for chocolate or nachos.  Don’t care which.

Then there’s conference lunch to meet more new people.  Afternoon party with hors d’oeuvres, then dinner with friends before evening parties with booze and dessert.  And that’s only the first day.  Can you imagine how huge I feel by the end of a four day conference?  Especially if conference is in a fabulous city like NYC.  I mean, could you possibly go to a Manhattan restaurant with your editor and NOT eat something awesome?  Even though you’ve just come from cookies and coffee with your best friends?

So I end up feeling like I’ve just eaten my way through the conference.  Yes, I have a stack of meeting notes and things I plan to do.  But I’ve also just eaten non-stop for 4 days.  OMG, I feel huge!

Anybody else have this problem?  And while you sit down to tell me all about it, I’ll grab another muffin. Do you eat through all of your travels? (The day this blog goes live, I’ll be traveling to New York and beginning my foodfest. So, please comment but I may be late with mine depending on when the plane lands.)

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?