It’s always interesting when someone who knows me outside of writing first reads one of my books.  If they are already romance readers, it’s usually not a big deal. Romance readers understand the genre and the conventions. They can easily get lost in the fictional world, even if it’s been created by a friend. But for those who don’t read romance, the experience of reading one of my books is a little more disconcerting for them, I think.

“I kept thinking about you as I read it,” said one friend, her eyes wide, her look one of total discomfort. “I could really hear your voice in it.”

Well yes.  And that’s a good thing. I want my voice to be highly recognizable and distinctive. It’s the subtext of this comment that causes problem for her as a reader and- to a certain extent- for me as a writer. She identified me with the heroine and- when those love scenes came around- couldn’t get past the sense that she’d glimpsed a little too much into my private life.

I totally empathize. I remember this sensation from the days when I’d first ventured into romance writing. I would make a writing friend – published or un-published, it didn’t matter- and then read her work. Afterward, I’d feel like I knew far too much about her! That sensation has long since disappeared. I write with plenty of separation between me and my characters, and I recognize that other authors do
as well. We are not writing biographies. We write the stories of characters from our head.

Perhaps that’s why there’s always a little overlap though. We tend to create characters that are accessible for us, characters who could be a best friend or – even- ourselves, had we taken another path in life. If we
chose to write about people too different from us, we might hit too many false notes. So we fearlessly mingle reality and fiction, giving one character our fear of snakes and another character our love of soap operas. We make one heroine a writer – that’s always so tempting!- and we write another with the same profession we held before we were writers. Bit by bit over the years, we piecemeal out our sense of self into lots of characters so that every one we create has something in common with us, if only in the most superficial of
ways.

This was proven to me recently as I reviewed my older titles in an effort to promote them on my website. I wanted to freshen up the blurbs and make sure I mentioned connected stories.  In doing so, I had cause to re-read some of those older books, and what do you know, my heroines have matured along with me. Not that I wrote an immature heroine to start with. But I did write a heroine who was typically a bit more carefree. Her conflicts were often work-related and she was less focused on her emotions- that emotional focus only came after meeting the hero. Those earlier heroines probably had better wardrobes. They went out more.

Nowadays, my heroines have more emotional conflicts straight out of the gate. They have a bit of baggage, but they strike me as a bit tougher because of it.  I like the heroines I’m writing today, but I have to admit I really enjoyed the look back and reading the heroines of a decade ago. It was like meeting up with old friends.

*** Pretend you’re writing a romance novel.  What quality would you give your fictional heroine?  Career? Tell me anything about a character that comes to mind and we’ll see if your characters share anything
in common with you! I’ve got a hot-off-the-press advance copy of ONE MAN RUSH for one random poster.

 

Today I won’t be able to respond to comments because I’m out of town for the weekend on an annual retreat with my 2 critique partners.
I look forward to this retreat all year long. It’s fun getting away from my usual routine, and there’s always good food and wine and sitting by the fireplace chilling out.
We arrive late Friday afternoon and get settled into our rooms, then meet in the kitchen to catch up with all the non-writing news each of us want to share over chips, salsa, and homemade guacamole, (and wine, of course) And then we get to work.
With only 3 of us, we each get a 4-5 hours long session where we all 3 concentrate only on that person’s writing needs. One session Friday night. One Saturday morning into the afternoon, then we break and go out to dinner, then another session Saturday night. Sunday morning is reserved for anyone to address anything they’ve thought of since their session.
One can use a session to plot an entire book, or plot the bare-bones of a trilogy proposal, or to figure out a difficult black moment and resolution, and then just brainstorm ideas for a new proposal. Sometimes we might even use a session to talk about our writing life in general, deal with burn out, or changing strategies or goals, or even taking a time-out from writing.
The retreat helps start the year out renewing my love for writing, energizing my excitement for plots and stories, and generally refreshing and de-stressing my life. I love talking about writing with other writers. But especially with my 2 critique partners. We’ve been together now for 10 years! I can’t believe it. We’ve grown to be not only really good critique partners, but very close friends. We talk with each other weekly, if not daily, and we’ve all been there for each other through the good and the bad times. I can’t imagine my life without my 2 CPs. And I know I’ve said this many times before, but, Linda, Pam, I wouldn’t be published without you. I love you both.
HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY, LPJ!!!!
To celebrate my 10th anniversary with Pam and Linda I’m giving away a copy of my NEWEST BLAZE (It doesn’t even come out until March!) ONCE A HERO… to a random commenter. I’ll announce the winner as soon as I get back in town Sunday night or Monday morning.

Once a hero…always a hero
Subject: Captain Luke Andrews, M.D.
Current Status: On stress leave in beautiful Hawaii
Mission: Rest and recovery
Obstacle: There’s no rest from the wicked chemistry
Mission: Rest and recovery
Obstacle: There’s no rest from the wicked chemistry
he’s found with her

After a too-close-for-comfort brush with cancer, ocean
photographer Kristen Turner heads to Hawaii
for three months, where fate hands her a smokin’-hot
opportunity she can’t resist….

Captain Luke Andrews has to get some serious R & R,
but he can’t keep his hands off Kristen. She’s wild
and irresistible, and spending his nights with her
seems more dangerous than his last mission.
But is their hot little vacation romp an escape from
real life…or will the survivor and the hero battle it
out and learn to live each day as a gift?

 

With age comes wisdom. At least, that’s the way I’ve always heard the old adage. I’ve been counting on getting smarter as I grow older and, ever the optimist, I’ve had visions of my gung-ho, full-throttle hubby gaining some small scrap of caution as we reach the age of maturity.

I’m here to tell you – ha! I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off all through the holiday season, trying to accomplish too much, not taking care of myself, and – surprise!- ending up with a lingering cold. I was so over-busy, in fact, that I was convinced I had a book due on December 15^th when it wasn’t due until January 15^th. I killed myself to finish a book that wasn’t due for a month. Who makes mistakes like that? A woman spread too thin, that’s who. I learned long ago not to take December deadlines, but if I can’t remember from month to month what my deadlines are, what good does it do to make the best laid plans?

Clearly, I’m not getting any smarter. I may be getting more air-headed.  So I look to my husband with hopeful eyes, wondering if he might be gaining the keen intellect and seasoned maturity that is supposed to come with getting older.  But last week, he went out to play basketball with his friends and came home with an injury that requires surgery… an injury that might have been prevented if he could “operate at anything less than warp speed.  Clearly he’s not faring any better than me in the “wise old sage” department.

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom. Yes, I forget more surface details like the times of kids’ sports practices and the date a book is due. And yes, my typing has gotten sloppier whereas I used to consistently turn in crisp, clean copy all the time. Sometimes I think my brain just sees what I expect to see. But on the upside of aging, I think my writing is getting better.  I don’t take in extraneous information as well as I used to, but in my specialty area of interest, I soak up new ideas and sift through them on many levels, taking in anything that could be useful to storytelling.  My focused attention is killer when the topic pertains to what I do.

Small consolation for the other information that’s falling out of my head at an alarming rate? Maybe. But I’m glad there is a consolation.  And as for my husband’s sports injury… at least he’s still competing in a sport he loves.  He’s still entertaining the hell out of me as he over-exaggerates his limp all over the house, waving his arms around and knocking things down in his path just to make us laugh. We’ve decided that wisdom is overrated.

***So… what’s the status of your gray matter? Still learning and growing? Do you ever give much thought to maintaining mental acuity? Chat with me on the boards today and I’d be happy to give one random poster a copy of a signed Blaze of their choice!

 

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   

 

Today’s blog comes to you four days before my next Blaze is due.  It’s a trying time for me, but a creatively interesting one.  Since it’s virtually ALL I can think about right now, let me walk you through the joys and disasters of my life on deadline.

First up – I hope you’re not hungry.  Joining me on the journey means there is very little nutrition and entirely too much eating.  Red Hots containers litter the floor by my computer.  They’re my candy of choice as I recover from a Mary Jane additction.  Whoops.  That came out the wrong way.  Honestly, I mean the Mary Jane molasses and peanut butter candies.  I love them dearly, and I write well under the influence of molasses and peanut butter, but I like them a little too well.

Anyway, why can’t I eat real food on deadline, you ask?  I can’t possibly cook.  There’s no time to leave the computer, for one thing.  I’m writing all the time these days.  The ideas that I waited for weeks to arrive?  They’re all here now and must be captured in words.  I can only eat whatever I grab out of the pantry while in a preoccupied daze.  I also can’t cook because writing is all I think about!  Following a recipe would be a disaster.  I can’t hold any thought in my head for more than two seconds that doesn’t have something to do with my work-in-progress.

But writing is fun during deadline because, as I mentioned, all the ideas have finally arrived.  I’ve got lots of threads and characters in place.  I’ve knotted and tangled my plot.  All that’s left is to watch it all unravel into the black moment and see the characters reel from it until they start re-thinking their choices in the story.  I write a lot, but at least I have a huge well of ideas to pull from.

Creatively, my mind is at work on the story all the time.  While that’s a problem for cooking, it’s great for a book.  I’m thinking about scenes when I go to sleep, when I dream, and when I wake up.  I’m mentally revising before I even put the words on the paper.  That’s an exciting time for a writer.

I’m also exhausted.  I never would have dreamed that writing could be such draining work.  It’s not like I’m using a jackhammer or digging a ditch.  I’m not cleaning houses or washing windows.  But I’m turning my brain inside out and rattling it around, trying to pull the best ideas from the gray matter.  I’m also stuck in one position all day, and everything is cramped.  I’m so tired from thinking and writing that I walk, zombie-like, to my bed at night and fall right to sleep as I’m imagining the scene I’ll write the next day. 

In many ways, I can’t wait to turn this book in.  I’m working so hard to finally type The End, after all.  I’ll cheer when I hit the Send button and I can sleep for two days straight.  But at the same time, I’ll also hate to walk away from this deeply creative time.  Because the next time I sit down to work on a book, it will be to stare at a blank screen and pace.  Stare, pace, think.  Hope for an idea.  Worry once again that it will never arrive…

*** Today’s blog question is a piece of cake for you and of dire importance to me… what’s your favorite healthy snack?  Pretend you’re on deadline and you’ve eaten too much candy. AND, let’s also pretend you can’t cook!!  What would you stock the pantry with so you had something halfway decent to eat before you wandered back to your computer?  I’ll give a random poster an advance copy of my September Blaze, MAKING A SPLASH!

I wanted to be clever, I really did. But the truth is, it’s ninety degrees out this week, I just got through an intense labor with my alter ego’s latest book, and I’ve got less than two weeks before I’m officially on vacation. My brain has checked out. Way out. So instead of a sparkling new post, I thought I’d share some gently recycled wisdom from the Super Lucky #1 Fun Blog (apologies if you’re one of the three people who follow it). But without further ado, eleven things Top Model taught me about writing…

*  *  *

This also works for Project Runway, Top Chef, and plenty of other creative contest-based reality shows. I’m talking about writer-as-contender. Whether you’re after a contest final, a contract, an agent, or a good review, they way you pursue the coveted and finite prizes of this industry matters. Here’s what shows like Top Model have taught me:

1. Everyone has an off week. Even the stand-out talent on any of those weekly whittle-down shows gets a lousy critique or two. As long as the judges know you’ve got potential and want to see more, one missed target isn’t enough to sink you.

2. The judges want to be wowed. Most judges—and indeed editors, agents, contest entry readers, reviewers—don’t get off on ripping people apart. A toxic few may, which is unfortunate, but the professionals don’t, I promise you. They’d far rather be delighted than disappointed.

3. Be yourself. This comes up constantly on those creative shows—know who you are and play to your strengths. Don’t try be someone else, even if you love their work, and don’t just go through the motions of what you think a writer does. Don’t just pose. A genuine weirdo is infinitely more charismatic than a soulless imitator.

4. Be a pro. Be humble, but not self-deprecating to a point where people cringe. Believe in your work, but not to a point where you’re telling the judges they don’t know what they’re talking about. Always be gracious, sincere, and attentive, but unafraid to admit politely that you disagree.

5. Be emotional. You know all those boring, wooden, flat, cold girls who get sent home at the start of any Top Model cycle? Don’t confuse strength and poise with bottling emotions. Self-control is good. Repression is not. Unless you want to deliver stiff, lifeless, forced work, don’t be afraid to feel.

6. But don’t be a psycho. Like a shaken soda, intense sensations like anger, jealousy, distrust, and betrayal need to be allowed to settle before they’re uncapped. Nothing undermines professionalism quicker than a reactionary outburst, fight-picking, retaliation, or passive-aggressive gossip or sabotage.

7. Be a good housemate. Your fellow writers are many things; your peers, your friends, your colleagues, your competition, your connections, your future collaborators. Friendships are invaluable in this brutal business, but respect professionalism. If you’re tempted to gossip or blow off some steam, never take it for granted that no one else is listening. Snark isn’t the same as wit, and as good as it might feel in the moment, it doesn’t flatter you. If you’re tempted to vent online, ask yourself, “Would I put this in a public post?” It’s the interwebs, people. The cameras are always rolling. Never forget—the reunion show’s got clips.

8. Accept defeat gracefully. If you get voted off (a contest loss, a rejection, a shitty review) take it like a pro. If appropriate, thank the judges for their time and interest, and exit with a smile. Last impressions count, too, so leave a pleasant taste in their mouths. It’s okay if you’re faking it for the sake of dignity—grace doesn’t have to feel good.

9. Triumph just as gracefully. If your fellow contestants are heartbroken, don’t do a touchdown dance at the podium. Own and celebrate your happiness, but again—dignity.

10. Tabloids are a bitch. On the grand scale of a national reality show, no matter how popular a contestant is, for every ten fans, every ten flattering gossipy blog posts about them, there will be a certain percentage of cruel ones. The same goes for reviews. No one—no author or genre or book or voice or plot—can please everyone. Not even close. And not your job. And sad as it is, some people are naturally, toxically contrary, and will make it a point to hate things that others praise. They don’t matter—dodge them like turds on a hot sidewalk. For the rest, know yourself and what you’re feeling, and if you’re going to click on an editor or agent’s e-mail or a review link, do so when you know you’re in a frame of mind to handle it, good news or bad.

11. The show ends, but the job doesn’t. No triumphant high or sting of defeat lasts forever. Take heart if you struggled and came up short, because one set-back is just that—one set-back. You didn’t final in the Golden Heart, but a year from now, who’ll care? You still get to write, and isn’t that what you love? What’s that you say? You won the Golden Heart? Well, bask in that excitement and take your bows, savor but don’t wallow, because the glow is joyous but fleeting. Careers grow or fizzle well after the show’s finale airs. When the newness and attention of a triumph wanes, what you do, alone in front of your keyboard, is what really matters. So make damn sure you love it.

I’m on the road this week, checking out some colleges for my son who will be a senior this year. We’ve taken on a part-time job, apparently, researching scholarships and financial aid, cross comparing the caliber of programs in his major and trying to match up a city that will appeal to him. What a big undertaking! On the other hand, it’s a time of tremendous possibility. He turned to me yesterday and said, “It’s funny to think about all the different paths I could take. And how one path could take me somewhere so much different than the one I might choose.” That comment really crystallized the experience for me.

Do you remember that time of life and that feeling where the decisions you made would have a huge and lasting impact? I remember thinking it was way too much pressure. And ultimately, I was somewhat ill-equipped at 17 to make those calls. But life seems to have a way of bringing you around to the right path sooner or later. Sometimes I don’t get The Message until the universe has sent me repeated, noisy signs, but I do think we get where we were meant to be when we follow our hopes and dreams.

So I think tomorrow, as we visit the next college on the list, I’m going to tell my son that there’s no real wrong path (okay, beyond a life of crime). Sometimes the paths are crooked and winding, taking you to strange new places you didn’t think you’d go. And other times, they are surprisingly circular, bringing you back to where you started. I kind of think there’s an arc to our lives that’s in place, and though we veer around it, we’re called back to that main arc over and over again. Resistance is futile!

I like to think that’s a lesson my Blaze characters are all dealing with in some way or another. They often can’t see their lives intersecting with someone else’s. They’ve usually got a clear-cut path and destination in mind, and a significant other would only complicate and distract them from the main goal. Little do they know their story arc. The path to true love is even more convoluted than the journey to a good college and a rewarding career.

What Blaze characters need to remember – along with my son – is that the destination isn’t always as important as the journey. Enjoy the path you’re on. Explore a few options. Feel free to wander. But don’t ignore the big, wide open road in front of you.

***My son is anxious to check out life in a big city! If you had it to do over and could choose a college to attend in a fun, exciting part of the country, where would you go? Has Denver or Philly always called to you? From Dallas to D.C., pretend cost isn’t an issue… where would you like to head? I’m going to send one random poster an advance copy of my September Blaze, MAKING A SPLASH. I might have to wait until Thursday to pick a winner since I’m out of town, but I promise I won’t forget!

There is no doubt that I’m the new girl. At Blaze, I’m nearly positive I’m the latest author to sign, and still I’m a newbie on the writing side of Romancelandia in general. Three years ago I hadn’t yet realized that the movies playing in my head were stories trying to burst from my skull and splatter across my screen, not until July of 2008. But I’m nothing if not eager, and somehow or other I ended up here after a self-designed crash course in fiction writing, and with the help and advice of hundreds of kind strangers (hi, NEC!)

But let’s get one thing straight—I have no clue what I’m doing. I still feel very much like a student of this world, and thank goodness there are so many patient, generous authors and editors who DO know what they’re doing (and how), willing to grab me by the shoulders, turn me a few degrees and give me a gentle push in the right direction.

Often these kind acquaintances explain things to me, such as “What’s a sexy hook?” They very politely don’t question how I managed to sell to Blaze without really grasping this most basic and integral of concepts, they just take a moment to explain it in their own words, and after perhaps thirty translations from thirty different sources, one of them will finally click for me. They explain to my naive butt that there are certain outside industry folks I’d be better off avoiding, lest I step on any toes in my quest to appear engaged and active in the digital RomantiSphere. When I explain a new book idea, they ask questions so obvious I hadn’t pondered them, such as, “So…what’s the conflict then?” With knowing good humor they share their own second-sale struggles (apparently not such a rare hurdle at all). They field my epic-length e-mails fraught with frustration and insecurity with more patience and wisdom than is strictly human (thanks, Samantha!)

Where is this post going? I actually have no idea. The theme of the past few weeks for me has been Don’t Overthink It, and I may as well apply it to this while I’m at it. I’ve been struggling (sometimes admirably and with dignity, other times buried to the ankles in snotty tissues) to come up with a second winning Blaze premise / concept / hook / idea. It’s been ten months since my first sale, and the overachiever in me says that’s far too long a time to have passed before I’ve made a second. Was it all a fluke, my first sale? It sure felt like a fluke. Will I ever be able to do it again? A roller coaster of self-confidence ensues as I come up with an idea, suspect it’s brilliant, then plan and plot the life from it as I obsessively strive to make the proposal “right”, make it perfect, make a second sale so I can know for sure if I belong here or not.

Oh, trying. The enemy of creation. For me, anyhow. And when I say trying, I mean over-analyzing the idea I’m fixated on, using every trick and technique I can think of to make sure it’s the “right” story. It’s born of wanting something so badly, you squeeze the breath from it lest it has a chance to escape from you. And no wonder my proposals have been missing their marks—by the time this 70% pantser has forced herself to meticulously plot every chapter of her proposal (lest it not be perfect, every possible editorial question pre-addressed) all the mystery has left it, all the what-ifs that usually come to me as I’m tagging along on the hero and heroine’s journey already answered, but answered analytically, not intuitively.

I got to hang out with Brenda (Senior Blaze Editor) at the New England Chapter (mah peeps) of the Romance Writers of America’s annual conference last month, and my GOD was that helpful. My editor Laura had kindly passed along the latest of my over-labored proposals for Brenda to check out, and she rather frankly informed me that reading the synopsis’s latest fourteen-page iteration had been nothing short of painful. Well that did not shock or offend me. Writing it had been at least twice as torturous! I just wanted it be “right” so badly…cue the strangly hands.

She said scrap it, and run with another idea I’d tossed out in an earlier brainstorming session. She explained the Blaze line’s essential “hook” concept in a way that made it click into place for me in a totally new way (nothing short of a Helen Keller “water” moment). Perhaps most importantly, she gave me permission to accept that I write and plot in a certain way, one that may equal a pretty sparse synopsis to start off but yields organic, not contrived, story developments as the chapters are actually typed up. She explained how everyone writes in their own distinct style, and just as there’s no perfectly “right” story, there’s no “right” process either. Only the one that’s right for a given author. Sounds so obvious, right? Well the obvious tends to go fuzzy when you’re clinging white-knuckled to your belief that you’ve got to be perfect.

So, that was just over two weeks ago. I’ve spent the time since strictly NOT overthinking my current proposal. Just two weeks of walking and scheming and not allowing myself to worry too far beyond how the hero and heroine should meet and become tangled up in one another’s lives. I wrote the first three chapters in about a week, simply along for the ride as my characters took over the action. I wrote an eight-page synopsis, feeling I needed to at least guess at what might happen between their meeting and the black moment…then I scrapped it and wrote it in two pages, unanswered questions be damned. Then this morning, after the breathless final spell-check, I hit Send on the sucker.

It may be another miss. It may have potential. It may be a masterpiece of staggering Blaze-y genius! Well, perhaps not. Only my brilliant editor and a week or two of nail-biting will yield the answer to that mystery. But this time at least I handed something over with life still pulsing in it, and even if it gets handed back to me, another miss, I’ll be left with something that felt fun and natural and easy for the first time since my stakes got raised, since this second sale took on life-or-death proportions in my head.

Anyhow, just wanted to share all that. Since fumbling my way into this field, I’ve found it unspeakably helpful when authors are honest and upfront about their own struggles and set-backs. So if there’s somebody out there striving to publish, I hope this post won’t darken your hopes, its message landing with an ugly plop—”Even a published author still struggles to get it right? What hope is there for me?” No no no. Instead take away that our challenges are not so different. We’re not so different. Not so different, in fact, that you might just find yourself in my shoes in a week or a month or a year, a very fortunate new-kid sharing your own pitfalls en route to Publishedopolis. My best advice is: do your homework, and know your line as much as you can…then pack all that away in a cupboard and write a story that excites you. That’s why we all started writing, and I now know that’s the only thing that will keep me writing.

Leave the overthinking and all its headaches to the reviewers, and just write.

I’m blogging today at Access Romance about my recent family vacation. But here, I thought I’d tell you about my girl time—the five-day summer party officially billed as the Romance Writers of America national conference but what I like to call my personal summer camp.

It’s so much fun to hang out with my romance writer friends and meet new readers every year. My good friend, Love Inspired author Renee Ryan, led the First Timers Orientation this year and she had a really fun analogy for a writer’s first time at RWA. She talked about the conference at large as the cool sorority and the other first timers were your pledge class. That each year you attend RWA, you look for your sisters who rushed along with you, cheering on their successes and commiserating on the bumps in the road. You share your journey with those folks, and it’s all the more fun for having a few BFFs around. Together, you become the cool sorority, squealing in the halls to see each other once a year at your personal summer camp. I loved that idea. To me, RWA is exactly like that.

Renee, for example, was in my pledge class. So was SIM author Beth Cornelison and Desire author Catherine Mann, my critique partner. Other classes close to me included Tanya Michaels, Winnie Griggs and Anna DeStefano, friends I seek out faithfully every year.

And we do more than just gab it up. We sign books to raise money that supports a literacy initiative. We teach workshops for aspiring writers to share what we know and attend workshops to learn from our peers. Oh, and we dance.

Summer camp isn’t summer camp without a glitzy party after all. The RITA and Golden Heart ceremony is our fun excuse to dress up and the publisher parties provide our opportunity to shake our collective groove thing. I’ve discovered Blaze authors Wendy Etherington and Jacquie D’Alessandro are just as committed to the dance floor as me, so I like to hunt them down once the music starts hopping.

I think every woman should have a summer camp – your personalized version of the sorority reunion. Whether it’s a handful of high school friends or the crowd from your book club, you owe yourself a retreat weekend to celebrate friendship and a common interest. Don’t have a big budget? You can tent it down by the lake for a night and share a few bottles of cheap champagne. I guarantee you’ll come home happier!

**You know what I’m talking about…. girlfriends speak a different language than our significant others! What’s been one of your favorite friend-dates? Ladies’ poker night? Neighborhood bunco? Chat with me on the boards today about fav ways to hang out with friends and I’ll give one random poster a signed copy of my August relese, Double Play.

Summertime is baseball time at my house and not just because I have an August Blaze with a major league manager. We watch a lot of baseball—from major league to little league—and critique games, plays and coaching decisions on an almost daily basis. The sounds of cheering ballpark crowds and the crack of a bat on a hardball are as rooted in our summer family memories as the scent of barbecue and cut grass.

Even the pace of baseball is suited to summertime. With one hundred and sixty-two games in the regular season, the sport is spread out over time so that we don’t live or die by the outcome of a single game. Win some, lose some is a given attitude, though obviously we want the win column to boast the better number by the time all is said and done. Games are long and languid, with plenty of downtime as pitchers kick the dirt around and batters adjust their gloves. That leaves me enough time to order a beer and a bag of peanuts without missing a beat.

I like the friendliness of baseball and its players, too. The tradition of batting practice allows fans to see their favorite players up close before game time. The ability to catch a foul ball or a home run ball gives everyone in the park a shot at returning home with a free souvenir. Also, the accessibility of tickets means you can afford to take the whole family to a game without taking out a second mortgage, the way you might have to if you want to catch the NFL live.

So summer and baseball go hand in hand for me. I’m already planning a trip to watch the Reds beat the Pirates in Pittsburgh the first week of August. But I’m not just going to root, root, root for the away team. I’m going to savor a family tradition with my glove in hand in case any balls are fouled off in my direction. And with any luck, maybe I’ll lay eyes on a player who inspires the sequel to Double Play…

***As I make a list of what to bring to on my road trip to see the Reds, I wonder what road trips you’ve got in mind for the summer. Water park for the weekend? Picnic at a friend’s camp? Chat with me on the boards about your summer day tripping plans and I’ll give one random poster an advance copy of my August Blaze, Double Play.