So far, 2012 has been kind of a weird year. I started it feeling scattered. Writing-wise I was torn between several different projects and opportunities, yet unfocused on any one in particular. I took a temporary position, designing for a Boston ad agency, relegating my formerly flexible writing time to an early morning slot between 5:30 and 7:00. We had a weird, warm winter, and it felt like I woke up in April, not really believing it could somehow be spring again. I hadn’t had to shovel the car out a single time, so how could I have earned spring? My husband and I are in a semi-contented holding pattern with our plans to move. I turned thirty-three a couple of weeks ago, an age that’s neither-here-nor-there. My body’s screaming at me to make a baby already!! but I know now isn’t the right time. Basically, I’ve been feeling utterly lost.

"In a reversed position, the Fool can represent recklessness, carelessness or inexperience…"

A couple of weeks ago, one of my best friends was visiting, and we went to have our tarot cards read (I live in Salem, Massachusetts—we boast more psychic parlors than ATMs.) She had a pretty illuminating reading, and I’d had an heartening experience before, having my cards done at this same establishment. So I was a bit disappointed when I asked the psychic what he saw for me, career-direction-wise, and the first card he turned was the Fool, upside-down. I thought, That can’t be good.

He went on to tell me that the Fool represents new beginnings, but reversed it could mean my path was uncertain, even hazardous. Maybe not hazardous, I thought, but scattered, sure. I was further annoyed when the psychic finished my reading and basically announced, “You’re already doing fine. Quit worrying about what you’re not doing.”

Say what? I felt like I was treading water, and I’d wanted some signpost to tell me where I was supposed to be heading, upside-down fool that I was. Then I thought about what he’d said, and you know what? He was right. I was doing just fine, writing every day, and I’d narrowed my floundering down to a few select projects that seemed like they’d take me in the right direction. Or any direction.

Not every season is going to bring big news and exciting opportunities. What I’d been seeing as water-treading wasn’t a fruitless, stationary struggle. I was paddling, moving forward, I just couldn’t tell because I don’t yet know exactly what I’m swimming toward. Yet. It’s foggy out here, but I’m writing new words every morning, doing the work, making steady progress, and eventually I’m bound to hit land.

So now spring is officially here, and I’m feeling a bit more at home in my life, and in my holding patterns. I’ve planted some seeds, and now it’s time to be patient and wait to see what blooms in a few weeks’ or months’ time, as long as I keep watering them each day. I’m trying to engage more in my non-writing life, too, doing home improvement projects, running, cycling, picking up some freelance design work, making extra time for social activities. I’m taking some of the eggs out of my writer basket and spreading them around, so this cricket-chirping period doesn’t feel so dispiriting. It’s working! Also, that temp gig is over, so I don’t have to get up at five in order to write, and being well-rested has done wonders for my peace of mind. Funny how that works!

Well, it’s time to scrub and seal the next section of my kitchen grout. Yeah. It’s not as thrilling as landing a three-book contract or scoring an award nomination or seducing an agent, but it’s actually quite satisfying. And my grout is looking pretty damn white. It’s a welcome distraction, anyhow, while I keep paddling and wait to see where all this drifting takes me.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

I’ve been feeling pretty lucky the last couple weeks…in a roundabout sort of way. Maybe more grateful and appreciative than lucky, but Thanksgiving’s half a year away, so we’ll call it luck, for seasonality.

I recently started a new day job. In a former life I was a full-time graphic designer, and for the next few months I’m going back to that, freelancing at an ad agency in downtown Boston. The opportunity came out of nowhere, literal hours after my husband and I had been talking about how we could stand to bank some extra money this year. I got offered the gig because my contact at a staffing agency had e-mailed me by mistake, then wound up realizing she had a job that just might be a good fit for me. Seemed serendipitous. So I thought, why not go for it? Good money, and though it’s full-time with a long train-and-walking commute, it’s a temporary contract, so I can leave when I want to and go back to writing as my primary vocation, which is how it’s been for the last not-quite-three-years. I’ve been awfully spoiled, after all (and awfully broke, but my job satisfaction’s been through the roof!)

So I’ve been at the new job for two weeks now, and it’s good gig. I’ll likely keep it up until summer, for the money and the new skills I’m acquiring. But man, is it ever exhausting!

Because I’m determined not to lose momentum on the books I’m working on, I’ve been getting up at five, showering and making coffee, shoving toast in my face, writing from 5:45 to 6:45, doing my hair and scooting out the door a little after seven to catch the train. Ride into the city, then walk a half hour or so to my office (the subway takes about five minutes less at rush hour, but I’d much rather get the exercise and do some story brainstorming along the way.) Stare at a screen for eight hours, walk to the train station, home around 6:45 to make dinner, eat, and pass out around nine with a book on my face. Then up again at five to do it all over.

But like I said, it’s worth it, and not just because of the money. Though I’m sacrificing a ton of unstructured time for the opportunity, it’s actually made me more productive. Or more efficient, anyhow. I may write a thousand new words on a weekday now, instead of three thousand as I’d gotten accustomed to, but I write them way quicker and make the most of my little sliver of precious writing time. And this morning I sat down and hammered out about 3,500 words, way more than I usually have in me on a Saturday morning. I’m super concentrated! Like orange juice or laundry detergent.

I appreciate the writing process in a way I haven’t the last year or so, recognizing it for the necessary luxury it is. I don’t think I ever took for granted how awesome a day job I had as an author, but now I realize that with all the more clarity. The way you appreciate a partner or friend with a new intensity when they’re away. So in a sense, though the new day job’s physically exhausting, it’s charging my projects with a fresh energy and importance. I spend so much time thinking about my characters as I’m moving pixels around on the screen, my creativity well is as full as it ever was…even if I’m not able to toss a buckle down there and haul out as many daily words as I might wish. And when I go back to full-time writing in a few months, it’ll be like summer vacation to a grade school kid. Bell ringing, binders jettisoned, locker combination forgotten, and me flailing headlong toward the nearest work-in-progress.

So anyhow, I guess I’m feeling pretty lucky! Now excuse me while I go collapse.

Wishing you all the best of luck this St. Patrick’s Day,

Meg Maguire

Hey, everyone! Happy… Dear God, mid-November? When did that happen?

I know it’s a bit premature, but I’ve been thinking about goals for the new year. Goals have been on my mind all through 2011, since I’ve been doing all those ridiculous monthly Lent experiments, and while I don’t want to do anything as intensive and constant as Discipline Year again any time soon, I am still very much pro-goal. So what to aim for, in 2012? Some aims are obvious; write and sell as many books as I can. Stay healthy. Learn when to step away from the keyboard. And between July (no sugar) and this month, alcohol-free Novembooze, I’m eager to keep eliminating sugar from my diet (if anyone else shares that mission, I can’t recommend this lecture enough as motivation). But here are some more measurable, targeted goals I’ve been kicking around:

1. Read more. I’d like to read one hundred books in 2012. That’s two a week, and I know to some of you voracious types, that’s laughable. You could read a hundred books by April, I bet! But in the past few years, since becoming a writer, my fiction-reading skills have taken a battering. Every book I open up turns into a lesson. Not drudgery, not homework, but I’m so semi-consciously preoccupied with seeing how other authors put their words and stories together, it takes me ages to read, now. I’d love to relearn how to read quickly, nuts to turning the act into a learning experience. So, a hundred books in a year. That’s my first goal.

2. Cook new things. My vegetarian month, Meat-Free May, and our participation in a farm-share program (we get a box of fresh, local, seasonal vegetables every week) have reminded how much fun it is to try new recipes. I’d like to try a new recipe once a week in the new year, to keep my modest culinary repertoire expanding…and to make grocery shopping a bit more adventurous.

3. Run ten miles. I used to hate running. But in the last decade it’s gone from torture to chore to routine to something I even look forward to, some days. But I’ve yet to run farther than five and a half miles without stopping, and most days I go about three. I’d love to be able to say I ran ten miles, even just once, just to know I can do it. I’m going to aim to reach that goal by my birthday (May 2), with a little help from a renewed YMCA membership once the weather here turns inhospitable. Which could be any second now. [checks watch]

4. Land an agent. I really need to get off my butt and do this! It’s a scary goal, because of all the ones I’ve listed, it’s the one whose success is ultimately out of my hands. I can try and try and try, but I could still fall short. But that’s a stupid reason to not try, so come January, I’m an author on a mission!

So those are my goals. I think 2012 is going to be an exciting year! I’ll be attending my first Romantic Times Booklovers’ Convention in April, and those folks actually just nominated Caught on Camera for an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, for best series debut. Pretty cool. So cool, in fact, let’s do a contest! Tell me a goal you have in mind for the new year, and I’ll pick a commenter at random to win a paperback copy of Caught on Camera (or if you’ve already read it and you’re patient, I promise I’ll mail you a copy of my next Blaze, once it’s published). I’ll even make the contest international, so go ahead—tell me what you hope to accomplish in 2012! I’ll pick a winner on Sunday, around noon, EST, and announce it here in the comments.

Take care! Can’t wait to hear what your goals are.

Meg

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 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 so thrilled to be blogging here today and regularly in the coming months.  I have been writing for a while usually for Harlequin Desire, occasionally for Kensington Brava and once in 2004 I wrote a Blaze.  Now I’m back under contract for two new books for Blaze and I couldn’t be happier!

I’m not sure when they will come out but they are a sort of duet of books.  The heroines are the link as they co-own a bakery called Sweet Dreams.  I’m a bit of a foodie addict.  I mean I like food and can eat like nobody’s business but I also really love watching other people cook (Food Network!), listening to other people talk about food and trying new dishes.  My son and husband valiantly tried lettuce wrapped halibut a few months ago but requested we go back to something more familiar.  However we did discover we love radishes sauteed in butter with peas–success!

Food is so tied to who I am that I honestly can’t think of my past or my family without thinking of food.  What about you?  Are you a foodie like me or is it something else that is your passion?

Katherine

At least I'm in the same room with the board, right?

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.

People ask me all the time how I get the ideas for my books. The truth is, from everywhere. I’m inspired by music, television, film, pop culture, people I see on the street, airports, restaurants, people from my past, the past, present, what I think the future might be and dreams. I never lack for ideas — ever.

My May release, Truth and Dare, was inspired by my past and my love of the television show Bones. I don’t actually want to see Booth and Bones get together on the show. It would would ruin it. But I do sometimes wonder what would happen if they did get together. Would it be explosive fireworks? Would we see the passionate side of Bones?

Of course, my story is very different from the show. My hero is a business man/cowboy who is helping Patience, a forensic anthropologist who seldom gets out of the office, solve his father’s murder. A murder that took place 20 years ago. Funny thing is, when I called her Patience, it didn’t dawn on me until someone mentioned it that I’d played on Temperance on Bones. Funny how that stuff happens.

The my story part: I lived in Houston but every summer as a teen I hung out at my grandparent’s farm in a small East Texas town. It was surrounded by lakes and so much of my time was spent on the water. I had my share of cowboys for boyfriends and I have to say there’s something sexy about a guy who can ride a bull. It was fun thinking back to those days. There were street dances on July 4th, and all kinds of festivals in nearby towns. I love small towns.

So today I would like to hear from you. What inspires you? Who inspires you? If you post here, you could win a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

I take a cottage garden approach to writing - a little of everything

That was never me. Don’t get me wrong, I could fake it sometimes. I got great grades. Pursued the degree I set out to earn and dove straight into the career field I envisioned for myself. But all along, I wondered, what if I’d chosen a different path?

That’s still me to this day. Not that I second guess writing. That was a career I found later in life and I’ve never thought for a second that writing books was a bad idea. I love this job and I’m so grateful to have the chance to do something I enjoy. But I still can’t choose a favorite genre, favorite sub genre or favorite anything else associated with writing. And sometimes, as I look back at the wide and varied assortment of stories I’ve written over the years – dark, angsty cop stories, frothy fun sexy stories, time travel, medieval, suspense, a few heartwarming tales – I wonder if I’ve shot myself in the foot being one of those people who likes to take the wide-angle lens view of life.

I mean, would it have made more sense to choose one thing and learned to do it really well? Some authors have such a great vision for their voice and their careers, and they deliver just what their readers want each time out of the gate. For me, that’s kind of like choosing the chocolate cake every time at the desert counter. I’m more of a “I’ll have one of everything” desert eater. Or, at very least, I need to try something new each time until I’ve savored each and every offering.

So I keep writing a little something different each time and hope my readers will forgive me for the story leap frog. This month, I’m really excited to revisit the Uniformly Hot! Miniseries, something that was new for me back when I wrote Always Ready. It was so much fun I thought I’d delve back into the military world for Highly Charged. And, I’ve already got the follow up in mind for 2012, so I’ll be sure to return to that miniseries next year. But, being me, I can’t wait to share with you a couple of fun and sexy Wrong Bed stories first. Maybe a hot medieval. Definitely a sports hero or two.

Perhaps it’s a failing of mine. But I prefer to look at my varied story offerings as the cottage garden approach to writing. There are less boundaries and more overlap, colors of every kind. To the untrained eye, maybe it’s a hodgepodge. But the marigolds protect the tomatoes from the deer and the first round of spring blooms help ready the soil for the summer flowers, so that it all works together. One thing strengthens the other. My fun Wrong Beds are more deeply emotional in the end for having written those angsty cops. My military guys have greater depth because I’ve allowed creative time to percolate in between their stories.

It all works together. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

***Were you one of those people born knowing exactly where you wanted to go? Have you meandered a bit on the way or circled around a few times before you felt sure of your direction? Or heck, tell me if you order your favorite desert every time or if you feel the need to try new things! There’s no right answer on my boards because I think variety is the spice of life. Just chat with me today and one random poster will win my new Uniformly Hot!, Highly Charged.

You’ll notice my blog this month is a variation on a famous back-to-school essay theme. While I can’t personally recall every being asked to pen a “What I did on my Summer Vacation” essay during my school career, I hear it’s a common academic request. And I would have loved this topic! No one enjoys a bit of self-reflection and light musing as much as yours truly.

So this month, I’m giving myself the chance to reflect on another sort of vacation entirely—the elusive time that author’s spend recharging between books.

I thought it would be good to track this time since it seems to evaporate so easily. The time I spend actively writing is carefully tracked and recorded, with vigilant attention paid to each day’s progress, whereas the time spend not writing passes in a speedy blur. Afterward, I often ask myself what I did during that blink of time between writing books. Read the rest of this entry »