Lacey Kaye

Number of pounds lost since last week: 1

Number of additonal lost pounds needed to meet second milestone: 1

Number of new outfits purchased to celebrate approaching milestone: 6

Number of new hairstyles: 1

Number of colors in new hairstyle: 2

Number of people who requested Lacey’s digits this weekend: 2

Number of people who used that number to call Lacey: 1

Number of times Lacey answered: 0

Number of new experiences in LaceyLand: 2

Number of new experiences that shall never be repeated: 1

Number of new scenes in VHM: 1.5

Number of scenes consisting solely of IM dialogue: 1

Number of new hotties spotted: 1

Number of new hotties coming up with lame excuses to invite Lacey out to lunch: 1

It’s been a good few days.

I just want to take a minute (or a Friday) to thank all the pubished authors who are so generous with their time. It means so much to us unpubbeds that you will write encouraging emails, helpful advice, or in the case of Kalen Hughes, explain some of the background of your stories and how they came to be published despite the odds.

Yeah, it’s a short post, but so, so close to my heart. If I could, I’d share the reasons behind it. Instead, all I can do is suggest that if you’re ever sitting at your desk, ready to toss your laptop out the window, and thinking “but why did so-and-so get to do it?”, just write her an email and ask. You might be surprised what comes back!

Have you ever contacted a published author to ask them why? Why did they get out of the slush pile? Why did they decide to write book two before book three? Why did they choose to show some character trait using the scene in Chapter 5 instead of explaining the hint in Chapter 3? And if so, what happened? If not, why not?

Critiquing is 2 parts helping others, 3 parts helping yourself and 5 parts networking.

I made that up. My blog, my recipies for success. But I think there’s a lot of truth in it. When someone asks me to critique for them, first off, I’m honored. You don’t ask people you think are stupid to crit your stuff. You don’t ask people who are clueless in your genre to crit your stuff. (Ok, actually that’s probably not true. I crit paranormal, for example, and I know nothing about paranormal. Or Victorian, for that matter. But it’s not a logical way to pick critters, so I say do as I say and not as I do.)

So it’s good for the ego. But let’s get past ME. Critting is good for the critter because it helps shed light on plotting or structure problems she as a writer may never notice in her own work. It’s like printing your book out and reading it off paper instead of the screen. You see way more logic errors in others’ work than you see in your own. It makes sense you to the way you wrote it — for other people, not so much.

That’s 2 parts you. Hm. I need one more part.

When you crit for others, you have the opportunity to ask for a reciprocal crit. This is like a reciprocal pimp — a word Darcy reminded me of the other day. Fantastic word. Whoever came up with that is a real clever critter. Hey! No pun intended.

Anyway, it’s true. It doesn’t HAVE to be true. You may already have great cps, like I do. I don’t ask too many people to look at my stuff anymore because I know 10 cooks will have 14 different opinions on what’s wrong with the soup. But it gives you opportunities for the future.

Now I need 2 parts for helping others. Hmm…

1) You help someone out. Hopefully, it’s someone you like. Ok, kidding about that part. But one great thing about romance writers is that we all help each other, even though we’re technically in competition. But like I said above, you get way more out of helping other people than shunning them, so go forth and be helpful!

2) You teach someone something. “Helping” is one person making sure the other person doesn’t have a plot hole they could sink an elephant in. “Teaching” someone is showing them WHY they had a plot problem they could sink an elephant in. Or not. Maybe that person is a much better writer than you. Maybe you’re actually their mediocre read, a middle-of-the-liner on craft, or their reader-read, which we’ll all hopefully get one day. If you love everything about their story, you’re not letting them down. You’re showing them they can write an engaging story even if they DO have plot problems large enough to drown an elephant in. Not all readers are going to make wallbangers out of Big Misunderstandings, for example. But most readers won’t read a book they don’t enjoy. So no matter what you put in your comments, you’re going to teach them something about their writing.

Ok. Five parts networking. Am I CRAZY? Five?  

1. Credibility. Who wouldn’t want Kalen Hughes to go over their costuming once before publication? Keep those zippers and button-downed shirts out of the way. What’s that? No belts? Gah! But seriously, each Maven brings some special talent to the party. That’s why I need all of them. I mean, realistically not everyone will see every logic error. But I know if I want a great hooky first three chapters, I need Janice to take a look at it. She’s like a saint who blesses them as they flip under her nose. Can’t lose, if Janice has critted you. (Note: Janice did NOT look at my Royal Ascot entries. Kicking myself!)
2. Business rapport. How you crit is way more important than what you crit for this one. Now, let’s be honest. A critter who won’t tell you what’s wrong with your work but makes a mental note to never buy or promote you isn’t helping ANYONE. So you don’t want to be a doormat. Don’t let glaring errors pass just because you don’t want to be “mean.” But don’t act like you write Wikipedia, either. You’re not the be-all, end-all source of information. And get this: You might be WRONG. So crit tactfully. It’s not even about not making people cry. It’s about building business relationships and your own reputation.
3. Free Reads/Free Advertising. People read your work. You read other people’s. What’s not to understand?
4. Find out what’s hot. One tip we hear over and over is to read what new authors are publishing. But that’s what was hot last year or maybe even two years ago. What’s hot now, and how can you find out early? Well, if you crit enough (and this includes judging contests), you’ll start to see trends. One example is the prevalance of non-white people in unpublished manuscripts coming into me. Now, I suppose I like to advertise my brand enough that it could be argued people are bringing me manuscripts with non-white characters. But most of these people are writers I’ve known as long as I’ve been here — long before my blog was born. So I think not. Regardless of my situation, the more early work you see the better shot you have at normalizing your data.
5. Is there a five?! What about…chatting with others? Talking about a rockin’ story you read the other day is always a good opener. Blogging about critting can work, too /smile

So how do I crit? Let’s save that for Friday!

Do you like critting? Being critted? What is your take on crit loops, like the yahoogroups?

*UPDATE on Mixing Work and Writing* My mom found a great article on advancing your career. Click here to read it.

I really like these Roman numeral titles. Saves me a lot of effort!

I’ll put the next two topics together to make a nice, long Monday-like post.

Essential Business Skills

1. Communication
2. Flexibility
3. Personal Mastery

Here’s a funny way to handle that coworker who keeps putting you off:

“I heard you were the best person to talk to about my problem, but since you’re too busy maybe you can tell me the second best person to talk to?”

Guaranteed, they’ll make a little time for you!

Quote for keeping out of the “We’ve always done it this way” rut:

“In a beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In an expert’s mind, there are none.” — Zen Master Susuki Roshi

Developing a Personal Action Plan:

1. Ask yourself what you can do to help develop your own essential business skills. Pick an easy one. Go get it.
2. Ask yourself what others can do to help develop your essential business skills. Decide who it is that can help you. Find them and make it worth their time to help you out.
3. Ask yourself what you can do to help others develop their essential business skills. Pick a mentee, or lead a group that helps others. Never forget that teaching is often the best way to learn.

Key quote here: You don’t have to feel guilty because you don’t like everybody. Chances are pretty good there’s a few people who don’t like YOU!

The last workshop was about planning your own workshop to present at the annual conference. This was doubly amusing because I got to listen to the presenters complain about whittling down good 100-word abstracts from huge 50-minute presentations. Can you say query letter?

Indeed, the rest was so standard for you I’m not even going to share it. Suffice to say the key takeaway here was that I need to think up a workshop idea that 3000 women pilots, astronauts, engineers, riveters, accountants, directors — and the list goes on and on — would want to hear from ME. Tiny, insignificant me.

Did I? Not at first. Too daunting. Did you SEE the people who would be in attendance? But late that night I did think up something…Something so good it’s outside my scope and I decided to get help. (I’m not cheating! The presenters highly recommended presenting in teams of 2 or more.) So I cold-emailed someone extremely high above me with a pretty clever title at about 11:30 on a Friday night. We’ll see what she says. Hey, you won’t get anywhere if you don’t ask, right? The worst she can say is no, or that she’s already done that topic before.

Anything useful in here? I hope you found something that will help you out, even if it’s just getting up the nerve to email strangers with crazy workshop ideas. After all, we ALL can present at the RWA Conference. The hard part is deciding when we’re ready to do it. ARE YOU READY?

The panelist part of the conference. In the interests of time and not boring you, I’ll just give you a few good quotes I took down.

• Move around and try different things to find your passion. You can’t be expected to like the first thing you try, and people change. Let yourself change.
• No one gets out [of life] alive.
• It’s ok to work for money instead of personal growth.
• Be more afraid of NOT doing it.
• If you’re at all interested, do it. If it’s not your groove, try something else.
• There’s risk inherent in every decision.
• Never forget that you’re living your dream RIGHT NOW (this one was mine)
• When you do things that are so incredibly challenging you look back and say wow, I don’t know how I did that, it’s because while you were doing it, you were just doing it — you got up every morning and DID IT, because if you didn’t, if you stopped to think about the challenge in what you were doing, you’d have driven yourself off a cliff one night on the way home from work.
• Don’t pass up a nugget of opportunity. It all chains up to make a career.

(I forgive the mixed-metaphor here because she has a great point!)

Turns out this will be more than a three-day series. I still have some good stuff for Monday! Any good quotes you’ve heard lately? Brilliant off-the-cuff remarks someone should write down and put in one of those little inspirational books? Please share!

Some myths about customers and competition:

Build (write) a quality product and they will come. Quality does not equal giving your customer what she wants. Good writing does NOT equal good plot, intense emotions, a character arc that is universally recognizable, or a satisfying ending. On top of that, writing a fabulous book that never sees the light of day isn’t going to help you become Miss Bestselling Author, and getting the darn thing into print doesn’t equal getting it into the customer’s hands. You have to go beyond creating a quality product and build an entire infrastructure to support it: satisfy market needs, advertise it, follow-through with the sales, and then use feedback to make improvements on the next go-round. Rinse and repeat.

Customers want the lowest price. You may think at first glance this has nothing to do with us. Not so! All publishers price the book at the highest amount they think they can sell it. Read: the highest price they think they can sell YOU.

Anna Campbell, for example, was released one bump above Newbie Author. Why? Because her product was predicted to deliver great value. Sure, we’d never heard of her before, but once the buzz got out we all scrambled to read her. Did you notice her dissenters couldn’t write their negative reviews without the caveat that Anna Campbell is a terrific writer, even if a bit twisted in the head? It’s true. Many of those who didn’t care for her plot still said they’ll buy her next book (Untouched–there’s some irony for you) because she’s just that good. Great value. (She also used another tool, which is the buzz itself, of course. But that’s something else entirely.)

And then we have epublishers. How many people are biased against epublishers? Aren’t their books usually cheaper? Easier to transport? But the quality is often perceived as being lower, and so the value isn’t considered to be as high. We’d rather wait until next year and spend $7.99 for Julia Quinn’s latest romp than grab the latest ebook by You’ve Never Heard of Her for $2.99.

Customers are always right. This one reminds me, first of all, of authors who get on Amazon and argue with reviewers who say things like “This contrived plot element would never happen in 1812,” though the author read through 16,000 court cases to be SURE she got her stuff right. Or the reviewers who point out that the word “macaroni” wasn’t used in 1786 the same way Elizabeth Hoyt chose to use it in her Georgian novel. Or how Kalen Hughes recently admitted she missed a title problem in Lord Sin because she got distracted by a copy edit.

And then there must be the equally strong temptation to argue with those who say there wasn’t enough conflict in the book or the h/h goals weren’t clear. And God help those who get caught in intellectual rights battles — Knocked Up, anyone? Or how about Bob Mayer and LOST? (More on this subject — WARNING! SPOILER ALERT!)

The customer may not be always right. But we have to treat them as if they are, recognize they can be wrong, and then work to bridge the gap in the future. Clarity comes to mind. Remember that Enchant means “to attract and delight; entrance.” You can’t do that if you’re pointing out all the ways they’re stupid morons.

No complaints = Good customer service. In this business in this day and age, it seems unlikely you won’t get a complaint about your novel. You will do SOMETHING someone disagrees with and they will get on Amazon and tell everyone else, even if they don’t directly email you. Which is actually the point of this myth. Even if the reader doesn’t email YOU, they will post it for EVERYONE. The stat they gave is that 96% of dissatisfied customers won’t complain to you, but they will tell at least 8-10 people. With the internet and blogs, that number can easily skyrocket to hundreds.

Satisfied customers = Return customers. Ah, the Second Book Test. According to the statistics given, 1 out of 3 satisfied customers don’t come back. Why? Because you haven’t hooked them yet. You don’t get cookies for giving them what they paid for. But you get entire cakes for going above and beyond.

Resolved problems = Happy customers. At first glance, this myth might appear outside of our scope as writers — you can’t very well change your book to solve their problem after it’s already been printed. But wait a minute! Who are our customers? Just the readers? Or are they the copy editors, agents, editors and marketers who help make our Word document into a book?

Let’s say you’re a real pill. Obviously, your customers aren’t going to be thrilled to work with you. But let’s say you’re not a pill, you’re just an Average Jill. The copy editor makes a change and you STET it. They come back and say hey, lady, you’re making a big mistake. The hero can’t take down his zipper in 1813. You decide your hero is an Inventor a la Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bear and your hero most certainly DOES have a zipper. It’s part of his character and his invention of the zipper is a huge subplot in your story.

Obviously, you’ve got a disagreement to work out. Just remember it’s not solving the problem that makes the difference: it’s the WAY you solve the problem. Your attitude while you’re solving the problem. Leave the huffs and rants offline, and save ‘em for your husband or dog.

So why put all this time into enchanting your customers? Because loyal customers:

• Buy more and pay more
• Refer others, saving you marketing dollars and effort
• Forgive when you make mistakes
• Are strong advocates of your brand and try your new products more willingly
• Can offer improvement suggestions

Most sources agree it costs far more to get new customers than to retain the ones you have.

How do you create loyal customers?

• Start with a vision for yourself/brand
• Understand your customers’ wants and needs
• Communicate the heart and soul of your brand clearly

And finally, here’s an exercise you can do to help improve your product:

• Choose a process or service you’d like to improve. This might be your blog posts, your website, a craft topic like emotion or dialogue, etc.
• Identify the emotion you want your customer to feel when they read your stuff (whether it’s your website/blog content, feel or look, or your book)
• Determine another company or person/author who gives you that emotion when you read THEIR stuff
• Then figure out how they do it
• Adapt their strength to yours — build on it. Master it. Just avoid European claims of monopoly!

Does any of this ring true to your career as a writer? As I said in Monday’s blog, while I was listening to the workshop I was struck over and over again how alike a product- or service-oriented company we are as writers. I absolutely realized that by not applying the strengths I’m developing for my writing career back to my professional one I’m climbing the ladder half as quickly.

Besides, 3000 women can’t be ignored as a potential marketing avenue! That’s one ENORMOUS target.

Key takeaway: THINK LIKE THE BUYER, NOT THE SUPPLIER!

I don’t know if you realize what an Organiziation Whore I am. There’s just something about belonging to part of a group that I really enjoy. I’m wired that way. Knowing that, it should come as no surprise that when I sat in on a mini-conference hosted by Women in Aviation International I absolutely bought-in to the membership they were pitching.

The truth is, I’ve recently realized that I need to get involved in my local IIE chapter and maybe SWE group (Institute of Industrial Engineers and Society of Women Engineers, respectively) because organizations help me find and channel my passion, and I really need to develop the same sort of excitement for my career as I have for my writing. I mean, let’s be perfectly logical here. I’m not likely to start raking in the big bucks with my writing anytime soon and I have a pretty kickin’ job as it is. Might as well climb that ladder!

What does all of this have to do with you? Well, maybe nothing. But I enjoy sharing the career advice I hear and I also need a new blog topic for the week, so…Ok, don’t leave yet. There’s a ton of great career advice I jotted down from the workshops that you can absolutely apply to your writing career (as well as your day job, should you have one).

Here are the basic similiarities between WAI and RWA: Women in Aviation International (WAI) has an annual conference with over 3200 attendees — bigger than our own National conference at around 2000. There’s a state chapter and local chapters within my company. Networking is considered to be the core of the organization. Women from all walks of life share all sorts of knowledge via workshops presented either at the conferences or chapter meetings. WAI likes to have chic, women-oriented graphics in their presentations.

Ok, drawing at straws with the last one.

Over the last week, I’ve been listening to the National Conference lectures (the RWA ones) on my iPod. This really prepped me for the mini-conference because I’d just recently heard career advice aimed at writers that turned out to be not that different than the career stuff aimed at the aviation segment of the population.

Another note I see jotted down here in my book: I’m easily motivated. I actually wrote that down so I’d remember to share it with you. I need very little above hearing someone give a speech and I’m totally there cheering for them and for me. Again, this is important because I want to channel that sort of passion into my professional career as well as my writing one. Apparently, I can get jazzed up about pilots just as much as NYT bestselling authors.

Another factoid: of the 200 women in the room, I knew 2. How is that possible, when everyone at my company got the same email from WAI? Well, I have a feeling most if not all of the women I work with didn’t even ask if they could come. I admit, when I asked my boss if I could skip a day of work to go do this I thought he’d say no. But I asked anyway. And obviously, he said yes (which I really, really appreciate because this was fabulous!). So I think right there we have a trigger for some of the problems women face when growing their own success. They don’t ask.

But you knew that already.

So you also won’t be surprised to know at least half the women in the audience were about my age. Well, obviously half the women in Puget Sound aren’t my age. There was a disproportionate representation of my generation. I think this goes back to women traditionally not asking, and maybe women thinking they’re too old to start something new like networking. More on that later.

Ok. So this will be a three-part blog. There were four workshops that day and I’m going to summarize the key points in the order I took notes (mostly because I’m really hoping to write a scene or two in my book and it will be easier to transcribe than to reorganize them into topics). To tell you the truth, though, I should organize them into topics. Oh well for you.

Workshop 1: Holding Effective Meetings by Madonna and Nirvana (seriously)

Unlike what the title suggests, this workshop wasn’t actually about effective meetings but about freeing the mind from the usual we-must-patch-this-problem-now attitude and letting loose a little creativity to solve the root cause. Warm ups, so to speak, which are also called ice breakers (and maybe a lot of other things depending on who’s doing them).

Here I won a bracelet for being one of four women who, in under a minute, thought up 12 ways to use a clothespin. 12 was the maximum in the room even though you’d think it would be pretty easy to come up with 20. Oh well — it was early.

Then we played a game where everyone was handed a balloon. We had to blow up the balloon, tie it off, and then write a question on it. When everyone’s balloons were ready we tossed them up in the air and had a batting contest for 2 minutes. The vigorous activity really helped! At the end, everyone found a balloon and then answered the question within their group. The MCs asked for unusual question/answer combos so we could hear a few funny ones.

The reason I’m sharing these is because it really shows you that any large conference of women is going to have a similar tone, I think. It’s as if a lack of men suddenly puts everyone in the same mindset. Now tell me this doesn’t sound like some stuff you’d hear at your local RWA meeting!

“What is your favorite place to kiss?”

Totally inappropriate work question! What did the woman answer?

“My boss’s butt.”

Another inappropriate question: “Where are all the single, middle-aged men?”

Answer: “The Quality Change Board seems to have a bunch!” (Ok, maybe this is only funny to me…)

A good mood-setting one: “Your most embarrassing moment?”

Answer: “My first Weight Watchers weigh in.” MC: “And how many pounds ago was that?” Answer: “40.”

Nice! Who isn’t pumped up to set goals after an answer like that?

Then we were shown what they called Kinetic Listening Devices. Uh, does this sound familiar to anyone else? Yes, I asked you for other Daydream Jamming Devices besides the iPod — WHO KNEW those were real things?

They gave us small jars of Play Doh, plastic lizards, stickers, pipe cleaners, the balloons — and suggested anything else we could hand out so our attendees can touch and play silently while the boring stuff is going on.

Wow, Chris, I’m starting to think I really should write that book.

Lastly, we did a small exercise to demonstrate how change feels. You try it: Stand up and cross your arms. Then drop your arms and recross them in the other direction. Feel weird? Then drop your arms and shake them out and cross them again in the second position — the one that doesn’t feel natural to you. Still feel a little weird but not as much as the first time? This is how change is. Change gets comfortable as you acclimate to the new process.

Ok, so that was our warm-up workshop. Take some of those ice breakers back to your RWA meeting or Sunday School, and tune in Wednesday for “Enchanting Customers.” You’ll like that one!

Any other good ice breaker games you know of? How do you feel about organizations? Love ‘em? Leave ‘em? Do you think most women will act basically the same regardless of the type of conference/activity?

This blog was originally born last week after a certain Exciting Event occured. And yes, this is related to my super news I hinted at and promised to tell you. (This post is all out of order, but hopefully you’ve already had — or are having — your AM coffee.) See, a published author recently commented that one of my books sounded particularly interesting to her. Without pausing to think about what could possibly go wrong with my idea, I immediately found her email address and wrote her an email thanking her for her kind words, then suggested/asked/requested/begged that if she truly found my story concept so intriguing she might consider forwarding it on to someone who could help me get it into publication, thereby affording her the opportunity to read it as soon as possible.

After reading the email over just a few thousand times, I hit Send. And then I wrote the MMs and gave them the gist of what I did.

Erica thought it was exactly what should have happened. She would have done the same thing in that situation (in fact, she said I had stolen her MO). In fact, she just sent in a partial based on that exact same series of events!

Darcy thought it was cool. I suspect she’ll jump on that opportunity as soon as she can — but then, the topic of this post is how she will go about *creating* those opportunities!–and that’s even cooler.

Jacqueline wondered if it was kosher. Appropriate. Inappropriate. Rude?

Well, she has a point. It can be rude. Certainly, if you’re not thinking clearly, it probably will be rude (I’ve poorly executed this in the past myself…but I also had a positive result from that embarrassing encounter, so I only learned from the experience and didn’t start panicking and decide never to do it again). And if you go to National intent on not doing this sort of thing, you’ll probably come home without any requests at all (unless you have an agent appointment, and even then, asking if you can send them your stuff will go a long way to getting a request, as we’re all trained to know).

So after plenty of time to worry about what I did, what do I think? I believe so long as you give the author plenty of space to politely decline, you’re ok.

See, that’s my big thing with this subject: you can only do the best you can and hope for a positive outcome. As long as you don’t back her into a corner or publicly embarrass her, the author has all sorts of outs. She can introduce you as a personal friend or acquaintance and vouch for your winning personality (a factor of the successful relationship with your publisher depends on your willingness to work with them as a professional, right?). She can request or otherwise become acquainted with your manuscript and then, after reading it, vouch for your writing and/or story; she can tell you your story doesn’t sound like something her agent/editor acquires; she can tell you she’s not comfortable with this idea; she can tell you no.

She can tell you anything she wants, really. It’s entirely up to her.

But most likely, she’s not going to yell at you. She won’t snap at you and call you a Horrible Person. (All of this is built on the assumption that you and the author have some sort of pre-existing relationship — I don’t care if it’s dependent on a single internet interaction, so long as you’re not cold-calling.) But regardless of how you know her, the most important thing is that she’s not going to tell you yes if you don’t.ask.

I told a friend at work what I’d done. Then we talked about the MM discussion that followed. After hearing the gist, my friend pulled a book out of her purse called Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation (and Positive Strategies for Change) and gave me a huge smile.

Ok, so that’s my setup. That’s what prompted me to promise this post today. Then I went to the Rose City Readers’ Luncheon to see Sherrilyn Kenyon and everything changed! Yep, this weekend I took the train to Portland and met up with Darcy (yes, THE Darcy) for the weekend. She was such a rockstar! She snagged the seat next to Sherry at the board dinner Friday night (I couldn’t drag myself out of Powell’s — that story will be Wednesday’s post). The dinner is its own story: when we got to the restaurant, only our two seats were left open. Darcy sized up the situation, walked to the back of the room and bam! got the seat next to Sherry. (I took the last seat beside some hi-larious board members, and thought, damn, Darcy did good!) (more…)

Yes, I’m in Vegas. No, I couldn’t give up my blogging addiction long enough to skip a post. I figure I managed over Christmas Chaos, so why start missing posts now?

Actually, it’s more like my WordPress site will hold posts created in advance. But that takes some of the magic out of it, so let’s pretend I just wrote this at 8am this morning, as I tend to do

An easy one today: mix up my blog for a change. Please post a blog you like to visit that ISN’T linked on my sidebar. No other rules apply–it doesn’t have to be writing-related or PG or anything like that. Got it? Go! Let’s find some new friends!

I got hit by a meme the other day. I thought I’d answer it but then I thought, no, wait a minute. I’d rather ask you, the loyal reader, to answer a few questions for me. So here goes!

1) Why did you decide to write romance novels?

My answer: I was a faithful fan of the genre for about 10 years and it never, not once, occurred to me to write my own novel. As some of you know, those ten years encompassed high school and college. It wasn’t until I got my first Real Job that I realized hey, the sun isn’t so shiny over here in Paid Land. Paid Land kind of sucks for artistic expression. Well, at least my job did. So because I had a lot of free time on my hands (read: a LOT) and nothing to do during that time (read: employers have this thing against reading on the clock), I decided it was up to my imagination to entertain me. Which was when I decided to see if I could even come up with a plot, let alone write a novel. Maybe it’s because I had a lot of time or maybe it’s because I was a newbie–completely inexperienced at this sort of thing–my plot ended up totally sucking. The important thing is I started writing, and once I started I found it was like crack. I HAD to do it. But you already knew that. Now you know why I tried in the first place.

2) Do you believe in Happily Ever After?

My answer: I believe in Happy, and I believe in After. Ever…that’s a tough one for me to swallow. But I’m still young.

3) Who/what inspires you?

My answer: My brothers. I don’t know why, but both of my brothers have this knack for keeping friends. They both have had the same sets of friends since high school, so about 8-10 years. Try and find just one person I knew back in high school who I still talk to on a regular basis and you’ll hit a dead end pretty quickly. Like my heroines, I seem to have trouble putting down roots. Maybe my new condo will help!

4) What is it about blogs, anyway?

My answer: It’s not just seeing into other people’s lives–that’s part of it, yes, but I prefer blogs that stay mostly on-topic i.e. writing romance novels. I think it’s the comfort of knowing there are others out there trying, failing, and succeeding just like I am.

There you go. Answer those 4 questions for me and I’ll put you in a drawing to win some coverflats. How about Loretta Chase’s [new Avon!] Not Quite A Lady and Samatha James’s The Secret Passion of Simon Blackwell, hm? Both come complete with a stepback! Classy.