Forbidden Territory

My first book, FORBIDDEN TERRITORY, is very hard to find new online, and y'all know how I feel about buying new if you can.

Powell's Books has one available. First come, first served!

What is Patience Smith Really Like?

The lovely folks at Pink Fuzzy Slippers Writers give you a chance to find out with their interview with the Silhouette Romantic Suspense senior editor.

I love my editor and writing for Intrigue, but this interview really tempts me to pitch a few things Patience's way, just so I could work with her.

There. Are. No. Words.

The Top Five Awful Disney Crossover Toys.

I'm an unapologetic capitalist, but...dude.

If you were stranded on a deserted island...

(Crossposted from the Intrigue Authors blog and the eHarlequin Intrigue Authors Blog)

We're doing our spring cleaning at home a little late in the season, in order to turn a basement den into a small apartment for my sister. Unfortunately for me, the basement den is where I've stored about half my books, so now I have to find room for them upstairs. Except, if there were room upstairs for the books, they'd have already been up here. So you know what that means: it's time to cull.

Culling out books is hard for me. I'm a collector by nature, and many of these books I've had since childhood. But as I go through the books, I'm finding that many books that once meant a lot to me I can now get rid of without much pain.

Writing books have been some of the more obvious casualties, now that I'm published and know more about what it takes to be a writer. The books that were once so valuable to me for their information and support are now headed to charity or the local library in hopes that they educate and inspire other aspiring writers still reaching for the brass ring of publication. Also gone are the piles of romances and other novels I bought over the years as I tried to find my niche as a writer. Not all of them, of course; the ones that spoke to me, that helped me find my genre and my voice, stay on my shelves in an honored place.

I have books I bought as reference material for a specific novel that I'm now getting rid of because the novel is written, or the reference book turned out to be useless. I have books that I'm getting rid of because they're literally falling apart at the seams or they duplicate, in some way, other books I have. (I have a large Shakespeare compendium I bought in college that's in wonderful shape; what's the point in holding onto those little paperback versions of specific plays?)

The classics stay, even if I didn't enjoy them, because I have nieces in grammar school who aren't too far from needing those books for their studies. I have books that I seldom read but keep for sentimental reasons, like the books written by a writer friend who passed away tragically early from cancer. I kept my college textbooks forever, but I'm finally letting some of them go--Algebra, Trigonometry--while I hold onto others--Zoology, Spanish, all my English textbooks--because I think they might be useful to me yet. Who knows when I might write about a hunky biologist and a sassy English professor who end up on the run in South America? (...jotting that idea down in the idea file...)

I've often played along with the old game, "If you were stranded on a deserted island, what's the one book you'd want to have with you?" It's fun to speculate. It's not so much fun, however, to have to reduce your book collection by nearly half. I can attest to that personally.

However, I do think I could probably come up with a list of five books I'd have to have with me: The Bible, Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE, THE STAND by Stephen King and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. (But I sure would miss ROBERT FROST'S POEMS, PERSUASION, JANE EYRE, the Harry Potter books and THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN).

So, what about you? If you had to trim your book collection drastically, what would go? What would stay? Or is this a subject too horrifying to contemplate?

Introducing...Cooper Justice

Coming from Harlequin Intrigue in 2010:

COOPER JUSTICE

The Coopers of Chickasaw County, Alabama believe in truth, justice and family. They also want to believe that love can last forever—but danger has a way of finding each of them at the worst possible moment...

CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING
January 2010

On the trail of the killer who murdered his wife, Wyoming cop Riley Patterson finally has the break in the case he's been waiting for—a real, live survivor. But while pretty tourist Hannah Cooper can't remember anything about her attacker, he remembers her. After a second attempt on Hannah's life, Rileyoffers himself as her personal bodyguard. But will his growing attraction to Hannah put his case in jeopardy, especially if his best chance to catch a killer puts Hannah directly in the crosshairs?

CHICKASAW COUNTY CAPTIVE
February 2010

Someone is targeting Jefferson County Assistant District Attorney Sam Cooper— and using his family to do it. After an attempted kidnapping leaves Sam's four-year-old daughter Maddy traumatized and his teenaged niece in a coma, Sam knows he needs help protecting his family and finding out who's behind the attack. But is a young, female police detective with a notoriously tragic past really the person for the job?

Literary Nightmare

Last night, I dreamed that my editor wanted me to write a short book (67 pages) with another author's hero (but Intrigue had the right to use the character). The hero's name was Dominic, and he'd appeared in two books by a now-deceased author. (Helpfully, she'd sent me the two books by that author in which Dominic had appeared). It seemed that Dominic was a time-traveling immortal who, at one point in his time-traveling history, had raped a woman. Oh, and in the first two books, he'd had a torrid affair with the same woman, so readers might expect him to end up with her or something.

You might think that part of the dream was the strangest. But no, for my editor showed up in person to discuss it with me, and turned out to be not a female, as I thought, but Adrian Paul dressed in a very natty suit. Which, I admit, might normally be seen as the best part of the dream, except in my dream, he was clearly batting for the other team.

(Only I would have a dream about Adrian Paul in which he was gay. Sigh).

Then I woke up.

Bigger Books

Having just turned in the second book of a two-book contract, I'm now contemplating what to do next. I do have two more book proposals under consideration with my editor, and I'm planning to write three more books in the Cooper Justice series so all the brothers have their own books. But given the rate I'm writing these days, I could easily be finished with all of the Cooper books by early 2010, even though the books themselves will be spread over 2010 and into 2011.

What that probably means is that I'll have time to contemplate a bigger book if I want to write one.

There are definite benefits to writing a bigger book. I'm not as limited by subject matter, type of hero/heroine, language, etc. as I am writing for category in general and Intrigue specifically. I can delve deeper into the areas of the story that aren't directly related to either the mystery plot or the romance, allowing me to explore other relationships for the hero and heroine--family, friends, etc.--as well as delve a little more into their own personal histories and issues. That's also quite tempting to me, as I sometimes have to leave things out of Intrigues that I might have liked to include in order to flesh out my characters a little more.

Plus, whether it's fair or not, single title authors get a little more respect from readers as a whole than category writers do, despite the fact that I believe some of the best writing happening today is happening in category, especially Intrigue--Dana Marton is hands down one of the best writers I know, and all the Intrigue authors out there flat out know how to tell a great story. I feel completely humbled to be included among them and it's a challenge to live up to their examples. The money for a single title author is hit and miss--but when it's a hit, it can be very good money. Who wouldn't want to be Norah, Jayne Ann, Suzanne or Susan Elizabeth?

On the other hand, there are also drawbacks to consider. First, I'd have to interest a whole new editor. And I'd almost certainly have to get an agent. I'm not sure how I feel about having yet another person to please, on top of a new editor, just to write a longer book. Pleasing the editor I have is hard enough! Also, there's a certain security in writing for Intrigue--you know there are going to be six monthly slots to fill, and if you're an established writer and you write a good book, you have a more than decent shot of landing in one of those slots. But becoming a debut single title author? It's like starting all over again.

I know several Intrigue authors who've either made the jump to single title or write single titles and category novels simultaneously. I know others who happily and successfully write only category books. I love writing category, and it's not a stretch to imagine myself writing Intrigues for the rest of my career.

So I guess I'll keep pondering this question until the Cooper Justice books are done, and then maybe I'll have an answer.

Deadlines...and World Building

I've just printed out and packaged not only the second book of my current contract (thus completing my obligation to my publisher) but I also printed and packaged the proposal (three chapters and a synopsis) for another book that my editor wants to pitch to the senior editor as the second of another two-book contract. So wish me luck!

I'm in a position where I don't want to continue forward with those two books without having agreed to a contract (when you start selling, you soon learn that you shouldn't waste too much time writing something that's not earning you money). So I'm thinking ahead to even proposals. The two contracted books are the first two books of a new series, Cooper Justice. The two proposals I just finished are also Cooper books, and the next three will be as well, to finish it out. So it's probably a good idea to get those last three proposals worked up to pitch a three-book contract next time so I'll know what I'll be doing with my next couple of years as a writer. ;)
After that, however, I haven't really decided what the next group of books will be about. I've created several fictional places within my story world that I can work with, however. And who knows? Before the Cooper Justice series, I may create even more.

Fantasy and Science Fiction authors are the ones best known for world-building, but a lot of writers build their own fictional worlds to play in. For me, I needed to create places where I had control of the terrain, the political structures, the histories and the current affairs of the places involved so that they would meet the needs of my particular stories. But once those places exist in my story world, I've enjoyed using them to give depth to my other stories.

In my book FORBIDDEN TERRITORY, I created the Alabama city of Borland, Alabama. Though I haven't revisited Borland, outside of mentions in the two books that completed the Forbidden trilogy, It's a place I can certainly go back to now if I want to. In the third Forbidden book, FORBIDDEN TOUCH, I introduced the Caribbean island of Mariposa, a tourist mecca with a seedy side, and the Central Asian republic of Kaziristan, a former Soviet satellite with a history of tribal unrest, Islamist terrorism and constant political volatility.

In COWBOY ALIBI, I created Trinity, Idaho and Canyon Creek, Wyoming. I revisit Canyon Creek in my January 2010 book, CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING. I may go back to Canyon Creek before all is said and done. Who knows?

In my upcoming February release, which is currently without a title but will probably be called CHICKASAW COUNTY...something, I introduce Sanselmo, a South American nation on the Caribbean coast that combines the oil resources and volatile political history of Venezuela with the terrorist threat of Columbia. A nascent democracy with a history of both right wing dictatorships and Marxist juntas that have nearly destroyed the country over the past fifty years, Sanselmo's elected government is in a deadly power struggle with a leftist rebel group called El Cambio, which once espoused democratic ideals when it was trying to overturn a brutal dictatorship but now has shown its own totalitarian instincts by opposing honest statesmen trying to build their country into a true liberal democracy. I also revisit Kaziristan as part of Sam Cooper's backstory.

Kaziristan also has a role in the backstory of former Marine officer Luke Cooper, the hero of the recently proposed third book in the Cooper Justice series. And Sanselmo and Kaziristan feature prominently in the proposed fourth book (and the island of Mariposa gets a mention as well).

Here are some things I've discovered about world building in contemporary, earth-bound fiction such as romantic suspense:

1) It's easier to create fictional countries in areas where national borders are constantly in flux.
Thus, Kaziristan is in the Central Asia, where many countries were part of the Soviet Union as recently as the 1980s, and where borders are constantly in dispute (see also Kashmir).

2) It's easier to create fictional countries in areas that are not immediately familiar to most readers.
Can you really be sure there's not an island in the Caribbean named Mariposa?

3) If you're going to create a nation in a more familiar areas, make it plausible.
I couldn't have made Sanselmo an oil-producing nation on the Caribbean coast of South America if a country like that (Venezuela) didn't exist already. And I couldn't have created a quasi-Marxist rebel group like El Cambio if terrorist groups like FARC (Columbia) and Shining Path (the Maoist rebel group in Peru) didn't make such a thing plausible for that part of the globe.

4) A corollary to #3: If you're going to create a city or town in a state that people have visited, make it plausible.
Trinity, Idaho is plausible, because I based it largely on a real town, Stanley, Idaho. I used real landmarks like the Sawtooth Mountains and Boise to ground it more in reality. Canyon Creek doesn't exist, either, but I placed it in the ranch country just east of Jackson Hole, where similar towns do exist. Likewise, Gossamer Ridge, Alabama, the setting of my February 2010 book, may be fictional, but it takes on characteristics of two towns in northeast Alabama that do exist: Guntersville, Alabama (which is the inspiration for Gossamer Lake) and Ft. Payne, Alabama (which supplies a lot of the geographical features for Gossamer Ridge, including its beautiful mountainous terrain. As I did with both Trinity and Canyon Creek, I grounded Gossamer Ridge in real places like Birmingham (where Sam Cooper commutes to work and parts of the story take place).

So, how about you? If you're a writer, how have you handled world-building? And if you're a reader, which fictional worlds (and their writer/creators) have had the most impact on you?

Squeeeeee!

Chuck has been renewed!

I can live with the budget cuts, if they can.

Folks, if you've never given Chuck a try, please do it this coming season. The show is funny, touching, romantic and exciting—a smorgasbord of 1-hour dramedy delight.

Garden Adventures: May 2009

Today on Garden Adventures, watch Paula work on a container garden for her back deck. Pretty pretty tomatoes and peppers. Look at the lovely herbs (cilantro, basil, chives and parsley). See Paula plant the flowers—marigolds, salvia, impatiens, begonias. Oh, look, lizards sunning themselves and playing courtship games...

Hey, wait a minute, is that a black widow spider in that pot?

Why, yes. Yes, it is.

For a little while, I thought I was jumping to conclusions. Yeah, big round black abdomen, and yeah, when she moved around you could see a flash of something red on her belly. But really, a black widow spider in my container garden? Come on.

But then she flipped over and there was the red marking on the underside of her abdomen, just like this. And she also had a big round egg sac just like the one in that photo.

Normally, I'm a live and let live kind of person. She was outside in her own habitat. But she was also laying eggs and making more black widows. And we have kids and animals here. Plus adults trying to have a nice little container garden who don't need to stick their hands into a pot of dirt and come back with a possibly fatal bite.

I hated to do it, but the spider is no more. And neither is her egg sac.

I just hope she was a loner.

Top 10 Bits of Trivia about COWBOY ALIBI

While I'm waiting for my new books to come out in 2010, I suppose it doesn't hurt to talk about my last book, COWBOY ALIBI. So here's my Top 10 Bits of Trivia about my September 2008 Intrigue:

10. It's the first of my books that takes place entirely outside the state of Alabama. (The epilogue of FORBIDDEN TOUCH took place in Alabama, though the story was set in the Caribbean).

9. It's the first of my books with a cowboy hero.

8. The town of Trinity, Idaho, is loosely based on the small town of Stanley, Idaho, located near the Sawtooth Mountains.

7. While the hero, Joe, turns out to be a whiz at Blackjack, I'm not a gambler and I had to do a little research to find out how a good Blackjack player might react to the hands Joe was dealt.

6. I'm endlessly fascinated by con artists and how they work, so it was fun to incorporate a con artist into the heroine's background.

5. I deliberately wrote a rain scene into the book, despite the notoriously arid climate of the Idaho/Wyoming area, in order to keep my streak of rain covers going.

4. The original working title of the book was TARGET: JANE DOE.

3. I didn't know that Joe's best friend, Riley, was going to be a widower whose wife had been murdered until I actually got to the scene near the end where Joe and Jane meet up with him. His backstory just popped into my head as I was writing the scene. I went back and worked his backstory into previous chapters before I turned the manuscript in.

2. The horse Jazz is actually named after my friend and critique partner, Jenn, whose nickname in college was Jazzy Jenn (because of her affinity for hip hop music).

1. COWBOY ALIBI is still available for purchase at Amazon.com. If you haven't purchased a copy, I hope you'll consider it, especially if you're planning to read my January 2010 book, CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING, which takes us back to Wyoming to give Riley Patterson his own happy ending. You can read CASE FILE: CANYON CREEK, WYOMING without reading COWBOY ALIBI, but it's a lot more fun if you know how Jane and Joe got to where they are by the time Riley's story rolls around.

Congratulations to my Southern Magic Sisters!

The Daphne du Maurier contest for unpublished writers has announced their finalists in the Daphne, and three of my Southern Magic chaptermates made the finals! Congratulations to Marie Campbell, whose category-length romantic suspense, AGAINST HER WILL, made the finals in the Series Mystery/Suspense category and Pamela Bolton-Holifield and Julie Johnstone, who made the Historical Mystery/Suspense finals with their books THE DECEIT OF DESIRE and DECODING DECEPTION, respectively.

Way to go, ladies! Best of luck to all of you.

Blast from the Past

While looking for a picture I'd posted to my blog about three years ago, I ran across two blog posts that amused me greatly, if for no other reason than their proximity to each other.

August 2, 2005

August 3, 2005

Just goes to show you, a door closing doesn't mean another won't open.

Bohemian Electronica

Stuff like this amuses me.

Check Out My Food Blog

I mentioned a while back that I had started Weight Watchers. At the time I posted about it, I'd lost 16 pounds. Since then, I've lost another 24 pounds, for a total of 40 pounds. I'm still going strong, still really enjoying the program and still feeling confident of reaching my goal, despite how desperately far I have to go.

Anyway, I promised I wasn't going to turn this blog into a food blog, but I have started a separate food blog, if you're interested. It's mostly going to be about the food, more than about my personal food issues, and I'm going to try to share my favorite low-cal foods, how I incorporate "no-nos" like chocolate and potato chips into my food plan, and a few delicious recipes I come up with that work out well enough for me to want to share.

If you love food but want to eat healthier, too, you should check it out: The Kitchen Curse.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Sometimes, a girl's just gotta blog about the things that make her happy. So, in no particular order, here are a few of my favorite things:

Chapstick Medicated Lip Balm

My lips tend to dry out and chap, especially since I sleep with a fan on most nights, so I couldn't do without lip balm. But I also have very sensitive skin, so when I find a product that works and manages not to irritate my skin at the same time, I become a very loyal consumer. For me, that product is Chapstick Medicated Lip Balm. It works as well as some of the tub balms like Carmex and Blistex, but the stick is so much more convenient to carry around than those little tubs.

Sephora Apple-Pomegranate Body Butter

Sure, it's a little on the pricey side, but the jar is large and a little body butter goes a long way. I have dry skin issues, and for a while my skin felt like old leather. But now, I just smooth on the Sephora body butter after I bathe and my skin stays as soft as a child's. The Apple-Pomegranate fragrance is my favorite—its crisp, clean scent is like aromatherapy when you apply it, and it lingers very subtly on your skin for most of the day.

Pringles Light Sour Cream and Onion Potato Crisps

Yeah, they contain Olestra. But Olestra doesn't bother me, and the reduction in fat and calories make this a mostly guilt free snack for me now that I'm on the Weight Watchers Momentum plan.

Hershey's Kisses

Yes, I eat chocolate on Weight Watchers. I'm trying to teach myself moderation, and that includes enjoying foods I have always enjoyed in a more sensible way. I add them to my food plan in small portions, at calorie counts I can live with. I don't "diet." I eat sensibly.

Kashi's Southwest Style Chicken

The first Kashi product I tried was one of their cereals. Hated it. It tasted like cardboard. I didn't try any Kashi products for a long time after that. But recently, I tried their southwest Style Chicken dinner, and it changed my view of Kashi forever. The dish is delicious, very filling and relatively low in calories and fat. It's a fast, easy and satisfying addition to my weekly diet. It also goes great with...

Guacamole and Baked Whole Wheat Tortilla Chips

Forget worrying about the fat in guacamole. Avocados are a very fatty fruit, true, but it's good fat, and in moderation, homemade guacamole is a nice addition to your diet. I make my own chips by slicing whole wheat tortillas into wedges and baking them until crisp in a 350 degree oven.

Want my super easy recipe? Here you go:

1 ripe avocado
2 green onions, diced
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons lime juice
1/4 cup diced tomatoes

Halve the avocado, remove the pit and scoop the green flesh from the rind. Mash the avocado until it's smooth (or leave it a little chunky if you like it that way). Add the diced onions, chopped cilantro, diced tomatoes and lime juice. Blend it all together until thoroughly mixed. Makes two servings. (If you're counting Weight Watchers points, 1 serving is 3 points).

So those are some of my favorite things. What are some of yours?

Titles, titles, titles

I've blogged about book titles over on the Intrigue Authors blog. Gimme a little comment love!

So I dreamed I was on Lost Island

Sawyer had pulled a coup and driven both the DI and the Hostiles off the island, and now we were all going to create our own democracy (with him as our elected leader)...and we were doling out jobs, and I just knew he was going to make Kate his right hand woman, but dude, he picked me!

And then I woke up, darn it.

Staying Relevant

I was bummed when I realized I wouldn't have a book coming out in 2009. I think 2010 is going to be a great year, because I already know I have two books coming out, and I'm about to pitch a third book to my editor which almost certainly would come out in 2010 as well. Plus I have two more in the wings, one that's nearly finished, so there's even a possibility of a four-book year for me.

But that doesn't really help me in 2009, does it?

So I've been giving a lot of thought to the idea of staying relevant even when you don't have a book on the shelves. How do you do it? How do you keep people thinking about you when you're not front and center?

I'm not a social person, as anyone on my list of Facebook friends can tell you. I'm not big about just sharing anything on my mind. Part of the problem is that the two things I feel most passionately about, religion and politics, are the two things I steer clear of in my public life, for the most part. Another part of the problem is that I'm a classic INTJ, which means I'm not big on small talk, among other things. I prefer to spend my time actually working on my books rather than rubbing elbows with people to make connections.

Networking is a chore. In fact, I actually created a networking spreadsheet the other day to force me to make the effort to connect through websites, forums, blogs, etc. If I'm honest, one of the main reasons I'm blogging right now is that there's a blank mark on my spreadsheet that desperately needs an "x" on it.

So, back to the question of relevance. What can a writer do to stay relevant when she doesn't have a book on the shelves? I'm trying to work on my networking skills, create a routine of checking out the more visible blogs and commenting, trying to get more involved in forums where readers might go, trying to step up my posting on MySpace and Facebook, etc. But I'm always open to suggestions if you have any.

Also, I'm seriously considering posting an unpublished novel of mine to my website in serialized form. It's a book I think is a good story, but for various reasons, elements in it make it a bad fit for Harlequin Intrigue (though it's definitely an Intrigue-style story). And I don't have any desire to try to make it into something bigger to fit the single-title market. So right now it's just languishing on my hard drive, doing me no good whatsoever.

What do y'all think about that idea? It's 16 chapters long, so we'd be talking about a chapter a week for 16 weeks, which is a nice chunk of the year right there. I could set it up so that I start doling it out about 16 weeks before the publication of my January book, which would hopefully keep people interested in my writing enough to be ready for my new book then.

Is that a good idea? Have I lost my mind?

And do you have other ideas for ways I can stay in people's minds while I don't have a book on the shelves?

March in Alabama

Not always daffodils and sunshine:

The above is a picture of the two tiny snowmen my nieces Ashlee and Melissa made this morning. The snow is still falling—we're hoping for maybe an inch or two on the ground.

Update: Some more snow pics:

A view from the back deck:

Down the street:

My dog Buddy, the Lab mix, enjoying a little snow:

Snow on the back deck:

Mild white-out in the neighborhood:

Here are a few more Alabama snow pictures from a local news site aggregating viewer photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abc3340weather/show/