Amie Stuart | What’s in a Name?

One of the most important parts of a book—besides the conflict of course LOL—is your character’s names. I put as much effort into naming a character as I did my kids…okay, probably more since I don’t have to consult anyone else. However, it’s not like you can just go around throwing out names willy-nilly. I once named a secondary character only to have my WIP to come to a screeching halt. And I’m talking painful! I had to back up and change his name. Then ended up with a fully formed secondary character who had the hots for the heroines best friend.

In HANDS ON (June 2007) I gave all my heroines names that could have male or female nicknames to represent their dual lives. In Make U Sweat (Aphrodisia September 2008), the heroine in the first novella is Reece—and she made sure to give her daughter a name that’s decidedly feminine. Her sister’s name is Roberta. I must say, if my name was Roberta, I might go by Robbie Jo too.

In NAILED (Aphrodisia, June 2008), I was presented with the challenge of giving my heroine not one, but two names! Convinced that her sister’s death is no accident, Julie Burt goes into hiding.

But wait….there’s more!

You see, Julie has a cat named Clyde. And being that God blessed me with a twisted sense of humor, I decided Julie’s new name should be Bonnie.

As in, you know, Bonnie and Clyde.

A name with such, um, illustrious antecedents needs a killer last name to go with it. Thus Bonnie James was born—yes as in Jesse and Frank James. Even my hero, who’s no slouch, catches the “James” reference.

And my hero? His name is Wynn…pronounced Win as in “I always win.” Considering he’s a bounty hunter, it’s a great fit. And don’t tell him I told you this, but his mom calls him Wynnie.

A name/a nickname/a pet name is one of the foibles that can give real insight into a character. By the way, Clyde was named after my neighbor’s cat….but that’s another story.

Amie

amiestuart.com/

HANDS ON - Now Available from Aphrodisia
KINK in Built - Now Available from Aphrodisia
NAILED - Aphrodisia June 08
MAKE U SWEAT - Aphrodisia September 08
SCREWED - Aphrodisia March 09

Blaize Clement | Why Pets Are In the Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series

The first time somebody asked why my Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series includes pets, I was a little taken aback. I mean, Dixie Hemingway is a pet sitter, for gosh sake, so there had to be pets. But when I thought about it, I realized it had been my choice to make the pets equal in importance to the human characters. Not with human characteristics or psychic abilities or super strength, but just regular pets like regular people have. So I gave it some thought, and finally came up with an answer.

Every culture has mythic tales of a golden age when humans and animals lived as friends. In The Illiad, when a warrior was killed, his horse hung his head and wept. In The Ramayana, an army of brave monkeys rescued Princess Sita from an evil kidnapper. When the Buddha left his father's palace to seek enlightenment, his horse wept too, when he had to return to the palace alone. And then there's that serpent in the Garden of Eden who told Eve the truth about eating of the tree of knowledge.

In all those old stories, animals represented wisdom and courage and loyalty, and the friendship between humans and animals was one of unconditional love and sacrifice. As humans distanced from that connection with animals, I think we lost a connection to the best part of ourselves. So that's the real reason for putting pets in my stories. It's my way of trying to reconnect with the best part of humanity's story.

The third book in the Dixie Hemingway Mystery Series was published last week. It's titled Even Cat Sitters Get the Blues. Like Curiosity Killed the Cat Sitter and Duplicity Dogged the Dachshund, it has several animal characters that are important to the story. You can read more
about all the books at www.blaizeclement.com/ and at my blog, Kitty Litter (http://www.dixiehemingway.wordpress.com/)

Blaize Clement

Jenny Gardiner | And They Lived Happily Ever After

In one of my favorite films last summer (Paris, je t'aime, which is actually a series of short films about love, set in Paris), there is a vignette in which a long-married man is about to leave his wife for his mistress. Years of mutual apathy have rendered the couple’s marriage stale and wilted. All of the little idiosyncrasies that he once found charming and endearing about his wife have become irritants that make his skin crawl. He fairly loathes the woman. Nothing short of an injection of a serious dose of "I actually give a care about you" could save it.

But (without spoiling it!) the husband learns something that completely alters his approach to their relationship. As their relationship evolves, the narrator intones, "Once he began to act like a man in love, he became a man in love."

I love this line, and the concept behind it. It is, in fact, this very kernel of an idea that grew into my novel, SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER. So I found it interesting to hear it verbalized in the movie. There is, to me, such a simple truth to it.

Most everybody starts out in a marriage happy (I hope so, anyhow!). But long after the pheromones have fizzled out and the yearnin’, burnin’ love settles down to a quiet smolder instead of a raging inferno, life starts getting in the way of that original optimistic version of love. It is then that many marriages wither into a state of tolerance, or worse yet, intolerance.

I know it's a cliched line, but the truth is, you have to work at a marriage. All the time. But the daily reality of life tends to clash with that mandate: with kids and work and chores and all of life’s have-to's, who’s got time to work on something that you take as a given, even take for granted?

At a point in life in which my husband and I started seeing some of our friends' marriages dissolve, I started to embrace the idea that you really can go back. It just takes a bit of effort. This is what I set out to explore when I wrote SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER. Perhaps with an optimism borne out of folly, I wanted to set straight the defeatism that seems to plague so many marriages eventually. But I wanted to do it with humor. And because I tend to be a smart aleck, with a little tang of sarcasm.

My own parents' marriage fell apart after 25 years. It was not a pretty sight, and in truth it was a long time from when that first thread was picked from the tapestry of their marriage until the entire thing unravelled. But even though things played out in a worst-case scenario, I couldn’t help but believe that they could have forged through the worst of things and found some sort of positive resolution had both of them really wanted to do it.

Through the demise of their marriage, I learned that there really is--pardon the cliche, again--a very fine line between love and hate. Like fiber-optic-line thin. So if you can morph from a deep, unyielding love into almost hatred, can’t you then go back again? Or is this evolution only uni-directional?

I know that mentality seems a little pollyanna-esque. And rarely have I been accused of being very pie-in-the-sky. But I very much want to believe that-like with that man in the movie–perhaps what it takes is some sort of revelation to help two people, once so much in love, to re-vamp their attitude and try to rediscover what it was that thrust them together in the first place.

Who knows if this really can work out in real life? But the beauty of fiction is that a writer can resolve what in real life seems un-resolveable, and provide a little impetus for that happily ever after that we all expected in the first place.

Jenny Gardiner

website: http://www.jennygardiner.net/

blog: http://www.thedebutanteball.com/

Melody Thomas | Happy Endings find us all happier. What could be wrong with that?

Some years ago I sat in a movie theater watching, The Perfect Storm. I must have been the only one present who did not know this was a true story, therefore the ending set in the proverbial stone of historical fact. Up until the point all three of the heroes perished, I had been waiting for that miraculous intervention, anything that would save them. When the movie ended, I was so aggravated that I had sat through the entire movie and had nothing but a sense of doom to show for my time. So my question to you is: what is the point of a movie or a book if it does not end with at least the hope that the characters we suffer with will be happy when the story ends. This is one of the reasons I don’t trust mainstream fiction or movies that are supposed to have a meaningful message to us poor, beleaguered souls of humanity. Too often, such entertainment leaves me depressed. In addition, because I am a writer, I have concluded that it is a lot easier for an author to give a book or a movie a sad ending than it is for one to deliver the hope of happiness. It takes great skill to leave a reader, who has just been put through an emotional wringer with a character, elevated at the story’s end. It is far easier for a writer to let characters dangle indefinitely in perpetual misery than it is to build the foundation for a happy ending. A good story accomplishes this feat. A great story resonates long after we close the book. Knowing that our intrepid heroine has overcome adversity, taken control of her life and destiny, and found true love, empowers us all as we embrace her happy ending as if it were our own. A great romance does this by invoking all of our emotions throughout the book and, just at the moment when all feels lost, somehow pulls it all together and yanks that worried reader back from the brink. That quality is what makes this wonderful genre the most popular and bestselling mass market genre in the world. As a writer of romance novels, I am proud to stand up for the happy ending.

To that happy end, I hope you check out my latest two historical romantic suspense releases from Avon, Wild and Wicked in Scotland and Sin and Scandal in England. I write emotion and grit with some humor, and guarantee that though my characters’ trials and tribulations are many, they do earn their happily-ever-after ending.

Melody Thomas

Website: http://www.melodythomas.com/

Kerrelyn Sparks | Where Would You Hide?

The Undead Next Door, which releases January 29th, tells the story of a French vampire named Jean-Luc Echarpe. Jean-Luc has done many things since his transformation in 1513. He’s been a knight, a musketeer, a lieutenant-colonel in the Great Vampire War of 1710, the owner of a fencing academy in Paris, and the Coven Master of Western Europe. That’s him on the cover. What a hunk!

Having lived through many different styles of clothing, Jean-Luc knows fashion. So much so that he began designing evening wear for vampires in 1922. By the 1930’s, he was secretly designing evening wear for the Hollywood elite. In 1975, he expanded his business into the mortal world and became a great success! What a great life! He’s a celebrity, surrounded by beautiful models. What more could a guy ask for?

Unfortunately, the media has realized that Jean-Luc hasn’t aged in over thirty years. They’re following him everywhere, hounding him with questions. There’s only one thing Jean-Luc can do—go into hiding. He’ll disappear for twenty-five years, then return to his beloved Paris, posing as his own son. He’s too recognizable in Paris or Milan, New York or Los Angeles. Where can he go where no one will know who he is?

The hill country of Texas! There, high fashion is a great pair of jeans and a cowboy hat, and the most exciting topic in the small town of Schnitzelberg is the next high school football game. How will Jean-Luc manage to fit in? And how will he handle a feisty Texan girl who gives him hell? Yee-haw!

And that leads me to the Question for the Day: If you needed to go into hiding, where would YOU go? A haunted castle in the Scotland? A white-washed cottage on a remote Greek isle? Frodo Baggin’s Hobbit house in New Zealand? Or maybe you’d like to share your hideaway? How about sharing a little grass shack with Josh Holloway on a lost island in the Pacific? Now we’re talking!!

Enter my one day blog contest and tell me your ideal hiding place (and if you like, your ideal hiding partner). One lucky castaway will receive a signed copy of Be Still My Vampire Heart (the third book in the Love at Stake series). To find out more about the series and play vampire games, please visit me at www.kerrelynsparks.com/!

Cover Cut Ups to California Cops to Knitting Clubs to Southern Crazy

January brought a slew of authors to Dallas and I had the opportunity to check them all out! First we began with the visit of Thomas Allen author of UNCOVERED. Thomas has a special connection to books, especially pulp fiction books, He likes to CUT THEM UP! Yes, he takes old paperbacks, cuts out the figures on the covers then poses them in title suggestive ways and photographs them. It's fascinating, beautiful and to an avid reader and collector, TERRIFYING! Thomas gave a presentation that showed some of his work over the years (not really that long, but he did start with his father's photography before he was born) including book covers and magazine works. Gwen loved his illustrations for New York her primo magazine of the time.

Next up, we went South, to the New South filled with crazy ladies, southern food, barbeque, garden parties ... and did I mention crazy women? And Michael Lee West came to town before heading up to be part of The GirlFriends Weekend in Jefferson, a tiara wearing, big-hair celebration of womanhood. She was so comfortable she sat down with the readers and gave us the "story behind the tales" of her amazing books, including the latest MERMAIDS IN THE BASEMENT. She does protect the innocent and not-so-innocent so never fear, she's not writing about you... or is she? Hmmm. A beautiful woman, it's hard to believe Michael lives on a farm outside Nashville and has three donkeys to scare off the coyotes, 20 pygmy goats, a flock of chickens and a couple of dogs! And while on tour, the goats got loose, so a crisis long distance had to be adverted! Now I understand her books. And they are a delight! Unfortunately for me, Daniel was entranced with CONSUMING PASSIONS part memoir but chuck full of recipes he's itching to have me try and make. Since when did I become a Southern cook? And that frying scares me!

Stephen Cannell and Sara
Originally uploaded by freshfiction

Then a double-header, on a cold chilly night, it was a treat to meet with Stephen J. Cannell in town to sign the next book THREE SHIRT DEAL in his continuing Shane Skully series. This one's a definite keeper, I love Skully and Alexa and I've been a fan of Cannell since 'The Rockford Files', so it's always fun to read an action packed, roller coaster (which figure in this one as well) adventure. And Stephen also talked about his special passion -- spokesperson for Dyslexia. There were several children at the signing who came to talk to him, and he was wonderful sharing his story as well as being a role-model.

Kate Jacobs in Dallas
Originally uploaded by freshfiction

While waiting in line to get THREE SHIRT DEAL signed, the noise volume rose...because up at the top of the escalators women with big bags were gathering. And their hands were as busy as their chatter. The knitters came out to see and hear Kate Jacobs, author of THE FRIDAY NIGHT KNITTING CLUB. This was one crowd where standing around wasn't allowed. Chairs and benches were found and quickly filled with knitters, click clacking away! And they knitted all the while listening to Kate. Okay, I was impressed because I can crochet but the two-needle thing just never worked for me. No matter, it was amazing to watch. They didn't even look down too much while listening and asking questions. Maybe that was my problem? Who knows!