Trish Wylie | Do you get your ideas from real life?

Authors are constantly asked where they get their ideas from. It’s probably the most commonly asked question. And here in the UK and Ireland Mills & Boon (Harlequin’s UK division) is celebrating it’s Centenary, so we’re seeing a lot more press coverage - hence I’ve been asked this question about a half dozen times in the last week alone.

One of the next things they asked was ‘Do you get your ideas from real life?’ to which I consistently answered with a burst of laughter and ‘I WISH!’

But that’s probably not the real answer. Because the initial spark of inspiration *does* come from real life and the things we see and hear around us every day; a song, a movie we hated the end of, the sight of two people talking in a street café, a photograph that captures a moment we want to know more about. And then a chain reaction begins. The who, what, when, where and why starts to find answers inside our heads – the part of our brain in charge of creativity rubbing its hands with glee and setting to work with gusto! (We hope…)

For many it’s the best part of the job – that magical period when ideas come together and characters are born. It’s the putting it into words that makes it *work*. Add deadlines and sometimes it can even become a chore. But then there are so many jobs out there that lack that initial period of magic, aren’t there? I think that’s what makes it such a great way to make a living and what carries us through the harder stuff…

Well that and the readers of course! Because readers are just as capable of seeing that magic on the page, forming different images in their minds, adding personal experiences and how they felt at a certain point of their life to what they’re reading to create a completely original perception pf each book. And I kinda LOVE that. It’s why my February book for the Harlequin Romance line – Her One And Only Valentine – is dedicated to my Readers; the dream makers.

That’s what they are to me. By reading romance and sustaining the genre the way they do they allow me to do what I love to do. And by allowing themselves to get lost in a place where magic still exists they help celebrate love and hope in a world where it be so very over-shadowed by terrible things. So what is it you enjoy about romance novels? Is it that little touch of hope it leaves you with, the escapism, the way some plots make you think? Or was there a book that particularly touched you or helped you through a difficult period in your life?

To find out more about my books, where I got my ideas from and the Emerald Isle I call home you can visit me at My Website (http://www.trishwylie.com/) or my Blog (www.trishwylie.blogspot.com/)

Go n-eírí an bóthar leat.

Trish

Tasha Alexander | Dare to Dream

When I first started writing, I hardly dared to dream. I banged away on a semi-decrepit laptop in my attic apartment in New Haven, Connecticut (yes, really, an attic...servants’ quarters, actually; I kept looking with no success for the butler...), working on my debut novel, And Only to Deceive, with only the briefest someday-maybe-if-I’m-good-and-lucky-this-will-get-published thoughts.

I’d chosen the location for the novel carefully—wanted to use settings familiar to me. Places I’d actually been. I studied abroad in college, living in London, and that seemed an easy starting point. Two trips to Paris had cemented the city in my soul, and a recent visit to Greece had wholly seduced me. I was confident I could capture the essentials of each location.

But what next?

I’d joked for a long time that my writing career was a thinly veiled attempt to justify my travel plans, but I’d never really let myself believe that someday, just maybe, I could be an author and jet about the world on research trips. I kept those thoughts far from my brain, focusing instead on writing. It’s the best thing an aspiring author can do—nothing is more important than crafting the best books possible—while all the while pushing the bounds of what you can accomplish.

And you know? A really funny thing happened. All of a sudden (well, okay, not quite; a few years and a few books later), I found myself sitting on a ferry cruising up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea, watching the colors of Istanbul bounce from the shores of both Europe and Asia toward me. Somehow, through lots of hard work and more than a little magic, I’d made it: two weeks in Turkey, researching the next book in my series. The characters I created in that attic apartment are still with me. They’ve grown and deepened and developed a fondness for Turkish food, and I’ve no doubt I’ll drag them along for many more adventures.

I’m home now, more than a little worse for wear (I blame the two hour cab line in a snow storm at O’Hare for that), fairly confident that I’m never going to entirely regain my voice, but happier than I could have ever imagined. Dreams have a way of catching up with you—and I can’t wait to see what happens now that I’m no longer bent on keeping them at bay.

Tasha Alexander

A Poisoned Season - Available Now

A Fatal Waltz - Coming May, 2008

www.tashaalexander.com/

Bronwyn Jameson | Working with Friends

They say you should be wary of working with children and animals, but what about friends?

This was a question I probably should have addressed when the Desire senior editor suggested a down-under continuity series back in 2006. I had worked on three continuity series before then, but each was an editor-led series. The overview of the series, the characters, the broad storylines were developed by the editors who invited the authors to participate.

This series, however, was to be author-led. In other words, the development of the series from initial concept to completion would be in the hands of the six authors. The idea of collaborating on a project like this excited me. So much so, I jumped right aboard that train while yelling encouragement to the others to join me.

"Come on," I cajoled to those dragging their feet. "It'll be fun! We'll brainstorm and bounce off each others' energy and we won't have to work in isolation as we usually do. Plus developing a whole series arc will be brilliant!"

Six strong-minded women who are used to operating in creative independence working together as a team... How would that work? Would we still remain friends after all that brainstorming, plotting, writing and promoting?

Two years later and Diamonds Down Under has launched with VOWS & A VENGEFUL GROOM (January, Silhouette Desire.) Getting to this point was all of the above AND about 300% more work than we'd anticipated. Along the way we honed our collaborative skills and learned about delegation, compromise, tact, and teamwork. AND--here's the happy ending romance always promises--the bonds of friendship have not only remained intact but have strengthened.

We're not the first to tackle our own multi-book continuity series for Harlequin or even for Silhouette Desire. Before Diamonds Down Under there was the six-book Millionaire of the Month, and before that The Madonna Key (7 books) for the now defunct (sadly) Bombshell line.

But when it comes to continuity collaboration, my poster gals are the Mills & Boon Medicals foursome who recently sold their 12th Crocodile Creek title.

Lilian Darcy, Alison Roberts, Marion Lennox and Meredith Webber have got together not once, not twice, but three times to develop and write three four-book mini-series. Who better to ask about the magic of collaboration? Here is what they had to say:

Alison Roberts: To sum it up, I'd say it's challenging but fabulous. And so much fun, working in little bits and pieces of the other books, like snatches of conversations overheard or even just the expression on someone's face.

Marion Lennox: It was indeed fun. It felt a bit like a free book cos there were four plotters rather than one. I think the fact that we totally respected each other as writers and we knew each other's characters would be treated sympathetically was the key.

Meredith Webber: What I loved was the intricacy of it, weaving the stories together so bits of one fitted seamlessly with bits of another. We even wrote little passages for each other's books so the stories melded. This might not have happened if we'd known each other less well or not been friends.

Lilian Darcy: What they said…plus I will add some advice to anyone attempting an author-generated series: give yourselves a simple over-arching continuity thread that hits the centre of your line's promise to the reader so that the complexity and uniqueness can develop within each story without you all getting tangled up and treading on each other's toes.

If you'd like to sample the results of the collaborative effort that produced CROCODILE CREEK, visit my blog (www.bronwynjameson.com/blog) in February. If you'd like to sample the results of the collaborative effort that produced DIAMONDS DOWN UNDER, visit www.diamonds-downunder.com/ for blurbs, extracts, backstory and our series blog. And don't miss the chance to win a diamond pendant in our Treasure Hunt. VOWS & A VENGEFUL GROOM, by Bronwyn Jameson, is available now.

Chris Marie Green | MIDNIGHT REIGN, Vampire Babylon, Book Two

Years and years ago, when I still played with Barbies, Saturday nights were a magical time. They were all about steak dinners with the family around the candlelit table and my dad smoking his cigar in the backyard afterward. Saturday nights were also when IN SEARCH OF… aired on TV, and I remember watching it, enthralled, and oftentimes, scared to death when Leonard Nimoy told us about things like The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot.

Of course, I was young, and I freaked out at everything. So when a certain episode about vampires aired, it left an indelible impression that’s stayed with me until this day.

Long claws, sharp teeth, a woman in bed with a gnarly shadow creeping over her…. I was hooked, and it’s no surprise that I’m writing about vampires now for Ace Books.

In keeping with what scared me when I was younger, my own vampires usually have a mean streak and will do anything to survive. In fact, my first vamp book THE HUNTRESS (for the defunct Bombshell line from Silhouette) featured a tribe of female bloodsuckers, feral and hard to slay. I loved those gals, but the real villain in that story was vampirism itself.

I suppose you could say the same about my Vampire Babylon series, a noir-mystery-fantasy with romantic elements. This particular group survives because of secrecy; among their many gifts, they’re great spies who continually mess with the heroine, Dawn Madison, and her new team of hunters. Every book in the series revolves around a vampire-related mystery, but to me, the horror comes from how far a person might go to capture long-lasting life, youth, and fame.

Here’s a hint of what the first book in the series was about:



But NIGHT RISING, Book One (2/07), concerned more than Jesse Shane’s death. Dawn got sucked into the search for a vampire underground when her dad went missing, and her personal discoveries go hand-in-hand with what she finds out about these vampires—and what her own mother’s death might’ve had to do with them.

As you can see in this next trailer, the second book, MIDNIGHT REIGN (2/5/08), continues Dawn’s search for her dad.



There are a lot of twists and turns for you mystery fans. And for those of you who want to follow the relationship between Dawn and The Voice? There’s plenty of that, too, and BREAK OF DAWN, Book Three (out in September) is going to delve into Dawn’s search for who "Jonah" really is!

I hope you stop by my Web site at http://www.vampirebabylon.com/ because, among other things, I’m giving away a great prize for the contest. It’s a "museum quality" Giclee print called "Little Blood Sucker," and it’s signed by the artist, Billy Martinez of Neko.

Isn’t it great? I’ve got one hanging on my own wall.

Thank you for reading, and happy hunting!

Chris Marie Green (AKA Crystal Green) writes full time across the genres. Besides her Vampire Babylon series, she writes for Harlequin Blaze and Silhouette Special Edition. You can visit her other web sites at http://www.crystal-green.com/and www.myspace.com/vampirebablylon.

Rhonda Pollero | Finnley is soooo not me!

I’ve heard that a lot since the debut of my of the Finley Anderson Tanner series. I can’t attest to how much she and I are alike. Yes, Finley and I share the same sense of humor and I suppose her moral code mirrors my own. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. Well, excluding the fact that she’s blonde and short. That’s a function of practicality. Being blonde and short myself, I know how to dress Finley (fairly high heels are important) and the physicality of the character’s actions reflect the fact that unless she started dating Michael J. Fox, she’d never know what it felt like to dance with her head resting on a guy’s shoulder.

In all other aspects, Finley and I couldn’t be less alike.

She’s a shopper, something I personally loathe. I’d rather remove a kidney than go to a mall. The whole idea of window-shopping makes me want to stick pencils in my eyes. Finley’s also heavily in debt, another personal taboo of mine. But the biggest difference is that she’s an underachiever by choice. I’m so much of an overachiever that I probably could benefit from lengthy therapy.

Crafting a character is never easy – nor should it be – and there will always be a sprinkling of the author’s personality and/or personal experiences in his or her characters. Figuring out where to draw the line can be tough, especially when doing an on-going series.

Knowing Finley needed room to grow, so I gave her some hefty flaws. In KNOCK OFF (available in paperback now), she takes her first foray into the realm of solving a crime. She isn’t all that adept in the beginning, but by the end of the book, she’s learned a few things, although she’s a long way from attaining the moniker of amateur sleuth. At best, she’s an accidental sleuth.

In the second book, KNOCK ‘EM DEAD (on shelves February 27th), she builds on what she learned in the first book, though she’s still a long way from a crime-solving whiz.

Finley marked a detour in my career. After writing more than 25 romantic suspense novels under my pseudonym Kelsey Roberts, I wondered how books penned by Rhonda Pollero would be received. Different name, and different flavor. Was there enough mystery to satisfy mystery fans? Was the sizzle between Finley and Liam enough of a subplot to draw fans of my romantic suspense? I honestly didn’t have a clue and after a lot of angst filled soul-searching, I decided I had to put those concerns on the back burner and just tell the story.

I’m glad I took the chance. People seem to love Finley as much as I do.

And that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? A writer is a storyteller; everything else is just window dressing.

Happy Writing . . . Rhonda

www.rhondapollero.com/ www.kelseyroberts.net/