Eileen Dreyer's Blog

Publishers Weekly Top 100 Books of 2010

2010-11-11T00:07:00.004-06:00

It's an annual event. Publishers Weekly announces what they consider to be the best 100 books of the year.

What was fun was to see that out of the 100 books of all kinds, romance got 5 slots. What was astonishing, at least to me, was that my first historical romance, BARELY A LADY, was named one of the top 5. I'm still trying to believe it. I'm so psyched to be in such amazing company. Two of the other books are already on my keeper shelf. To say I'm honored would be an example of how, even as rich as the English language is, it is limited. Wow. Just wow.

Here's the more fun part. Joanne Bourne, one of the other authors on the romance list(and an amazing author. I love her work) mentioned on her blog that Rose Fox, on her blog, Genreville, gives us an inside look into the process, including the top 5 romances and the 5 who came really close. It's great reading. I'm including just the list here. If you want an introduction into romance, I can't think of a better list. I know that I'll search out the ones I've missed.

Top Five:

The Forbidden Rose
Joanna Bourne (Berkley Sensation)
In mid-revolution France, a noblewoman and a spy are torn between wartime practicality and headstrong passion. The gripping espionage story and wry voiceovers from the heroine will win hearts.

The Iron Duke
Meljean Brook (Berkley)
Brook's fabulous steampunk tale has an iron-boned war hero and a half-Asian detective inspector matching wits and wills on airships and battleships and in smoke-choked London as England recovers from 200 years of Mongol rule.

The Heir
Grace Burrowes (Sourcebooks Casablanca)
Burrowes pulls off an improbable Regency affair between a spoiled ducal heir and a housekeeper with a secret.

Barely a Lady
Eileen Dreyer (Grand Central/Forever)
The wartime amnesia romance is as old as the hills, but RWA Hall of Famer Dreyer (aka Kathleen Korbel) makes this one work.

Trial by Desire
Courtney Milan (HQN)
Modern readers will be as intrigued by the Victorian-era political issues as they are by the central story of a man trying to reconnect with the wife he abandoned.

And the rest of the top 10:

Proof by Seduction,
Courtney Milan
A stunning debut Victorian that very nearly made the top list, outclassed only by its sequel.

(my note: how good do you have to be to rate 1 slots in the top 10? I agree, too. Love Courtney Milan)

Whisper of Scandal,
Nicola Cornick
An adventure story wrapped around a heartbreaking tale of a woman rendered barren by her husband’s beatings.

Last Night’s Scandal,
Loretta Chase:

The hilarious and adorable story of two rapscallions renovating a haunted Scottish castle.

Marry Me,
Jo Goodman:
A moving 19th century American romance with tons of interesting period medical detail.

Warrior/Scoundrel/Rebel
Zoë Archer’s
Cranks up the Indiana Jones–style adventure to 11 and then piles on the sexy heat.

Welcome to Harmony
Jodi Thomas
Contemporary Western, is a really lovely meditation on what it means to be family.

No Chance,
Christy Reece
series kickoff is an exemplary romantic suspense novel with a fabulous self-saving heroine.

So, my friends who've come over from suspenseland or the small town of mystery, even the universe of science fiction, here's a great way to dip your toes into romance, just to see what you think. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Now, back to the champagne and chocolates....

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

2010-10-20T05:05:00.001-05:00

Probably the most frequent question I'm asked. And wish I could give people a better answer than “everywhere.” But I'm afraid that's the truth. Maybe if I tell you about how my latest idea is forming, you might get a better idea.

I'm working on a series of historical romance set at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In my series (because I love nothing more than a little suspense), there are nefarious spies, who, in the third book, commit my heroine Kate in an insane asylum. Not a good thing for her, certainly. But as I was writing the scene, I realized something important. This isn't a normal insane asylum. This asylum is controlled by the nefarious spies, who really think they are working for a good cause. If some people have to be kept constrained until the bad guys gain control, well, so it must be.

But, as often happens, once I have one new idea, several more follow. I realized that while Kate is in this asylum, Kate hears about another woman kept there; a woman who has been committed because she threatened to turn her husband over to the authorities for his part in an attempt to overthrow the government. And for a while, that was all I knew. Except I had the nagging suspicion that this mysterious woman would end up with a book of her own.

Cut to Venice. I'm sitting on the balcony of my B&B overlooking the Canereggio Canal, and suddenly a voice comes into my head. It's of a woman in exile from her homeland, smuggled away to Italy to recover from incarceration. Her health has been fragile, but the beauty of La Serenissima has begun to heal her.

Still, she is hundreds of miles from her children. She has a husband she may not have loved, but certainly respected. She knows that he believes he is acting for the best, that her commitment was, in his mind, to protect her, because if he hadn't been able to contain her she certainly would have been murdered. She simply knows too much.

She still knows too much. She is still a threat to the group her husband belongs to. She would do anything to protect him, even refuse to speak of his involvement. But she knows that she cannot remain this way. Besides, there is a man...

Well, there's always a man in romance. But that's not the point. The point is that it was the sight of that side canal in Venice that set her loose in my head. Until then she had only been a one line idea. A plot point. A possible complication. That canal began to give her color and shape. Conflict, purpose, goals. To her the pastels of those old, crumbling, palazzos are the colors of melancholy. She wants to go home and knows it to be impossible. She wants to return to her marriage and knows she can't. She has begun to fall in love with the man who brought her to Venice and should not. And she thinks all of this as she sits on a balcony in an old palazzo as the sun sets over the choppy water and the bells of St. Mark's toll out the hour. She is in one of the most beautiful spots on earth, and she can only wish she weren't.

And that is where I got at least one of my ideas.

I Get It Now

2010-10-15T04:52:00.000-05:00

I have always wanted to travel to Italy, specifically Pompeii and Venice. I know. It makes no sense, but there you are. For different reasons, both places drew me. So when I agreed to plan the family trip to Italy, the stipulation was that we include Pompeii and Venice.

Pompeii was everything I thought it would be. Without getting all mystical, let me just say that I swore I could hear old whispers as we stepped back and down into time. Whether because of the renovation or because of the place and its terrible demise, I felt as if the spirit of it had been trapped within those ancient stone walls to leak out like a badly sealed container.

And then there is Venice. I'm sitting on a balcony over the Canneregio Canal listening to the neighborhood settle towards evening and watching the gold of the setting sun wash down the pinks and oranges and terracottas of the tattered and peeling buildings across the way. And all I can think is why didn't I come here before? Why do I have to leave?

I know. It's been written every way but haiku (and if given the chance, I'd do one) about the romance and timeless beauty of Venice. Painters have struggled for centuries to capture that warm light, that peculiarly intense blue of the water, the erotic lushness of flowers and people and architecture. There is no way I can do better.

But I can report that every one of them was right, and I didn't really appreciate it until I sat on this balcony. I'd hoped it was so. I'd hoped that I could have a special experience in a city I've always held in my heart. I didn't realize it would be in a tiny caffe called the Leon d'Oro, which was run by an elderly couple who cooked your food the way their families had for centuries, right in front of your eyes, and made friends without knowing a word of English. I didn't know that one boat ride up the Grand Canal would steal my heart so completely that I felt melancholy even taking pictures, because I knew I would leave.

I'd heard that Venice was an unapologetic, overpainted old courtesan who knew exactly what she was and was perfectly happy with it. But until you see her colors and are seduced by her whimsy, you just don't understand.

I do now. I get it completely. I just wish it hadn't happened as I'm about ready to leave....

The Value of Serendipity

2010-10-13T04:38:00.000-05:00

I love to plan trips. I love to research them, to find out the interesting places I want to see, the history I want to search out, the unique and the out of the way places that simply need to be visited. On the trip we're taking now, to Italy, I planned eight days worth of tours to learn about everything from volcanic eruptions (Pompeii) to the effects of music on grape vines (Tuscany) to the composition of tuffa stone (Rome) to how to blow glass (Venice). But even more importantly, I planned time for serendipity.

Serendipity in travel is what happens when you're surprised. Either you have to cancel something (we had to cancel a tour of the Amalfi Coast because of one of our members' unforseen carsickness), or you end up receiving unexpected gifts (my sister and I wandered off one day to explore Amalfi). And while I think tours are wonderful, especially the personal kind where you have a guide and all of his knowledge and enthusiasm to yourself, sometimes it's even better to wander off and get lost.

That is what is so wonderful about Venice. Venice is a city to walk. Actually, the only thing you can do—besides take a boat up the canals—is walk. There are no cars, no scooters, no motorized transportation of any kind. I found out why when we were walking down one of the main drags and we saw what looked like tables covered in sheets of heavy wood placed at regular intervals down the street. The strollers tended to sit on them, especially strollers waiting for shoppers(there is a LOT of shopping in Venice). It didn't occur to me that they had another purpose. Until I tried to get into St. Mark's Square.

I made the mistake of going about noon, which, it seems is high tide. As you can see by the picture, it is fairly perilous to try and maneuver St. Mark's during high tide. The city, wisely, has laid out walkways so the tourists can visit the important places: the Cathedral, Florians, and shops.

That was when it dawned on me what all the scaffolding was doing in the middle of the streets. It wasn't only St. Mark's Square that tended to flood.

Which brings me back to serendipity. Because Venice is an island, it is impossible to be lost for long. Although it is amazingly easy to get lost in the first place. The city is ancient, with city planners who obviously followed the seagulls to lay out the grid. There are big streets, little streets, tiny streets, cul-de-sacs, piazzas and a thousand or so churches (you will quickly realize this when it comes time for the Angelus bells to ring). The great thing, though, is that each of those streets is interesting, quaint, picturesque, charming, and full of cafes to rest weary feet in, if not shops.

Stop a while. Get your bearings. Ask for directions. Even if you don't understand them (and as one guide warned us, when asking for directions from an Italian, never listen to the words. Watch the hands. If they say, “A la sinistra”, or to the left, and wave with their right hand. Go right. Trust me), you'll end up having a great interaction. Hand gestures (non-offensive ones, anyway), do quite well to supplant tourist Italian. With hand gestures and my catch all of “Mi dispiace”, which means I'm sorry, and makes everyone feel better, I got a lovely shopkeeper to make me a custom-made necklace for my daughter. And by the end of it, both of us were laughing and happy.

Serendipity. Even if it isn't Venice, give yourself the chance. Schedule in a bit of extra time to get lost. Definitely stop by a little cafe where you only hear the local language and made yourself known. You'd be amazed at how much fun you have. Because as much as I love planned fun, I love the unplanned kind even better.

There's Old and Then There's Old

2010-10-11T05:56:00.002-05:00

Everybody in America knows what old is. Old is before television. Old is before computers and microwaves. Really old involves either Pilgrims or Native Americans, who fought nature to tame a wild and often unforgiving land. That is old. We in America are infants.

I just spent three days in Rome. Yeah, I can see you now, shaking your head. Everybody knows about Rome. Crowded, noisy, filthy, rude, chock full of fanny-pinchers. Oh, there are some old buildings you can drive around in your car, but does it really matter? All I have to say is, Americans are infants.

It wasn't just the Coliseum, which after the Taj Mahal is probably the most recognizable historic site on earth. It's a bit moth-eaten, sure, but Russell Crowe fought gladiators there. But the Coliseum, although massive and amazing, isn't even the most amazing ancient architecture in Rome. I give that award to the Pantheon, a simple round building built as a temple to the gods and found itself taken over by people who believed in only one of them. It is perfectly proportioned, elegant, deceptively simple, and still standing in the same glory with which it was made...two thousand years ago.

Yes, that's what I said. The thing predates longbows, and still looks pristine. Absolutely amazing. Then there are the Roman fountains, which in and of themselves would be worth noting, especially the ones by Bernini, dancing explosions of marble that spout water from varied and amazing places to enchant, edify and nourish, since the water is perfect to drink. The water that is being forced through aqueducts the Romans constructed over...two thousand years ago. Nothing has changed. The wells the women got their water from have just developed fancy skins.

And then there are the catacombs. Now, for the purposes of fair reporting, the catacombs have been on my bucket list since I was a kid. You see, like any Catholic kid, I was raised on Lives of the Saints, which included every martyr known to the church, especially those who died particularly gruesome deaths. And many of those saints not only worshiped in the catacombs, they ended up there(not for eternity, though. When the market for relics got hot, the Church moved the saints to prevent further pilfering of fingerbones and skulls). The dark, close, musty subterranean vaults they used to inhabit, though, appealed to my dramatic little soul.

What I hadn't counted on was the fact that these things really were so old. Yep. We're talking two thousand year old range. The Romans mined the area for tuffa stone, leaving behind empty caverns, and the Christians (among others) used them for burial. I also hadn't counted on the fact that when we got to go down there, those narrow, dark, cool passages would affect me the way they did. I swear you can feel the pain and hope and devotion resonating from those carved cavern walls, where little beds were carved from hard stone to hold someone's wife or parent or child. I looked down the seven levels of tombs that had built up over the years (not many, though. They were finished in the late 500s. That's five hundred. A.D. And those who passed through still seem to have form and spirit and weight) and found myself overwhelmed by the half million people who had been buried there. Did I mention it was two thousand years ago?

Kind of makes our “George Washington Slept Here” signs silly in comparison.

In Praise of Staying Off the Beaten Track

2010-10-08T06:33:00.000-05:00

When you travel to a new place, it's inevitable you're going to cross paths with every other tourist in the country, at least once or twice. We did it in the Vatican yesterday, and Amalfi two days before that. The cool places have already been found, and they've been found by the companies with the big buses. So when you enjoy the transcendent glory of the Sistine Chapel, you do it with 1500 of your closest friends.

The secret, though, is that you don't have to stay with them. What I've found before, and has really been brought home to me on this trip is that it's much more fun to stay where the busses don't stop. For instance, we began the trip in the little town of Matera in the south of Italy. Most Americans have not heard of it. Italians are just beginning to. There are tours there, now, as opposed to the first time I went, but it's still a meandering, contemplative kind of town where the big entertainment is dressing up in the evening and strolling the piazzas with your friends. A perfect introduction to Italy.

From there we headed for the Amalfi Coast. Now it shouldn't be surprising that there are crowds there. The Amalfi Coast is celebrated in movie and song for its legendary beauty. And I can't argue. There is nothing quite so romantic as sitting beneath the bougainvillea watching the sun set behind the isle of Capri. But here's the hint. Don't do it from a hotel in Amalfi itself. Or even Positano, lovely as it is. Both are overrun with every manner of tourist, which means that all the shops sell tourist kitsch, and all of the kitsch is expensive. Not only that, on the trip you took to learn about Italy, mostly you see Americans or Japanese. The streets are a nightmare, with locals trying to squeeze their cars past the hordes who descend on the town every day, and the restaurants are the most unpleasant I've ever been at. As for Positano, it's much lovelier. It's also MUCH more expensive.

Our compromise was Praiano, right between the two. Smaller, friendlier, more family-oriented, so that the people who own the restaurants serve you and visit out of interest rather than obligation. The rooms are WAY cheaper. The room we had at the small Hotel LeSirene, was large, airy, and came with a balcony overlooking the sea and Positano. For 90 euro a night. Come on. A Holidy Inn in Topeka is more expensive.

The best part is that there is a bus that runs about every 20 minutes that will take you anywhere you want to go on the coast, is painless (although often very crowded) and fool proof. So my sister and I hopped on the bus at 10AM, spent the afternoon in Amalfi, where the shops stayed open throughout lunch (one drawback to smaller places, if that bothers you. They do respect siesta, and close everything from 1:30-4:00.), had a drink, then climbed on the bus for home. We didn't have to try to drive that coast ourselves; we could get off and on where we wanted (like the big Ceramic Warehouse halfway home) and we could get a ticket at any cigarette shop (can't miss them. They all have a sign with a big red T on them)

We did the same in Rome, resting our heads in the Vatican Vista two blocks from the Pope, where we had a view, a bit more quiet (it's never really quiet in Rome, except Sunday morning) and a landlady who not only gave great directions, but better private tours. Much less expensive than the center of town, easier to navigate, and less stressful. And now, instead of fighting our way through every other tourist in Florence, we're taking a train to Siena, where we'll unpack our bags, pull out our wine and wander out onto the patio of the Albergo Bernini to enjoy one of the most spectacular views in Tuscany. After all, Florence is just down the road.

We're Not At McDonald's Anymore

2010-10-06T06:27:00.003-05:00

The first thing you need to know about Italian meals is that they are an event. Because I was speaking at the Women's Fiction Festival, I got vouchers for every meal at about a dozen of the restaurants in Matera. And they kept apologizing when I presented my voucher. Until I got a bit more comfortable with Italian, I thought they were refusing the voucher. But no, they were apologizing because on the voucher I could only have two courses, coffee and wine, instead of the usual four courses, wine, coffee, and desert like a regular meal.

Now, on a regular Italian menu, you start with the Antipasti, which is what we call Appetizers in the US. The first course, or Primi, involves your pasta and pizza, which come on plates larger than I could consume in an entire day.

But wait! There's more! Second course, or Segundi, includes either fish or meat course, which would be an entire entree in the US. Each region has their special fish, which is usually either baked packed in salt or 'crazy water'. Nobody so far has had the guts to find out exactly what crazy water is.

You can also get vegetables, of course, or, to my eternal surprise, the best french fries I've ever had.

After that is the salad course, which includes bruschetta (every time I'd see bruschetta I'd get excited all over again, until my family said, “Bruschetta in Italy? What?” A special note about salads in Italy. Fruit and vegetables are impossibly fresh and delicious here (and, for the hesitant among my friends, safe). But Italy, probably because the produce is so good, doesn't smother it in salad dressing. They rely on good old oil and balsamic vinegar. Now I'd heard that you really need to know your balsamic vinegar because there's a world of difference among them, but I'm telling you right now, I had no idea. Real Italian balsamic—not the stuff you get at Costco—is a gustatory revelation. I'm thinking of buying a case of it, like wine, to bring home.

AFTER the salad course, you can have Fromaggio, or Dolci. Cheese or desert (which often involves cannolis or tiramasu).And then, of course, your after dinner digestive and/or coffee.
Full yet? Trust me. I was full after the Primi. I have yet to quite make it to the Secondi, even splitting either salads or antipasti. I hate to waste food, especially good food, and it felt a sin to leave so much on my plate those first days when I didn't know better.

Once you have your seat in a restaurant, you're there for the evening, though. Nobody keeps the place at meat locker temperature or blasts cheesy music to make your dinner so uncomfortable you don't want to linger. They consider it an insult if you hurry away. Food is to be enjoyed, savored, shared. It isn't just a meal, it's a celebration, and they enjoy nothing more than sharing it with you. My kind of country.

And I haven't even begun to address how good the food is.

That Joseph Campbell is a Smart Guy

2010-10-04T05:17:00.000-05:00

I probably could have learned this stuff if I'd just read Joseph Campbell. Sadly, I just can't get through non-fiction. I'm blaming it on my ADD. I don't know. What I do know is that I've had a lot more fun learning the same lessons by visiting different places in the world. And that is that for all the different mythologies, religions, and superstitions our ancestors taught us, they're all the same.

I had another reminder of that at the Women's Fiction Festival in Matera. We had a lecture from Dorothy Zinn, an anthropologist who specializes in the South of Italy. Her talk was on the belief in magic in this region, and how it lasted a much longer time than the rest of the world, because it was a particularly poor, isolated region where life was desperate and people had little control over their fates. According to Dorothy, the melding of magic and Catholicism here lasted into at least the 1950s, with priests and magic practitioners holding equal footing.

She told a few of the stories, a few pervasive myths tat addressed the insecurities and mysteries of life: like the magical jinx, who brought destruction with him wherever he went, or the little people who were pranksters and wore funny hats. Or the fact that on the day between All Saints Day and the Day of the Dead(Nov. 2), a procession of the dead leave the cemetery for mass and communion at midnight before returning to the grave, and how crossing that procession can cause disaster.

Hmmm, thought, listening to the stories. Very familiar. And not as old in other parts of the world as Dorothy thinks. I've been going to Ireland since the 1980s, when Ireland was still very poor, isolated from the rest of the world and insular. And I heard people tell me of sightings of fairies, leprechauns(little pranksters with funny hats. Sound familiar?) and Firbolgs, an ancient race of giants with one eye. The dead in Ireland walk on Halloween(well, they walk every day, but they have a special time of it on Halloween, when no living person should cross them for fear of disastrous consequences). Our mythology(because even in America I inherited it) was so entwined with Catholicism that one of the most beloved lullabies, the Castle of Dromore, invokes the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Blackwater Fairies in the same stanza.
A more recent example for me was a trip I took to a small village in Alaska, reachable only by plane and seagoing barge(in fact,all their supplies come by that barge twice a year). The area is desperately poor, still wild and raw, where internet—and therefore the wider world—had just been introduced.

I had the privilege of talking with several classes of children who were mostly Yu'pick, and asked them to write me a story, either about their lives or the stories their grandparents had told them. And there, just like Italy and Ireland, were the small, mischievous men in funny hats. Although I liked the Yu'pic version a lot better. According to them, the Little Men came on New Years and stole bad children. And the children were not returned until they learned to respect their elders and obey. Obviously a parent's story.

The only difference in the stories of all the regions I got to hear was demanded by that specific environment. In Alaska, for instance, there were a lot of stories of monsters lurking in the forest. When you look at how primeval and unending their forests are, and how very real terrors lurk there, I can well imagine a parent inventing something far more frightening to a child than a bear to threaten them if they disobey and wander off from home.

In Italy it's werewolves, and the warning is to never answer the first time a person knocks at night. In the stories, the threat is that a werewolf will knock before resuming human form. By the third knock, it's safe. Sounds like the old “never let a person know you're alone in the house” warning.

And in Ireland, it's never wander alone outside after dusk, for fear you'll stumble over a fairy ring or come across a trooping horde and be stolen away by them. There is also the idea that you never take food from one or you're doomed. What do we tell our children about strangers?
There is always a myth about how deadly women are, but I think that's just a man's excuse for not always being in charge.

But, of course, if I'd read Joseph campbell, I would have learned all of this from him. Because one of his basic tenets about mythology is that it is the stories are the same world-over. Smart guy.

I'll Never Do This Again. This Time I Swear It.

2010-10-01T05:13:00.000-05:00

I said it before. I swear I'm never doing this again. I sound suspiciously like Robert Downey Jr. to a judge. But I really, really mean it.

Okay. I love to travel. I think we've established that. I love to plan trips. Half the fun for me is finding that interesting little place on a hill over the ocean nobody else knows about, or the town that had that thing happen I want to investigate, or....well, you get the idea. And since the internet has enabled me to do this from the comfort of my own chair, I've gone mad. Mad, I tell you, mad. I've arranged a 3 week trip to India for a friend's wedding (and quite a bit of book research. I swear, CPAs, that elephant ride will show up in a book). I got to plan a month to England and Ireland that included research in London and the Cotswolds for my series of historical romances, a wonderful trip around Galway and Sligo with my friend Katie as we took her husband Dave's ashes to places there he loved, and a couple of weeks renting a house on Dingle with my writer friends to work.

Now, I'm in Italy. I was coming anyway to the Women's Fiction Festival. Which my family heard me talk about. Which meant that suddenly I tacked on two weeks and 4 more cities, not including all the in-betweens. For five. By train. Do you know how many details that involves? Not just B&Bs, but shuttles, trains, insurance, tours just for the 5 of us. It certainly means that I learned a lot more about Italy, which will help for the books this is helping me write (Dave LOVES Italy). But it also means that I have a billion widgets of info whirling in my brain and four people who are relying on my knowledge of a country I've never been to.

Four people who assured me they'd be happy to go anywhere I took them, but who, when faced with the actual schedule, said things like, “We ARE going to the Pantheon, aren't we?” (the answer, thankfully, was yes). Four people I feel are my sole responsibility in a country where English is, usually, a casual acquaintance.

I even asked my family to learn at least tourist Italian. I assured them that I refused to be their translator, especially in issues of toilet-searches. Of course, I'll believe that when I hear it.
So I sit poised at the moment when I know they're taking off, my last moments of blessed, selfish peace, and I'm telling you right now. I'm never doing this again. It's just too much.
I sincerely hope you'll remind me the next time you see me say, “Guess where I'm taking my family?” Your response is “NOWHERE.”

I just planned 3 weeks in Italy. And I loved it. I get great satisfaction

Eating My Way Around Italy

2010-09-29T13:08:00.002-05:00

Too often eating is a chore. I'm not one of those people who considers food fuel. I consider it art, inspiration, passion. It is, at its best, a sensual marriage of sight, scent and taste. I don't eat bread. First I inhale its scent—ah, wheat, rye, honey, maybe asiago cheese--(you can imagine how delighted my children are to eat with me in public). I nibble, like a mouse, hoping to stretctch out the experience as long as I possibly can (I learned that from living in a big family where you got one—count it one—helping and no more. So hurrying did you no good). Like a mouse, I nibble, just to make the experience last longer (another reason my chidlren just love to eat out with me). But sadly, most days it's impossible to dig up any enthusiasm for the fare. After all, it's one thing to go into raptures over Chateaubriand. It's quite another over cereal and yoghurt.

Which brings me to one of the reasons I've been counting down to Italy. I can't think of anyplace else in the world a meal is such a symphony. The French think that they rule with their sauces you can't pronounce that take three days to make and five minutes to eat. But for me, I'll take fresh pasta, a glass of red wine and the sun warming my shoulders as church bells chime the hours.

I always put recommendations on my website for any restaurant I've enjoyed. I may have to start an entirely new website for Italy. The truth of the matter is, I have never had a bad meal. I know they're possible. I read it all the time on Trip Advisor. But I've been lucky.

I wonder if it's because from the minute I sit down the waiter realizes that while I'm not an expert, I am certainly a devoted fan. For instance, I supped at Il Bottole in Matera. I ate alone. At first the waiter was a bit hesitant. But when he poured my wine (a Primitivo from Matera) (didn't I say that like I knew what I was talking about?) he saw that I approach wine like any other food. As if I'm courting it. Approach coyly, hold gently, savor with eyes closed the surprise, the delight, the mystery of its make-up. It doesn't have to be complex. It certainly doesn't have to be expensive. All I ask is that the chef is as delighted by his own work as I am.

So the waiter sees me light up like a saint hearing heavenly choirs, and he smiles. And it's a special smile, not one of those “I'll put up with her because it's my livelihood” smiles, but a smile of companionship, of superiority that we two can recognize beauty.

He asked if he could order for me. To me, a great compliment which I gladly accepted. After all, I know what the best regional food of St.Louis is (toasted ravioli and Ted Drewes's frozen custard), but I want to know what he feels proprietary toward in Matera.

Well, he had good taste. Of course I'm not organized enough to remember to write down names, but the first course was two offerings, a small tart of ricotta cheese and vegetables (and to tell you how much I loved it, I HATE carrots. Not in this), and aa variation on bruschetta with (I can't make this up) charred char, tomatoes and shaved ricotta. Enough to make saints weep.
My second course was a breaded cod cooked in olive oil with potatoes, olives and tomatoes. Yes, thank you. It was that good. I barely refrained from tilting the plate straight down my throat. Add to that the smooth complexion of that Primitivo wine, and I was having my version of holy communion (wow, can I hear my mom's voice chastising me for that one).

Even the Italian version of fast food, a cafe Americano and zucchini quiche seems to be more exotic, more flavorful, more satisfying. Maybe it's the sunlight. Maybe it's being away from my normal staple of sandwiches and salads. I'm not sure. All I know is thank heavens Italy is all uphill, or I'd never fit into my clothes again. Although it would certainly be in a worthy cause.
Now that I've become familiar with Matera, though, I need to find out whether the Amalfi cuisine measures up. Or if the Roman cuisine can compare. I hope you dont' mind following along. I promise I'll try and make it as palatable as I can (which, in Italy, really isn't that tough to do).

And Now, a Pause in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

2010-09-29T13:03:00.001-05:00

For the next three weeks, I'm going to be changing my blogging schedule, although it will serve much the same purpose. I'll still talk about my writing life. But I'm going to be couching it in terms of the trip I'm on. I'm writing this from Matera Italy, where I'm attending the Women's Fiction Festival. From here I'll be traveling to the Amalfi Coast, Rome, Tuscany and Venice with my family in what I call the Flying American Tour. I want to at least touch each place so I know what it feels, smells and tastes like(Matera feels like sunlight, smells like fresh bread and cappuccino, and tastes like olives). My family wants to see as much as they can. So we compromise.

What I will also be doing will be scouting for my books. Just like Mel Gibson's set decorator for Passion of the Christ did when he walked the streets of Matera's Sassi district, I hope to find inspiration, confirmation and serendipity. I hope that the ideas that are gelling in my head for a story set in Italy just after the Napoleonic Wars will fine a setting, a voice and a score. It certainly worked in India. I found three characters and four stories there.

So here in Italy I will report on my success or failure in achieving at least the same. The fact that my search will entail sipping wine on a balcony over the Mediterranean, strolling medieval walled cities and gliding along the canals of Venice just means that I am the damnest, luckiest girl alive to have this job. It sure beats the hell out of fighting my way through ER hallways without spilling the pan of urine in my hands.

And if I may be pardoned for it, I will also do just a tiny bit of gloating over the fact that I was able to organize a champagne tour on a beer budget. Because besides being an author, I'm also Queen of Internet Travel. And I take both positions very seriously.

Ciao! Ciao!

J.K. I'd Like to Buy You a Drink

2010-09-03T04:48:00.001-05:00

I hope J.K. Rowling makes more money than God. Not just because I thought the Harry Potter series was seriously brilliant, beautifully innovative and clever as hell. Because J.K. Rowling seduced generations of kids into reading.

I admit. I came to Harry late. But then, my kids were already grown when he showed up. I didn't have anybody to take to the midnight parties or warn that if they didn't get their homework done, they couldn't read the next installment before their friends. I couldn't imagine what could cause such passion.

As I finally read the series though (in a two week period), I felt cheated, because I didn't have kids to discuss it with. Because it isn't enough to read the series, to root for Harry and Hermione and Ron, to hiss at Snape and the Malvoys, to wonder at the magic of Dumbledore, you felt compelled to discuss it, argue over it.

J.K. didn't just write an adventure story with kids, it's a guidebook for kids in how to live their lives. As I said to my cousin when she objected on the grounds that Harry is a wizard and must be evil, Harry Potter is yet another retelling of the Christ story. It can't be more obvious. And along the way, he teaches strong lessons on the power of love, honor, loyalty and faith. And, my favorite, that the power of a mother's love is stronger than any other force in either world.

I did lasso my grown kids and make them talk to me about the series. I'm going back in the next few weeks after my deadline and rereading the series again. And I've discussed with other authors at length the respect I have for Rowlings's work. I got to the end of that sixth book and couldn't imagine how she was going to pull it off. As an author and student of mythology, I knew exactly what she had to do. I just couldn't figure out how she was going to do it. I tip my cap. She did it beautifully.

But as an author who has been hearing dire predictions about the future of literature, I want to give money to J.K., because she hasn't just enticed kids to read books, she's enticed them to read good books. Books that teach. Books that open their imaginations and expand the world. I was in the coffee shop today and got into a conversation with a girl who was deep into the Rick Riordan series about Percy Jackson. She was enthusing about the ancient gods, which she knew about because that is the world of Percy Jackson. I've met a lot of other kids who went from Harry Potter to Frodo Baggins, who graduated from the wizarding world to the Mars of Bradbury, the earth of Isaac Asimov.

When my kids passed through those all-important years when reading is ingrained on a person's habits, they only had RL Stine and Fear Street. Exactly where do you go from there? It took my daughter ten years to find her way back to reading. If Harry had been there, I contend she never would have taken breath. I think of the great books she missed, and it makes me sad.
So, thank you, J.K. If we ever meet, I'll stand you to a drink. Because I contend that without you the future would have looked a lot more dim.

Surprise!

2010-08-27T04:46:00.003-05:00

People often ask me who my favorite characters are. After thirty-six books, I've had quite a few. But I'll be honest with you. My favorite character is often one of the secondaries. The supporting players who fill out the story, but don't make it.

The reason for that is perfectly selfish. In any popular fiction book, the protagonists basically exist within a certain behavioral range. They aren't allowed to be amoral or completely selfish. In my current book, BARELY A LADY, what criticism I get is for my hero Jack, who wakes up from a bad head injury with amnesia. Among the first things he remembers --in detail--is the mistress he had after he divorced my heroine Olivia. There are people who simply can't forgive Jack for not vilifying the woman he believes was a positive force in his life, or for admitting that he had feelings for her.

He broke the rules, and some readers won't forgive him. Which is perfectly understandable. Now, if Jack had been a secondary character, nobody would have thought about it at all. Secondary characters can be anybody, do anything, and it's okay, because they're not the moral center of the book.

One of my favorite characters of all time was in my books BAD MEDICINE and HEAD GAMES. He is a lawyer named Frank, who is a sociopath. Not a violent sociopath, like Mouse in the Easy Rawlin's series. More your jolly con-man kind of sociopath. And he knows it.

I didn't know when I first wrote about him that he was a sociopath. I just thought he was a lawyer who had sued my heroine Molly Burke. Over the course of the book, though, I realized that he was so much more.

Frank was really fun to write, because he had few boundaries. And he was a surprise. The same happens with most of my secondaries. Because there aren't any restrictions on them, they become kind of my gift to myself, the surprise that makes the book exciting. I mean, I know what the story is. I know how it ends. But it's my secondary characters who change the flavor, at least for me.

In my Drake's Rakes series, I got to give my character Lady Kate an entire household of fun characters that I'm continuing to play with throughout the course of the series. In fact, as I write Kate's story, her staff is about to go out on a rescue mission.

Even more fun, I gave Kate a companion. An elder woman named Lady Bea, who was Kate's sister-in-law. But Bea is special. After suffering a head injury of her own, she suffers from a condition called expressive aphasia. She can hear the words and concepts she wants to express in her head. But the correct words simply don't come out. So Bea has figured out a rather convoluted way of communicating that most of the time only Lady Kate can understand. And if it gets really hard for Bea to communicate, she sings. I've had people tell me that Bea is their favorite character in BARELY A LADY. And truly? I can't argue with them. I adore Bea. And she hasn't even had her starring turn yet. Until then, I hope to have a lot of fun with her.

Secondary characters are like that.

Details, Details

2010-08-20T04:40:00.001-05:00

One of the choices authors make as they write their books, is whether or not to write the story in its proper order. Some write back to front. Some write the scenes as they come to them, some the character scenes, the clue scenes, the action scenes, all in a bunch. Me? I'm a firm proponent of writing the book in the order the story takes. I can't do it any other way, for several reasons.

First of all, I'm a lazy writer. If I wrote scenes as they came to me, I'd never write the tough stuff. It is a sad truth that it often takes only hours to write a chapter-long action scene. And then, the next page, which simply moves us from one scene to another, takes a week.

The other reason is because it's impossible to write a scene toward the end of the book first, for the simple reason that I don't know who these people are yet. How do I know what they're going to do?

As most people who know me realize, I am massively right brain dominant. It means I have a much easier time seeing the whole picture than I do the details. I can see my story in my head like a jigsaw puzzle I just have to assemble. What I don't see as well are individual pieces. It doesn't matter if I do storyboarding or astrology or character outlines. I can think I know everything about a character, but the characters don't really come alive for me until they act. Not only that, many times, the secondary characters show up completely without my permission.

For instance, in the book I'm working on now, EVER THE TEMPTRESS, the third in my Drake's Rakes series, I realized that the hero, Harry Lidge, has a batman. It certainly makes sense. Harry is a Major in the 95th Riflemen, who has just survived Waterloo. It's a great supporting character who can reveal all kinds of things about the hero and the backstory, and often provide comic relief.

So, who is the batman?

Beats me.

Oh, I figured I knew. But when I introduced him, it wasn't the hard, wiry, little Scotsman I'd intended. Instead, the introduction line went something like this; "(Harry) looked up to see his batman there before him, already throwing open windows to let in the air. The moonlight spilled in over the young man's features. Once when Harry was on the continent he'd seen a painting of angels by Raphael. If he didn't know better, he'd swear that one now stood by his desk; young, beautiful, with curly brown hair and big, liquid brown eyes that looked as innocent as a child's. Definitely too beautiful to be thrown into a troop of riflemen without protection."

Even worse, I realized that this angel's name was Mudge. Not exactly the moniker for one of the heavenly horde. So, what the heck did that mean? Where did he come from? Well, I have no idea. But I've spent so long doing this job, that I know that the best thing I can do is trust my muse. Somehow Mudge had been materializing in the sludge of my right brain, like the Urukai in Lord of the Rings (although much prettier). I know that he belongs there. I just have to figure out how. And why.

And that's just one character.

Pull Me A Pint

2010-08-18T04:53:00.001-05:00

As I tootled along the back roads of England, I found myself obsessing over pubs. I photographed them, counted them, and wanted to sit in each and every one and have a drink. What is it about those places that draws me? It isn't the drink. Believe it or not, I don't drink beer in any incarnation, be it lager or bitter or porter (yes, I am a sore disappointment to my Irish family). And it's a dead cinch that I can't drive around for long if I'm downing gin and tonics all day. But I really want an excuse to get inside those old doors and sit down.

I can't help it. Every time I go through a small town like Tetbury or Banbury, or Stow-in-the-Wold and see the white stucco or half-timbered front, the ale sign in the window, the name that evokes bygone eras, names like The George, the White Hart, the Bell Inn, and the tables out front in the sunshine, I have to stop. I order a gin and tonic just to have an excuse to sit either out under those umbrellas to watch the town pass by, or inside, where the chairs are worn, the floors flagstone, the walls half-timbered and the ceilings low.

It's not a proper pub if the floors don't list or the doors hang straight. An added bonus is a big, soot-stained fireplace, walls covered in framed black and white photos of the street out front over the years, and a bar that has been buffed by thousands of elbows. And then there is the name. The Merrymouth, the Royal Oak, the Kings Arm (do they really mean his arm? His gun? The branch of his government?For some reason it's always Henry VIII on the sign) and my favorite of all, from Tetbury, the Snooty Fox.

I've decided that it isn't the pub. I don't simply want an excuse to drink in every town in England (I don't even really drink the G&Ts. I just put them on the tables in front of me to give me a reason to be there). I think it's the history. I was walking through Burford, a town that reeked of the sixteenth century. The buildings were constructed of the famous honey-colored Cotswold stone, set with mullioned windows and topped with steeply pitched roofs. What, I wondered, were the insides like? If I closed my eyes, could I feel the lives that had passed through the rooms? Could I hear the centuries of feet that had trod the floors, smell the dinners and woodfires? Would I sense the pain and joy and grief that had resonated within the walls? I don't know. But I itch to see.

Well now, there's the problem. Most people have more sense than to invite a perfect stranger into their living room just because she wants to breathe the same air their ancestors did. The pub, on the other hand, is delighted to see me step through its doors. Even better, as long as I'm not flinging tables--or other customers--around, I'm welcome to stay. Even more, I've found that most of the people who own or work in the pubs don't need much encouragement to talk about the history of the place. So I don't have to simply imagine the people who have passed through. I have names and dates.

I can sit quietly, not necessarily even talking to anyone, and imagine the Royal Mail coach pulling into the couryard, horses snorting and stomping as they're being readied, women in long skirts and quaint bonnets being shown into back rooms for tea. I can see the farmers and shopkeepers gathered after a long day in the smoky taproom with their pints and their Wellington boots and their flat caps. I can feel the core of village life passing through these doors.

And since that is what I traveled to England to do, I don't mind at all that I've missed seeing a National Trust property so I can sit in the pub down the road for another hour.

Me and My Sari

2010-07-18T01:31:00.003-05:00

About a year ago, my husband and I got the chance to travel to India for a wedding. While there, I took the opportunity to do some research for my Drake's Rakes series. So far Grace and Harry Lidge both lived there. So I hunted down the places they would have lived, and I interrogated every person I came across about the unique customs I saw, the exquisite art, the opulent architecture.

I came home with a bonus. My sari. I had planned on getting something made from the delicious fabric that is sold from every fourth storefront, I swear. But I had been strongly warned away from saris. "Western women are forever getting into trouble," I was told. "They don't know how to put on a sari, which means it tends to fall off at the worst moment." I wasn't about to challenge fate.

My hostess refused to listen. She wanted me to wear a sari and have my hands painted with henna for the wedding. When I told her of the cautions I'd heard, she told me she would have a 'western' sari made for me. So, two days before the wedding, she took me to the tiny town of Rourkela where we visited a fabric store(she almost couldn't get me back out. I swear I heard angels sing in there). Once I picked out my material, we walked across the street to the local tailor, and she asked him to make me a 'western' sari.

I know. You've probably never heard of a western sari. Trust me. Neither had the tailor. He, his staff, and my hostess spent half an hour tugging material around me and arguing. But they must have come to some conclusion. He promised the sari for the next day.

Personally I consider him and his staff genius. They constructed a sari that includes an elastic waist and a zipper so the skirt wouldn't fall off. And unless I undress, you can't tell. Even if I say so myself, it looks great. But then, I contend that every woman looks beautiful in a sari. I've made it a point to wear it when I can, simply because I love it so much. And because I'm not the one who has to wash and iron it myself.

Winners!

2010-07-12T17:05:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to both Karen and Linda! You've each won a signed copy of Barely A Lady.

Please email my assistant at kimscastillo @msn.com (no spaces) with your mailing address. She'll get your prize out to you.

Stay tuned next month for another contest.

You Get a Page

2010-07-09T05:00:00.002-05:00

My friend Karyn and I used to play a game. We were mall-walkers in those days. Half-a mile up, half a mile back. We did the first circuit fast, scouting out the stores, and then, if we needed to, we'd stop on the way back and make our purchases. We were deadly Christmas shoppers.

The stores we never missed, though, were the book stores. Barely breaking stride, we'd swing into the store and head over to the new book section, where we'd troll the shelves like vampires running through a blood bank. We scanned the covers of every new book we saw, no matter the genre, to see what struck us. What was current, what colors were hot (hot as in, much in use, not....well, you get it). And the covers that struck us would get picked up.

We didn't choose by authors. This wasn't personal preference. This was a test. If somebody came across a book written by an author he or she didn't know, what would attract them enough to pick the book up. If we were that author, what did we think would work for us?

Yes, I know. Publishers had entire departments who do that for them. Art departments, marketing departments, sales departments. But ya know? The sales force's name is not on that cover. Mine is. So I have always felt the need to at least be educated. And I've found that the only education better than that run down the bookstore shelf is a regular stop at a local used book store. If you want the latest gossip on what's hot, what people are looking for, what they respond to, forget focus groups. Sit thee in a used book store. I knew Christine Feehan was going to be a hit before her own publisher did. I knew that romantic suspense was about to make a big surge when the editors at conferences were still shaking their heads and asking for westerns.

But the next best thing is to test yourself. Pretending you don't recognize any author, what else makes you pick up the book? Cover art? Do you want a man or a woman, or both? Bright colors? Traditional poses? Full moons for paranormals or horses for historicals? Quotes by other authors? New York Times Bestselling author?

Okay, so you've reached for one. Next, read the back. Is the cover copy hopelessly generic or well-enough written that you're intrigued? Does it leave you wanting to know more? Yes, the editorial staff writes cover copy, but more often than not, I've been asked for input. So I have to pay attention.

Intrigued, you open the book. And here is where the rubber meets the road. You get exactly two paragraphs. Not even the whole page. Because nobody has time anymore to wade through pages of text before deciding to buy a book. I'm a huge proponent of the first line. As somebody said, "The first line sells this book, and the last line sells the next." But really, it's the first paragraph.

Does it drop you right into the author's world? Does it answer an unanswerable question? Does it tease or excite or soothe, depending on what has been promised on the cover? I work an inordinate amount of time on my openings. Because after trolling all those bookstores, I know that all I'm going to get is that first page. That first paragraph. Maybe no more than that first line.

I spend an inordinate amount of time on my openings. I never cement them in until the entire book is finished, since by then the opening has changed at least a dozen times. I change where I open the book, I might change whose point of view the book opens in. I might just change the lines. For my new historical romance, BARELY A LADY, I didn't make a final decision on my opening until the manuscript had been through my editor. Not fast enough, she said. Not immediate enough. True, my heroine is in a pickle of a situation, but I had to set up her normal world before showing how it's about to change drastically. All good, but I really needed a more compelling opening.

So I fretted. I fought. I paced my house like an expectant husband. And finally, it came to me. The book doesn't open with my heroine. It opens with my hero. And he's standing at the edge of the battlefield at Quatre-Bras, the day before Waterloo. The opening goes like this. "It would take a miracle to get him out of this alive. And he had the feeling he'd used up his share of miracles."

Because I'm a new name in historical romance, I have to rely on my cover, on the cover copy and on those two opening lines to lure in new readers. Grand Central gave me a luscious cover. We got a great quote from Eloisa James, and the ever-important New York Times bestselling author on the front. I even love the back cover copy. I can only hope the opening lives up to them all. I guess we'll find out.

I have many favorite openings, from "I dreamed I was at Manderly again" to "I found myself in a empty house with a dead body, a bare-breasted woman and a lawyer. The rattlesnake in the paperbag only complicated matters." (Earl Emerson, Fat Tuesday). How bout you? Are there any openings that made you buy a book? Any you remember fondly or not so fondly?

In Praise of Big Bus Tours

2010-07-07T05:00:00.003-05:00

Now, as anybody knows who either knows me or has been reading my travel blogs, I am not the kind of person who usually joins tours. I'm too impatient, and too impulsive. If I want to stop to take a picture(and I do. Often), I want to stop. Then and there. Not so possible on a bus tour. I also want the pictures that nobody else gets. Also tough to do when you only stop where all the other buses stop, for as long as they stop, and wander about with the thirty other people on your bus. And I want to go the places other people just don't go so much. You see my theme here.

As I have also said, bus tours are wonderful for the people who enjoy the safety and comfort of having somebody in charge who knows the country, who like making friends with the other people on the tour and sharing the discoveries with their new friends. Or, for people who simply want to get a good overview of a place so they know what it is they want to visit when they return. Which is where we come to the one bus tour I take every time I travel to a new city.

I take the city tour bus. In London it's called the Big Bus Tour. I've been to London four times, now, and I've hopped on Big Bus every time. First of all, because it does give you a great overview of the city. Second, because it's the easiest way to get around to where you're going to go anyway. Easier than reading the local bus schedule anyway(although I'm pretty darned good on the Metro/Underground/Subway, whatever you want to call it---a brilliant way to get around any city).

Anyway. If it's a doubledecker bus, I'm the first one on the top, where I can see the architecture unimpeded, and get the overall feeling of the area we're driving through(is it bustling? Quieter? Noisy? Full of historic buildings or 20th century behemoths? Narrow streets or boulevards? Dripping green or burdened with concrete?). Atop a bus is the best place to find out, especially when you have a friendly driver and guide to correct mistakes or offer extra tidbits.

Even better, you can get on and off at will. Oh, they have set stops, but in most cities they're very well placed so you can walk all you want and catch a later bus back where you're going. On this trip to London, I picked the bus up at Victoria Station, hopped off at Green Park so I could walk the streets of Mayfair and St. James, got back on the bus at Green Park, road around to Buckingham Palace and walked through the special art exhibit on Victoria and Albert(btw, he was gorgeous. He had eyes that pierced right through you. Her? I just wish somebody had told her the empire wouldn't fall if she'd smiled). Anyway, back on the bus, then over to Lambeth Palace where the Bishop of Canterbury lives and has the offices that dispense the famed special licenses for marriage.

On the bus, off the bus, as much as I wanted, with a final complete circuit so I could set the placement of each site firmly in my head. Oh, I love to walk the streets of London and Dublin, and fell madly in love with Prague. But I like knowing that if my knees give out, I have a way home.

Oh, and my secret delight about the buses? There is just something voyeuristic about sitting above all the rest of the city, where you can look down on people. Because people tend to protect themselves from being watched from the ground level. But they never think that somebody's looking down on them, and you get to see them at their truest. Sneaking kisses and straightening clothes, cursing a cab that came too close to a puddle or swinging a child in the arms. Laughter and tears and furtive glances, and I get to see them all.

So next time you're in a new city, if they have one of those 'hop-on-hop-off' tours, give it a try. At the worst, it's a $20 ride around the city. Sure cheaper than cab fare.

Let's Cut to the Chase

2010-07-02T05:20:00.000-05:00

I was going to write something esoteric about the fact that my book, BARELY A LADY, came out this week. I thought to wax rhapsodic about the joys of publishing.

Maybe next week. For now, I'm going to give you a break and skip straight to the good stuff. The contest. BARELY A LADY is out now on bookstore shelves everywhere. I want to celebrate. So I decided to give a prize to someone on the blog. All you have to do is leave a comment on my post and then hit the FOLLOW button on the right side. And because I'm in a particularly good mood, I'll give away an autographed copy of BARELY A LADY to two people. I imagine I'd be even more delighted if the comment you left was about BARELY A LADY(a good opinion is not mandatory)(it would certainly make me feel better, though). I'll announce the winners on next Friday's blog.

Good luck! Now, I'm going back to the work I'm doing on the third book in the Drake's Rakes series, EVER THE TEMPTRESS. I hope that by the time you finish LADY, you won't be able to wait to see what happens next.

The Joy of Planning

2010-06-30T07:00:00.003-05:00

I know. Anybody who has ever known me will look at that title and laugh. I hate to plan anything. Because of my ADD, I have--resentfully--learned to make lists and rely on calendars. But how much fun can planning be?

When it leads to a trip to India or Ireland or Chile is at the end of it, a lot of fun.

I love planning trips, especially now that the internet has made research cheaper. It has, conversely, made it harder, of course. Do you know how many B&Bs, inns and hotels there are in Florence alone? Do you know how many review sites there are? I could stay on line for the rest of my life, just comparing rental houses in County Kerry Ireland (in fact, I almost did).

As disorganized as I am in almost all areas of my life, I'm very organized in planning travel. I am, amazing as it is to behold, methodical. The first question is whether I've been to the spot before. If I have, of course it's an easier course. If not, then travelogues are involved, be it the Inside books, or Frommers or Rough Guide. I tend to look for the out-of-the way places, the towns big buses don't visit. It's why I initially visited the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. All the buses trundled around the Ring of Kerry, making it overrun and the roads dangerous. Dingle, at the time, was blessedly unchanged. Nothing stays the same, though. The buses finally found Dingle. I still go anyway. I fell too madly in love long before the buses changed the scene.

But I digress. Let's see. What's next? Dates, places, and then, my favorite, accommodations. There is no better way to spend an evening (or develop tendonitis) than to skim internet sites that specialize in travel accommodations. Some guides specialize in certain countries, like Alastair Sawday or Georgina Campbell. I'll mention them in reference to the pertinent trip. Then I check everything with a review site like Trip Advisor. I have found that if you get used to it, Trip Advisor is a wonderful tool. You just have to know what your expectations are as opposed to those of some of the reviewers. For instance, if you're visiting a family castle in Ireland that obviously isn't geared to rich tourists, it would probably be too much to expect spas and wi-fi. I interpret the review accordingly. I also tailor my expectations depending on who travels with us. Rick and I are more adventurous travelers than many, and would put up with more surprises than most people we know. For evaluating my possible choices, I've found that sites like Hotels.com and Travelocity also provide reviews that are pretty reliable.

Personally I look for something unique. Either a view or a special place, like a historic house, or something evocative: a villa in Italy or a horse farm in Ireland. I love staying in the country better than town, but I see the benefit of staying within walking distance of a pub. And if at all possible, I stay as far away from tourist hotels as I can. I go to France to see the French. I can see Americans in Akron.

And if I'm going to Colorado, I'd rather meet the people who live in Colorado, not St. Louis.

Of course the regimen is reliant on whether I've been to the place, or whether others are coming with me. I decide if I need help, as I did planning the trip to India, or not, as happens with trips to Ireland. I decide what help I'll need. I gather information about where I want to go and what I want to do. I have ten days in Italy. Do I have time for everything I want to see? If I have to sacrifice something, is it Florence or Venice? Since we're taking several of my siblings, do any of them have an opinion?

If necessary, we have a meeting to set down expectations and restrictions. When I took my brothers and their wives to Ireland, my one brother wanted to stay in a castle. My sister-in-law wanted to see wildlife. I could accommodate them both. I'm afraid, though, if one of them had said they wanted to attend a medieval banquet at Bunratty Castle, I would have maybe dropped them off. Fortunately, they know that.

Next week, we'll talk about the next phase...close encounters of the third kind.

My Mother Wouldn't Approve Part I

2010-06-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

If you sit with me for more than ten minutes, you'll figure out that my background is unapologetically Irish. My great-grandfather was a member of the Flying Brigades of the IRA in the 1870's and, according to the family, escaped Ireland one step ahead of the law for blowing up a statue of King George in Dublin Square (and we're damn proud of him). According to my Irish cousins, at least the part about his escaping the law because of his Republican activities (that's Irish republicanism, which is a far cry from American republicanism) is absolutely true. So I inherited strong beliefs about Irish history and culture, and the role of the perfidious (my mother's word) British in it all.

Considering the fact that because of careful tutoring by my parents I was raised without the traditional prejudices you'd find in St. Louis, which was, really a southern city, I always saw that British bias in the light of a great lesson in the growth and development of bigotry. I never really thought the average British citizen cut down all the Irish forests or starved the Irish peasants or really wanted them to die in the potato famine, but I do admit that even now I have to watch myself, especially when the British royal family is involved, or people talk history, be it Cromwell or the Potato Famine or Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. My instinctive reaction is to carry on the fight.

So why, my critique partner Karyn asked me, have I started writing Regency romance? With British aristocrats as heroes? Actually, I've thought about that a lot (while assuring the ghost of my mother that I'm not actually a turncoat). Someone first suggested I write an Irish historical. I can't do that. I know too much Irish history for it to ever be romantic. First of all, if the hero had money at all, he wasn't really (according to my family definition) Irish, but Anglo-Irish (you should have been in on the discussions with my mom about the difference between green and orange Irish. I couldn't even drink Bushmill's whiskey because it was...orange). And if the character was Anglo-Irish, he would have come to power in Ireland by having the lands of real Irishmen handed to his ancestors by British sovereigns.

So if I wrote what my mom would label a true Irish hero, he'd have to be a rebel, and we know how well that always turned out. If he was lucky, he would end up emigrating to American or Australia. And as a girl who considers her greatest dream to have land back in Ireland, emigration is not what I call a happy ending.

Okay, then, why not Scotland? They were also fairly often at odds with the British. They also always lost. Or got thrown off their land. Or starved. Same outcome. The lucky ones emigrated.

It's awful sometimes to know too much. I couldn't even watch Dances With Wolves. You know the end, where they escape up into the mountains? My reaction was, "Yeah, for what, six months? If they don't starve, the army'll still kill them." Really puts a crimp in the romance.

But the English, my mother would say? Well, yes. You see, if we're talking fantasy, (the same fantasy that has populated a mostly blond-blue-eyed British population with more black-haired-blue-eyed dukes than brown horses), then I can write good English aristocrats. Kind, thoughtful, in favor of Irish Emancipation. I can believe that they wouldn't ignore someone just because his accent had a hint of the brogue. I'm afraid he can't have lands in Ireland, because if he did, and he spent the majority of the book in England, that would make him an absentee landlord, which any Irishman could tell you was one of the roots of all the problems.....oops. There I go again.

But we're talking fantasy. The fantasy man. The fantasy relationship. The fantasy that a woman could meet the man who respected her for who she was (and be honest; there were as many aristocrats who achieved that fantasy as the one about being disgustingly rich and creating a utopia for everyone in the Irish countryside). The fantasy that this man and woman would not only want to have children, but that they'd be able to support them, so that nobody starved or wanted or ended up in a rookery doing needlework by candlelight to feed her starving children. And if you want a period of time when, even for the wars and the impending Industrial Revolution, society was solid, settled and prosperous (at least in a fantasy way), it was Regency England.

Yes, it does get in the way if you know too much history. It helps though, if you can find a place to pretend. Happily Regency England is that place for me (with apologies to my mother).

Anticipation is Half the Fun

2010-06-23T07:00:00.002-05:00

I think that's pretty true of everything, from travel to Christmas. The reality is never quite as sharp and sparkly as it is in your expectation. Well, maybe once when I saw Richard Burton in Camelot. My friend Vicki called from Chicago to say Burton was going to be touring there in Camelot. He was in his 50s, and had lived a pretty hard life. But one of my items on my fantasy wish list was that I'd get the chance to see the original cast of Camelot; especially Richard Burton.

I drove five hours through thunderstorms to get there. I vividly remember spending the entire time cautioning myself: Don't be disappointed. It won't be what you hope for. But it's still Richard Burton. You will be a cultural icon. You will have seen the Beatles live and Richard Burton in Camelot.

When the play finally started, I was so focused on not minding the dimmed and diminished Burton that it took me all of ten minutes to realize that, by God, he was brilliant. He was breathtaking. He was, as far as I was concerned, the only person on that stage. I have been very lucky to see some great theater, from Jerry Orbach to Ian McKellan to Vanessa Redgrave. Few of my experiences could come close to matching that afternoon watching Richard Burton.

But that doesn't happen often. So I've learned to enjoy the anticipation as much as the trip. Not that every one of my trips hasn't been wonderful. I've had rare and wonderful experiences. I've met fascinating people and shared wonders with my husband and friends. But just like anything else, during the planning stage, the possible is greater than the reality. I still have the chance to see everything I want, instead of having to settle for a museum because the rain is keeping us off a mountain, or missing the York races because your host is sick. But while it's still in the future, you still have the chance of seeing and doing everything you hope to. That is the time the maps are magical and you know that this trip is going to be the best you ever took. It's when, like Richard Burton in Camelot, the place you go will be even better than you'd hoped.

The Lure of Research Part II

2010-06-18T07:00:00.004-05:00

This being the part of the discussion where I admit to my slow descent to the dark side.

I was falling in love with research. I was beginning to change my relationship with it. Along about my fourth suspense, I found myself learning something in a forensic course about arson and thinking that I had to figure a way to put it in a book that until that moment had no arson in it (I burned down a house in BRAIN DEAD). Then, one day, I was at a Forensic Nursing conference, and I heard a guy talk about how he'd just taken the training to be a SWAT medic. And I heard myself say--out loud--"I have to write a book so I can do that." WITH A VENGEANCE was born. So instead of research serving the project, the project served the research.

Hello. My name is Eileen, and I research. And I've officially gone to the dark side. I've gone back to researching history. No. Not World War II. Not yet. (It's still a great book). I'm writing a trilogy that opens at the Battle of Waterloo. I not only know every regiment that served in the battle, I know what Waterloo teeth are and what happened in the barn of the Château Hougoumont.

The good news is that I've learned a few lessons. I haven't actually gone back to the beginning of the Hanover reign to find out why England was the way it was in 1815. I haven't even read a biography of Napoleon. But I do know who was at the Duchess of Richmond's ball and what kind of conveyances were seen in Hyde Park.

Okay, I did read a biography of Princess Charlotte, who would have inherited the British throne if she'd lived. But that's because she plays a role in the nefarious plot my heroes and heroines have to uncover. In their best sarcenets and superfines. And I went to India to learn how my heroine Grace Fairchild was raised and her good friend Harry Lidge came to be an adult. ( Well. I went to India. Why not find those things out while I was there?) I have several blogs on that trip that will explain everything. And this spring, I went back to England and Ireland to further research these books.

Okay. England. I only went to Ireland because I could. And because I write romance there better than anywhere else in the world. But England was an orgy of walking, talking, handling and writing, as I searched all the sites my characters would inhabit, from St. James to Bourton-on-the-Water. Suddenly my characters had not only names, they had references for their lives, from the elaborate barrel vaulting of the Burlington Arcade, to the longest village green in England at Frampton-on-Severn. My characters had not just names and backgrounds, but set decoration, and if you don't think that's important, I suggest you take Hogwarts out of Harry Potter and see how well you can visualize his world.

So for all those of you who cringe at the idea of research, come sit by me, and I will tell you that once you have surrendered to it, you will find your life enriched immeasurably (especially if you watch Jeopardy or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). Fall in love with it. Use it (please. I beg you). And let it take you places you never thought to go. Just remember. Not everyone at a cocktail party wants to know the history of the Tudors (but if you do, see me in the corner).

The Lure of Research Part I

2010-06-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

When I first wrote for publication, I sucked at research. I admit it. I never really learned how to use a university library. I'm a nurse. Nurses didn't really read extensively on a subject. We played with things. To make it worse, I'm a triage nurse. Kind of like a Jeopardy champion. We know a little about everything, but a lot about nothing. One of my friends likened our intellects to oil slicks. Because there was just so much we had to deal with, we only learned as much as we needed to across a breadth of knowledge that can be, quite literally, staggering.

So, when I wrote my first book, a Silhouette entitled PLAYING THE GAME, I basically wrote Singing in the Rain with me and Tom Selleck, set it in St. Louis, where I live, and made the heroine a nurse. It was the trifecta of no research. I figured that I knew how to write (been doing it since I was ten), but I didn't know how to research. So I'd write about subjects I knew until I could learn how to research subjects I didn't.

All in all, the plan served me quite well. I did made one almost disastrous mistake. Before I was ready (I could wipe on, but couldn't wipe off), I tried to write a historical romance set at the very beginning of World War II (no, the fact that nobody reads books set in World War II wasn't that mistake. It was another one). I set out to learn what I could about Europe at the moment Hitler invaded Poland in August of 1939. I got books. I trolled the library. I found myself absolutely fascinated by the history involved. And after months of this, I actually heard myself thinking, "Well, this information is vital to how the continent came to be the way it was when Hitler rose to power. I have to start the book farther back." The information was the Treaty of Versailles. Which was signed in 1919.

I put away my books and notecards and ideas until I could figure out how to discipline myself around interesting information. I wrote another book set in an Emergency Department. I wrote a book set in Hawaii, where I'd been on vacation. I wrote one in Alton, Illinois, which is right upriver, and deals with an author of children's books. No. Not exactly a huge stretch.

It was the suspenses I write that broke me free. First of all, I still got to set them in the Emergency Department. I set the hospitals in St. Louis. And since I don't have to do an inordinate amount of research on either, I got to spend my time learning forensics (okay, so it also helped me keep my nursing license up to date) (and I'd been fascinated with forensics since I was a pup in training). I got to talk to really interesting people (detectives, medical examiners, arson investigators) and play with things (lock picks, dead bodies--and no, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I'm not Dexter--guns). It was wonderful. I began to appreciate research. The problem is, I began to fall in love with it.

Eating My Way Around the World

2010-06-09T07:00:00.002-05:00

It isn't enough to see a new place or meet new people. Half the fun is eating. At least for me. So, when I speak of the trips I've taken, I will also speak of the food, the drink, the atmosphere. I've already included recommendations on my website for restaurants I've enjoyed in different places. I'll be able to expound on those in my blog, which will alternate with my writing blog. After all, one has a lot to do with the other.

How, you say? Imagination. Curiosity. The two cornerstones of writing. Sensuality, which comes in handy for romance. But the sensuality I refer to is the love of the senses. Enjoying what you see, taste, hear, touch and smell. Also very handy for a writer. For if you can't put yourself in the scene through your senses, your reader can't possibly connect with what you're saying, or the story you tell.

So I can tell you that I went to a pub in Ireland (if you know me, you've probably heard that before.). But what if I say I fought a damp night wind to push open a battered old wooden door into a dark and smoky room, frothing with the sound of laughter and argument. The walls are gray stone and cold, the floor the same wood as the door, even more scuffed and dulled by generations of hard boots and whirling dance. The bar itself is a work of art, the centerpiece of the room, where light glitters off the mirror behind and gleams like spilled water over the carved wood, where bottles stand at attention like guardsmen waiting for the call. The wood stretches smooth and cool as silk beneath my hand. The air is redolent with the tang of hops and barley, the ancient earthy smoke of peat bogs and the shallots that season potato soup. And oh, what a potato soup, thick and creamy, with vegetables bobbing like icebergs and steam wrapping around your hand. It's the smell of life and warmth and comfort, the smell of Irish potato soup. It's...

I have to stop now. I'm making myself crazy.. But you see what I mean. It is these things I search for when I travel. And I haven't even mentioned the people I shared my meal with, or the questions asked and answered, the opinions offered(in Ireland, if you want to start a great argument, ask directions anywhere. It's like a national sport). Or, for me, even better yet, the music.

In another blog. In many. Whenever I travel, I think of the things that strike me, and I want to share them. So what the heck? I will. And I'll share how I came to build a writing career from the traveling I've done. And will do. In fact, I'm heading back to Ireland in the spring, Italy in September, and hopefully, Chile in between. Because there's so much to see and do and feel and taste. And it all ends up in my books. Somewhere.

Meanwhile, I'll continue eating my way around the world.

Escape

2010-06-04T07:00:00.001-05:00

Thank heavens for my coffeehouse. (WIRED in South St. Louis County). The truth of the matter is that I have trouble organizing breakfast. And right now I'm in the middle of a trilogy that is taxing a brain already burdened with ADD, family, aged parents, publishing business, travel planning, all the little business a household demands like calling to see why your electric bill just shot up(a call that ends up taking most of the morning)and, oh, did I mention ADD?

But at my coffeehouse, nobody calls me. Few people have my cell number, and those who do know better than to call to chat. I do not chat on my cell. I spend as much time as I can getting away from the phone. I'm sitting here now at a table next to a bright wall, across from a fire in a cozy fireplace, with soft music playing in the background. I know all the staff, many of the frequent attendees like myself, and I've built myself a little routine.

I come in, get my coffee, lunch, carrot bread, whatever, and drag all my paraphenalia over to a table, or if I'm lucky, the back room when it's not in use where I can be completely alone. I borrow the funnies from the community paper so I can do the New York Times crossword puzzle. I check email and news on line. I make any travel arrangements I need to (I am the queen of internet travel), do spot research I need, and update my facebook if I have the mental focus.

And then, when I'm in the proper mindset, I begin work on whatever book I'm tackling. Last week it was PR for BARELY A LADY, the first book in my historical DRAKE'S RAKES trilogy; the line edits for NEVER A GENTLEMAN, the second book, and the writing of the third book, EVER THE TEMPTRESS. This week will be the revisions for NEVER A GENTLEMAN, the second book.

If you're confused, think how I feel. The good point is that I can at least take some of the distraction out of the equation. The only TV here is turned to CNN. I can't accidentally trip over the daylong TCM tribute to Ronald Colman or House Hunters International. Nobody can find me on the phone. There is no bed or couch to lure me for a nap, or plethora of little chores that can quite successfully keep me from work for an entire day. Here I don't have a choice.

So here I am. I just wish I didn't have to leave before it closed. I mean, I'll just have to go home and make dinner and go through the mail and remember all the things I should have done while I was enjoying myself at the coffeehouse. Oh, for an escape...

Someday I'll Go

2010-06-02T07:00:00.004-05:00

Yes, I have the wonderlust. But so do a lot of people I know. People I've heard all my life say,"You know, someday I'm going to go." To Ireland, to Italy, to Branson. Someday, when the responsibilities are gone. When the money is just right. When the portents are good and the winds in the right direction. Some day.

I used to say the same thing. I had school. I had work. I had a husband. I had babies. I had a mortgage. And all the time I read those travel books like porn and dreamed, just like everyone else (everybody has these little dreams. I'll write a book. I'll try out for the local chorus. I'll do what I really want to do).

I've been lucky. I actually got to live out a big dream. I was a nurse. A good one, mind. But an unhappy one, because I needed some kind of creative outlet, and I'd told myself that I'd do that 'later.' It was my husband who refused to let me wait. My friend Katie who gave me a direction. Katie and I worked trauma together, and would spend hours on the parking lot after work saying, "There has to be something better than this." She was the one who suggested I try writing. It gave me courage. It made me realize that it was okay if I did something for myself.

At the same time, as a nurse I kept seeing a pattern repeating itself. I kept taking care of people who told me of all the things they had meant to do and never would. The trips and creations and small, personal pleasures they had deferred until they were ready, until everything else had been taken care of, until they retired. Only they died first.

The lesson came home when I was thirty-one. I'd just had my second child. One of our dear friends who was attached to the Vatican had been begging for us to come see him. "Come over to Rome," he kept begging. "I can get you in the back door of the Vatican. You can see things normal mortals don't."

"Some day," I said. "Right now I have work and children and mortgages. Some day."

Before some day could happen, my friend died. At the age of 33, he drowned, and I lost the chance to spend time with him, to see the miracles of Vatican City at his side. It's a chance that will never come back.

It might not have changed my life if I hadn't just seen my mother die still holding the brochure in her hand for a trip to Ireland. Her first trip. The trip she'd dreamed of her whole life, that she'd saved for, waited for. The trip she would take some day, when everything else was taken care of. The trip she never made.

It finally dawned on me that things weren't ever going to be completely taken care of. That the people I saw wait for that perfect moment almost always waited too long, whether it that moment was something big or something small. As small as spending a day alone, or reading one book, or learning to dance.

So within eight months of the day my friend died, I booked my first trip to Ireland. I remember circling for landing, and the mist cleared to show those legendary green fields. As I looked down, I realized I was crying. Not just because I was there, because my mother wasn't, nor her father, who had dreamed just as hard.

Now, I knew, it would never happen to me.

I won't do everything I want to. But I'll definitely do some of them. I can't afford to wait. Too late happens too fast.

The Wanderlust

2010-05-28T07:00:00.002-05:00

I'm always telling people how much I yearn for adventure. For new experiences. For travel to new and exotic places. Don't get me wrong. I love St. Louis. I like being in the same city as my entire family. But it has long since been a widely acknowledged truth that I was born with the Irish wonderlust.

I was the one who seemed to be able to get out of my playpen at eighteen months with disconcerting regularity to show up across the street looking for cookies (my father never did figure out how I did it. No matter what he did, next time they turned around, two of the playpen bars would be lying on the ground, and the front door would be swinging shut). I remember discovering a storm culvert at the end of my block that stretched out into the woods behind the neighborhood and thinking how exciting it would be to follow it to the source, like a suburban Nile. To my huge disappointment, it went no farther than one street over where my cousins lived. I'd already been there. No adventure at all. (Although it did go through the woods, which still hold a strong memory for me as "The Place of Adventure.")

To my greater chagrin, my mother had to come find me when she once again found me missing. She was not pleased. She let me know with the business end of a hair brush. I'm sure I scared the bejesus out of her. If her memory is correct, I was four.

It was difficult as a child. We had no money. We had a family of ten, including my grandfather, which meant that our vacation choices were two: floating down the rivers in Missouri (fun) and my aunt Janie and Uncle John's cabin on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan), which turned out to be a magical place. The cabin is situated about fifty feet up off a private beach over the lake, and the cabin is separated from surrounding houses by dunes, so it was as if we were the only people around. We had the lake, which had stunning thunderstorms, we had the sand and woods, and we had the town, where massive tankers from exotic places pulled in with regularity (okay, so it was usually no more exotic than Detroit or Milwaukee. To a six-year old, that was exotic).

And yet, it was never enough. There was so much world out there, so many people to meet, so many foods to sample and historic routes to trace. There was so much to learn, and it wasn't in St. Louis, where, when I was growing up, the only language heard was English, and the most exotic people were the students at Washington University. I needed more.

Happily, I married the perfect man. Not only does Rick understand that if we have twenty dollars set aside, it goes to the next trip. He doesn't care that we'll never move from the house we've been in for thirty years, or that we never quite joined that country club or had season tickets to anything.

Not only that, but he travels the same way I do. Not something you hear in the wedding vows, certainly, but something that should have been in mine. As I share our travels with you, you'll understand what I mean. And how, if you are as lucky as I am to be able to see new places, you find someone who is happy staying in the same places, doing the same things, and eating the same foods.

I live by two mottos. From Auntie Mame, my mom's favorite quote: "Life is a banquet and most poor fools are starving to death." And, from somebody's bumper sticker: "Life is short, but wide." So I hope you'll enjoy sharing my experiences with me. Even if you're like one of our friends, who doesn't really want to get on a train in Calcutta, but can't wait to hear all about it from us. "We just got back from India," we tell him. "And you had a great time."

I hope you do, too. And if I can clarify anything, or tempt you into taking your own trip, or eating at any of the cool places I've gone (and no. I have not eaten eyeballs or grubs. Rick is another matter entirely), jump in. Because life is short. But it is very wide.

Going Back to Ireland

2010-05-26T07:00:00.002-05:00

Funny, but this is the way I always think of it. I wasn't born in Ireland. Neither were my parents or grandparents. But from the time I can remember, I was always going to go 'back' to Ireland. It might be because that was the way my Grandpa spoke, and my mother. As if we'd only meant to visit the US for a few years and somehow forgot to catch the boat home. It was the first foreign country I wanted to visit. It's the only place on earth that I want to buy land. It figured in dreams and pride and memories that took on mythical proportions over time. And so by the time I finally went, it should have been a disappointment.

Not even close. I can vividly remember sitting in the plane as we came into final approach to Shannon. It had, predictably, been cloudy, a grim gray that wrapped the plane like batting. I kept my eyes focused out the window, though, waiting, breathless (really) for the first sight of that legendary green. I was trying not to hope for too much. After all, it was fall, and back home the ground was as gray as these clouds. The trees were at the end of color, and the sun rested lower in the sky. What could I honestly expect?

A miracle. At least to me. Suddenly, from one breath to the next, those clouds frayed like pulled cotton, and for just a second, I saw it. Blue-green. Chartreuse where the sun shone through. A checkerboard, an ocean, a stained glass window constructed f greens and blues and yellows.

A hint became a suggestion, and suddenly, like a magician pulling back a cape, it was there. And it was everything I'd dreamed of. Everything, I think, my mom and grandpa had dreamed of. I know a thousand and one people could look at that same sight and say, "Why, isn't that pretty?". But there are others, like me, who lose their breath too entirely to speak. They feel the sudden swell of wonder and don't even realize that there are tears on their neck. They hear a funny voice in their head that just says home.

I contend that there is some one spot on earth for everyone that says the same thing. The landscape seems to embrace you, to comfort you like a friend. The air is purer somehow, the sun more sweet (notice I didn't say brighter. I am, after all, talking about Ireland). Even if you're lucky enough for it to be your own back yard, if you pay close enough attention, you'll feel the world slip into place. You'll hear that seductive voice in your head. "You've come home."

That's the voice I heard that day in 1983. It's the voice I hear every time I go home. Yeah. I've long since given up. I might never have the money to actually buy land there. I might forever be the visitor from the US. But when I'm here and see that particular shade of green, a hot yellow spring green that turns inexplicably blue in the shade, I know. I really am home.

Going It Alone

2010-05-21T07:00:00.001-05:00

I admit it. I like to travel alone. Not that I don't like to travel with my husband, or my children, or my family. I do, especially Rick. We travel in the same way, assimilating into a new culture by watching and listening.

But on this trip to England I'm all on my own. Which means that I don't have a wing man, true. But it also means that I can go where I want to, even if I catch a sudden inspiration and turn on my heel to go back where I came from. I don't have to worry about time or distance of whether the person I'm with can take my pace, or wants to see what I do. I can sit in a restaurant for hours nursing a glass of wine and reading, and nobody complains. I don't have to constantly worry I'll lose the person I'm with, or that they'll be distressed or angry or, the worst, bored by what we're seeing.

True, when I plan a trip I send out an advisory that goes something like this. “I'm the one planning this. We're mostly going to see what I want to (i.e., in the fall we're doing Italy, and by damn, we're seeing Pompeii. I've wanted to see it since I was seven. The nice thing about Italy, though, is that I can sit the non-participaters down in a coffee shop and let them watch people while I'm checking out 2000 year old salacious mosaics).

But here and now, with no one to rustle a map in my face or sigh loudly or try and give me the correct directions in a rising tone of voice, I can get completely lost on the back lanes of England and enjoy the lambs and wildflowers and quaint country cottages without worrying that I'll never find my way home. It's England, for heaven's sakes, which is about the size of Illinois. And while the bigger cities are woefully undersigned, you can't turn a corner in a country lane without seeing a sign to five other little hamlets. And I swear each of those hamlets is more pretty and quaint than the one before.

So the only time I have to be on time is catching the train. Other than that, I'm okay. I'm on my own, after all.

Travel Tip #342

2010-05-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Whenever somebody I know gets married, I give them the same advice. “If you don't enjoy yourselves, you're missing the point of the day. But remember. No matter how well you plan, something will go wrong. Plan on it. And when it happens, laugh. It will end up being a great story.” I have the same advice for traveling.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm about as organized as a soccer riot. But the one thing I organize to within an inch of its life is my traveling. I actually do color-coded spread sheets(when my brother the CPA saw that, he was speechless for a full five minutes). In fact, the trip I'm on now was so organized. I had spreadsheets. I had notes. I have a GPS, and plans to circumvent any problems.

I was going to get a SIM card for my phone so I didn't have to pay exorbitent US rates in England. I put Skype on my computer so that when I was in range of wi-fi I could call even more cheaply. I was going to blog almost every day.

Well, I have a feeling you'll be getting this late. I'm heading into my third day in London, and so far, a)the SIM card doesn't work, b)the Brits aren't nearly as wi-fi mad as we, so don't think it necessary to put it in every coffee shop in the city. Starbucks does have it, but you pay, and so far it's only let me online once for about half an hour(did I tell you computers hate me?) So much for Skype and blogging and Facebook.

Not that I'm not having a productive visit. I am. I spent today walking Mayfair and taking pictures(which did call me to the attention of the Metropolitan police who were standing guard at the Saudi Arabian Embassy, which was once a great Georgian house set back from Curzon Street(and which belonged to some Captain of the Guards, although I can't find out who, because I still can't get on the internet). I ate at a very cute bistro in Shepherd's market at the edge of Mayfair(and how a shepherd's market got to be anywhere near Mayfair, I'd like to find out....right after I learn about that house on Curzon), put faces to all the places I'd heard about, including Berry Brothers, Lock Hats and Purdey gunsmiths.

But for now, I can't share that with anybody. All I can do is write it down for the time in what feels like the distant future when I'll be able to post it.
It'll make a great story some day.

Travels with Dave

2010-05-03T07:23:00.004-05:00

One of the fun things about traveling is bringing friends along. I love to show them new spots, share things I love, and discover things they love. Well, I've taken it to a new lever recently. One of my good friends died suddenly last year. I say he was a good friend; his wife is a better friend. She's the person who greeted me my first day in the ED years ago. She's the person beside my husband who encouraged me to write. Katie and I have been friends through years of trauma, marriage, children and her divorce. I had moved to a different hospital by the time she met Dave, so I heard about him at lunch one day. Her eyes glowed like a little girl's as she told me of this younger paramedic/firefighter who approached her at work. He was handsome, he was fit, he was an adventurer, which Katie had never been. She became an adventurer with Dave. Anybody would. Dave had a way of bringing everybody along with him before you even knew you were going. Sailling, climbing, hiking, climbing, flying. Especially flying. I never got the chance to go up in the plane Dave and Katie built. But I've certainly heard about it.

Two years ago this June, Dave took his plane up and never came back. He suffered a heart attack up there in the air. I want to think that he died when the world was the most sublime for him, that he never knew what happened. I do know that since he died, we, his friends, have been carrying him around with us. Not in spirit, although there is that. Katie divided his ashes into little pill bottles, and we carry him nestled in our purses, backpacks and luggage around the world.

Today i'm in Ireland, and on this trip, I've brought Katie along. We're going to take Dave around with us, and on the last night, we're going to give him an Irish wake in a pub, and sing to him The Parting Glass. The last lines are "But since it falls that I should leave and you should not, then gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be too you all." It's an amazing trip to take. I'm writing a journal about it. so's Katie. But for now, raise a glass to my friend Dave, who you see in this photo taken in a music pub in Kinvara, enjoying the music. He'd be honored.

Eating My Way Around the World

2010-04-22T01:22:00.005-05:00

I've set myself a goal, and it involves travel and food, two of my very favorite things. I want to not put a pin in every country I can find on the Trip Advisor map, I want to eat there, too.

I haven't done too badly so far. According to that Trip Advisor map, so far I've made it to 450 places in 15 countries. But I tend to focus more on the space on the Trip Advisor that does not have pins on it and wondering when I can rectify that. I spend the time between trips talking about the last one and planning the next one.

Which is where you come in. No, you don't have to call Travelocity for me. But I'm a writer. I write about things that interest me. So I've decided that every Wednesday, I'm going to dedicate my blog to traveling, and it will be under the subheading "Eating My Way Around the World." Because, of course, that's what I'm attempting to do, and I'd love to invite you along....well, via blog, anyway.

Because I've done so much traveling when not blogging, I'll share both the trips I'm taking now and the ones I've already taken. I'll share tips I've figured out myself(like not wearing ballcaps, white tennis shoes and sunglasses to foreign countries--they call that the American Uniform), and some I've collected from other people. And, of course, how my travel impacts my writing, because it always does. Travel is my idea of advanced education.

So fasten your seatbelts and come along. I can't wait to get started.

Everything Changes

2010-04-20T00:01:00.006-05:00

I've been trying to figure out how to introduce this newest stage in my career. Oh, I've talked about the idea for my new book. I've shared the early progress of selling the book. And then, I know, I dropped the ball. I'll tell you something I found out a few years ago. I have ADD. I seem to be the last to know. What that means is that I finally have to admit that no matter how hard I try, I have an exceedingly difficult time organizing myself. There are simply patches of time when I can only do one thing. There are other times, like now, when I'm happy as a clam doing eighteen things at once. I'm blogging again. I'm starting to tweet. I'm planning trips.I'm writing three different books. But for the last two years, I've been much too quiet on the blogging front. That is because I've been consumed by writing the first two books of my new series. I'll talk a lot about those later. Now, I'd like to simply reintroduce myself.

I am Eileen Dreyer. I write historical romance.

My suspense readers might be surprised. I'm actually a bit surprised myself. I thought I'd be publishing my historicals under my romance pseudonym, Kathleen Korbel. I'm very proud of Kathleen(yes, I speak of her in third person). She is responsible for all my publishing awards, and my place in the RWA Hall of Fame. But, you see, Eileen is responsible for my RWA Honor Roll, which is what happens when you reach the New York Times Bestselling list. And I did that with the book I wrote with Jenny Cruise and Anne Stuart, THE UNFORTUNATE MISS FORTUNES. The decision was the publisher's, and, as I've said before, if you think I'm going to pass up a chance to work with those two women just because I preferred to use another name, you don't know much about me.

Well, the thing about making the New York Times list, is that it's a powerful thing(I plan on having it engraved on my tombstone. HERE LIES NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR, EILEEN DREYER). And poor Kathleen had never made it. So when my new publisher, Grand Central, decided which of my names would better sell a book, Eileen it was. And so it is that my newest book, BARELY A LADY, which makes its debut this July, is by Eileen Dreyer.

I don't want any of my readers to be confused. It's one of the reasons I've always used two names. The types of books each of my evil twins has written has been very different, from emotional relationship books to serial killers on the loose. And I don't want my suspense readers to think they're getting a book about serial killers when they see my name on the cover. On the other hand, one look at the cover should tell them. It doesn't exactly say 'serial killer.'

So I hope you'll hang in there with me. I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this new path in my career. I love history. I love trying to fit a strong woman into a historical context. And, okay, I put nefarious spies in the series, so I can still kill people. I just do it with dueling pistols instead of mac 10s.

This does not mean I am finished writing suspense. It means I'm not doing it this year. Who knows what next year will bring? Because if there is one thing that doesn't change, it is that everything changes.

This blog has moved

2010-03-17T12:27:00.001-05:00

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Let's See; Where Were We?

2010-01-24T03:46:00.000-06:00

Rejoice, my druids!

2008-03-21T16:55:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I seem to have a lot of flower pictures latey. But I just walked out my door to see that there were tiny irises blooming by the walk. Deep purple ones. It hit me right in the head that it's spring.

You might think that is a fairly obvious conclusion. But we've had a miserable winter this year. Cold, wet, icy, snowy, and just dismal well past the time we usually see the first shoots poking through. So the fact that the first time I see the daffodils poking through the mulch at the end of March is inconceivable here(usually it's the end of February, and then we have a big snow at the end of March and kill everything. A usual rule in St. Louis is that if the tulip trees bloom before the middle of March, just kiss those flowers good bye).

The other reason I'm so excited is that I decided long ago I must have been a Druid in a former life. Or many former lives. Several of my less complimentary friends have said I was actually an Irish fairy. The short kind. It doesn't matter. I live for the color green. I wilt and die in the winter when everything is dead. Or I should say I endure. From that first fallen leaf in September to the first tiny iris in Spring, I hold on, because I know spring is coming. I even realized a few years ago that all the artwork I buy has at least a bit of spring green in it. This last year I took that one better. My little writing office is painted entirely in neon spring green. My husband won't come within fifteen feet of it. I love it. It always makes me smile. And I don't fall asleep if I'm in there(a great peril in the winter).

Which is why you'll never see me relocating to Arizona(the only thing you should rake on a lawn is leaves). I can't tolerate anyplace that doesn't have trees taller than I. Believe it or not, deserts make me claustrophobic. I literally can't breathe. I swear I can hear the animals screaming for water--especially if the city has golf courses it's wasting water on. Also no surprise that the most holy place for me on earth is Ireland. And right now the lambs are arriving, and soon the bluebells and wild iris will take over. And it will be....GREEN.

I can breathe now. Wait til I get back to my writing. It's spring!

Eileen/Kathleen, the evil twins

The Continuing Story of Eileen and the Book

2008-03-10T16:53:00.008-05:00

When last heard from, my manuscript was languishing in publishing purgatory(that place where you sit for eons thinking on your sins)(in publishing, those are mostly of pride). The good news was that two editors reacted very well to my manuscript--actually it was more than two, but the sales forces got in the way of one. The bad news was that another five houses couldn't figure out what to do with me(not unusual in my career. I tend to write about fifteen months ahead of the curve).

Well then, off I went to Prague to visit already existing publishers and sightsee with my husband. I'll have my report on the historic Prague on my travel page soon. But wheil I was there, I was fortunately connected to Wi-Fi, because I actually got two offers. TWO. That's never happened before in my life. I actually had to make a decision.

It didn't come down to money. It never does with me. Of course, nobody's ever offered me the kind of money that makes your mouth go dry, so I don't know what would happen in a case like that. I would call these offers respectable. Both from successful houses, from editors I respect. And both from editors who said that they loved what they saw on the page, even the history that had confounded a couple of the other houses. What do do? What to do?

I'm not going to get into all my deliberations. Suffice it to say that I'm very grateful to have a very left-brain engineer of a husband, because he sat down with me and did a very credible 'pro and con' list for each house. I contacted authors from each house to ask their experiences(and let me say right now, that in my experience, authors--especially romance authors--are some of the most generous, helpful people in the world. They didn't just offer help, they offered the truth).

The outcome? I got to take my husband out in Prague to a fabulous restaurant to celebrate the sale of my historic trilogy to Grand Central Publishing(formerly Warner books). We've talked a lot back and forth, and God willin' and the creek don't rise, they will be out in succeeding months in 2010. I feel bludgeoned. I feel exhilerated. I feel....of course. Terrified. I'm now on a very tight deadline. But then, my cousin, who once wrote scripts with me assured me that I was no damn good til the two minute warning. So I figure I'm in the perfect position.

I'm still trying to convince myself I'm a historical romance author. It's such a new place for me. But I absolutely adore the period, and I find that there's enough action amid the romance for the heart of any suspense writer.

I'll keep you posted on my progress. I'm also going to add a research page to the Kathleen side of my website. I'm using a lot of the same old research, but I've found some really cool things to add to it. Because to me, historical means historical. Not just dressed in outdated clothes. I just hope I make my history fun.

Kathleen and Eileen, the evil twins

A small break in writing

2008-02-19T15:04:00.002-06:00

I'm interrupting the saga of Eileen and the New Book to present you a quick recommendation. Prague. There. Can't say it any faster. I'm here now, because my husband has business, and I have business.I'm seeing my agent and publishers. Yeah. Does that sound cool or what? Believe me, a girl from St. Louis does not think she has that combination of words in her vocabulary. Turns out, I do.
The Czech people are famous readers. One of their political heroes, Vaclav Havel, was a playwright. They have the largest bookstore in Europe in Wenceslaus Square. I've been there, and I can tell you they aren't exaggerating. I was on a cruise ship once, and I think it was smaller. As a matter of fact, that store was my definition of hell. Four floors of more books than I'd seen in one place in almost my life, and I couldn't read any of it.
I couldn't' even fake it. The Czech language, being slavic base, is so completely different than English that they have sounds that we simply can't make(I told one person that I think they use that sound just to prove that we couldn't). It's a beautiful language, soft and rhythmic. But terrifying at first glance when you walk down into the train line and all the signs are a variation of Vindhradska. And I'm not even adding the diacritical marks. I was paralyzed, until I realized that there was a lot of English around, and the universal symbols actually are universal. Taking the metro was a breeze(I also found that almost everyone speaks English--except all the Russian tourists)
The city itself is a fascinating mix of ancient history(I was staying at a hotel they said was "only built in the 17oos, as if that didn't count as historical)(it was haunted, too, but that's a different blog), modern progression and the remnants of communism. In fact, I think we Americans should make it a point to come here, if only to talk to people who had only recently fought themselves free of a totalitarian regime. It makes you realize how much we take our freedom and democracy for granted. It's a humbling experience.
Just as an example, if you look closely at Czech architecture, it's very ornate. Eastern rococco, I call it. Beautiful and expressive, with fantastic creatures spouting from eaves and churches topped by onion domes. Imagine that culture being constrained by another that thinks square block concrete highrises are the way to build a city. I think it would kill a soul.
Tonight we're in a business hotel in the burbs, but tomorrow we move to a hotel in the historic district, a 14th century convent that's been renovated(there seem to be a lot of hotels that were old religious houses). I'll let you know how it was on my travel page. But I can't wait, because I think that's the real Prague. I've only gotten a taste so far. And I still recommend it.

Eileen/Kathleen, the evil twins

Late Frost in the Garden

2008-02-05T01:45:00.000-06:00

So I got the first news on the latest proposal. And, contrary to the sad flower to the left, it really is a mixed bag. One very veteran editor said it made her cry(that's like making Dick Cheney cry). One said that there was too much history(in a historical romance), and another said it simply didn't fit their current requirements, which is perfectly valid.

It's not enough to have a great(if I say so myself) manuscript. Your story has to fit into the editorial slant of a certain house. For instance, I wouldn't think of sending a 300,000 word Viking Vampire Time Travel to Harlequin Historicals. They have a very strict word count.

True story. I sold my first suspense, A MAN TO DIE FOR, on a two-page proposal(never happened before, and certainly never since). By the time I finished the manuscript, the buying editor had left, and the editorial policy had shifted. I sent in the manuscript knowing that, so I wasn't surprised when they called to tell me that what I'd written no longer fit their list. Considering the fact that I sold the project on lines like "Her best friend still drops acid. Her ex-husband is a cross -dressing psychiatrist, and her mother has turned the third floor of the family home into the Chapel of Eternal Vigilance," you can probably pardon the publisher for thinking they'd get a light, fast, funny read. Unfortunately, once I figured out just why the mother had done this, the book had taken a much darker turn. So it was still funny(one editor calls my suspenses the funniest serial killer books you'll ever read), it was fast, but it was no longer light. I'd stepped away from genre, and the publisher didn't know what to do(The story ended well. I even won a RITA Award for the book).

So I'm not surprised that I don't fit somebody's parameters. But does that make me feel better about being rejected? Don't be silly. I still feel as if I've just been hit in the face with a swinging door. Huh? What? Ow, that hurt. Because the long and short of it is that my perfect fantasy has been run over by reality. It doesn't matter how good the manuscript is. It matters what's going on--or not going on--in publishing. My lovely young garden has been hit by bad weather, and the lovely green shoots are a bit curled and brown.

But not dead. I won't allow it.

Eileen\Kathleen, the evil twins

The First Test

2008-01-20T00:12:00.000-06:00

The other day I posted about submitting my newest proposal. It is officially called THE THREE GRACES, a Regency historical romantic adventure(good heavens. How many labels can a person put on one book? Be happy I didn't include time-traveling or vampires. You could have been here all day). The heroines of this series are Mrs. Olivia Grace, a widowed companion, Miss Grace Fairchild, the daughter of a Guards colonel, and Her Grace, Catherine, Dowager Duchess of Murther. All three meet on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, and end up ensnared in a plot to overthrow the British throne. This is the first time except for my proposal that I've actually put that into words. It is something I've never done before, and I have to admit, I'm having the time of my life(nothing like beating up a hero to relieve your stress).

I wrote about the stage of proposing when the project was still pristine. The perfect moment in a book when it is still perfect and the next #1 on the New York Times . The next stage, inevitably, is to show it to a professional. If you have one, your agent. Well, I did that. And I have to admit, I did it with trepidation. I don't think I have to tell you that these are uncertain times for publishing. Everybody sees the numbers changing and nobody is quite sure how to stop the slide. What is selling? What is the next thing? What does the audience want? So giving your brand new, beautiful baby to an agent is akin to handing it over to Andy Rooney and hoping he's in a good mood.

I handed it over. I went to New York last week to talk to my agent. I think I held my breath through the entire plane flight and three acts of Cyrano de Bergerac(Kevin Kline. Be still my heart). I faced my agent over mineral water and prayed she would at least like the heroines' names. And I'm not sure what this means, but she didn't think we needed to change anything in the book. She liked it as it was.

I should be delighted, right? Please. Don't you know authors better? I'm looking over my shoulder, wondering what I missed. After all, she's sent the thing in to publishers, and I'm sure there's something both of us have forgotten to include. Another hero. An alien who exchanges Napoleon for Stephen Colbert. More sex(in romance that's never a mistake). And I'm ignoring it all while I write on the first book, because if I really thought of the fact that this brand new twist in my career is in the hands of editors who might like me but haven't ever seen me write historical romance and don't know whether or not they can really support such a thing(or more importantly, pay for it), I'd end up immobilized in a bathtub with a quart of Haagen Daz and wrinkled toes.

Now, I wait And write. And hope that what I'm working so hard on now doesn't get thrown away late. Cause I have to tell you, I think it's great. At least I'm having a great time with it. I'll let you know if anybody else does.

eileen/kathleen, the evil twins

It is finished. It has begun

2008-01-17T14:57:00.000-06:00

Actually I should have written this post about three weeks ago. But I've been having problems with my blog server, and if anybody hasn't told you already, I'm the last Luddite.

Be that as it may, the important thing is that I've put together a proposal for a brand new genre for me. Suspense fans, I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. It's going to be a bit before I can get my suspense in and see if it can be published. Which means that I'm focusing for a bit on romance. To that end, I did what I've been dying to do for years. I've begun a historical romantic adventure trilogy. The long and short of it is that I'm having a blast.

But the point today is that the proposal is put together. It has been sent in to my agent. And this is the most perfect point in a book's life. It reminds me of a garden in spring, when the detritus of winter has been removed, and the beds are pristine, the new mulch laid, and tiny green shoots forcing their way through the soil to prove that creation does repeat itself. At that moment, all is possibility. There have been no weeds or grubs or beetles to destroy the beauty you can still only imagine in those green shoots. Everything is tidy. The plants thrive. The flowers you wait for are still in the anticipation stage, and are still as bold and sweet-smelling and hardy as promised by the garden who supplied them to you. All is wonderful.

That is where I am(was three weeks ago. Bear with me here) right now with my next project. The idea that has been tugging at me for a good five years has found a voice. A face. A focus. I've defined my characters to the point of giving them family trees. I've scoured the internet and the British Heritage sites to come up with the perfect places for all my characters to live(I am not ready to launch a character until I know where he or she lives. It's stage setting for me, like Annie's house in Bull Durham. The minute you see that, she doesn't have to say a word to tell you who she is). I've put together a package of three books that involve sex, violence, pathos, suspense(okay, I couldn't get away from it completely), and humor. Not necessarily in that order. I madly love all my characters, eve the bad guys. I can't wait to see what happens. I can't wait to get to the desk to write(rare enough in an of itself) I've spent literal weeks trying to organize it into a comprehensive outline that will attract only the most enthusiastic editor.

And, like green shoots in the soil, it is still all possible. It has not been touched by editor or agent who think that if I'd just change a few things it would sell better. It hasn't been criticized or cast aside. It hasn't had a marketing department question its viability (are you sure the heroine has to be a duchess? Duchesses just aren't selling this week. Could we make her a prairie teacher instead?) It is still perfect in my mind, its future limitless, it's form perfect. It is a garden in spring. It is a young girl who sees her whole life spreading limitlessly before her. It is possibility.

Next comes the visit to the agent, who has the first chance to put a pin in my pretty balloon(okay, I'm mixing metaphors here). Meanwhile, I have to get back to see what happens to my heroine, who has just found her husband on the field of Waterloo in an enemy uniform.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Taking a Breath

2007-09-15T00:28:00.001-05:00

Those of you who are stalwart enough to hang in waiting for me to post a blog, your time is now. I actually posted two other blogs, and thought I'd done so successfully. Such is my keen knowledge of the internet, that I evidently didn't notice for four weeks that I failed--miserably. So when I logged in tonight, imagine my surprise to find that I hadn't actually posted since June, when the Miss Fortunes came out. A lot to catch up on, for sure.

First of all, thank you to everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who shared the experience of the Unfortunate Miss Fortunes with Jen Cruise, Anne Stuart and me. Because of you, Anne and I are first-time New York Times Bestsellers. We weren't WAY up there, but ya know, it all counts. As Nora Roberts said years ago when she made 17 and then failed to return for at least five more books. "I can still put it on my f&^*$# tombstone. New York Times Bestseller." I'm following Nora's advice. In fact, the granite company might be inscribing it right now, just in case my family forgets in thirty or forty years from now when I need it.

Secondly, hang on for a few days, and I'll catch you up on what's next. For my suspense readers, things are going to be slow again, I'm afraid. I'm working on a new book--and it's a doozy. I can't tell you about it, because it's something new and I"m just superstitious enough not to want to put the idea out into the ozone where somebody else can catch it(last time I did that, Ridley Pierson snatched it up and made a bestseller out of it--and no. He didn't steal anything. The ozone is where we float all our cool ideas, and suddenly they all come out in print at the same time). Anyway, the problem is that I lost my suspense house. St. Martin's finally admitted that they simply don't know how to promote me. I don't do a standard suspense. I'm different. So I'm writing half of the new book on spec(without contract), and taking my chances.

In the meantime, I'm playing over in romanceland. Not only am I finishing the trilogy for Silhouette Nocturne, featuring the horniest fairies in the Northern Hemisphere(Daughters of Myth--Dark Seduction out in Feb '08)(in case you wanted to know--and Deadly Redemption in the works now), but I just sent in an outline for a trilogy that's been in my head for the last seven years. I don't know if any of you remember Melinda Helfer, one of the original reviewers for RT, who reviewed contemporaries and regencies, but Melinda cursed me. Right before she died, the last thing she ever said to me was, "Eileen, you have to write a Regency." Well....

All I'll tell you is that it begins at Waterloo, and is as much adventure as romance. I decided to follow in the footsteps of Patricia Veryan, who did the best historical adventures I've ever read. More on her later.

But right now, I'm in Alaska. Yeah. The big A. My husband and I needed some serious time off together, so before I attend Bouchercon in Anchorage the two of us are taking the Dreyer Wilderness Tour(did I tell you I'm the queen of internet travel), the particulars of which will be up on my travel page when I get home. I tried to upload a photo from the Anchorage to Seward rail trip, but evidently I can't do that in Alaska. So I'll try again when we get back to Anchorage. And for a few days you might have to set publishing aside to hear my travel rants.

Now, it's time for some rest. I have to get up early tomorrow to walk a glacier and sail a fiord. It's a filthy job, but somebody has to do it....

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Creativity Central

2007-09-06T12:10:00.000-05:00

I always seem to begin my blogs by apologizing for not posting. I'm afraid that I don't have that wonderful brain that can schedule stuff like that. I just suddenly look up and think, "Oops. I haven't posted in a month." Which is actually probably better, since that saves you from my rants. I have trouble editing those down to acceptable statements, so you get the full blast of my momentary indignations.

The good news is that I am rant-free at the moment. That's because I'm in one of my most creative places on earth. We got to have a second week on the beach in Michigan, and besides playing dominoes, reading, reading, reading(I FINALLY got to read all the Harry Potters. Finished Deathly Hallows yesterday. Hooray, Harry!) and having happy hour as we watch the sunset, I've been doing some prodigious writing.

It's the most amazing thing. I never write with other people around. I'm writing out on the deck as the rest of my family lobs breakfast products over my head. I never write in the morning(I rarely even see the morning), but here I am on the deck overlooking the lake pounding keys so fast I forget to space between words. I never actually write more than one book at a time. But in the last two days I've completed 20 pages on the regency historical adventure series I'm proposing(and oh, baby, is there action), and another 12 on the last of my fairy trilogy for Harlequin Nocturne. Orla is having her day in the sun, and she's about to cause a world of trouble for the Dubhlainn Sidhe, the patriarchal fairy clan. I'm having a blast. I wish I had another week or two. Unfortunately(and only in the context of what I want to get written), my husband and I go to Alaska next week. I'll try and find cyber places to post my impressions( I AM going to see the aurora borealis if I have to track it like wild ox).

In the meantime, a reflection. I've decided that what I really am is a water person. I don't have to be in it. Matter of fact, I prefer not to be in it(especially Lake Michigan. We go in once a year, just to say we did, and last a good fifteen minutes). But I need the sight of it, the smell of it, the sound of it. And it has to be water you can see across(the Mississppi doesn't count as I frequently tell my husband). Lake Michican, the Irish Sea, the Pacific. Any will do. I just need to be there. There's something about the edge of the world by the sea that unleashes my creativity.

Imagine my chagrin when I came to that realization at the age of thirty, sitting in St. Louis, where the nearest ocean is over a thousand miles away. Sigh. Well, Michigan's only 500 miles, so I do get here. But oh, boy, do I wish I could do it more. Til then, though, I'll get back to torturing fairies and imperiling Dragoons. After all, I have twelve more hours of lake time left.....

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Because I'm too stupid to post sometimes

2007-06-28T17:01:00.001-05:00

Okay. You're wondering what the picture is. The picture is the prize I"m offering over on the Unfortunate Miss Fortunes blog. You see, we're having this contest about the book, and people are supposed to say what they'd like to do with the power my character Dee has(which is shapeshifting). We pick one answer, and they are awared the beautiful needlepoint I did of butterflies, all framed and ready for hanging. It's about 21" x 21". And it's a prize. It's not pictured on the Miss Fortunes blog yet, because I can't figure out how to load the #$%$ thing. It's a different program than the one I'm used to, and it's got me completely bamboozled. So in the meantime, I'll show it here. I can also invite you over to the Miss Fortunes Website(www.unfortunatemissfortunes.com) so you can post on the What You'd Do with Dee's Powers, if you want to. Or just laugh at me, since I'm so cyberstupid.

Back to your regular programming....

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

And now, ladies and gentlemen.....

2007-06-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

Funny thing about a publication date. In the end, it's more frustrating than rewarding. THE UNFORTUNATE MISS FORTUNES, the (funny, erotic paranormal) novel I did with Jenny Crusie and Anne Stuart premiered yesterday. I should have felt better.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled it's out. I'm so glad that we've reached the culmination of about three years of hard work, and as anybody who reads this kind of blog knows, only about half of that work was writing. We blogged, we websited, we contested(and still do). We cross-posted and sent books in a kind of author merry-go-round so that all three of us could sign each copy. We created needlework briiliance( I did needlepoint, Anne quilting and Jen knitting). We contacted everybody we knew and quite a few people we didn't, to let them in on the publishing news. Jenny's daughter Mollie did yeoman's duty on our website and newsletter. We've been stoking people's anticipation for at least nine months. And then on the day the book actually came out....

Well, I was sitting at home working on a new book. Publishing is kind of like that. I think it's why so many of us do needlework(one of the prizes in our contests over at www.unfortunatemissfortunes.com) or gardening or gourmet cooking(that last one would not be me). We need just a bit of immediate gratification. We work so hard on our books, from inception to publication, but by the time the book actually comes out--even by the time the reviews come out--we're at least one or two books down the line, usually stuck at the point(again) where we're questioning our wisdom in going into this business in the first place. We think we stink(we always do in the middle of the book) and carry around a sneaking suspicion that any reviewer who really liked our work was either paid by the publisher or two weeks off her meds.

So think how refreshing it is to focus on flowers(my addiction). After all, all they want is a little water and food, and they'll bloom happily for the rest of the summer. They don't want rewrites or better numbers or a new author photo from you (since the one you're now using was taken at highschool graduation). They don't care what your numbers were last year, or how much you're promoting yourself this year. They just want to make you happy, right this minute. It's refreshing.

I'm not actually at the "I stink" phase. I'm more at the "I'll never finish another project" phase, which often happens when the rest of my family interferes. But the message is always, "when they find out how bad I actually am--how I can't finish anything--they'll dump me faster than Britney Spears panties".

Add to that the fact that numbers come out so fast now, that we're all holding our breath (and praying, and lighting candles and invoking any household god of our acquaintance) that we show up ANYWHERE on a list. That's what publishing survival is all about.

So, am I excited that THE UNFORTUNATE MISS FORTUNES is out? Absolutely. It's my most dominant emotion of the day. Right behind terrified and wary.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Will give free books for review

2007-06-21T10:40:00.001-05:00

I might actually be too late on this. I'm in Michigan on vacation with the family, and only able to get internet in town(which, if you're on a beach in Michigan, you tend not to frequent). But here it is. My book with Jenny Crusie and Anne Stuart, THE UNFORTUNATE MISS FORTUNES, premieres very soon. In the spirit of sharing, we would like to offer a whopping 50 copies to people who have an active blog that's at least two years old. The only caveat is that we'd like you to blog a review of it on your site.

So, if you're interested in a free copy, please contact

http://www.unfortunatemissfortunes.com/2007/06/19/free-books/

Molly our brilliant webqueen will randomly pick fifty names, and send the books off post haste. And then we'll link with your site on the Miss Fortunes site. And if I can figure out how to do it here, I'll do that, too.

But don't think that's all. We're having ongoing contests through the end of August over at the www.unfortunatemissfortunes. com site. And I'm giving away three copies myself here. So sign up. And stop by the UMF site and see what you think. I do know that the reviews are coming in(posted on the UMF site), and with the exception of Publishers Weekly, who seem to think that it is not necessary to actually read a book to review it, have all been wonderful.

So stop by. Sign up. And let us know what you think. A good review is NOT a requirement. We just would like a review.

Now, back to the beach. I'm thinking of you all as I watch the waves and birds and sun. Really.

Eileen/Kathleen, the evil twins

What I'm Writing on my Summer Vacation

2007-06-15T20:20:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow morning--early--well, for me early is any time before they stop serving Egg McMuffins at McDonalds, I'm heading off with my family to the vacation cabin we've gone to since I was a year old. Now when I say my family, I don't just mean immediate. I mean siblings and families. This year I think it rounds out to about 30 people. I've said before that a drunk lady once labeled us "The Last Functional Family in America." It was on the beach in Michigan we had our run-in with her.

We have a whale of a time here. The kids are kids, the adults are kids, and the entertainment is watching storms come across the lake(the rule is that we all sit on the deck with our gin and tonics until lightning hits the flagpole). There are no TVs, no radio, and only one emergency phone. Cell and wi fi can't make it around the surrounding dunes. It's....QUIET. It's away from everything. It's heaven.

So what am I going to do while I'm there? Why, write, of course. Actually, during the day I'm going to be doing research. You can't really research a fairy kingdom you've made up yourself, so that's a gimme. But I can reread Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer to get me in the mood and place for my regency adventure series. I'm also reading books on regency etiquette and battle tactics. I can't wait. I'm also going to give that collage thing a try. If this series goes the way I want it to, I'm going to have to put together about ten extended peerage families. They need faces, names, houses and animals. So I'm bringing magazines on English architecture, history, etc, and those People magazines with beautiful people in them. I guess if I have ten families, some of them are going to have to be blondes(have you ever noticed that there are more dark haired-blue-eyed English heroes than you'll find in the entire empire....including Wales?) So I'm going to be cutting pictures like a third-grader.

For my suspense I'm reading books on criminal motivation by John Douglas and psychiatric disorders. I'm going to be putting down the basic plot. I already have the okay from my most important forensic research person for the plot and characters. I really would tell you who she is and what her expertise is, but I"m just too superstitious. I don't want to ruin my mojo for the book.

Okay, I'm going to be doing that all out on the deck in the sun with my daughter, sister and sisters-in-law while my brothers play golf. I'll get the research in around long, convoluted discussions on the family(especially the ones not there) and breaks for storms and the hot event of tankers coming into the harbor(I wrote a romance called Hot Shot that I set in Grand Haven, and my favorite scene involves a tanker arrival). Not that I really need to soak up even more atmosphere, but I will. The beginning of my suspense takes place in a town called Blue Harbor, Michigan which is really Grand Haven(but which I change the name to so I don't get caught in mistakes---"No, the Prontopup hotdog stand is in the first block of Washington. Not the second.")

And then, at night, when everybody but me is in bed, I'll pull out the laptop and play in the world of faerie. Nights are the best time for faeries, after all. And there won't be anything to distract me there....except the moon on the water, the sound of the waves, the raccoons digging in the trash cans....

So, if I can stir myself to get off the deck and into town where they swear the whole town is wi-fied, I'll blog for you then. Otherwise, see you in a couple. I'll be busy working.....yeah.

eileen/kathleen, the evil twins

Old Eclectic Me

2007-06-11T04:23:00.000-05:00

In about two weeks, The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, the book I wrote with Jen Crusie and Anne Stuart will be out. It's a bit of a departure for me, so I thought this might be the time to discuss why I tend to write so many different kinds of things. It's not that I'm trying to follow the
market. I'm not that smart. Or that fast. I used to be fast, but that's a different blog. No, the truth is that I just like to write....everything. Mystery, suspense, fantasy, romance, history, blogs.... Anyway, as I thought about it, I considered what I'd been doing the last couple of weeks and thought it might shed some light on the matter.

Let's see. First, I went to see La Traviata at the St. Louis Opera Theater. Great, grand opera: lots of emotion, lots of angst and gorgeous music with a bit of consumption thrown in(when my daughter saw a production, she said, "I had a patient with tuberculosis this week. She couldn't sing like that). Then I went to New York and saw a musical, 110 in the Shade. I'd never seen the musical, but it's a version of one of my favorite movies of all times: The Rainmaker with Katherine Hepburn and Burt Lancaster. This was all that and wonderful music: lush, fun, bright, and with a great happy ending, handsome men and a manly chorus(I love manly choruses). It was the perfect romance. To balance that, I went the next night to see Kevin Spacey in Moon for the Misbegotten by O'Neill. And Jenny Crusie would be more than happy to tell you that watching O'Neill is comparable to whacking yourself in the forehead with a ballpeen hammer for three hours. Nobody gets out of that one alive. And I loved it(but I"m Irish. We have an affinity for hammer-whacking).

When I got home I went back to the Opera to see the Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan's delicious ly satirical operetta about bureaucracy in Titipu,Japan. If you're not familiar with G&S, Stephen Sondheim is their direct musical descendent. It was brilliant. I knew the company had updated the book, with the chorus(manly) in business suits, briefcases and PDAs (and a Titipu Hard Rock sign), but you got the full message when, during the overture, a lovely geisha tiptoed out holding a paper model of a Japanese temple. She very carefully laid it on the stage and left. Music swells, we're about to get curtain up, when out from stage right, Godzilla clumps over, steps on the temple and leaves. It was that kind of night.

So then I bought Allison Kraus and Union Station tickets, got another copy of Moody Blue's Days of Future Past and cheered on Rags to Riches as she took on the boys at the Belmont Stakes. Yeah, I'm a horse racing addict. Blame it on Dick Francis. Yesterday I went to a Cardinals baseball game and cheered on my boys. Yeah. Serious and lifelong addiction. Blame that on my mother. She and her dad taught me to keep score when I was four. In fact, when my kids want to make me cry, they make me watch Field of Dreams. And it's my mom I miss.

A bit of gardening, a bit of Monty Python, a bit of Irish music, and a book on bloodspatter patterns. Oh, and registration for the 10th Masters Course in Death Investigation. I guess the point is, I can't sit in one place too long. Some would blame it on my ADD. I think it's just a broad range of interests. Three of my favorite movies? Lethal Weapon, To Kill a Mockingbird, Holiday(a great romance with Catherine Hepburn and Cary Grant). At any time you might find on my CD player Evanescence, Willie Nelson and Porgy and Bess. I think the only place you'd probably never find me is at a Toby Keith concert or playing golf. Other than that, I'm open to about anything.

It translates into my writing. I think it's because I read everything. But if I'm caught too long in one genre, I feel suffocated. There's just so much to see, to say, to create. So many different ways to do it. And I want to do them all. Which, of course, does my career no good. But the sad truth is, I can't write to order. If I'm not involved with the words, they simply don't end up on the page. So I'm researching another medico-forensic suspense, finishing the last of my fairy trilogy for Silhouette and seeing an erotic paranormal published with two other people. And I'm about to put together a proposal for something completely different(can you hear my agent groan?). It's why I'm evil twins. For now. Who know? There may be more of us? It's the only way I can do it.

eileen/kathleen, the evil twins

Life Interferes

2007-05-19T03:04:00.001-05:00

I love to blog. I love to read blogs. But when life happens, it's the first thing to fall by the wayside. My dad was diagnosed with cancer. He's 86, he's had a magnificent life, and we have no idea what the future holds. But for five weeks, I was the one in charge of all the details. Yeah, I'm the oldest daughter. It's always our job. I've often said that oldest Irish daughters have been classified by the AKC as a herding group. The problem is that this tends to splinter all concentration(which in me is marginal at best).

In the moments at home I'm not on the phone with doctors, therapists, the thirty thousand or so relatives I have, insurance companies, and the like, I find myself staring at the wall. Not very productive. There've been a lot of times I thought, "this would make a good blog subject". Then I got home and forgot what it was. Then, when I thought about blogging, I found myself reading somebody else's blog(I spit coffee through my nose reading Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels May 16th offering, including the warning system for hero clothing that is brilliant--and color coded). I discovered a huge controversy over a rather scathing review and an odd response by Kathryn Falk. Makes me feel as if I've been hiding in a cave.

The good news is that over on the Unfortunate Miss Fortunes website, we ran a contest for the bloggers who have been faithful til now for taglines, and the winners are posted over there. That was great fun, and we got some fabulous answers. I'll talk about them on next blog. I'm still using this one to apologize for not posting sooner. The better news is that I'm actually writing. I got a pub date on my next Silhouette Nocturne, and I'm researching the suspense. It's going to be so much fun!

And finally, I got back to my blog. I feel MUCH better now.

Eileen\Kathleen, the evil twins

Mystery Research

2007-05-01T23:09:00.000-05:00

Hmm. That title looks as if I mean that the research itself is a mystery. Like I open a phone book, close my eyes and try and point to a forensic specialty that looks interesting. I may actually do that one day. In the meantime, let me tell you how I research my mysteries.

You'll notice that the picture accompanying this post is different than the last. That's because the research tends to be different for each genre. Romance demands more ambiance. Suspense demands calibers and dimensions. The similarity is how I research. When I began to write, I realized that research was my biggest weakness. I had lots of friends who wrote historical fiction, and spent their time in libraries(that's how old I am. They didn't even have internet then). Well, I'm a nurse. And nurses don't do libraries. We play with things. So I had to figure out how to use my strengths rather than my weaknesses. Which is why I am trained in death investigation, forensics, and tactical medicine.

I do my best research hands-on--as you can tell from the picture. That was taken at Tactical EMS School at Camp Ripley in Minnesota, where I took the training to be a medic on a SWAT team for my suspense With a Vengeance. Yeah, oh yeah, it was tough. I've been gassed, I've been flash-banged, and I've stood on the top of an 8-foot ladder and fallen backwards into a crowd of medics, assuming they'd catch me(they did. The only problem was that one guy, who really wanted to keep me safe, was 6'5". We hit heads so hard I still can't remember my social security number). But I can't begin to tell you what a difference it made for me. Because I need to use all my senses in research. I need to taste it, see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. I need to find the symbolism and ritual in what I'm researching as much as the details of the science.

A good example is the research I did for my first suspense, A Man to Die For. I have a good friend who was a St. Louis City homicide officer.
"John," I said. "Would you take me down to homicide so I can research?" I asked.
"Why?" he asked.
"So I can smell it."
As you can imagine, there was quite a silence. "So you can smell it."
"Uh huh. What does homicide smell like, John?"
Another silence. "Homicide."
Just so you know, at that time, the St. Louis city homicide bureau, which was in a building erected in the 1920s, smelled like coffee, cigarettes, floor polish, and air freshener. That kind of thing cements a place, a job, a scene for me. Not only that, but as I was sitting there, two of the detectives had to leave. They stood up and picked fedoras off of a hat rack.
"What are the hats for, John?"
"Tradition. When you get transferred to homicide, you go down to Levine's Hat Shop on Tucker Blvd and get a fedora, then have the brim trimmed to 3/4". It's called a Stingy Brim. Then you flip up the back like a duck's ass."
"But why?"
He laughed. "Do you know how messy a jumper scene can be?"
I shook my head. "Wow. By the time we get them, we worry about our shoes."

Yeah. The entire conversation went into the book. More important, the hat went in. It became the symbol for my character, who was an ex-Marine, ex-Jesuit cop(and before you ask, I met one at the homicide department). Ritual and tradition are vital to him, as they are to most cops, most Marines and most priests. I think that stingy-brim hat says it all.

That's why I do hands-on research. I'm in the process of putting an outline together right now for my next suspense. I'm afraid I'm too superstitious to tell you what it is(the big thing right now is for an author to have a fresh idea nobody's done. I think this is fresh. So I don't want anybody to see it before I sell it). And as I put the outline together, I'm lining up my forensic research. In fact, I'm going to be spending the day in Philadelphia with one of my experts I was able to train under last year. I'll also be talking to my police and ME friends, a forensic psychiatrist, a regular psychiatrist, and a stained-glass maker. For some reason, my heroine makes stained glass. So I have to learn how to make it, so I can make her behavior as real as I can. I have to see what it smells like to create stained glass(does soldering smell?).

I truly believe that there are some things about writing that are fairly universal: characters, motivation, plotting, outlining, that kind of thing. But I believe that every author has to find his or her own way to getting all that stuff done. I had to find mine. I had to adapt it to each genre I write. And I had to adapt it to my own strengths and weaknesses. But I think I'm going to talk more about that in my next blog.

So come back next week, and we'll discuss learning styles, Meyers-Brigg personality tests, brain hemisphere dominance, and research. Oh, and I may even discuss ADD. Because at 54, I was finally diagnosed---evidently I was the last one to find out. And I finally got to admit that there are very good reasons I have to do my work in a certain way.

But that's for next week. In the meantime, if you write, think about how you research. Think about how you think you might enjoy researching. I think I can explain why. Next week.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

So There I Was In Ireland...

2007-04-23T02:33:00.000-05:00

Now, take a look at the picture on the left and tell me it doesn't look like a fairy glade. In fact, it's the home of the fairies who live in my next book. Okay, I don't have the name yet. Silhouette is still holding it in some vault somewhere. When I do, I promise I'll let us know. For now, I thought I'd talk a bit about putting a book like this together. My next post will be on the research I"m doing right now for my next suspense(no, I haven't forgotten those. I'm working hard on both genres at the moment).

So here I am with the third of my Daughters of Myth books to write for Silhouette. Number two, Sorcha's book(yeah. No title yet on that one, either) is in, is being edited, and I hope published this year. I'll let you know about that, too. Anyway, as I'd planned all along, the third book will be Orla's book, she of the rather surly disposition and the overwhelming desire for the fairy throne. I admit I love doing a book in which the bad person in one book is the heroine of the next. And poor Orla was certainly a bad girl. Not only was she the leannan sidhe (lyanan shee), which is the fairy who seduces and makes sexual slaves out of mortals, she went behind the queen's back to let some bad guys into the realm in an effort to prevent her sister from ascending the fairy throne.

Well, Nuala, that sister, is off in the land of mortal having babies. Sorcha, who was the next one the queen tapped to inherit the title, refused and is being punished by her mother, who sends her to a place her mother said was so terrible it would shrivel the very soul of a fairy--Yorkshire--to recover one of the lost Filial Stones--and okay, fall in love with a very uncooperative mortal named Harry. That leaves Orla to face whatever her punishment is for not only letting the bad guys in, but inadvertently letting them get away with the other Filial Stone(which brings power to the world of fairy). So her mother the queen has decided that she's going to offer Orla up to the enemy: she's wedding Orla to the prince of the Dubhlainn Sidhe.

Well, on the good side, I love a good marriage-of-convenience book. I also plan on doing a bit of a riff on Lysistrata with Orla's story, since the very masculine Dubhlainn Sidhe need to be taught to temper their testosterone a bit. I can't wait to see what trouble we're going to stir up.

On the not so good side, I realized that for the first time I had to set an entire book completely in the world of fairy. No characters peeking in with dry observations. No human intervention. Just fairies. And this is a fairy world I've kind of completely made up. So I have to flesh it out a bit more, especially since it will be with a completely different fairy clan than the one I've already introduced. It'll be like that Star Trek where they ended up in an alternate universe. Everything looks familiar, but not the same.

So I've spent the last few days doing a family tree of the royal family of the Dubhlainn Sidhe and how it connects to the mortal line of the second book, and the family of Orla, who is a princess of the Tuatha de Dannan clan. It's amazing how internecine that all can be. Because the king, Cathal, has a relationship with the mortal in the second book, and a relationship with Orla herself. But I didn't want to make it too close. Even fairies have consanguination rules. At least in my world of fairies.I can't begin to tell you how much trouble I had with all those cousins and grandkids. I might put the whole tree up on my website, once I figure out how to do it.

Then I had to give the fairies who populate this clan names. Not easy names, like Declan and Connor. Fairies aren't named after soccer players. They have Gaelic names with lots of silent consonants. And they each have a meaning, which is important. Because the women of the Dubhlainn Sidhe have become very passive and put-upon by their men. Until Orla shows up and points out the error of their ways--and their names. "With names like 'peace' and 'soft' and 'melodic,' how can you think to stand up for yourself? Couldn't one of your sires have named you 'warrior' or invincible? Goddess, I'd even settle for 'fiery one.'"

And, of course, I've been pouring over the pictures I took on my last trip to Ireland. I knew that the Tuatha de Dannan had their seat in the fields of Sligo. I'd been there and scouted out the area. Well, the Dubhlainn Sidhe couldn't be there, too. Very territorial, those Dubhlainn Sidhe. So I thought it might be a good idea to send them farther south. And when I went to look, I found the perfect place in Killarney. The picture on the left is in a valley called Gleann Fia, or glen of the deer, or fairy. It really looks like a fairy glade. But it's very close to another place called the Gap of Dunloe, which is bare, windswept and rugged. That's the picture on the right. And that's where the Dubhlainn Sidhe rule, too, because I've decided they control the wild places. And I had to know that before I could really get a handle on Orla's story. I had to have it all to really know who the hero is, even though I'd introduced him in Dangerous Temptation. He is Liam the Avenger. And with a name like that, don't you think he belongs in those mountains?
Now that I know a little bit more about him, I can't wait to see what he does there.

Not That I Feel Strongly About That....

2007-04-14T01:52:00.000-05:00

That's what I'm thinking of titling my blog. I told one of my friends and she almost had a hernia. "Who, you?" she demanded. "Have opinions?" Yeah, okay. You know I do. It's a fine old tradition in our house. My mother was notorious. My dad couldn't get through a meal without staring a debate on something; anything. My brother and I get into shouting matches. And if we begin to agree, we switch positions and play devil's advocate, just to keep the debate going(once one of my son's friends came in while my brother and I were leaning across my kitchen counter finger-waving and shouting at each other over...oh, I don't know. Gun control. Nuclear disarmament. Exactly what part John Wayne played in the psyches of the males in the US. "Good grief," he said to my son. "Do they always do that?" Kevin shook his head sadly and said, "You should see what happens when her sister shows up.")

I was raised in a family that's lousy with Jesuits. We were steeped in the tradition of debate and discussion. And, yeah, I hit my formative years in the 60s, when anything was fair game for a good round of argument. There's nothing I love better. It is not only a learning experience, but the best exercise I can think of for the brain--certainly better than soduko, which makes my eyes bleed. I think debates clear the air. They open the door to new ideas and demand a person defend a position with tenacity, all the while allowing her (or him) to remain open to the discovery of new ideas. They sharpen a person's verbal skills and teach her to crystallize concepts.

My last post evidently started a very active debate. Passionate in some quarters. It ended up fitting into a dandy discussion going on over at Laura Vivanco's blog, Teach Me Tonight(the post on Elizabeth Thornton's Fallen Angel). I didn't agree with everything said, and I certainly wasn't agreed with by everyone. But I couldn't be more delighted. I think the idea of violence against women in the romance genre is one that should continually be examined. And I think that the discussions I read have been passionate, thoughtful, insightful, and intelligent. Should we label romance to indicate issues that might disturb? Would limiting content be censorship, if the same book can be published elsewhere? Is the observation being made in CTC valid? I still feel strongly about my position, but I can see valid points in many of the dissenting views.

I don't like censorship any better than anybody else. But I do believe that genres, by definition, have boundaries. I'm intrigued by the labeling idea. Some think it would be demeaning. I'm not sure. Nobody considers Harlequin to be patronizing by clearly marking their lines and what the parameters are for each. It's not censorship so much as marketing. It's something to think about I wouldn't have considered if there hadn't been a debate at all.

Which is why they're so much fun. Just ask any Jesuit. Or my mother.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins.

Eileen the Angry

2007-03-31T13:58:00.000-05:00

No, Eileen the furious. Eileen the outraged. Eileen the greatly disappointed.

Before I tell you why, let me preface it by giving you a bit of my history. I worked in trauma nursing for sixteen years. We were the catchment hospital for familial abuse, so I took care of endless numbers of women caught in a terrifying spiral of violence, abuse and degradation because they'd been taught that they were worthless, powerless and lucky to have the man who was crippling her and her children. So I have absolutely no objectivity about the subject. I know what an abuser looks like what he(statistically) sounds like and what the cost of his abuse is.

One of the things I've been proudest of in romance is that as a genre, we have persistently communicated the message that women have power, that women deserve to be loved, to be respected, and to have their needs and wishes fulfilled in a healthy relationship. Yes, especially in the early years, the message has occasionally been much darker. And I"ll tell you something, and I'm not being flippant. I used to stand in bookstores and watch to see who bought the kind of books that taught women that all they deserved was pain and punishment. That this was the definition of love. Universally, the women who picked up these books walked across to the self-help aisle and bought books on how to deal with abusive mates.

It makes perfect sense. If they've already been taught that this is all they deserve, this is the message they're reinforce in their romance books. Thankfully, those books were mostly weeded out. And while I can intellectually appreciate the "Taming the Beast" message of the old rape fantasies, I"m afraid that the women reading them for reinforcement, told me that the message they got was that if they just hung around long enough, their abuser would be redeemed by the love of a good woman. Usually what I saw was those good women on slabs in the morgue.

And now, the spectre of the abusive hero has reared its unspeakably ugly head again. I'm not talking about the old "he forced her when he first knew her but learned his lesson through pain and work" books. I'm talking about a book that is an abuser's lexicon. And worst of all, it came out from Avon. I guess I expected better of them. The author is new. She's very talented. Which is even more unsettling, because she does provoke emotion. It's called Claiming the Courtesan. What I'd call it is "Punishing the Helpless."

I read about fifty pages, and thought, 'no, it can't really be this bad." I checked in with All About Romance, whose reviewers I respect. I found out that it was far worse than I'd thought. The hero, a duke, has the most notorious mistress in London. She leaves. He refuses to allow that, insanely furious that she has the nerve to leave him(even though she's fulfilled her contract). He stalks her(and doesn't raise really comfortable images), kidnaps her and terrorizes her. He doesn't simply continually rape her, he forces home the message that she's worthless.

"You still don't understand, do you, Verity? And I've always considered you to be a very clever little poppet. You have no power. You have no rights. You belong to me. This isn't London. This is a forgotten little corner of a feudal domain. And I am its lord. There is nowhere to run. There's no one to help you. If I want you--and we both know that I do--I take you."

In St. Louis, we have a law that allows police who respond to domestic abuse situations to judge the real abuser by language alone, because the language of an abuser is classic and universal. What you just read would have had that man arrested and indicted. There could not be more classic abuse language.

I'm afraid, as Sandy Coleman said on All About Romance, that somebody's going to call this unfortunate work as 'edgy and cutting edge'. Not at all. It yanks us right back to the years when women were powerless and only good for subservience and obedience. And if it's all the same to you, we've worked too damn hard to climb out of that pit to go back there. Especially the thousands of women who risked their lives to save themselves and their children from the kind of situation this book glorifies. On behalf of my genre, I apologize to them all.

Eileen/Kathleen

The Two Sweetest Words in the English Language

2007-03-22T18:06:00.000-05:00

Yes, that's right. The end. I finished my book this last weekend. I would have blogged about it Monday, except that was devoted to converting all my Wordperfect 6.2 files into Word for Windows so they could be edited at Silhouette, then copying them all, then sending the snailmail and the email versions to editors and agents.

Then the last two days I wandered around the house feeling a bit disoriented and lost, which is exactly what happens after I finish a book. I don't know where I'm supposed to be, because I"m not in my office sweating blood. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, because I don't have a book hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. Of course, I have the next book already hanging there. I need to start on that by the end of the week, because I want it finished within two months. But for now, I'm actually taking a bit of a breather.

How to describe the actual end of a book you've totally focused on for so long. First of all, I admit that I waste an inordinate amount of time cleaning it up and writing the last three or four pages. First, because I do not have an active brain cell in the linear logic division, and have to clean up my continuity errors(WHAT was that person's name again?) and make sure all my clues are in place for whatever happens later. Second, and the truest, I think, is because no matter how much I struggled over those characters, I've loved them enough to struggle over them in the first place. I've spent the last few months in intimate acquaintance with them. And, to be honest, The End also translates into Good Bye.

I simply hate to send my lovely characters away to someone who might not love them as much as I do. I hate to forfeit the feeling of delight and discovery I've enjoyed when a surprise character shows up(in this newest book, the second of the Daughters of Myth series for Silhouette Nocturne, I was surprised when exactly halfway through the book, a little four-year-old named Lilly made a dramatic entrance, and I fell instantly, madly in love with her. Lilly has Down Syndrome. And as she appeared on the set of my book, I discovered that the world of faerie calls children with Down Syndrome their "Cherished Ones", because nothing is more beautiful to the world of faerie than pure joy; and these children will never lose theirs. In fact, they are the only children who will never be too old to see the fairies). Quite simply, I hate to say goodbye.

But that's what The End is all about. And I'll be able to visit with them in about two months when I get my copy-edit back. And, hopefully, get to talk about them when people read the book. I'll let you know when it's scheduled. Oh, and what it's titled. The title committee's in charge of this one.

Eileen\Kathleen, the evil twins

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2007-03-17T22:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know I'm late posting, but I"ve spent the day with my family. We consider this one of the high holy days, and spend it together--usually at a restaurant as far removed from an Irish bar as we can get. Because, you see, we're not amateurs, and we don't see a need to mix with them.

St. Louis has a monstrous celebration: fourth largest in the country. We have two parades: one downtown that is the big public one, and one in the area we call Dogtown where the original Irish immigrants settled, put on by the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. Usually those parades are separate, because the downtown parade is always on a Saturday and the AOH parade is always on St. Patrick's Day. And yeah, they coincided this year. The AOH parade is completely family oriented--well, as much as it can be when bars are open. And all the bars and restaurants with an O in the title rent tents and pour green beer. My very favorite site in St. Louis, John D. McGurk's, actually puts up a wire cage, like Blues Brothers, to keep the crowd from falling over the traditional Irish music band that plays.

So I refuse to wear shamrock glasses or F#$# Me I'm Irish buttons or silly green wigs. I figure if you take one look at my face, you get the idea. But it's a very important day for my family. Mostly I guess because of my mom. She was Irish with a capitol I. Wept at sad music(is there any other kind?), celebrated any Irish triumph, railed against the British(she used to point out the fact that there were no trees in Ireland. "It's because the English tore them down to build warships in the 1800s", she'd say. "Couldn't they have planted them again any time in the last, oh, say, eighty years they've been an independent country?" I'd ask. She'd smack me. After all, what's the point of replanting the forests if that takes away the chance to blame the English for taking them down in the first place? Fortunately, Ireland is much more sensible than my mom. They've started replanting.

If you've read anything I've ever written, you'll see how important Ireland is to me. It infuses everything I write. My themes tend to be guilt and redemption. My heroines are usually named something like Maggie or Molly. My families are dysfunctional(have you read Angela's Ashes? I know those people. I'm related to them--fortunately, one ring out on the family tree, so they're interesting instead of devestating). I find the dynamic of the Irish character endlessly fascinating. A land of madmen and poets, Ireland is called. So true; so true. I can't tell you the times I've walked into a music pub and seen a pathetic, drooling, can't-clean-himself drunk passed out on the bar until somebody with the band says, "Tommy, lad, will you give us a song?" And suddenly, for the length of time it takes him to finish a song--maybe twelve verses of it--he lifts himself, opens his rheumy eyes, his mouth, and a sound of pure beauty pours out from him. Then, finished, he lowers his head again. Amazing.

Yeah, I go to Ireland frequently. (Here are a couple of my pictures.) I can't help it. I was just saying tonight that I missed it--especially in the spring. There are so many places on earth I want to see, but every other year, like a salmon hearing the call of the river where he was spawned, I have to return to the west coast of Ireland and sit out on a headland and write longhand in a notebook. I sit the whole evening in the music pubs, and if I'm lucky, sing the old songs(I actually have a collection a friend gave me entitled "It's not an Irish love song if nobody dies"). It's therapy. We figured I've been over thirteen times. I can't wait to get back. It's where God lives for me. It's where countless generations of ancestors call to me, and the cousins who are still there welcome me with family stories. It's where I tap into the core of creativity(more on that in a later post).

So if you'll excuse me, I"m going to put on the movies Into the West, then Matchmaker and Ryan's Daughter and sigh for the most beautiful spot on earth. In the meantime, Slainte! I hope your St. Patrick's Day was nice, be ye Irish or not.

Eileen and Kathleen, the evil twins

I love it when a plan comes together

2007-02-23T00:53:00.000-06:00

I've been hanging around Anne Stuart and Jenny Crusie a lot lately, and have been reading their blogs with great interest, and I love how they do that 12 days of whatever book they're writing. I'm also amazed that they can do it. My problem is that, usually, if I'm writing about writing a book, I'm not actually writing the book. If the book is working, all I can think of is getting words down on the page before they all disappear, like soap bubbles. I think about it so much that when I'm driving I miss exits, and when I'm cooking I burn whatever's on the stove. Because I'm just not there.

Such is the case right now. I'm only taking the time to write this because my husband is working on my work computer(the computer I write on is completely separate from this one. Not only that, its working systems are completely obsolete so my kids would never play on it. Yeah, okay, they're now adults and sneer at my computer, but old habits die hard--especially the habit of creating a book in Word Perfect 6.2). So I thought this would be the perfect time to talk a bit about end stage manuscripts. At least mine.

I'm not what you'd call a scheduled writer. I'm more what we lovingly call a "binge-and-purge_ writer. I spend days wandering the house staring at nothing, and then spit out at least a chapterin about 2 hours. I just did that yesterday. I spent 60% of my time on a book in the first five chapters. It's like pulling teeth for me. I liken it to a rollercoaster, when you're heading up that long, long hill, with the tracks making that click-click noise, and you think you're never going to get there and then suddenly.....woosh!!! Well, woosh happens to me just about when it reaches critical deadline time. One of my cousins put it most beautifully. "Eileen," she said. "You're just no damn good 'til the two-minute warning." She has a point.

So here I was(right before Rick had to fix my computer), with about 3/4 of the second book in the Daughters of Myth series(I can't remember the title--because the Silhouette title committee came up with it), about Queen Mab's second daughter Sorcha who has to convince a very angry mortal that he's in possession of one of the great ruling stones of faerie, and that she needs it back before all heck breaks loose. And he's just a guy trying to escape the notoriety of a family that made its name photographing fairie--and then, allegedly, catching one. And the bad guys have found them, and since the bad guys are fairies, they can do terrible things like infect dreams with terrible violence, and I'm at the 3/4 point, and I know kinda what has to happen to get to the end of the book, but not exactly, and I'm trying to write with my eyes closed, as if, if I don't look, it'll all work out, and suddenly, why suddenly-----woooosh!

I know exactly how Sorcha proves herself, and how Harry redeems himself, and how little Lilly, his neice who has Down Syndrome, which makes her one of the world of faerie's Cherished Ones, is saved from the evil fairies. It came to me on a flaming pie, as John Lennon used to say, and that's how all the best stuff always comes to me. And, even after over thirty books, it's still a surprise.

So Rick's finished now, and I'm going to head back to my office to send Sorcha and Harry after the great Dearann Stone, with Cian on their tails, since he wants the stone to help his clan gain all the power in the world of faerie--which would also rob the earth of any more springs--and Darragh from the first book playing his part, and....

well, we'll all just have to wait to see how it turns out. The good news is that I know. Whew! What a relief. I just love it when a plan comes together.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Why dog shows are like publishing

2007-02-16T00:38:00.000-06:00

I admit it. I'm a dog show junkie. There's just something about canines on a runway that attracts me; I can't say why. So I watched Westminster the other night--well, two nights. And I have to admit that I was pleased by the results. A beautiful springer spaniel won. I was pleased. Not thrilled. I'm waiting for more big dogs to win. I'm a big dog girl. I've had two golden retrievers, two labs, and a great dane. I have dogs that would eat the entire toy category for lunch. I want a dane to win. Even an Irish setter. Come on, you have to admit that there isn't anything quite as gorgeous as an Irish setter on the move.

But those small dogs keep winning. Okay. They jump around. Okay, they have cute little legs that work like hamsters in a wheel to get down that carpet and back in the allotted time. Okay, they've been groomed to within an inch of their lives(I still say, poor poodles. My aunt had a standard poodle. It was a magnificent dog. All I could think of watching those pouffed and moussed creatures they had prancing down the runway was, a)isn't your butt cold in this weather? and b) all the other dogs must laugh at you....when they're finished laughing at the Mexican hairless, anyway.

But I realized as I watched, that indeed, dog shows are like publishing. It doesn't matter if you have the winningest dog in the US(a long pouffy mop of a dog called the Dandy Dinmont). It doesn't matter if your dog is more popular with the crowd(the ubiquitous PBGB). What matters is the objective opinion of one man or woman on one night. Like the announcer says, they come down from 2500 entries to the 7 top dogs. And the judge said he wished he could give out seven ribbons, because the best of class were all champion dogs(I still can't warm up to the poodles) (of course, I doubt they can warm up, either)(I do love the explanation of why they have those puffballs of fur on their knees. It's to keep their knees warm in the water. Well, what about the rest of their naked back half?). But, considering that these dogs were considered the very best representation of their classes, perfect in conformation and blessed with a showring attitude(boy, could that bouvier stack). (yeah, I even have the lingo), it came down to intangibles nobody can control.

So there you are as an author. You might be the best author of your generation. You might have written a book--even a series of books--that are beautifully reviewed, that are beloved by your friends and family and even the critique partner who can never find a nice thing to say about you. You might even find an agent who loves your stuff. But if you don't get the subjective approval from an editor, it doesn't matter. And no matter how brilliant a worsdsmith you are, or how beautifully you craft characters or plots or themes, no matter how timely or topical, the sad fact is that often it ends up in the area of intangibles as to whether you're picked for the show. And then whether, once picked, you get the attention of the rest of the people in the publishing house. And the sales force. And the.....you get the idea.

On the other hand, if you're a writer, you do it because you can't not do it. So you might as well shoot for that ring in Madison Square Garden and the single spot, with that judge calling, "the winner is....." I know I do.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Finally, Kareena

2007-01-29T17:24:00.000-06:00

So here I am back at the coffee shop, and I figure it's about time I told you about Kareena Boudreaux. Now, for anybody who hasn't read it, SINNERS AND SAINTS is where you'll find my lovely Kareena, one of my favorite second-bananas I've ever gotten to write. SINNERS takes place mostly in New Orleans. I wanted to do a fish out of water book, in which my heroine, Chastity Byrnes, has to leave one of the premiere forensic communities, here in St. Louis, to wade through the much different forensic community in New Orleans. I think if I say "Good old boy" network, you'll get it. If I mention it might be a weensy bit inefficient, you might be able to see evidence of that, too, especially since Katrina.

Anyway, to set up Chastity's foray through a completely new community, I needed a guide. I knew that the male protagonist would be an ex-firefighter-turned-cab-driver, James Guidry(I really didn't want to fall into that "her boyfriend's a cop" cliche of discovering what was going on in the case). But James didn't have the contacts Chastity needed. But then, Chastity is a forensic nurse,one of the newest breed of forensic scientists. She is an ED liaison, who collects evidence, evaluates and testifies in abuse cases, and works with the police in a myriad of ways. And the thing about forensic nurses, is that because it's still such a new profession, they tend to know each other.

Which is how I came across Kareena. I was at a forensic nurse conference(I am trained, but do not call myself a forensic nurse, because I do not practice) in 2003, when I ran across the Forensic Nurse Liaison for the Charity Hospital ER in New Orleans. Her name is Karen Chabert, and she is not just funny, beautiful, interesting and edgy, she is a brilliant forensic nurse and an even better teacher. And she had every contact I needed for research.
"Please," I begged her. "I'm coming down to New Orleans for some forensic research. Help me."
"On one condition," she said."You have to have a character named Kareena Boudreaux from Cut-Off Louisiana, and she has to be sexy."

Well, when somebody makes a suggestion like that--that is pure gold--I gave them three good chances to change their mind. I gave her those three chances. She insisted. I wrote Kareena Boudreax.

Kareena is kind of my voice of New Orleans in the book. She knows the not-so-good stuff that happens down there, but she knows the really good stuff and good people, too. She knows how hard most of them work to do the right thing. And she knows that they're all doing it in New Orleans, which has rules and traditions all its own. Okay, and she knows the ways to circumvent them all to get the information she needs.

Karen Chabert took me through Charity, even to the morgue, which was built in the 1800s, and looked like it. She introduced me to people and drove me through the city with a forensic nurse's eye(we went back again after the hurricane, and she took me through the Lower Ninth Ward, where she pointed to one destroyed house after another saying, "One of my patients lived there...one of my patients lived there...that's where the chaplain lived. They still haven't found his sister. We sat in a warm April sun in the middle of desolation the likes of which I had only seen in photoes of Hiroshima, and prayed for all those patients she'd lost that day. I'm still not sure whether they found the chaplain's sister).

But as much a consummate professional as she is, she's also one of the funniest, most wonderful people I know. She's a member of the Zulu krew for Mardi Gras, and has taken her comments about medicine to live stand-up comedy clubs. She's taught forensic courses and raised money for the police, and made friend with every one of them. And when Charity was lost to the hurricane, she lost not only her job, but her beloved dog, and was homeless for months.

Karen is back now. Just as I considered Kareena my voice of New Orleans, I consider Karen the face of it. Because like the city, she suffered, but she's fighting back. And she's doing it in the most amazing style. If I get her permission, I'll find my picture of her on the Zulu krew and post it. Til then, when you read Kareena, think of her. And remember that although Karen was my inspiration, Kareena is only a shadow of her inspiration.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

the local coffee shop

2007-01-25T02:45:00.000-06:00

I know, I keep saying I'm going to write about the genesis of my character Kareena Boudreaux in SINNERS AND SAINTS, and I keep meaning to, really. It's just that there are so many interesting different factors in writing, that I feel a compulsion to write about something else and then forget Kareena. And I'm about to do it again.

I'd like to pen an ode to my local cybercafe. Now, please understand that I have friends who have had their own cybercafes for years, and I have coveted their cafes. One friend, Rexanne Becnel, goes to the mother of all coffee shops in New Orleans in a historic building with true eccentrics and artists manning the tables. I have a lowly whitebread neighborhood, five tables and a fireplace(okay, there are some comfy chairs) (no one expects the Spanish Inquisition). Sorry. Couldn't help it. Anyway, it's not much as far as Hemingwayesque atmosphere. But it's mine. Well, mine and the guy who owns it and all the other people who come in through the day. But the point is that a)it's a funky little place with nice owners who treat you like friends, b) it has free wireless, and c) it isn't my house.

One thing you need to know about me is that for years my husband would regularly kick me out. Me, a pitcher of iced tea, my CD player and my laptop. I'd check into a local motel and closet myself in for four days or so in an effort to finish a deadline. And I'm here to tell you that it's amazing how much you can get written in a boring beige room with nothing but a bad print of the Grand Canyon for decoration. There must be a Chinese restaurant within a five block radius, of course. But other than that, I don't leave the room.

It's wonderful. You see, writing is a very selfish business. When the book is working, you don't want to stop for anything. Not husbands, police, children or doctors' appointments. You just want to play in the world you've created. But when you're working in your house, there's no way to avoid any of that. So I'd have trouble getting the deadlines done. Thus the motel. Well, I kept telling myself that once the kids were grown, I could skip the hotel. After all, I'd have the house to myself--with all the business work I hadn't done yet, the TV, the internet for mail and e-bay, and, of course, the evil telephone, which, as an old trauma nurse, I'm not allowed to leave unanswered. Because the one time I don't answer the phone, it will be the ER calling about a loved one in a perilous state of health, who demands my permission or referral RIGHT AWAY. Somehow that kind of thing doesn't occur to me when I'm not in the house to hear the phone ring.

So you see that the empty house thing wasn't enough. And then my cybercafe opened up. It's called Wired Coffee, and it's a cute little corner place with bright colors and soup for lunch. And nothing but my computer. I was there today because my internet went out and I had to use their wireless. And then I remembered how nice it was to write there. The music is good acoustic 60's stuff. The coffee is excellent and comes with free refills. And nobody really looks over your shoulder. I've tried writing on a plane, but nobody respects monitor privacy in a plane. And I sure don't want just anybody reading either my sex scenes or my serial killer scenes while seated next to me on a full four hour flight. In the coffee shop, nobody notices. They just know I'm working hard.

So what happens is, I get eleven pages written, just like today. I even leave in time to get dinner for my husband. I did ask the proprietor if he wouldn't mind lending me the key so I could come back about 1AM when I do my best work. I had to settle for coming back tomorrow. Which I might just do. I'll let you know. I'll drop a blog from the shop.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Edits

2007-01-07T23:40:00.000-06:00

Oh, if writing were a linear life. If only I wrote a book, published a book, basked in the glory of publishing a book(or the ignominious shame of not selling a book well), and then started researching the next book. Of course, if I did it that way, it would take at least twice as long for any of my books to come out.

This is January. I have a suspense that just came out in December(SINNERS AND SAINTS), a romance that came out in October(DANGEROUS TEMPTATION). I am in the process of telling you how the suspense came to be while I'm doing final page proof edits on the collaborative novel(THE UNFORTUNATE MISS FORTUNES) I did with Jenny Cruise and Anne Stuart that's slated for June '07. I'm writing the text of the second book in the romance trilogy that came out in October as I research my next suspense by taking courses in brain physiology and arson investigation. Oh, and I'm working with Jenny and Anne on setting up the website to promote The MIss Fortunes, and outlining the regency-era action trilogy I've been wanting to do for a long time and won't leave me alone.

In my spare time I'm organizing the travel for the speaking engagements and conferences I'm signed up for this spring (it will be on the website soon. But expect me in San Antonio, Seattle, Bloomington, Illinois, Cincinnati and Indianapolis). I'm sending out PR info, speech proposals, contest winnings, blogs on friends' blogs(LIPSTICK CHRONICLES), and writing the first blog for the new UNFORTUNATEMISSFORTUNES.COM website. Oh, and doing my best to map out the geneology of the mortal family who interact with the world of faerie in my next book(they all have to descend from the same great-great granfather without having three eyes and a fin).

Which is why authors are sometimes so confused when they see you at a signing or conference and you quote their latest book. That book might have only come out four months ago, but the author is already three books--and characters and crises and conflicts---past that already. It's also why it's tough for us to really enjoy our success. By the time we have it with a book--if we do--we're already hating the next book or the one after that we're stuck in the middle of with no obvious way out.

Ah, if it only happened in a linear fashion. But, alas, it doesn't. Which is why all those years working the emergency room stood me in such good stead.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Happy holidays

2007-01-01T13:16:00.001-06:00

It's been a few days since I've posted. Amazing how time flies when you have twenty people to the house for Christmas eve and then another thirty five to your dad's the next day. We had a wonderful Christmas. My whole family was here, which every year is getting to be a much more iffy proposition, considering the fact that my f-i-l is 95, and my own dad is 85. But we were blessed once again.

May I extend my most sincere and heartfelt wishes for your own holiday celebrations. I think it's a wonderful time of the year, and a wise time to place some of the most important holidays, right in the depths of winter, when the human in us simply wants to curl up and close our eyes, not really sure that spring will come again. Then there are lights everywhere, and people are actually kind in store parking lots, and okay, they play "It's a Wonderful Life" on tv ad nauseum. It really does get us through these shortest days of the year with hope.

I just read an extraordinary article in the New York Times that I'd like to include. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/01/us/01charles.html?ex=1168318800&en=302f250eda6c7ed8
&ei=5070&emc=eta1

I'm not sure if it will come through, but it's the story of a young soldier who wrote a diary to his newborn son on how to live without him if necessary. That soldier didn't come home from Iraq. This story to me highlights the special bond of the season, and I hope you'll take a moment to think of those men and women halfway across the world, who give of themselves to protect us. No matter your politics, these are our brightest and best, and they deserve our respect and gratitude. So the next time you're in an airport and see someone in uniform, reach out and shake a hand. Say thank you. I know they appreciate it. They're usually startled. Or donate to one of the many services that send small mementos of home to that distant place. Or just pray for them. My brother came home from Vietnam and was spit on for risking his life in an alien land. We know better now. But it can't hurt to take that extra step to say thank you. Especially at this time of year.

And to you and yours, a happy and healthy holiday season, and a wonderful new year.

my very best,
eileena and kathleen, the evil twins

The tao of booksignings

2006-12-19T21:54:00.000-06:00

"Excuse me. Can you tell me where VC Andrews is?"
And so begins another adventure in the wonderful world of booksignings. Here I am at a major chain bookseller, sitting at the little table they've set up right in the pathway to not only the information booth but the bathroom--because people WANT you to interrupt their mad dash to pee for the chance to buy a suspense novel about New Orleans(they're probably just sneakinging in from the arcade down the hall anyway). Even better, right in front of me is the package-wrapping booth, which means that a shopper doesn't see me through the snaky line until she barks her knee against the aforementioned table. But me? I'm smiling.

"Hey," I say, trying very hard not to sound like a carnival barker with a waxed mustache and a megaphone. "Do you know someone who likes suspense?(I assume you know somebody who likes books, because you are, after all, in a bookstore). This is a really cheap Christmas present. The autograph is free(if I could have figured out how to charge for it, I would have)(only because I'm supporting pagan babies in Africa)."

Rubbing at her sore knee, she checks out the geometric patterns of the ceiling lights rather than make eye contact. She might have the courage to shake her head as she scuttles past, obviously afraid I'm going to take her to the floor and force her name from her so I can personally inscribe a book she'll then be forced to take home.

Me? I smile. First of all, because I know exactly how she feels. I'm not any happier than she is. I am TERRIBLE at promoting myself. Every time I even think of saying, "I highly recommend this book. I think you'll love it and want to take it home," I can feel Sr. Mary Alice, my gradeschool Dominican nun teacher standing over my shoulder all set to smack me for the sin of pride. Now, I can promote anybody else. Sit me at that table with another author and I'll sell them til they don't have a book left.

That's actually the secret to any booksigning. Bring friends who are also selling books. It's amazing how much more fun it is. There's someone else you can talk to in the lag times, so you're not just watching the crowd like a drowning woman hoping for a rope. You have someone else to play fashion police with(one of my favorite pasttimes at signings. For instance, today what I notice is that about a third of women over the age of 30 are wearing the wrong size jeans. And I'm praying that I don't look like that from the back). And there's somebody there in case you're the one who desperately needs to pee, so you don't miss even one customer.

Never forget. No matter how happy and relaxed we look, most of us would rather be dancing naked down Fifth Avenue than sit at that table(well, there are some of us who really would rather be dancing naked down Fifth Avenue. That's another topic altogether). Not because we don't want to meet you, the reader. Dear God yes, we want to meet you. We love book people. We positively yearn to talk to book people about books, about authors, about genres or LIT-rature, about anything. The problem is that not even Nora Roberts gets to spend all of a signing visiting with book people. Well, okay, maybe she does now. But I've actually been to a signing with her(my job was to clean off the clump of ink from the end of her pen), when not ONE person showed up.

It was my most important lesson in booksignings. Murphy rules. Just cause you're there, just cause you've done everything to let other people know you're there, maybe even unto radio shows and TV and newsletters, it doesn't mean you're going to have a good showing. That part really doesn't bother me at all. I still get to talk to the booksellers who are, after all, book people. But there is still that part about sitting at a table right in everybody's way waiting, hoping, PRAYING somebody just comes up to talk to you so you don't look like such a big loser. And then, finally, somebody comes up to you, smiling. You smile back. Your heart flutters. Your palms sweat. You straighten and hope you don't have any foam on your lip from the latte you've just scarfed down instead of lunch. And then, she opens her mouth. And she says,

"Excuse me. Can you tell me where VC Andrews is?"

And I say, "She's dead. Buy my book instead."

Okay, not really. But it would have made the time go faster.

Cristophe the cab driver

2006-12-11T00:40:00.000-06:00

To preface this, let me say that when I set out to write SINNERS AND SAINTS, I knew that my heroine was going to be a classic fish out of water. A certified forensic nurse who worked in St. Louis, she has to wade through the good old boy network of New Orleans politics and police to find her missing sister. Well, I love writing both a heroine and a hero. The dynamics are always fun, and each brings a unique perspective to the story. And I didn't want to fall into the cliche "she's dating a cop who can get all her info". But who would she--a trauma nurse--trust in a strange city? Easy. A firefighter. Only this guy couldn't be on the job. He had to have lots of free time. So I created James Guidry, a scarred ex-firefighter-turned-New-Orleans-cabdriver. He's a native, Chastity can hire him to help her, and he knows the city. Voile! The problem was, I didn't know any cab drivers. I knew forensic pathologist, forensic nurse liaisons(that's another entry), cops, authors, artists and tarot card readers. And it seemed not one of them knew a cab driver either. So I went searching.

It was 2AM on a weeknight that I hit the jackpot. My friend Karen and I had been doing research out at one of the lakeside bars that probably isn't there anymore. A great place with beer and boots and a surfeit of Dwight Yokum. After a few hours, we needed a ride home and called a cab. And who we got was Cristophe.

Yeah, just the name probably says it all. A man of more than one race, although I didn't closely quizz him on which ones, he was slick and sleek and handsome, with long hair tied back in a queue, skin the color of cafe mocha and a delicious New Orleans accent. He had statues of saints on his dashboard and jazz on the radio. And he said he'd be happy to answer my questions. We went over schedules, maps, routines, problems. We reached my friend's house. Cristophe wouldn't let us out. Not yet. "I cannot tell you all about my beloved N'awlins in ten minutes," he protested. "I'll tell you what. Let me take you to my favorite restaurant in the Fauberg Marigny, and we'll talk, and I'll tell you all about my life, and we'll watch the sun come up." And that's just what we did.

Of course the longer we talked, the more I learned about New Orleans. Not just what Cristophe said. What he didn't say. The statues on his dashboard weren't saints. They were his loas of voodoo, there to ensure him safety, money and success. He wasn't really from New Orleans. He was from Queens. And I have a real suspicion that his name wasn't Cristophe(it was a while later before I found out that Cristophe was also a character in an Ann Rice novel). But he was the epitome of the best of New Orleans; its whimsy and creativity and bravado. The fact that anybody(but a local, evidently) can remake themself into whatever image they please there. A lot of the flavor of SINNERS AND SAINTS came from that cab ride. And not a little of James Guidry. I have two grease-stained place mats from La Peniche,crammed full of notes. I have material for more than one book. And I have the satisfaction of knowing that I mortified my daughter.

As Cristophe dropped us off, we exchanged phone numbers in case there were any more questions. The next day, my daughter called me from St. Louis. "Mom," she said, sounding truly bemused. "Some guy named Cristophe called? He said he has some great places to show you?" You can imagine how confused she was by a hot young guy calling her MOTHER. "Yeah, baby," I said. "That's right. I'm cool." I'm not sure she's gotten over it yet.

Next I'll tell you about the lovely, inimitable Kareena Boudreax.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the blog

2006-12-09T01:52:00.000-06:00

I swear I was going to be posting sooner than this. But you see, an ice storm hit last week, and I was without power or access to my internet for five days. FIVE DAYS. Did I tell you I'm a lousy refugee? I spent all that time rotating through siblings and trying to keep my house warm(temps dropped near zero each night) with a barbecue grill(I told my husband I was NOT going to tell my firefighter friends that I burned down my house with a barbecue grill in the living room)(then, of course, he decamped to Chile, the rat bastard--on business. Uh huh). And, of course, right in the middle of all that, SINNERS AND SAINTS hit the bookshelves. I'm just getting around the St. Louis area to do drive-by signings (that's when you stop in the store, sign stock, gab with the booksellers and then run on to the next place). And here I'd promised to tell you a bit more about SINNERS. Well, and so I will.

Here's the thing. I've been fascinated by New Orleans my whole life. When I finally got to go, I fell madly in love with the city. There's just something there that makes me feel at home; an energy, a unique spell the city casts over you. I love the color, the characters, the lazy, kind pace of the place. Yeah, okay, and the food and music and architecture and...you get it. Well, finally I had the chance to set a book there. That was about three years ago, when I first started collecting research information. Now, I'm a rabid researcher. I don't want any of those emails that say, "You're such an idiot. Don't you know that it's the MIssissippi that runs through New Orleans, not the Missouri?" (not that I'd ever say that). And, of course, it gave me an added excuse to spend time in New Orleans. Which was just fine. Can you think of a better way to research a book then singing in the back room of Jean LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop at two in the morning? Or driving to every cemetery in the city limits? Or driving through the good and bad streets with one of New Orleans finest(all cops tell great stories. New Orleans cops are in a universe of their own. You can read one of the best stories in my OUTTAKE section of my website). I almost didn't stop researching at all. In fact, I ended up taking out over a hundred pages of the finished manuscript."Eileen," my editor said with great patience. "This is a suspense novel. Not Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Fine. Just fine. I cut some of the stories.My cop friends and nurse friends and CSI friends have told me I got it right anyway, which makes me very, very pleased.

Fast forward to last summer. The book comes out--five days before Katrina hits. Yeah. I have great timing.It absolutely killed me. Not just because I'd just written a love poem to a city that had just been destroyed. But because I felt that destruction like the grave injury of a loved one. The good news is that all my friends are now back home and working. The bad news is that the city still struggles. But I do believe in her. I believe in her people, who are the greatest survivors I've ever met.

But now, the paperback is out, and I hope you'd enjoy visiting with me in the New Orleans of my heart--okay, even though there are some grisly murders happening, a heroine who is in terrible peril, and--did I mention this?--a level 5 hurricane bearing down on the city. (considering when the book first came out, I've decided to take contributions to NOT write about earthquakes in California). Next blog, I'll introduce you to the inspirations behind one of my very favorite heroes, James Guidry, and the unique, the wonderful, the lovely, Kareena Boudreax. Til then, stay warm. I'll try and do the same.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

feeling MUCH better now....

2006-11-29T16:11:00.000-06:00

So there I was about to go on the offensive about promoting my SINNERS AND SAINTS, which should appear in paperback any minute now, when Thanksgiving happened. Now you have to understand that Thanksgiving isn't just a holiday in my house. It's a sporting event. Because my lovely husband's grandmother was a collector of note--the note being that she had no money and still ended up with enough Limoge to hold a state dinner-- I always end up with Thanksgiving dinner at my house for my entire family; that was, this year, 34 people, all at linen tableclothes(on permanent loan from my sil who loves estate sales), crystal(mismatched) and Limoge plates. The place looks like a British officer's mess, with tables taking up every square inch of available non-kitchen space, and my family taking up the rest as we cook two turkeys, and lashings of dressing(my mom's basic depression dressing) and various other starch-ladened classics. We have a fabulous time, that usually ends with somebody getting whipped cream, if not an actual pie in the face(this year I was so honored. My 16 year old neice nailed me--and then teepeed my tree).

But since there can't be a holiday without some kind of disaster(when my kids were teens and insisted on using my oven for pizza, we never quite got the dinner rolls cooked, because my oven would catch fire from the grease and turkey stuff---the good news is that my kids now have great disaster-related reflexes) this year my one brother managed to make my toilet overflow--right through the floor to where my son has rigged up all the various equipment that makes our internet run. Yeah. Hiss. Crackle. Meltdown. So I spent five days trying to replace it while hoping nothing big happened on email(good news. it was mostly spam).

So, now that you know my holiday trevails, I hope you understand the slight delay in my schedule of gushing enthusiastically about my book. And talking about the fairy series. As for the Unfortunate Miss Fortunes,with Jen Cruise and Anne Stuart, check in on Well Behaved at All Times. I'll be back tomorrow with more on the background of SINNERS. I'll also try and explain why I had to cancel the auction I'd hoped to do for the New Orleans police. I'm waiting to hear from them, and hope to have a fund that is equipment specific to replace it with.

Anyway, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, too. And you'll stop by again soon to hear about SINNES AND SAINTS. I swear it will be worth it.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

back to work

2006-11-22T17:29:00.000-06:00

It amazes me sometimes how the rest of the world can be so organized. I just looked up from the Silhouette Nocturne book I've been writing as Kathleen to discover that it's November, and darned if I don't have a November book coming out(as Eileen). And not just any book; my beloved SINNERS AND SAINTS. If you've been with me, you know that the hardcover for SINNERS came out two weeks before Katrina hit. And that the book is about a forensic nurse who searches New Orleans for her missing sister---yeah. As a level 5 hurricane bears down on the city. Not good timing at all. And the reviews on the book were really glowing(I usually don't say stuff like that, but this book meant an awful lot to me). Even more important than the book reviews, were the reviews I got from the cops and docs and other New Orleans natives who helped me research. They told me that it was absolutely true to the city, which is the most important opinion I think you can receive on a project. I can't think of a US city I love more, even St. Louis, which is my native town. And I can't think of more generous, inciteful, gracious, funny people than the ones who went out of their way to make sure I could tell my story.

Anyway, the paperback version comes out in a week or two, and I need to take a bit of time and announce it. I'll add more in the next few days. Tantalizing you, if you will, with a peek into the twisted mind that created it(and I look so cute).

Til then, back to work.
eileen and kathleen, the evil twins

The Inimitable Sister Krissie and the Power of Envy

2006-11-16T16:12:00.000-06:00

I'm afraid I'm always a day late and a dollar short on industry news. But I just caught wind(and a pretty foul one) of the crap that was posted on the blog of an anonymous hack who calls herself Ms. Snark about Anne Stuart. I say hack, because even her writing is insignificant. If you want it taken apart bad cliche by bad cliche, check out Jenny Cruise's Argh, Inc. I thought of answering on the Snark comment page, which is filled with the kind of vitriol Ms. Snark was hoping for, I'm sure. But I just don't want to give her any validation at all.

What this blog by the anonymous Ms--and other of her blogs I caught--reminded me of was Rush Limbaugh. Nobody plays the schoolyard bully better, making uninformed, often cruel accusations about his enemies for the sole purpose of catering to that small, mean part of the human spirit that says, "yeah! You're not better than me!" And how much easier is it to indiscriminantly accuse behind a mask of anonymity. It isn't just petty, it's cowardly.

But when this would-be pundit incorrectly accuses someone who is not only a friend, but a colleague and, truth be known, one of my role models , I don't think anybody needs to be polite back. Anne Stuart has been in this business longer than I have, over twenty years. In that time she's been the consummate professional: talented, responsible, exceedingly generous, and, okay, she looks great in a habit. Not only that, she's made a hell of a lot of money for the houses for which she's worked. As my brother the Marine says, she's definitely earned her stripes. I consider it an honor that she is a colleague.

Yes, as Ms. Snark says, there are those whiny authors nobody wants to deal with. But as Jenny Cruise said, the ones who will end up working for no one are the ones without talent, and without the ability to bring in money. How many ways can you say that Anne Stuart is a New York Times author? The idea that because after twenty years she told a truth in the industry,she should be vilified, is absurd. Who has more right? The anonymous Ms. Snark, who, for all we know is a fat, fifty-year old accountant in Pacoyma? Even if this person actually is an agent, would you sincerely wish to be represented by a person whose message is, "Shut up and be a good girl?" Gee, thanks. No.

Every author has been through what Anne talked about. It's that kind of industry. And for anyone who compares it to, say, selling washing machines, trust me. There really is no comparison. And would you rather this kind of thing remain our secret? Would anybody who wants to survive in publishing really wish they weren't told the truth? Or would you rather be surprised that it's a hard business? It's hard when you begin: it's hard as you go on; it's hard no matter how famous you are. If it weren't, Hemingway never would have shot himself.

So I hope Ms. Snark enjoys her fifteen minutes of fame. That's all she's worth. Because, if she could write like Sister Krissie, she wouldn't waste her time slinging mud from behind a fence.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Oh, and one more thing....

2006-11-10T00:34:00.000-06:00

Did I tell you I'm from St. Louis? Did I happen to mention I'm a Cardinals fan? Well, my son has told me he can never put me in a nursing home, now. I took him to a World Series game. And if I can finally figure out how to post pictures, I'll put up a shot of us at the stadium. Cause, WE WON!!!!!!!!!

So, Hooray Cardinals! And now that the series is over, I can concentrate on my books again.
eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

and now for something completely different...

2006-11-10T00:27:00.000-06:00

This is a political post that isn't. I just had to comment on the election. Not who won. That's almost incidental. The fact that so many people came out to vote. Now, you have to understand I'm an child of the 60's, when we were all involved. When the vote was the most important thing in the world, and we were happy to wait, because we could change the world(okay, that didn't work so much, but we did manage a few things...oh, say the end to the war in Vietnam). Anyway, it's not been since then that I've seen what I saw Tuesday. I stood in line for an hour and fifty minutes. In an area that's chockful of old, cranky people(older and crankier than I). And not only did everybody stand without complaint outside for at least an hour and a half each, but everybody--EVERYBODY was talking about how excited they were to be voting. Old people, young kids, everybody. I felt like I was in a Frank Capra movie.

Now, I love what I do. But it ain't brain surgery. I've seen brain surgery, and this isn't it. And as much as I'd love to say this isn't true, it isn't nearly as important as what we did Tuesday. We reinvolved ourselves in the national debate. We reclaimed our right and responsibility to have a voice in our future. Hooray for us! And now, hopefully, we'll remember that our responsibilities last beyond election Tuesday. Oh, and one more thing. I brought a book while I stood in line. And when somebody commented on what a good idea it was, I handed them one of mine. I'm not completely altruistic, after all.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins.

the rules of writing

2006-11-03T00:10:00.000-06:00

Okay, I just had to say this. I just saw where yet another author put on his\her blog the rules of writing. And I think of the years I struggled to consider myself an author, because I didn't obey any of the rules that other people--who knew they were right--laid down. Oh, I could write. I'd been doing it non-stop since I was ten. I have a big lock box full of the stories I'd written, and I thought they were good. But I wasn't an author, because I couldn't follow the rules.

Most of the books I read on the subject were written by people with left brains. Outline, character charts, routine writing hours, etc, etc. Well, not only do I have a vestigial left brain that is all used up with punctuation and spelling, I'm so dominantly right brain that not one of those suggestions worked for me(okay, and I was diagnosed last year with ADD. It's the hat trick of disorganization).

I felt like a failure because I couldn't write an outline to save my life. Not that I can't write a synopsis. I can tell you who my characters are, what the conflict is, and many of the scenes that are within. But to do it in a linear fashion before I actually write the book is, literally, impossible. Every time I try I can feel my head hit the wall. I'm frustrated, I feel like a failure, and my creativity shuts up like an irritated clam. It took me years of study on brain function and some wonderful books on using the right brain to finally understand that the way I wrote, which included laundry-listing items in the book, doing a free-association character study that just let the character talk for herself, writing my books in what we lovingly call the binge-and-purge fashion(more on that later), was absolutely right. For me.

Here's the best word I've ever heard on the subject of rules of writing. It's by Somerset Maugham, who said, "There are three hard and fast rules to writing. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are." In other words, whatever gets words on paper in a timely fashion is the right way. For you. Yes, I can give suggestions. Anybody can. Just remember they're suggestions of what works for me. You have to take those and see if they fit into your way of doing things. If it energizes you to write better, more easily, more comprehensively, great. If they stop the words like big clots in your chest, then they're the wrong suggestions. Keep looking.

If you want to write, and you want to improve, you'll always find something that resonates for you. I do all the time. But always keep in mind this simple fact. Not every rule is for every author.

Happy writing!
Eileen\Kathleen, the evil twins

The Fairy Child

2006-10-07T17:57:00.000-05:00

Back in 1991, when my daughter was eight and my son eleven, my family got to go to Ireland. Since it was my children's first trip there, I wanted it to be special. I wanted to stay in special places. After much research(half the fun of travel for me), I stumbled across a castle in Ireland that had a B&B. Called Castle Matrix, it was about twenty miles south of Shannon, and had been renovated from a 15th century tower castle by a mad Renaissance man named Sean O'Driscoll. We were so lucky on that trip. Sean was still alive, and he spent our trip enchanting us with tales of his land, which had originally been a sacred site to the goddess Matres, and later the site where the first potato was planted in Ireland. He''d restored the castle to amazing condition, and collected not only an astounding library, but incredible artifacts(I held one of Napoleon's death masks in my hand). We sat at his table in the old hall--with no electricity--until three in the morning talking about how one of the secrets to the true Holy Grail was hidden in the walls by the old Templars. Yes, that holy Grail. I heard the theory behind DaVinci Code years before the book hit.

Anyway, at the time of our first visit, Sean had a three year old son named Kieran my childen immediately named "the fairy child." It was easy to see why. He was small, delicate, with flaming red hair, and ears that had just a bit of a tip to them. Most amazing, he had the oldest, wisest dark eyes that were just a bit slanted. It was as if he'd seen it all before and was vastly amused. My kids adored him. I adored him. In the years since, I've been able to visit my friend Liz, Kieran's mother and Sean's widow when I've been in Ireland(sadly, she can no longer manage a B&B, but if you're near the Castle, see if you can get a tour). The second time I visited, after a lapse of about five years, I admitted to my friends and authors Karyn Witmer and Kimberly Cates, who went with me, that I couldn't wait to see how Kieran had grown. And then we got there, and I swear to you on my mother's grave, that he hadn't. Not a bit. Oh, he was taller, but he looked not at all older, except for those amazing quiet, watching eyes of his. He'd developed a very sly sense of humor and a passion for basketball. But he was still the fairy child.

I've been since, to see him gain even more height, but otherwise stay the same fairy child. Liz spent all her time preserving the castle that was Sean's gift and Kieran's inheritance. It's been viciously difficult. But Kieran was her life.

I went back to Ireland this May, after not seeing Liz or Kieran for about three years. As usual, I called beforehand. The phone was disconnected. I tried the email. No. Then I just googled the castle. And that was when I found out that my fairy child, that fey, wise, charming child of Ireland had died the year before of ravaging leukemia. He was eighteen. I was distraught. I called my friends and my children who had known him, and they couldn't believe it either.

Actually, I could. I believe in reincarnation, because as a nurse I've seen that the children who don't remain with us all, to a child, have the oldest, wisest eyes I've ever seen. I truly believe that they've learned the lessons we were sent here for, and are simply finished with their journey. We weren't meant to have Kieran long. But I'm still grieving that bright spirit. So I asked Liz's permission, and then I inserted Kieran into the Daughters of Myth series. This way, Kieran has just returned to the land of faery, from which I knew he'd come to brighten all our lives. And I think, when I think of him, of the brilliant WB Yeats poem The Stolen Child

Come away, o human child,
To the water and the wild,
With a faery hand in hand,
for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

after a brief delay...

2006-10-06T02:02:00.000-05:00

I just looked at the date on my last post and said, "No, there must be some missing. I couldn't possibly be quiet for this long." Evidently, I could. I didn't mean to be so quiet for so long. But, you know, life got in the way. I'm caught in what is affectionately referred to as the sandwich generation. But as a friend of mine said, 'I hate it when they call it the sandwich generation. Sandwiches are nice things. Call it what it is: the mammogram generation. You get squeezed from both sides until you scream." Ah, yes. Okay, I was also writing, and well, I did get to go to Italy. Yes,(if the picture actually did download), that is me sitting outside in a lovely piazza in Matera. But I'm back now, and hard at work. We're in the final stretch of the Miss Fortunes, and it looks as if Dangerous Temptation is out. In my next post I'm going to tell you a bit about the dedication of the book, and a very important character in the Daughters of Myth trilogy; The Seer, Kieran O'Driscoll. But not now. Now I'm going to head to bed, hoping I can get some good writing done tomorrow so I can post again tomorrow night. Remember. I'm going to have a story to tell.

Eileen\Kathleen the evil twins

The revision process

2006-07-03T15:26:00.000-05:00

Well, it's fourth of July weekend, and if it weren't about a hundred degrees out, I'd be at a county fair looking at 4H exhibits. But I'm a delicate flower, so I'm inside working on revisions on the Miss Fortunes book. The basic way I go about revisions is this. I get through the first draft on one big wave of energy. Then I collapse. For at least three or four days I sleep a lot and do no more than read or sit in my garden. Then I wonder what it was I did put in my manuscript. So I go back and reread. That's when I find all those little continuity inconsistencies(like picking up an animal and then forgetting it's there for the rest of the scene, or making sure my heroes eyes stay the correct color--Caribbean blue, this time) and those pacing problems. And I do the final chiseling.

Chiseling, you say. Ah, it's something I've been thinking about as I've worked with Jenny and Krissie. I've never really looked too closely at the process of how I put a book together. I'm an organic writer, pretty much working on instinct. I've long forgotten the rules of why I do something (as opposed to Jen who can list them off like the commandments in a revival meeting), but I know if the words work or not. It's like they clot up in my chest and make it hard to breathe if I'm doing it incorrectly. Anyway, this time I actually saw how I put things together, or take them apart, or whatever, to make a complete manuscript, and I realize that I'm most like Michelangelo.

No. I'm not saying I'm a legendary renaissance artist. How I equate myself to him is in his own description of his work. He said that he took a chunk of marble and kept chipping away at it until he discovered the form that had been waiting inside to be seen. I think that's what I do with words. In my very first draft, I throw every word I can onto the page, just to get it down, to see where the story is going, where my character is going, and what it means that she does. It is my chunk of marble. In successive drafts--which really aren't as well delineated as they sound. I do edit as I go. I go back at least three times from the beginning even as I construct the first draft--I begin to chisel away the excess words and ideas until I get to the book I think is waiting inside.

I can always tell if I haven't had enough time or focus for a book, because there are, simply, too many words. But the better I can follow my own process, the tighter and more precise the story I'm telling. So now, since the weather is awful, I'm going to sit in my office and pull out my smaller chisel. And I hope I can get my story to be just what I'd envisioned when I found my chunk of marble. And that it's worthy of the two lovely creations I get to share space with.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

I'm feeling MUCH better now

2006-06-28T12:34:00.000-05:00

There's nothing like the end of a deadline. First, you feel as if you must be mistaken. You know that can't be enough words, that the plot is wrong, the characters insipid, the theme obscure. Then you go back over the last chapter or two one or more time more just to make sure, and you sit there. You have nothing more to do. You're free.

I keep thinking of that line about if you open a cage on a bird who's been inside a long time, it won't know it's free. Same feeling. No, I must continue to feel obsessed, pressured, frantic, pumped up and high. No. There's no need. It's like coming off the biggest high in the world. The good news is that before you realize you don't need the adrenaline anymore, you've cleaned your office, caught up on correspondence, done your grocery shopping and wallpapered the bathroom(not really. Certainly not in my house). Then, I thought, I'm going to treat myself to a morning in bed. A lunch at a restaurant with a book. A slow meander through the garden center of my choice so I can actually plant something in my garden.

Instead I spent the day in the dentist's office getting an emergency root canal. "Have you been under inordinate stress that caused you to grind your teeth to splinters and provoke mind-searing pain?" he asked. "Why, no. Why should you think that?"

But I'm feeling MUCH better now. I'm off deadline. For at least a week.

I think I'd better put a bite guard in my office.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

back at 1

2006-06-22T02:01:00.000-05:00

Deadline. Writing. Words. Many, many words. I go now........

words are my life

2006-06-21T01:03:00.000-05:00

I got to use the word concupiscent today. Okay, you might say. So what? So I've been wanting to use that word since I first read it in Wallace Steven's poem "The Emperor of Ice Cream" in high school. The actual line is

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

The poem goes on to reflect a wake. But I found myself stopped dead at that word, at the way it clattered off my tongue. At the lovely round vowels and sharp consonents. I had to find out what this wonderful word meant. And yes, it means kind of what it sounds like. Great sexual passion. Works for me.

But the sound of it! I don't just love writing words. I love saying them. I love poetry and romance because there are few things more fun than alliteration. I mean, come on. Kitchen cups concupiscent curds. Say that fast three times. Even better, dig out Poe's poem "The Bells." By the end you're shouting the words so fast you sprain your tongue. At least once a year I read it out loud to my empty house (okay, and my cat. But she's not so much a Poe fan) just to hear it.

But I got to use concupiscent in a book. Specifically in The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes. Even more specifically, about Aunt Rellie, who enslaves men and feeds off them until they're dust and blow away. Which is just about what her niece Dee wishes would happen to her. We'll find out if it does. But in the meantime, I got to say concupiscent. What a cool job this is.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

Busy, busy, busy

2006-06-10T17:37:00.000-05:00

I'm back on the road again. I spent the last four days in New York with Jenny Cruise and Anne Stuart wrestling "The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes" into shape. God bless Jen, she has the other side of my brain I'm missing. I'm so right brain wind whistles through the left side(that's the linear, logic side of the brain....you see my chronic problem). Jen actually posesses a left brain. So I have great ideas and Jen has great ideas and then organizes them. She did so by putting sticky notes all over the kitchen cabinets in the apartment where we stay(yeah. It really is living the good life, ya know? Having to go to New York because you have to write a book with two of your best friends). So by the time I left, my brains were smoking. And then I had to come to Topeka and give an all day seminar today. No brains left at all. I'm mute. Which is a fairly cataclysmic event for me. But I have tonight off before I head out tomorrow to the family cottage on Lake Michigan with my siblings, so I"m going to have a nice margarita, some protein, and a look at Miss Fortunes to clean it up before I go on. I just have to remember what we agreed was going to happen.
I just did the line edit on "Dangerous Temptation", the first of the Daughters of the Myth trilogy. And I have to admit, I really still love this book. There's danger, there's magic, there are enough horny fairies to populate a strip bar. I mean, who knew? The best part is, the sexiest parts take place in everybody's head. Shows you that it's true that 90% of sex is in the brain. Poor Zeke. His brain was quite overloaded. I can't wait to see what you think, especially since, except for a story I did for the old Shadows line anthology, this is the first paranormal I've done. I hope I didn't break any of the fairy rules...although my friends assure me that they're like the time travel rules. Pretty much what I decide they are.
I hope you don't mind. I'm off to the bar now. I need to plug my ears so the rest of my brains don't simply drain away.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

back to work

2006-05-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

So, here I am back home again after a lovely three weeks in Ireland and Scotland. I got to walk Edinburgh(did you know it's all uphill?), ride a pony over the Gap of Dunloe in Ireland(I have to kiss my horsebackriding instructor full on the mouth for preparing me. Ponies trot, too. Badly. And considering I was on a steep mountain pass, I wasn't interested in falling off), I got to see two horseraces, one at Limerick, where the son of the B&B where I was staying(the recommendation is going up on the new website) was racing his first horse over hurdles as a trainer. It was a Dick Francis book. Then I got to live a scene from Quiet Man. In Dingle, they still have thoroughbred races on the strand when the tide is out. Wow, it was fantastic! I hope to have pics on the travel for fun page.
But what I really am is back to work. Zeke is in, Silhouette is happy, and now I'm off to start the next book in the trilogy. If you remember, Zeke falls in love with the heir to the throne of Mab, Queen of Faerie. Well, when Nuala(our intrepid heroine) leaves, the job is left to her next sister, Sorcha, who'd rather have her fairy toenails plucked than be queen. So she's sent on a quest, and runs across a dark, brooding human, who'd rather have HIS toenails plucked than admit that there are such things as fairies. Hopefully the real Mab won't mind. I said hello to her when I was in Ireland. Purportedly, she's buried under a 40 foot high cairn on top of a mountain called Knocknarea. I'll let you know. In the meantime, I have fairies to torment.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

the road to tipperary

2006-05-04T13:33:00.000-05:00

this is going to be quick. i haven't posted for a bit, because i've been in deadline fever--or, as my daughter so lovingly calls it, deadline psychosis. But the best news. Zeke is in! He's FINALLY gotten his story, and i love it. The question will be, of course, if Silhouette will. I'll let you know. for now know that I've spent a lovely week in rainy, cold Ireland, and am now strolling pleasant and warm Edinburgh(sounds like a typo to me, too). i'll fill you in on the trip when I get home. And also on the updated webpage. Wait til you see it! i think it's smashing! now, children, i'm off to sample a few more single malts. my favorite so far is, balvenie. if you have only £6000, you can buy the 50 year bottle. i'm going a bit younger. slan abhaile!

eileen/kathleen, the evil twins

scoring a book

2006-03-22T02:22:00.000-06:00

I was talking to somebody the other day about music. Not in a general, "Don't you like music" kind of way, but in a "What music do you play while you write a book?" kind of way. Each author finds a different source of inspiration. Some need absolute silence. Some tv's. Some only music without words, or only baroque(my critique partner Elizabeth Grayson-Karyn Witmer).When I'm writing my books--especially the character-driven books-- I use all kinds of music. The interesting thing is, I usually find one CD and then play it non-stop throughout the whole book. My children have been known to run screaming from the house the minute "Last of the Mohicans" hits the sound system.
For my Kathleen Korbel "Some Men's Dreams", it was Nickel Creek. Over and over and over again. For my Eileen Dreyer "Sinner's and Saints", which is set in New Orleans, you'd think it should have been jazz, blues. Maybe a little Winton Marsalis or Harry Connick. Nope. Evanescence. For six solid months. If you haven't heard Evanescence, it's a dead cross between Puccini and Linkin Park. Brilliant stuff. Evocative. Rawly emotional. The soundtrack for Sinners. I tried using Braveheart once, because the music is beautiful. But I coudln't concentrate on the book, because I got so depressed. "Oh, there's where his wife dies" I think, then, 'Oh, there's where he's betrayed by the Bruce". It really interferes with the writing.
Right now I'm working on two different, but very similar projects. Both involve paranormal, and both are fairy erotic. I find that I'm using similar music, although changing a bit. For the fairy book, which right now is entitled Daughers of the Myth: Dangerous Temptation, I have a selection on the 5 disc CD changer. Two Loreena McKennitt. Nobody puts me in a celtic mood like Loreena.( And on Elemental, I get to play along on my bodhran, the Irish drum that is a very nice stress reducer) . Those are slotted between Evanescence(Never assume that you wear yourself out on only 6 months of the same CD. Especially if it's good stuff), Dave Matthews Some Devil(SO evocative for me) and Melissa Ethridge's first album(raw sexuality). It's the perfect mix for what I'm doing there.
Now for The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, I just skip the Loreena. That's because Loreena brings a softer, dreamier edge to my work, which just doesn't work in the Miss Fortunes. So it's Evanescence (raw emotion) Dave Matthews (I have no idea, but it makes me write better) and Melissa Ethridge(raw sexuality). I also on occasion throw on a little Chris Isaacs(I did mention that I was using a lot of sensuality stuff) or Fiona Apple(read previous parenthesis).
I never know what the music is going to be until I get a ways into the book. I try a lot out, like the Braveheart. But once I'm settled, it never changes. For up to six months.
Well, it's back to work. Well, actually, the bodhran song has come up. So I'm going to whack at a goat skin for a while, and THEN get back to work.

eileen/kathleen the evil twins

erin go bragh

2006-03-18T02:00:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I'm really not posting exactly on March 17. You really don't think that a girl named Mary Eileen would have time on the exact holy day to sit at her computer, do you? Actually, my day isn't as wild as it could be. It's mostly a family day, where my siblings and I meet at any non-Irish establishment in the city. Non-Irish because St. Louis excells in St Patrick's Day, and none of us want to mingle with all the amateurs who are out tonight. We eat, we have a few, and we raise a toast to my mom. And then, any other day of the year, we visit the hallowed halls of any of the several pubs in town that have an O' in the name. Or a Mc. My favorite of these(and impossible to even get within a city block of today) is a lovely place in the Soulard area of town called John D. McGurk's. McGurk's is a music pub. And not a "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" kind of place. More a collecting for the widows and orphans fund for Sinn Fein kind of place. In fact, it is legendary for its music. Wherever I go in the world, if I find a music pub I would like to sing in(finding the pub is the problem. There's never a question of my singing.), all I have to do is tell the musicians that I've sung at McGurk's in St. Louis, and I have carte blanche. And there's nothing I love more than sharing music in a real Irish pub. In fact, Tess Gerritson, who plays the fiddle, and I are thinking of forming an Irish equivalent of the Rock Bottom Remainders. Now all we have to do is convince Erin Hart's husband Paddy O'Brien(one of my very favorite Irish musicians in the world--a legendary button accordian player whom I knew long before I knew Erin) to join in.
For now, though, I'll just sing to myself as I return to my lovely fairie, who have astonishingly turned into quite a randy lot. Amazing how little time it takes to get back in the habit of writing love scenes after a hiatus.
So slainte, everybody. And may I share with you my favorite Irish prayer.
May those who love us love us,
And those who don't,
May the lord turn their ankles
So we'll know them by their limping.

eileen\kathleen, the evil twins

a side note

2006-03-14T23:36:00.000-06:00

This will be quick, because I'm behind on my deadline due to a rash of thunderstorms and tornadoes that interrupted my work for two long days(no, I wasn't affected. I can't remember that many tornado warnings in one day through one state, though. It was overhwelming). Anyway, I thought I'd drop in a quick note about an anthology I'm in that will be out soon. I haven't had a chance to put it up on the web page, since I'm in the middle of a redesign, and can't seem to get anything else done.
The anthology is called Deadly Housewives, and it's coming out from HarperCollins. I was asked to submit a story that didn't involve dead husbands or neighbors. As a matter of fact, the editor, Christine Matthews asked for something different. Maybe, she said, a romance, since she knew I wrote them(she didnt' know it had been four years since I'd written a love scene, but there are some things you don't share with any editor. The mantra in publishing--and acting, from what I've heard--is, "Sure. I can do that." Christine was on a time crunch and asked if I could do a 20 page story in a week. I'm happy to say that an hour later while in the shower, the whole story came to me. It's called "Vanquishing the Infidels", and it is more a fictional memoire(nods to James Frey) based upon not just my family, but my mom.
I decided that I couldn't think of anybody more deadly than that five foot one inch Irishwoman. And so I wrote of an incident that happened when I was six, and she defended me against a crazy adult who shoved me off my bike. The story is family legend, which I think should be immortalized. It is wrapped in much of our family lore. All of it true--as true as an Irish storyteller can make it. I've only changed a few names--like the English war bride down the street, and mistaken one thing. I've always remembered the final confrontation, but I always thought I"d made it up. That I couldn't have been there. So I wrote it from another point of view(also absolutely true). I found out from my brothers last week, that I was right in the first place. I was there. Go figure. But that's how memoirs go afoul...well, and the natural need to make a story as interesting as possible(the big surprise for me when I did family geneology was when the story turned out to be TRUE).
So now I go back to deadline. I'll have more on the fairy book later. Just know that I'm having one of the most fun times I've ever had writing. I just love world building! Especially since my fairies(with apologies to Nickie Hilton) are hot!
eileen and kathleen, the evil twins

changing fortunes

2006-03-09T03:17:00.000-06:00

So, why am I writing romance again? The truth is, I never stopped. Well, I never wanted to. I love both suspense and romance. I love to write both. Loren Estelman, a wonderful mystery\nonfiction\western writer calls moving among genres "literary crop rotation." I really like that, because you reall do use different talents in each genre.
I like suspense because I can really delve into the dark heart of the soul. I can have really, really imperfect protagonists(my favorite male lead so far is a sociopathic lawyer in Bad Medicine and Head Games. He's not a bad sociopath, he just doesn't have the moral code of normal people, and he knows it). I also love to write action scenes. In fact, I'm so enamored of them that I find myself putting them in my romances. I mean, otherwise they're just standing around talking to each other....well, almost all the time. I'm terrified my audience will get bored. But put a bullet through the window, and you can keep them busy for pages.
I like romance because I love a happy ending. I love the hope that is the message of each and every book. I love writing about relationships. And I sincerely love writing character based novels, which romances are much more than suspenses. I love romance language. If for no other reason, I'd continue to write romance because I love alliteration. And you simply can't get away with that over in suspenseland.
Right now I'm writing romance because of the vagaries of the industry. My suspense numbers didn't grow the way my publisher wanted me to. So they've asked me to put
a hold on my suspenses for a bit. I'd already had ideas for some romances, so I pitched those to my agent and my romance house--or rather Kathleen Korbel's house-- Silhouette. They said yes(thank heavens. I have SUCH student loans to pay off. The bain of having smart kids), and so I'm settling into a trilogy for them called Daughters of Myth, which used to be called Mab's Daughters until the sales department found they didn't have a clue who Mab was. Ah, well. The first of the books, still untitled, but I think sales is leaning toward Dangerous Temptation(not hugely original, but it gets the job done) to launch the newest Harlequin line, a dark paranormal line that goes by the name of Nocturne(now, that I like). It is also, by coincidence, if you've followed my Kendall series at all, the final book. Zeke's long-awaited visit with the fairies.
So I'll keep you up to date on the progress. And I'll just tell you this for now. I realized the other night that it's been four years since I've written a love scene. At first I was quite stymied. But then, I realized that (if you'll pardon the concept) all in the rhythm. It really is like riding a bike.

Eileen and Kathleen, the evil twins

work hours

2006-03-01T01:38:00.000-06:00

If you read this regularly, you'll come to see that I tend to post these things deep into the night, when most of the sensible world is asleep. There's a reason for that. I'm a night owl. Always was. I used to blame it on the fact that when you grow up in a two-bedroom house with ten people, late night is the only time you can control the TV. Then it was my nursing career. My favorite shifts in the ER were evenings and nights. The very best? 5PM to 3AM. That's generally when all the fun stuff happens--and the supervisory staff at home with their families instead of getting in my way.
But when I quit to write--well, I quit because I burned out. I found myself backing a doctor against a wall with a scalpel in my hand and realized I just wasn't having fun anymore--but I was writing full time, I realized that I had no more excuses. I simply don't function in the morning. When I was still working they'd literally have a pool going to see if I showed up with my uniform on inside out.
Now, it's a simpler issue. No matter how hard I try--and believe me, when deadlines loom, I try like a trojan--the only thing that happens if I try and use the computer before at least 3PM, is I sit at the desk until drool collects in my lap. I can't even answer the phone before noon. Usually because I've been up til 4 or 5AM, and am just too sleepy to be coherent. No one in New York is allowed to call me before then. It's not that I'm surly. I just can't remember that I've talked to anyone(if my husband calls, he makes me tape a note to the bathroom mirror with his message).
I tried again today. Yes, I have deadlines, and my husband is out of town, which means my schedule is my own. Drool collected, I clutched my thesaurus like a liferaft as I struggled for words I knew perfectly well yesterday, and nothing happened. Nothing. On the other hand, it's about 1:30AM, and since Midnight I've edited two chapters and written five new pages. And I"m just getting warmed up.
So, while some of my best friends are morning people, I'd much rather bay at the moon. Or have my characters do it.

It's the little things

2006-02-24T04:05:00.000-06:00

Well, here it is, zero-dark-thirty, and I'm finishing up my work day. It's been a really good one. Not because I got a lot of pages written. Heck, I spent abotu twelve hours trying to complete my art fact sheet for the fairy book for Harlequin. The art fact sheet, if you haven't met one in person, is the information an author gives the art department about her book so they can create a cover....actually, so they can ignore it completely while making a cover. The new art fact sheets have been computerized, and that was such a successful idea, that if you live anywhere in a five-state radius from me, you should have heard my shreeks(how DO you spell that?) of frustration.
So it left little time for actual writing. However, I overcame a stumbling block today that's important to me. It also will help illustrate how God is in the details in writing. The book I'm doing for Silhouette is the first of a trilogy about an Irish Faerie clan in Sligo, whose queen is Mab, or Maeve, if you will. They have been going along pretty happily until the moment my hero falls down a fairy rath and right into their living room. Drama and comedy ensue, but also an attack by the bad, bad fairies. Okay. That works. I get itchy anymore if I don't have at least one fight scene or gunshot per book. The only problem with that idea is that the only really bad fairies I know about from my research are called air fairies. Yeah. Not particularly scarifying. So I really had to find them a good moniker, or they wouldn't terrify anybody. I do have to say that I've had great fun investigating gaelic names and translations, and, of course using them with impugnity.
So there I am trying to find a name for a clan of fairies who are patriarchal(obviously Mab's clan is matriarchal), and once upon a time, a postive, powerful clan. Recently, though, they have become dark and fearsome( you know what happens when kids hang around with the wrong crowd). So I needed a portentious name, but one that could be interpreted for good or evil. I searched and I searched, and finally I found it. My patriarchal fairy clan is the Dubhlainn Sidhe. The Fairies of the Dark Sword. Cool, huh? Okay, maybe it doesn't send you into raptures, but the minute I had their name, I knew exactly who they were. Tarnished knights who have been influenced by powers beyond their control. Redeemable, of course. The hero of the third book in the trilogy is Liam the Protector.
Symbols are very important to me. The dark sword is my symbol for my dark fairies. The symbols for the series, tentatively called Daughters of the Glen(or the Mists or Myth), are the three Filial Stones which rule the world of faerie and must be in their right place to maintain balance. But that's a topic for another post. Good night, all. It's time to curl up with my cat and dream about the clash of fairy courts. More fun, certainly, than dreaming about art fact sheets. I did that last night.

Eileen/Kathleen the evil twins

the business side of show

2006-02-22T04:09:00.000-06:00

I was going to get a lot of writing done today. My husband is in South Africa, the rat, so I have no set family schedule to work around, which means I can write, then nap, then write, then nap. The problem is that instead I had to do an interesting thing called an art fact sheet for my next book for Silhouette. It's goint to launch their new line, Nocturne, which is a kind of dark paranormal line. Art fact sheets are a necessary evil, so that the artist at least has an idea of what you're looking for. Not that he actually always follows it, of course. I had a book once called "A Prince of a Guy," about fictitious European royalty. I sent photos of Bruce Boxleitner in a Lauren add(tuxedoed and everything) for the prince hero, and, I think, somebody like Meg Ryan for my secretary heroine. Instead I got a narcoleptic Anthony Newley about ready to fall into a fountain. Fortunately Vanna White holds him up. In return he (and a suspiciously placed rivet) held her dress up.
So giving them physical info may be optimistic, but it's better than nothing. Well, it was until they computafied it. Now I have to pick from a list of traits--giving my character only one--personalities and themes. I ended up wanting to jab a sharp pencil in my eye. So I'm blogging to feel better, then catching another of those two hour naps. Hopefully I'll be able to rejoin Mab, Queen of Fairies and her lovely daughters Nuala, Sorcha and Orla in the morning.

eileen/kathleen, the evil twins

blogging is easy. Writing is hard.

2006-02-21T01:06:00.000-06:00

I was just visiting one of the many lists to which I subscribe, this one Dorothy-L. I mostly lurk on lists these days, which is frustrating. I join a list to visit(I'm a great visitor. One of my best traits is that I play well with others). Then I visit and visit and visit, and all that time I should be writing and writing and writing. So I have a choice. I can play or I can work. And think about it. If you have a choice between scrubbing toilets(which bears a striking resemblance, some days, to writing) or answering mail, which would you choose? Naturally, I choose mail. It's like always having presents to open that are just for me. I can talk about anything and everything--the post I want to answer on Dot-L tonight is about Oprah and James Frey. Much more fun ranting about other authors than reaffirming the fact that I'm one. It reminds me of my favorite Ken Kesey quote. "Being a famous author is a wonderful thing. The only problem is that every once in a while you actually have to write something."
So saying, I'm going to end now and go in and actually write something.
But stick around. I know I'm going to need to vent about something, or share a silly "how I collaborated with Jen Cruise and Anne Stuart" story. Just remember. The more often I post, the less often I'm actually writing.

eileen\kathleen the evil twins

The Evil Twins themselves

2006-02-19T01:08:00.000-06:00

So, there I was, perfectly happy writing suspenses and the odd romance(yes, all my romances are odd), when I hit a snag in suspenseland. There is going to be an industry-imposed hiatus on Eileen Dreyer's suspenses for a bit. I'm really not happy about that, but all I can do is keep trying. In the meantime, I've gotten back in touch with my inner Kathleen Korbel, and voila! I'm contracted for three romances for Harlequin, and the aforementioned Three Authors in a Book deal with Jen Cruise and Ann Stuart. Since that's the fun one, I'll probably be talking about that for a bit. In the meantime, I'll be tucked in my cozy office--rather than outside in the near zero weather, which I abhor more than American Idol and tofu--working on this new concept of collaboration.
As I do, I hope to give you a better idea of who the evil twins are(I always say that Eileen is reponsible for the phone bill and Kathleen never cleans up her bedroom).

Eileen\Kathleen, the evil twins

Jenny Made me do it 2

2006-02-17T11:26:00.000-06:00

I really have been meaning to start a blog for ages. I love sharing information on my writing day, my research, little tidbits of stuff I learn along the way (my kids call me the Jeopardy Queen). But, as anyone who's been near my website will tell you, I'm the world's last luddite. Not necessarily by choice. I think it's a bent chromosome. The good news is I gave birth so that I'd have a computer expert handy(and here I'd always thought I'd done it so I'd have somebody to do the dishes and mow the front lawn). So, since the chatting is never difficult for me, I had my son help with the computer-input side of it, and here I am.
As for the Jenny made me do it, part, that's easy. I sometimes need a bit of a nudge to get off center, and that nudge(okay, my ribs still hurt) was provided by the inestimable Jenny Cruise. She and Anne Stuart and I(or rather, the Kathleen Korbel I) are working on an anthology together. We are really pumped about it--especially the part where we spent three days in an apartment in New York brainstorming. Is this a great job or what?--and Jen, especially. And if you know Jen at all, you'll know that she is genetically incapable of doing anything halfheartedly. So, she and Anne and I are going to be linking our blogs in the future--.as soon as I figure out how to do it--so we can cross talk about the project(Jen's already begun. Check her out. It's a hoot). In the meantime, I'm going to fill you in on what's going on in with my writing, research, the changes in my writing future, and the reason behind the change in my website.
So, stop by any time. I'd love to hear from you. I can't wait to share this odd process of creativity, especially the new experience of collaborating. Never done it before. Never knew it could be so much fun--or so frustrating. Both EileenDreyer and Kathleen Korbel will be posting about their projects(yes, I am evil twins. It'll probably be the official title of the blog from now on), and anything that crosses their devious little minds. Join the fun.

eileen and kathleen--the afforementioned evil twins

jenny made me do it

2006-02-08T13:21:00.000-06:00

This is the first in a grand experiment for me. As you know, my web page claims I've entered the 21st century. Blogging, I guess, proves it. I will try and be dilligent and informative and fun. And I can take some of the burden off the rest of my site for fun little factoids, which I love to share.

eileen/kathleen, the evil twins