July 14, 2007

Lies told in the name of fun

Since my first contemporary romance for Avon is now on the shelves, I thought I’d blog a little about it. Yes…again. After all it took 2 years and 5 months for it to be published so I’m wringing every last ounce of pleasure from this month.

You’ve forgotten what it’s about? You’d like me to remind you? Thanks so much for asking. In a nutshell (what really is a nutshell anyway??)…When She Was Bad is about a woman who leads two lives. One as boring accountant Jenny Carman (this is who she really is) The other as sexy hairdresser Jasmine Coret (this is who she wishes she could be).

How did I get the idea for this book? Anyone out there ever make up a boyfriend or change your life facts to make yourself more interesting?? Since you can’t see me, I’ll tell you that my hand is now waving wildly in the air.

When I was a freshman in high school my girlfriend and I made up boyfriends. They were brothers. Mine was Robert (my hero’s name in this book) and hers was Joe. They were rich and cute and totally devoted to us. They also lived out of town…an easy way to explain why our other friends hadn’t met them.

Do I see some other hands in the air now? C’mon, I’m sure I’m not the only one….

As far as altering facts about my life…I’ve never done that but I have a funny story that happened to a friend. She went on a cruise, became friendly with a guy from New York and at the end of the cruise they decided to try a long distance relationship….problem was he had to tell her that he’d given her a made-up name and occupation at the beginning of the cruise!! Suddenly she was no longer interested in continuing a relationship with a liar.

That’s what happens in When She Was Bad. The lies start out innocent enough but soon Jenny is in over her head. Robert is everything she’s ever wanted (every bit as good as my made-up boyfriend) but she knows she’ll lose him if she tells the truth. I was stressed writing the book….worried they wouldn’t get together in the end. Okay….so that’s not quite the truth. I was worried I couldn’t bring them together in a convincing way…almost the same thing, right?

I’d love to hear your stories of made-up boyfriends and lies told in the name of fun. Please, please, please, don’t make me look like the only one who ever stretched the truth…

July 13, 2007

Sniff-Sniff. So I didn’t get to go to RWA National, but…

…as a way to pass the time until the rest of the Quills check in from conference (And just to prove that I do actually go to some of these events on occasion, LOL) I thought I would share a couple of pics from the Reader/Author Get-Together that I recently attended in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hosted by authors Lori Foster and Dianne Castell, it was a lot more laid back than your typical conference or convention, and I had a blast mixing and mingling with readers and fellow authors!

Here I am, stuffing myself at the first night pizza party. (My friend caught me on camera with a mouthful of soft drink, but that’s par for the course with me. ) That’s Harlequin author Kay Stockham in the background on the far left. I shared a table with Kay and author Catherine Spaulding during the event and really enjoyed talking with them.

And here’s a group shot of all of the authors who attended. Can you find me in the crowd? It’s a bit like Where’s Waldo, isn’t it? If it helps, I’m next to author Erin McCarthy. Now, all you have to do is find her…

I definitely plan on going back next year!

July 12, 2007

There is a Season

It seems like everything comes and goes in waves. A few years ago, all my friends were getting married. I have never been to so many bridal showers, couples showers, engagement parties, and finally weddings.

Now all my friends are having babies. Rarely a week goes by that I don’t get an announcement about a birth, a baby shower, or a new pregnancy.

Yes, even one of our own JQs has joined the bandwagon. Shirley, I’m talking to you!

Honestly, a few months ago, I counted and realized that I knew 17 people who were pregnant. Since then most have had their babies, but now different people are pregnant or about to have babies.

Still, I can’t complain. It’s better than being in a season like that of my grandparents. While I go to baby showers, they go to funerals. As much as I dislike baby showers, I have a feeling that they are better than funerals.

My parents are in a season where everyone is retiring. This seems like it would be fun except that retired people usually end up moving to the “home of their dreams,” so my parents have lost quite a few friends. They’re moving, too, and can’t complain.

What about you? Are you in any particular season of life?

July 11, 2007

A Ghostly Specter! Oh, wait… it’s just Jenna.

I’m not here, yet I’m writing a blog. I know, the power of post dating, right? I’m actually in Dallas, with several other Jaunties… oh, and about 2000 of our best writing friends. Today is a really fun day. Probably my favorite at conference. See, today is the Literacy for Life Booksigning. If you’ve never been to one, it’s an experience, to say the least. There are hundreds of romance authors all lined up at table after table after table. The books are all donated by the publishing houses (or authors) and all the proceeds go to local and national literacy efforts. Here are some pictures from booksignings past:

At the siging in Atlanta, 2006.

At Reno, NV in 2005 (sitting as Jess Michaels and very, very blonde).

These images are from my Day-by-Day Diaries in the Articles section of Passionate Pen, by the way.

Anyway, it’s great fun and I love meeting people and I’m sure I’m having a good time right now doing… something, depending on the time you’re reading this.

My Mom actually did some work with literacy issues when I was a little girl. I remember thinking it was sad that people couldn’t read, since I enjoyed it so much. I still think it’s sad because reading is such a joy to me (let alone writing). So good on RWA for sponsoring such a great effort. And good on the publishers for donating books for the cause.

I’ll be back Sunday and I’m sure we’ll all have much to report from Dallas! Have a great week everyone.

July 10, 2007

About The Regency Period

I just finished reading a book called Our Tempestuous Day, A History of Regency England, by historian Carolly Erickson, PhD (who has written several other books on historical periods and people). It’s a relatively short book (276 pages), and has a lot of footnotes, but does not go into great depth about the period. However, the author does give a very good overview of the forces at work during the years 1810-1820.

Besides the grand society that we are so familiar with through reading our favorite Regency romances, it was a decade with huge social forces in play. Hannah More was an evangelical reformer, teacher and writer. She worked closely with William Wilberforce (remember the movie Amazing Grace?). Miss More said that popular fiction “debased the taste, slackened the intellectual nerve, let down the understanding, set the fancy loose, and sent it gadding among low and mean subjects.” Her books and pamphlets outsold everyone else during this period. In order to improve the lives of the poor, More established schools – to teach farmers’ children to read the bible. The first school was located in Cheddar, a parish badly neglected by the church (because it was so poor). “Children came into the world without baptism and frequently died without a funeral.”

According to Erickson, Wilberforce was a humanitarian when it came to African slaves, but not with English laborers. He said their attempts to form unions was immoral. He also argued that Christianity should make the lower orders “less discontent with their lot, and the Bible taught them to be diligent, humble and patient.”

The Family Shakespeare was published in 1804 by Thomas Bowdler, who removed every impropriety he read in Shakespeare’s woks. The author wanted to protect women and children from being subjected to Shakespeare’s blasphemy and vulgarities. Men, of course, could read whatever they wanted, in private. Words were replaced (body became person; God became heaven. And everything was sanitized so that no bodily functions or expletives were found. In fact, the changing of a work in this way (with a silly connotation) has come to be known as “bowdlerization.”

On the opposite end of the moral gauge was George Gordon – Lord Byron. He was a gorgeous fellow who caused ladies to faint in awe when he entered a room. But he did not hold with the evangelistic leanings of the day, having adulterous affairs and living a rather dissipated existence.

Starting around 1812, there were “Luddites” – Regency terrorists – who came into country villages (anonymously) and smashed hosiery workshops. This was done in protest over the loss of work for framework knitters. It’s a complex story of labor/supply/demand, but suffice it to say that there was a huge group of people who were put out of work by the conditions of the day and they did not just sit still and take it.

And then there were the Corn Laws.
After the first defeat of Napoleon, the people became disenchanted with the government. Orators sprang up – spokesmen who would speak eloquently against the status quo. People gathered in crowds to grouse about the price of bread, singing anti-government songs and posting slogans on walls. When a bill was introduced in Feb, 1815, which would limit the importation of foreign grain, it threatened the survival of the lower classes. At this time, it was estimated that the average adult ate a pound of bread a day. Bread was the chief staple of their diet, and it had to be affordable.

But Parliament, in its typical way, passed the bill that favored the landowners. It kept the price of grain artificially high, creating vast numbers of people who could not afford to eat! After the second defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, they used the army to disperse the disenchanted crowds that gathered, sometimes with tragic results.

With so much social upheaval going on, our fascination with the titled elite of this era is interesting, isn’t it?

July 9, 2007

The Queen of Romance

The romance community received sad news this weekend when we learned that legend, Kathleen Woodiwiss had passed away. If you ask any historical romance reader how they got started reading and the majority will point this woman. She pioneered love scenes when it was taboo to even consider women reading such material. And she swept us away to far off places full of romance and passion and love. She is the reason I started reading romance and certainly the reason I ended up writing it. I was 17 when I picked up a copy of A Rose in Winter and those first few pages I just felt something click inside me. I just knew, that’s what I wanted to do to. I went on to read Shanna, The Flame and the Flower, Come Love a Stranger and the rest of the Woodiwiss greats and I passed them on to friends. A few years ago before I had sold I was at an RWA National conference and she was there to accept an award. The entire room fell hushed as we all realized her presence and then as she took the stage, we all took to our feet and the room was filled with applause and more than a few of us had to wipe away tears. She was a giant in our industry and she will be sorely missed.

A Rose in Winter is still my favorite romance and though my copy is tattered and torn, it will forever be on my keeper shelf. So what’s your favorite Woodiwiss and what did she mean to you?

July 8, 2007

Margo & Cindy’s book review in the Chicago Tribune

I was excited when a friend emailed me that a review for my book, When She Was Bad, had been reviewed in the Chicago Tribune. When I was reading the reviews….I saw a familiar name, fellow Quill Margo Maguire!!

I thought you’d enjoy reading them:

Theme Park: Romance
All wrapped up in love

A TV producer, an accountant, a warrior and a slave feel the heat

By John Charles
Published July 7, 2007

When She Was Bad By Cindy Kirk Avon, 352 pages, $5.99 paper

After dedicating the last few years to her career only to lose out on a promotion she richly deserved, accountant Jenny Carman decides it is time to shake things up in her dull life. Reinventing herself as Jasmine Coret, she hits one of Chicago’s hottest clubs and hits on sexy stranger Robert Marshall. But when one incredible night of passion suddenly turns into a simmering, long-term affair, Jenny has to figure out some way to tell Robert that the wild, unpredictable Jasmine, with whom he is falling in love, is really sensible, practical Jenny.

Cindy Kirk’s sizzlingly sexy, romantic tale of one woman’s efforts to redo her boring life is delightfully fun.

A Warrior’s Taking By Margo Maguire Avon, 384 pages, $5.99

When a tall, dark and sexy stranger washes ashore on the beach one day, governess Sarah Granger had no idea he would turn out to be the solution to all her problems.

Druzai warrior Brogan MacLochlainn traveled 900 years from the past to 19th Century England for one purpose: to find the legendary talisman known as the Blood Stone and return with it to fight the evil sorceress who is trying to take over his world. Instead, Brogan finds himself becoming distracted by the sweetly charming Sarah and her much more down-to-earth troubles.

Margo Maguire gives the classic historical Regency story a fresh, clever new twist by deftly adding some Celtic-flavored magic to the plot of her superbly sensual love story.

New cover

The cover for BLACKTHORNE’S BRIDE, the third book in the Misadventures in Matrimony series, is now on my website!

Great Expectations — update

All expecting parents have a pre-baby’s arrival to-do list a mile long, and we’re no different. We’ve been working on making the master bedroom a soothing, calm place to be — new paint, curtains, a lovely closet organizer system, the whole she-bang — as well as going through 10 years’ worth of clutter, on our way to working on the baby’s room. Junior will likely stay in our room in a bassinette for the first few months, and if we did his room first we’d probably never get to ours.

With a due date 7 weeks away, I also have a special list of more urgent tasks, just in case Junior decides to make an early appearance. Type up a list of names and phone numbers for my hubby to call to spread the news after baby arrives. Make a list of names and addresses for two friends who are throwing a baby shower for me later this month, and register for baby items we still need. Figure out which baby items we still need. Train the gal who’ll be filling in for me while I’m on maternity leave — she’s had two sessions already, so three or four more might get her comfortable in her new role. Get in another week of extra hours while the gal *I* fill in for uses up her vacation time while I’m still available.

And wonder about the exciting “honey, it’s time!” moment to come. Will my water break in the produce aisle at the grocery store? Will I wake up with damp sheets in the middle of the night? Make a mad dash to the hospital, perhaps attracting a police escort along the way, my hubby’s white knuckles gripping the steering wheel while I’m doing whatever breathing techniques I’ve learned in childbirth classes to get me through the painful contractions?

Throw all that out the window.

Thursday morning, I e-mailed my doc about a change I’d noticed. Probably nothing, especially since I’d just had a check-up on Monday, but being the proactive paranoid patient that I am, I wanted doc to know so she could reassure me it was nothing. She called and said to get to the hospital for a test. Okay, I’ll stop by on my home from work.

I haven’t been home yet.

Seems that sometime last week, my water didn’t break so much as it sprang a small leak. When they hooked me up to the fetal monitor, I was having mild contractions and didn’t even know it. And I’d driven myself to the hopsital — slowly, in rush hour traffic — while having these contractions.

How anti-climactic can you get?

The plan is for me to stay here in the hospital, closely monitored, until I deliver. Now that the sterile amniotic environment has been breeched (no matter how small the break), there’s a risk of infection. Once we reach 34 weeks, that risk outweighs the risk of Junior being preemie, so the docs will let him arrive no later than next Thursday. Since ultrasound shows he’s already 5 lbs. 15 oz, we just want to let his lungs mature a bit longer before he makes his debut. While it would be oh so cool to have a birth date of 7-7-07, I’d rather he have those few extra days.

Oh, and that to-do list? It included taking childbirth classes, which we were scheduled to begin on Monday.

What’s the old adage … if you want to make God laugh, make plans?

July 7, 2007

I’m brain dead and need your help

Okay, I’m sitting here looking at the screen and thinking what should I write about this week. The problem is that I’m just finishing up the revisions on my second book for Avon, moving offices at my day job and trying to get ready to go to Dallas next week. BTW, if you’re going to be at the literacy signing on Wednesday night…stop by and say hello. I promise not to try to sell you anything ….but I will be handing out free Jaunty Quill bags. But enough about that…..

I need your help. I’ve noticed that I haven’t been getting very many responses to my blogs….or at least not as many as the othe Quills…..so this week I want you–in response to this blog–to blog about anything that’s on your mind. I’d like to have twenty-five responses blogging about twenty five different topics.

Okay, so maybe it won’t really be in response to some topic that I’ve blogged on but at least I’ll know you’re out there.

Will you do it? Will you help me out?