Ever wonder what it’s like to be a full-time writer? Well, I certainly can’t speak for all the authors out there, we all have different lives, different responsibilities and schedules. But I thought I’d give you a peek into an average day for me.

I wake up to the sound of birds chirping and the smell of breakfast cooking. After a rigorous workout with my personal trainer, I shower and dress in my silk leisure suit. My assistant checks my emails and takes care of the ones that don’t need my personal assistant and formulates my new promotion plan. I sit at my computer and the characters immediately come alive and I quickly whip out 15 brilliant and perfectly crafted pages. Since I finished early I call my masseuse and then have a little nap. I wake up in time to see my lovely husband walk through the door with flowers again and announce we’ll be dining at a new 5-star restaurant. Anyone sick yet? Yeah, me too, okay so here’s how it really goes…

7:00 alarm clock goes off, The Professor hits snooze
7:30 after 30 minutes of snoozing, I get up, drag my laptop onto the bed and check email
7:45 begin bugging The Professor to get out of bed
8:15 no really, GET OUT OF BED!
9:00-9:30 somewhere in here either The Professor leaves or I take him to work (we only have 1 car)
9:45 talk to my mom on the phone
10:00 eat breakfast and decide to put dinner in the crockpot
10:30 check email and respond accordingly
10:45 open current book document and scroll down to the last written page
11:00 look at plot chart, what was I thinking? There’s nothing going on in this book
11:02 send panicky email to critique partner about how this is the worst book ever and I can’t imagine how I’ll ever pull it all together
11:15 write a couple of pages, get stuck looking for the right word, spend 15 minutes on-line looking for the right one. Go back to the pages, yep, still crap
11:45 check email, critique partner assures me that I always think the book I’m working on is terrible and I’ll be able to fix everything later, send her a threatening response that if she’s wrong, I’m giving her a nasty dedication

11:50 look at plot chart for inspiration and see that the next scene looks more interesting (it’s an almost love-scene), make a note in the manuscript to finish/fix the current scene and move onto the more interesting one – write 9 pages
12:45 lunch break, eat something wildly healthy and watch the food network
2:00 check email, email from my editor’s assistant and they need a picture for the back cover, peruse current promo pics and email friends to see which one they like best
2:15 critique partner calls with a plotting crisis of her own and I’m brilliant and very helpful in solving all her problems, we then brainstorm issue with the problem scene from earlier today. Decide I need to research for some sort of large event to set the scene in.
3:45 hang up – yes we talk a long time, but hey we’re wordy and I had to say hi to her 2.5 year old which you know takes a while sometimes, but now it’s time to go get The Professor
4:30 check email and get ready for our afternoon walk
5:30 walk
6:30 finish dinner up and eat
7:30 check email again (frankly I think I check email really like every 2 minutes, but I didn’t want to look like a total loser)
7:45 start research needed to fix scene, make notes for tomorrow when I’ll do it all over again.

You know some days are like this and some are great writing days where everything goes wonderfully and I’m done writing all my pages in like 2 hours. And some days its painful and brutal and I barely get a page done before I just throw in the towel and hope the next day is better. Then there are those days when I have a doctor’s appointment that lasts forever and have to go grocery shopping and to the bank and by the time I get home I barely have any time left. But I get some work done everyday. I try to do weekly page goals rather than daily to afford for the crazy schedule my life sometimes has so that I can deal with the 3 page days when I have a 15 page day. It all evens out.

So how about you, how do you spend your days?

A woman named Courtney contacted me last week and we’ve been trying to figure out if maybe we met as children. Our dads were stationed at the same base in England, and our time there overlaps by two years. It’s been a great trip down memory lane, remembering places and events I hadn’t thought of in years.

From her I learned the hill that we’d slide down on flattened cardboard boxes near the baseball field was actually formed by a bomb dropped during WWII. We used to jimmy the door at the back of the manor to get into the snack room, apparently fueling rumors the house was haunted and the ghost had a sweet tooth.

Courtney’s original question still has me smacking myself in the forehead. What was the name of the manor house in which all personnel stayed when arriving or departing Greenham Common Air Force Base? Everyone who knows anything about England knows that all their old houses have a name, from Donnington Castle to Waverly Cottage. It hadn’t even occurred to me wonder about the name of ours, a house that I featured in such loving detail in my first completed still-under-the-bed-where-it-belongs manuscript. When questioned, my mom drew a similar blank.

Since I was working on my taxes, naturally I had to immediately do a Google search. The first search result was my own bio page, which is how Courtney found me. After that, not much luck. I did find a site that mentioned the base was returned to its natural state in the 80′s after the whole debacle of our government wanting to store nuclear missiles there. Greenpeace was still camped out at the front gates when my dad went back for a visit in ’92.

On the plus side, I found www.PicturesofEngland.com and thought I’d share a few memories of Newbury with you. (Where are my pics, you ask? Haven’t a clue.)

On Saturdays, this car park downtown is an open air market with vendors’ stalls selling everything from cabbage to paperbacks to clothing. If the camera panned left, on the back row you’d see a toy shop that sold wonderful wooden toys. Directly behind the photographer is another row of shops, including a bakery that made marvelous walnut whips — a cone-shaped chocolate confection I haven’t found here in the States. A few doors down is where we bought my absolute all-time favorite pair of shoes, a pre-teen version of the platform shoes that were so popular at the time, in purple-black leather with chunky high heels. I’d never felt so tall. If you didn’t want to cook and didn’t want to eat in a pub, about the only other option was the Chinese take-away across the street, or the fish and chip shop up a couple blocks.

England’s canal system has been a smooth ride for getting fragile items to market for hundreds of years, especially in the days before Macadamized roads or asphalt. Our class took a field trip on one, going up and down many locks. We didn’t go far since most canal boats have engines of one horsepower – an actual horse, who walks along the towpath. The lock pictured here is the same kind of technology that gets massive cruise ships through the Panama Canal.

The Kennet River runs through town and every year they hold the Crafty Raft Race, pictured here. Notice everyone onboard is wearing a life vest – these are mandatory since many of the rafts turn out to be less than sea-worthy. The guys in my dad’s unit often competed and most years completed the course before their raft, er, encountered technical difficulites. We had an excellent view of the race since we had friends whose garden ended at the canal’s edge. I don’t remember any house boats parked by Mr. Ball’s garden gate, though.

My debut novel, The Legacy (April 2008), is a historical romance about the destructive nature of secrets. Set in 1525 Wittenberg, Germany, the novel weaves events occurring during the Early Reformation period into an intimate love story played out on the canvas of history.

I was inspired to write this outside-the-box historical romance about a printer and the runaway nun he is blackmailed into marrying when I came across a book entitled Martin Luther Had a Wife. The book described how the sixteenth-century religious reformer met and married Katherine von Bora, an ex-nun. She and eleven other nuns engineered a daring escape from a convent and fled to Luther’s doorstep in Wittenberg, asking for help in starting a new life. Luther decided to help the women, finding most of them husbands in a round of hasty matchmaking. The twelfth nun, Katherine von Bora, decided she’d rather marry Luther than anyone else, and theirs became one of the great love matches of history.

It got me thinking: What must it have been like for the other eleven women? They went from nun to wife in such a short time, most of them marrying strangers. And what if one of those women hadn’t wanted to marry the man chosen for her as a mate? The idea morphed into one of intrigue and suspense: What if an escaped nun was recaptured by her family and forced to marry a certain man for reasons she didn’t understand? And what if his reasons for marrying her were just as mysterious? Thus, The Legacy was born.

I created the three Behaim brothers to tell the story, one of whom is thrust into an arranged marriage with Sabina von Ziegler, a runaway nun with a tragic past. In the beginning, neither plans to consummate the marriage they each want to have annulled, but they find themselves challenged by a fiery passion they cannot resist. In addition, they must also solve a mystery revolving around why Sabina’s adopted father forced these two together in the first place. In the course of their discoveries, they find love and a truth that sets them free from their past.

While writing The Legacy, I also came across research describing the lives of the 16th century German mercenaries known as Landsknechts, or servants of the country. These mercenaries were hired by the Holy Roman Emperor, among others, to fight territorial battles between the major powers of the day (France, England, Germany, Spain, and the Low Countries). I was so fascinated with the difficult and spectacular lives of these men, I decided to make one of the Behaim brothers a mercenary fighting in Charles V’s Italian campaigns. Günter Behaim meets and falls for a Spanish blade artisan’s daughter who believes she is cursed. Their romantic adventure is featured in The Promise, available May 2009.

I hope readers will find the settings for these books a refreshing addition to their usual historical novels. If you’ve had a chance to read The Legacy, let me know what you think! You can stop by my website and read excerpts, send me an e-mail, check out pictures of conferences I’ve attended, and comment on my blog.

In addition, I’m giving away a free book and a $40 gift certificate to either B&N or GermanDeli.com (a German foods importer) to any one who comments on at least two of the blogs I’m touring. Comment here. For a list of the other places, check out my blog. Good luck!

Guest author TJ Bennett blogs with us tomorrow. She asked me to let everyone know that she’s having a contest whereby anyone who posts a comment on at least two of the blogs she’s touring will get a chance at a free book and a $40 gift certificate to either B&N or GermanDeli.com (a German foods importer).

Check out her blog tomorrow for more information.

I’m an AmericanIdolHolic and I’m in the mood to talk AI.

I’ve watched American Idol since the beginning. I have never missed a season. In fact, once it’s over for the year, I go through withdrawal. Tuesday nights just don’t seem the same without AI on Fox.

Season One–I was happy Kelly Clarkson won. Justin G just didn’t do it for me. Of all the other seasons, Carrie Underwood is my favorite contestant. I also have to admit I was a Clay Aiken fan and really,really,really wanted him to win.

This season? My favorites are David A and David C.

What about you?

You knew it was coming, right? The inevitable blog about taxes. Have you done yours yet?

USF and I had them ready in January, but we’ve had to wait until this week to get one last form. We knew we were going to owe. Even though we itemized and took every deduction, we still owed.

Not because we make a lot of money. No way. We just make a lot of untaxed money. I do contract work and he sold some property and then there’s my writing income.

You know I really should pay estimated taxes, but I just never know how to predict if and how much money I’ll make. Royalty checks for all your favorite authors are showing up in mailboxes around the country this week. As far as my total, your guess is as good as mine. $10? $100? $1,000? $10,000? Who knows? I’m hoping for the last one, though.

So we got the last form in last night, did the final calculations, and wrote the check. Actually, no one writes a check anymore. We had it debited from our back account. When we realized we were going to have to pay, we started saving, so we had it covered. It was even a little less than we thought.

And now, of course, we’ll be getting money back from the government. Not so sure this whole economic stimulus thing is going to work. My refund will go right back into savings.

So what about you? Do you owe, have a refund coming? What are you going to do with your economic stimulus refund?

Hello! Thanks so much to the ladies of the Jaunty Quills for inviting me to blog. As you can guess, I’m here to talk about my new book, writing, and anything else you’re interested in! NEVER TRUST A SCOUNDREL was released this month by Avon, and it’s my sixteenth published book. Since I’ve been at this a decent amount of time now (ten years published), and this is the first book of a new series, I thought I’d share with you how I come up with my trilogies.

I can’t seem to conceive of an idea that stands alone. As I flesh out secondary characters, they’re always so interesting to me that they seem to demand their own book. Long ago I gave in to the inevitable and plotted in trilogies. After a while they even received trilogy names, like “Spies and Lovers,” “Sisters of Willow Pond,” and the newest, “Sons of Scandal.” I come up with an over-arching theme, like spies, penniless ladies, or with this new trilogy, a group of cousins who have to live with the scandal of their parents. I started with the male cousins first, and I hope to do a “Daughters of Scandal” trilogy next.

Each hero had to have his own reaction to the scandals in the family: one strives to be perfect, another tries to leave it all behind, and the third, Daniel Throckmorten of NEVER TRUST A SCOUNDREL, gives in to the notoriety and revels in his own scandals. Of course, our heroine, Grace Banbury, comes from a disgraced, scandalous family, and only wishes to live a quiet, secure life. They have opposite goals, which really helps the plotting! Daniel’s newest scandal involves a mortified Grace: he wins her in a card game against her mother. He offers his own wager to Grace: if he can’t seduce her into his bed in two weeks, she wins security for herself and her family. Grace thinks this will be easy, of course, since all she has to do is resist. But how can she resist a handsome, scandalous man, especially when she’s determined to reform him? If you want to check out an excerpt, you can visit my website at GayleCallen.com

I always try to make sure the reader doesn’t miss out if she reads the books out of order. So do you like reading trilogies, as long as each book stands alone?

I am SO happy to announce that I finished my manuscript (my 15th book!) entitled WILD, and sent it off to my editor yesterday. This is good and important for 3 reasons.
1. It’s due April 15th.
2. I like to meet my deadlines on time (early is even better).
3. I am leaving for Paris with my husband on April 11th.

Ahhh … April in Paris!

I’ve never been there. My husband has to go for work, so I’m going with him. At first, we were only planning to go for a few days beyond his work days – like maybe a 4-day weekend, but the trip has expanded to 11 days. And we’re going to chunnel up to London and stay there for 4 or 5 days. I haven’t had a chance to unwind from my grueling writing schedule, but I’m going to get going on my Paris research tomorrow and figure out everything we should see.

I’ve been practicing my French, too. Haven’t used it since college … so I’m quite rusty. But I’m determined to give it a good try while I’m there. D’accord? I’ve even been listening to the French station on my satellite radio. Next, I need to rent a couple of French videos and ignore the subtitles.

In the meantime, I’ll stick with youtube for my cultural enlightenment.

Whoa, baby!

Hello, it’s me, Jaunty P. Quills, Porcupine Extraordinaire! Actually, I have a confession to make. That middle initial that everyone always asks me about…well, you haven’t asked me about it, but I know you’re wondering.

The truth is that my middle initial stands for Pirouette. That’s right. I’m Jaunty Pirouette Quills. I couldn’t tell you before because I was too embarrassed to admit my true passion. It didn’t seem…manly enough, but today I realized that I’m Jaunty Pirouette Quills, dang it!

I am porcupine. Hear me roar!

And now Vegas is going to hear me roar, baby! That’s right I’m going to Vegas to be a showgirl—er, showman. Feathered headdress? Who needs it when you got sexy quills like these?

Dear Quills, I hate to say it, but I’m out of here.

Take this job and shove it.

(Not that this was a job or that I could shove it anywhere, but, well, you get the idea!)

I’m too cool for school. So if you’re ever in Vegas, look me up, but don’t expect a backstage pass. Or an autograph. I know what those go for on eBay.

Goodbye, Jaunty Quills. Forever…