I get asked a lot if I base my characters on real people or if they’re products of my imagination. Well, they are totally made up people. Perhaps a compliation of a dozen people I’ve met or seen with the extra baggage of a past that I’ve created.

Characters go much deeper than a picture, though I often go through magazines and clip photos of celebrities or models that fit my mental image of the character and post them just for a quick reference. But that image has to “talk” to me in some way.

They can’t just be a name or pretty face (or a not so pretty face.) I have to see an expression or attitude that fits a mood or a trait of the character.

A couple of times I’ve made collages of works in                                            progress.    Here’s the one I made for A Cowboy  Christmas which debuts in Oct.   I’m not a huge     Matthew McConaughey fan but his pose in this ad for Stetson was perfect for my hero.  So were the  images of the other actors and models. When  I combined them all (in a not so artistic fashion)  it helped to keep the conflicts of each  character right in front of my eyes.

Of course there are some real people that just stand out for one reason or another. Like Johnny Depp.

In Pirate Tycoon Forbidden Baby, my July release from Harlequin Presents, I couldn’t get the image of Johnny Depp from my mind.  I kept seeing him as Captain Jack Sparrow, and then as the suave celebrity of today on my fictional island in the Carribean. That odd duel image fit my hero, Andre Gauthier, who was a decendent of French Pirates and was a modern day corporate raider.

I’m giving away an autographed copy of Pirate  Tycoon Forbidden Baby to one lucky commenter. If you’re an author, have you used celebrities as character models? If you’re a reader, have you imagined an actor portraying a character in a novel you’re read? 

The winner will be announced on Sunday.

Authors put a lot of thought into the beginnings and endings of the books we write. We want to hook you in the first paragraph or two. We want to draw you in and compel you to keep on reading.

 How do we do this?

That is a very good question, and I’m sure there have been hundreds of classes and workshops given to aspiring writers on this very subject.

 My take on it? I think we authors want to make you wonder who the hero or heroine is, and how they’re going to deal with whatever’s been thrown at them. We don’t usually give you a lot of “backstory” right away – that’s the information that you’re going to need in order to understand where the character is coming from. No, we’re going to dribble that information throughout the first couple of chapters (not pages!). Because nothing is more boring than reading through someone’s past history. Besides, we can hit you with some aspect of the character’s backstory when it’ll be really compelling.

 For example, maybe the hero had a harsh nanny or tutor. The author isn’t going to simply tell you that – we want you to understand what that part of his life was like by showing you how he reacts to the same kind of harshness in another situation. Or perhaps he has a terrible fear of something … the reader might know about it, but he’s reluctant to reveal it to the heroine.  The reader understands his conflict, but the heroine is blithely ignorant of it – until she gains a greater understanding of him and his character.

 So we want to hook you in the beginning of the book with something so compelling, you can’t help but keep reading. Maybe that will work best in a prologue. In a good prologue, the author can suck you into the story with a few pages that describe an earlier event, and then the reader has an idea about what’s at stake before the story even begins.

 In my October book, Taken by the Laird, I wrote a prologue that takes place in St. George’s Church in Mayfair – the fashionable place for weddings in the early nineteenth century. Only the villains appear in the prologue, and they’re waiting for the heroine (the intended bride) to appear. They show their true colors during that one scene, and it becomes clear why the heroine has slipped away and fled London during the night, just before her wedding.

In romance, a happy ending is essential.  And it’s not just that the hero and heroine get together. We like all the loose ends to be tied up satisfactorily. There is usually more than one plot thread running through every book, and most readers want to see them resolved. They want the villain to get his just desserts, and the hero and heroine to be well on their way to perpetual bliss. 

However, the book might be part of a series. The murderer might not always be caught, or the gang dispersed, or the ghost destroyed…Maybe there’s a serial killer who wasn’t caught and will make his appearance in future books. Even so, this hero and heroine are happy and secure. They don’t have to worry about that killer any more (although the next H & H are going to be in for it when the next book is released!) 

Sometimes we write an epilogue. When there’s a sequel coming, the epilogue can foreshadow troubles to come. If it’s not part of a series, it can give the reader a taste of what happens with the hero and heroine after the dust has settled, after their issues have been resolved and they’ve made their commitment to each other. Maybe it covers the action that occurs right after the story, or it can be years later. 

Taken by the Laird has an epilogue, and it takes place in St. George’s Church, right where the prologue was set. The main characters are the hero and heroine, although it is not their wedding. Even so, it gave me the purest feeling of satisfaction to make the prologue and epilogue resonate together, I’m not sure how many readers will notice. And that doesn’t really matter. The epilogue ties up every question that was raised in the book and answers it to the reader’s satisfaction. I hope.  

What do you all think of prologues and epilogues? Like them? Hate them? Which kind do you like and dislike?

     As some of you know, I’m over in Scotland on a three-week tour. I’ve been dreaming and planning and wishing for this trip for a long time — I’m doing this by myself! I rented a car and have already driven all over SW Scotland and on several islands (Mull, Skye, Harris/Lewis) as well as a good portion of the western Highlands (Glasgow up to Oban, through Ft. William out through Lochalsh).  One of the best things about this trip is that I’m taking advantage of several different festivals and special events happening as part of Homecoming Scotland.

     The Blas Festival (Blas means ‘a taste’ or ‘a bit’ or ‘to savor’ in Gaelic) features lots and lots of music — and so far, I’ve attended 3 events:

Eilean Donan Castle

Dunvegan Castle

Calum MacCrimmon

St. Mary's Church, Portree, Skye

    If I had not been trying to act discreetly, I would have snapped a bunch of  photos of the men….in kilts…. in the choir. One in particular looked as though he’d walked out of a historical romance! But, I was behaving — it WAS a church after all!

   Now — about the magic. . .

    Sometimes, on my trips here and to England, strange things happen to me. In the Tower of London, in one of the medieval rooms, I knew that there should have been a door instead of a wall. The plans in the next room showed it. In Glamis Castle, I could feel a terribly cold draft coming from one place in a wall in a medieval chamber. Turns out that three men were walled up in a chamber to die behind that wall.

      This time?

       Sitting in Eilean Donan Castle as the narrator spoke of the tall, brawny, black-haired, bearded MacRae warriors, she mentioned that they were known for their ferocity and strength….and she whimsically wondered if maybe one was listening to her story…. Just after she mentioned the name of one of the founders of the clan, someone put their hand on my shoulder and I turned to see what they wanted. . . Yeppers, no one was there! No one. 

    And the latest bit of magic? I stopped at a viewpoint for Kilt Rock and suddenly the sun came out and this appeared right in front of us:

   I can’t wait to see what other magic and music await me on my tour…..

       So, is there some special place you’d like to visit in the world? What makes it special to you? Please post it and I’ll send out some special Scottish souvenirs to one lucky commenter!

 Terri B – reporting from Scotland!

PS — yes, I am terribly behind in sending out prizes, but I promise they will get there!

I love reunion stories. Of the nine books I’ve had published, four of them are reunion stories. That is, stories with couples who fell in love when they were young, only to break up or–even better–whose love was unrequited. Oh the emotion! The angst! The turmoil!

I admit it. I’m a total junkie for that stuff.

Here’s the weird thing. I never had a real boyfriend until college. At which point I met The Geek, my future hubby, dated him for about six months, got engaged and then got married a few years later. No turmoil. No angst. No unrequited love.

To paraphrase Robyn, my critique partner, “What’s up with that?”

Well, I have a theory. As a romance reader, I started pretty young. Eleven to be exact. So there I was, a pre-teen, full of romantic notions and more than my own fair share of unrequited love. (Way more than my fair share.)  My middle school and high school years were a series of one crush after another. And I’m pretty sure that none of those boys even knew I exists. Still, I was happy to read reunion stories and indulge in the fantasy that one day would step forward to fill the role of love of my life.

As a new romance reader, I devoured pretty much everything in my path, but I especially loved those reunion stories. And I still do, both as a reader and a writer. With my latest book, In the Tycoon’s Debt, I once again returned to those familiar grounds. Evie, the spoiled and rebellious princess of a small town falls in love with Quinm, the son of the town drunk. At seventeen, they are everything to each other. Needless to say, things go downhill from there.

The book is out today, so hopefully, if you’re out at the store, you’ll pick it up!

For now, tell me the name of your favorite reunion story and I’ll put you in the running for a prize. By the way, some of you may remember Quinn from Baby on the Billionaire’s Doorstep and Baby Benefits, two of my previous releases. So the winner will receive both of those.

Recently, I’ve had a spate of celebrity dreams…wonderful dreams, really, in which I am dear friends (or romantically linked) with a celebrity. Sometimes, it’s not the celebrity I’d expect. In one such dream, for example, John Cusack was my boyfriend. I don’t really like John Cusack…well, of course I don’t know him, so I can’t truly say, but if he came up to me in a bar and offered to buy me a drink, I’d have to turn him down. But in the dream, we were quite in love.

Once, I dreamed that Russell Crowe was my husband. This was an unusual dream, because it was set in the 1800s. Russ was a sea captain. Our little daughter and I were going down to the docks to greet him after a long sea voyage. Even in the dream, I was a little giddy at the sight of Russ clad in breeches. And he was my husband, know what I’m saying? Boo-yah!

Not that long ago, I dreamed that Joe Torre and I were driving around Connecticut in a pickup truck. Derek Jeter and my two kids were sitting in the backseat, horsing around. Joe and I were looking for a wife for Derek, who is indeed single…basically, Joe and I were just driving around, hoping to see someone suitable. Then Derek leaned forward and admitted that he didn’t want to do this, because, you see, he was already in love. With me. I said, “Derek, that’s so sweet, but I’m older than you are.” (Just a teensy bit…well, okay, nine years). “And I have two kids!” Derek told me he already loved my kids, and he would adopt them as his very own.

McIrish, my long-suffering husband, is always conveniently nonexistent in these dreams. I think that’s great. That way, there’s no guilt, know what I mean? I can be engaged to Derek or in love with Russell, and I’m not doing anything wrong.

A few days ago, I dreamed of Daniel Craig. But he wasn’t Daniel Craig or James Bond…he was the hero of one of my books, and I was the heroine. Didn’t want to wake up from that one, let me tell you. I also dreamed that Tim Gunn of Project Runway was my best friend, and I was at his gorgeous apartment in Manhattan for a party. I don’t know if Tim has a gorgeous apartment in Manhattan, but I bet he does. Project Runway has a raffle or something…the prize is lunch with Tim. I’m going to enter.

So is it me, or does everyone have celebrity dreams? Which was your best one? Did you ever have a dream that made you like a celebrity more than you did before the dream? Or less?

The winner from my blog on Thursday is EAP. Email me your contact info so I can put your prize in the mail. Congratulations!

Before I started writing, I hated to see people on the covers of book. That’s because they never looked like how I’d envisioned the characters. It especially drove me crazy if they looked waaaaay different (authors hate this, too)

Above is the cover for my upcoming November release from Silhouette Special Edition “Merry Christmas, Cowboy!” I like it. I think it conveys the tone of the book. The heroine and child look as I’d envisioned them. The guy…well, I didn’t have a good mental picture of him…but I thought he was blond…guess that’s not what i turned in on the Art Fact Sheet. Oops.

Here’s my own brief blurb on the story: Lauren Van Meveren came to Big Sky country to complete the research for her dissertation. Unlike her two friends who unexpectedly found their perfect matches in Sweet River, Lauren has no illusions there’s a happily-ever-after for her in the Montana stars. The daughter of two prominent academicians, Lauren’s career path was determined long ago.

Widower Seth Anderssen vowed on his wife’s deathbed that he wouldn’t marry again until their daughter was grown. But when Lauren temporarily moves in to help him care for his injured child, keeping his heart safe proves an impossible task. But Seth is a man of his word, and he’ll keep his promise… even if that means the woman he’s grown to love can never be his.

I think the cover reflects the tone of the book and the story inside. That is another thing the cover is supposed to do…if it’s a suspense book it should convey “suspense” and not “paranormal.” If it’s just a straight contemporary romance with a home and hearth feel, that’s what the cover should feel like. Harlequin does a lot of research on what makes people pick up a book…because you know if you don’t pick it up, you can’t buy it.

But their research aside, tell me what you like in a cover…and don’t…and what makes you pick up that book!

The other night I felt ambitious and decided to make homemade pasta. Thanks to modern machinery, it was a lot easier than it sounds and the results were superb, if I do say so myself.

Pasta recipe:

2 cups of flour (I used 1 cup of all-purpose and 1 cup of semolina).
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. Olive oil
2 Eggs
Water

Put the two beaten eggs into a 1 cup measuring cup, add the olive oil and then fill the rest of the measuring cup with water. You can always add more water if the dough is too dry.

Next I put the flour and salt into the machine’s mixing container and set it to mix. Then, the trick was to add the egg/oil/water mixture very slowly, one-third at a time. That way the dough mixed evenly. This took about three or four minutes – and I did have to add just a bit of extra water to get it to the proper “crumble” consistency (where the mixture had clumps the size of peas that, when pressed together, formed a dough that wasn’t too wet or too crumbly).

Once it reached “crumble” consistency, I set the machine to extrude the pasta. It was that easy!

What are some of your favorite recipes?

In its various forms, love scenes are probably one of the most discussed topics at romance writers’ conferences. Love scenes are an integral part of romance writing yet for some writers the thought of writing one can strike the same amount of fear as the dreaded synopsis. I can’t tell you there is no reason to be afraid, sex, unlike synopses, can actually have fearful roots. But I can tell you that there was a time when I found writing love scenes to be rather uncomfortable, yet now they tend to be one of my favorite scenes to write.

My journey through them isn’t important, and frankly I’m not sure why everything has changed, so I can’t offer you a step-by-step guide. I can tell you that the first one I wrote (many years ago now), I just typed as fast as I could to get through it as quickly as possible. When I re-read it, it was riddled with clichés and purple prose and had zero emotion. Needless to say it needed a lot of work.

The first step to writing love scenes (okay, so I lied, apparently I am giving you a step-by-step guide) is to ignore those around you. If you sit down to write a love scene and immediately you worry about your cousin or your mother or your in-laws, then it will paralyze you. As a romance writer, we have a built-in readership, it’s not our job to recruit new readers, though pulling people over to the dark side is always fun. But our readership is already used to graphic love scenes, they will not be embarrassed by what you have to offer them, so you shouldn’t be embarrassed.

Step number 2, your love scenes should not be able to be removed from one book and inserted into another. They should be just as character specific as everything else in the book. I’ve been asked on more than one occasion if I plot my love scenes and I don’t. I often know where one might naturally fall and I’ll indicate that, but I’ll wait until I’m there in the moment to see where the characters are emotionally and whether or not a love scene is a natural progression of the story. Plus I often will add one earlier or later than I would have expected. This isn’t the only aspect of my writing that is fluid, but it seems to be more so any other element. This is one way you can overcome the embarrassed feelings from above. If you really focus on the story and the characters, then the love scenes will be more natural, feel less forced.

Several years ago I read an article about how to use your heroine’s sexual fantasy to create your love scenes. This can be a very powerful and useful tool. So I always give it some thought when I’m creating my heroines I consider their sexual fantasies, what kind of man they need how that first scene or subsequent scenes will play out. If love scenes don’t grow directly out of a character’s internal conflict, then they should definitely mess all of that up. Create more conflict, more obstacles for the characters to climb over on their way to their happy ending.

Keep in mind that love scenes (at least in romance novels) are rarely about the choreography, but rather the emotion they bring to the surface and the sexual tension. Romance readers love sexual tension. The number one element required to create sexual tension is awareness. It’s not just about having your hero notice your heroine’s breasts or your heroine notice your hero’s muscles. Yes, those can be included, but there should be more. This, of course, goes back to character. I once wrote a book (I think it was A Study in Scandal) where the hero was obsessed with the heroine’s gloves and how many tiny buttons lay across the tender flesh of her wrist. He notices this is more than one scene and for him those gloves are sexy. Layering that in leaves a trail of sexual awareness from the first moment he sees those gloves to the moment he removes one. Start small, little things make a big difference.

I believe it was Anthropologist, Desmond Morris who came up with the 12 Steps of Intimacy that people naturally follow. Sometimes we skip steps, or even get them out of order, but this is a helpful guideline to creating believable intimacy.

Step 1: EYE TO BODY
Step 2: EYE TO EYE
Step 3: VOICE TO VOICE
Step 4: HAND TO HAND
Step 5: HAND TO SHOULDER
Step 6: HAND TO WAIST
Step 7: FACE TO FACE
Step 8: HAND TO HEAD
Step 9: HAND TO BODY
Step 10: MOUTH TO BODY
Step 11: TOUCHING BELOW THE WAIST
Step 12: INTERCOURSE

What are some of your favorite love scenes? Or do you just like the parts that lead up to the bedroom (or carriage, whatever the case may be?) Do you think love scenes enhance romance novels or push them over the top? I’ll draw one lucky winner from the comments today to win some loot (i.e., free books) I got at RWA National this year.

*this blog was originally featured as a guest blog on Fresh Fiction

I don’t usually write about charged contemporary issues because, well, I’m a romance author, not a blogger for CNN. But I’ve been thinking a lot about Michael Vick lately. Ultimate Sportsfan told me a week or so ago that he was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles’ football team. Later I saw a press conference where some guy—maybe the owner of the team—said that he thought everyone deserved a second chance.

Well, how can I argue with that? I mean, what kind of person would I be if I didn’t want to give anyone a second chance? But then I think, what about those dead dogs? They didn’t get a second chance…

And it’s not like Michael Vick can only make millions of dollars playing football. He could go get a real job that pays 40K a year or something. That would still be giving him a second chance.

Of course, as a writer, I love second chance stories. Many of my heroes and heroines are in desperate need of a second chance. In my next book (which won’t even be out until June 2010, so I probably shouldn’t talk about it but I am anyway) the hero Julien escapes from Revolutionary France with nothing but the clothes on his back. He is looking for a second chance in England. What if the English had sent him back? He’d be headless, and I’d be writing a paranormal romance! Of course, Julien is a good guy. He didn’t do anything to deserve being attacked by angry peasants, but I’m sure the peasants didn’t see it that way.

So what about you? Do you like second chance stories?