Most of you know I was a nurse in my previous life. Intensive Care was my field, and I loved it. I loved the high “tech-ness” of it, and the adrenalin rush every day. It was incredibly rewarding to make a difference in the lives of my critically ill patients and their families. There is nothing that binds people together like a life and death situation. Back in those days, I also did some moonlighting in an outpatient clinic that took care of all sorts of patients – OB/GYN, plastic surgery, ophthalmology, general medicine and surgery – pretty much everything. It was interesting, but my true love was ICU.

A few years into my career, my dad got sick. He had his first heart attack, and back then, they were not doing coronary bypass surgery for his kind of MI. He was treated medically, and did pretty well for almost a year. Then he had another MI, and it was downhill from there. I lived in my own apartment by then, but I was summoned to my parents’ house at least once or twice a week to check on Dad. He developed complications and got to the point where there wasn’t anything more to be done for him, short of a heart transplant. And they weren’t doing many of those back then. (Wow – I sound pretty ancient, don’t I?)

My dad’s last hospitalization lasted about 36 hours. His cardiologist gave him (and us) the option of putting him in ICU (with all the IV lines, tubes and monitors) but he said the outcome was extremely unlikely to be good. The other option was to admit him to a private room where we (my mom and siblings) could stay with him for the duration. Dad took Option 2. We were all with him when he passed away. My four siblings and I were all in our 20s. My mom was 56.

I burned out of nursing shortly after that. Turns out, the experience with my dad – watching him struggle for breath, seeing his EKG monitor doing all kinds of things it shouldn’t, noticing the veiled awareness of doom in his eyes – was something I experienced almost every day at work. And I found I couldn’t do it any more. I turned in my resignation and figured I’d have to find something else to do.

My supervisor refused to take my resignation (which turned out to be a really good thing for me!). She asked me to go into teaching in my hospital’s multiple ICUs – preparing and giving “in-service” classes on disease states, new medical treatments, and new technologies that were coming our way. I took her up on it, and at the same time, went back to college for another degree – something unrelated to science or nursing. History.

And that’s how I started on the path to writing historical romances. I actually went back to clinical nursing after about a year and a half, and still practiced nursing when I got married and had children. When my kids were young, I worked two or three afternoon shifts in the ICU every week, and after a long, tense shift, I would write to unwind – because it was impossible to go to sleep some nights after work. Somewhere along the line, somebody gave me a historical romance to read (I think it might have been Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss) and so I found myself inspired to write a romance of my own. The history and the happy ending really appealed to me.

The rest is… history, as they say. My eighteenth novel, Seducing the Governess, just came out, and my nineteenth (Brazen) is a December 2011 release. Funny how things happen.

Has your life taken a twist or turn that you never expected? Tell me about it and I’ll choose one commenter to receive a copy of Wild, one of my recent books.

Have a great week, everyone – and Happy March tomorrow. Spring is on its way!

Today would be a good day to run over to the Romantic Times blog where they are giving away three copies of my last book, The Rogue Prince.

Also, a visit to Border’s Blog could net the same prize. Check it out!

I read somewhere that when you have clutter in your home, it can negatively impact your writing…because clutter at home = clutter in your head.

I’m not sure that’s true but I know when my desk area is nice and tidy, it makes me feel better. That’s why I though it would be fun if we could each share a tip that helps us maximize our efficiency. Because if I have more time, there’s a greater chance I can get/stay organized.

I thought it’d be fun to host a virtual cocktail party where the price of admission is 1. a tip to help us all be more productive and 2. an appetizer.

Pssst….I’m furnishing the drinks.

Okay, I’ve made cream cheese pin-wheels and my tip is “when you’re watching TV, get the laundry out of the dryer during the commercials, then fold the laundry while watching the show.”

I’d love to have you stop by. You don’t need to stay all night. I’ll be giving away a gently read copy of “How to Marry a Duke” a book by Vicky Dreiling (that I really enjoyed) to one lucky guest who brings an appetizer and gives a tip.

The drawing will be Sunday night at 9 pm.

Oh, wait, I hear the doorbell…..gotta run.

Today is my day to blog, and I thought it would be fun to invite two other authors who have new books for March. Please welcome Anne Mallory (one of the original Jaunty Quills!) and Robyn DeHart (also an original here on the JQ blog!) We each have a historical romance released this past week, and they all have something else in common, too!

Margo: Anne! It’s so good to have you back here with the Jaunties! Tell us about your March book. I understand it’s a Romantic Times Top Pick – congratulations!

Anne:   It is lovely to be back!  Thanks, Margo!  One Night Is Never Enough is a story about gambling debts, dark London, a society princess who feels as if she has the weight of the world upon her shoulders, and a roguish scoundrel from the wrong sides of the tracks (really good looking tracks, of course).  Oh, and one very interesting night mixing the above ingredients. 

Margo: Love your dark heroes, Anne. And Robyn – Treasure Me is also a top pick, too! No surprise there. Your ‘Legend Hunters’ are… legendary.
 
Robyn:  Yes, it is a Top Pick and I’m thrilled to be in such great company. *nudge* *nudge.* Treasure Me is about a hidden treasures, biblical relics, Loch Ness, a marriage of inconvenience, a surly Legend Hunter and an eager lady paleontologist. That about covers the highlights.
 
Anne:  Oooh, treasure hunting, legends, and marriage of convenience yumminess!  I can’t wait to dive in!  And Margo, we need to extend our congrats to you as well before we go any farther!  Seducing the  Governess is a Top Pick too!  And I hear it has a delicious Jane Eyre vibe.  Tell us about your Mr. Rochester. 

Margo: Thank you, ladies! My “Mr. Rochester” is Nash Farris, Earl of Ashby . He’s a third son who never expected to inherit his title, or the guardianship of his brother’s young daughter, which is why he was an army officer, and got wounded in battle. His estate is a wreck, he has no money, and now he’s got a shy little girl to deal with. What’s a big, strong, gruff earl to do? Hire a governess, right? Hey, Robyn – I want to know how biblical relics and Loch Ness connect. Give us a hint.

Robyn: OK, but first can I just say how much I love governess stories, not to mention the unexpected heir. *sigh.* Well, in the ‘Legend Hunter’s’ world there is a connection between the Stone of Destiny and Loch Ness. The Stone of Destiny is an actual biblical relic (believed to be the stone upon which Jacob had his prophetic dreams) that is deeply engrained in English and Scottish history and something they fought over for generations. It is used in the coronations of the English monarchy (you can see it in The King’s Speech, by the way). So I took the real history and merged it with some legend of my own that involves a mystical collection of stones that can put the throne of England in jeopardy. One of those stones is hidden in caves beneath Loch Ness, a perfect location for my heroine who just happens to be a paleontologist looking for her first find.

Anne:  Once again, that sounds incredible, Robyn!

Margo: This sounds like the stone that was somewhere around Dunfermline, Scotland - I think it was near St. Margaret’s chapel during medieval times, but was moved to London. I’m totally intrigued!  

Robyn: Thanks. I’m hoping readers are equally intrigued. Let’s move back to London and hear more about Anne’s poor heroine who is a prize in a gambling debt.

Margo: Yeah, let’s hear it, Anne – your heroine was WON in a card game? Sounds like a set up to some verrrry outrageous happenings.

Anne:  My poor heroine.  Ever wonder what would happen if someone won you in a card game?  Charlotte Chatsworth hadn’t either, lol.  The “purchased” night doesn’t go exactly as any of the parties think though…

Margo: It sounds delicious. Didn’t Charlotte make an appearance in Seven Secrets of Seduction?

Anne: Charlotte was the “other” woman in Seven Secrets of Seduction.  She bloomed full-scale from a scene I wrote at the end of that book (a scene between the two women).  I became determined to give Charlotte her own happy ending.  And then the brother of the hero in One Night Is Never Enough demanded his own story (October 2011), and the mad cycle continues.

Margo: Funny how characters seem to dictate what goes on and not the other way around!

Anne:  I love feeling compelled to write a particular tale – always such fun.    How about you two? Do you have any characters doing that to you right now?

Robyn: I love it when characters just come so alive you must tell their story. I don’t have any solid details on my next series, but with any luck it will be another Victorian-set trilogy, but this one a bit darker and more suspensy (is that a word?) But it all started from a heroine that came to me and just wouldn’t let me go. I just had to tell her story. Hopefully my publisher will agree! 

Margo:  I totally get that, Robyn! Isn’t it great when characters come and demand to have their story told! That’s what happened with my December ’11 book, Brazen. The heroine is the sister of my current heroine in Seducing the Governess, and she could not be more different from her sister.

They are twins, but were separated at age three, and raised by completely different families. I’ll tell more about the set up in my blog on Monday – so be sure to tune in and see how these two girls happened to get separated! You can check out the Author Spotlight here at Romantic Times for an excerpt and a chance to win one of my earlier books – The Rogue Prince.

Anne: I can’t wait to hear more about your new series, Robyn!  And about Margo’s Brazen.   New projects are always exciting.  And I’m looking forward to reading both of your books this weekend and then salivating for more. 

Margo: Anne, thanks so much for visiting with us today and telling us about One Night is Not Enough. I am SO looking forward to this book! I’ve got yours as well as Treasure Me on my TBR pile (which I can dig into as soon as I finish work on Brazen – next week). I’m looking forward to a week of settling in with two books I know I’m going to love.

Anne:  Thank you again for having me back!   I’ve missed the Jaunties!!!

Robyn: And we’ve missed you. You’ve got to come back and see us more often!

Anne:

Margo: Be sure to visitAnne Mallory’s website for an excerpt of her new book. You can also visit Robyn’s and mine by clicking on our pictures in the header above. Happy reading, everyone!

So, I have news. Kinda big news. Recently I sold 3 Steampunk romances to NAL under the name of Kate Cross. Some of you are already aware that I have a Young Adult Steampunk series launching from Harlequin Teen in May. The first book is The Girl in the Steel Corset and it’s being published under the name Kady Cross.

I also just sold an urban fantasy series, which I’m not going to say much about because nothing has been signed yet and I don’t want to jinx anything. However, I am so excited I could squeal like a little girl. It’s also going to be written under a new name. Right now I’m gearing toward Kate Locke.

Yes, it’s a lot to absorb and a lot of change. Some of you many wonder what’s going to happen to Kathryn Smith — and that’s the rub. I’ve been Kathryn Smith my whole life, and Kathryn Smith professionally for more than 10 years. However, When Tempting a Rogue will be the last Kathryn Smith book for awhile, possibly forever. It feels… weird.

So why the change, you may ask? Well, in publishing there are all manner of factors — how different the new product is from what fans expect from Kathryn Smith, wanting a fresh start… My reasons were many. Mostly, I decided I needed a change, and a restart to my career. That doesn’t mean that giving up Kathryn Smith was easy. It wasn’t. It isn’t. However, I also want to give these new books the best chance they have to succeed, and sometimes that means a clean slate. I don’t want Kathryn Smith’s history (the good and bad) to influence these new books. However, I also want to make it easy for fans to find me, so I’m going to do all I can to make sure my current readers know I’ve made the change. Hopefully they’ll follow me.

Then there’s the fact that a pen name affords a certain amount of privacy. I can go out and put on the persona of Kady Cross and then come home and be plain ole Kate, which I have to admit, sounds good. In fact, if I could go back, I would write under a different name than Kathryn Smith right from the beginning.  Do you know a reader once said she wouldn’t read me because my name didn’t sound ‘historical romance enough’? It’s true, I swear.

This new venture is scary. I haven’t written anything for any publisher other than Avon (except for one short story) since they bought me in 1999. Now, I’m writing for 3 different — and new to me — publishers. Scary, and exciting. I find myself nervous about new territory and new working relationships, but at the same time the enthusiasm for these new projects has been infectious. I am so excited to be working on these books and with the chance to really push myself and see just what I’m capable of creating.

That’s my news. What do you think? Does it bother you when authors switch gears and change their names? Or do you follow ‘em regardless because you like their work? Fellow authors, have you played the name game? And who are some of your favorite authors who write under different names?

After getting emails from three good, candid friends and reading a review, I realized  that I’d hit the mark on my upcoming/may be currently available book HIS ENEMY’S DAUGHTER. That may sound confident and presumptuous but this book was so very emotional for me to write, I really hoped it would have readers reacting too.

Writing this book was an attempt to redeem one of the darkest heroes who have ever told me their story. And really, when they come to you and reveal their past, their present and their hopes or fears for their futures, what can a writer do?

Readers have met Soren before — in his ‘beautiful’ condition when he flirted his way through his friend Simon’s wedding, expecting and knowing that his bed would be filled with one or another beautiful woman. Then, in THE CONQUEROR’S LADY, after the Battle of Hastings, readers heard about him – his grievous injuries and the hopes he would survive. In THE MERCENARY’S BRIDE, he arrived in the story late to help his friends but he was a terribly changed and scarred man. And now in HIS ENEMY’S DAUGHTER, readers get to see how damaged this man is and how far his life has gone from what he always thought it would be.

I confess–I cried like a baby writing some of these scenes. I sat, usually in my pajamas in the dark of the night, with wads of tissues stuffed along my neckline so I could keep typing. . . and crying at the same time.  My son remarked that I hadn’t looked that bad since going to see P.S. I Love You….( and that was BAD, he said!). I felt his hurt and his pain and his loss as Soren struggles to find the man he is meant to be. The situation is made worst by the heroine (of course – this IS a romance novel!) who he wants to personify everything bad in the man – her father – who wrought this damage to him.

Ah, heroines! This one is particularly vexing to Soren – he wants to hate her, he wants to kill her and goes to Alston just for that reason. Discovering who she is and her own damaged condition (interestingly caused by him!), she becomes the one woman who he could claim as his own for so many reasons–and all of them are emotional ones.

Yeppers, readers, more crying!

I did realize an interesting thing about writing and reading for me — I love books that make me cry. If I have to drag out the tissues, that book is a winner to me, whether I’ve written or it read it. I don’t usually seek out TV shows or movies that make me cry – okay, other than Gerard Butler moveis – I always watch the comedies on TV and prefer laughing until I’m breathless to crying over a movie. It’s the first question I ask others when they say they’ve seen this movie or that one — will I cry?

So, I wonder why that is? Do you have that reaction — love to cry at movies or books? Or do you prefer to laugh? Or both as long as it’s emotional? Or neither?

Tell me what you like in terms of emotions in your entertainment and I’ll choose two posters who will each receive a signed book and a $10 gift card to their choice of Amazon or iTunes so they can purchase their favorite movie or book….

Terri is busy working on a new proposal but has a bit of news, too. Shhhhh- it’s TOP SECRET! Terri will have a brand-new, digital release from Harlequin Mills&Boon in April — WHAT THE DUCHESS WANTS is a short story about a historical royal wedding to celebrate THE upcoming real royal wedding. Check her website for updates and info and links.  And, , there’s more exciting news to come soon!

Its Oscar season and I can’t wait to hear who the winners are on Sunday night. I’ll be tuned in hoping to see a few of my favorites walk away with the golden statuette. Watching the award shows always makes me want to dress up in something impossibly inappropriate for my suburban home and give a speech to thank the people in my life who’ve helped me out.

I’d thank my parents and sisters for the noisy household I grew up and especially my mom for sending me outside all the time when I was growing up and teaching me to use my imagination to entertain myself. I’d thank my husband for making the little moments in life count and showing me that loving someone goes way beyond romantic gestures. I’d thank my children who show me nuances in creativity that I didn’t realize I’d missed. And I’d thank my friends for all the laughter.

Your turn! Who would you thank?

I’m giving away an autographed copy of TAMING THE VIP PLAYBOY to three lucky blog participants today.

Bad boys are a staple of romance novels, thank goodness. I’ve just written my first bad boy and heavens, it was fun! In one scene, Posey, our heroine, finds herself irritatingly attracted to Liam, our hottie hero. She notices that he has a Celtic knot tattooed on his shoulder…in her words, “as required by the Bad Boy Book of Beauty.”

As happens with many writers, I was quite enchanted with my own phrase. Bad Boy Book of Beauty? Somebody, get me a copy, quick! It got me to thinking…what else would be required for a romance novel bad boy, looks-wise? Wardrobe-wise?

A tattoo. Okay, yes, we’ve covered this. Baddie’s not afraid of no stinkin’ needles, oh, no. But I’d say less is more in a romance novel…we don’t want a guy who’s going to die of liver failure because he can’t sweat anymore, do we? No.

A leather jacket. Oh, yes indeedy. Battered, aging, with character, baby, not something he just bought at Nordstrom’s. No. Bad Boys do not shop at Nordstrom’s.

Levi’s. Sorry, all other brands. Bad Boys wear Levi’s, the end. Bad Boys are unaware that other brand exist, in fact. Because really…he can’t be that bad if he’s wearing Michael Kors Astor Distressed, can he? Uh-uh. No, he’s a Levi’s man, preferably faded and torn, too, though not shabby. Must fit extremely well so heroine can ogle.

Careless hair. Bad Boys do not use hair products. No gel, no mousse, no blow-dryers, certainly no highlights! Bad Boys ≠ Metrosexuals.

Green or blue eyes of the bedroom nature. One look, and we are a-quiver, because those eyes promise seduction, baby!

Earring (optional). Just for that pirate edge. (By the way, have I mentioned that McIrish has an earring? Meow!)

Medallion of some religious/cultural/military significance. Dog tags, crucifix, St. Christopher’s medal …whatever it is, Baddie makes it work. And it hints of commitment, of deeper belief, of stability, even though he is still so extremely bad at this point. But our heroine knows, oh, yes she does.

Muscles. Please. This is a romance novel! Of course he needs muscles! Plus, look at this picture. You’re welcome. Now to me, I don’t like that overdone, ripped look…I like my baddie’s muscles to be blue-collar…or as I say in Too Good To Be True “man-who-can-fix-car muscles” as opposed to “hours-spent-admiring-self-in-gym-mirror muscles.” Indeed.

Manscaping…not that Baddie manscapes, of course!  Though he always seems to need a shave and the hair on his head is thick and rumpled (see above), our bad boy’s chest is golden and smooth, velvet over steel mucles. Same with his back (because this is fiction). No odd tufts of hair sprout anywhere. He has no fur (maybe just a scattering to show that he doesn’t in fact manscape).  In Bad Boy romances, there is no “honey, would you shave my back”…instead, there’s just perfection. This is why we read these books, after all.

So what else, gang? What else is required for someone to be identifiable as a bad boy? Would love to hear what you think!

Mary M, Tiffany, Chey, ArkansasCyndi and Mariee….you’re all winners!

Email me through my website www.cindykirk.com

Let me know your mailing address and if you already have The Christmas Proposition, let me know (and I’ll find a different book for you)

Otherwise, I’ll get it in the mail right away!

The winner is:
Danielle Gorman

Danielle, email me at Emily at EmilyMcKay dot com and I’ll send you a book.