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I carefully placed my treasure in his large, calloused hands. Cradling it, he heaved a heavy sigh and said, “Well, I guess I’ll have to read it now.” Ha!

A few months later on an oil rig in the middle of the North Sea, he slipped into his private room, turned on his flashlight and began to read. It was the fourth book he’d read in about ten years. After he finished, he emailed me saying, “It was really good, Dee. I’m so surprised! I’d be working on the rig, yet anxious to get back to my room to see what was going to happen to Drew and Connie.”

When he finally made it home, he walked in our backdoor, dropped his bags, slung me over his arm and said, “Oh, Connie!”

These days I don’t have to coax him to read my books. He reads them with pleasure and enthusiasm. And if you were to ask him today, he’d still say romance novels are only one small rung above soap operas--all of them but his wife’s, that is. ;)

What about you? Do your friends/family/significant other tease you about reading romance?

Hello, everyone.

A SOLDIER COMES HOMEI’m so pleased to be a part of the Romance Book Club blog today. My newest release, A Soldier Comes Home should be showing up in stores any day now. This is the story of Captain Ray Hughes, whose wife leaves him while he’s fighting in Iraq. He comes home to an empty house and a three-year old son he scarcely knows and has to pick up the pieces of his life as a single dad. He meets Chrissie Evans, a young widow whose husband died early in the war, and the two fall in love. But Ray isn’t sure he can trust a woman again, and Chrissie is afraid to marry another soldier.

Probably the most common question writers get asked is “Where do you get your ideas?” I’m as curious as the next person about this. When I read a good book, I always wonder “How did the writer ever come up with this story?”

The inspiration for A Soldier Comes Home was a series of newspaper articles that ran in the Rocky Mountain News about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the articles was about soldiers who received “Dear John” letters while they were overseas. They came home to no one and in some cases, nothing. The story tore at my heart. I wanted to make things come out better for those soldiers. I couldn’t do that in real life, but I could create a happier ending in a story.

Another article was about war widows, many of them young and not married very long. That article helped me create the character of Chrissie. A third article was about Native American soldiers from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. That was the springboard for a major subplot in the book.

I’ve heard of writers whose stories were inspired by dreams. Some authors write about things they really happened to them or to friends or family. Music, conversations and movies have also inspired stories for me. Of course, the inspiration is merely the spark that gets things going. The real challenge is taking that germ of an idea and fashioning it into a full-blown story. One thing I find helpful in fleshing out stories is to focus on creating realistic, three-dimensional characters. I try hard to create people who act the way I would act or people I know would act. People who have real emotions. Characters who are flawed, with both good and bad aspects of their personalities. For instance, in A Soldier Comes Home, Chrissie doesn’t like change. She’s so resistant to change it doesn’t hold her back. Ray, for good reason perhaps, only sees the bad side of his ex-wife. Facing up to the ways in which he contributed to his marriage’s demise is a real turning point for him, and it opens up a path for he and Chrissie to have a better relationship.

Even after more than 30 books, I find everyone is different — the inspiration comes from a different place and the process of creation takes a different path. I think that’s what keeps me coming back, book after book. It never gets boring. I’m always waiting to see how things unfold.

So, that’s my take on inspiration. Do any of you have questions or comments?

Cindy Meyers

http://www.cindymyers.com

Last year my latest historical RIVALS FOR THE CROWN debuted in trade paperback size with a gorgeous cover.  I had book trailers made, newsletters sent, postcards printed.  I plastered that cover over everything I could think of, thinking how wonderful it would be to have that wonderful cover stay the same for the mass market (regular size) paperback that would hit the shelves on May 20.  Wellllll, life through me a curve.  My publisher had changed the cover for the mass market edition.  Same title, same story, but different size and a very different cover.  Don't get me wrong - I love the new one too.  But now I'm scrambling to let readers know about the cover change. Or should I call it my cover story? 

Which one you you like?

So what's your idea of a real life hero?

For some odd reason, our neighborhood has become a little noisy lately, and it's been hard at times to concentrate on my writing. There's nothing like being caught up in finding just the right words for something, only to have your thoughts totally scattered by a bunch of barking dogs or car horns or what have you. Ah, but no longer, since my hubby gave me an amazing pair of noise reduction headphones that let me completely enter my own private world. They work with my Ipod, but I don't even necessarily have to have music going because just turning on these puppies mutes all the sounds around me. Pretty neat. It might not sound like the most romantic gift -- not diamonds or lingerie or a candlelight dinner for two -- but to me, it WAS romantic because it showed that my husband has really been listening to me, understood exactly what I needed and took the time to find it! What a guy!

So here's another question: What's your idea of a romantic gift?    

How nice to be here with you today. Thanks for the opportunity to get to know me and my work better. I write for Harlequin Superromance and Berkley Press. I have thirty-two published novels, with a few more in the works. I love writing and feel grateful to have this wonderful career.

Actually, I’ve had two great careers. I was an English teacher for a long time and it was really a vocation for me. I loved being with adolescents (no, I’m not crazy) and I enjoyed imparting knowledge and helping them to gain self-esteem. My main academic goal was to instill a love of reading and writing in them.

It’s obviously a love I have myself. I’ve been a voracious reader since my own teen years. I had a beloved English teacher who introduced me to Shakespeare, Henry James and C.S. Lewis and served as a model for my own direction in education. To this day, I turn to books for entertainment, escape, and to learn about the world. I read best sellers like Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD, everything Nora Roberts, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Linda Howard write, and must confess to reading over a few of my own books after they’re published from time to time.

My writing career began early in high school and college where I wrote short stories and poetry and kept a diary every single day until I was nineteen. I planned to be a professional author then, but my life took a different turn when I realized I was meant to teach. Still, I continued to write short stories, essays and poetry until I turned forty and said, “Okay, it’s time to write a book.” My second manuscript was bought by SuperRomance in 1994 (the first never sold) and I’ve continued to write ever since. 

I’ve done books about teachers, lawyers, carpenters, lots of cops, doctors, architects, newspaper reporters, pilots, Secret Service agents, senators, judges, stay-at-home moms and counselors. And of course, one of my favorite professions, firefighting, which brings me to TAKING THE HEAT.   

This is a story about widower Liam O’Neil who lost his wife three years ago to cancer and is ready to date again. He meets Sophie Tyler, rough and tumble female firefighter from the FDNY, and is attracted to her. But his sons are still suffering over the loss of their mother and Liam feels he can’t risk getting involved with someone in a dangerous profession. Too bad, though, because they can’t help themselves and sparks fly, emotionally, physically and on the line.

So, what do you think? Any questions about writing, me, my work, whatever? I look forward to hearing from you.

Kathy Shay

http://kathrynshay.com/

View Kathryn's latest book trailer!

Recently I was given an interesting interview question: You are a heroine in one of your novels. Would you rather play the young and innocent virgin, the worldly widow or the seductive, yet secretive courtesan?
Boy, those are some limited choices. Which is one of the reasons I chose to write in a period of more recent history—the turn-of-the-century—so that I could have a wider selection of heroines.

Gigi, the heroine of my debut book, Private Arrangements, is a businesswoman, a mogul, even. Her control over her own fortune is made possible by the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882. For my sophomore book, I turn around 180 degrees, and star a heroine who is a cook—a marvelous cook, but still a servant (it’s a Cinderella story, if you haven’t guessed). My third book, which so far exists only as a conversation between me and my editor, will feature a heroine who is a practicing physician, a character that is not historically possible in the United Kingdom until after 1865.

Other more vague ideas for possible future historical romance heroines include a mathematician, a WWI ambulance driver, and maybe a hack writer of penny dreadfuls (really lurid pulp fiction published in nineteenth century Britain which appeared in installments, each costing a penny).

I like my heroines to be independent. And by that, I mean having an independent source of income. For which they either need to have skills that get paid decent wages or an inheritance. And even when they do have an inheritance and don’t need to work, I still prefer them to have a vocation—must be the influence of all the industrious women in my family, impressing upon me from an early age that idleness is not a good thing.

So back to the question asked of me, whom would I choose to play?

The courtesan is definitely out. I’d make a reluctant and resentful courtesan—the thought of sleeping with men I find unattractive gives me the creeps. And it would be a rare courtesan who didn’t have to take a protector for reasons other than his personal hotness.

The young and innocent virgin is the next to go. All my best friends are non-virgins. I find them more interesting this way.

That leaves the worldly widow by default. Private Arrangements actually has a worldly widow—the heroine’s mother—as a secondary protagonist. She is virtuous, but she is also ambitious and wily. And I can live with that.

So, Dear Readers, if you were to answer the question, which character would you play? Or if you, like me, find the choices too restricting, what character would you invent to play?

--Sherry Thomas, www.SherryThomas.com