ELIZABETH CATCHES FALL FEVER

I’m suffering a holiday lull.

You know what I mean. Waaaay too much to do and waaaaay too little oomph to do it.

Or maybe I’m just lazy.

*ponders the idea*

Maybe it’s the shorter days.

Maybe it’s the beautiful storm rolling down off the mountains over the red rock cliffs and down the canyons. Watching the clouds is like watching the ocean—always changing, always the same, always mesmerizing.



What kind of wife/mother/grandmother/sister/aunt am I, to watch clouds when I could be wrapping presents to mail, baking cookies, polishing silver, dusting ornaments, and hanging wreaths?

*bites down on a yawn*

Those clouds sure are glorious.

Maybe I’m not lazy.

Maybe I’m a cloud dreaming I’m a wife/mother/grandmother/sister/aunt.

*votes for the cloud idea*

*settles in to watch the show*


Do you have days when you declare a “time out,” if only for a few minutes? It’s a new skill for me, one I’m a bit uneasy about acquiring, yet I find that I enjoy it quite a bit!

When Thanksgiving is over, I sink into a deep depression.
All the painful memories of the past wiggle into my brain and I am one miserable allig--woman. Please bear with me. I'm sharing with you the sad story of my birth and formative years. They did have a great deal to do with my urge to write The Bayou Books.

COMEDY OF ERRORS

My mother told me I was hatched from an alligator egg she found when a swan got tired of sitting on it. Mother took that big old egg home, popped it inside a crocheted tea cozy, then put it in a cardboard box by the fire. The family cat took over egg-sitting duties and eventually the shell cracked (the noise was ear-splitting) and out came a baby alligator dripping slime. The cat got a bit carried away with clean-up duties and licked every scale off that critter, then, when the cat saw how ugly the baby was, she wouldn't feed it. So my Mother stepped in with some milk and other human foodstuff and the result was . . . Me!

My childhood in England was a mess of turmoil. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find myself and how much I suffered on the journey. Children can be so cruel, especially if they get to pick on someone who’s a bit different. They taunted me and called me Jaws—among other things. You should have heard the tacky references to my tail.

But all that changed after the plastic surgery. I was turned into a swan, maybe because it was a swan who almost brought me into the world.

Well, I never felt really at home in England. I couldn't get past thinking my Mother put up with me out of duty and I knew I needed to get to wherever I ought to be. I knew that couldn't be in that cold seaside town, but the more places I visited, the more places I found where I didn't fit in—until I took a plane to Western Australia and got diverted to Baton Rouge.

Did you know that the duck billed platypus is native to Western Australia? It is. Platypus babies are called puggles—isn't that sweet? I'd decided to take a look and see if these folks were my long lost relatives because I have this spike on one of my ankles and if you get scratched by it, you may die. The platypus has spikes like mine, but my plane being diverted was a real blessing in the end. I arrived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and I was home. I mean those swamps called to me—sirens’ songs. I just followed my twitching nose and slipped into that thick, green, snake-filled warm water and knew I was finally where I was meant to be.

You wouldn't believe the gossip that gets tossed around among the water hyacinth. Some Louisiana folks think they can keep secrets—that makes me laugh. You'd think by now they'd all know how at night, the cottonmouths hide in their walls and under their floors, and disguise themselves as bathmats. Remember making those mats out of crocheted tubes that you wound around and around—bit like a big, swirled candy sucker?

I could tell you things that would make you molt (and I do), but you've got a right to know all about how I came to write stories like A MARKED MAN, A GRAVE MISTAKE, NOW YOU SEE HIM and BODY OF EVIDENCE—The Bayou Books. Cottonmouths! They were the reason. They slithered back to the swamp and kept us alligators up all night telling us what went on in little towns along the bayou and in the houses, taverns, sheriffs’ offices, dance halls, hotels, cafes, doctors’ offices, bookshops, lawyers’ offices and rectories in those towns. All I had to do was keep my computer dry and the rest is history.

As always, I thank my readers for their support. I'm crazy about Louisiana—of course I am! The parts of the state I write about are sultry and mysterious, and so are the folks I want you to care about.

--Stella

Susan Gives Thanks

Happy Day after Thanksgiving, everyone!

I have so much to be thankful for this year.

My best friend Mimi's husband Doug, who is a very good friend in his own right, is finally on the mend. Just a few short weeks ago he was in Seattle's premiere trauma center, where he'd spent 5 long weeks in ICU connected to so many tubes and machines, having so many procedures done to him it boggled the mind. I'll tell you the truth: we weren't always confident he would recover and it's devastating trying to imagine a world without someone you cherish in it. But he's home now and although it might take him a long time to regain all his strength, in the end he will.

And I give thanks for that.

My mom is getting up there in years and she's kinda forgetful these days. But she's still one of the most generous souls I know and she has that best of all possible attributes: a wonderful sense of humor.

And I give thanks for that.

(that's her on the right in the blue turtleneck)

I guess I simply give thanks for family --both that into which I was born, that into which I long ago married and that which, while not technically related perhaps, I call family all the same. (Here's my Sweet Baby Boy with The Girls)

I spent the day at my oldest brother and sister-in-law's house. There were 18 of us and kids laughed and played, adults laughed and talked, and I ate way too much. I'm sitting here now in a turkey and pumpkin pie induced stupor.

Pretending those calories didn’t really count and tallying my blessings.


I hope you all had a lovely Turkey Day. How did you spend yours? What do you all give thanks for? And did anyone else (she inquired, burping delicately behind raised fingers) eat as much as I did?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING from the Quills!

Suzanne "jumps" at the chance to interview Shirley Jump

I had a celebratory lunch last week with my friend and fellow romance author Shirley Jump. Her feet weren't touching the ground that day because SUGAR AND SPICE, a Christmas anthology she's part of, had hit the USA Today and NYT extended bestseller lists. I had a few pertinent questions for Shirley about the writing life.

Suzanne: Why would any sane person want to be a writer?

Shirley: First, you make the assumption that I AM a sane person. Right there is the flaw in your logic. There are many days when I question my sanity, and pretty much 365 days a year when my husband does. Bless his heart, he stays with me anyway. I think it's something to do with a charitable tax deduction.

Suzanne: What is your writing schedule like?

Shirley: Excuse me while I have a laughing fit. Okay, there. I feel better now. I have two kids. Two dogs. Two cats. And the aforementioned husband. That means whenever I think I'm about to have a great uninterrupted writing day, someone forgets a trombone at home, someone pukes, someone needs shots...in other words, one of those bothersome people in my house needs me to do something that I hadn't figured into my day and my whole writing day is shot. So I end up running to school, the pediatrician, the vet...anywhere but the office. And vow to write more the next day.

To get some actual writing time, I feed my children junk food, allow them to dress in clothes they find on the floor, and encourage the dogs to be my vacuum cleaners.

Suzanne: Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Shirley: Again, flawed logic. Assumes I actually want to grow up. Growing up means I'd have to take responsibility for my actions. Quit eating chocolate for breakfast (thanks for that box of chocolates for my birthday, Sue. It was a very nutritious breakfast last week and was a good replacement for those nasty Wheaties). If I had to choose anyone to be when I grow up, it would be Peter Pan because he doesn't have to cook. He just imagines the food and it's there. That's the kind of kitchen I want.

Suzanne: How would you describe your books?

Shirley: Not a fair question. Because I would go on glowingly for hours about the brilliant writing, the complex story lines, the incredible characters...oh, who am I kidding? Five minutes of that and I'd be weeping in my chocolates, begging you to reassure me that I truly don't stink and can indeed write my way out of a paper bag. Hey, I'm an artiste. That means I am riddled with angst (I dine on chocolate all day...it's bound to mess with my emotional state). Let me put it this way--I am a better writer than most, but not all, of my son's third grade class.

Suzanne: Tell me about the life of an author. Is it really as glamorous as people think?

Shirley: Oh yeah. I told you about the chocolate, right? Well, that's the only perk.

The day I sold my first book, I was expecting the feather boas, the loveseat and the Pekingese. Instead, I got a nearly three-year-old with an overloaded diaper, a dog who had jumped INTO the Christmas tree (thanks to the three year old throwing a tennis ball into the tree). The dog knocked the tree onto the floor--glass everywhere--and then left me a carpet full of doggie surprises the next morning because my sweet Golden Retriever ate those nice shiny ornaments.

The day after my 14th book hit the bestseller lists, I came home to the same dog and a whole lot more doggy surprises from her eating something else equally bad for her digestion. Since the maid is still wearing her invisibility cloak, I had to clean it up myself. My editor suggested that maybe all the excitement of sales and bestseller lists is too much for my dog, and perhaps we should keep the news quiet. I think maybe I just need to buy an island and trade in the dog for a lot more cats. It worked for Hemingway, didn't it?

Suzanne: Finally, what do you dream of for your future?

Shirley: Peace in my living room, good will among my children, dogs that don't shed and dinners that cook themselves. If I could have all that and an island too, well, hey, then I might not need the chocolate anymore to get through my day. :-)

Suzanne: Thanks for talking with me, Shirley. You always make me laugh!

Inquiring Minds want to know: Do you give books as Christmas/holiday gifts? If so, what is your favorite kind of book to give as a gift? (I buy books for myself, wrap them, and put them under the tree with a tag that says: To Sue from Santa.)

Jayne Draws the Line

Now that the vampire craze has gone from being "the next new thing" to becoming a major, well established subgenre -- as I predicted a few years ago, by the bye -- I am frequently asked "when are you going to do a vampire novel?" The answer is "probably never". (In this business I never say never).

Trust me, I looked at the idea six ways from Sunday back at the start of the rush. I really wanted to write a vampire novel, not only because vampires are the ultimate Alpha Males but also because being one of the first to catch a rising tide and ride the crest of a big new genre wave is an ideal situation for an author. But, alas, it was not meant to be.

I could enjoy reading vampire novels but I couldn't figure out how to write one -- not without obliterating most of the standard conventions (the ethical and moral implications of eternal life for creatures who clearly haven't done anything to deserve it, risk of incineration by sunlight, the necessity of drinking real Bloody Marys to stay fit, etc., etc.). I figured I could handle the great sex and the cool clothes that go with the vampire lifestyle but the other stuff was just too complicated. I don't do magic. I need some grounding in reality, however faint.


Ah, you say, but you do write paranormal fiction, Jayne. Yes, I do. I write psychic romantic-suspense and I do it in three different settings: historical, contemporary and futuristic. I absolutely love writing stories with a strong psychic twist and have done so off and on since the very beginning of my career. Now, with the start of my new Arcane Society series, I'm pulling out all the stops.

But, you see, for me there is a clear, bright line between the psychic and the supernatural. It may be a line that exists only for me and only in my imagination, but it is there and I don't seem to be able to cross it as a writer, although I can as a reader. I love the psychic thing because I see it as taking the concept of human intuition one step beyond. Almost everyone believes in intuition. Pushing the envelope in that realm works just fine for me.

But it appears that, for now at any rate, I am doomed to remain a reader -- not a writer -- of vampire novels. If nothing else, I find myself curious to see how other authors deal with the factors that stopped me cold.

What about you? Which of the many aspects of the vast new paranormal sub-genre appeal to you? Which ones do you love and which do you avoid?

Journey of the Covers

Today I wanted to talk about covers.
Yeah, yeah, I know most of you will say that you don't judge books by the covers. But a lot of readers do, or publishers wouldn't have huge art departments.
They wouldn't have meetings to discuss the artwork for the covers.
They wouldn't "go back to the board" on covers that they feel aren't quite right.

And writers everywhere live for the day that they get cover approval.

Ahhh... cover approval. My most coveted perk.

Yeah, it was a dream thing for me.
I felt I'd finally "made it" when I got cover approval.
I'd reached one of my biggest goals, scaled the toughest peak.
Sound dramatic? Hah!
You haven't seen some of my really stinko covers.

So that's what I'm going to talk about today. My little perspective on the journey of the covers I've had. Through reissues, some have morphed from the ugly duckling into the beautiful (and appropriate) swan.

These days, most of my covers are awesome. The ones that don't blow me away are still good enough that I trust the art department's opinion. After all, that's the biz they're in and I can't always be objective.
Books aren't my babies, but they do represent several months of hard work and a lot of creative energy and I really, really get visuals, especially of my heroes.

What is that?

C'mon, you know you're asking that right now.
Well folks, that's the first cover for Sawyer, a category book I wrote for Harlequin way back when.
The first of a 4 book series.

Scary, huh?

Yeah, I wasn't too happy. Believe it or not, this is a revised version. In the original, he had no neck at all. And his chin was really pointy.
I know, I know. His eyes are still crossed and he looks really confused, but at least he doesn't have a pointy chin anymore. (I always try to look on the bright side!)

Here's the example I sent Harlequin, to show what Sawyer should look like.

What? You say he looks nothing like the guy in the cover? Really? Huh. (Picture me laughing, cuz I am. I wasn't at the time of that cover, but I laugh now.)

The hunk on the right would be mightily insulted if he saw that warped impression of himself.

I was mightily insulted for him!

In case you're curious, (and I'm just positive that you are!) I'm going to show you the other 4 covers and my original "ideas" of what they should look like.




The guy on this cover reminds me of William H. Macy. Great actor... but not the hero image I'd written.








This cover came the closest to matching the image I had.
It wasn't quite right, but at the least the guy isn't a mutant.










Little white dog?
There's no little white dog!






Okay, so what's the upside of all this?
Harlequin reissued the books once already, and the result was much, much better!


Isn't that a nicer cover treatment for my books!? I think so.
Once and Again featured the Sawyer/Morgan books.
Forever and Always featured the Gabe/Jordan books.







Next March, Harlequin is reissuing all 4 books again as single titles.
Same titles, all new look.
I love these new covers for a variety of reasons that I'll share...
right after I show them to you.













Nice, huh!?
When Harlequin does a cover right, they really do it right.

The important elements on these covers, in my never-very-humble opinion, are:

A. They're attractive. The men are good looking and rugged.
B. They bright. Smoky dark covers have their purposes, but these aren't smoky dark books.
C. They've kept the original titles, so readers won't be confused thinking these are new releases.
(I try to make it clear to readers what is new and what isn't. I have a couple of pages on my website - the reissue page and the connected book and series page - dedicated to that.)
D. They still have a "category" look, which I think is important because they are category books.

It doesn't matter if I've grown as an author, or that I no longer write in category.
(No slight to category authors at all. It is one tough job to write a category length book that covers all the bases of compelling plot, great characterization, and fast pacing. Categories were some of the hardest books I ever tackled.)
Because the books have such a fresh new look, it could mislead readers to think these are single titles. They don't read like single titles, though, and that's an important distinction.

So look at how those covers have changed! From hideous to really pretty nice.
Interesting, huh? I think so.

Another interesting facet of book covers is how the images can show up in multiple places.
You know I have examples for you, right?

This is my Too Much Temptation cover:


And this is from a magazine:










Very cool similarities, don't you think! I always wondered if one inspired the other.

And check this out! Same image, two different books. Both look great!















And...





You know that's the same pair of shoes!
But I love how they made the image look so different on the two covers.






And lastly, for a little thrill...
(hope I don't get tossed out of Quills for this)
...a nekkid photo of my Say No To Joe cover (foreign) and the same tush for a foreign Robin Schone!

Titillating, doncha think?

By now you're probably either bored, or as fascinated by all the incarnations of covers as I am!
My favorites?
Obviously something that represents the book. But not a "sex in your face" type of cover. I don't care for those. I think our work should be the draw, not the suggestion of "hot sex."

At the same time, I want readers to know what they're getting. So I love the nice, bold covers with a sexy stepback. I also loved the covers on Catherine Coulter's Sherbrook series. And Brenda Joyce's early "Fire" series.

You know that thing about cover approval?
Well, for an upcoming book, the stepback had a fighter - a very sexy dude leaning on a wall in work-out gear, all sweaty and macho.
But he had on the wrong gloves for the type of fighter I write. He wore regular boxing gloves when my fighters wear either 4 or 6 oz fingerless gloves.

Bless my publisher, they listened and changed it for me. To make it easy, they just took off the gloves. He still looks like a fighter, but now he's not the wrong fighter.
Yeah, I LOVE cover approval!

So what's your favorite type cover?
Images, like flowers or shoes (see Bryan's cover!)
Scenery? Characters (but only when they get them right!)?
Note: I've had the wrong characters on my books a couple of times. The one that comes most to mind was with a volumptuous redhead as heroine, and on the cover, the hero is atop (in a sexy pose) a scrawny blonde babe. The cheating swine!)

I've seen some stinko covers, and suffered for the writer.
I've seen some fab covers, and turned green with envy.

I've seen some that boggled my mind.

What about you?
Can you name a cover you loved?
What about "bad" covers bugs you the most?

I could go on and on - but this puppy has gotten long enough!

Happy Friday everyone!

ELIZABETH ASKS: TO SERIES OR NOT TO SERIES?

Most of the time I didn't set out to write—or not to write—series. I simply told the stories as they came to me.

When I wrote mysteries with Evan as A. E. Maxwell, we knew from the get-go that it would be a PI series featuring a guy called Fiddler. We wrote eight books for two or three different publishers (hard to say, because one pub swallowed another and/or branched into a third, carrying us along with the debris). Our audience was loyal and too small to make a living on. That was fine as long as Evan had a day job and I wrote science fiction books (lots of fun, miserable pay).

The FIRE DANCER series was born. I could have written a lot of them. I wrote only three.

Why?

When Evan quit his day job, life got interesting. The end result was that after eight years, we stopped writing Fiddler and Fiora mysteries. The fans wanted more. They still want more.

Ditto the science fiction fans.

But I simply couldn't afford to do more in either genre. There were bills to pay, kids to feed and educate, mortgages, cars, the whole catastrophe. I could make much more money for my investment of time writing romances.

And I loved romances with all the fervor of a recent convert. (Thanks, Jayne!)

When I started writing romances, I wrote unconnected books. At first, anyway. Every so often a side character would grab me and I'd write about that character in a different book. Then I wrote four inter-related stories. Didn't mean to. It just happened that way. The MacKenzie-Blackthorn books (Fire and Rain, Outlaw, Granite Man, Warrior) simply grew, one out of the other. Yes, I planned to do Utah’s story…but the publisher and I parted company for reasons too complex to go into here.

Bye-bye Utah. And yes, I still get requests for Utah’s story.

Frequently.


Then Evan and I started the Risk, Ltd. series under the name of Ann Maxwell. THE RUBY/now WHIRLPOOL, and SILK AND SHADOW were written against the Risk Ltd. backdrop. Then I found out I'd bitten off more than I could chew in terms of contracts. I had been working hard. Too hard, I guess. My doctor told me to cut back or crash.

No more Risk Ltd. books.

So now I was down to 2-3 full length historical romances a year for Avon. The ONLY series was a great success, surprising everyone when the third book went on the New York Times list. So, naturally, my publisher wants more, right?

Wrong.

My publisher was planning to more than double my print run on my fourth book. In order to sell that many copies into a resistant marketplace (remember, this was before Only You went on the NYT list), you have to have a sales “hook.” No same old same old will do.


The medieval series was born, one at a time, not as a planned unit. UNTAMED, FORBIDDEN, ENCHANTED. The readers were loyal, but the marketplace itself was beginning The Great Decline of mass market paperbacks, a process that is still ongoing.

No one knew this at the time, of course. The publisher asked me if I'd mind going back to westerns, maybe my audience wanted them more. I didn't mind—hell, I loved westerns. Always wanted to write them.

Bye-bye medievals, back to westerns.

So I wrote another Only, then took some side characters from that book for AUTUMN LOVER and WINTER FIRE.

Publishers change, people are fired or quit, news ideas come…and Avon decided to publish hardcovers under the Avon imprint. Again, there is this pesky marketing problem. How do you make a mass market paperback romance author look “important” enough to justify a hardcover price? (Remember, this was before NY really believed that down-market romances could sell in the up-market hardcover market.)

My publisher asked me if there was any other area of romance that I'd like to explore.

Oh, yeah. There sure as hell was. I'd been trying to sell romantic suspense for YEARS. (Remember, Jayne?) So it was decided that my “breakout” book would be romantic suspense, not western.


Except the timing was wrong. WINTER FIRE came out in hardcover and went on the New York Times. Yes, my publisher was surprised. But by that time, I'd already written AMBER BEACH and was well into JADE ISLAND. I was committed to romantic suspense and was loving it. I was also loving the Donovans. I did two more--PEARL COVE and MIDNIGHT IN RUBY BAYOU.

Don't know if you read my blog two weeks ago. Let’s just say that the covers for the Donovan books were a freakin’ disaster. Again, publishers were going in all directions trying to make the covers of hardback romances of all kinds appear more up-market. The “look” for romantic suspense hadn't yet gelled. I was unlucky to come out on the wrong end of the packaging game. Nothing personal, and certainly nothing intended. My publisher was doing the best it could with the knowledge at hand.

Bye-bye Donovans.

Enter MOVING TARGET—and Rarities Unlimited, a new backdrop for a new series. RUNNING SCARED and DIE IN PLAIN SIGHT were also Rarities books, with some side characters from the Donovan books snuck in.

My publisher really, really, really prefers one-offs; that is, totally unrelated books. As long as I could continue to do the kind of hard-edged romantic suspense I loved, I didn't care enough to fight to the death over the series question with my publisher.

So bye-bye Rarities Unlimited.

Enter THE COLOR OF DEATH.

Enter ALWAYS TIME TO DIE.

Except in the latter book, something called St. Kilda Consulting appeared—an international, private troubleshooting group for all those nasty transnational criminals the collapse of the Soviet Union caused. So many truly awful, and awfully fascinating, transnational crimes to understand. The more I researched, the more I realized that what we get in the headlines and six-second sound bites isn't even the tip of the international iceberg. It's hardly even the shine off the tip.

Oops. Here was another backdrop I wanted—needed—to explore with more books. THE WRONG HOSTAGE further expanded St. Kilda Consulting. Ditto INNOCENT AS SIN. Ditto BLUE SMOKE AND MURDER, the book I'm working on now.

Will all future books be St. Kilda Consulting books?

Wish I knew. Part of the answer depends on my publisher’s patience. Most depends on how long St. Kilda continues to fascinate me.

What I do know is that life isn't linear.

Series fiction is.

And you can't go home again.


My question for you is: If I could add onto any of my previous series, which one would you prefer? Or do you just want a good read, series or no?


P. S. I'm vanishing into the interior mountain west for a week. I'll comment on your comments when/if I hit a WiFi hookup, or when I get back, whichever comes first. Until then, enjoy what you have...this isn't a dress rehearsal!