A confession.  I don’t read much category romance.  Right now, not many at all.  I follow authors who I’ve bought for years and few new ones, usually folks who are writing both category and single title, but that’s about it.  This is not a knock against category or a comment on the quality of writing.  [...]

Wendy wins.  As usual, she knows what she’s talking about.  I almost hate to admit that because there will be no living with her now.  But, since we reside on opposite sides of the country, I can always ignore her email if  she becomes completely unbearable, so here goes. 
Back to last week’s entry called [...]

The Barnes & Noble website keeps daily top ten lists.  Yesterday I signed on and looked up the selections for contemporary romance.  You know, just to see.  Wondered if the list matched my TBR pile or the unwritten list of books-to-be-purchased-next in my head. 
You’ll quickly notice a pattern.  The pattern is Nora Roberts.  She’s [...]

Whenever fans of romance books talk about their "first time" in the genre, inevitably the names Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt and Kathleen Woodwiss come up. Sure, other authors are mentioned but these three seem to be in the library of every right-thinking, card-carrying romance reader.  Everyone knows their work.  Everyone can talk, at great and [...]

Making a story’s conflict smooth, real and alive is always a chore for me.  A lot of people complain about false conflict in romances - contrived circumstances that amount to little more than simple misunderstandings blown out of proportion that could be resolved by page 19 if the hero and heroine would just say, "oh, [...]

I have a love/hate relationship with writing contests.  Actually, mostly hate. Okay, all hate.  I rarely enter them.  When I go to the trouble of printing out 6 submission copies and writing a synopsis for a book that I’ve only mapped out in my mind through chapter 2, it’s usually because there is yet another [...]

From time to time someone will ask a question of fellow authors on a listserve and, I admit, I’ll be stumped.  Not because the question is tough or particularly challenging, but because I can’t figure out what the hell the poster is talking about. Or, to be more precise, why anyone would ask the question [...]

I start a story without fanfare….or much planning.  Really, almost no prior plotting is involved when I sit down to write.  I often have a stupid moment somewhere along the line in a manuscript where I stop and say "wait, the hero had a brother?"  then have to go back and make sure my writing [...]

Some clean-up from the last two days.  Some thanks, congrats and comments….and then I’m done on these issues.
-congrats to Wendy for having the guts to blog about RTB even though she knew it put her butt on the line.  She’s a grown-up and can speak for herself but I do want to say something - [...]

The other member of my household, you all know who I mean, has been telling me I am not as cool as I think I am for about a year now.  He insists I don’t know what’s "in" and, strangely, that he somehow does.  Yeah, right.  I thought he was nuts until I stumbled across [...]