What do you find romantic?

I'm a real sucker for thoughtful little surprises; a card for no special occasion, a bunch of daisies on a rainy day, cooking breakfast in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, or washing my car and filling the tank. Luckily, my husband is very good at that sort of thing. Romance is never far below the surface if you are with the right person, no matter where you are or what you're doing. That said, I'll vote for Hawaii.

Why do you like reading and writing romance?

I like to travel the journey with the characters as they find redemption and empowerment in love. When I've come to care about the people in a book, and I've lived through their struggles with them, I want them to have the happy ending they've earned. And if on the journey they have a few laughs and great sex, all the better. Writing books allows me to be "in" on the story that much earlier.

How do you weave strong plot, emotion, and characterization to make characters real?

I wish I could say it's magic and it just happens. In truth, I do a lot of background work first. By the time I'm writing the story, the characters already seem real to me. I always know more about them than gets into the final draft. And I know what happens after the book ends. I've given them full, rich lives.

Because I like to read books with lots of stuff (that's the technical term, I think) happening, I tend to write fairly complex plots. That takes planning in order to make everything come together at the right time and not have all the problems solved on the last page. I generally write a ten to twenty page synopsis first so that I have all my ducks in a row. The creativity is in getting from that to four hundred manuscript pages.

When I put real people in difficult situations and give them lots of important stuff to accomplish, the emotion happens naturally. That's the magic.

Do authors use real life experiences and people to create a story or character?

I can only speak for myself on this, and frankly, I don't know. All of our memories and experiences are stored somewhere in our subconscious. When I need a characteristic or event and I pull it out of the sludge in the back of my brain, I suppose it may have a distorted relationship to something that really happened. But our subconsciousness doesn't differentiate between actual memories and imagined events culled from books, movies, TV, etc. and it does tend to mix things up. Therefore, it could have happened, or it could be from a re-run of Gilligan's Island after an enchilada supper.

Tell us about your most recent release.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CASSANDRA (Jan.2003, Zebra) is about a spinster, Anne Weathersby, who tells a few little white lies for some very good reasons, and then has to straighten everything out when the lies snowball one on top of another, landing her in trouble--and in Marsfield's bed. Lord Marsfield is a rake of the first order; marksman, pugilist, and lover. But nothing had prepared him for dealing with a strong-willed woman like Anne.

What projects are you working on now?

I like working on several books at the same time, so I'm juggling three projects in various stages of development. On top of the pile, with a looming deadline, are the copy edits for my October 2003 release, THE NIGHT WE KISSED.  It has continuing characters from THE TRUTH ABOUT CASSANDRA and was a lot of fun to write. Though a bit less fun to edit.

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