After an 18 hour plane ride from Los Angeles to Bangkok, we flew another three hours to Kathmandu where we stayed for three nights at the Kantipur Temple House, walking distance to the Durbar Square next to the old royal palace. We took a smaller flight around the Himalayas and took a day trip to Bhaktipur where we visited the monkey temple. We saw the tallest Buddhist temple in Nepal, watched a dance performance where local schools were competing, visited the Bodnath stupa and ran around the prayer wheels. We drove to Bandipur, a medieval city nestled in the beautiful countryside where I leaned against an old fence for a photo op and ended up toppling off a small cliff head first after the fence broke! I landed in muddy hills covered in nettles (like getting a thousand bee stings) but I didn’t have time to whine since we were off to the Fish Tail Lodge in beautiful Pokhara. We then continued on to Tansen where we played Frisbee with the local kids and ate dinner in their quaint Newari village. After little sleep we were off to Lumbini where we sat under the Bodhi tree where Buddha was born.

Despite being monsoon season in Nepal the heat was nearly unbearable.

Our next stop was the Royal Chitwan National Park where we were chased through the jungle by a mean-spirited wild elephant that had only three weeks ago killed two locals. I’ve never been so scared in my life!
 

Every night while we were in Nepal the lights would go out and we would have to find our way back through strange towns in the dark while thunder boomed and lightning lit up the sky in the distance. The day after we were chased through the jungle, we rode friendlier elephants in the river and played in the water while they sprayed us and rolled over, tossing us off their backs. I think that’s where I might have picked up a few parasites. We visited twin elephants at a breeding area. The babies drank from our water bottles and were so cute and loving.

We saw a one-horned rhino and crocodiles. Despite Nepal’s poverty, it’s impossible not to see the beauty wherever you go. The smells and sounds are many and always changing. The Nepali people are warm, friendly, and resilient. Despite a few mishaps, I would go back do it all over again in a heartbeat!

Okay, so here’s my question for the day. Being in Nepal made me ponder questions about settings used in the books we love to read. Do you ever look for a particular setting before you buy a book? For instance, do you gravitate toward stories that take place in a tropical paradise or in exotic locations?

And one more question, what magical or special place have you visited in your lifetime?

  Calling all bakers!!  Help!  

I love cherries!!  And most of all I love cherry pie.  I even write about pies in my books.  Where the Wind Blows, which released on Tuesday of this week, and is my Lonesome Dove meets Little House on the Prairie story, has a page or two devoted to Jessie at work baking an apple pie for a bent-out-of-shape, Chase.  And, Cassie, heroine of my wip, Sourdough Creek, also has her very own pie-baking scene where the hero saves the day-and the pie!!!  Love that guy!  So, you see, these delectable pastries have captivated not only my pallet, but also my muse.  Coincidentally, I’m very lucky because I have one of the best producing cherry trees this side of the Mississippi. 
 
Just look at the abundance.   It took me several days to clear its branches – or actually, until I quit from exhaustion.   The birds, nuisances that they are, were totally happy I got tired and finally gave up leaving them many juicy morsels that were too high for me to reach. 

After the hot sticky job of picking, I washed and then pitted.  I measured my bounty into four-cup portions and put them in freezer bags to keep for later.  It’s wonderful now that all the hard work is done.  All I have to do when the urge strikes is mix my flour, sugar, vanilla, and cornstarch together and pull out a sack of already measured, washed and pitted cherries.  It’s fast and easy. 

So, why the call for help you ask?  My problem is I don’t have a recipe that is consistent.  Sometimes my pies come out fabulous, a delight to any taste bud and at other times they are runny like water-and a huge disappointment.  Confused, I keep switching back and forth between recipes that use cornstarch, tapioca or flour for thickening.  I’ve heard several women swear by the tapioca, but I can’t seem to make that work.  I’m sure there must be a good number of bakers out there with a fabulous, fail-safe family recipe that you wouldn’t mind sharing.  I’d love to hear your ideas……

BTW: I always seem to have a pit or two hiding in every pie I bake no matter how diligent I work at extracting them all.  I have to warn everyone before they try a slice.   What is the best way of pitting?  Advice anyone?

In celebration of my debut novel I’m giving away a copy of, Where The Wind Blows, to a person who leaves me a comment.  Also, if you want to enter my Under The Western Sky Contest that’s running August 1^st  to December 1^st., all you need to do is watch my Book Preview on my website, and write your version of the last line of the story.  Anything goes so don’t be shy.  We’re looking to have fun.  Grand prize is a night stay in an ol’ western bunkhouse under the stars.  Check the details at www.carolinefyffe.com 

As I was sitting here trying to come up with a pithy topic for today’s blog, I glanced at the cover of STOLEN HEAT, the second book in my Stolen Trilogy, which released yesterday. And I realized something profound as I stared at the book. I’ve got a real habit of writing about, well, unheroic heroes.

Take the hero in my first book – STOLEN FURY. Rafe is a thief. A good thief, but a thief. He makes no apologies for that fact, nor does meeting the heroine change his thinking on this topic. Sure, he’s working on his last job, but his decision to quit his questionable career-choice has nothing to do with her. Shady? Possibly. Sexy? Oh, yeah. A heroic hero? You’ll have to ask someone who read the book.

And then there’s the hero in my second book – STOLEN HEAT (did I mention it released yesterday?!). Pete is an antiquities dealer. And at times, a questionable one. In fact, the entire premise of the book is based on his less-than-desirable dealings, a past that’s caught up with him and bad choices he’s made along the way. Shady? Possibly. Sexy? Most definitely. A heroic hero? Again…that’s up to the reader to determine.

One of the things I love about romance novels is that you can have an anti-hero who eventually grows into the heroic hero we all want to read about. Anti-heroes are fun because their character arcs are so much more profound than say a good guy who’s never done anything even remotely questionable. I like my guys to have a past. I like them to have made tough decisions that may not have been the right ones. I don’t want them to make excuses for those decisions, but I want them to learn and grow from those experiences. Maybe they do something awful at the beginning of the book. You know, that’s okay with me so long as they are profoundly changed by that experience. And if it somehow involves the heroine? All the better in my mind because it adds rich conflict to a book and makes it that much more interesting.

How about you? Are you a fan of good guy heroes or anti-heroes? And can you think of a character from a recent book who made a great anti-hero?

In honor of the release of STOLEN HEAT, I’m hosting a huge giveaway on my website. Go to www.elisabethnaughton.com/stolen_heat_contest.html to enter. Prizes include:

1st Prize: $100 VISA Gift Card
2nd Prize: $20 Barnes & Noble Gift Card
3rd Prize: Autographed copies of the first two Stolen books:
STOLEN FURY & STOLEN HEAT

Winners will be announced 8/16/09. But between now and then don’t forget to check my blog where I’ll have daily guests and daily prizes.

I like my men exotic – not a hundred percent of the time, but I regularly enjoy falling in love with a sexy man from another culture.

Of course as an ecstatically happily married woman, I’m referring to those exceptional heroes in romance novels but you knew that, right?

I adore reading all kinds of romance novels but when it comes to category romance, it’s the cultural reference in a book’s title that can snag my attention.

Buzz words such as Australian, South American, Desert, Outback, Spanish, Greek, etc.

True, it’s the man’s character and not his nationality that makes him worthy of the romance novel’s heroic iconic class, and in turn worthy of his equally strong heroine, but with such a banquet of men from which to choose I say indulge the fantasy!

What draws us to these men? Is it the sexy accent and whispered endearments in another language? The hot sex? Power? Wealth?  They’re all wonderful adornments for falling in love along with the heroine, but ultimately it’s his ability to love, protect and cherish that makes us fall for him.

Millionaires, billionaires, kings, princes, navy seals, doctors are charming (I’d also add lawyers to the list. I’m married to one and can say that lawyers are sexy too!) but if the hero is also exotic, chances are you’ve sold me.

If for argument’s sake all heroes are created equal, which one would turn your head?

Is he Greek, Italian, South American, English, Scottish, French, Russian, Australian, Asian, African American, and what about those tantalizing sheikhs?

Share your thoughts and I’ll choose one lucky winner who’ll receive a purse I brought back from a recent trip to Peru.  Sorry, I have no sexy South American to give away, but I will leave you with this wonderful ideal of an exotic hero.

Going to the national RWA conference is a wonderful opportunity, but it can also be immensely overwhelming: so many great workshops, agents and editors milling around, friends to see, and gatherings to take in.  Siphoning through all the materials to find five things I learned has been a challenge, as there were so many. I attended great workshops, enjoyed many impromptu sessions with fellow writers, and learned so much it is hard to digest.

Here’s my top five list…

1.  How to tear apart a work in progress – revision techniques from Anna DeStefano.  I have a WIP with an ugly middle.  I admit it.  The manuscript is finished.  The middle doesn’t work.  Well, it works, but it isn’t publishable.  I knew I was going to have to tear this apart when I got home from National, and after attending Anna’s workshop, I have a plan!  Check out her handout on her web site – http://www.annawrites.com/workshops.html - and click on the Revision handout.  I use the Browne and King book when I teach Creative Writing – it is definitely worth the cost.

2. From Sharon Page and Jessica Faust, I learned to write a synopsis is fifteen minutes.  The key, of course, is to put the seat of one’s pants into the chair, set the timer, and write.  This is important because I tend to edit myself as I go.  Sharon’s advice to just get the big points down on paper and go from there is sound advice.  Writers tend to be their own worst critics. This can slow us down.

3.  Since I write both inspirational and historicals, I attended a variety of workshops, including “Merging Inspiration, Romance, and More,” a panel with Lenora Worth, Lisa Mondello, and Renee Ryan.  I was excited to hear about the breadth of subgenres emerging in the inspirational market.

4.  Though I know editors are people too, after attending several “spotlights” on different houses, I had a renewed appreciation for what they do, their support of the industry, and their passion for good writing.  Because many of us don’t see editors in person (we only see those rejection letters), we sometimes forget about the real people who are just doing their jobs to the best of their abilities.

5.  Another thing I was reminded of at the National conference was the great support network of RWA members.  When we think that we should maybe concentrate on our day jobs and our families, and that maybe our writing isn’t good enough, our fellow writers remind us not to give up the dream. 

If you attended the RWA conference, what’s one thing you learned?  If you didn’t attend, maybe you’ve been to a local or regional conference recently – any words of wisdom?  Or perhaps you’ve read something that resonated with you – please share! 

Kayla

Okay, I’ll admit it. The beginning of last week’s Romance Writers of America® National Conference depressed me. This was my eighth National, my first being in Anaheim in 1998. I’ve been a contest winner seven times and a finalist twenty-five more times (including twice in RWA’s Golden Heart®). Heck, I make my living in publishing industry helping others sell their books. I wrote and sold a couple of short stories some years back and I’m published in different fields, but I still haven’t nabbed a sale contract for my novels. Despite being a cheerleader for other writers, it sometimes feels like my brass ring will always be too slippery to grab.

But by the third day of the conference, I was getting some a-ha moments. (I invariably do, which is one reason I go despite it all.) But this year’s a-has didn’t come from workshops — I hardly attended them. Nor did the a-has come from the luncheon speakers, as great as they were, or from the glamorous Golden Heart® awards ceremony in which I was once again a finalist.

The a-has came from my friends.

I’ve come to know a lot of people at these eight Nationals. Some I met first online, and others while at the conferences. I’ve enjoyed connecting with many current and former clients of my ex-agents. Some pals I’ve met through friends, and now I gladly consider them my friends, too. And two wonderful sisterhoods formed among the Golden Heart® finalists from 2007 and 2009.

My a-has came during chats with these many buddies at meals or at the bar. We swapped tips on industry shifts, promotion, agent and editor leads, and reading suggestions. We shared commiseration about the downsides of the publishing business and the hard work, talent and luck it takes to break in. Best of all, we shared joy when a published but struggling 2007 finalist was offered a contract at the dessert reception on the last night of the conference.

And that, I realized, was the best a-ha of all: friendships. There are people who truly gave a damn that I succeed, and I give a damn that they do, too.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t nervous at the awards ceremony. The first time around, I could have sworn the entire auditorium heard my banging heartbeats. This year, I was calm and enjoyed it all. I woohooed for my pals as their names and manuscript titles flashed onto the huge screens. And when my photograph and title lit the screen and my friends cheered out in the audience of 2000, I felt…well, loved.  It wasn’t about the award or a possible win. It was about rooting each other on. Encouragement through both the bad and the good.

L to R: Cate Rowan, Robin D. Owens, Kayla Westra, Caroline Fyffe

Whether you’re a writer or a reader, I’m sure there’s something you want — a long-term goal that makes you strive to succeed. And I hope you have kindred spirits with whom you can share the journey.

So thank goodness for the generosity of friends. You made my conference a sheer pleasure and you lighten my struggle toward that danged ring.

Here’s to you, sisters!

If your “Well” is a place to get comfortable and liquored up, it might be time to expand your horizons.

How do you stay creative? Creative people can get burned out, but the more I talk with and learn about other creative people, the more it seems we one thing in common: we are information gatherers. In the book, “Now Discover Your Strengths” it’s called INPUT. I call it RESEARCH.

Tell me if this sounds like you:  “You are inquisitive. You collect things.  You might collect information – words, facts, books, and quotations – or you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs. Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you.  And yours is the kind of mind that finds so many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. if you read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be acquired and then stored away.

Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say exactly when and why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those possible uses in mind, you really don’t feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and compiling and filing stuff away. It’s interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will prove valuable.” (from Now Discover Your Strengths)

It turns out INPUT is a great strength to have if you are a writer, artist, or another type of creative. It doesn’t mean you are a pack rat, though if you’re not careful that can become the outward manifestation…in which case either produce work, or clean out the mess to free your mind. But INPUT can keep you fresh. If you are not naturally like this, here are some tips for when the ideas dry up.

1. Travel. Go to new places, sight-see, learn the stories and histories of the locals. There will be experiences, settings, visual reference, characters and more that you will come home with.
2. Visit Your Library. One trip to the stacks in the history or art departments is usually enough to keep me occupied for an entire afternoon. Browse the old books, periodicals, as well as the new stuff.
3. Tour Museums. Find a good Docent Tour and get educated. Or study portraits. I always make up stories in my head about their lives. Museums give giant colorful and/or sculptural inspiration for stories. (But don’t touch! They really don’t like that.) Museums a horrible temptation for tactile people, but I torture myself anyway.
4. Survey Popular Culture. This works less for me, but some swear by it. You might even be able to write-off the salon visit if that’s where you read all the pop magazines! (That’s what I call creative accounting.)
5. Go to the Symphony (or listen at home). Either way, you will likely doze off, but something about the math of music can clear the mind and open it up to musical stories. I always leave music productions inspired…if a little groggy. If you play an instrument, you should also try that.
6. Revisit Your Personal Library and Collections. How much fun is it to get more of your money’s worth on all those research books about England, Maritime History, Natural Phenomenon, and Medieval Times?  Or how about that fat file of clippings?

Do you do any of these now? Do you have one to recommend to our readers?

Come to the Well and share. Drinks are welcome!

Speaking of drinks, I will be signing SIREN’S SONG and SIREN’S SECRET this Saturday, July 25th, 1-230 PM at Barnes & Noble on Malvern in Fullerton. Then everyone is welcome to meet me at the Slidebar in Fullerton. More info on my web site. Hmm. Perhaps I’ll find another creative catalyst there.

Look forward to chatting and/or seeing you.

Many adventures!

Trish Albright

For my first blog of Nobody Writes It Better, I considered the time frame. I’d just be returning from National. My body would be stiffly uncooperative, my head on the verge of exploding. The one thing I thought I might still be capable of doing is forming questions. So I decided that as authors on our way up, we should pick the brain of someone already at the top of her game, and determined to stay there. ‘007ers, and friends, put those fingers on the keyboard and form those questions. Here to talk to us about being persistent, prolific and unstoppable is two-time RITA nominated, five-time Romantic Times-nominated and the recipient of RT’s Career Achievement Award, and now the two-time Overall published Daphne Winner for the Kiss of Death Chapter’s Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, Author Kylie Brant.

Post a comment and Kylie will award one reader an advanced reader copy of Waking Nightmare and another reader a chapter critique of a WIP.

D.B.: Kylie, thanks for joining us. You’ve written 25 Silhouette categories and three single title novels for Berkley Sensation as part of your Mindhunter’ series. The Nobody Writes It Better Blog is made up of very talented authors in their own right, some published and on their way, some striving to get there. If you could give a particular piece of advance to someone who knows craft and is on the high end of the teeter-totter, what would it be?

K.B.: Once the craft has been polished, at this point in the career, you need to focus on the stories. Hopefully, by this time you’ve pitched, you’ve submitted and have editorial feedback to analyze. Try to find common threads there. There are usually two reasons for rejections at this point: execution and plot. Leslie Wainger always used to say that there weren’t any taboo story elements at Intimate Moments, that it was all in the execution, or how they were handled in the story. You might be at the top of your game as far as craft and voice. Now it’s time to develop a story idea that will grab an editor’s attention.

It can be frustrating trying to find that particular idea. Publishers are always looking for “the same, but different.” When we first start submitting, we target editors buying similar stories to ours. Having read widely of the types of books they publish, we develop those kinds of plot lines. But after a while the publishers get sort of ho-hum. Why should we buy author B if we already have author A in house writing the same sort of thing?

On the other hand, if you give them something too different, they may be intrigued but have no idea how they would market it. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that marketing drives all buying decisions.

A fresh twist on a familiar story hook is the best way to get an editor’s attention. Because the plot hook is something he/she recognizes they already know what they’d do with the book. Then it just becomes a matter of grabbing the editor with your voice and with your handling of the treatment to get that sale.

D.B.: You work back-to-back deadlines for both Silhouette Romantic Suspense and Berkley Sensation, and maintain a full-time job as a teacher. How do you have any semblance of normalcy in your life? What would you tell us about finding balance?

K.B.: I’m not sure ‘normal’ is an appropriate adjective for my life . But family and friends come first and I always make time in my schedule to hang out with them. My husband is a gregarious sort and requires entertainment on the weekends, so unless I’m under killer deadlines (like most of last winter), we also go out Friday and Saturday nights.

That means I have to be very very disciplined with the rest of my free time. I exercise in the morning and right after school. Making dinner is something I’ve given up as a low priority item LOL. (As I told my husband, I cooked the first thirty years, he can cook the next thirty, then we’ll re-negotiate!) So about 5:30 or 6 at night I sit down and start writing. If I have nothing else going on that evening, I try to write three to five pages a night and ten pages a day on weekends during the school year. Of course in the summer it’s different. Then I aim for fifty to sixty pages a week.

This frequently means I have to schedule my writing time. I’m often playing catch up and those pages during the week make up for not making my writing goals on the weekend, because we were tailgating or visiting one of the kids or whatever.

But when the deadlines grow crushing, I focus only on the writing. After the holidays were over this year I did nothing but work and write for ten weeks. I think we attended one event during that time. The pay off was that once I finished the book, it would be time for vacation, so that gave me some motivation.

But I can’t keep up that sort of grueling schedule without breaks. For one thing, my husband would object! I have to have time to do the things I want or I begin to resent the writing, and those feelings would interfere with my ability to create.

D.B.: Talk to us about the revision process. Does it get easier? Stay the same? Has there ever been a time when a revision letter totally overwhelmed you, and how did you handle it?

K.B.: I give myself permission to obsess for twenty-four hours over the revisions . I mean, I’m going to anyway, so allowing myself to wallow in it seems to shorten the process LOL. By putting a time limit on it, I have a deadline for coming up with solutions. I have to mull things over for a while sometimes before I can figure out how to handle the editor’s concerns in a way that works for the story.

It’d be nice to believe that the longer you write the fewer revisions that will be required. It’s been years since I’ve been asked to revise a book for Silhouette, and my Berkley editor’s suggestions are usually pretty light and easily handled. And admittedly, I welcome any opportunity to go back in and edit the work again.

But I suspect that revisions have a great deal to do with the editor and how hands on they are. And that’s not something you know until you begin working together. Just understand that all authors through the lifetime of their career deal with the same thing. Recently, a friend of mine who’s a NYT bestseller had massive revisions that changed the course of her story. She basically had to rewrite a third of it. It was pretty major, but she’d be the first to agree the book is stronger because of it.

I have a pretty healthy respect for the editors’ knowledge so understanding that the book will improve because of the revisions helps with motivation. And I’m not married to every word I write. Give me the manuscript ten times and I’d probably change it every time. Most editors will compromise on the changes, and if there are things they suggest that I can’t live with, we talk about it and work something out. But an author has to establish credibility for such discussions by not fighting every single suggestion the editor makes.

D.B.: I’ve read Terms of Surrender, Terms of Attraction and now Walking Nightmare. Your category books, in my opinion already have a rich, single-title feel to them, while your single title books are edgy, scary and gripping. How do your editors feel about you writing for other publishers? How do you separate the single title elements from your category work, or reduce the urge to incorporate romance into the more mainstream threads, and vice versa. Also, do you finish one book at a time?

K.B.: I’ve been told since I first started writing for Silhouette that I have a single title voice. It was years before I understood what that meant. I enjoy incorporating realism and suspense in my stories. At Silhouette, I was often told to tone down the suspense and put the romance more at the forefront . And of course, I’m familiar with the parameters of category romances and know what will work in a SRS and what won’t. I’ve been very lucky there, as from the first book I was niched as ‘an edgy author’ and they’ve given me a lot of leeway. I’ve pushed the envelope where I could.

When it comes to the single titles, I admit that I still wrestle with how much romance to incorporate. I enjoy satisfactory romantic relationships with the suspense, so that’s what I want to write. But in a romantic thriller, the suspense is going to take center stage and the romance is secondary. That’s definitely the case with the Mindhunters’ books. The plots are big and require more space to develop. But I think the relationship between the hero and heroine develops similarly whether it’s a Silhouette book or a single title. The difference is in the ratio of suspense to romance in the book.

In the final analysis, it’s the story and characters that determine the route the romance will take. Because of reader expectation, all my SRS’s have avowal of love from the hero and heroine, but they don’t all end with marriage proposals. The single title books may or may not end with an avowal of love, but there is a reasonable expectation of happiness for the characters beyond book’s end. But what that might constitute differs between stories, dependent on how the relationship has progressed to that point.

So many authors write for multiple publishers, I think editors are used to it and it hasn’t been an issue at either of my houses.

Normally, I finish one book at a time. That helps with sanity issues because I might be working on different stages of three different books simultaneously. Maybe I’m writng one, doing copy edits on another and galleys on a third. But last summer when I was juggling contracts between Berkley and Silhouette, I had to write two books at the same time. It was definitely not something I want to repeat any time soon, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared it would be.

I had two sons getting married and my writing was really curtailed. I had to take a calendar and cross of all the days I couldn’t write and figure how much had to be written for each book on the remaining days to make deadlines. This meant I ended up writing five pages on the SRS and ten on the single title on the writing days. Sometimes I was still writing at ten o’clock at night, which wasn’t much fun. But it wasn’t as difficult as I thought to keep the two straight. I might have had difficulty recalling characters’ names LOL, but the plots were so different that I never confused them.

D.B.: For those on the blog who have sold, what would be your best advice to them as far as marketing, persistence and staying prolific?

K.B.: Marketing. There’s a word that resonates with me right now! Very little is required of category authors when it comes to marketing. We can’t affect a whole lot of change because only a set number of books are out for a short period of time. The publisher isn’t going back to print if sales are good, because the next month they have a new slew of books to put on the shelf. It’s best to maintain a good website that is frequently updated and confine your efforts on ways to increase traffic to it.

For single titles, however, it is becoming more and more common for publishers to do little or no promo on the books. There are so many marketing opportunities out there, and it’s easy to spend tons of money, for a result that is usually not quantifiable. So a careful analysis is in order of what might be best use of promotional dollars. Don’t overextend in the area.

Regardless of the current state of the economy, publishers are still publishing books. So they are going to need to buy more, and why shouldn’t it be from you? That’s the mindset we have to keep, as we work hard to develop something so amazing the editor absolutely can’t put it down

Once sold, it’s important to set reasonable deadlines and deliver on time. With so many authors to choose from, given a choice between two authors at similar career levels, why wouldn’t they keep the one who doesn’t put them in a jam with production by delivering late? This requires careful analysis of our individual schedules before setting the deadlines. And then arranging our writing schedule to reflect the pages needed by certain points in order to meet the deadline.

D.B.: For those who haven’t sold, what would you advise us about persistence and adding the words prolific and unstoppable to our resumes?

K.B.:  Don’t stop writing. It’s just as important for you to set aside time to write as it is for published authors. It trains you for the time when you do have deadlines to meet and are juggling books in various stages of production.

Use this time to experiment. If you’re intrigued by the new urban fantasy craze, check it out. Read widely in the genre and start a story of your own. You never know which book is going to catch the editors’ attention and it never hurts to have others stockpiled for when you do sell. They’ll often ask to see other works you might have.

By this time in your career, you’ve polished your craft so FINISH YOUR BOOKS! I can’t tell you how many times I’ll hear about aspiring authors having tons of unfinished manuscripts. That might be fine when you’re still working on style, pacing and sexual tension. But when you get to the pre-published stage, it’s important to also have honed that ability to see a story through start to finish. The best training you can get is learning to work through those sagging middles and plot glitches to the end. That’s what authors have to do.

And finally, don’t stop submitting. Take advantage of opportunities at conferences to pitch to editors and with contests that have editors as the final round judges. Check out those houses that don’t require agents and get your story in front of an editor. Setting realistic goals and charting your progress toward meeting goals can be helpful to keep at it.

Two of Kylie’s books are soon to be released. Silhouette’s Terms of Attraction hits the shelves August 2009 and Walking Nightmare from Berkley Sensation hits bookstores in September, 2009.

At 5pm yesterday, I was in the centre of Sydney, taking a taxi to the airport through peak-hour traffic. By 9pm, I was turning into our gate, hundreds of kilometres from the city, 22 kilometres from our nearest town, and a kilometre still from our house. It was a crisp, clear night, with no moon; when I got out of the car to close the gate I just had to stand for a few minutes under the brilliant night sky. With no competing lights, the sky was huge and dazzling with stars, the Milky Way a thick band across the south-east, the Southern Cross – significant for we Australians – shining down.

I’ve been lucky that I’ve almost always lived in or near beautiful places. For the first six years of my life, we lived near the bottom of Mount Dandenong, outside Melbourne. Then Canberra for 20 years, where the view of the Brindabella Ranges from my parents’ windows still catches my breath. Then I moved to the New England tablelands of northern New South Wales, to a pretty town of only 25,000, surrounded by grazing lands and National Parks, with natural bush and spectacular gorge country. Now we’re on 100 acres of beautiful bushland near the gorges, our nearest neighbour 3km away, and we love it. I’m gradually learning the rhythms of the environment around us – droughts and storms, wildlife and plants. I still do enjoy a visit to the city, but I’m now definitely a country girl at heart.

My place - late afternoon light

Place is a part of us; whether we live somewhere we love, or whether circumstances limit our choices, the cities, towns, landscapes and communities around us shape the rhythms of our lives. I love to travel, and my favourite way to experience a place is to spend time in it, wandering around, watching the people, hearing the conversations, seeing the architecture and the history and the wildlife and the land that encompasses them. In some places, that land is so harsh there are few people, and long silences:

Ruins of the old Mulka Store, on the Birdsville Track, outback South Australia

When it comes to my books, it’s probably not surprising that place is important – and, given the fact that I write romantic suspense, and much of the Australian landscape is dramatic, it’s a perfect combination. My first novel, As Darkness Falls, is set in a fictional town on the edge of the outback. For the environment around the town, I drew inspiration from an area I’ve travelled to many times, a few hours away, where a vast, dry forest wilderness covers hundreds of thousands of acres, its western edge easing into the vast plains of the outback. The heroine, Bella, grew up there, and travelled the region, droving with her father. (Yes, I confess, I’m a little envious of Bella…) The hero, Alec, is from Sydney, facing the challenges of leading an investigation in an isolated environment, far from the resources that he’s used to having at hand. And somewhere in the wilderness around them, there’s a missing child, and a murderer…

Pilliga Scrub

What places are important to you? What do you love about where you live? Or is there somewhere you’ve visited that has stayed with you ever since?

I’ll give away a copy of As Darkness Falls by drawing a name from one of the commenters, so if you’d like to be in with a chance to win, tell us about somewhere you love!

ETA: since 9am New York time is 11pm my time, I’ll be off sleeping for some of the US day – but I will be back again later in the day, to respond to comments!

I have mixed results when it comes to writing challenges. I’ve participated in Book in a Week challenges with my writing chapter where I get less done during the challenge than on my regular schedule. Yet every time I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, I’ve met my goal of 50,000 words in a month.

The first time I signed up for NaNoWriMo, all I had was characters and a vague idea. But I had the biggest blast writing that story. It would wake me up at 4 AM and I would reach my goal many times before I left for school.

Now, the story is a huge mess, has maybe a few redeeming qualities, but after that “Year of Revisions,” it felt so good to write something new, no matter how big of a mess it was.

The next year, I had a plan. I’d plotted a book at a writing retreat, and met my goal almost a week early. But…I didn’t connect with the characters. I was working on revising that book earlier this year and I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. I think that’s what it is, though. Usually when I write a book, I spend months and months with the characters, and so I know them well. These characters didn’t have that benefit and the story suffers. I can fix it, but it will take some digging.

This past year, I’d plotted another book. And three days before NaNo began, I got another idea. I LOVED this new idea, and while I got my 50,000 words in the month’s time, the story wasn’t done. I spent 4 more months writing and revising it and I love the book.

Now I’m doing eHarlequin’s JuNoWriMo because I was determined to get the rough draft of a book done this summer. I took the book I’d plotted for NaNo and began working, hoping for 2000 words a day.

But it’s not coming, no matter how long I sit in front of the computer.

I think certain books lend themselves to challenges more than others. I probably should have worked on the straight romance instead of the romantic suspense. But, the more I get done before school starts, the happier I’ll be.

Why do a challenge, then?

1) It keeps you accountable. If you’ve signed up, you’ve made a pledge in front of other writers. If nothing else, it gets your butt in the chair every day. Words on a page, every day.

2) It challenges you to see what your limits are. I am not a ten page a day writer. 5, usually. Personal best, 18.

3) The more you write, the more involved you are with your story, the less holes you’ll have in the plot.

These are my reasons. Do you participate in writing challenges? What are your reasons?