May is the one-year anniversary for the Romance Bandits, and we are celebrating big time. In addition to our normal fun posts, we’ve got a lot of great guests coming throughout the month beginning with New York Times best-selling author Eloisa James tomorrow.

We’re also having lots of drawings for prizes ranging from bookstore gift cards to signed books to critiques of first chapters. Be sure to visit every day and comment to be in the running for the prize drawings.

First off, my pal Mary’s book Hot Shot is out from Samhain Publishing today! In celebration, she’s guesting with us over at the Romance Bandits blog. Swing by if you have the chance.

In my writing news, I’m working on my AAs (author alterations) on my first book, A Firefighter in the Family. This is the last time I’ll get to look at it before it goes to press (squee!) and thankfully I’m not finding many edits. I think that’ll make my editor happy. And I like to keep my editor happy. I’m also working on ideas for my option book (what will hopefully be the first book of the next contract). I want to get that partial written before I head off to the Romantic Times conference later in the month.

For some reason, our Internet service has been intermittently wonky lately. I REALLY don’t want to change service providers because I’ve got screaming-fast cable Internet, so I hope the wonkiness doesn’t continue. For when it goes on the wonk, I’m glad there’s a Panera Bread with WiFi nearby. I spent 3 hours there yesterday! And since the hubby was out of town, I grabbed my dinner from there on the way out. According to him and his brother, Panera is “chick food.” 

The big upheaval of the last week, however, has been a surprise room re-do. We have a large-ish house, especially for two people, so in the winter we close off the back part so we don’t go broke with heating bills. Natural gas = not cheap. So we don’t go back there much in the winter and keep the temperature at about 55 so the pipes don’t bust. But the other day when hubby came home from a business trip, he zipped in the back door to use the back bathroom. This bathroom happens to be where the hot water heater resides. You see where this is going, don’t you?

Imagine the hubby’s surprise when he opens the door to find the room soaking wet and, I kid you not, mold growing up the walls. He says, “What happened back here?” I, clueless, wander back to see what he’s talking about. My mouth falls open. The water heater evidently had a leak but not so much that we didn’t still have hot water. The room was dripping from the ceiling, the border was peeling off, the mirror had come loose from the water, fallen and broken all over the sink and floor. The sink cabinet was ruined. In a word, it was DIS-GUST-ING!

The next day, I called contractors and got bids. Thankfully, one was able to start work last Friday. Since the room had to be gutted anyway, we decided to convert it to a laundry room. Looks like it’ll be done today, so tomorrow I’ll post some before and after shots for your viewing pleasure.

Today, I’m welcoming fellow Harlequin American author and Wet Noodle Posse member Lee McKenzie, who has a new book out this month.

Congratulations on your new Harlequin American release, With This Ring. It’s a sequel to your debut novel, The Man for Maggie. As you were writing The Man for Maggie, did you have in mind that you were starting a series, which now continues in With This Ring?

Thanks, Trish! Yesterday was the official release of With This Ring, so I’m pretty excited!

I didn’t know this would be a series until the first book was well under way. I’m not a plotter, so I never know much about a story except what unfolds as I write. I realized there could be a second book when I discovered, in The Man for Maggie, the hero’s best friend had been in love with the hero’s sister, basically forever. After that, the first chapter of With This Ring practically wrote itself. Don’t you love it when that happens?

Tell us a little about your journey to writing for Harlequin American. What drew you to the line?

For a few years, I tried writing romantic suspense—a couple of them even finaled in RWA’s Golden Heart Contest—but those manuscripts are still languishing under the bed. It was when I returned to writing more traditional romance that I made my first sale.

Writing for Harlequin American Romance is great. These books focus on the developing relationship between the hero and heroine, but the stories are interconnected with their families, friends and community.

My writing tends to be light and somewhat humorous, and I love creating quirky secondary characters—like the heroine’s Aunt Margaret in The Man for Maggie and Max, the hero’s Old English Sheepdog in With This Ring. There’s lots of room for that in American Romances. Having said that, the authors who write for this line cover the full spectrum of writing styles, from dramatic to comedic, and with varying levels of sensuality. It’s great when you get to write the kinds of stories you love to read, and this line really has something for everyone, readers and writers alike.

What’s next in the Collingwood Station series? Or will your next books be outside of Collingwood Station?

The Man for Maggie and With This Ring are the only books in the Collingwood Station series. And I should mention that Collingwood Station is a fictional town in Connecticut.

I’m currently working on another two-book series, and I’m so excited about it. The heroines are two young career women, best friends, who live and work and meet the men of their dreams in the beautiful city of San Francisco.

I love the look of your Web site. How did you decide on the fun, hip look?

That’s an easy question. I felt the Web site should reflect my writing rather than me! So I hired someone who had the skill to make that happen. He’s actually a marketing specialist who happens to know how to design really great websites. He also created business cards and bookmarks that coordinate with the colors and the polka dots on the Web site.

At our first meeting, he asked me a lot questions about my books and about the kinds of things I wanted, and didn’t want, on the Web site. He came up with three different concepts and they were all stunning, but I went with the polka dot theme because it was fun and colorful.

Like me, you’re a fan of some great TV programs. What are your top three favorites and why? Do you think writers can actually benefit from watching good TV programming?

Currently, my top three favorites are Men in Trees, Gossip Girl and The Office. My hands-down favorite is Men in Trees because it has so many great characters and the storylines are funny and unabashedly over the top. Gossip Girl surprised me. I’ve read a lot of YA fiction and although I had not read that particular series, I decided to give the show a try. After two episodes, I was hooked. The TV series is incredibly well done, and now the first book in the Gossip Girl series is in my TBR pile. The Office doesn’t have a lot to do with romance, but has some of the most entertaining comic characters on television these days.

I definitely believe novelists can learn a lot from good TV shows and feature-length films. Scriptwriters are masters when it comes to creating strong character archetypes, and strong characters make great books, too.

Last summer at the Romance Writers of America National Conference in Dallas, Michael Hague gave several outstanding workshops. Anyone who wasn’t able to attend should definitely listen to his workshop, titled “Uniting Plot Structure and Character Arc,” on the conference CD. It was an excellent workshop!

Thanks for stopping by today, Lee, and I hope With This Ring sells like hotcakes. I know it’s on the top of my TBR pile.

Check out more about Lee and her books at her Web site and blog:

http://www.leemckenzie.com
http://thewritersideoflife.blogspot.com