I hope everyone is having a lovely Memorial Day weekend!

Now, on to more of your questions. . . (in case you missed Part 1, I’m answering questions readers posed to me in an earlier blog):

Q.  While the sexual tension between the H&H in “Practice Makes Perfect” and “Something About You” is certainly equal in it’s intensity, the later and most recent book is more sexually explicit. Did you find the more graphic love scenes more difficult to write?

A.  Yes and no.  Because there was a suspense subplot to Something About You, it felt right for the love scenes to be more intense and descriptive.  But I did drink wine while writing those scenes.  : )

Q.  In Practice Makes Perfect, was the socioeconomic differences between the upbringing of the hero and heroine planned out or was it something that just developed?

A.  That was planned.  On the outside, I wanted Payton and J.D. to seem like polar opposites.  But once they start to get to know each other, they realize they have a lot more in common than they’d originally thought.

Q.  In Something About You, I often wondered how the trial turned out…if Jack got his vindication?

A.  Actually, the Martino case continues in my next book, A Lot Like Love.  That book centers around an undercover investigation into a wealthy nightclub and restaurant owner who is laundering money for Martino.  Both Cameron and Jack have supporting roles in the story.

Q.  I just want to know ii it’s based on real events…
and if you’ll have a movie adaptation of your novels, what director would you prefer?

A.  The idea for Practice Makes Perfect is very loosely based on my experience working at my former firm.  There was a male associate in my group who was the same year as me, and because my group had never before made two associates partner in the same year, I often wondered what would happen when he and I came up for consideration.  From there, my overactive imagination ran wild.

As for what director I would prefer in the movie adaptation of my novels. . . my answer is the one who is most likely to get the film made. : )

Q.  How would you rate your books? PG, PG 13? R? X?

A.  I would say that Just the Sexiest Man Alive and Practice Makes Perfect are PG-13, and Something About You is R-rated.

There are a few remaining questions, which I’ll get to next week. On a different note, I just finished Dark Lover (book 1 in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series), which I enjoyed.  Now I’m curious about Zsadist’s story–oh, and Darius.  Luckily I already own the next two books in the series.  : )

I just started my book club book, The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard.  A mystery set in a small town in Kansas, but that’s all I really know so far.

How about the rest of you?  What are you reading?

I noticed that several of you had questions for me about Something About You and Practice Makes Perfect in my previous blog about reading guides/discussion questions.  So I thought I’d go ahead and answer a few of those:

Q. I was wondering what inspired you to include more sex in Something About You?

A. Lots of wine.  Just kidding.  (Well, sort of.)  Something About You was steamier than my first two books because it felt like the right thing to do.  By adding a suspense subplot, there was a little more “grit” to the book, and the higher sensuality seemed a better fit for that.  Plus, there was such a build up of sexual tension between Cameron and Jack, I thought readers might kill me if I didn’t show the culmination of that.  : )

Q.  Do your characters take over – meaning have a mind of their own and if so, do they take you to a very surprising journey?

A.  Yes and no.  Sometimes I set out to write a certain scene and I write and rewrite and rewrite it again and it just doesn’t work, and usually that’s because I’m trying to get the characters to do something that would be, no pun intended, out of character.  And what also happens is that, as I get into the book, the characters will become so vivid in my mind that I can “hear” their voices and the back-and-forth dialogue really begins to flow.  I don’t know that I’ve ever been completely surprised by any character’s actions, though.

Q.  I am curious as to how your ‘past life’ as a lawyer pushed your books ahead and have you had to do more research as you write new books?

A.  Being a lawyer has certainly been a plus in writing lawyer heroines, I can say that.  : )  Although I did have to do more research for Something About You, since I was a civil litigator and Cameron is a criminal prosecutor.  So I emailed a friend who is an Assistant U.S. Attorney for help.  I suspect he thought that I was going to have all these sexy, thought-provoking questions about his job and then instead I asked him things like, “How many people do you share a secretary with?”  “When you meet with FBI agents, do you meet at your office or theirs?”  I knew the big-picture aspects of the job, I just needed help with the details.

With respect to Book 4, the upcoming A Lot Like Love, I had to do a lot of research.  Neither the heroine nor the hero is a lawyer–imagine that!  The heroine owns a wine store, so I shadowed the owner of my local wine shop for a day, I took a wine appreciation course (not exactly a hardship), and I read a couple books on wine.  Plus I took a trip to Napa Valley last year, and I was able to draw on that experience.

Q.  While writing the one book, did you start to get ideas for the next book and if so, are you able you write more than one book at a time?

A.  Not with my first three books.  Those were written entirely as stand-alone books, without any cross over in the characters.  But with A Lot Like Love, not only do I bring back characters from Something About You, but a supporting character in ALLL will be the hero in Book 5.  So when writing A Lot Like Love, yes–I definitely began to get ideas for the next book, because I already know who the hero will be.   That being said, I don’t actually write more than one book at a time.  I get very entrenched in the book I’m writing and need to focus only on that.

There were more questions, and I’ll get to those next time.  I think I like this Q&A idea!  So if you have questions you’d like answered in a future blog, feel free to post them below.

On an entirely different note, I started the first book in J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and I’m enjoying it so far. For those of you who have read the BDB books–and I know there are many of you–what did you think?  (No spoilers please!)

Happy reading!