Molly O'Keefe's Blog, page 22

Dead Letter Week and injecting new life into Urban Fantasy

Such a fun week, celebrating Eileen's new release. Unlike Molly, I love urban fantasy, the combination of mystery, romance and kick ass into one book is tremendously appealing to me, but I went on an urban fantasy glut and they all started blending together.

And that's what I love the most about Eileen's series, is that she's taken the urban fantasy genre and given it such a cool spin. For starters, it's got a wicked sense of humour, Melina's voice is snarky, but also witty and I've laughed out loud many times reading the series.

I also love that Melina isn't mired in darkness. She's bright and has friends, and genuinely enjoys her life and the balance between dealing with the paranormal and maintaining her normal life is an important part of the book and dealt with in a way I'd never read before.

Because of that, when bad things happen, it has more impact, and the emotions come across in a way that is more impactful than most other Urban Fantasy.

I have a plane ride coming up, which means five glorious uninterrupted hours. I have Dead Letter ready on my kindle, and I'm so excited. Hope everyone else enjoys it as well

Dead Letter Day, 1st Person and Jennifer Lawrence...

So I haven’t read Dead Letter Day yet as I’m committed to finishing my RITA books first. For now it sits on my Kindle waiting for me to devour. But given this is Eileen’s release week I thought I would talk about my love for the Messenger Series in general and why in particular I think it works.
Oh yeah – and I’m going to try and tie this to Jennifer Lawrence’s Oscar too.
The series is told in first person from Melina’s point of view. First person stories are always hit or miss for me. Sometimes I love them and sometimes I loathe them. There was that point in chick-lit where everything was being written in first person and the heroines were all funny and quippy and snarky ala Bridget Jones.And that can be a fun read, but often I would feel as if I was missing out on the depth of a person. We’re not funny and snarky and witty ALL the time. I think that’s why I fell in love with Melina so quickly. There was more to her than just one liners. I felt like I knew her. I felt her struggle and her pain when she lost her mentor. More importantly I felt like we could be friends. We would connect on a personal level… and go kick paranormal butt together of course. And that’s when it occurred to me why first person can be so tricky. For me, I have to like this person. I have to connect with her. Otherwise I can’t put myself in the character and look at the story from her POV. If I don’t, the funny and the snarky feels flat. The person seems one dimensional. Which of course brings me to Jennifer Lawrence and what makes her special. Twenty-two and already a two time Oscar nominee and 1 time winner. Why? I’m sure you might say – good acting. That’s a given. But I think it goes beyond that. I think ultimately people identify with her. The person behind the character. She’s real and genuine and if you watched her interview with George Stephanopoulos after she won you totally wanted to hang out with her and be her friend. I think it’s because of that openness of spirit - it allows you to watch her play a difficult character and still relate to her. I get that with great acting you shouldn’t “see” the real person. But I think people like Meryl Streep and Sally Field and now Jennifer Lawrence have a… quality. An honesty about who they are and that resonates through the character they are playing.I think the same is true for writers and their voice. And I think this is especially critical in books with 1ST person POV. I have to believe this character. I have to want to be inside their head with him which means to an extent I’m inside the writer’s head as well. It’s why I can’t wait to read this book. I can’t wait to get back into Eileen’s amazing head through Melina!

Dead Letter Day!

Yep! It's here. Release day for Dead Letter Day!!!

I got me a whole big box of 'em in the mail.



Can't you just smell that new book smell?

This is the 3rd novel in my Messenger series and my 10th published novel overall. I know 10 isn't that significant for some folks Molly , but it feels like a pretty big milestone to me. I'll be celebrating on Friday over at the Avid Reader in Davis at 7:30 p.m. I bought a bunch of bottles of Prosecco so come on by and have a glass of something bubbly to help me celebrate.

Oh, and I'll have to say something at this shindig. What do you like to hear about from an author? I'm thinking about telling everyone about something they made me take out of the book, but I'm not sure that will be enough. Any suggestions?

Dear Ben Affleck (again)....

In an effort to catch up on Oscar movies before the big show, I watched ARGO on Friday night. After which I engaged in a twenty minute fantasy, that somehow you and your wife and kids ended up at my house for dinner. It was awkward at first, Adam burned the steaks, I spilled wine all over your kids - but then because in this fantasy you are so normal so like us but with more money and an extra kid - we became fast friends. You invited the Damon's over and we all played Trivia Pursuit. It was a good fantasy - I might have even acted some of it out.

I am not even embarrassed about this. I'm not.

I wish I could say it was all ARGO's fault. ARGO is a great movie, you managed to go from small scale picture, to big scale picture without missing a beat. It was deft and nuanced. You made cohesive, tension-mounting plot points out of small moments, tiny details. You didn't spoon feed us, or pander. I really liked it. The world-building and your commitment to it, just like those movies set in Boston - it's fantastic. And your casting was perfection. As the captain of the ARGO ship - you absolutely nailed it.

And you! In the last letter I wrote, I gave you such a hard time for casting yourself as the lead in your own movie. Because you were the weakest link in The Town. But in ARGO, you seem to have found your niche - very few lines. In the vein of Bruce Willis, you shouldn't talk too much. You managed to be more real, the less you said. The scene at the end, when your character asked his wife if he could come in - I believed it. It was the same sort of moment you perfected in Good Will Hunting, when Will wasn't at his house, and you knew what that meant.

That said - stop casting yourself. Really. You are Ben Affleck and you just aren't good enough to make people forget that you are Ben Affleck. There aren't many actors who can - in fact the few that exist were all nominated last night. You weren't. And I think the fact that you weren't nominated for Best Director, is probably because you cast yourself in that role. You manage to get amazing actors to support yourself with - actors I imagine who don't need a lot of help from you in terms of character choices or motivations. I want to see how you do with someone like you - but not you.

The reason why I unabashedly have the friendship fantasy was brought home last night during your acceptance speech. While so many others are emotionless robots, or incredibly smooth and gracious practiced winners - you were so real. You were red-faced and emotional. You made bad jokes and might have offended your wife - though I doubt it. You revealed a little too much, swerved off topic and managed to be so totally real, through out it all.

The Oscar show was a poorly directed, weird hodge-podge last night and we almost gave up to watch the Saturday Night Live we had taped - but I'm glad we didn't. You were worth it, Ben. You've been worth it all along.


PS Your wife's dress was one of my favorites.

Zero Dark Thirty and absolutely no backstory

So finally got around to watching Zero Dark Thirty, and loved it. It's complex and fascinating and tense and that Kathryn Bigelow didn't get a best director oscar nod - well, that's for another post.

But the main reason I loved it is because of the main character, Maya played by Jessica Chastain. The movie covers the ten year search for Bin Laden, and we see it almost entirely through the eyes of one woman, a CIA analyst, who never even picks up a gun, but does all the tedious, painstaking work of chasing clues to the whereabouts of America's number one enemy.

And the character evolves through the movie, from wide eyed and relatively innocent to hard edged, whose focus is almost the bane of her superiors. It's an utterly fascinating character study, more so, because aside from one short scene, we never see her in anything but a work situation.

At the end of the movie, we know this woman is the force(and I mean that literally, there are some amazing scenes where she hounds her superiors to do something with the leads she has uncovered)behind the search, but we know almost nothing else about her, except that she's single.

We don't know if she has parents, friends, any other interests, although, I suspect not, or any childhood traumas. We don't even know why she has a drive to find Bin Laden, even after every other person she works with has given up, we just know she's stubborn past all reasonableness.

And it's amazing. I'm left with all these questions that I've been answering, inventing a backstory, ideas of where she might be now, and it's why the movie is still fresh in my mind.

And even though the idea of a character without backstory is tempting, it's almost impossible to do in book form with your main protagonist, but really fun to think about with secondary characters, whose character is revealed entirely but what they do, and not what they've done.

I'm trying to think of an example and nothing comes to mind, but it's something I want to play with a little bit.

Has anyone else seen the movie? Maya is my favourite character of the year by far.

How Downton Abbey makes cliches work...

Since we’re talking a lot about TV this week I thought I would throw my recent favorite into the mix. I love Downton Abbey. For the time period, for the costumes, and sadly yes… for the clichés.I’ve never seen a show more riddled with cliché plot lines in my life. It’s as if Julian Fellows (writer and creator) has said to his staff… find me every ridiculous cliché that’s ever been beaten to death and write a scene with it.

A list which includes:1.      I can’t marry you because I’m already married but my wife is crazy and lives in an asylum. (See Jane Eyre.)

2.      Watch out for the bar of soap on the floor because you’re pregnant and if you slip, you will miscarry. (Why does the person getting out of the bathtub never see the soap? Ever wonder that?)

3.      Youngest daughter falls in love with chauffer. Only to get married, get pregnant and die of… eclampsia. (It’s as if no woman who died in childbirth did so from anything else.)

4.      Everything is working out so well in my life. I’m so happy. I think I’ll take a drive with the top down. (I won’t tell you what happened here – but I’m assuming you can guess.)

This shouldn’t work. Anyone watching should shrug and say been there and done that and this is nothing new. But this show is a tremendous hit. It’s up for acting awards. It has a huge following. I saw that car on the road and knew immediately what was coming, but still I was riveted. Riveted and screaming at my television… Nooooo!!!!

Total cliché. Absolutely worked. Does that mean we should all revert to clichés? No of course not. I try really really hard to avoid them… like the plague. But Downton does teach us that if done well, compelling drama, can break all the rules.

Morally Ambiguous Heroes(ines)

Eileen's post yesterday got me thinking some more about introducing characters, especially ones who  have a lot of moral ambiguity.

And then I went to see Identity Thief. And it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.

I think there are several "tricks" or techniques writers can use to make us like morally ambiguous characters. And here are some thoughts on the ones I can think of right now...

Give the protagonist an enemy who is way worse than they are. That is, if the hero is morally ambiguous, put them up against someone who is so morally corrupt that the hero/heroine looks better in comparison.

On the TV show Banshee that Sinead I were talking about. The hero/protagonist is a thief. He's a murderer. He's out of prison now but is definitely not reformed or repentant. And in a fairly far-fetched scenario (the whole show is intentionally far-fetched and over-the-top) he ends up impersonating the sheriff of a small town.

But in spite of his criminal past (and present) we like the dude. We're rooting for him. Why? Because he has a man searching for him who is *really* scary. And because there's yet another bad guy in town who's a more immediate threat who's also really scary. And because he obviously loves someone--a lot--which gives at least his initial motivation for being in the town.

Another way to deal with this is to keep the audience/reader guessing. In the first season of Homeland they made us think that Carrie was crazy (or at least wrong) while we were building sympathy for Brody--his wife is sleeping with his best friend; he loves his kids and family; he went through a terrible ordeal; he's really trying to adjust; etc. We see things to make us think Carrie is right too, but we're kept guessing. And then by the time we knew the truth about him (sorry for spoilers if you haven't seen it) a much worse enemy has already been established in Abu Nazir (or two worse enemies, if you count the Vice President).

And thinking about it, one of the many reasons we sympathize with Tara Jean Sweet in Molly's Can't Buy Me Love is because Lyle is such a villain. Sure. What's she's doing is a tad slimy. But what Lyle's doing and has done in the past is so much worse, which makes Tara Jean look less bad in comparison. And what she's doing for him, even if it's morally ambiguous, is nice. She's trying to help a dying old man reunite with his kids.

In Identity Thief... In the beginning the Melissa McCarthy character is fairly unlikeable because of what she's doing. And at the start you believe that Jason Bateman is the protagonist and she's the antagonist... but by the end, I think she's the protagonist and he's the side kick/facilitator/mentor character. The one who helps her on her journey and transformation. Hmmm.. Yup. They change each other, but she changes the most.

And how do we first meet her? In her opening scene, she takes a stolen credit card, goes to a bar, and tries to make friends with everyone by buying them drinks. And we see how desperately lonely she is. And then when things get out of hand and the bartender says something mean to her... we really feel her pain along with her. These little hints of vulnerability continue to come through in the movie so that, by the time we learn the real depth of her sense of abandonment it's heartbreaking.

And the movie also uses the "have worse antagonists" technique. She may have done something bad, but way worse people are after her...

It's far from a fabulous movie, but I was entertained. I know it's getting mostly terrible reviews, but I thought Melissa McCarthy was amazing. Going from wacky, OTT comedy to serious drama on a dime.  A life-of-the-party, bold character, who can be cut down in an instant by a cruel word that hits home. Masterful really.

Good Guys and Bad Guys . . I can't tell the difference anymore

I am a simple girl. I like things to be straightforward. I am getting very confused as to who are the good guys and who are the bad guys in some of my favorite TV shows.

First up: Scandal.

I loved the first season. Wow. I loved the cases they took and how they solved them. This season? I'm having trouble. I'm sure I'm going to end up putting SPOILERS in here so please be ALERTED, okay? So . . . Olivia Pope who I just adored for being smart and brave and tough, but still vulnerable, did something really really terrible in the past. She is continuing to do terrible things (some to people she cares about) to cover it all up.

Now, I love stories where people do the right thing for the wrong reasons or the wrong thing for the right reasons. Those stories intrigue me and that's how this story began. She did a wrong thing for a right reason. Now, however, she's just doing wrong things to cover her ass. She suffered a terrible emotional blow a week ago and I actually thought she deserved it. I think it's probably not good when I root for the heroine to have her heart broken. Sort of reminds of why I stopped reading Nevada Barr books. I found myself hoping that the heroine got murdered because I found her so obnoxious.

Second up: Southland.

Always very gritty. Always ethically gray. The trials and tribulations of the officers in the show really resonated with me. There was a real nobility to them even when things went wrong. I was super excited to see it show back up on my DVR and then I was super disappointed in the first episode. Again, SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER.

Suddenly, they're all jerks. Every one of them. There's nothing noble about hanging out with drunk, high strippers in a parking lot. What are you thinking? And Lydia, did it not occur to you that being a detective and being a single mom would be difficult? And Sammy? Control yourself. You know your ex-wife is bat sh*t crazy. Why are you letting her bait you like that? You were an idiot for marrying her in the first place. You're still an idiot.

Third: House of Cards

I've only watched one episode. It's Netflix's first (I think) original series. It's a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey. I can't tell if he's a good guy or a bad guy. I don't know if I'm supposed to root for him or against him. I do think the weird Sex and the City talk to the camera things are a little bizarre, but he does them really well. Anyone else watching this one? What do you think?

WINNERS!!!

Hey! So we did a lot of loving this week. Three great authors - lots of comments and now, three winners. Thanks for stopping by - and Stay Tuned for Eileen's DEAD LETTER DAY release week. It will be EPIC!!

So here are our winners

A digital copy of Ruthie Knox's fabulous novella - HOW TO MISBEHAVE - JOY ALLEN
A Paper or digital copy of K.M. Jackson's debut THROUGH THE LENS - Deborah O'Neill Cordes
A paper or digital copy of Laura Florand's CHOCOLATE THIEF - Michele S

Drop me an email through my website www.molly-okeefe.com and we'll get these out to you! Thanks again for coming by.

What we love... Laura Florand Books!

So I can't be anymore excited than to introduce to our our readers Laura Florand. She was gracious enough to join us here at Storytelling Rules for our special What We Love Valentines Week extravaganza. Her books are amazing and getting a chance to interview her was a thrill for me. Did I mention she writes about Chocolate and really hot French guys?

Laura is giving a print copy away of The Chocolate Thief to one lucky commentator. Leave a message and we'll select a winner at random. The winner will be announced on Monday.

 
I first found you through a review at Dear Author. I think it might have been Sunita who raved about the Chocolate Thief – but I actually hesitated because I saw that it was released in Trade because I wasn’t sure if it was a traditional romance. Now it was anything but traditional with how wonderful and unique the setting was, but it was also an absolutely satisfying romance. Can you speak a little about why your publisher decided to go that route? Was it just because of the foreign setting or were there other factors?
            I asked Alicia Condon, my wonderful editor at Kensington, if she could speak to that, and this is from her:  “We decided to publish in trade because we felt that the book would appeal both to traditional romance readers and women who tend to read women’s fiction and look for their selections in  trade format.  The explorations of Paris, artisanal chocolate making and fairytale themes will intrigue women’s fiction readers, while the intense sexual tension between Cade and Sylvain will more than satisfy lovers of romance.  And the to-die-for descriptions of the chocolate itself?  That’s a treat everyone will enjoy!”            Isn’t she nice?  I could never have said that about myself!  So I’m going to just keep my mouth shut now and say, “Thank you, Alicia!”
 
Can you tell us how when/how you started writing? Do you consider yourself a romance author? Or simply a contemporary author who writes stories with romance in them. Do you think there is a difference?               Are you ready for this level of drama?  Third grade, two girls, best friends and rivals for teacher’s pet.  We were told to write a two-page story, so I was pretty proud of myself when I wrote four pages.  Then she called, and she was at five!  Fifteen minutes later, I called her back—six.  And so it went.  The next day, I had an incredible nine pages...and she had twelve.  I’ve really never gotten over it.  I probably should dedicate a book to her one day.

            I don’t know if I set out to write a romance in the sense of giving myself a set of parameters and trying to fulfill them.  My first published book was a memoir.  (And let’s not talk about all the many, many unpublished books I wrote to completion and should now probably burn, between the age of nine and thirty-four, when BLAME IT ON PARIS was published.)            But absolutely, my books could be called romances.  They’re romantic, they have a happy ending, the love story is the central narrative arc, and they’re, in addition, very sensual.  I don’t really know how to write a story where falling in love isn’t the central narrative arc; when people have asked me to write another memoir, this one about when I lived in Tahiti, I never can, because there’s no love story to drive the narrative. 

            Can my books also be called contemporary stories with romance in them?  I don’t think it’s a contradiction in terms, really, since to me, to fall in love and establish a happy relationship means that both characters have to successfully negotiate that balance between self and other—how are you going to keep one and integrate well with the other?  Especially since very few people come into a relationship with a completely whole, healthy, and happy sense of self, and the love story becomes part of the process of establishing a happy self as well.  (If they do have a completely whole, healthy, happy sense of self, they might think twice and even fifty times about letting someone else in close enough where they could hurt that happiness, which is also an interesting story.)              This negotiation of self and love is a really complex and challenging thing to do in real life—many, many people fail at it, and sometimes you can’t even tell they’ve failed at it from your outside viewpoint, and you think you’re observing a happy, healthy couple.  But many people succeed as well, and it’s that process that compells me. 

            It can be an ongoing process.  For example, I love Turning Up the Heat so much because it’s a love story ten years later, where everyone involved, wife, husband, their social circle, all thought they were such a happy couple, and yet they both so desperately need to renegotiate who they are and how that fits with the person each loves.  A good love story is a neverending story, and you renew it when you need to.            It’s not a simple story, or a light story, even though it can be told in simple, light, fun ways.  To me it’s one of the most fundamental stories of human existence, so I think you can say you’re writing a love story, writing a romance, and writing a work of literature that reaches into the very heart of what it is to be a human being, and have them all be true.

            I don’t expect other people to necessarily think of my work that way—if they just feel happy reading a good, fun romance, that’s all I need—but I approach writing that way, really trying to get at the heart.            Trying to get at the heart...I was going to say that’s the essence of writing a romance, but then I thought...no, it’s the essence of almost any great book.

      Turning Up the Heat might be one of my favorite novellas of all time. This was a self-published effort. Can you talk about why you chose to self-publish? Did you plan to self-publish something and this story just fit? Or did you feel like this story was better served publishing it yourself?
            Thank you, Stephanie.  Turning Up the Heat is a very vulnerable, emotional story for me, and it means a lot to me when it speaks to someone.              In terms of my decision: On the one hand, I did have a growing awareness of self-publishing and just purely from the business perspective, I did have the increasingly strong conviction that writers who were being traditionally published would do well to experiment with some self-publishing as well.  I certainly wanted to try it at some point, yes.

             But the real reason is this.  Most publishing contracts have in them a clause along these lines:  “The publisher shall have sole discretion in deciding upon cover and title of the Work.  The Publisher shall have the right to copyedit the Work and to make such other changes to the Work as the Publisher sees fit.”
            Or:  “The Publisher shall have sole discretion to change the title of the Work and to make deletions, revisions or additions to the manuscript or any edition, and to use the name of the Author as Author of such varied Work.”
            I have a great deal of difficulty with this.  I have held up contract negotiations for multiple rounds just to get the word “reasonable” inserted before “additions” in clauses like that.  There is something so profoundly wrong in the attitude towards an author and her work, and the ownership of the same, that you might say my whole being rises up in revolt against it.  Imagine Sylvain Marquis being told that someone else could do whatever they wanted to his chocolate and put his name on it—his reaction would be my reaction.            And at the time, I had just been through a fight against a ghastly copy edit.  You can get wonderful copy edits, that help you realize you’ve used the same word fifty times, or that a sentence isn’t clear, or that you said someone had lived somewhere twelve years in one place and eleven in another.  But this one just went in and tried to stamp some giant personal cookie cutter down over my work.  It was really bad.

            It was scarring, as a writer, to see what my book might have been turned into because I had released control of it. Fortunately, my editor supported me.  But the thing is...if I had had a bad editor, the contracts would have allowed the house to make these changes and utterly ruin the story.  I really couldn’t stand it.  I love that book.  Some people say, It’s a business, let it go.  It’s not so much a business to me.  My chocolatiers and I are very different, but in some ways, we come from the same spot about our work.   Money’s always nice, don’t get me wrong.  But telling the story I want to tell is more important.            So I just couldn’t turn Turning Up the Heatover to anyone else, not on the heels of that copy edit battle.  I couldn’t.  If you read it, and like it—if it’s a story that speaks to you—you might see why.  It’s a deeply emotional story and just too close to me and tender.  I wanted to keep complete possession of it, and yet share it, too.  To me, self-publishing was a way to do that.

            I honestly think all writers should be mixing a little bit of self-publishing with their traditional publishing.  Not so much for the income, although it is VERY smart to experiment with sources that aren’t dependent on one publisher, but because it is good for a writer not to yield all control of what she pulls out of her heart.  It makes you too cynical, or makes you see your stories as a commodity you owe to other people.            That seems to me a very sad thing.  But I’m not the most practical of people.

One of my concerns with the self-publishing is authors putting the work into the “publishing” part of the book. Some people use friends, I paid a copyeditor a pretty significant amount of money, what is your process for polishing the product before you “publish”? 

            I am obsessive.  I polish and polish and polish.  I’ve talked to writers who write it through, revise structure, polish—just 3 rounds—and send it off.  But that is not remotely my process.  I do value keen outside eyes—that person who says, “I don’t get this, what’s your reference?”  or, “Are you sure this belongs here?  It’s cute, but I feel like it really interrupted the pace, maybe cut?”  Or, “His jaw has tightened five times in the past two pages.  I know she’s annoying, but still...”.  But the buck stops with me.  That’s actually one of the joys of self-publishing for me—it really does stop with me.  No one else can change a word of it, they can only make suggestions.  That final document is in my hands.            Meanwhile, if you have a good team working with you, one of the joys of traditional publishing can be knowing it doesn’t stop with you!  That you have a wonderful editor, a great production manager, an experienced cover artist, a top-notch publicist, a great marketing team.  I think I’m very fortunate to be writing at a time and in a situation that permits me to juggle both right now and to enjoy the benefits of both, to my writing and my ability to get the story I want to tell, in the best form possible, to readers.

Paris is without a doubt my favorite place on this planet. I hope to go back next year. So maybe I have a built in love for your stories. Why did you chose to write a French setting? Are there other places or nationalities you want to explore? Would you consider a book set in the US?            A French setting because I’ve lived that setting so much, and really is there any better place for love and romance and adventure than Paris?  There’s certainly no better place for chocolate!  Although...I’m really enjoying writing this new series in Provence.  That’s such a vivid world.

            Definitely I would consider a book set in the U.S.  In fact, I have plenty of ideas and scenes jotted down, for U.S.-set books, but there are so many more books I want to write than I can ever actually fit in, and the next story is always the one that just kind of drives itself to the top and takes over against all the others in my brain.            For other nations, besides France or the U.S.—Turning Up the Heat is in Tahiti, or rather one of the more remote French Polynesian islands that often get grouped under “Tahiti”, but I used to live in Tahiti.  I don’t like superficial use of setting and I really dislike superficial use of people from other countries—you know, the Frenchmen written by someone who has never actually met one.  When I was in Italy for The Chocolate Thief’s book launch there, everyone wanted to know when I would write an Italian hero, in an Italian setting, and the problem is—how would I know what a real Italian might feel or do or think?  I can’t just give him big gestures and dark hair and make him say Grazie and mio caro, as if that means someone is Italian.  I mean, I could if I knew the other side of those stereotypes and how to question them and play with the humor in them, which is a bit what I do with Sylvain in The Chocolate Thief, but I couldn’t just from a superficial knowledge.  That doesn’t work from me.

 This week at Storytelling Rules is all about things we love. Paris, Chocolate and Laura Florand books is a good start for me. Add red wine to that list and I’m pretty much the happiest person in the world. What about you? Who do you love to read? What do you love to eat and drink?               Besides Stephanie Doyle and Molly O’Keefe? :)  Err...to read, I mean, not to eat.

            I love Martha Wells, Lois McMaster Bujold, Sarah Addison Allen, Ilona Andrews, Thea Harrison.  I laughed my head off at Elyssa Patrick’s butt-shaking hero in her novella One Hit Wonder—he was so much fun—and hope she’ll write more.  I loved the island setting of Donna Kauffman’s Cupcake series and Virginia Kantra’s Dare Island series. 

            You can probably guess what I love to eat from the titles of half my books.  But honestly, I love exploring food.  I always pick the weirdest thing on the menu...and then steal bites of my husband’s steak when my weird thing turns out to be not nearly as good as that rare beef.  Being French, he sometimes orders tripe or steak tartare to spike my guns, because I do have a few more limits to my palate than he does.  But mostly...I just love food.  Good food, I mean, that someone has put some attention and care into.  I reviewed restaurants for a while in Paris, and I can’t say I always liked the purple octopus tentacles I could find myself trying, in fulfillment of my duties, but...it was fun. 
Finally everyone should know that The Chocolate Kiss is now available in stores and on line. And if you haven’t read it check out Turning up the Heat too for only 2.99. What’s next up for you? More Chocolate?… Which can’t be anything but a good thing.Yes, at least two more in the Chocolate series: in August, THE CHOCOLATE TOUCH, the story of CHOCOLATE THIEF hero Sylvain’s mortal enemy, chocolate rebel Dominique Richard, and Cade’s younger sister Jaime.  (Hint:  the development of this relationship is going to be very hard on Sylvain.)  And a fourth book in December.  There will be 2 more books in the Chocolate series as well, but I can’t say much on when, where, and how yet; not this year!  Meanwhile, you’ll see the start of my Provence series in a novella in a Christmas anthology with Kensington in October.