10 Things You May Not Know about The Rock Chicks

Some spoilers in here so if you haven’t read the books, beware!

1) Neither Eddie nor Hank were meant to get a book. Both of them were secondary characters when I started to write Rock Chick. Hank started pulling at me early (as in, while writing Chapter 1). But Eddie was a different story. The minute he came to me, sitting outside Paris on the Platte, so strong in my head, the sun shining on his lusciousness, I fell in love.

In fact, I fell so in love that when Indy and Eddie were at Walgreen’s, I quit writing Rock Chick and started writing Rock Chick Rescue. Then I fell so in love with Hank, I wrote Rock Chick Redemption. And during that, I fell so in love with Vance that I went on to write Rock Chick Renegade. And then, no joke, I kept going with Luke.

I actually didn’t finish Indy and Lee until after writing Revenge.

2) When I was in Denver, I owned Indy’s duplex and rented Ava’s row house and Jules’s apartment (with the weird bed loft that was totally awesome). Lee’s condo was based on some friends of mine’s condo in Governor’s Park. Ren’s house is also a friend of mine’s in Cheesman Park. Same with Hank’s House in Bonnie Brae and Eddie’s house in Platte Park. Another friend of mine owned a mansion she was fixing up with her partner, and she rented space in it, and one of those spaces was an awful lot like where Stella lived. Hector lives in a house just like the home of a guy friend of mine in the Highland’s. Writing thus, I got to be places I loved with people I loved, which was the whole point of the Rock Chick Series.

3) While I was writing the Rock Chick Series, I would send my chapters to my friends Cat and Dena and my uncle Will. I was at the part in Reckoning when Mace and Stella are shot at on the stage. I’d just finished writing that chapter when both of them went down, sent it off to Cat, Dena and Will and I stopped to take a bath. In the bath, Sadie from Regret came to me, full-fledged, history and all that had happened to her.

I burst out crying, big, wet, slobbery tears and pulled myself from the bath. I toweled off, threw on some clothes and sat down at my computer as soon as I could, writing Sadie and Hector, and I was a woman obsessed.

See, when Eddie talks to Jet about his fears that her pathological shyness has to do with her maybe being raped, I knew that his brother would face that atrocity with his woman. So Sadie had been playing at the back of my head for three and a half books. In the bath, it was her time to come out but what happened to her, the life she lived was so awful, I was desperate to get her to her happily ever after.

I was in seventh heaven writing Sadie and Hector. But Cat, Dena and Will were not. They were back with Stella and Mace on the stage and had to wait ages for me to get back to them to let them know all was well. And it took longer than them waiting for just one book, for, I fear, I may have written some other books in the meantime too. I’m flighty that way.

4) I had a cat just like Jules’s cat, Boo. His name was Cedric. He was the best cat in the world. He died in my car after having surgery to remove a tumor at a vet who didn’t have the capacity to monitor an animal 24/7 (which the man should have told me in the first freaking place). I was rushing him to the emergency vet hospital, which was half an hour away, hoping and praying he’d make it.

When Cedric passed, I actually felt his beauty leave my car. I knew the instant he took his last kitty breath in his carrier on my back seat.

It’s been years, but to this day, I miss his pride, his affection, his stubbornness, his kitty conversations and his company.

But I love it that I get to visit him when I read Renegade.

5) Tex is a real person. So is Mr. Kumar. And I used to hang with my “Mr. Kumar” in his corner shop. Both of them were the bomb.

6) While immersed in the Rock Chick World, for research purposes, I asked my crazy friend, Frank, to take me to a gun shop. He did and we pored over display case after display case of guns, knives, brass knuckles, batons, mace delivery systems and then some. The place was fascinating, if not the vibe of my usual shopping extravaganzas – including the fact that it was absolutely not, in any way, designed for a woman to shop there. It wasn’t men only but the look, feel, smell and calendar content said this was a place fit for a dude. It…was…awesome.

Thus, Zip’s Gun Emporium was born.

7) On occasion, when the mood struck us, my real life Tod and Stevie (my neighbors when I lived in Indy’s duplex), would have dress up nights. This being Tod and Stevie dressing me up in Tod’s drag queen gowns. We actually have pictorial evidence on my website of such an occasion when I was home from England and visiting them. I also borrowed Tod’s shoes. And we played Yahtzee (the Deluxe edition) with Freixenet so frequently, I’m not sure the game was ever put away.

Oh, and Chowleena was also real. Her name was Vail. And she had attitude. I doted on her and looked after her when Tod and Stevie were on flights. Vail and I used to take walks and people would stop me to pet her (she hated this; she wanted to walk and sniff, not be pet). Vail also had an unusual hairstyle, just like Chowleena. One dude stopped me and hooted, “That dog is wearing chaps!” He wasn’t wrong. She looked just like she was wearing chaps.

She also, alas, is no longer with us. But like Cedric/Boo, I get her back whenever I’m with the Rock Chicks.

8) I wear the perfume Roxie wears, the silver Ava wears and I have an “I do my own stunts” t-shirt – my most favorite tee in a vast collection.

9) The original manuscripts for the Rock Chicks included all the lyrics to the songs intermingled with the action, most notably practically everything Stella sang in Reckoning and Jet and her dad singing “Jet” at varying times in Rescue. I can’t publish lyrics without the permission of the artist so I had to rewrite anything with lyrics in it. Which sucked. They were much better scenes originally.

10) My mother was a letter writer. She hated the phone. She wrote letters all the time.

Her last letter to me before she died was right after she read Rock Chick. She loved it but said, “Kiki, did you have to have so much sex and use so many curse words?” Alas, I never got to answer those questions.

The last line said, “I hope you find your Lee.”

That was the last thing my mother ever “said” to me. And that’s probably why Lee will always be my favorite. Because my momma wanted him for me.