Writer's Secret Joy: Research

by Joanne Rock

One of the real joys of writing is the research. Sometimes it can slow us down when we need to check and recheck mundane points to be sure we haven’t made an error. But for the most part, writers choose settings, historical periods, and concepts that intrigue them so that researching a book winds up being really fun.

When I wrote historical romance, I always chose the time periods that appealed to me. I am fascinated by all things medieval and could have gladly spent decades researching castles, gowns, and court intrigue. These days, as I write more contemporary stories, I still choose to set the books in places and within professional realms that interest me. Never has this been more true than for my current release, The Magnate’s Mail-Order Bride, set in the world of professional dance.

What beauty and grace! There is so much talent, work and fierce competitiveness here. And on occasion, a sort of “court intrigue” all its own. Take for example the scandal in the Bolshoi Ballet four years ago when a bitter soloist dancer conspired in an attack on the ballet’s artistic director. The director lost most sight in one eye when acid was thrown in his face by an assailant in dark parking lot. Those stories are, of course, well outside the norm for dance. But they hint at the passionate commitment and emotion behind the most successful companies.

I watched one beautiful dance clip after another on You Tube for the sake of breathing life into my

The Rose Adagio

heroine, Sofia Koslov. I studied the differences between ballet schools and dancing styles, as well as the way individual dances impose their artistic interpretation on famous dances. I spent half a day watching the most famous ballerinas in the world perform the Rose Adagio- Aurora’s entrance dance in Sleeping Beauty. There are commentaries on the performances too, so you can learn why each is unique or particularly talented. I was captivated!

Another important facet for the book was discovering what a dancer’s day to day life is like. For this, I was very grateful for the video content on the New York City Ballet’s website. In addition to dance clips and rehearsal clips, there are snippets of dancers talking about their tours, pre-show rituals, falls, aspirations and much more. If you visit, just click on some of the individual dancer names and look for their “Screen Test” video. Very fun.

But sooner or later, the research must come to an end and all the new knowledge needs to funnel into a book. It’s difficult to turn off the information-gathering quest, but when we begin to use it to bring to life the world we’ve learned about, it becomes really rewarding. With any luck, the writer brings to life the research for the reader in a newly enjoyable way.

***What’s your favorite dance scene in a movie? I’m partial to Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen’s “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing” in White Christmas! Share yours on the blog and I’ll give one random poster an advance copy of my upcoming Harlequin Desire, His Accidental Heir. 

New Releases and a quick Hello from Susan Stephens

Hello again,

It's so good to be back here chatting to you :) 

And thank you all for your wonderful response to my last two stories about the sexy gaucho polo players from Brazil. I'll be really sorry to leave these hot men and feisty women behind, and I’m so glad you enjoyed reading the series. Just in case you didn't catch the last two books in my Hot Brazilian Nights! series, here they are, and they’re on sale now!

Carrying her Brazilian boss’s baby!

Chambermaid Emma Fane is looking for the perfect distraction – and her best friend’s wedding promises to be just that. Until, heart racing, she spies Lucas Marcelos – infamous bad boy and father to her unborn child!

Lucas might have lost his head over innocent, spirited Emma for one glorious night, but he won’t lose his heir! He lures her back to Brazil, but Emma is no man’s mistress. She demands her independence and then takes a job in Lucas’s hotel – much to his annoyance!

It only took one night to change their lives…now they have nine months to face the consequences… 

Back in the Brazilian’s Bed a December 2015 release, is the last book in the series. I loved writing it—in fact, I put my heart and soul into this story to make it a fitting finale to the series.

He’s back in her life…

Events-planner Karina Marcelos has risen to the top of her field, while trying to forget Lothario polo-player Dante Barracca. Ten years ago he took her innocence – but that wasn’t all she lost after that fateful night…

She’s back in his bed!

With the Gaucho Cup to organise, Dante knows Karina is the best person for the job. But the buttoned-up woman he hires is a shadow of the vivacious girl he once knew. No one can hide under the glare of the Brazilian sun, and Dante plans to lift the lid on Karina’s secret before he lifts the champion’s cup! 

And then I went somewhere entirely different to set my next story...

After a wonderful research tip to Tuscany, I got this idea for a sophisticated Tuscan billionaire, and an absolutely unsophisticated gardener, up to her elbows in mud! I had such fun writing it, and if you enjoy Cass and Marco's story half as much as I enjoyed writing it, I think you’re going to have a blast. 

Happy reading everyone!

AND HERE'S THE SKINNY...

Nine months to claim what's his!

For gardener Cassandra Rich, working in the foothills of Tuscany is the perfect way to escape her past. Until the man of the manor graces the villa with his presence and Cassandra with his attention.

Marco di Fivizzano can't take his eyes off the delectable Cass. So when he requires a plus one for a gala, Marco will uncover who this fiery blonde is-- over dinner, or in his bed!

In Marco's arms, Cass blossoms, finding the freedom she's always craved... until she discovers she's pregnant and bound to the billionaire forever!

And that's it for now from me. So good to have this chance to chat with you!

I'll be back soon, and in the meantime, I wish you a wonderful November, full of romance, and friendship, and love.

Your friend and author,

Susan

Gorgeous dress and fabulous jewels...

Research is one of the best things about being a writer. When I first started writing it involved trips to the library, coming home with piles of books on wherever I had happened to be setting my latest story. Travellers tales, gorgeous coffee table books with photographs of deserted lagoons so luscious that you could almost feel the sand between your toes, lovely houses, background information on trades, crafts.

I had lovely conversations with helpful tourist information officers in London embassies — and always sent them a signed book as a thank you. I had a breathtaking brochure describing all the fabulous houses on Mustique where I set All She Wants for Christmas.

At the moment, tempted by my editor, I working on a new “sheikh” story — working title, The Sheikh’s Temporary Princess — and I’m having an absolute ball on my latest passion, Pinterest.

It’s a marriage of convenience story, always fun, and my Cinderella needs a “princess” dress for her transformation. This is the one I chose. And these are the jewels her prince gives her to wear on this momentous occasion...

Here’s a sneak peek—

Ruby’s heart was racing and in an attempt to slow it, reclaim control of her body if not her life, she closed her eyes. When she opened them again Bram was standing in front of her and her heart rate shot through the roof.

She had only seen in him in the most casual of clothes, a towel, a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, dusty riding clothes, the chinos he’d worn with a loose, collarless shirt to travel into the city. Now he was wearing traditional robes.

Everything was simple, understated. A plain white thaub over which had been thrown the finest camel hair bisht, a fine white keffiyeh held in place by a plain black egal and at his waist he carried a knife in a traditional, curved black and silver filigree scabbard. Simple, understated, regal, he was every inch the desert prince but it was his face that held her, his golden eyes, a jaw strong enough to slay dragons, the seductive curve of a lower lip that she wanted to suck into her mouth.

No, no, no—

‘Wow…’ she said, all faux brightness. ‘Look at us.’

‘Ruby… Rabi…’

She frowned, distracted. ‘Rabi?’

‘It means harvest. For the contract I had to give you an Arab name. I tried to get as close to your own as I could.’

‘Harvest?’

All afternoon Violet and Leila had talked about weddings. Their own, those of their friends. They’d shown her photographs of their children assuming that she would soon be a mother and she’d had to play along, smile as if she couldn’t wait.

The name he’d given her implied fertility, fecundity and the lie was like a cold hand squeezing her womb.

‘Your father will like that,’ she said as he put down the leather case he was carrying. He glanced up, frowning, clearly catching something in her tone. ‘Good choice,’ she added with the smile she’d once practised in the mirror. The smile she used to cover hurt, pain, the spiteful remarks of others. It had been so long since she’d used it that her cheeks creaked a bit with the effort, but it seemed to reassure him and, as he opened the case, she didn’t have to pretend to catch her breath as he revealed the jewels within.

Her gasp was totally real.

‘Oh, my…’ she said, staring at the art deco parure of diamonds and rubies.

At one point, feeling that she had to add something to the dress, shoe, underwear debate she’d suggested that perhaps she needed some colour to offset the silver-grey but Leila had it covered with ruby polish for her nails and colour for her mouth.

‘You approve?’ he asked.

Approve? Was he kidding? ‘It’s perfect… How did you know?’

He smiled. ‘Violet sent me a photograph of the dress, although I have to say it looks a lot better on you than a tailor’s dummy.’

She felt her cheeks warm as he continued to look at her and she said, ‘You owe her, Bram. She must have had a thousand things to do today but she and Leila have overseen every detail.’

‘I’ll repay her when I donate to her charity tonight.’ He turned to the case and picked up one of pair of bracelets that nestled against the silk. ‘Shall we begin?’

She raised her hand without a word and he fastened the wide cuff of diamonds and rubies over her left wrist. Was he taking care not to actually touch her or was that her imagination?

He repeated the performance with her right wrist and no, it was not her imagination. When the

clasp proved awkward she saw that his hands were shaking. No doubt like the Imam who fainted, he was counting the cost of this temporary arrangement but the jewels, at least, could be returned when it was all over.

She held out her hands to look at the result. Hers were shaking, too, she realised and he caught them and held them, held her gaze. If he thought that was going to steady her he couldn’t have been more wrong.

‘Are you going to be all right, Ruby?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she managed through a throat that felt as if it had been stuffed with boulders. ‘It’s just that I’ve never worn anything quite so…sparkly.’

He laughed. ‘Shall we try the collar?’

She nodded and he released her hands to pick up a necklace that was a simple V-shaped geometric collar of diamonds and rubies, with clusters of rubies forming hearts down the centre of the V.

It was set dressing, she told herself. Putting on a show to convince his father that this was real.

‘You seem taller,’ he said, as he lifted the collar to her throat.

‘It’s the shoes.’ She lifted the skirt an inch to reveal a barely-there shoe, her ruby painted toenails.

He glanced down and it seemed half a lifetime before he finally looked up. ‘Very pretty,’ he said, his face expressionless, ‘but I’m going to have to ask you to bend forward a little.’

She dipped her head and as his fingers brushed against the back of her neck she struggled to control the shiver that rippled through her body, tightened her nipples into hard buds against the lace that he would see the moment she straightened.

After what seemed like an age with his arms around her, drowning in the scent of clean laundry, warm skin, something that might have been sandalwood, the clasp finally clicked into place. He stepped back and she could breathe again. Too soon…

The backs of his fingers brushed against her skin as he lifted the collar and eased it into place so that the row of hearts was perfectly vertical and the necklace echoed the neckline of the dress where it dipped between her breasts.

‘How does that feel?’ he asked.

‘Heavy…’ There was a heaviness in breasts and low in belly. An ache between her thighs. It had been a long time since she’d shared a bed with a man but with every touch the heat was building.

‘It will soon be over,’ he said, reaching for one of the earrings — long falls of diamonds and rubies.

‘Shall I…?’ she asked, shakily. She was unravelling and if he touched her again…

‘Your hands aren’t steady enough.’

‘If you were wearing this many diamonds you’d be feeling a bit wobbly,’ she said.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ he assured her.

‘I doubt it and you wouldn’t do this for Bibi,’ she said, desperately, her knees, hips melting as women’s bodies had melted since the morning Eve woke up and discovered Adam staring down at her.

‘No, Bibi would come ready gift-wrapped,’ he agreed as he carefully fitted the earrings in place.

And it would be his duty to unwrap her. In her case he was doing the wrapping but it wasn’t going to be Christmas for either of them.

‘Are they comfortable?’ he asked. ‘Not too heavy?’

She shook her head and they brushed against her neck.

Next he took the small, matching tiara from the centre of the case and lifted it onto her head, setting it firmly amongst the ruffle of curls arranged by Violet’s hairdresser before, taking the last item from the case, a curious piece of white gold, scattered with diamonds and rubies arranged in flower shapes.

‘What is that?’ she asked.

‘Give me your left hand.’

She raised it and he took it in his, held it for a moment before sliding the confection over her hand so that the gems sparkled along her thumb and index finger. ‘A double ring,’ he said, continuing to hold it.

‘Did I say wow?’ she asked.

‘I think that’s my line.’

‘No, really. I feel like a queen,’

‘You look like one,’ he assured her.  ‘No one is going to lift an eyebrow when I tell them that when you appeared, unexpectedly, at the fort yesterday morning I knew that I could never let you go. They’ll only wonder why on earth it took me so long to figure it out.’

‘A fabulous dress and a king’s ransom in jewels will work wonders.’

‘It takes more than that.’ For a moment he just stood there looking at her, then seemed to catch himself. ‘Time to go.’

You can see more of Liz's inspiration on her Pinterest page.

To keep up to date with Liz’s releases, “like” her author page on Facebook (where she does regular giveaways) and sign up for her newsletter (for those little extras) at her website http://www.lizfielding.com

The Black Hole of Researching a Novel by Jenny Gardiner

We were talking about research on another blog this week so I thought I'd talk a little bit about things I've had to learn while writing my books.

Yeesh! Research! Nearly as big a time-suck as Facebook is...but at least with research, I'm learning something. Maybe it'll help me get on Jeopardy some day.

If I want to distract myself and not do the writing I need to do, all I need to do is knock on the door of my good friend Mr. Google under the guise of researching for my book, and off we go on a little educational adventure...

I find in researching royalty for my It's Reigning Men series, it can get super complicated, so many lords and dukes and marquesses and then if you change countries it's a marquis and don't even get me started on emperors and dowagers. If I want to adhere to strict rules of royalty as per Burke's Peerage, well, forget it. It gets far too complicated, and well, my characters aren't British. They're more like British-ish. With a soupçon of Italian, and maybe un peu de français. With a little Scandinavian royal wedding-wear thrown in for good measure. Which has made it more fun yet occasionally more time-consuming, and more easy for me to just chuck the rules out the window and make up my own royal dictates. Sometimes you just gotta love fiction because it lets you just make it all up.

That said, I had worked for a long time on a book I had hoped would be a fantastic novel. It is, unfortunately, not that at all, and is in fact never going to see the light of a publishing day, so all that time and effort and gnashing of teeth was for nought. Although maybe not entirely because I did learn plenty from it--i.e. I learned not to waste my time on a lousy book. But I had to do some interesting research for that one because my characters needed to die in a car accident but be resuscitated in the emergency department (and yes, they are now called emergency departments, not emergency rooms). The resuscitation idea came up when I was reading Sam Parnia's Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death. Fascinating book, by the way. I was so intrigued with the universality about what happens with people who have died and been revived, so I decided to give my characters a chance to walk that path.

My town is a big hospital town, so it's easy to find medical types who are willing to help out. I reached out to someone I know who knew someone who was a nurse in the ED and happy to let me pick her brain. And she was amazing, gave me the grand tour, we sat in the trauma bays and she went over minute details about every piece of equipment in there and what would happen with a car accident and what might kill someone but leave room for resuscitation, then what would happen if the medical team was able to get their hearts working again. She gave me the names of a number of medical conditions that could fit into this category, which I then went down the rabbit hole of the internet to research more deeply.

A family friend is an EMT and she helped me to understand what would happen when they arrived on the scene of an MVA (motor vehicle accident, natch).

For the same book I needed my protagonist to develop a deep friendship with a man who'd been a cattle rancher in Australia. Oh they're not ranches in Australia, they're stations. So I reached out to some Australian friends for details about all things Oz I'd need to know for this. And the protagonist was a wedding photographer who was flown by a wealthy client to shoot their wedding on the Amalfi Coast (I actually have a photographer friend who had such luck!), so had to drill down for more information on where you'd marry there. I decided I didn't want it to be on Capri, so turned my sights to Positano, a town I love.

So while the book is dead, may it rest in peace (oh wait, maybe it was a cardiac tamponade that killed the book and can actually be revived with a needle precariously inserted into its pericardial sac!), I learned all sorts of interesting things and wasted much time that could have been spent on another book that might see the light of day. But I'm all the wiser for it, on a number of levels. At least that's what I tell myself.

Such is the day-to-day working of a writer, I guess! And I'm ever so grateful we have the internet to rely upon rather than having to stir up my allergies by delving into dusty, dark rooms full of old books I'd need to read cover-to-cover in order to glean the needed information.

Speaking of publishing books, today book four of It's Reigning Men, Love is in the Heir is being released--hope you'll check it out!

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And I just re-released Anywhere But Here, with a brand spanking new cover. It's a book I've always enjoyed, and if you've not read it, feel free to mosey on over to see what you think!

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Lastly, book 5 of the It's Reigning Men series, Shame of Thrones, is available for pre-order!

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Any excuse for a kitten pic...

I'm writing the third in my "ice cream" trilogy at the moment.

Tempted By Trouble was Elle's story. Anything But Vanilla saw Sorrel finding not only a happy ending, but a great new beginning.

This is Geli's story - she's the one who looks like a skinny vampire and collects stray animals.

Well, the vampire has grown up and she's no skinny any more, although she's still addicted to wearing black. And she hasn't been in Italy for more than an hour before she finds a stray kitten. That's gattino in Italian. Or rattino, as the hero insists on calling it.

One of the best bits of writing is research - especially when it's someone glamorous like Milan.  And hero is Dante Vettori. It's all fashion, art, style and although I can't actually get away to the city for a long weekend of walking the ground at the moment, I am having the best fun buying gorgeous travel magazines, watching stuff on YouTube, researching recipes.

Here's a link to Delia Smith's risotto alla Milanese. Enough said!

New York! New York! : : Anne McAllister

In the interests of research, I went to New York City a week and a half ago.

I am gearing up to write a Christmas-in-New-York book for a story that’s been brewing in my head for a good long time. But it’s been a far longer time since I had actually spent time in New York before the holidays.  So I thought a refresher  course of a few days in the city was in order.  That these few days happened to coincide with Hugh Jackman’s one-man Broadway show was fortuitous indeed.

So . . . I went. I refreshed. I experienced lots of good stuff that gave me ideas for my book. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes.  And Hugh. Definitely Hugh.

And I’ve come home with plenty of memories.  But one thing that stands out – besides Hugh – is how incredibly nice and thoughtful and pleasant everyone was.

From the taxi driver who drove us into the city from LaGuardia and who wrestled a very heavy suitcase up a flight of stairs (unasked and already tipped, so he didn’t need to) to the one who drove us back to the airport six days later, but who asked us before we got in the cab if we were in a hurry because, if we didn’t mind, he had to go a few blocks out of our way to drop off a camera to someone who’d left it in his cab, every person we had contact with was pretty much unstereotypically delightful.

Now, I’m not a big believer in the ‘brusque, sarcastic, can’t be bothered New Yorker” stereotype in the first place. But at this time of year, when people are normally more frazzled and harried than usual, it was a delight it was to run into so many people who were thoughtful and generous. Whether it was squashing more closely together on the subway  to offer us a place to sit or digging through their billfold in Macy’s to provide a coupon for a discount on a sweater, or offering tips on shopping when they were sharing our table at a fast food restaurant, New Yorkers were unfailingly kind and almost, dare I say, unhurried. 

They were great.

I think I promised last month to say where we went and what we did while we were there.  So here’s the recap.

We walked all over and absorbed sights, smells, sounds. The Christmas trees on the corners were lovely and fragrant, and we delighted in seeing them wheeled in shopping carts to nearby brownstones. We did wonder, though, who was going to lug them up the four flights of stairs.

We went to the Frick Museum which I love because it’s small enough that my feet don’t hurt by the time I’m done wandering through it, and the collection is small enough that I can actually remember paintings. They don’t all blend together in some artistic brain blur.  We went to the planetarium and saw the Journey to the Stars program.  Pretty impressive.  I liked it a lot, even if I came away with a stiff neck!

We ambled through the Natural History Museum, spend a bit of time in the New-York Historical Society, spent an evening in Chinatown (great soup dumplings!) and wandered past the big department stores to ogle the lavish animated Christmas windows.

We went to the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side, and shopped at one of the very best Museum stores I’ve had the pleasure to visit.  We crossed Delancey and sipped tea at the Starbucks and watched the rain pour down outside. Then we walked through it across Manhattan and caught a bus back up to the Upper West Side. 

We went to Macy’s.  We rode the escalators up and up and up. Then down, and felt sorry for the employees whose job was to stand there and say to everyone who descended, “Watch your step.”  But it was personal, and appreciated, where those recordings at the end of moving sidewalks in airports are somehow not quite so personal – or appreciated.

And we saw Hugh.

If you want more about Hugh, you’ll have to go over to the Pink Heart Society blog and scroll back to Monday where I wrote the Male on Monday piece this week. 

Suffice to say, we had a good time otherwise, I got a lot of research done, but if I had gone looking for a hero, well, that one afternoon would have done the trick.

All in all, a great trip. Thank you New York. Thank you, New Yorkers. 

I love your city. I feel like it’s my city, too. It definitely will be my city as I finish the book I am working on now and get going on the Christmas one to come.

Hugh was glad to be back on Broadway.  I am just so glad to be back in the city itself!

Some Call It Research : : Anne McAllister

It's a treat to be back at Tote Bags 'n' Blogs! I've stopped by and read plenty of other writers' blogs here this year, but I haven't written one myself because life has just grabbed me and pulled me in other directions (mostly out west to see new grandchildren, but I've been writing, too)

Anyway, I've missed you, and I'm glad to be back. I expect to be here once a month now -- and I hope life cooperates. I'm counting on it.

I've just started a new book -- and I'm deep into the best part which, trust me, is not the writing.

The best part for me is always the research. It's what Twyla Tharp calls 'scratching' in her wonderful inspiring book, The Creative Habit. It's also a bit of 'hunting and gathering' as far as I'm concerned.

Someone says something which leads to an idea, which leads to a bit of reading which leads to talking to someone which leads to another idea, which leads to maybe a trip some place or a bunch of inter-library loans or an interview with a physicist or a weekend at bull-riding school or an afternoon at a trendy Upper East Side beauty salon.

The impetus for this particular trip began eleven or twelve years ago when I was casting about for a hero for one of my cowboy books for Silhouette.

My friend Lucy Gordon and I were having dinner in Bath, England and discussing this difficult problem -- which guy was most appealing -- and she said thoughtfully, "You ought to have a look at that Australian playing in Oklahoma in London right now."

And I said, "Uh-huh," or words to that effect.

Mostly what I thought was, "Yeah, right," in the time-honored tone reserved for double-positives that equal negatives.

My dad was born in Oklahoma. So was his dad. So was his grandmother. I know Oklahoma. Aussies don't do Oklahoma, even when it's a musical, not a state.

But this one did.

His name, in case you don't remember back that far, is Hugh Jackman.

And he played Curly very well indeed. He jumped right up to the top of my hero list. Then Kate Walker got me a copy of that wonderful Australian film Paperback Hero in which Mr Jackman plays a romance writer who can't bring himself to admit he's doing any such thing -- and I never looked back.

Hugh has, as those who attended the Romance Writers of New Zealand and the Romance Writers of Australia conferences in 2004 know, evolved into a serious research object.

And the thing is, of course, you can never do too much research.

Which is why I'm going to New York tomorrow. And on Thursday it's why I'll be heading down to Broadway to attend the play A Steady Rain -- a two man production starring Hugh Jackman and that blond guy -- you know the one -- Daniel Craig. As Chicago cops.

How tortuous the path has been. And twelve years in process. Can research get any tougher?

Don't answer that.

Just think good thoughts -- and hope for no stand-ins and lots of, um, inspiration.

My friend Nancy the cat slayer (just kidding, she doesn't really, but Kate Walker and I have an incriminating photo that makes it looks as if she does) is coming along with me. The Prof (that would be the man I'm married to) is teaching (yes, he retired, but it lasted only about seven hours) and he can't go. So Nancy and I double-dating with Hugh and Dan.

Well, perhaps not. I write fiction, after all.

But I'm looking forward to the play -- er, research -- as you can imagine. I think I could even learn to appreciate blonds.

Equally -- well, almost equally -- I'm looking forward to my interview with the physicist and my prowl around Columbia University and my dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant and whatever else happens over the next week.

It's all going to bring my new book to life. I'm not sure exactly how yet -- but it will come to me. It always does.

If you write, what's your favorite part of the process?

If you're a reader, what have you read that made you want to broaden your horizons and go somewhere or do something you've never done before? What was it -- and did you do it?

Did it involve Hugh and Dan?????

Real-Time Research

I'm in a bit of a quandary this month.

You see, I'm wanting to do a work up for a new story, one different from anything I've written before. I know where I want to set it, but the trouble is, I've never really been to this place before. We're talking about coastal Maine. You'd think growing up on the east coast of Canada I would have been, but I haven't. My sum total experience was a trip to Houlton when my age was still in the single digits, and a conference in Machias when I was in university.

When I write a Harlequin Romance, my settings are very much a place I've been to. In the small anomaly that was a fictional principality in The Rancher's Runaway Princess, I had complete autonomy to do what I wanted. But I can't this time. This time it is REAL, and I always feel a strong responsibility to get it right.

The silly thing is, it is not a long trip. I could be there in a matter of hours by car/ferry. But it is something I would want to do with the whole family over the course of at least 4 days, and after me going to DC and our family trip that is planned for November, we just don't have the cash. Four nights in a hotel and four people to feed and the gas adds up REALLY fast.

And yet....

I really feel like I want to research this in person.

I suspect in the end, I'm going to be doing a lot of reading and online research and looking at pics and videos. Does anyone have any suggestions?

And in the meantime, I'll go back to working on my latest project!

What's not to love?

This past summer, my boys and I went to Barkerville, the "Gold Capital of British Columbia."

It was a long trip, frought with all the usual road trip joys, but for every mile we drove in our air-conditioned SUV with Star Wars blaring from the DVD player and our chilled water jugs snug in our cup holders, I couldn't help but wonder what on earth would possess a person to travel such a distance on foot or on horseback. Money, of course.

Standing on the main street of Barkerville made me fall in love with the west all over again, and it helped that my boys let me wander around, peeking into all the buildings as many times as I liked.

I loved the school house so much, I had to buy myself an old slate and pencil which the man wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. We bought candy sticks at the confectionary store and even road the stage coach around town.

Everything about the town was amazing, from the blacksmith who tended the fires, to the library that was roped off to keep people like me from touching the books, to the family of whistle pigs that tunnelled their way around town.

And then there were the cabins.

Who lived here? Where did they come from? Who did they leave behind and why? And did they know they were making history as they hiked up the Gold Rush Trail? Story ideas are endless in a place like this - that is why it's so important that we take the time to visit historic sites like these as often as we can. It's research, after all.

One last picture before I go. I'm not a girly-girl. Never been one to get all excited about a frilly dress or minolo shoes (I don't even know if I spelled that right! LOL) However. . .I do think it would be great fun to prance around in one of these dresses for a while.

Do you have any great research trips you've taken? And did you find a flash of inspiration for a new story or character?

ARIZONA, COWBOYS OR BUST!

I love research when it takes me to special places. It's the best of both worlds, a little vacation, a lot of research and a tax write-off. What could be better?

When I got the idea for a Desire mini-series, I knew I wanted the stories to revolve around three Tempest Hotels, locations with such appeal and character, that they would take on a life of their own, much like secondary characters. From the deep russet canyons of Arizona, to southern jazz and historic plantations of New Orleans to the bending palm trees and tropical ocean breezes of Hawaii, each Suite Secret story lures you into a new and exciting world of love and revenge, deception and redemption and of course, secrets!

Five-Star Cowboy launches the Suite Secrets Series this August. Set in the fictional locale of Crimson Canyon, we get Arizona at its sizzlin' best!

I remember visiting Sedona, Arizona and knew one day I'd fashion a contemporary story after that scenic location. As we drove through red rock terrain and jutting mountains in shapes of coffee pots and bells, I started to get an idea for a "different" kind of hotel, a dude ranch with all the expensive luxuries of the Ritz Carlton and Tempest West was born in the fictious locale known as Crimson Canyon.

Now, the only thing I needed was a cowboy! Since I'm partial to cowboys, I had no trouble imagining gorgeous, sweet-talking Trent Tyler to take the reins, so to speak! He's smart and saavy in the business world, yet a man who's just as comfortable in a saddle as he is in a Porche.

My kind of man!

Whenever I research, I try to visit the state capital. We were lucky enough to spend the afternoon in the old capital building in downtown Pheonix last March. Here's a few pictures that really helped me get a feel for the state, the art and culture. I simply LOVE Arizona!

The Capital Building

The State Symbols

Old Town Scottsdale

Loved the galleries and museums.

We couldn't miss Spring Training. Our L.A. teams were playing- Dodgers vs. Angels. Hey, that's research isn't it?

So what's your favorite place to read about? Do you love to learn about the area you're visiting? And if given a choice, would you stay in a Five-Star luxury hotel or a dude ranch in a stunning mountain setting?

Win a copy of the prequel to Suite Secrets, The Corporate Raider's Revenge (or any of my available books) and a sexy cowboy handfan to cool the summer heat!

Five-Star Cowboy available now on Amazon .

Available in bookstores in August!

Suite Reading!!

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