It's Time for your Big O! By Jenny Gardiner

Ack!
I forgot I needed to post something and now I'm in a place with really lousy wifi so here's hoping this actually posts!

I just finished writing the last book in my Royal Romeo series and am awaiting edits from my editor. I laughed at myself with this book--The Royal Romeo series is a spin-off from my royal contemporary romance series, It's Reigning Men. Back when I started writing the It's Reigning Men series, I was sort of more a writer of women's fiction and chick lit, and with those genres you didn't need to write much in the way of sex scenes.

But when I started writing rom/com series, I knew I was going do need to step it up a notch (or two or three). But it was a very gradual process. Back when I started the IRM series, I kept thinking "ugh, what it my mother reads this?!" Which I know is stupid but still. My mom passed away a couple of years ago so that is no longer a concern. But then my mother-in-law kept telling me she wanted to read all of my books in my series and I kept assuring her she wouldn't enjoy them. I no longer worried about my mother reading my stuff and then my mother-in-law is going to make me anxious about it?

I know, I know, it's ridiculously juvenile of me to even worry about this but hey, what can I say?! I finally just had to let go of that and not sweat it. Which brings me to my last book in the Royal Romeo series, Big O Romeo. The title alone, well, sort of needed legit sex scenes in it based on the title alone. And I did not disappoint. Not only that, but I realized that finally I was actually comfortable writing sex scenes and frankly don't care who reads them (well, um, I'd be fine if my kids don't read them, but, whatever!).

I've really enjoyed writing these two series and now have to figure out what my next series is going to be. Whatever it is, I'm sure that there are going to be ample sex scenes at this point, now that I've hit my stride haha!

I hope you'll have a chance to check out my Royal Romeos series, which is a spin-off of my wildly popular It's Reigning Men series--please do check them out!

Happy reading!

    

  

 

Jenny Gardiner: Royal Romeos, Heat wave and Paris!

Hi there!
Hope you are all well and not too miserably hot from this ridiculous premature heat wave we're having! It's 100 degrees here in Virginia in May--unheard of! Ugh!

We're staying cool inside with my girls' new puppies! They're moving next week so it's a temporary thing but it's been a bit of mayhem with these two---our house is puppy-proofed as if we had a bunch of toddlers under our roof. We've had some sleepless nights watching one of the pups as my daughter is studying for MCATs, which she takes tomorrow. Her pup had a UTI which meant she was waking constantly to pee. Hoping her antibiotic is fixing that now!

We just returned a few weeks ago from a lovely 30^th anniversary trip with my husband to Paris. It was such fun—what a fabulous city. And amazingly amazing food. Alas, I am carrying about 15 food babies around still. We ate soufflés out the wazoo! I didn’t think it could ever be possible, but there is the chance that I might officially be souffléd out… Although it’s unlikely, because my one daughter and I love to make chocolate soufflés so I have a sneaking suspicion I still might not turn that down if push came to shove…The good news is we walked so much while in Paris that maybe I didn’t gain a pound on the trip (probably more like I gained 15, womp). Not that I’d know because the scale has been banished from my life… Perhaps not a good thing, but oh well!

I’ve now got to really get cracking on Blue-Blooded Romeo, which I have to have to my editor in early June. Gulp. And get ready for the release of SilverSpoon Romeo , which comes out June 13! I had a lot of fun writing that one.

I hope you'll have a chance to check out my Royal Romeos series, which is a spin-off of my wildly popular It's Reigning Men series--I hope you'll be able to check them out!

Happy reading!

    

  

 

How Horribly Lovely by Jenny Gardiner

Hey all!

Happy three days after Valentine’s Day ;-). This winter I’ve tried to make time for a little bit of TV series binge-watching—the latest being The Crown. I thought it started out slow but I quickly became quite engrossed in it—a bit of insight into what is really a strangely rarified world that the rest of us peons could never properly relate to. I did find it quite fascinating to learn about I guess you’d call it the moral underpinnings of Queen Elizabeth—what has motivated her over the years, perhaps why she’s often seemed cold and detached, even why she’s not yet yielded the throne to her son (who sure comes across as neglected in that series!). But it turns out, it’s complicated! Evidently it’s not easy being the Queen…

One of the fun things about writing about royals is the research involved. For Red Carpet Romeo, which comes out today and is centered around a royal wedding in Monaforte with the It’s Reigning Men gang, I started digging around to learn what happens in a palace in preparation for things like State Dinners and other premier royal events, and wow, it’s nuts! The manpower and the elbow grease are staggering. It takes days to prepare, and there is no detail unattended to, right down to measuring the distance between the dinner plate and the edge of the table.  You can learn more here http://bit.ly/2l0Lus0

I suspect I’d make a horrible guest at a royal dinner: guaranteed I’d say the wrong thing, use the wrong utensil, request my dressing on the side, make an inappropriate joke that would render those within earshot dead silent. I feel fairly certain I’d not be invited back.

Once I saw a documentary about Queen Elizabeth in which two girls presented her with a sweater they’d knit for her. The Queen, in her own inimitable way, thanked them. “How horribly lovely,” she said with what looked like a grimace but was probably actually a smile. Not many people can properly use the word “horribly” in a compliment. I thought it was endearing.

We’ve also caught up on movies in advance of the Oscars—so many good ones out right now but a lot of pretty depressing ones. Loved Manchester by the Sea but ugh, it was, to borrow the Queen’s phrasing, horribly sad. La La Land—they had me till the ending, which I hated. Jackie—again, so grim but so well-acted. Lion—amazing. But so sad. Hmmm…there’s a theme here. Hidden Figures was uplifting! Oh but I adored 20^th Century Women—it was quirky yet so much fun and terrifically acted. The other night because of a movie ticket snafu, we ended up watching The Nice Guys at home—loved that film! Lots of laughs and slapstick, which I love. Oh and go watch A Royal Night Out if you’re looking for a fun escapist movie.

I also wait anxiously each week for a new episode of This is Us (the best!) and I can’t resist that evil Corinne on the Bachelor, which has me tuning in for all their mindless nonsense ;-). Oh and now I can’t help but watch Riverdale—it’s totally not my thing, but the girl who plays Veronica used to live across the street from us and was my daughter’s best friend when they were little girls, so it’s fun to watch her all grown up and all girl-powery while being slightly villainous.

On a sad note, we lost our beloved Labrador Sassy a couple of weeks ago after nearly 14-1/2 wonderful years. It’s been really hard; I miss her like mad. I set her picture as my phone wallpaper, but it made me cry every time I looked at her so had to switch it out. I’ve now taken to stalking the most gorgeous Labrador retriever on Instagram here—his name is Camden and he belongs to a friend of a friend of a friend. He’s so a handsome boy! Oh, and if you love him, check out these insanely adorable white Lab puppies here—makes my heart jump for joy to watch them! I really need a puppy…

Here’s to royal weddings and puppies and good guys and villains, and while we’re at it, springtime being just around the corner.

 Check out my Royal Romeos series, which is a spin-off of my wildly successful It's Reigning Men series--I hope you'll be able to check them out!

  

La Bella Vita by Jenny Gardiner

We were blogging on a group blog recently about locations: writing locations, settings in books, etc. As luck would have it I'd just returned from an amazing month away on a working vacation in Italy and Morocco. 

Below is my post about working vacations. Keep scrolling for some fun pictures of my work venues for that month, and even further down, squeee!!!, you get a first peek at my latest book cover for book 4 in my IT'S REIGNING MEN series, LOVE IS IN THE HEIR, available for pre-order and set to release in late September.

Oh! And book three, BAD TO THE THRONE, releases on June 29. It is my favorite so far in this series, complete with a Harry-esque bad boy prince who I think you'll fall for...

 And lastly, don't forget to sign up for my newsletter--which will be going out next week. There'll be a little special something in there for your efforts ;-) .

I recently returned from a lovely working vacation in Italy and Morocco. And the hard part of a working vacation is the work part.

I departed for our trip with a deadline pending for the third book in my It's Reigning Men series. I had a lot of fun writing this book--the hero in it is a rakish Prince Harry-esque black sheep, and I just loved his attitude. So I didn't want to rush to end the book, plus I was scrambling to get ready to leave, so I left the final third of the book dangling...

Which meant I had a few days during my trip in which I had to just hunker down, abandon the idea of being a tourist, and focus on writing. Of course this was a bit of a bummer, because I would have far rather wandered the streets of ancient Italian cities and settled in for a leisurely lunch of pappardelle al sugo di anatra (fat strips of homemade pasta with amazingly delicious duck confit cooked in a red sauce) and a glass of Chianti. Which would have led to the need for a nap which would have meant no writing.

So instead, I savored my "rooms" with a view, and hunkered down to finish my novel with some of the most spectacular scenery going.

We writers are so blessed that we can do our work pretty much anywhere. And over the years I have, by default, done that: in pick-up line at the kids' schools, on the sidelines at soccer practices, with ear plugs in while the kids watched the television that is mere feet from my "desk" which is in the kitchen and basically means hardly a quiet zone.

So my designated work stations while away this time were pretty much unbeatable: at our B&B with a spectacular view of the Duomo di Siena, which is a breathtaking work of architecture; while sitting on the ponte di Santa Trinita in Florence, with a view of the famed Ponte Vecchio in front of me and the world's most amazing gelato just steps away (Gelateria Santa Trinita---if you're in Florence, go there and try the sesamo nero, which sounds weird, black sesame seed gelato, but is incredible).

I wrote at an outdoor bar in the delightfully colorful Piazza Santo Spirito (full of great people-watching, which sort of causes problems when trying to focus on writing!), in the Oltrarno, the section of Florence across the Arno River that is more residential and relatively less touristy.

Not for the first time I enjoyed writing in the Giardino di Boboli, the spectacular gardens that are part of the imposing Palazzo Pitti (hoarding headquarters for the Medici family), with a splendid view of all of Florence.

I regretted missing a fascinating tour of the city of Matera in the Basilicata region of Italy, down by the boot heel. My husband got to take that tour while I hunkered down on the deadline-iest of deadline days: I absolutely had to get my book to my editor on that day or it would screw up my publication date, which would make me an enemy of Amazon ;-) . Far be it from me to get on the bad side of Amazon...

Anyhow, the "Sassi" in Matera are a United Nations World Heritage site---originally a prehistoric troglodyte settlement, considered to be among the first human settlements in what is now Italy. The Sassi are caves dug into the rocks, from which an ancient town sprung, one cave atop the other, until a warren of many thousands of caves piled atop and next to one another existed. Until the mid-20th century these caves were inhabited by the poorest of the poor, who were ultimately relocated to housing with plumbing and other modern comforts. Since then the area has been rebuilt to house apartments, hotels, restaurants and shops. It's an amazing place, extraordinarily beautiful at night when lit up, too.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have had such an phenomenal opportunity to travel and experience the world and various cultures and incorporate it into my writing (and am grateful that my husband has afforded me these opportunities because trust me, writing isn't paying these bills). On this trip also, we visited Morocco, and immersed ourselves in an entirely different culture there (and, um, learned the hard way that the closest place to the Sahara desert in which to find a tampon would be a rugged 10-hour drive through the High Atlas Mountains to Marrakech...)

Along the way I also worked on my book while waiting for a grocery store to open in Siena as I needed to buy laundry detergent and was in a hurry to get it done before we traveled to Florence.

I love to incorporate things I experience while traveling into my books, and have used quite a bit of my extensive Italian travels in my current series, the It's Reigning Men series, especially with the third book of the series, Bad to the Throne, which is available for pre-order now here and will be released June 29.

I hope you can enjoy a little bit of my journeys as you read my books! And please, do enjoy the view!

working on deadline with Duomo di Siena as my view

I had a solid 30 minutes to write while at the entrance to a grocery store. Catch as catch can!

I was waiting for my husband and daughter so parked it on the Duomo steps and wrote for 20 minutes

enjoyed writing in the serenity of the Boboli Gardens (until I fell asleep...)

and this is the view from the Boboli Gardens--not too shabby...

Yes, I did sit on the edge of a bridge and write with another famous bridge as my view

while enjoying an Aperol spritz I wrote outdoors in the Piazza Santo Spirito while a very drunk man screamed at strangers in the background...local color

my final "deadline" deadline, where I gave up a great tour to write a really fun character and finish my book, in the Sassi in Matera, Italy

And I'm sure this fellow is going to somehow find his way into one of my books ;-). In the Sahara desert with my camel, who we named Ralph, and our nomad guide who offered up six camels for my daughter's hand in marriage ;-)

  

  

Subscribe to my newsletter

find me on Facebook

find me on Twitter

my website