In the last year I’ve had the privilege to meet Maya Rodale. Though we’ve only met online, she strikes me as a kindred spirit, and I happened to love her first book,  The Heir And The Spare.  Like anyone else who read this engaging story, I’ve been eagerly awaiting her follow-up. But rather than have me blather on like an impatient fan, I’ll let Maya introduce you to her new book. Please join me in welcoming Maya Rodale!

MR: Hello Everyone! I’m thrilled to be blogging here today in honor of my new book, The Rogue And The Rival. Thanks, Elizabeth, for inviting me! I had the darndest time thinking up a topic, but eventually I decided to go for the perennially popular subject: rakes and rogues.

A friend of mine once described a guy she liked as “a good man but a bad boy.” I thought it was a very good way of describing all those rakes and rogues we love in romance novels. But we don’t want ‘em to be too bad, so occasionally, they need a little improvement.

In my first book, The Heir & the Spare, I had the brilliant idea to give the villain every imaginable vice: he gambled to excess (so long, family fortune!), drank constantly (brandy for breakfast!), and ruined numerous young women (four going on five, to be precise), and he was a bad kisser (unforgivable!).

In my second book, The Rogue And The Rival, I had the brilliant idea to make this less than stellar specimen of manhood the hero. Lucky is the girl that gets this one! A true fixer-upper! Who doesn’t want a broke, womanizing, drunk who was a bad kisser as her hero? Well, me. And most women, too, I’m sure. So Phillip Kensington, Marquis Huntley, villain turned hero, needed to be reformed and redeemed. Big time. More good man and much, much less bad boy.

At the end of Heir/Spare, Lord Phillip fled to Paris to escape the aftermath a disastrous duel. It was there that he 1) learned how to kiss properly (or rather, not at all properly) and 2) sank so far into debt that he had to return to England.  Things then go from bad to worse, because Phillip needed to hit rock bottom. The story begins with my hero waking up after having being shot at, thrown from his horse and left for dead in a ditch. Oh, and then he was robbed. He is truly a broke(n) man. He was taken to the nearby abbey to recover, and be nursed back to health by the tender ministrations of one Angela Sullivan, ruined girl and would-be nun if she could only get around to taking her orders.

Angela is no angel. She’s what I call “a lady who has lived a little”. She’s sharp and she’s smart and, thanks to previous experience, she knows better than to fall for the likes of a renowned scoundrel like Phillip. But she goes and does it anyway. She’s the first person to look past the “bad boy” to find the good man underneath, and she finds one who is thoughtful, helpful and funny. She finds something lovable there, and he loves her for looking. In short, she’s a very, very good reason for him to try to be a better man.

Alas, they can’t stay in the abbey forever, and once Phillip returns to London the consequences of his past demand his attention. But his reformation holds true, especially with Angela by his side.

Are you a fan of rakes and rogues? Who are some of your favorites?

Since this morning is the one where we wake up and find out who won, I thought I would also announce the winners of my October contest:

Annette P. of Ludlow MA
Leslie D. of Elk Grove Village IL
Lori M. of Fort Campbell KY
Jason N. of Elko MN
Lisa M. of Bel Air MD

Congratulations and watch your mailboxes for your winnings! And even if you didn’t win (or your candidate didn’t win) there is still this month’s contest.  You don’t even have to wait 4 years.

The second question people always ask you after you tell them you are an author (the first being: do you have any books that you’ve sold) is always: where do you get your ideas. Most of the time, I haven’t the vaguest clue where the ideas come from, they sort of sneak up on me. Right now I am starting work on a new, three book series that will spin off from the Bachelor Chronicles. I got the idea for the series while I was screwing around, avoiding writing, putting together a family tree for Thatcher, the duke in Love Letters from a Duke. I needed to see how poor Thatcher had managed, through no fault of his own, to go from being the family black sheep at the bottom rung of the inheritance ladder to the Duke of Hollindrake. Okay, it wasn’t entirely essential work, but as the family tree came together I saw the three stories sort of come to life before my eyes.

Oh, not the whole story. How I wish. Because I have had that happen. In the cases of Something About Emmaline, Stealing the Bride and His Mistress by Morning, the entire book plot sort of plopped into my lap out of the blue, like a big pile of seagull surprise on the windshield. Despite my poor metaphor comparing them to bird poo, they are actually some of my favorite books that I’ve written, just because the ideas came so easily. I wish this was so in the case of the next three Bachelor Chronicles books, but all I’ve got are the heroines, I think I have the heroes, and I’m working on the plots. And praying for some large idea leaving birds to fly overhead. I’d probably be doing better if I hadn’t read my Sunday paper last week. Because I got hit hard by the story bird and it won’t go away.

What always surprises me is when I get ideas for stories that I will probably never write. It is like the story fairy dropped Dumbo into my tent. Like the one that hit me when I saw this picture of Clay McDermott from the K Diamond K Guest Ranch in Republic, Washington on the front page of the travel section. (A Diamond ranch in the rough, story and pictures by Brian J. Cantwell, Seattle Times) This guy really is enough to make any girl look west. Or in my case, look east, since Republic is east of Seattle.

Still, let me get one point very clear: I probably will never write a western, not even a real fan of westerns, except when they have Jimmy Stewart as the hero and the occasional John Wayne. I don’t want to see some post on a forum that I’ve gone western. I haven’t. I can’t.

But that hat, and those eyes, and something about the coat and his stance just get me. I see this cowboy kneeling beside a fire looking across the flames at a woman he’s found, she’s hurt, got amnesia, needs his help. Or see him coming into his lonely cabin after a long month on the trail to find a stranger, a woman in his cabin, cooking. One picture and I can’t shake the darn stories out of my head. I really need to be in the Regency right now. Not seeing visions of lonely vistas and wide open spaces and a heroine in a calico dress. But that’s what this story has done to me. I mean, come on, this guy’s name is Clay McDermott?! How much more like a romance hero could you get??? So please, someone be inspired by Clay as I was, take this story and write it, so I can get back to 1814 and my widows on Brook Street.

When we moved into our house 14 years ago, the neighbor came over just before Halloween and broke it to us gently that most likely our house would be covered in TP during the night.  The neighborhood kids liked to “welcome” the newcomers with a little extra Halloween decorating.  I told her not to worry about us, I had a Halloween Insurance policy that would see us safely through the night, and she looked at me like I was nuts.

But what she didn’t know is that I went to the Rhody Burrows School of Halloween.  Rhody, bless his heart, was a dear family friend when I was growing up.  I even dedicated Something About Emmaline to his memory. He would have loved that con artist heroine of mine, just about as much as he loved Halloween. Long before everyone else started decorating for this hallowed holiday like it was Christmas, Rhody did it up right.  He had a full-sized witch that would swoop across his front yard, an ancient axe (brought across the country by one of his pioneer forebears) that would sit in an old stump with “blood” dripping from it and a terrorized carved pumpkin lying at the base. He had bats and spooky music, and dry ice that filled his yard with a ghoulish vapor.

And he had one other thing that made his house unique beyond any other: he always gave out full-sized candy bars. No fun-sized, penny candy for Rhody, no sirree. He gave out the good stuff.

So when my well-meaning neighbor warned me about the neighborhood hoods, I just smiled. I’d already been to Costco and had my own little insurance policy ready. Full-sized candy bars. And when the little ghouls came to our door, the ones I knew were the TP kings, I insisted they take two. “Real candy bars,” they exclaimed, looking at each other in awe.

If I could have read their minds, I think it would have gone like this: Hey, man, I’m not wrecking a good thing by TP’ing this house. And in 14 years, we’ve never been hit. But my well-meaning neighbor has. Twice.

Thanks, Rhody. I miss you like the devil. Especially this time of year.

. . . until you turned to highway robbery.

Now let me say flat out, I have always loved going to the movies. To me it is the biggest treat to watch a film on a huge screen, with a big bag of popcorn to munch on, and a soda. But I have to say that my trip to the cinema last week has cooled my love affair with going to the movies. No, let me rephrase that: we are over. Done. Finished. At least for the time being.

There is something about walking into the theater and shaking your head over the fact that you just laid out $21 for two kids and an adult to see a matinee. Not Friday night. Not Saturday night.  Friday at noon. $21 freakin’ bucks.  But the shake-down had only just begun. Because after we ordered popcorn and sodas, the grand total of which came to $32. Yes, $32 for just the concessions.  2 popcorns, 3 sodas, and one candy. $32. Explain to me how that should be legal, not to mention moral. Of course I paid it, you might argue, and yes I did. But have you noticed how they don’t post the prices for concessions anymore?  They just show you the combos, let you order and then hit you with the final tab–without blinking an eye that they’ve just marked up the price of corn by probably a thousand percent.  As I walked through the multiplex, I no longer had that happy anticipation of going to the movies, quite frankly I felt like I’d been ripped off. Almost moreso than the day I watched my WaMu stock evaporate before my very eyes.

And that feeling stuck with me during the entire movie.  However can they charge such exorbitant prices for freakin’ popcorn and soda?  It isn’t right, no, it’s robbery. But I do have a choice, I can stay home, and quite frankly in this economy and with the holidays coming, I can think of a lot of other things I can do with $53 dollars other than going to the movies.  Things that will last and not leave a sour feeling in my gut. Goodness sakes, I could fill a shopping cart with soda and popcorn with that amount of money.

What makes me shake my head over all this, is the sense that the corporate wonks who set all these prices don’t seem to realize they are pricing themselves right out of business. That they are making consumers feel not that happy glow over seeing our favorite stars, but soured to the point of not enjoying the movie because of the niggling sense of having had someone just pick your pocket clean. Fine, set the ticket prices a little higher, but please don’t make my popcorn and soda so outrageous that I have to resort to my new catchphrase: I won’t be back.

What do you think? Are the movie prices fair? Are you going to the movies less because of the prices?

I have for years loved entering contests.  And mostly because I tend to get lucky.  Oh, I don’t win everything I enter, but I think I have a pretty good rate at scoring some great prizes.  My best friend Kit will not enter a contest with me because she says that guarantees I’ll win.  Okay, so I won the wardrobe from the Bon, the TV set and the airline tickets  but to my defense, she had just as much chance of winning as I did.

Last year, we went to a Paula Bejoun lecture.  Paula is the Cosmetic Cop and has a wonderful line of beauty products.  She talked about anti-aging, and colors and all sorts of things that I personally don’t really lose a lot of sleep over, so when Kit said, “Don’t enter the drawing, I really want to win,” because the drawing came with $200 worth of product and a personal consult with Paula herself. I tried to respect that request.  I really did. My little entry form just sat there, vacant and unloved. But just because I love to taunt Kit, I tossed my name in when she wasn’t looking, and two days later I got the call–I’d won.  The poor assistant who called me probably thought I was a madwoman because I just broke out in this crazy laugh and couldn’t stop, thinking how much fun it was going to be to call Kit and say “nanny-nanny boo-boo, I won!!!” Okay, you can do that with a friend you’ve known for nearly 30 years.

Now if you think Kit grumbles about this, it’s only a little, because being good friends, I usually share. And after I got done laughing manically at Paula’s poor assistant, I talked her into letting us both come.  So Kit got the benefit of Paula’s advice, and I got a bad case of hives from some combo she put on my face.  Really, I need to be more firm in sticking to my edict with make-up people:  Ivory soap and nothing else.  Thank you very much. The hives could also have been cosmic payback (or rather, cosmetic payback) for the years of taunts.

So onto a couple of weeks ago, I am driving to pick up the kids at school and the phone rings.  I didn’t catch much of the first part of the conversation, only the “you’ve won our drawing” part, and then I spent a few seconds being smug and thinking how I was going to call Kit, until the guy on the other end paused, and I could ask, “Who is this?”

“Dr. Doo, from  ?”

It takes me a moment to catch up.  “Dr. Doo?”

“Yes, you’ve won our Zoo Doo drawing.  When would you like to come pick up your Doo?”

Yes, folks. I won Zoo Doo.  As in a big pile of well-rotted, worm ridden, really smelly manure.  And quite frankly, it was better than winning a case of hives. So the other day, I grabbed up every big pail, empty garbage bag and garden trog I own and went and fetched home my piece of the elephant.

And when the kids got in the car later on, and it still smelled a little, and they asked me what I’d been hauling around, I could honestly say that I’d a bit of elephant.  You can’t say that everyday.

Come on, what have you won that you’ll ‘fess to?

I recently got a copy of Naughty Paris,  A Lady’s Guide to the Sexy City by Heather Stimmler-Hall, and had a great time, if only from the comfort of my couch, designing the perfect naughty visit to Paris.  Now this is not Rick Steves travel, or the kind of trip you’d book with your mother (unless your mother is really out there), but the sort of What-happens-in-Paris, Stays-in-Paris adventure guide for a girlfriends gone wild on an unforgettable long, long weekend.

Chapters reveal hints into why Frenchmen are better lovers, where to find your hotty Frenchman, and how not to worry if you are, ahem, over a certain age. Attitude is everything. There are tips on where to stay, shop, hit the spas (okay, if I can’t take a lover, I’ll hit the spas, they sound almost as heavenly), and if you do find a lover, how to get what is called a “day use” hotel room for your amorous afternoon. Go figure, those French are smart.  Day use rates are just that, you rent a decent, lovely and clean hotel room for just a few hours at a reduced rate. And not the usual dives we  uncouth and unfun Americans consider for such “special” rates. When a hotel in Seattle rents by the hour, believe me, I wouldn’t care if my newfound hottie was George Clooney, I’d have my affair in the backseat of my mini-van before I’d venture into some “day use” hotel this side of the Atlantic.

But since this is all fantasy brought to life, I set aside my lover after a few hours and get back to the shopping and eating sections of the book. Or the part where I can become someone’s muse.  If it comes with chocolates and wine, as well as unending adulation, I’m all over it.

I loved the rich, atmospheric photos in this book, and it is great fun to flip through the pages imagining such a trip. Also, the book comes with all kinds of tips and ideas on how to see the usual sights (the Louvre, Musee Rodin) as well as the unusual (pleasure coaching, anyone?) with a new bent, or rather a naughty outlook, that might take an ordinary adventure into a life changing one.  So if you are interested in living your own romance novel, or just want to take a trip to Paris without the passport and airport encumbrances, Naughty Paris is the book for you.

Where would you like to be naughty?

Thanks to the internet, I’ve discovered that I get around. Well, not me exactly, which would be sort of fun for a 40-something stay-at-home mom with the social life of an earthworm in the Mojave, but my virtual me.  That Elizabeth Boyle entity, who in the last month or so was popping up all over the place, that impertinent little minx. I rather envied her prowess, her brilliance, the way she was beloved by all.  Okay, that is probably overstating the case–okay, way overstating the case, because some people were slightly miffed with my virtual self, but then again any girl who moves around the globe like is going to get a reputation, if you know what I mean.

First of all, I received a nod in The Hoyden’s Award, or rather Something About Emmaline did. My virtual self arrived in her usual blowzy fashion, looked around for the wine and cheese (and more notably for the statue, since I was skunked out of mine from Romantic Times), but all I could do was comment politely and keep on moving.  Still, I thought a Hoyden Award was pretty cool, I mean who doesn’t want to be a bit hoydenish from time to time–even if you have to explain to family and friends just what exactly is a “hoyden.” Since the Hoyden, aka Lana, is a fellow Oscar Wilde fan and an excellent spotter of Hoydens, I’ve kept reading her delightful blog, A Hoyden’s Look At Literature. I would invite you to do the same.

Now onto my next Elizabeth Boyle adventure, an escapade that if I hadn’t had Google Alerts, I wouldn’t have known about it.  Apparently some time last month, I  passed out and my 20 month old child dialed my cell phone to save me.  Truly.  It is all right there on the Internet. Of course, typical of the Internet, they got it all wrong. My mother’s name is Tess and I don’t live in Essex.  The next headline will be, “Passing out Mother can’t recall having Milly either.”  Kids these days, they just drop in and out of your life without so much as a phone call . . . and this one can apparently dial a phone.

Then, much to my annoyance, Elizabeth Boyle started living her Million Dollar Life.  Wild woman that she is, she even gave a seminar for CEOs and other fools.  I’m sort of glad I missed this one, ’cause I’m not a huge fan of CEOs right now.  But my internet-alter-ego apparently isn’t opposed to taking their money.  Well, good for her, but I think her next seminar ought to be “Sharing the Wealth with Other Elizabeth Boyles.”

And finally, when I am not leaving my life in the hands of my virtual child, charming people by selling snake oil, and being Hoydenish, I also work at a scrapbook shop in Bellingham, Washington called Treasury of Memories.  Now I know why I am so tired all the time, between the commute to Bellingham, the writing and now, non-stop crafting, no wonder I’m passing out. But there I am (at least my virtual self) blogging all the time about the cute crafts I have time to do. I actually love seeing what Elizabeth is doing so I have her blog on my Bloglines account.

So the lesson here is, give yourself a “Google” and see what you’ve been up to.  You might be surprised.

So I had an interesting evening the other night. I went to the third annual (at least I think this is the third year) of the Librarian Meet & Greet which is in conjunction with the Emerald City Writer’s Conference. Don’t ask me how the conference was, as I didn’t go this year. But I did make it to the Librarian gathering as it is too much fun:  essentially our hostess with the mostess, Deborah Schneider of the King County Library System–seen here, and the esteemed Mary Buckham gather together librarians from western Washington, get them all in a room and then we “speed date.” The authors sit at tables divided by subgenre and the librarians move from table to table so they get to meet all of us. Debbie rings her trusty bell, and everyone shifts–well, the librarians do, we authors sit and wait for our new victims, er dates.

The authors go all out and fill bags of goodies and the librarians go all out, peppering us with questions and promising to buy copious amounts of our books.  Remember, librarians, you promised. Most of us had seen the recent Stephen Colbert spoof on libraries being the cause of our economic woes because they. . . shudder. . . don’t charge for their services, and the libraries here in Seattle are like most of the libraries in the country and have seen increases in service requests go up as much as 33 percent. Being no novice or sloucher where it comes to using my library, all I can say is, “What took you all so long?!!” I’m a library girl and proud of it.

I shared a table with Julia Quinn and Gerri Russell. Now I think Gerri (who just go back from a glorious trip to Scotland, lucky wench!) had this whole Scottish vibe going, because before we knew it, there as this Scotsman at our table. That, or there was Speed Dating for Scots down the hall and he just hit the wrong room. And no, we didn’t ask him how authentic his kilt was, but he did say he didn’t ride his scooter when he wore his kilt–so we sort of concluded the answer to that one.

Now you might think meeting a man in a kilt was the highlight of my night, but no, my highlight was a much more vain–as it was, my KCLS Read poster was there, and so I got to show off (along with Serena Robar) my READ poster. Here we are with the talented and wonderful J, the print god of KCLS. J is a real kick and awful nice–he always comes to the Romance Meet & Greet because his wife is a HUGE romance fan, so she tags along to meet us all, and then we hit on J to get him to us our books in library print media.  It worked for me, as he used one of my book covers in one of the Valentine Day promos last year. Believe me, that is huge, because there are 43 libraries in the system, and the circulation makes it the 3rd largest library system in the country.

The genius behind this READ project is Darcy over at Bellevue Regional Library, who has spent the last year cajoling her co-workers, famous local folks, any author she could point her camera at, and regular old patrons into posing for their READ campaign posters holding their favorite books. The posters are really cute and use different cartoon graphics depending on the subject. This was very special to me because some of my earliest memories are of my mom taking us to the library once a week to pick out books. I even worked in my local library while I was in high school. Now I am a poster child. Sort of cool, huh?

Live Interview, Call In – Win an Autographed book! 

Yes, I’m going to be on the radio (internet radio, that is) Tuesday evening (October 14th) at 8:30 pm Eastern time and would love to have you call in and ask a question or just say hi. The call in number is 646-200-4071, and if you get through and get your question on the air, I’ll send you an autographed copy of one my Avon books. If you are too shy to call in, you can just listen in over the internet or join the online chat. All the specifics can be found on my Events page.

So what book would you be holding for your Read poster? And have you marked your calender for tomorrow night to chat?

I’ve been sitting on these covers for a few weeks, dying to show them off.  I got the cover of Confessions of a Little Black Gown first (Tally’s story – March 31st)  and couldn’t believe how gorgeous it turned out:

When I asked them for this title (yes, this is my title) there was concern about a black gown looking too much like a “funeral”, but I don’t think anyone will be thinking about her graveside manner–am I right?    The stepback inside is breathtaking, but you’ll just have to wait for that.  I am such a tease.

But not so much that I won’t share Pippin’s cover.  Now I called the book Pippin & the Pirate as I was writing it, but once I came up with the title for Tally’s book, I knew I needed a similar one for the back to backs to work, thus her book was rechristened:

When I opened this .jpg and saw this cover my mouth dropped open.  I didn’t think they could outdo the Confessions cover, but oh, it is either a tie or a photo finish. Because I think this is just incredible.  I love the way she moves across the back drop.  Just too cool. You’ll be able to get your own copy April 28th.

And just in case this is too much eye candy without anything to tide you over, I’ve got another downloadable bookmark to share.

This one features Julia Quinn, Kathryn Caskie, Samantha James and moi.  Lots of lovely covers and great stories to look forward to. So, what books are you waiting for?