More Summer Time Bandit Booty!

by Suzanne

Today I have several prizes to give away! Mostly because I was lax in getting them posted the past month or so. I thank everyone, guests and readers alike for your patience.

So, to begin with the winners of Jane Graves signed Advanced Reader Copies of BLACK TIES AND LULLABIES  are Na and Krazymama98! Congratulations!!


The winner of the signed copy of Sandy Blair's new novel THE KING'S MISTRESS is Laurie G. And the winner of the Sterling Silver Knight bookmark and saltwater Taffy is Louisa! Congratulations!!


And the winner of the signed copy of J.D. Tyler's debut novel PRIMAL LAW is ElainG! Congratulations!!

Please email me your snail mail addys to swwelsh2001 AT yahoo DOT com and I'll see your prizes are sent to you!

Jane Graves returns to the Lair!

interview with Suzanne

Jane Graves is the author of eighteen contemporary romance novels. She is a seven-time finalist for Romance Writers of America's Rita Award, the industry's highest honor, and is the recipient of two National Readers' Choice Awards, the Booksellers' Best Award, and the Golden Quill, among others. And I'm honored to call her my friend.

Suz: Welcome back to the Bandit Lair, Jane. Pull up a barstool and have a glass of wine while we catch up. It's been a while since you visited us here. What have you been up to?

Jane: Thanks for the wine, Suz. I'll have this glass of Cabernet while you sip your White Zinfandel. We do know each other well, don't we?

For personal reasons, I took a break from writing for a few years. Fortunately, when I was ready to get back in the game, my editor was very excited and wanted to buy more books. Black Ties and Lullabies will be out on June 28, and Heartstrings and Diamond Rings will hit the shelves on September 27.

Suz: Black Ties and Lullabies is your third Romantic Comedy for Grand Central Publishing and it's once again set in Plano, Texas. This time your hero is billionaire businessman, Jeremy Bridges. Many of your readers will remember meeting him in Hot Wheels and High Heels. How did he come to be the hero of this book?

Jane: I got more mail from readers wanting his story than any other character's I've ever written. He was actually somewhat of a villain in Hot Wheels, but there was a scene at the end of the book that hinted that there was more to the womanizing multimillionaire than met the eye, and I think that was what readers picked up on. I'm so happy they did, because I wanted very much to write his story.

Suz: I fell in love with your heroine of Black Ties and Lullabies, Bernadette Hogan, on page one. She is a very unusual heroine and has a unique relationship with Jeremy at the beginning of the book. I'll let you tell the Banditas and friends about "Bernie".

Jane: Bernadette Hogan is a bodyguard, ex-military, who never met a firearm she didn't like. It's rumored that she once killed a man with a Popsicle stick, but she insists that's absolutely untrue. It was a Q-Tip. She's been Jeremy's bodyguard for two years, and he aggravates her so much that if it weren't for the outrageous amount of money he pays her, she would have quit a long time ago. If you read chapter one at http://janegraves.com/blacktiespage.html, you can get a sense of their rather unusual relationship.

Suz: Throughout this book, you had me chuckling frequently at both the internal thoughts of the characters and their dialogue with each other. Do you find it easy or hard to write the witty/snarky banter between the characters? Does internal dialogue come easy for you?

Jane: Writing snarky banter is second nature to me, because I'm a pretty snarky person. But in real life, even I have to draw the line somewhere. I can't always say what I think. But my characters can, and oh, man, is that ever fun. It's a blast to let them say things I couldn't say in real life without getting slapped silly or arrested.

Suz: Since we're on the subject of writing, you have a rather unique approach on writing a book. I know of only one other writer who does the same process as you. Care to let everyone in on the Jane Graves way to write a romance novel?

Jane: Okay, but I feel obligated to issue a disclaimer up front. DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME. It'll make you certifiably crazy.

I begin writing a book by tossing down a whole bunch of dialogue, bits of scenes, exposition, whatever, that I can see possibly being part of the book somewhere in the 400 or so pages I'll eventually end up with. Then I expand on those pieces at random until the characters start talking and the story comes to life. Then I try to zero in on page one, because I can't sell the book until I can get proposal chapters written. Or if I've already sold the book, I can't get paid for the proposal until those chapters are done. I like to get paid. But getting three consecutive chapters down in the very beginning? It just about kills me. Fortunately, the more I get to know the characters, the easier the writing becomes. Still, when I finally write The End, I invariably have at least fifty pages of excess stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor.

I hear other writers say they see the story in their head and just write it down. Consecutively. One chapter after another. I'm so jealous of people who can do that. It would make my life SO much easier. Then some of them go on to say that one of the reasons they can write so many books is that they type fast. Well, I type over 100 words per minute, but when I spend an hour working on a three-sentence paragraph until my eyeballs bleed, typing speed doesn't really come into play.

I've been told many, many times that my writing seems smooth and effortless. That's hilarious. If those people had any idea of how much I consider every freakin' word that goes onto the page, they'd think twice about saying that. I'm actually not a very good writer. What I am is a pretty good rewriter. I just have the persistence to hit it over and over and over again until I get it right.

Suz: (Boy just hearing about that process exhausts me!) The next book in your future is Heartstrings and Diamond Rings. Can we have a little peek into that story?

Jane: The heroine is Alison Carter, Heather Montgomery's best friend from Tall Tales and Wedding Veils. In that book, Alison's dating disasters were well documented. In her own story, she's still determined to find her Mr. Right, but she's losing confidence in her own ability to find him. So she hires a matchmaker. But when it turns out that the matchmaker isn't the kindly old lady she expects but her sexy young grandson, the fun begins. Heartstrings and Diamond Rings will hit the shelves on September 27.

Oh-I also want to let everyone know about a promotion my publisher is running for the month of June. They're discounting the price of the e-book versions of Hot Wheels and High Heels and Tall Tales and Wedding Veils to only $1.99! That's 75% off the cover price, so if you haven't read those books yet, I hope you'll consider picking them up! Check out the deal at http://www.janegraves.com/

And now a question for you. The original cover of Black Ties and Lullabies (the blue one shown here) was much more cartoonish in nature, a follow up to my two previous covers that were the same style. Then my publisher decided to go with a different look. They did a photo shoot and came up with the cover with the red dress.

Which one do you like better, and why? Also, there are a whole bunch of covers these days with headless characters. How do you feel about that? If you see hero's and heroine's faces on the cover, does it screw up your ability to imagine them for yourself? Personally, I feel a little sorry for the models-I wonder if their contracts include the fact that they're going to be decapitated?

Those who comment will be eligible to win one of two copies I'm giving away. I have two sets of advance reading copies-one set for each cover-so the winners can specify which cover they'd like on the autographed copy I send!

MAKE ME LAUGH

by suzanne

No, I'm not asking for your best Internet forward joke...although I have a great one best told in a bar with an Irish accent. What I want, what I'm craving is a funny book to read. A light-hearted fare or one where there are brilliant moments of comic relief.


The first Susan Elizabeth Phillips (SEP) book I ever read was NOBODY'S BABY, BUT MINE. Now, this wasn't a slap-stick funny book. But when she removes all the marshmallows from the cereal box to make it more healthy for him and he says, "I've married a cereal killer!", I cracked up! When she insists on driving up the North Carolina mountain in a storm to have her baby, yep, got me laughing out loud! And it also had me back at the bookstore the next day buying everyone of SEP's back list.





My friend, Jo Davis,(author of TRIAL BY FIRE, UNDER FIRE and HIDDEN FIRE), who reads mostly suspense, claims AIN'T SHE SWEET was the funniest book she can remember reading. One of her favorite parts? When the dog in the front seat beside the heroine farts at her. The heroine thinks, "yep, even the dog hates me.





Another author who mixes great characters, good story telling, some suspense and comic relief is Julie Garwood. In SAVING GRACE , two clans are trying to live on the same land under the same laird, only they refuse to merge into one clan. Many funny episodes occur as the heroine uses quiet defiance and even tosses shattered crockery to get her point across. I chuckle my way through that book every time I read it. (28 at a last reading.)



Another dear friend, Sandy Blair, (author of A MAN IN A KILT, A ROUGE IN A KILT, A THIEF IN A KILT and A HIGHLANDER FOR CHRISTMAS) says the funniest book she can remember was Garwood's THE GIFT. What makes it so funny? Sandy says it's knowing what's coming next from the heroine's POV and the hero's exasperated reaction to what he perceives as illogical. Garwood sprinkles these gems throughout all her books. One of the reasons she's one of our favorite feel-good authors.





Addison Fox, (author of WARRIOR ASCENDED: The Sons of the Zodiac, coming in March 2010), couldn't pinpoint a specific book by Nora Roberts, but says one of her favorite reasons to read Nora's books is her ability to have witty dialogue that relieves some of the suspense and have her readers chuckling in different places throughout her books.






One of the funniest books I've ever read was Linda Howard's TO DIE FOR. This book works in so many ways. First it is in first person, (not my usual cup of tea), and because we're mostly in the heroine's head we understand why she does the things she does, even if she admits they're stupid. We also get to see the hero's frustrations at her actions, he's banging his head on his desk. This is also a different kind of suspense for Ms. Howard, totally at odds with her usual dark fare. When I was reading it, Rocky-the-wonder-dog was parked on the bed beside me. I laughed so hard the bed shook and he gave me that irritated male dog look (very reminiscent of irritated male human look). I had to stop reading long enough to stop laughing in order to read some more!




Jane Graves, a romantic comedy author, (HOT WHEELS AND HIGH HEELS, TALL TALES AND WEDDING VEILS), points to any book by Jennifer Crusie. Jane says, "I always feel a special sense of delight at her word choice, her sentence structure, and especially her dialogue. Her books are just flat-out fun to read, sentence after sentence, page after page. They're not funny in a laugh-out-loud way, at least not to me. They're just...fun. She's one of the few authors out there who can entertain me with almost every sentence she writes." My daughter, Alison, agrees whole heartily.

In fact, the idea for this blog originally titled, "where have all the funny books gone?", came from my daughter. She was going through a pregnancy, was home on maternity leave a few weeks early and was looking for books to read. She asked me, "Mom, I'm tired of reading serious, dark books. I want to laugh. I need a funny book, do you know of any?"

So, I need some help.

Who would you like to read? What writer makes you laugh? Who do you read when you want a good chuckle or to relieve some of the stress in your own life?

Tall Tales with Jane Graves

by Suzanne Welsh

Jane, welcome back to the Bandit Lair, pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable. As you can see we've done a bit of remodeling since your last visit. Over there is the Golden Rooster's nest, and those gentleman bearing trays of drinks and decadant chocolate desserts are our Vrai Anna's hockey hunks and Joanie T's Roman gladiators, aka the cabana boys.

Thanks for the welcome. Nice remodeling job. Send one of those cabana boys my way.

Your newest book, Tall Tales And Wedding Veils, was just released on May 27th. It's your second contemporary romance for Grand Central Publishing. Can you tell us a little bit about this story?

Heather's a straight-laced woman who never met a detail she didn't like. Tony's a sexy charmer who never met a woman he couldn't seduce. After a chance meeting in Vegas, she ends up helping him win the $20,000 he needs to buy the business of his dreams. They wake up the next morning with hangovers from hell and their names together on a marriage license.

Through a crazy turn of events, they're forced to stay married for a month pretending to be happy newlyweds when nothing could be further from the truth. But it isn't long before the playboy and the plain-Jane begin to see each other in an entirely new light!

We first met the hero, Tony McCaffrey, as the skirt-chasing lothario of the repo shop in Hot Wheels And High Heels. How has his life changed since we last saw him?

He's decided to go into business for himself by buying a bar & grill. He figures it's a helluva deal. He can do what he's best at - drinking, chasing women, and being the life of the party - and get paid for it at the same time. But he's going to figure out really fast that there's a big difference between sitting on a stool in front of a bar and working behind it. The heroine of Tall Tales And Wedding Veils is an accountant, Heather Montgomery. She doesn't seem like the kind of woman Tony would be attracted to. Why did you choose to match her with him?

Simple answer. Conflict. That's what you read for, isn't it? You don't want a story about a hero and heroine being nicey-nice to each other. That's a bore. And as an author, the easiest way to shake things up is to put two vastly different people on the page together and watch the fireworks.

But the thing is, when you have two people so incredibly mismatched, the challenge is to come up with a way to keep them together long enough for each of them to see the value in the other and ultimately to fall in love. In Tall Tales, it begins with the "oops" wedding in Vegas and goes from there.

Tall Tales and Wedding Veils is a fun romantic romp. One of your reviews for it compared it to a Jennifer Cruise book. Do you think romantic comedies are making a comeback in the market?

If they are, it's not nearly fast enough for me. Doesn't anybody want to LAUGH anymore?

Seriously, I'm not sure. There was a time in the late 1990s that romantic comedy was king. But these days, those of us who write comedy are getting nudged aside in favor of romantic suspense and paranormal authors. Why is the market saturated right now with dark and dangerous stories instead of light and fun ones? If anybody has an opinion, I'd love to hear it!

Since you were last in the Bandit Lair you've taken on a new PR project. Care to give us any hints about it?

Sure. My daughter and are are starting an online promotion business, part of which will include author promotion. We're making widgets.

Exactly what is a widget?

Our widgets are small, portable, multimedia presentations packed with information that can be picked up and put anywhere on the web. Because a widget streams from a single source to multiple sites (like a television signal streams from a single source to multiple sites) it means a widget isn't stuck at one web address. Instead, it can be in hundreds or even thousands of places at once.

And here's the good part. With only a few clicks, anyone can add an author's widget to their website, blog, or social networking site, or email it to anyone they choose, which gives a widget the kind of viral capacity authors have only dreamed of up to now. Click "get or share" on my Tall Tales widgets below and email it to a friend to see just how easy it is to share:

http://www.clearspring.com/widgets/480371302b3669c0

And be sure to keep an eye on those widgets. They're alive! If you're a reader who has embedded one of our author's widgets, whenever they have a new book out or the content of the widget changes in any way, your copy of the widget changes, too, and you don't have to do a thing.

As cool as they are, widgets are only a part of what we have planned for author promotion. If you're an author and you want to get in on the ground floor of the hottest trend ever in Internet marketing and drastically increase your presence on the web, send me an email at jane@janegraves.com and we'll let you know when we're open for business.

Another project you've been involved in for the past three years is the annual Richardson, Texas "Buns And Roses Tea". This is your second year as Chair for the tea. Can you fill our readers in on details for this year's tea and what the proceeds support?

Buns & Roses is back, bigger and better than ever! We're thrilled that Sherrilyn Kenyon is joining us as keynote speaker, as well as thirty three fabulous romance authors as table hosts.

Widgets aren't just for author promotion. They're for event promotion, too, or for anything else you need to get the word out about! Click on the image to check out one we just launched that tells you everything you need to know about Buns & Roses.

Thanks so much for inviting me into the Lair. As always, it's been a blast!

So, what about you guys, any of you ever done something spontaneous, like Tony and Heather, you either loved or regretted later?

Jane is giving away a signed copy of Tall Tales And Wedding Veils to one lucky commenter.

Approved for all Audiences...Preview of Coming Attractions...

by Jeanne Adams

It's JUNE!! We have SUCH a month for you!

On June 4 our own Bandita, Donna MacMeans is throwing HER launch party for her newest fantastic read, The Trouble with Moonlight. It's bound to be another rowdy day in the Lair! Shield sliding, anyone? If you loved Mrs. Brimley, you'll adore Donna's next offering as well.

In addition to our other wonderful Banditas nd their scintillating posts, we have a number of really interesting, amazingly prolific guests.

Jane Graves is here on June 3, to talk about her latest book, Tall Tales and Wedding Veils. Jane writes both series and single titles, so bring your questions about writing in multiple areas!

Debut Avon Regency Historical Author Olivia Parker is with us on June 5. Her first book The Bride Hunt Ball received a 4 Star Review from Romantic Times! She will be giving away a signed copy of her book to one lucky commenter.

On June 9, be sure to come visit with beloved NY Times Bestselling author Loretta Chase. Library Journal has called her the "Long-awaited successor to Georgette Heyer." What else needs to be said?

Award winning author Susan Crandall will be with us on June 12, sharing her unique wit and wisdom.

NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Historical author Lorraine Heath is visiting on June 17.

And hot, hot, hot erotic, historical and romantic suspense author Karin Tabke is with us on June 19. Karen writes for three - count them, THREE - different publishers and is going to talk to us about her latest release, Master Of Surrender, the first book in her Blood Sword Legacy series.

Another debut author, Anna Louise Lucia will be in the Lair on June 22nd to celebrate the launch of her book Run Among Thorns; out this month from Medallion Press. Romantic Times gave her 4-1/2 stars!

Last, but certainly not least, check out author Karen Kendall and web guru Liz Bemis of Bemis Promotions on June 26th. These two fine women both create the book trailers which are becoming more and more popular on websites today. They'll discuss the creation of the trailer for Take Me If You Can and answer questions about book trailers.

It's going to be a FAB-U-LOUS month! So check back every day for amazing stories, rowdy parties, and the usual level of Romance Bandit fun!

So, what's your favorite among these awesome authors? Who are you looking forward to "meeting" the most? And if you could be a fan-girl-or-guy and meet an author, living or dead, who would it be?