Sorry I've been MIA. We've reached what is probably the busiest time of year at the newspaper — a cluster of demanding special editions — and I've been working all day then taking work home at night. I've fallen behind on my blog, on emails, on laundry, and, yes, on writing.

I haven't written a word on Naked Edge in three weeks, partly due to work and partly due to the fact that my younger son, Benjy, was home on spring break last week. I had a lot of fun with him and chose to spend every free moment I had with him.

But, as of this weekend, with various crises and spring break behind me, I'm hitting Naked Edge hard with a goal of finishing it by the end of May. I'm not sure if it will be out next November, but I hope so!

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a bit about Gabe Rossiter, the hero in the story. Gabe is a Boulder Mountain Parks Ranger, which means he's like a cop who works in the mountains. I've volunteered with Boulder's Mountain Park Rangers, doing naturalist work for them, and they're a wonderful bunch of men and women. They carry guns, wear Kevlar, and deal with everything from climbers who've fallen to injured wildlife to drug dealers to poachers.

Like most rangers, Gabe is a paramedic. He's also an expert climber. And by expert, I mean world class. Because most of you have had little exposure to what rock climbing is and probably don't know a carabiner from a cam, I thought I'd share a video from YouTube that shows Dan Osman free soloing, which is what Gabe does in his free time.

Free soloing means climbing alone without gear. People who do this have nerves of steel, are incredibly strong both physically and mentally and are perhaps also a bit nuts.

As some of you know, I come from a family of climbers and grew up in the mountains hiking and climbing. My dad taught rock climbing and alpine climbing and spent some years climbing with Layton kor, a very famous world-class climber who spent time at our house. The vocabulary of climbing and the gear involved have always been part of my life. I remember stepping over huge coils of climbing rope as a kid and watching my dad clean and check his gear. He once saved a man's life by stopping his fall (he was on belay when the guy fell). The rope dug into my dad's waistline by about a half-inch, leaving permanent scars.



I almost died doing alpine climbing in 1994 when I fell 40 feet after slipping on an overhang of ice on Mount Ida (highest peak to the right above). You can actually see where I fell in this photo. See the tiny fingernail sliver of snow almost in the center of the photo in the saddle between the two peaks? I slipped, fell, bounced over rock. But that's another story...

I might have died had it not been for a ranger who was mountain climbing off duty and found me. He called for a helicopter rescue and eight hours later I was safely in the Estes Park trauma center. Curiously, this is how Kat and Gabe meet, also.

Okay, I'm rambling...

Click on the link above to watch one of of the greatest speed climbers and free solo climbers in the history of climbing. Sadly, Dan Osman died base jumping when his rope broke (the last segment of the video). Watching him climb leaves me in awe! And it gives you a chance to see how Gabe spends his free time and to see what, exactly, he was doing when he first glimpsed Kat.

Poll results: Very interesting! Most of you — a whomping 67 percent — say that bad research and writing is the thing that most offends you in a romance novel. The next largest group — 27 percent — say that deliberate cruelty by the hero or heroine toward the other is what upsets you most. That's what I would have chosen. I cannot stand deliberate cruelty from either the hero or the heroine, and a hero who's Alpha male qualities are demonstrated in this way is what I call a "jerk." It turns a book into a total wall-banger for me. Two percent of you said that graphic sexuality is what upsets you most, with another 2 percent saying the same of foul language.

I thank you for your votes and for the fun discussion about pregnancy and birth in romances.

I'm not sure what the next poll will be, but keep watching.

In the meantime, prepared to be awed by Dan Osman.

I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for it. And I'm not even sure why.

When I wrote Ride the Fire, I was pretty sure the story was going to tank. It contained so many forbidden elements, foremost among them a heroine who was heavily pregnant with a baby that wasn't the hero's. I didn't care. The story had fallen into my heart in one big chunk, and I wanted to write what I saw because to me it was beautiful. A tortured man and an abused woman find themselves alone together in the midst of a violent frontier and, by working together, slowly overcome their own horror and fall in love.

I was also determined to write a more realistic birth scene than one gets from, say, television. Having given birth twice — once without so much as an IV or an aspirin — I really wanted to do justice to this very feminine experience of childbirth. So often, it's glossed over, and yet it is an amazing, horrible, terrifying, exciting and transformative experience for women. I've always felt our society doesn't give the act of giving birth the respect it deserves. (In ancient Sparta, for example, women who died in childbirth were given the same honors as men who died in battle. Can you imagine that here? But I digress...)


Of course, once you have a baby you have to feed it, so I include breastfeeding, which was the only way to nourish a baby in historical times and is still the best way to feed a child. I nursed my oldest till he was 15 months old and my younger son till he was 10 months old, at which time I was in the hospital for a while and he was weaned by circumstance, not choice. Neither received formula or bottles.



In my other novels, both contemporary and historical, the HEA often involves a new baby, though not always. I'm conscious of the fact that I tend to include that and have tried to veer away from it so that it doesn't become repetitious for you all to read. But there's something about pregnancy and new babies that adds to the HEA for me, at least.

In historicals, of course, it's realistic. I always find it strange and unrealistic when a man and woman in a historical romance can get it on for several weeks or even months and not make a baby. In contemporary novels, it depends on how careful the hero and heroine choose to be, so it's completely realistic that the heroine might not get pregnant. Still, it adds to the sense of fulfillment at the end of the story if I know that a baby is on the way.

Why do I feel that way? Not sure. I guess that children, for me, are the outcome of deepest true love between a man and a woman. They represent the love the hero and heroine have for one another.

I've caught some heat for having birth scenes that are detailed and for including breastfeeding. One reader emailed me and asked, "Can't we just assume that she nurses the baby? Why do you have to show it?"

I show it because I think it's beautiful. The same is true of pregnancy and birth. They're beautiful and natural and the outcome of the hero and heroine's passion for one another. Also, they're a very real part of many women's experience of life and are far too often hidden to society's detriment, I believe.

But that's just how I feel.

So what do you think? Does pregnancy and/or birth enrich the HEA? And what about breastfeeding?

Several months ago, I lurked through a back-and-forth between romance readers about speech that offended them in romance novels. Many of them felt it was offensive and therefore wrong for a writer to include phrases like "Jesus Christ" and "goddamn" in novels because these words constitute "blasphemy." I lurked and said nothing...

A few weeks ago, I got a letter from a reader thanking me for making my characters' religions a real part of my historicals. She said that most historicals reflect modern biases either by creating characters that have no religion or by putting it in the background. This bothers her because it's historically inaccurate. (I think I posted her letter as a Letter of the Week.) I really appreciated what she said because religion did play a major role in people lives historically speaking, killing, dying, emigrating to new lands. One can't downplay the importance religion had in people's lives throughout history. I was happy that she noticed the effort I put into being true to that fact.

I found these two topics to be very interesting because they illustrate for me what place I believe religion ought to hold in novels. Let's see if I can explain.

For me, characters rule everything. If I have a character who is a devout Catholic, then I want to portray a heartfelt Catholicism in that character, which means that I as a non-Catholic have a lot of research to do. I've had a lot of Catholic characters — in Carnal Gift and then again in the MacKinnon's Rangers series — and have gone so far as to burn votive candles and buy rosaries for Morgan and Amalie, which two of my Catholic friends used to say the Rosary once to "break them in."

(Writing Catholic characters from historical times also means I get to put Latin in the story, and I like that. It's my inner Latin geek coming out to play.)


Morgan's plain wooden rosary that he wore around his neck.


Obviously, when I write about any faith from the point of view of characters who practice that faith, I try to be very true to the faith and respectful of it. It's conceivable that I might have a character who would be very at odds with his/her faith, and in those cases I would portray that tension realistically. Kat in Naked Edge will be my first non-Christian character, though I suppose a great many of my I-Team characters probably fall into the category of agnostic, reflecting the times we live in now.

In short, I respect the religion of my characters and I make it a part of the story because it's part of who they are.


Mitakuye Oyasin! We are all one.


But when it comes to offending people with language, that's something very different. Again, it's my characters that rule. If I have a character to says "Jesus Christ!" I put it in the story. If it offends readers, there's really nothing I can do about it. I don't write inspirationals and so I don't feel compelled to constrain the language in my stories or the behavior of my characters to the external ideals and beliefs of readers.

Though I would certainly stand behind every person's right to the free exercise of her religion (within certain bounds -- I don't believe in forced teen marriage, honor killing or polygamy), I don't feel that it's my job to reflect other people's faiths in my writing or to write in such a way that doesn't offend their sensibilities. I don't set out to offend people, however.

Does that make sense?

I guess the easiest way to summarize my view on this is that my characters' religion (if they have one) is the only one that matters to me in my writing. For me, blasphemy means not being true to my characters and that's it.

Now, for the results of my last poll....

Some 12 percent of you are fans of the Man Slut. You want the hero to have as much experience in bed as possible.

The vast majority of you — a whopping 55 percent — want the hero to have enough sexual experience to know his way around a woman's body.

A solid 25 percent say it's okay if the hero has has a few partners, but you don't want him to be a Lothario.

And 7 percent of you would like to see romance authors try harder to incorporate virgin heroes into their stories.

Very interesting!

Check for my new poll and vote!

This is going to be an extraordinarily busy month at the paper. I'll try to keep up with my blog, but I make no guarantees. Benjy is home for spring break. The two of us spent today at Denver Botanic Gardens looking at orchids, tulips and other pretty things (including a very lazy squirrel napping on a pine bough). I doubt I'll make much progress on my story until after Benjy goes back to school. I just hate to take time when he's home to write, especially when I'm not getting any time off from work to be with him.

Have a great week everyone!

Why do you think they call it deadline?

Thanks to Lucy Abarcia from Ever After-The Romance Book Specialists in Wollongong, NSW, Australia, I found out that a great many people are expecting Naked Edge to be released in April.

Wow, do I feel awful or what? D'oh!

Sadly, the book won't be out till November, and that's if — and only if — I hurry up and finish it. As many of you know, last year from May on was one catastrophe after another in my personal life. Two kids in serious car crashes. A tornado that destroyed my roof. And so on ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Though 2009 has been a better year so far, we've had some serious health problems in my family, and I'm very, very behind on the story. This weekend I reached the official halfway point, which is where I should have been last May.

I just wanted everyone to know that the book is not going to be out next month and that I will write as fast as I can, but not so fast that the book stinks. I really never want to rush a book. Both my readers and my characters deserve better. If I ever felt like I let either of those groups down, I'd feel terrible. Readers trust me to tell a good story, and my characters entrust me with their very lives. That's how it feels to me, anyway.

So I really am trying. I am not sitting around watching TV and eating bonbons. I don't have TV, and I'm not sure what bonbons are. I write every single moment I can, though I do try to maintain my blog and keep up with email. (I'm only behind by 58 reader emails now! Woohoo! My Inbox had more than 1,200 messages on Monday morning.)

My agent has been concerned enough about my situation to send cards and care packages to cheer me up. My editor, who knows what's been happening this past year, has been very supportive and just wants me to take care of my kids and my family first and then write the book when I'm able. And, really, I haven't had a choice. My kids and family have to come first. That's part of what romance novels show us, right?

But things are looking up! (AT LAST!)

THANKS for being so patient! I promise to torture you with excerpts and photos of sexy rock climbers (like Gabe, my hero) as often as I can.

I'm just popping in to say hello and to share some photos of my birthday flowers. I hand-picked the flowers for this and let the arranger at the floral shop put it together. I just love flowers, so this was my birthday present to myself.

It has blue hydrangea, pink roses, stargazer lilies and waxflower. The roses have opened most of the way now, and they look so lovely! Somehow, the beauty of the bouquet didn't translate well to my hasty photographs. But you get the idea...




Thanks to all of you for your wonderful emails and birthday wishes!

I'm caught in the midst of a busy work week at the paper, but I'll be back soon! I just wanted to share these photos.

Have a great day, everyone!