Greetings

This is my first blog post as a Simon Pulse Ro-Com writer and my first blog post. . .ever. Actually, this is my first time writing anything significant online, ever. It's even my first time using a computer. (Just kidding on that last one.) But since my first Ro-Com, Hard to Get, is coming out on February 23rd, it's time I stop being such a Luddite and officially enter the blogosphere.

So, the statistics. I'm thirty years old, married, have a baby son and a hairy black dog. Before I wrote romance novels, I wrote biographies and also educational books on health topics. So if you ever want to know some facts about Christopher Columbus or methamphetamine, I'm your woman. And before I was a writer, I taught horseback riding. So if you ever need to know how to get that horse to pick up its right lead, I'm also your woman.

I wrote Hard to Get right after I had my first baby. (I was actually talking to my agent about the deal as I lay in my hospital bed.) The juxtaposition of the two worlds was exactly what I needed during that particularly stressful time in my life. Here I had just given up my most of my independence and all of my free time, and for two hours a day, I could go into my study, shut the door (ah! blissful silence!), and dive into the world of high school, where there are no sodden diapers. If someone had a problem in that world, they could just say what it was, using actual words, unlike the newest member of my family.

I worked on the novel for nine months--all through the fall, winter, spring and into the middle of summer. By the time I wrote the last sentence, my son had transformed from a blob wrapped in a blanket to an actual crawling, laughing, babbling human being. Val and Adam, the main characters in the book, had also grown up to a certain extent. I think they ended the story as stronger people--at least that was my intention. And I ended that nine months having grown up a little too. Poop explosions no longer made me cry. I could easily function on four hours of sleep per night. And I was ridiculously proud of having raised up two babies in just one year--my son and my novel.