Me, being authorly, talking about writing romantic comedy to MoRWA, the St. Louis chapter of Romance Writers of America. A great group! Note Mark Twain on the wall.
Me and my good friend Linda Wisdom in Hawaii for the 1995 Romance Writers of America National Conference. I loved those sunglasses. Wonder what happened to them?
At the top of Diamond Head. Yes, Linda and I were crazy enough to climb the volcano. I ask you -- are those the coolest sunglasses ever or what?
Me goofing around with the Murphy bed -- like the one in Return Engagement -- in our hotel suite at the Hyatt Crown Center Hotel during the Romantic Times Conference in Kansas City, Missouri in 2002. Where's Noah Patrick when you need him? Oh yeah -- he's a figment of my imagination. Darn it.
With my friend Paris Brandon, author of Assassin's Kiss, attending the Ellora's Cave party at the Romantic Times convention in St. Louis. I can't tell you what's in those gift bags!
One of the giant shuttlecock sculptures from Mother of the Bride, on the south lawn of the Nelson-Adkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Yes, they're real, and really, really big!
My good friend, Nancy Haddock, author of La Vida Vampire, and Marguerite DeMello, my biggest fan (her words) at the San Francisco RWA conference in 2008. Marguerite makes the most gorgeous jewelry you've ever seen, and tells the worst jokes you've ever heard.
NOT my inspiration for Nightwing. Our oldest son Chris on Halloween.
My cats Molly, calico, and Phantom, the inspiration for Molly and the Phantom. The Little Queens (as I called them) came up in a conversation with my editor at Temptation, Malle Vallik. "Y'know," I said, "Molly and the Phatom would make a cool title for a book." Malle agreed. Took me about a year to come up with the idea of Molly, the princess, and the Phantom of St. Cristobel, a cursed blue diamond.
My first published novel, Like A Lover, won the New Romantic Suspense Author award from Romantic Times magazine. The trophy looks like I won a bowling tournament and is one of my most cherished possessions. On the plaque suspense is spelled
s-u-s-p-e-n-c-e. You've got to love a misspelled writing award.
Misspellings haunt me. On the cover of The Patriot, my second book for Harlequin Temptation, Lynn is spelled Lynne. This is the one and only book Lynne Michaels ever wrote. I write as Lynn Michaels for my husband Michael. He warned me never to dedicate a book to him so I stole his name instead.
Three of my category romances from Temptation, Remembrance, Aftershock and Nightwing, were nominated for the Romance Writers of America's RITA award, the Oscar of romance writing. My first romantic comedy for Ballantine, Mother of the Bride, won the Reviewer's Choice Award from Romantic Times magazine for the Best Contemporary Romance of 2002. This one is spelled correctly.
I love to write romance. I love comedy and I love the paranormal. I've created characters that are clairvoyant (The Dreaming Pool), telepathic (Second Sight), meet a ghost on a beach (Remembrance), are cursed by a famed diamond (Molly and the Phantom) and fall in love with a vampire (Nightwing).
I started writing in sixth grade when my class formed a writers club. At the end of the year the other kids quit, but I kept at it. By the time our sons Chris and Paul were in elementary school I had boxes full of stories. "If you don't do something with all this stuff," Michael told me, “I'm going to make wallpaper out of it.”
Otherwise my life is pretty much like yours. I grocery shop, I pump my own gas; I clean my own house and do the laundry. I'm a fiend for coupons. I collect teapots, thimbles, hand-made bookmarks and misspelled writing awards.
