So when will we find out:

• who's been embezzling the TLD money
• how Kerri's getting along with her family
• when Ethan and Kerri are getting married
• about Amandine and Gavin's married life
• and their baby
• etc?

I get asked this a lot via PM, email or comments. So I decided to make a simple chart:

All the books are fine as standalone novels. Yes, there are some plot threads that don't always get resolved (like the embezzler thread that spanned four books), but there is no cliffhanger that makes you wonder, “Will they or won't they stay together?”

I think you'll enjoy it more if you read them in order, but it's not necessary. I hope this helps. :)

Okay, several people asked me about Jacob Lloyd. Mostly about whether or not I'm going to write a story about him and redeem him.

At this point, the answer is no, I have no plans to redeem him. He's such a jerk — bigamist, stole girlfriends from his youngest brother just to feel superior, ran the family business into the ground and verbally abused his wife.

The other thing is I have no clue what kind of woman:

a. would want to be with him, and
b. could change / reform him.

He has so many unforgivable flaws, you know?

OTOH — a lightning might strike and I might come up with the most perfect woman for Jacob. So I won't say never, but for now, I have no plans to write his story.

If have any questions about me, my writing, books, characters or anything else, feel free to drop me a line by leaving me a comment, using the contact form or via Facebook or Twitter. I reserve the right not to answer if the topic happens to be politics or religion. But anything else is more or less fair game. Thanks! :)

This is a new feature I'm trying out. When I get questions — about anything — I'm going to try to answer them on Wednesday. :)

So here's this week's question from a fan:

At what point did you KNOW this was what you absolutely HAD to do?

Honestly speaking, I've never felt like this is what I absolutely had to do. Rather, it was more like this is what I kept coming back to because when I'm not writing I miss it.

When I graduated from college, I honestly thought I'd do the corporate America thing, make good money and retire. And the pay and perks were fabulous for a fresh-out-of-college kid in her early twenties. But it wasn't right for me. I didn't like having to lay people off, for one thing, because it wasn’t laying off some high school kid doing a summer job. We're talking about hundreds of people in their mid- to late thirties and forties with children and mortgages to pay for. I understand the economic imperatives behind work like that, but that didn’t make it any easier to do. After a couple of years, I felt like my soul was shrivelling up.

And even when I wasn't part of the team that laid off people, I just never felt like I was making any real difference or making things better. So I quit after three years to become a writer. (My mother was flabbergasted by this decision and — in typical tiger-mom style — said, “You're too smart to be a writer!”)

I'm not sure if I'm ever going to make as much money as I would have if I'd stayed at my job and did the whole career track and whatnot. But I'm not hurting anybody — nobody's gotten fired because of my writing. And getting notes from readers who tell me my writing gave them enjoyment — just plain made them feel good — is more or less priceless. And you know what? That's what I want from my work. I want people to feel good as a result of it. So that's why I keep coming back to writing because that's how I can do that.

If have any questions about me, my writing, books, characters or anything else, feel free to drop me a line by leaving me a comment, using the contact form or via Facebook or Twitter. I reserve the right not to answer if the topic happens to be politics or religion. But anything else is more or less fair game. Thanks! :)

This is a new feature I'm trying out. When I get questions — about anything — I'm going to try to answer them on Wednesday. :)

So here's this week's question from a lovely fan:

How do you find the time to write with a little one?

This question came from a reader who knows that I have a very active two year-old boy. It's pretty simple:

Daycare.

We put him in daycare when he was eight months old. He really likes it there, and the staff are friendly and sweet. He also made a lot of friends there, and he plays with other kids, which helps him socialize. We don't plan to have any more children, so it's important that he learns how to play with other kids.

If he's home all day, the plain fact is I don't get much done. Maybe one or two hours here and there. Thankfully Hero Material takes him out in the morning to feed and chase pigeons or go play at an indoor area for children. (The best $20 we can spend!) So I can get a bit done during that time.

If have any questions about me, my writing, books, characters or anything else, feel free to drop me a line by leaving me a comment, using the contact form or via Facebook or Twitter. I reserve the right not to answer if the topic happens to be politics or religion. But anything else is more or less fair game. Thanks! :)

This is a new feature I'm trying out. When I get questions — about anything — I'm going to try to answer them on Wednesday. :)

So here's this week's question from a lovely fan:

What author and book turned you on to this genre [romance / contemporary romance]?

My first romance novel was Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey. I picked out that book because I was “forced” to read romance on a dare. A high school friend told me romance was great, and I told her it couldn't possibly be any good when all the covers had half-naked men and women in semi-orgasmic states of…whatever.

But since I wanted to be “open-minded” about it (haha…), I went to the local library and browsed the paperback romance section, all the while hoping that nobody who knew me would see me there. (I sort of ducked and hid between the stacks.) I picked Gentle Rogue because had the cheesiest cover of all the romance novels available. I was convinced it'd suck and and I would be proven right–that romance novels were poorly written.

Except…I got totally sucked into it. I read all the Johanna Lindsey romance novels I could find, then went onto read more historical romance novels. I became addicted to Julie Garwood and Judith McNaught's historicals.

It wasn't until a few years later that I read Nora Roberts' Born in Fire, which I thought was good, even though it wasn't historical. (I just had this incredible bias for historical romance novels at that time.) I think I read something like fifty Nora Roberts contemporary romance novels along with Judith McNaught's contemporaries.

Then later I decided to try my hand at writing contemporary romance. I just don't think I'd be any good at writing historicals because I don't have the patience to do the necessary research, and I'm pretty sure I'd mess it up. :)

If have any questions about me, my writing, books, characters or anything else, feel free to drop me a line by leaving me a comment, using the contact form or via Facebook or Twitter. I reserve the right not to answer if the topic happens to be politics or religion. But anything else is more or less fair game. Thanks! :)

This is a new feature I'm trying out. When I get questions — about anything — I'm going to try to answer them on Wednesday. :)

So here's the third one for the feature from a lovely fan:

How much research do you do per book, if any (by that, I mean location and so on)?

Oh it totally depends. Sometimes I do a lot if some detail is important, but sometimes just a little is enough.

Let's tell you what I mean.

There are a few locations like cafes and parks in Reunited in Love and Redemption in Love. Exactly what chain / brand they are and the precise location aren't particularly important to the plot or character growth / emotions. So I just say it's near so-and-so's place and maybe do some high-level description to set the scene.

Sometimes places I've been to inspire me to set certain parts of the story in that locale. For example, Kerri's old job was in Hong Kong. I went to Hong Kong for a few days to visit some i-banking friends, so I drew on that a bit. (And i-bankers work insane hours…)

And if you're a long-time follower of my blog, you might have noticed that Hero Material and went to Thailand for our honeymoon. Guess where Gavin and Amandine have their second honeymoon? ;) I had to set it there because I absolutely loved Thailand. As a matter of fact, we’re going back next year with The Boy.

But when I was writing an SF thriller with romantic elements (still unfinished, alas), I actually had to figure out how each character would get to certain places and how long it'd take. Why? Because if I want to have the Villain to hatch some evil plot in Location A, I better make sure that the Villain has enough time to get there and set things up. Otherwise I'm going to hear from annoyed readers. And I had to make sure that the science tech I was using was, if not actually possible at the moment, at least somewhat plausible. :)

Oh and for the current book I'm working on (Mark Pryce and Hilary Rosenberg's romance), I had to watch a few videos of girl fights and something else (I can't talk about it because I don't want to spoil the story!). I'm not the most athletic type, and have never gotten into a fight like the one I'm writing, so I headed over to YouTube and watched some women duke it out.

Sometimes if the characters are involved in something finance/ economics-related, I don't have to do a lot of research because that's what I studied in college. They say you should write what you know… I think that's generally good advice and I try to leverage a lot of what I already have in my head.

Also I read a lot of articles and stuff from various newspapers, esp. the Wall Street Journal. One of those articles inspired Natalie's background / adoption story. I won't talk too much about it since that's a big spoiler. :) But if you want to discuss more, you're welcome to contact me privately via email or private FB group.

If have any questions about me, my writing, books, characters or anything else, feel free to drop me a line by leaving me a comment, using the contact form or via Facebook or Twitter. I reserve the right not to answer if the topic happens to be politics or religion. But anything else is more or less fair game. Thanks! :)