Squawk Radio

Well, sorta serious, anyway. I can't get too far out of character.

The reality is that I'm the poster child for how NOT to write a series.

When I wrote THE BAD LUCK WEDDING DRESS, I never guessed I'd be writing more Bad Luck books ten years later. It's all been market/reader driven.

I left my first publisher (where, on my very first editor-author dinner, I got to tag along with none other than Ms. Teresa Medeiros, btw) before THE BAD LUCK WEDDING DRESS was published. The book took off, kept going back to press, and readers kept asking for Tye McBride's story.

So, after doing two unrelated historicals, I wrote THE BAD LUCK WEDDING CAKE. Again, I thought I was done with the Bad Luck, and I wrote a couple more books about a different family, the Ross's--SIMMER ALL NIGHT and SIZZLE ALL DAY. (I won't even mention the novella that muddies the water even more.) With these books I was moving from Texas-set historicals to England & Scotland settings, and I hoped to bring my McBride readers along with me. So, I gave the McBrides and the Rosses a minor family connection.

My big mistake was giving a Ross story a Bad Luck title, THE BAD LUCK WEDDING NIGHT. I'm forever trying to explain how the stories are all interrelated.

Then, after ten books, I was burnt out on historicals, and I wanted to do something different. I wrote three contemporaries.

Can you see I have career planning issues?

A couple years ago I found myself in the mood to write a historical again, and I mentioned that to my agent. She mentioned it to an editor she had lunch with, and all of a sudden I get an offer for four new Bad Luck books. Obviously, the editor was a Bad Luck fan, too.

I owned the rights to the original Bad Luck book, and HQN wanted to reissue THE BAD LUCK WEDDING DRESS, then have me write love stories for the three young girls in that book-- the McBride Menaces.

I loved this idea. I'd loved those characters and so had my readers. I jumped into the project and had a blast writing them. In this respect, the break from writing historicals was good for me. I came back to it with my creativity recharged.

The stories are a trilogy called The Bad Luck Brides. The first book is HER BODYGUARD, which is a June release. I'd love to post the cover here because it's gorgeous, but as a virgin blogger, I don't know how. Look on my website, would you, please? It's Mari's story, a good, old-fashioned western. The second book comes out in December and it's Kat's tory, HER SCOUNDREL. Emma's story--tentatively titled HER TEXAN--isn't scheduled yet, but I expect you'll see it sometime in 2007. Tah-dah! A series that finally makes sense.

Except, I left a Bad Luck book hanging in an Epilogue. Poor Melanie Ross was abducted from Emma McBride's first wedding and she's been hanging in limbo ever since. THE BAD LUCK WEDDING GUEST has yet to be written.

Remember, I'm the How Not To Write a Series poster child.

The good news is, HQN wants me to write The Good Luck Grooms to follow The Bad Luck Brides. I'm hoping to use THE BAD LUCK WEDDING GUEST to introduce the grooms, but I haven't mentioned that to my editor yet, so don't tell, okay?

And somewhere in here, I'm doing a new, small-town-Texas set contemporary series about four brothers.

I'm a busy writer. I'd go swim off my stress if I could face putting on my new bathing suit.