Squawk Radio

Kitty: This ought be different. I have actually partied with Ms Bevarly. In fact, I taught her some of her more choice expletives. Okay-trip down memory lane over. ON to the interview.Liz, babe, you have a book out entitled YOU'VE GOT MALE --but why did you stop at one, I want to know. Why not YOU'VE GOT MALES? And why haven't any of the squawkers asked me to do a memoir, YOU'VE HAD MALES. LOTS OF MALES? Okay. Sorry. Anyway this is a spy story, right, and I heard you got the idea for these spy books from your kid. How the hell did that happen? Is he a spy?

Liz: Kitty, please. If you wrote your memoirs about all the males you've had, it would take up more shelf space than the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. Just be satisfied with all those footnotes you have in all those biographies of Kennedy and Castro and the Rat Pack. And that mention you had in the coffee table book about Altamonte. And aren't you the stewed tomato Chef Boyardee mentioned in his memoirs not too long ago?But getting to MY book. Yes, my son is responsible for the whole spy series.

He came home from school one day a couple years ago, saying his best friend Chuckie had sworn his dad could hack into the computers of the Pentagon and the United Nations. I, of course, knew Chuckie's father worked for a local food production company as vice president in charge of Nutella or something. So I was reasonably sure my son's friend was yanking his chain and my son was, as usual, being as gullible as Kansas in August. Oh, wait, that's corny, isn't it? Kansas, I mean. Not this story.Um, where was I?Oh, yeah.

Anyway, after this little post-school exchange in my office, I went back to work on the book I was SUPPOSED to be writing. But my brain kept circling back to, "What if Chuckie's dad really CAN hack into the computers of the Pentagon and the United Nations, and this whole Nutella, life-in-the-suburbs thing is just a front?" Wherein I had to put aside my work-in-progress and write a new proposal instead. (I WASN'T procrastinating. I wasn't.)

Kitty: The heroine of this book holes up after being in the pen for a few years for doing no-nos on the computer. So she's...what? Agoraphobic? She gets panic attacks? And if so, why isn't she taking any drugs. I gotta say a few pharma- What? Oh. Okay.

Liz: My heroine Avery deals with her panic attacks by consuming large quantities of Johnnie Walker Black. So I couldn't very well have her taking Xanax, too, could I? I mean, Johnnie Black is a BLENDED Scotch. Those are much better suited to Zoloft. Xanax is for your single-malts.But yes, she does suffer from agoraphobia and panic attacks, which was actually interesting to write about, as I used to suffer from panic attacks myself. It was almost an exorcistic experience writing about a character having one. Took a lot of the power out of those suckers for me. Kind of purging. Not like Connie's recent Golytely experience, but still cleansing in its own non-colonic way.

Kitty: There's a secondary romance in here that features an older woman/younger man. Cool and I am totally into that. But some of the other squawkers claim this isn't the result of forward thinking but on account of you're going through menopause. Which is it?

Liz: Definitely the latter. I don't think forward. I think in a more circular pattern. Kind of like spaghetti. No, the whole pushing forty woman with the twenty-five year old blond, ripped Adonis in a Speedo was, without question, hormonal in its genesis. And also kind of orgasmic, you want to know the truth.

Kitty: I'm hearing rumors that you're going the romantic suspense route now. That true?

Liz: I am mystified by all the reviews that have called this book romantic suspense. It's about as suspenseful as a job being vice president of Nutella. I write romantic comedy which I hope is grounded in emotion. People should be having fun reading me. If they're on the edge of their seats reading me, it means they need to take a bathroom break.

Kitty: You write about rich people a lot. Why is that? Is it wishful thinking orhave you been holding out on us every time you can't pay the tab at lunch?

Liz: I wouldn't say it's wishful thinking so much as it is unmitigated denial. I live in a very middle class neighborhood now, just as I did when I was growing up. But I often daydream about the Publishers Clearinghouse people knocking on my door. (To tell me something other than that my books have shown up in their Clearinghouse, I mean.) A big part of writing for a living is watching your bank account shrink while you're frantically trying to finish a book so you can get paid. And then watching your account shrink some more while you wait for your editor to read the book and release payment. And then watching it shrivel up and gasp for pennies as you wait for the paperwork to go through. Like any writer, I crave financial stability. Like any writer, it ain't gonna happen. So I like to move into palatial Hamptons estates with my characters and pretend their bank accounts are my own. It saves on the Johnnie Black and Zoloft bills.

Kitty: And the fact that your heroine is estranged from her family. Is that wishful thinking, too?

Liz: C'mon, Kitty. You've met my family. That time we partied together was at my cousin Mindy's wedding. Remember? She was the one who HAD to have a halter wedding dress so everyone could see her tattoo? So, yeah, okay, maybe I do some vicarious living through my characters' well-dressed and gainfully employed relatives.

Sue me.

Kitty: This book is number two in a series. Is this the first time you've done linked books? When will we see the next one?

Liz: I've written series for Silhouette Desire, but never in single-title contemporary until now. YOU'VE GOT MALE picks up where JUST LIKE A MAN left off. (And yes, I did get all the angry e-mail from readers about the bad guy getting away at the end of that book. I just, you know, blew it off. Here's a hint. There are two more books in the series after this one. 'Nuff said.)

The hero of YOU'VE GOT MALE made a very brief appearance at the end of JUST LIKE A MAN, and we learn more about Tiffannee the spy from that book in YOU'VE GOT MALE, too. (And yes, she shows up again in later books.) The next in the series is titled EXPRESS MALE and will be out in June '06. (Provided I mail it to my editor today, I mean.)

Kitty: Quelle kewl. Finally, fact or fiction: That pub photo in the back is actually from your seventhgrade yearbook.

Liz: Are you kidding? I looked A LOT better in seventh grade than I do in that pub photo. And hell, I was wearing Qiana and had Farrah bangs in my seventh grade picture. But somehow HQN pulled a grainy fifteen-year-old b/w photo out of the files and used it instead of the shiny new color one I sent. On the up side, I had A LOT more hair then. On the down side, those earrings are an affront to humankind.