Today, I’m discussing one of the few series I’ve ever done featuring characters in a contemporary setting. Once I discovered how much fun Regencies were, I stopped writing contemporaries, though I did originally have more contemporaries in mind.

With This Ring I Thee Dread

1. I wrote this after I wrote Falling In Love With Her Husband, An Inconvenient Marriage, and Eye of the Beholder in 2008. I thought I’d take a break from historicals and try something contemporary.

2. One of the bases my husband and I were stationed at while in the military was in Alaska, and I really enjoyed the three years we spent there. Since I wanted to go back (and physically couldn’t due to us being stationed in Nebraska at the time), I decided to make Alaska the focal point of this book. That was my way of revisiting the state.

3. In my head, the song that Ryan and Jacob used for their Intensity cologne commercial was “That’s the Way” by the Spin Doctors.

4. I decided Elizabeth would be an occupational psychologist because I found out about that division in Psychology while getting my degree. Had I pursued Psychology, though, I would have done Counseling. My real dream was to write books and be a stay-at-home mom. I went to college because, at the time, I didn’t know anyone who was going to give me the MRS degree. 😉

5. The idea for the bear was based on the many nightmares my husband had while in Alaska that a bear would find its way into our bathroom.

6. I decided to do a “man and woman switching roles” setup because one of my favorite I Love Lucy episodes was when Lucy and Ethel switched roles with Ricky and Fred.

What Nathan Wants Trivia

1. The cover was done by Bonnie Steffens, a very lovely person I’ve had the fortune of meeting.

2. At the time I wrote this book, I was living just south of Omaha. I used to go by a large building when I drove to downtown Omaha. I don’t remember what this business was, but I liked the look of the building so much that I decided to make it the building where Nathan worked.

3. I picked a travel agent for Amy’s occupation because of the kind travel agents who helped me find reasonably priced tickets when I used to fly twice a year from North Dakota to Florida to visit my family.

4. I picked the Florida panhandle as the location for Amy’s family because I lived there for a few years (high school and college) and was familiar with the area. I went to the Emerald Coast beaches quite a bit in the past. While Florida is beautiful, I don’t miss the hurricanes at all. I’ve been through two, and that’s enough. I’d rather deal with snow.

5. Amy’s car is named after my favorite cartoon dog of all time: Snoopy.

6. Danielle is named after a good friend I had in high school. She and Amy share the kind of friendship we did, which brings me good memories even to this day.

Just Good Friends

1. I wrote this a few years after finishing up With This Ring I Thee Dread and What Nathan Wants. One day while I was going over What Nathan Wants, I thought that I needed to just sit down and write Tyler’s romance.

2. One of my readers at the time wanted to see Tyler in a scene at a pool where it turned out he had a lot of muscles, thereby shocking everyone since he came off as a nerd with his clothes on. So that’s why I added the pool scene.

3. I opted for the plot where Tyler and Tiffany pretended to be married because of a book I had read years earlier. While portions of the book were cute, the author kept going on and on about how wrong lying was, and this got to be annoying by the ¾ point where I stopped reading it. I liked the plot and decided to run with it, but I wrote it from the angle I wished the other book had gone. (Quite a few stories I write are inspired by the “I wish a book or movie had gone this way instead” idea.)

4. The dynamics within Tiffany’s family were partly inspired by real life on my husband’s side.

5.  I opted for the elopement because my husband and I had debated whether to run off to Las Vegas to elope or have a courthouse wedding. In the end, we went with the courthouse, but, looking back, I wish we had just eloped since it would have been a lot more fun.

6. I decided to set this book around Christmas since I hadn’t done a Christmas romance up to that point. I thought it’d be fun to do something different.