“Promise.” Birger’s normally robust voice was reduced to a whisper, barely audible over the hum of the oxygen concentrator-compressor combo.

Maeve couldn’t hear the weakness, she wouldn’t hear it. This was Birger, strong, invincible, going-to-live forever Birger.

“No need. The reading doesn’t happen ’til you’re dead and you’re not dying anytime soon, so give it a rest. ” Maeve paced the master bedroom, her heels clicking decisively against the hardwood floor, her hands gripped tightly behind her back.

Blue eyes flicked back and forth, watching her.

“Englebarn.”

Englebarn, he always called her that. He was the only person who did. She didn’t even know what that blasted endearment meant because he wouldn’t tell her.

‘Course she didn’t really have to know. The caring in the word was powerful enough to sway decisions. It wasn’t fair of him to use it now.

“I’m not listening.” She gave him her best glare, one that would have incinerated any other man into a heap of ash. The old fart merely smiled.

“Englebarn.” He straightened his frail body, preventing himself from sliding off the bed.

Her lips twisted. Stubborn fool. “Let me do that.” She grabbed the stark white pillow and gave the stuffing a few angry thumps before slipping it back behind Birger’s gray head.

“Thank.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m not done with you.” She sat back down on the side of the bed, trying not to notice that there was plenty of space, and picked up the small plastic jar on the antique bedside table.

“Not.” Birger feigned a grimace.

“Yeah, the ointment.” Maeve smoothed the lotion onto her palms, rubbing her hands together, the friction raising the temperature. “It might stink but it works. Deal with it.” Though the doctor had doubts about its powers, she was convinced the massages made a difference.

There was only the sound of the machines and her friend’s ragged breathing as Maeve rubbed her lubricated fingers over his chest. Blast it, he was getting thin, disappearing right in front of her.

“You have to eat more,” she grumbled. “Tomorrow I’ll make you some fish cakes, the family recipe, just the way you taught me with warm potato salad and remoulade sauce. You know you’ll like that.”

“Not.”

Maeve’s eyes narrowed. “Not another word, Birger Rayner. I don’t want to hear about it.”

Her obstinate friend wasn’t giving up. “Must accept.”

She fought the urge to pinch him, hard. “I don’t have to accept anything; especially not you talking nonsense ’til my ears bleed.”

***

Maeve, my heroine in Invisible, is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve ever met. When I say that, usually non-writing buddies look at me strange. The thing is, for me, writing is like dreaming. The characters may come from my brain, but I have no control over them. I don’t know what will happen next or whom else I’ll meet as I follow them around. I try to steer them in the ‘right’ direction but often they’ll do their own thing.

And sometimes they’ll keep secrets.

Maeve is one of those characters. I’ve received a lot of reader emails asking about her past. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answers. I know. I know. It is frustrating for me also. She doesn’t talk, keeping herself in shadows.

I was hoping when I wrote Tavos’ story, Maeve’s knife wielding vigilante friend, this past summer, some of those mysteries would be solved. Nope. If anything, I have even more questions.

Ahhh well, there’s always Nikolay’s book.

Then I started thinking about Invisible, my latest contemporary treasure hunt novel, and I got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I have organized crime in Las Vegas and (wincing) basic lawlessness in the wilds of Belize.

It is ironic as I truly love both places. Even though I’m not a gambler (other than in business), I travel to Las Vegas at least once a year. I’d go there every month if my schedule allowed (it is a five hour flight). Belize is one of the most wonderful countries on the face of the planet. It is a tropical paradise filled with friendly, helpful people.

My familiarity and passion for both locals is why I partially set my novel there. It is easy for me to describe a place I love and visit often. I know the smell (every city has its own smell). I know the sights (not simply the touristy places). I have my own photos to source from, to jog my memory.

However, bad things happen in my novels. Very bad things. These bad things could happen anywhere. I lived once in a sleepy little town of 3,000 people and we had organized crime. Go out in the country anywhere and you’ll find residents living by their own rules (my niece is 8 and has driven a car).

But because Invisible is set in specific cities, I worry that these crimes will be associated with those places. Although Las Vegas really does have ties to the mob, most of the residents are law-abiding folks. Belize has had its issues (no country is crime-free) but a holiday there is as safe as anywhere.

What do you think? Does a fictional crime influence your perception of the city or country?

$

Kimber Chin writes sexy contemporary romances set all over the world. She loves to travel (with her hubby). She also loves the look of a man in a great fitting suit. She combines these two loves with a weekly photo of a man (usually international) in a suit on her site http://businessromance.com/. She is also an avid romance reader and gives away her favorite romance eRead every month.

Until one day, I was yapping with one of my best buds in the whole world, a cracker jack business gal. “Have you ever worked for a sane CEO?” I asked her. This question had been bugging me for weeks.

“I wish.” She fished the ice cubes out of her glass of water. “I’d settle for semi-rational.”

“Then why are all the business people in romance novels so boring?” Other than risking lawsuits by sleeping with their virgin secretaries, that is. I couldn’t understand it.

“Because it’s fantasy?” she suggested as she lined up her silverware perfectly straight.

‘Well, dang it,” I decided, “I’m going to write about normal business people.” Which meant, of course, I’d be writing about the insane.

So I have. I started out with the semi-normal. In Breach Of Trust, Philippe Lamont is a venture capitalist with a bit of a Napoleon complex, not that he’d ever admit to that. With Invisible, I’ve branched out to a woman making her living by hiding people. She’s so severely broken that any psychiatrist would love to lend her his couch. Hagen, the hero, has verbal diarrhea, great for his role as an auction house owner but deadly in the secretive world of hidden identities.

It has been a lot of fun but what is especially amusing is when readers comment on my imagination. Yes, of course, it is made up, because we all know business folks are boring. (wink, wink)

Every month, I give away a favorite romance eBook (no, not mine) on http://businessromance.com/ . Every week, I share a short story and a photo of a man in a great fitting suit. Why? Because men in suits are smokin’ hot!

But it looks like the fun is only starting.  You have a happening post coming up on the 21^st, sure to get the old brain cells moving (dancing in their daytime pajamas). 

I’ll be back to lurking.  Well, not being completely silent.  I think that is impossible. 

I always have a new free story on my blog  http://businessromance.com/ every Wednesday (I love backstory and the story posts allow me to indulge) and a photo of a man in a business suit every Monday (I hunted down some hot, hot, HOT European men on my latest trip, got them in their natural environments like eating gelato in Rome or downing a pint in London).  If we’re going to love businessmen, it is nice to keep them in the current styles.  I have my hubby knotting his tie in a square as is the latest fashion overseas.

Time to change into the nighttime pajamas.  Oh and shake my bootie as I’m hearing Madonna’s Four Minutes on the radio.

Why?

Because I have a history of setting goals and achieving them.  Despite huge odds.  Despite multiple failures.  I’m one of those pig-headed gals who stick with things until she achieves them.  Sure, I’ve never been successful at the first go of anything.  Never.  I no longer expect instant success.  I know I will have to try and try again, pushing past failures (some of them downright embarrassing).  However, I do eventually get there. 

So no one was surprised when I achieved my goal.  They were surprised when I made writing romance my goal though.  It made no financial sense (dollars usually a quick measurement of value added in the business world).  There aren’t many  (if any) authors on the Forbes 400 list.  In contrast, there are many businessfolks (btw, a billion in net worth won’t put you there, nope, you need more than that).  But once I explained the mentorship part of the equation, business friends got it and my business blogging buddies have become some of my biggest supporters. 

As for the future, I plan to plug away, writing a novel and novella a year.  I told the hubby I’d re-evaluate the writing thing after 5 novels.  If I’m on schedule, that’s 2012.  I might bump it up a year to 2011 ’cause that’ll be my 40^th birthday.  I usually do a massive overhaul of my business and financial plans on big birthdays like that.  Keeps it fresh.    

Would I write something other than contemporary romances set in the business world?  Likely not.  I love business.  I hang with execs and entrepreneurs and other businesspeople.  I’m married to a businessman (a salesguy).  I read business.  I watch it.  I play in it.  I don’t think I could write a non-businessperson’s POV.  Business is a part of me.  It is a part of my characters.     

It is also what makes me unique.  I can’t write Medieval Romances better than Margaret Moore.  I can’t write werewolves better than Kelley Armstrong.  I can’t write Sci Fi/Fantasy better than Ciara Gold.  And I don’t want to.  They’re doing a great job.  They have happy readers.  They don’t need me in the mix.   

But I do think there are some readers out there, in the business world, wanting more realistic business heroes and heroines.  That’s what I offer to the community.     

This confuses me because I visualize my books.  I close my eyes, watch the story like I would a movie and then write down what I see.  I don’t write down EVERYTHING I see.  That would be boring for the reader and, well, the longest romance novel ever.  You don’t need to know the color of the restaurant tablecloth, do you?  Unless the heroine ends up wearing it?  Nah.  I didn’t think so.

My characters are usually not ‘real’ people either.  Maybe somewhere, someplace, I glimpsed them but I can’t recall.  Philippe Lamont in Breach Of Trust looks sort of like Jake Gyllenhaal.  Anne James looks like, yikes, she’s a tough one, Natalie Portman’s plainer sister (if she has one)?  I guess that’s why I prefer not to have faces on my covers.  There is no way the character is going to look like what I have in my brain. 

Now, you’d think that with me visualizing the story, my novels would be an easy adaptation for screen.  Nope.  What I love about romance is how much of the true ‘action’ happens in the characters’ heads.  In Invisible, my heroine doesn’t do much talking at all.  She is the keeper of secrets (including her own) and that is easier done if she doesn’t yap much.    

Am I a plotter or a pantser?

I’m a project gal so I definitely lean more to plotting.  Before I start, I have my characters drafted out and a basic chapter by chapter guideline.  Nothing too detailed. 

Why?

Because my characters are pretty dang opinionated about what they want to do and say.  I tried to update Anne’s musical tastes in Breach Of Trust to something more modern.  I love many of the songs playing on the radio right now (I have such a weakness for Timbaland’s unique sound that some buddies call me Kimberland).  Nope.  Nothing doing.  She insists on listening to 80’s pop songs like Karma Chameleon.  My dear, delightful, tone deaf heroine.

So when they pull a stunt like that, I have to change my guidelines.  Not a simple task as a small change in the Chapter One creates ripples throughout the novel.

On the topic of music, the one thing I can’t live without while writing (besides the internet ’cause I research as I go) is music.  It sets the rhythm and pacing for the novel.  Breach Of Trust was clearly country, despite Anne’s love for 80’s pop.  Most romance novels I would say are country. 

Not Invisible though.  Invisible had an angsty Green Day feel  (actually more Billy Talent – songs like Surrender or Fallen Leaves).  A very fast, angry beat.

The novel I’m writing right now is the same.  A good thing as it is the sequel to Invisible.

I also like to write in daytime pajamas.  They are very much like nighttime pajamas except in ‘respectable’ checks and solids instead of Winnie-The-Pooh and what the hubby calls Drinking Dogs (dogs drinking martinis).  That allows me to go to the grocery store to get vats of Nutella without comments from the neighbors.   

*
I now live in a city so large it takes me 2 hours by bus to get downtown and I’m not that deep in the ‘burbs (though we do have deer in the backyard from time to time).  Once I venture beyond my tight little neighborhood, I am practically invisible.  Practically.  Not truly like some people seem to think (I SEE you bus riding, toenail clippers!).
*

The personalities of the people living in the two places are very different.  Their daily routines are different.  How they relate to others is different. 
*

In my first novel Breach Of Trust, Anne and Philippe had to live in a big city.  Why?  Because Anne wouldn’t have been able to keep her identity secret in a small town.  One of my dear ol’ Aunties not only would have told Philippe what Anne was up to but also shared with him her weight, her romantic history, and what she had for breakfast.  I don’t know how they know these things.  They simply do.
*

As a reader, I have a preference.  I like urban tales (usually set in Regency England).  I’ve mucked out enough barns in my life not to find the country that romantic.  I hear about herds of cows and think ‘that’s a lot of shoveling.’ 
*

Where do you prefer your romances to be set?  In the country or in the city?  And why? 

*

My love of travel is one of the reasons I love romance novels.  When I don’t have time to physically travel, I can mentally travel.  Both in space and time. 

*

If I want to visit Hyde Park again, I can go there with Harriet and Gideon in Amanda Quick’s Ravished (who can forget that scene with Harriet on her petite Arabian and Gideon on one of his massive horses?).  Bermuda is the hot, hot, hot location for Wylie Kinson’s Law Of Averages.  When I’m in the mood for cowboys, I visit Texas in Michele Ann Young’s Satin And Snakeskin. 

*

And I can do all this in my pajamas (I could do an entire post on my love of pajamas, daytime pajamas and nighttime pajamas).  How great is that?  Awesome possum!
*

For my own writing, I always base my stories on places I’ve been to.  Breach Of Trust is set in L.A., a natural to highlight Anne’s plain Jane looks (btw… every Jane I know is fab, not plain).  Invisible, coming out in February, travels from Chicago (Taste of Chicago, a must see), to Phoenix, Vegas, Pittsburgh, Belize, and (almost) Turkey.  Each place has its own distinct personality.
*

It’ll be a few weeks before I can physically travel again (’cause I do have to catch up with my businesses and I’ll admit to desperately missing my own house).  What books do you recommend I read to fill in the gap?

 
Romance authors sometimes get flack for the love at first sight phenom.  I understand.  Sixteen years ago, I was one of the people making a fuss.  I didn’t believe in it.  It was a fairy tale.  A Disney manufactured experience. 

 
Then a certain alpha male walked in the room, with his king-of-the-world swagger and downright arrogant expression, and boom, I was a believer.  Sure, it took him five more years to convince me to marry him (my heart was willing, my head said ‘whoa Nelly’) but I was his before we even talked (i.e. before I cut him down to a more manageable size).  He tells me it was the same for him.  We simply fit.

 
However, it wasn’t only the physical attraction making our relationship work.  Certain things about him impressed me.  He, despite working three jobs, drove an older car in good repair.  What did this mean?  He kept things.  Good for me as I’m now an older gal in not that great repair (grinning).  He had friends since grade school.  He had a double major and a minor in three very different fields (sign of a curious mind).  He was close to his family.  Even his enemies (and every alpha male has them) didn’t have terrible things to say about him. 

 
And that’s what I try to give to my heroes and heroines.  I find them instant attraction but to significant others they can grow with.  I hope that readers will finish my novels and think ‘those two crazy kids are going to make it.’

 
I don’t write fantasy (although the events and characters are clearly fictional).  I can’t have the executive assistant falling in love with the CEO.  I often joke that those novels should be titled ‘The CEO’s Virgin Secretary And The Impending Lawsuit.’  Seriously ’cause all people involved in that relationship would likely get fired in real life.  Getting fired and then sued (and rightly so as the couple is literally screwing around on the shareholders’ dollars) is SO not sexy.

 
Most Fortune 500 companies have anti-fraternization clauses for execs and senior managers (if not everyone).  These clauses state that execs can’t date anyone working within the company.  Even if there are no official rules, the manager’s creed says that thou shall not fish in the company pond.  Getting caught doing so will make you unemployable (the business world is very small and extremely chatty).

 
It is also a strong statement on ethics.  I don’t consider using a role at work to help land a bed partner a heroic move.  The executive assistant turning down her boss’s advances is risking losing her job.  If the hero truly cared for her, he would never put her in that position. 

 
Then there is the imbalance of power.  Is the executive assistant (in the fairy tale romances, usually less educated, coming from the wrong side of the tracks) truly going to feel the equal of a CEO?  Especially when her day job is to do the bidding of the exec?  When push comes to shove (and alphas like to mentally push, it is a trait we’re known for), wouldn’t she back down?  Much to the disappointment of the hero? 

 
Yeah, difficulties all around in drafting the hero/heroine relationship.  In Breach Of Trust, the relationship between Anne and Philippe isn’t as clearly ‘wrong’.  Sure, she works for him on a temporary basis but more in a consulting role and as equals.  Even this causes big, big problems at work.  As it would and should. 

 
But then Philippe, as a venture capitalist, is a bit of a cowboy anyway.  A business rebel to his heart and that’s one reason Anne is attracted to him.  He isn’t afraid to break some rules.

Now, I know I have an original reason for reading romance but I can’t be the only one.  What is your reason?