Where do you get your ideas?

The smart a$$ answer: Wal-Mart. The real answer: Everywhere. Twists on other books, movies or other stories, a funny lines of dialogue I overhear at the supermarket, news stories brainstorming, etc. RAZOR'S EDGE was based on a discussion/bet about how a heroine thinking a hero was gay would make for a lousy conflict (as what guy is gonna deliberately make the woman he likes think he's gay?). So I had to find a reason for him to perpetuate the myth. TRUST ME ON THIS was a mad scramble to find a new story idea. As it turns out, the height of this panic happened at SunCoast Video and I thought to myself… what about a vow of Celibacy?! A fellow who was with me said, “Um, Liz? What guy is going to do that just for kicks? He’d need a good reason.” I put down the box containing 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS and pondered this. “A BET!” I exclaimed. And the rest, as they say is history.
 

Would you use me as a character in one of your books?

You wouldn't like it if I tried. Trust me. My characters have flaws. You wouldn't want yours exposed.
 

Want to hear a what happened to me? I'll bet you can use it in your book.

Thank you, no. Reality is so much less interesting than the stories created from my head.
 

Don't all romances follow the same formula?

Only in that they have a beginning, middle and end and generally end happily ever after. Otherwise, the sky is the limit
 

How come, since you're winning all these contests, you aren't published yet?

Publishing is a very competitive business. There are 9000+ members of Romance Writers of America and only about 2000 Romance novels published a year. You do the math.
 

How long does it take you to write a book?

Depends. I've wrote the first draft of RAZOR'S EDGE in as little as six weeks. TRUST ME ON THIS has took me almost two years. (Mostly due to not planting my butt in my chair often enough, not because the amount of work has been that much harder.)
 

How many pages do you write a day?

Depends on how much time I have, how I feel, how much sleep I've gotten, how motivated I am and whether or not I'm under a deadline. (This is the biggest motivator for me). On a good morning, where I get up at 4:00 am have until 7:30 to write, have gotten a decent night's sleep, feel well and feel some pressure to get the thing done, I can easily write 10 pages. (Sometimes considerably more). I've taken to recording scenes on a digital audio recorder in the car, and that speeds up the process a lot. Then, most of my work at the computer is devoted to transcribing and editing. The largest number of pages I’ve written in one day WITHOUT a tape recorder is 32 or so. (But that was a 12+ hour day). I wrote 40 pages transcribed after a 2-hour road trip, each way.
 

What's the best part about being a writer?

The glamour of working in my pajamas.
 

What's the worst?

Trying to work when my characters are being persnickety and the words won't flow.
 

How do you research your sex scenes?

Carefully. ;)
 

Do you do try out all the sex-stuff in your books before writing it?

Do James Patterson or Jonathon Kellerman kill off a couple of people before putting pen to paper?
 

I'm sure I could write one of those books a month. After all, I've had a fairly… risqué past to draw from. It's not that hard is it?

Uh, yeah, it is. There's a lot more to a good romance than writing sex. The most love scenes I've ever had in a book has been four (in three different story lines), at an average length of 6-8 pages. Which means a max of 32 pages of sex in a 400 page manuscript. It doesn't take solving a quadratic equation to realize that there's a lot of other stuff happening in the story. Also, drawing on your own life can be risky. First, life is complicated and rarely makes sense in a linear book sense. Second, the people you might write about will not thank you.
 

How much research do you do for you books?

Depends on the book, and how much I know about the things that happen to the characters along the way. I’ll admit, research is pretty low on my list of fun things to do. If I can accomplish it with interviews, I will. If I know a guy who knows a guy, I’m usually willing to beg, plead and cry for an introduction. (Don’t knock it, I got to interview a Four Star  General for a WWII story I have in the works.)
 

Read Much? (this is usually asked when people step into my office and see my library which takes up my entire room.
               

Uh, Yeah! I’m a writer. That’s what we do.
 

How do you get an editor’s attention?

A query letter which tells her/him the nature of your story, what the hook is and a bit about why you’re qualified to write it. If she/he likes your premise, then she/he will ask to see a partial (usually a synopsis and first three chapters) though sometimes they’ll ask for the whole manuscript.