Random, wierd facts:

I hate having my achilles tendon touched, and have this creepy nightmarish fear that it will one day be severed.

I've been shot at. (OK, sort of. What happened was, some friends and I were out one night, and decided to go to Zombie Road, which was just this private road with a wierd name. But technically we were trespassing, and I guess the guy who lived there didn't want us there, so we heard shots. I doubt they were actually aimed at us. But I ran faster that night than I ever thought I could.)

I have two tattoos, one on my shoulder that I like, and one on my ankle that I don't.

I'm afraid of flying and hate, hate, hate to do it.

But I love to drive.

I never wear pink.

A couple of years ago now (I believe-I'm getting old and my memory isn't as good as it once was. Still better than my husband's, though. Ha!) the RWR-the Romance Writer's Report, the magazine put out by Romance Writers of America-ran a story on collages.

Apparently, there are many, many writers out there who make collages before they start a book. They use images from magazines and stuff to give them an idea of what the books's about. Then they look at it when they're working.

Or some of them do it after they've finished, to commemorate the work. (I get drunk. But that's another section.)

I don't do this. Nor do I pick pictures of models to know what my characters look like-I know what they look like, and while they may be of a certain "type", they don't look like models, movie stars, or professional sports players.

I listen to music.

I pick songs that have the feel of the book. Or that make me think of my characters, or that make me think of characters in the first place. If I'm having trouble with characterization, just listening to these songs makes everything much clearer.

For example, my hero in The Black Dragon was "Paint It, Black" by the Rolling Stones. Whenever I was in danger of making him come off too soft or funny, I just remembered that kickass opening and those lonely, angry lyrics. If what he was doing didn't sound enough like that, I pulled him back. (Not that he wasn't funny, he was. And not that he didn't have vulnerabilities, he did. But the difference was in making them obvious-telling, or in keeping them hidden where they could boil under his big manly surface and emerge as lustful violence. Showing. Keeping the music in my head reminded me to be subtle.)

I'm posting some random songs around here, and later hopefully I'll do some total playlists for each book.