Carole: Oh yes, you ladies are going to be totally blown away by this story. Because I know you guys just love sexy stories. Ahhh, EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON, I guarantee you, you will love it.

Heather: When did EAST OF THE SUN, WEST OF THE MOON come out?

Carole: It came out July 18th.

Heather: EOSWOM was another fast paced, emotional read. I always find myself so very engrossed in your characters. I think one of the things I like most about your books is that you give the secondary characters so much depth, yet you manage not to detract from the main story or main characters. Do you plan for these secondary characters to play such large roles, or do they just sort of take over at times?

Carole: Yes, they do kind of just take over and evolve in a way that almost seems magical to me. That's when the writing is going well, of course. The characters just take on a life of their own, and that makes my job so much easier. I love it when that happens!

Heather: EOSWOM is your steamiest book to date. I know that I enjoyed the heat of this book, and the RBL ladies will too. But we also want a great story with our steam - you deliver that as well. Do you plan to keep the steam rising in your future books?

Carole: You know, I think that's something that's just going to have to be decided on a book-to-book basis. EOSWOM really required that steam because of the situation. Readers had to understand just how intense Leigh's feelings were for Erik, and the sex - even though it wasn't just sex - was a very important part of their relationship. Leigh had never had a sexual relationship like that before. In fact, she'd been horribly neglected in that area, so when Erik came along - and I tried to write it so that it had to be Erik and not just any old guy - she was swept away by him and their passion. Therefore, the sex had to be hot, and incredibly intense. Not every book will require that. If you put it in, and it doesn't really fit the book, it's gratuitous. I don't like that, and I can't force it if the book doesn't require it. In UNDERSTUDY, there are a few steamy scenes, but nothing as intense as in EOSWOM.

Heather: Ah, but once again, you are stepping outside the boundaries here.

Carole: Oh yeah, yeah, we�re talking about adultery. I don�t know, maybe I have a death wish. I only want to tackle the things people say, "No, don�t do it." But I�ll tell you what, the reviews have been overwhelmingly wonderful.

Heather: Your other two books, BORDER CROSSINGS and SPOTLIGHT, are linked because two secondary characters from BORDER CROSSINGS get their own book in SPOTLIGHT. Any chance you plan to revisit any characters in EOSWOM in any of your future books?

Carole: Haven't really thought about it, but it's an interesting idea. The question is ... who? Hmmm. The only characters I think I'd be interested in writing about again are Leigh and Erik, but then I'd have to break them up and bring them together again. Or ... here's an idea. I like Mags. Maybe he could be the hero in a future novel. Mags and Melissa. Hmmm ... interesting.

Heather: What are you working on right now?

Carole: I�m currently working on my FIFth book, TANGO'S EDGE. I�ve got the prologue done, chapter one, and I�ve started chapter two and chapter three because I�m jumping around between characters. I haven�t finished chapter two yet.

Heather: Do you do an outline or anything?

Carole: Yeah, I do. I have to; it�s kind of a security blanket. Just to know it�s there, but I haven�t even looked at it since I started writing this book.

Heather: So can you tell us what this one�s about? Are you allowed to say?

Carole: A little bit - it�s not completely fleshed out yet, but it starts in Calgary (Canada), in 1988, with the Winter Olympics. My heroine is an ice dancer, and she�s been watching this Soviet couple ice dancing, and he�s really quite attractive and she�s been watching them, and likes the way they move together. When the prologue is starting, it�s early morning and she�s out practicing, doing her own training and he shows up and they start training together. Then he asks her if she will help him defect from Russia. So it�s going to be one of these chase things, where she�s helping him defect from his country and they�re on the run. It�s going to end up over in Estonia, where he�s from, and in Northern Finland and Norway. So it�s going to be a thriller I think.

Heather: You write really different storylines.

Carole: I know.

Heather: Why do you do that? Because the topic interests you?

Carole: I don�t know. I just get the idea and it has some resonance with me and I just want to go with it. So I don�t know, that may be a real problem with my career, you know - jumping around with such different things. The books are kind of different. Like my first two books were romantic suspense types, and then EOSWOM is more straight women�s fiction/contemporary romance. UNDERSTUDY, that one my editor has, is more a psychological suspense, and then this one would be romantic suspense again. But you know, I just don�t like labels, I just want to write a good book. A book that�s readable and has a good pace, a page-turner, that�s my only ambition when I write a book.

Heather: Your books ARE page-turners. That�s one thing I noticed when reading your books. You write about the characters, you write about their emotions, and you write about what�s happening at the moment, but you don�t dwell on it, you hit it and quit it, you give me the information I need for the story to progress, and then you move on. So I don�t have a chance to get bogged down in detail. I like for the story to keep moving.

Carole: That�s what I like, too. That�s what I like to read, so that�s what I like to write.

Heather: You know, I don�t mind that you write such different types of books - I guess we�ll just never know what to expect from you next.

Carole: That�s what people have told me. I don�t know, you know I take it as a compliment, but I just don�t know if the publishing world takes it as a compliment.

Heather: How do you feel about that?

Carole: Well, what I hope is that readers will read my books and say, "Okay, the style remains the same no matter what the book is about." So if people like my style, the kind of visual, quick, moving along kind of thing, then they know that�s what they�re going to get from me, with every book, no matter what the book is about. I don�t want to get bored with my writing, so the ideas I get ... I have to know that they are going to keep me involved throughout a year of writing, because it takes me about a year to write a book. I know if I get that feeling, like I have that feeling right now about this book, then I know that this is a book I�m really going to get involved in, with the characters and the story. I just hope that I can create a kind of readership that will always want to read my books because they know they�re going to get a good read, not because of the particular genre.

Heather: Well, I really enjoyed your first two books, BORDER CROSSINGS and SPOTLIGHT, which both deal with issues in Ireland. EOSWOM has nothing to do with Ireland - why?

Carole: You know, I�m very passionate about Ireland, and I�m very happy that my first books dealt with a very serious issue, but I don�t ever want to be typecast as to say, "Hey, she writes Irish books."

Heather: In your first book, BORDER CROSSINGS, you introduce secondary characters Fonda and Devin. When you wrote that book, did you know you were going to write their book (SPOTLIGHT)?

Carole: Um, okay, confession time. SPOTLIGHT was written before BORDER CROSSINGS! I got the idea for SPOTLIGHT, believe it or not, with a dream. A very, very vivid dream about an Irish rock star, and of course, at the time I was really into U2 - that is my favorite band - and Bono and all that. I�m sure that dream was sparked by that. But in that dream - something that very rarely happens - the dream was a whole story. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. I woke up knowing I had to write this book. It was so cool when that happened, because sometimes you just get little ideas and you have to spend so much time filling in the blanks, but that whole story came to me in a dream.

So when I wrote that, I had no idea that Kathy and Pearse (BORDER CROSSINGS) and all of them were alive. That came later. I was so into SPOTLIGHT, this whole story about Ireland, although most of the story took place in America. That is what sparked the idea of doing a story in Ireland about the actual troubles, about an American woman who moves over there, and why she would move there.

Heather: What prompted you to get into the whole Irish thing?

Carole: Well, there were a lot of things, but I really think it was listening to the lyrics of U2 music - like "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" - and it just touched something in me. It made me want to read about Ireland. So I just started reading everything I could about Ireland. Of course, that is my heritage, so I was interested in that.

Heather: Have you received mail from fans about that topic?

Carole: Yes, I have. One of the best compliments I received was from someone who said, "Now that I�ve read your books I now understand the situation there. I could never understand it before." I think it�s really important, although we write to entertain, but I don�t think there�s anything wrong with having someone read something, and cause them to think about some things and be interested in what�s going on in other parts of the world and maybe read more on the subject. A lot of people have said, after reading my books, they�ve gone out and looked for non-fiction books about Ireland. That is a great compliment to a writer - you know you�ve inspired them to look into a situation and discover more about it. You can�t ask for more than that. Amazingly enough, I have not received anything negative.

Heather: You know, I wondered if you had received any negative mail. But then I thought, in both books, you really present a balance of issues from both sides, and you pretty much leave it to the reader to decide which side is right or wrong. But I have to wonder if anyone had any serious negative thoughts about either side of the subject.

Carole: Yes, I wondered that too. When I was living in Hawaii, I was a member of the RWA Chapter, and there was an author there, Penelopi Neri, she writes historical romance. I didn�t know her really well, but I met her at one of the meetings, and she was really very nice, and she was British, moved to Hawaii when she married an American. I found out she had started a romance group, and I sent her a copy of BORDER CROSSINGS and asked her if she would read it and recommend it. Totally forgot she was British, and she read it, and I thought, "Oh my God, she probably hated it," but she didn�t. She read it and said, "Even though I�m British, I really identified with the characters." Well, that was really good, to get that feedback, coming from her. I tried to be balanced because I don�t believe there is a right or a wrong. Everybody has bad people in certain societies.

When I wrote SPOTLIGHT, in an earlier version of it, I really went into Devin�s life in Derry. But in the published version, it jumps right from his life at 10 years old, in the prologue, to chapter one, where he�s already made it as a rising rock star and is living in America. So there�s all this childhood portion that you didn�t get. But in the earlier version, I had actually gone further with it. There was a scene when he�s about 15, where the soldiers come into his home and ransack it, and I remember somebody reading it and saying that I made the British too evil, too mean, too one dimensional. So I decided to take out that whole section. I didn�t feel like it was that necessary for the book. I mean, it had a lot to do with his character, but I felt I could do that better using flashbacks or retrospection.

Heather: Let�s talk more about BORDER CROSSINGS. Some people would say that it�s not a romance, yet I felt it told the ultimate love story. It�s more than just about the love of a man and a woman; it�s about a man and a woman, his family, his children, and even his country. What do you think about this?

Carole: Well, I don�t think it is a romance. It is fiction and it�s shelved in the fiction section of the bookstore. I do, however, think it is a love story. That�s why I entered it in the RITA. I knew there was a very big chance it would be disqualified saying it wasn�t a romance, but I thought if I was lucky, if it hit certain judges, it would do well, and I was lucky with BORDER CROSSINGS. But I know a lot of people would not consider it a romance.

I call myself a romance writer because I belong to RWA, and it�s a good organization to belong to, and I enjoy what they have to offer in their conferences and all that. But what I write is commercial women�s fiction. So all I can say to that is, if you�re looking for romance and you don�t read anything that crosses that, then BORDER CROSSINGS might not be the book that appeals to most people. But if you�re looking for a good emotional story then BORDER CROSSINGS fits that bill. So it�s not going to be for everyone. I think there�s a lot of graphic stuff in it that might disturb some readers, but I think they could tell that by reading the inside flap. Because you know if you�re going to be reading a story about the troubles in Northern Ireland, there�s going to be some pretty strong stuff in it.

Some people will only read new age, fantasy, or science fiction - they want to be totally transported out of this world. I like my fiction grounded in reality, because I like to write about ordinary people in extraordinary situations. That�s just what appeals to me. Also, I write for the Confession magazines - I�ve been doing that for years, just to make some extra money, and I get a lot of my ideas just from the newspaper. Just basic ideas that I expand upon that I get for the Confession. So that�s what I say about my style - it�s always the same with the same pace, and people who don�t like reality-based fiction probably won�t like my stuff. Although I think SPOTLIGHT is more of a romance. But you know, I think if a romance reader reads outside the genre, I think my books would appeal to them because they still contain the romance element they may be looking for as well as some reality-based fiction that I know they would enjoy.

Heather: You had mentioned to me once before that BORDER CROSSINGS had been optioned for a movie, and then it was dropped. Have you heard anything further about it?

Carole: No, not recently. Last thing I heard, about a year ago, from the same producer who had optioned it the first time and then the option ran out, and they didn�t renew it, but he was still interested. The actress, Kim Delaney, had expressed some interest, and she just had to work it into her schedule, but I haven�t heard anything else.

Heather: You and I had talked about that before, and then after reading BORDER CROSSINGS I did think it would be a good movie.

Carole: Yeah, you know Hollywood is just so up and down. They get real excited about something and then it gets dropped. I went to Harpers Ferry last April - I went to a screenwriting talk, and this woman named Kathie Fong Yoneda - she is a script consultant and development person at Paramount - was talking about this Monterey Script Festival. I had entered BORDER CROSSINGS in that competition, back in 1997, and it came in second or third place. But anyway, I was just listening and heard her mention this festival she said she worked with and I thought, "Wait a minute, I remember getting a script analysis from her." So I went up and introduced myself to her afterwards, and her eyes lit up and she said, "Oh, BORDER CROSSINGS - yeah, I remember that - I was fighting to have it chosen as first place. I thought it was the best of all the scripts." But she was really excited to hear that the book had been published, so I gave her a copy of the book hoping it might spark more interest.

Heather: But a screenplay is different from a book, right?

Carole: Right, a screenplay can only be about 120 pages, so I had to cut out a lot of characters that were in the book when I wrote the screenplay, so many of the characters in the book didn�t even make it into the screenplay.

Heather: I�ve been to your website, and seen that in your "Library" section you do have a bunch of screenplays you�ve written there.

Carole: Yes, I�ve got that one, and I�ve got a comedy "Velma and Louie," which I�ve changed to "Chocolate On A Stick" for the title - and that one was actually optioned by an independent producer who just loved it. He said he thought it was so hysterical, it had him laughing out loud, and one night while reading he woke his wife and said, "Hey, I�ve got a winner here," and he sent that script all over Hollywood. He sent it to people like Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman, because it�s about an old Appalachian couple on the run from a nursing home with their adult children in pursuit. But unfortunately, nobody wanted it. But I could really see that one as a movie if you could get the right stars for it. I also wrote UNDERSTUDY as a screenplay.

Heather: Why don�t you tell me about UNDERSTUDY?

Carole: I think this is the best book I�ve written. It starts in Williamsburg, at the College of William & Mary, and begins with two best friends, Amy and Robin. Robin�s a daughter of a congressman, very high society, her family lives in a manor on the James River, and she�s just had an idyllic childhood, she has two brothers and a wonderful family. Amy grew up in a trailer park in Newport News. She�s never had anything, except she�s smart. Her parents are alcoholics; her father committed suicide after he came back from Vietnam. She�s had a pretty miserable childhood, but she�s smart and she ends up at this college and Robin is her roommate. They become best friends. Robin�s family is the family Amy has always wanted, it's what she�s always dreamed of. The only problem is she finds out that Robin is not as happy she should be, and she�s got a drinking problem, and on a night after bar hopping, they�re on their way back to college, when there�s a car accident. This is all in the prologue. Amy�s driving Robin�s car because Robin is drunk. When Amy wakes up in the hospital, Robin�s family is gathered around her, and they�re calling her Robin. So Amy decides she�s going to become Robin when she finds out that Robin is dead. So that�s what the book is about.

Heather: Now how does she become Robin ... do they look alike?

Carole: They do, they�re very similar looking, people often mistook them for sisters. The book is in two parts - the first part is the whole time up to the accident, and then maybe the first year of her trying to become Robin. And then the second part jumps ahead five years and takes place where she is, as Robin, working as a soap opera actress.

I�m just really, really happy with this book. At first I was kind of wondering, can I pull this off, can I do this - and I did, but it was very tricky. Although at one point, when I was making the transition from part one to part two, I got really panicky and for two weeks I had writer's block. I couldn�t get started with part two. Then I realized that I didn�t know what my characters had done in those five years - I had lost contact with them, so what I did was I wrote myself bio's of what each of the main characters did during that five year period. And that did it - once I finished those, I was off and started writing again. It was the first time I had ever suffered any kind of writer�s block and it was scary. But when I realized why, because characters change over five years, and once I did the bios, I was fine.

Heather: When is UNDERSTUDY due to be released?

Carole: I�m hoping sometime next summer.

Heather: So tell me about yourself, your family.

Carole: I grew up in Indiana about 20 miles away from the racetrack - you know the Indy 500. So naturally I was obsessed with that and my first book was about racecar driver and it was definitely romance. It was called THE SWEDE.

Heather: Oh, and where is that book?

Carole: I don�t know. My mom had that book, she had it for a long time, and I asked her about it years ago, and she didn�t know what happened to it. All of my early writings have disappeared.

Heather: How old were you when you wrote it?

Carole: Sixteen. I sent it to Doubleday.

Heather: At sixteen?

Carole: Oh yeah, I was sure they were going to publish it. They sent it back to me with a form rejection letter and I was crushed. I said, "Oh well, I guess I�m not a writer after all." I felt sure they were going to publish it. But you know, I think back and I still think it was a pretty darn good book for a sixteen year old.

Heather: So what else? I know you were in the service - what did you do and where did you go?

Carole: Yes, I was. I was a medical technician. Like I said, I grew up in Indiana and my first assignment was at Scott Air Force base in Illinois, four hours away from home. I was so disappointed. I could not believe it, because I really wanted to travel and see the world. My first choice, the place I wanted to go to most, was Greece and they sent me to Illinois. So I was there for two years and then I got my assignment to Greece. So I went to Greece in December of 1973 and started out New Year�s Day on the island of Crete. I met Frank in April of 1974 and we were married in December of 1974, so our marriage license is completely in Greek.

Heather: Was he in the service too?

Carole: Yes, he was in communications, a secret area of the base - the whole purpose of the base was to monitor Russia. He worked in the high security area and I worked in the clinic on base in a little ten-bed hospital. So I gave him a flu shot and that�s how we met. Well, that�s not officially how we met, I mean I just gave him a shot and that was it. When I really met him was later at a party between dorms. If you want the full story on that, you�ve got to read a book - it�s called CHOCOLATE FOR A WOMAN'S HEART - it�s part of that "Chocolate" series. The story about how we really met is in there - it�s called "A Streak of Love" - get it - streak, streaker.

Heather: Oh, I get it - somebody got naked.

Carole: (Laughs)

Heather: Ah, the things we do in our youth. Then we become our parents.

Carole: Ain�t that the truth.

Heather: So you have a son and a daughter?

Carole: Yes, my daughter, Leah, is 25 and she lives in San Diego. My son, Stephen, is 22 and he�s in college.

Heather: Is your daughter in college too?

Carole: No, she�s graduated. She used to work in publishing in New York. She stayed there for a year and then moved to San Diego. She said she didn�t like the winters in New York and wanted to live in the sunshine. Now she misses the seasons, so she�s probably going to move back East soon.

Heather: You�ve told me you like to ski?

Carole: Oh yes, I love to ski. That�s my favorite thing in the world to do outside of writing.

Heather: But you said you got started in that late in life, didn�t you?

Carole: Yes, I did, Leah got me into it. She was a senior in high school and one day she said she and her girlfriends were going skiing and did I want to go with them. I said sure, because I had always thought I would like to do it, but I just never got around to it. So we drove out to this little place in Virginia called Bryce, and she and I took a lesson. That was just enough of a positive experience that I wanted to do it again, so the following year we decided to take a short family vacation ski trip. We had difficulty at first, but it didn�t stop us, and now we go as often as we can and we keep getting better and better.

Heather: So, you�re a reader too, aren�t you? Who do you like to read?

Carole: Well, there�s a before and an after to this question. I was reading a lot of stuff before I became an author and started meeting other authors. Now I�m reading a lot of stuff from people I�m meeting. Because you get to know them and you like them, so it�s "Oh, I gotta read your book." So in the last couple of years what I�ve been doing is reading colleague�s books. Before I was a big Stephen King fan, I like Maeve Binchy, I always liked Sidney Sheldon, which is funny because my agent calls me a female Sidney Sheldon. I like Karen Robards and Sandra Brown. There�s a British author I used to love named Evelyn Anthony. I don�t know if she�s still around, but I used to love her books. I also like Jennifer Cruisie.

Right now I�m reading Mary Alice Monroe�s THE FOUR SEASONS. she also writes under the name of Mary Alice Kruesie. But the books she writes under Mary Alice Monroe are mainstream women�s fiction. This one is about four sisters, it�s very good.