My name is Adrienne Giordano and I am a liar.
It’s not my fault though.
Not long ago, I was sitting with Kelsey and Tracey complaining about my inability to read a book for the simple pleasure of it. I now consider reading a learning experience and tend to analyze plot structure, dialogue, POV, and whatever else happens to strike me along the way. I once studied a Suzanne Brockmann book to death. Literally. I wrote in it until the spine snapped. The book is still sitting on my shelf in three pieces. I learned a lot from that book.
Here’s the part where I explain how being a liar is not my fault. I just finished Red Hot Lies by Laura Caldwell and I read it without stopping to analyze it. This book forced me to kick learning to the curb and enjoy the wonderful story Laura created.
After thinking about it, I realized the same thing happened when I read her 2008 release The Good Liar. Of course, I went back a second time and outlined the plot structure of that book to see where she put all her turning points, but still, I read it straight through the first time around.
So, if Laura’s books weren’t so darn good I wouldn’t be in this predicament. Yep, I’m blaming Laura for making me a liar.
All kidding aside, we are thrilled to welcome Laura Caldwell to Romance University to discuss how her new trilogy came to be.
Here’s Laura!
I didn’t start writing until after I graduated law school and was working for a living. I should have started in college, when I was at the University of Iowa, arguably one of the best writing schools in the nation. Instead, I majored in Football & Beer (with a minor in Cheerleading). It took me three years to write my first novel (Burning the Map), but then I couldn’t sell it or even get an agent. Ditto for the next book I undertook. In fact, about nine years elapsed from the time I started writing until I got published. During those years, I marveled at authors who said they couldn’t stand book signings or complained about deadlines. If I could get my foot in that damned 
publishing door, I told myself, I wouldn’t just give it a nudge, I would push it open.
So once I finally got a contract with Red Dress Ink (I met my editor at a cocktail party of a writer’s conference and found an agent after), I quickly said yes when they asked for three more books on top of Burning the Map. I told my agent that I wrote suspense novels, too, and she suggested I finish one and she would try to sell it. I went speed writing and came up with Look Closely, about a lawyer who gets an anonymous letter that splits her world open. When my agent said MIRA wanted the novel plus two other mysteries, but that it would be a time crunch with my other books, I said, Who cares? And I kicked that door wide open.
Same thing happened after I sold Red Hot Lies, the first in my Izzy McNeil series, to MIRA. I knew I wanted to start with a trilogy featuring Izzy, a sassy, redheaded lawyer from Chicago who gets in all sorts of trouble around the city. MIRA was up for that, too. Then MIRA and my agent came up with the idea of putting the books out back-to-back-to-back, all in the summer of 2009, with the tag line, It’s a Red Hot Summer! Brilliant, I said. Then they gave me the tough news: I’d essentially have to edit the first book, write the second and third, and also write the non-fiction book I’d sold to an imprint of Simon & Schuster. And I would to do all that in….one year. I was a bit woozy. I sort of just wanted to lay down in a fetal position. Instead, I gathered my strength, said yes, and ripped the door off the hinges.
It was a fast and furious year. The upside of writing the books that way was the characters were razor-fresh to me. I didn’t have to dust them off and get back into them to start a new novel. I just kept hauling. And because of that, (and the fact that I happen to be a redheaded lawyer from Chicago) Izzy feels intensely personal to me. As do her family and friends. I’m hoping to write more Izzy books, and I’m already itching to jump back into their world. And if my publisher tells me they’ve got to be completed in a year again? Or some other craziness like that? Well, hell, it’s been fun so far. I guess I’ll just pick up the door and carry it out with me.
A special thanks to Laura for being with us today. She will be checking in throughout the day to answer questions so fire away. And, for those of you who have read Laura’s books, I’m wondering if she made liars out of you also.
For more information about Laura’s books please visit her website at http://www.lauracaldwell.com/books.html.
Be sure to join us on Monday when Christy Reece will be here talking about how to break in as a new writer.
Kelsey's serving up bite-sized morsels for your noggin on her new 
Morning Laura, and thanks for the great article! What a fun read…lol….grab that door and take it with you! Indeed!
I have to ask, how many hours a day did you write? Did you keep yourself on a schedule, like 9-5 to accomplish all of that? I’m so impressed!
I’m looking forward to reading your books!
carrie
Posted by carrie | August 14, 2009, 8:37 amHi Laura and welcome to RU. I’m curious if you are a “pantser” or a “plotter”? Your plots are so tight and there’s always a really good twist, so I’m wondering if that just comes to you when you are writing or you spend a lot of time outlining.
Thanks!
Posted by AdrienneGiordano | August 14, 2009, 8:45 amHi Laura,
Thanks for joining us! What an amazing ride you’ve been on.
I’m wondering how you keep it all organized. Any tips you can share? Do you have a page count you stick to each day to meet deadline?
OH, and when do you sleep? LOL
Tracey
Posted by Tracey Devlyn | August 14, 2009, 11:31 amHi Laura –
I’m just quickly chiming in to say thanks for taking the time to be with us at RU. I just stepped off the plane from a 13-hour flight so I have no intelligent questions right now. Please forgive me!
Kelsey
Posted by Kelsey Browning | August 14, 2009, 11:56 amGreat story!!!!
Posted by Wes | August 14, 2009, 4:55 pmI too, read books very critically and it is a rare book that actually pulls me in to the point where I don’t look at the dialogue tags, the POV or anything else but simply enjoy the story. Laura Kinsale is an auther that does that for me, as well as Laura Griffin, Allison Brennan, Sherry Thomas and Tracy Wolff. I’m sure there are other fantastic authors out there that I have yet to discover but I know that when an author gives me a read that I don’t notice anything other than the story, I’m hooked and I’ll keep going back for the next offering.
Thanks for a great post!
Posted by Jessica Scott | August 15, 2009, 7:39 amHi guys!
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to chime in this week. I spent every waking minute in the hospital in Tulsa with my sister who had a C-section and a yummy baby boy, Evan.
Thanks so much for the comments and the great intro by Adrienne. I know exactly what you guys mean. There is something about being a writer that tends to take a little of the pleasure out of reading, so that a book has really got to grab you by the throat. One novel that did that for me recently—A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. He’s a first time novelist. It’s historical fiction set in the late 1800s, pre-prohibition, in Chicago, St. Louis and Wisconsin and it is decadent. Highly recommended.
Carrie and Tracey, you both ask a good questions about organization and scheduling of your writing, and I have to answer that I had to keep mixing it up in the writing of my recent trilogy. At first I would write first thing in the morning, no emails or phone calls until I got one scene written (usually 3 – 7 pages for me). When I noticed that I was straying, checking Twitter and answering emails, I went with a different tactic, like saying to myself, ‘okay, just write for one hour straight, no matter how much you get done. Then you can Twitter to your heart’s content.’ When that stopped working I tried working in the afternoons after I had gotten all the emailing and discussions with my publicist, etc. out of the way. I had lots of other tactics too. For me, I can’t say, “I always 1000 words,” or “I always write for three hours on Tuesdays after it rains three inches,” or anything specific like that. The fact is the world changes, and so do I, and so I feel I always have to change up my writing routine. But make no doubt about it—when I am working on something and really writing, there is always a schedule of some sorts (which usually involves 6 days a week. Although I should say that when I first started writing, I only wrote once a week because I was practicing law, but even once a week still adds up, so I’m not one to say everyone has to write every day). If I don’t know what to do, I go back to my basic – 1000 words a day, attempting to do that in the morning before emails, phone calls or Facebook and the like.
Adrienne, I start out every book with a character (or two or four) who really sing to me. I write maybe a scene or a chapter or two. Then I sit down and roughly plot out the book (in a 10 – 20 page sort of free-form summary). This is large part due to the fact that I sell books on proposal now, so my publisher needs to see the beginning and where I think I’m going. We all recognize, though, that sometimes as you get into a novel, certain plot points don’t make sense based on other things you’ve folded in there, or some action you had planned for a character won’t work because that character has developed differently and now simply wouldn’t act like that, even if you want him to. So I guess I’m a plotter, who meanders off the road a lot.
I’ll check back with you guys tomorrow. Thank you for reading my post and if you get a chance to read the recent trilogy, I would LOVE your thoughts. I’m hoping to write more and I’m dying for reader feedback as to where Izzy and her crew should go.
Posted by Laura Caldwell | August 15, 2009, 8:50 amI’m not too bad about analyzing what I read. Sometimes something will give me pause and I think hmmm.
Posted by Kathy Crouch | August 15, 2009, 9:14 pmI can certainly vouch for Adrienne’s enthusiasm in reading Red Hot Lies. I was hoping she would leave the book behind when they left to return home from summer vacation at the shore. I am now forced to go out and buy the trilogy.
The best endorsement yet.
Posted by joan giordano | August 21, 2009, 1:39 pmThere is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points. Thanks
Posted by force max supplement | December 17, 2009, 10:21 pm