A Weird Thing Happened

In 1987 Dell published my single title paranormal romance The Dreaming Pool. I wrote the book as Paula Christopher for my sons Chris and Paul. The plot involves a stolen racehorse owned by the hero, Gage Roundtree. The heroine is Eslin Hillary, a clairvoyant. I figured you’d need a clairvoyant to find a 1200-lb. horse that has apparently vanished off the face of the earth.

My characters finally find the horse in Oaxaca, Mexico. On their way there (Oaxaca is near the border with Guatemala) they stop off in Mexico City. As I was writing this scene, I heard on the 6 o’clock news that a horrible earthquake had flattened a large part of the city. I freaked and called my editor and asked her if I should take Mexico City out of the book. No, she said, because I wasn’t specific about the year my characters were there. She also assured me that I had not caused the earthquake.

But I wondered….

In 1993 I wrote Aftershock for Harlequin Temptation as a part of a 4-book series called Passion’s Quest. Each book centered on one of the four elements, earth, wind, fire and water. I wrote about earth. The plot of Aftershock involves a little gizmo I dreamed up called the TAQ box, which stands for Tremor and Quake Warning Device.

The hero of the story invents it and the heroine’s father steals it. The machine is designed to detect an earthquake, but if you crank it up too high, it will cause one. Of course it falls into the wrong hands and my characters, Sheridan and Rockie, have to get it back before the bad guys blow up a Middle Eastern oil field. Earlier in the book the bad guys use the TAQ box to set off a couple little test quakes in the Mojave Desert.

Aftershock had no sooner hit the bookstores in February of 1994 when the Northridge earthquake struck California. The TAQ box is a figment of my imagination. I did not cause the Northridge quake or the one in Mexico City, but I’ll tell you what -- I’ve sworn off writing about natural disasters.

I do love to write about weird stuff – woo-woo, as I call it – but I was more careful next time. I wrote Nightwing, a vampire story so I wouldn’t have to worry about a sudden invasion of the undead attacking the world.

I also think a lot of the lore about vampires is pretty silly. I wanted to poke fun at it and make a point that has always escaped me when I read vampire stories. I don’t care how gorgeous the vamp is, why would any right-headed woman want to spend eternity with a blood-sucking monster?

To accomplish that I had to change my vampire hero back to a mortal man. That part of the story, the method I used to return Johnny Raven to the land of the living, I made up. I guess I did a pretty good job because I can’t tell you how many people asked me to tell them the title of the book where I’d found all that cool stuff about vampires. I told them I’d made it up, but I’m not sure they believed me.

Temptation had just published Nightwing when I went to Hawaii for the Romance Writers of America's national Conference. Aftershock was a finalist for the RITA award, and I wanted to be there in case I won. I didn't. The next year, Nightwing was a RITA finalist in the Paranormal Category.

About the same time Nightwing came out, Harlequin American published a vampire novel by Margaret St. James aka Maggie Osborne, Love Bites. Great title. Wish I’d thought of it.

At the Harlequin party in Hawaii, I was sitting on a terrace by the beach with my shoes off listening to the surf when four women wandered up and joined me. One of them recognized my name on my conference badge and connected it to Nightwing. She’d read the book and loved it. So much that she told her friends how great the book is and that they must read it. And then she started to tell them the plot – only she told them the plot of Love Bites.

I didn’t say a word. I just smiled and thought, “Oh well. At least she got my name right.”

Aftershock is available on Kindle, Nook and at All Romance Ebooks. Nightwing is also available on Kindle, Nook, and at All Romance Ebooks.

The Story Behind the Story -- The Cat Before Christmas and the Real Cat Before Christmas

The Cat Before Christmas is the story of Wiki, a Siamese cat that loves Christmas.

The idea hit me about two weeks before Thanksgiving. That didn't give me much time to write a novella and get it up on Kindle in time for Christmas, but I was excited about the story and decided to give it a shot.

I sketched out the plot and came up with my characters: Cary Tyler, Wiki's owner, Carrie's parents Ted and Lorraine, Carrie's friends Pam and Tina, and Ben Kendall, grandson of Charlie, the owner of the Christmas tree lot where Cary always buys her Christmas trees.

The real cat before Christmas is Smokey, the gray tabby that showed up in our driveway the Saturday before Thanksgiving.

I was not looking for a cat. The last of our three Little Queens went to kitty heaven several years ago, and I was enjoying a cat hair-free house. But there he was with his big green eyes. He was very sweet, had a soft voice, and he wasn't pushy -- he was just there. And he kept coming back over the next two weeks.

I agonized about that cat -- and the coyote that sleeps in our backyard. I talked to Michael. He said okay, let the cat in, and I did the next time Smokey wandered by. He's been here ever since.

He's a grown-up, he's been neutered, and he has all his claws. I worried about my furniture, but Smokey doesn't scratch. He comes into my office and sits by my chair until I take my feet off the footrest, which has a surface like Astroturf. That's where Smokey scratches. It only took him a couple of months to train me to do this.

In January we gave up searching lost cat ads and took Smokey to the vet. She gave him a physical, figured by his teeth that he's about 8 years old, and drew blood. Fifteen minutes later she told us that Smokey tested positive for FIV, feline immunodeficiency virus.

My heart sank. FIV is passed through saliva so likely Smokey was bitten by another cat with FIV. Just as HIV can progress to AIDS, so can FIV progress to feline AIDS. But, our vet was quick to explain, it doesn't always, and many FIV positive cats live long and healthy lives.

Michael wondered if FIV was the reason Smokey had been kicked to the curb. The vet thought he'd probably been infected while he was homeless. Her guess was the economy had put Smokey on the streets.

In multiple cat families a FIV positive cat is usually destroyed to avoid spreading the disease. We told the vet that we have no other cats and we wanted to keep Smokey.

He was underweight, just 10 pounds. He had a fungus infection in his ears, caused by his weakened immune system. The vet gave him two shots: his first rabies and the feline leukemia vaccine. She sent us home with an oral antibiotic to boost his immune system, salve for his ears and bad news for Smokey -- no more going outside because he could infect other cats.

That would be like telling me I could never eat chocolate again. Smokey was not happy about no more strolls around the neighborhood. He darted out the door a couple of times, but as soon as I yelled, "Smokey!" in my mother voice he froze until I picked him up and took him back in the house.

In February I took Smokey to the vet for his second rabies shot. The fungus infection in his ears had cleared up and he'd gained one whole pound. Our vet was thrilled that he'd responded so well to the antibiotic; she was actually grinning. So was I, but Smokey was sill not happy about being a shut-in.

Then I had a brilliant idea. Our deck sits a story off the ground and has no steps. "Why can't we let Smokey out on the deck?" I asked Michael. He replied, "He'll jump off." I said, "Only if he has a death wish. The rail is too high." Most cats won't jump if they can't see where they'll land. Michael argued that he'd jump through the gap between spindles, but we agreed to give it a try.

For a week Smokey was as good as gold. Then one morning Michael let him out at 5:30 and yep -- Smokey bailed, probably through the spindles; in the dark, no less. Michael grabbed the flashlight, went out and found him and hauled him back in the house.

The next Saturday Michael went to Home Depot. He bought two rolls of aluminum screen, which is tough enough that Smokey can't shred it with his claws, and stapled it over the spindles on the deck rail. Smokey spent an hour sniffing every inch of that screen looking for a hole. Then he gave up, flopped down in the sun and went to sleep. The photo is Smokey surveying his domain. He's the only cat in Kansas City with his own private sun porch.

What does Smokey's story have to do with The Cat Before Christmas? Everything. I wasn't looking for a cat, but Smokey found me and purred his way into my heart. Cary Tyler mowed down a fence to reclaim Wiki when he ran away. Michael built one so Smokey could go outside and be happy and safe.

Smokey picked me, but I picked Michael. My husband is the best choice I ever made.

Nightwing New Cover & Vampire Reading List

One nice thing about publishing my backlist titles on my own is this -- I can change things whenever I want. Like the cover of Nightwing. Here's the new one. What do you think?

If you like vampire romances and you're looking for something to read on your Kindle this weekend, click on the list for buy links through the Vamp Chix blog, "Hot Summer Deals on Vamp Reads".

Kimberly Van Meter designed the new cover for Nightwing. Kim is also an author, and she has a book on the list. Here are all the titles:

Drink My Blood -- Phoebe Conn
Lost -- Lori Devoti
Found -- Lori Devoti
Wicked Angels -- Michelle Hauf
Vampire Career -- Phoebe Matthews
The Reckoning -- Kimberly Van Meter
Nightwing -- Lynn Michaels

I adore vampire stories. My favorite for-laughs vampires movie is Love at First Bite. My favorite line is (I'm paraphrasing) "Don't mind the mess -- housework killed my mother."

Remember the 1979 version of Dracula, and the scene where Frank Langella as Dracula turned his head as he was climbing the wall and looked straight into the camera? My M&M's melted in my hand, right through the bag. Terrible ending; otherwise a cool movie.

Happy Father's Day -- and happy reading!

Where in the World Was Lynn?

I haven't been here, on Facebook, Twitter or anyplace else for a while. So where have I been?

I'd love to tell you cruising the Caribbean, but the truth is that since the first of April I've been at the chiropractor 3 times a week. I have 4 pinched nerves in my back. Possibly more. My lumbar spine is so smashed together that neither my chiropractor nor the radiologist that read my x-rays can tell how many for sure.

I'd also love to tell you I did this bungee jumping or playing polo, but no -- I fell down our front steps in January while I was shoveling snow. Eight-inches of white stuff that hid 2-inches of ice underneath -- which of course I didn't see until I'd cleared the snow.

I was happily shoveling my way down the steps with the little blue plastic shovel that our grandson Zachery used when he was five. About the time I decided that I should probably be shoveling UP rather than DOWN, I realized I was standing on solid ice.

A half-second later my husband Michael, who was shoveling the drive with a really big shovel that looks like it belongs on the front end of a snowplow hollered at me, "Get off those steps!"

The power of suggestion was all it took. My feet shot out from under me and I bounced down five ice-crusted concrete steps on my tailbone. When I landed at the bottom, I jumped to my feet to make sure Michael hadn't seen my Three Stooges descent.

He hadn't, thank God; his back was turned.

Astonishingly, I could move, and I wasn't in screaming agony so I kept shoveling as far up the flight as I could without climbing the steps until Michael finished the drive and took over.

The possibility that I'd pinched 4 nerves and that was why my back didn't hurt, never occurred to me. That is a special kind of stupid. I should have known better.

When I was 14 I went sideways off a horse (I wasn't playing polo then, either) knocked myself cold and crushed a disc between my shoulder blades.

Then I grew up and became a writer. Lots of writers have back problems because we sit all day. The last time my back went kaflooie I was racing to finish Honeymoon Suite. I could do anything but sit. I ended up at a sports medicine doctor.

Post MRI he diagnosed the problem as occupational stress -- sitting on my fanny at a computer for 20-plus years. He told me that fixed keyboard trays should be banned because they keep you in the same position all day long. He recommended voice recognition software and a really good chair.

I bought the chair that you see in the photo. It's unoccupied because I haven't been in it. The arms adjust up and down or forward and back. The seat goes up and down, too.

The platform on the front of my desk is an incremental keyboard tray. This is its highest position. I can stand and type at this height, when I can stand; I'll get to that in a minute. I can also lower it nearly to the floor. It adjusts incrementally, which means I can move it an inch or two or just a hair. That's all it takes to change my position.That's a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic keyboard.

The chair and the incremental keyboard tray got me through Honeymoon Suite, but they were no help this time.

The pain started in my knees in March. Silly me, I thought the problem was my knees. I loaded up on MSM with Glucosamine, but within a week I could barely stand, let alone walk. The dinner plate size bruise on the left side of my fanny had faded, but my back still didn't hurt. I went to the chiropractor anyway on April third, he took x-rays, showed me where the nerves were likely pinched, and I've been on his table 3-times a week ever since.

On Tuesday I posted about the release of Once Struck. That's the first day I've been able to sit in my really good chair for more than 10 minutes. Until then the most comfortable position for me was lying down or leaning against a wall or the kitchen counters. I could sit on the couch for 20 minutes, the recliner for 5, a kitchen chair for maybe 10. I was like Goldilocks; too hard, too soft.

I'm back now, but I'm taking it slow, not overdoing it. Look for my new weekly blog series "The Story Behind the Story" beginning on Monday, June 13.

What's the lesson I learned from this experience? Listen to the guy with the big shovel.