The Joy of Networking

As my regular readers know, I'm working on Bad Boy, the sequel to my debut novel, Bad Girl. It is perhaps not so much a sequel as the second in the series, although it features characters from the first book.

This time my heroine is Leah Reece, the owner of a popular e-zine called Heat. Leah is Anglo and her hero, Quin, is Hispanic. Quin has a previous conviction for assault and works for the shady owner of an underground sex club.

I got the idea for the novel from two disparate events: seeing Viggo Mortensen's very hot, tattoed body in Eastern Promises and the discovery of an underground sex club called the Cherry Pit in a suburb of Dallas. That suburb has been trying to close the club down without success for months. See this USA Today story here.

I speak some Spanish--enough to get by--but it is mostly a mixture of my childhood Italian and mandatory high school classes. I am far from being able to conjugate in the local vernacular.

Fortunately I have friends. Among them is Maria Zannini. I wrote about Maria's debut book for Samhain, Touch of Fire, here two months ago. The cover is one of the most beautiful I can remember seeing.



Maria and I had lunch on Thursday, and I quizzed her on the Spanish slang for body parts and extracurricular activities. She was able to give me one or two, but was unsure of others. Then she reminded me that she'd recently introduced me to someone online who might be able to help.

Red Garnier writes for some of the biggest e-publishers online: Ellora's Cave, Samhain, Loose Id and Liquid Silver. Her most recent book, Color My Heart, was released by Samhain last month.


Maria introduced us because Red recently signed a contract with NAL, my publisher, and is working with Tracy Bernstein, my editor. I gave Red a call a couple of weekends ago, and we had a nice chat.

She speaks fluent Spanish.

I emailed her yesterday afternoon, asking for help. Within minutes, I had a detailed email giving me everything I needed.

I'm telling this story as a reminder that you can never network too much. I've been so fortunate in my life because of the good friends I've made. Some of them go all the way back to my childhood. Family and friends are always there for me. I treasure them.

Please check out Red and Maria's websites. Maria's is here and Red's is here.

Thank you, girlfriends!!!