Welcome Lisa Mondello!

Please welcome to Women Unplugged bestselling author Lisa Mondello! I first met Lisa online through a romance loop for independent authors. Lisa is one of the most forthright authors I have ever met, always willing to answer my questions or provide guidance. I hope you enjoy getting to know Lisa and be sure to say hi in the comment section.

CH: Can you tell me about your ideal reader?
LM: I’m not sure I have an ideal reader.  I want people to be entertained by my stories. For the most part the response to my books has been fabulous.  But every so often I miss the mark with a reader.  And that’s okay too.  I don’t like everything I read either.  So I guess I don’t really have an ideal reader, except I’d love those readers who do enjoy my books to keep coming back to read my back list.

CH: Are you a full time writer? How did you get into writing and why?

LM: I am a full time writer and have been for several years.  Although I’ve written fiction for over 16 years professionally, my main job while I was trying to break in was freelance work, writing web copy and sales letters.  It paid the bills.  But I’m phasing a lot of that out so I can do more fiction and screenwriting.

CH: What do you do when you aren’t writing?

LM: Listening to music and watching movies.  I’m a big movie buff and I love music of all kinds.  In fact, my kids tell me to turn down the stereo all the time.  What a twist, huh?

CH: Where do you get your ideas?

LM: From everywhere.  I’m working on a story that started out after I read a 3 star review on a book and it turned into a story where a restaurant owner, who has major OCD about her kitchen tools, falls in love with the restaurant critic who had the nerve to give her restaurant a mere 3 star review.  It’s a romantic comedy and I’m having fun with it.

CH: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

LM: Neither, I’m a puzzler.  LOL!  Aren’t you glad you asked me this question?  In fact, I do a workshop on the 4 types of writing profiles for writers, linear, pantser, plotter and puzzler.  I write completely out of order.  It’s not uncommon for me to have an opening scene and an ending written before I even flesh out the story.

CH: Do you design your own covers or use a designer?

LM: I’ve done both. I like having someone else do my covers because sometimes I get tunnel vision.  I like collaborating and getting someone else’s perspective.

CH: Are there certain characters you would like to go back to, or is there a theme or idea you’d love to work with?

LM: I write all over the place; contemporary romance, romantic comedy, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, young adult and inspirational.  I hate limiting myself.  But I do like working on series for the same reason readers like reading them.  I like to revisit characters I’ve become fond of.  And you always wonder how that secondary character you introduced is doing. <G>

CH: Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?

LM: Well, I’ve never been chased by a Colombian drug lord so that is purely fiction.  But the town featured in Cradle of Secrets was clearly modeled after the town I live in.  I wrote a book, The More I See, about a cutting horse trainer who went blind and I’ve never been blind or been on a cutting horse.  But that story was inspired by a friend who’d gone blind for a time and had a guide dog named Otis. I was so impressed by that dog that I had to write a story featuring him!  I also worked with the past president of the National Cutting Horse Association on that book to make sure my research was right.   My book Gypsy Hearts was inspired by my time managing a Boston rock band.  And my Fate with a Helping Hand series is set in Massachusetts in places where I’ve lived and spent a great deal of time.  Other than that, the stories are purely fiction.  I don’t model characters after real life people, although I have used my husband’s stories from when he was a Marine in my books from time to time.

CH: How do you come up with titles?

LM: Sometimes they come before I even start the story and then I change them once I have a handle on where the story is going.  Sometimes, specifically with my Harlequin books, I check out Romantic Times Magazine and see what titles are being used in order to help inspire me so I can give my editor suggestions.  Publishers almost always change the title, so it’s good not to be wed to one in particular.

CH: Do you set writing goals for yourself? If so, are they daily, weekly or monthly?

LM: I do set goals…and I break them.  I’m better with goals and deadlines other people give me.  I know I can break my own deadlines because they’re not set in stone.  Doing freelance for so long I’ve learned to be a back-to-the-wall writer where I can turn out pages fast if I have to.

CH: What do you do when you get stuck while writing a book?LM: Clean the house.  There’s something about facing the toilet bowl that brings clarity. Seriously, I think no-mind work helps to free up the creative side of the brain and get the ideas flowing.  Having said that, I have been inspired while doing housework and have left the toilet brush in the bowl when inspiration strikes.  My family is used to half-done housework.

CH: Tell us about your upcoming book or new release.

LM: By the time this blog is released I will have released 3 of my 4 Texas Hearts Romance back list books as ebooks for Kindle, Nook, Sony, iTunes and Smashwords.  This is a series I wrote for Avalon Books years ago and I’m thrilled to have these books released to a new audience.  The books are Her Heart for the Asking, His Heart for the Trusting and The More I See.  I will also be releasing a new Romantic Thriller in April w/a L.A. Mondello, called Material Witness.  And then a young adult romance I wrote with my daughter will be released in May.  That’s called No Strings Attached.  So 2012 will see a lot of new book releases from me.

CH: If you couldn’t be a writer, what would you be?

LM: A special education teacher.  I’ve worked in special education as a paraprofessional aid, specifically with learning disabled and autistic children and I loved it.  It was one of those jobs where I’d forget I was getting paid to do it.  I’d thought about going back to school and getting my teaching degree at one time, but both writing and teaching are huge commitments and I tend to throw myself fully into what I do.  One or the other would have suffered if I’d tried to do both.  So I went with my first love and continued writing.

CH: What advice would you give to authors considering self-publishing?

LM:

a.       Know what you want out of self-publishing.  It helps to know if you’re doing it for the money, to create a buzz with your traditionally published work or if you’re trying to get exposure to attract an agent or publisher.  Then you can plan a strategy.

b.      Make a writing plan – how many books do you intend to self-publish, how often, what do you want to accomplish by self-publishing?

c.       Make a marketing plan and make sure you network with lots of other self-published authors so you can learn the ropes.  Once you self-publish, you’re wearing lots of hats and messing up your hair every time you change them.

d.      Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have to spend a lot of money to get published.  You don’t.  There are a lot of free ways to get your books released and get exposure.  Network and keep learning.

CH: Having done both, how does self-publishing differ from traditional publishing?

LM: There is definitely something to be said about writing the book and only thinking about the story.  I like being traditionally published and don’t plan on abandoning that for self-publishing.  However, having published my first book in 1998, I was fortunate enough to have a back list of books and have the rights to those stories reverted back to me.  They were just sitting on my hard drive.  So it seemed like a natural progression to try to do something with them to give my readers a chance to read stories that were published and went out of print before my current releases were published.  So far it’s been working out well.  But self-publishing is a lot of work and you need to be prepared and constantly think about promotion, something that is normally left up to the publishing houses.

Lisa Mondello is the best selling author of 13 published books. Her first published book, the award winning ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU, was recently reissued as an ebook and has had over 350,000 downloads worldwide. In addition to publishing her Fate with a Helping Hand series, which includes ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU, THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT and THE KNIGHT AND MAGGIE’S BABY, she is releasing her popular Texas Hearts series as ebooks in February 2012.  Texas Hearts is HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING and THE MORE I SEE.  She currently writes for Harlequin Books and is collaborating with a film producer/screenwriter on a screenplay.

She loves to hear from readers. You can email her atLisaMondello@aol.com, find her on her blog talking about writing, movies and music at http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com or chat on Twitter at @LisaMondello

Wild Things, You Make My Heart Zing

We live on a tiny acreage on the outskirts of a small town on the Canadian prairies. Behind our property is miles of grain fields interspersed with huge patches of dense bush and a creek which meanders through it all. So when we have visitors of the four legged variety, it should come as no surprise and yet….

The other night, unable to sleep in our too warm house, I decided to slip outside, sit on the deck, and star gaze. Out the back door I went, the squeak of the hinges magnified by the silence of the night. As I closed the door and turned toward the yard, an enormous shape caught my attention.

My heart pounded in my chest. My legs vibrated with fear. I stood there frozen and eyed the creature staring back at me. It was only a moose but still, if it charged, would I be able to get back into the house before it cornered me on the deck and ate me?

(Yes, I know, moose are vegetarians but I’m a writer, hence I have a very vivid and exaggerated imagination.)

Unmoving, I stared at the moose. Unmoving, it stared back at me. Out the corner of my eye, something moved in the dark and I noticed a second moose just a few feet away from the deck where I stood. Silence swelled around us, thick with tension, fraught with the unspoken question … who would bolt first?

I did, of course, because I’m not only a few hundred pounds less than they are, but I’m also a bigger fraidy cat. I summoned the courage to unstick my feet from the deck floor and hightailed it back into the house where I flitted from window to window, checking out our visitors with the binoculars, trying to see them with only a sliver of moonlight shining on their huge bodies.

But then a third moose joined the first two and now that the humanly threat had vanished, they proceeded to consume the leaves from my roses and fruit trees, until finally they bedded down in the yard for the night. The next morning, they’d left behind proof of their presence, little piles of dark pellet turds all over the green grass.

Thanks for the thoughtful gifts, Wild Things.

 Will they be back? As I write this post, I’m watching for them, wondering not if, but when they’ll return.  It’s not the first time a moose has wandered into the yard and so close to the house.

What wild creatures have you seen up close? What did you do and how did you react?

My Love Affair With Book Covers

I fell in love with book covers in the 1980’s when Avon published the historical romances of Kathleen E Woodwiss, Shirley Busbee, Rosemary Rogers and Kathleen Sutcliffe.  Today, cover art still fascinates me, whether it’s showcased in hardcover, paperback, or e-book form.  To see the beautiful cover art of the Women Unplugged authors, click here.

One of the most spellbinding covers I’ve recently seen is from the historical romance SECRETS OF A PROPER COUNTESS by Lecia Cornwall.  This intricate story involves a woman of breeding who stands to lose everything she holds dear, the incorrigible rogue who falls in love with her, and the masquerade ball where their secrets unfold. It’s a cover colored in hues of pinks and purples and blues and with one look, the reader knows this is going to be a romance reminiscent of the historical romances of old.

On the other side of the spectrum is FLEE by Ann Voss Peterson and J A Konrath. This is a high-octane spy thriller featuring an elite spy whose cover is blown. She has twenty-four hours to thwart a kidnapping, stop a psychopath, uncover the mystery of her past, and save the world from nuclear annihilation … all while dodging 10,000 bullets. This cover, with its heroine dancing across rooftops and a multitude of assassins within firing range, is as fast and furious as the story itself.

For inspiration, I have a tear-out advertisement featuring WHAT I DID FOR LOVE by Susan Elizabeth Phillips tacked on the wall in front of my desk. When a Hollywood actress is dumped by her movie star husband, what does she do but get caught up in a calamitous elopement with her detestable former co-star who is the dreamboat-from-hell. Before she knows it, she has a fake marriage, fake husband, and maybe (or not) a fake sex life. This cover, with its heroine (sans hero) in a beautiful white wedding dress, speaks of a woman’s journey to find happiness.

Since fun, humorous fiction is one of my favorite genres, I must include SPLITSVILLE.COM by Tonya Kappes. The heroine launches an online break up service where she works under an alias. When two of her clients end up dead, putting the future of her business venture on the line, she’s the first one on the trail of the killer. When I look at this cover, there’s no doubt in my mind I’m going to spend a lot of time smiling and laughing.

And from the young adult market is STATIC by Tawny Stokes. When a seventeen-year-old band groupie meets the lead singer of her favorite band, her dream turns into a nightmare. She’s changing, turning into something not quite human. With the help of the band’s roadie, she goes after the members of the band to destroy them. On this cover, the teenage girl in the funky clothes holding a guitar looks kickass and tough enough to take on any teenage boy who dares to threaten her.

So what book covers do you love the most? And what do the covers say to you about the story inside?

The Power of ‘What if…”

Last week, my husband and I traveled across the country with a pull-behind U-Haul. At one point in our journey, he almost ran into the back of another vehicle (shocking considering he’d been reading emails on his blackberry) and we pulled over a short time later to check on the stuff we’d packed in the trailer.

I stayed in the car with our two dogs while he got out to inspect our cargo. He left the car running (it was nearly 100 degrees outside) and I filled his ten minute absence by reading. When he got back in the car, he told me that a police officer had approached him and advised him he wasn’t in the best neighborhood to have his back turned inside a U-Haul. The cop stayed right by our car until my husband was finished and we were on our way a few minutes later.

Needless to say, I was shocked. I’d imagined all sorts of disasters before we left for our adventure, but never once did I dream we might get robbed or killed at gunpoint in broad daylight along a busy stretch of highway for the crap we’d packed inside the U-haul. We discussed the incident for a few minutes and then my husband didn’t think another thing about it for the remainder of our trip.  But I’m not built that way, so our brush with fate spurred a series of “what if” questions so familiar to writers.

Here is just a sampling of the things that went through my mind: what if the hero of my imaginary story had been killed on a cross country trip while his wife sat innocently in the car? What if the hero had only been wounded and the wife kidnapped?  What if the dogs had been children and the heroine and the kids had been kidnapped?  What if the couple were on the verge of divorce? What if the hero were a cop? What if the hero and heroine weren’t married, but had only been dating a few weeks? What if they were brother and sister? What if their attacker wasn’t a bad guy at all, but someone looking for a quick escape from trouble? What if he were a cop? What if the U-haul had been filled with stolen goods or the secret cure to an epidemic or a dead body? What if…what if…what if…

“What if” has led to every novel I’ve ever written and the ideas for all the novels I have yet to write. Some days I envy people who don’t have a thousand “what if” questions running through their heads, but mostly I wonder what would fill my mind if all the “what if” questions went away.

What about you? If you’re a writer, are you plagued by “what if” questions throughout your day?  And if you’re not a writer and you do experience “what if” moments, have you ever thought of penning your thoughts? Let me know, if only to make me feel better about all the questions floating around my head