GUEST AUTHOR: Rachel Bailey

Today’s guest author lives with her own personal hero and four furry friends named Oliver, Dougal, Jazmine and Fergus. She also editor of Hearts Talk, the Romance Writers of Australia monthly magazine and a recipient of the RWA Lynne Wilding Meritorious Service Award.

Please welcome RWAussie Desire romance author & LoveCat DownUnder blogger, Rachel Bailey!

Rachel, tell us a little about yourself.
I live on the Queensland coast and I write for Silhouette Desire.

Things I love (in no particular order): dogs, cows, chocolate, Jane Austen, cats, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, sticky date pudding, comedies (books & movies), sleeping in, and sunshowers.

What sparks your creativity?
Besides coffee and chocolate? ;)

Music, definitely, and to capitalise on that, I create a play list for each book I write. In fact, I'm writing a book set in Charleston at the moment, so if anyone has any suggestions of songs that evoke the southern US states, I'd love to hear about them!

So far I've got some country music (Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum & Rascal Flats), and the song 'Summertime', plus James Taylor's 'Carolina in My Mind'. I desperately need some more.

What do you think it is about your genre that readers find fascinating?
The emotional intensity. When I read romance, I'm looking for emotional stimulation. I want to be taken on an emotional journey: they'll make me cry with a touching scene, they'll make me worried for the characters, and they'll take me on the magical ride of falling in love.

Also, I think many readers find people inherently interesting, and romance allows us to really peek inside the life of another person, to walk a mile in their shoes.

Your latest release, MILLION-DOLLAR AMNESIA SCANDAL, has already hit the shelves in the US and is due out in Australia/New Zealand in March 2011, can you tell us about it?
 
An accident left April Fairchild with no memory, ownership of a multi-million dollar hotel and the nagging sense something wasn't quite right in her life. It also brought her intensely sexy businessman Seth Kentrell, whose late brother had left her the property. Seth believed her a gold digger - and how could April deny it, when she couldn't even remember her name? Now Seth was ready to play hardball to get the hotel back.

But April knew enough to refuse to sign over the property until her memory returned. And if that meant Seth needed to persuade her... well, that was something she could enjoy! At least until the whole truth came out...

What I wanted to do with this book was write a heroine with amnesia, so someone who knew nothing about herself, who's falling in love with a man who hadn’t met her before the accident - so he knows nothing about her either. Also, the heroine is a famous jazz singer / pianist, so everyone *thinks* they know things about her. That seemed like a recipe for fun to me. :)

Can you share a few fun facts about the geographic location where your novel takes place?
This setting - a lighthouse and hotel on the Connecticut coast - was heaps of fun.

It's the first book I'd written that was set somewhere I hadn’t been, so I spent heaps of time looking at photos on the net, reading blogs by people in the area, researching what constellations would be in the night sky, etc.

(And luckily my editors in New York are close to my setting because one of them picked up that I'd said the ocean was azure blue - she wrote on the manuscript that she dreamed of oceans that colour, but the water there was a grey blue. So even after all the research, a touch of Australia almost crept in.)

I know you have a menagerie of four-legged furry friends, so do you have a pet that keeps you company when you write?

Dougal

I have four dogs who are great writing companions. I've managed to sneak Oliver into one book - THE BLACKMAILED BRIDE'S SECRET CHILD, which also featured my mother's dog, Misty.

A cat who was part of my family a few years ago, Winston, makes a cameo in my October 2011 book, THE SECRET HEIR'S REUNION BID. And I'm currently working out if one of my other dogs can make their way into my Charleston book. Wish me luck!

Rachel, it's been a pleasure interviewing you, thanks for visiting!

If you'd like to leave a comment by 6pm, Saturday 26th February 2011, you'll go into a draw for Rachel's latest release, MILLION-DOLLAR AMNESIA SCANDAL, or one of her back-list.

To find out more about Rachel, please visit her website or call in at the LoveCats DownUnder blog or follow her on Facebook.

Rachel's other books: