I remember sitting in an audience at a Jennifer Crusie chat when someone asked her about the amount of research she did for her books. She pointed out that she writes contemporary romance set in Ohio and lives in Ohio, so there’s not much research to do. Like Crusie, I write contemporary romance. No need to understand period costumes. No worries about using correct syntax. No fears over language choices.

Then I decided to write a romance based in Hawaii…

I had researched small issues in the past and read books relating to specific issues. But this was the first time I had to not only get a point right, but also capture an exotic setting. Not that I nailed it the first time for Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy. Nope. I wrote about a third of the book, sent it off to my cp Wendy and waited for her comments. The most telling one was her view that the way I wrote the book it could be taking place in Hawaii or New Jersey for all she knew. I had failed to capture anything about Hawaii and pull it into my writing.

So, I tried again…

Thanks to my husband being from Hawaii, my in-laws living there and yearly family vacations to the area, I had the information inside me somewhere. Even had a few photos to use for guidance. I just had to bring it all out…somehow. Then I remembered my reason for writing this book came from a trip I took Kauai with my husband a few years before. We were driving around, stopping at the lookouts and taking in the sites. I saw Waimea Canyon with its deep purple and brown rock for the first time. Beaches, thick greenery, wild chickens running around everywhere and there, in the middle of all that beauty, sat a government building behind a high fence and marked only by a faded NASA sign. I could not help but wonder what was going on inside.

And a story idea was born…

After much revising and with an eye toward describing the beauty of Kauai and its people in the most respectful way possible, Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy was born. Now, this was not the Kauai romance I set out to write. I actually began a story with a heroine and hero who come to the island to investigate a helicopter crash in Waimea Canyon. I quickly realized I was writing the wrong story first. That I needed to write about a Kauai native. So, I started over with a story about Kane Travers, the police chief of Kauai, and Annie Parks, the woman who washes up on his beach.

In case you’re wondering, that Kauai helicopter story did not go away. You’ll see it in November 2008 when my second book in the Kauai trilogy of related but completely stand alone books comes out from Brava. Sometime in 2009 Josh, Kane’s friend in Your Mouth Drives Me Crazy, will get his own story. I just have to write it first.