Jamie Michele

My beta reader, Margie, has been encouraging me to add more humor to my writing. You’re funny, she insisted. Just try.
Just try? How does one “try” to be funny? If it doesn’t come out naturally, it seemed to me that it shouldn’t come out at all. But she’s a smart woman, so I decided to [...]

Do some writers have such strong voices that we might be able to recognize them from a few lines pulled from one of their books?
I don’t know. So, in the spirit of fun and discovery, I’ve pulled a dozen short sections from romance novels written by ten of our genre’s modern superstars.
How many voices do you recognize [...]

While standing outside of an airport, waiting for my big brother to pick me up, I get a call. It’s my brother’s wife.
“I’m sorry, J. We’re gonna be a few more minutes.”
“It’s okay. Are you lost?”
“No. Your brother—he’s—his shirt’s off. There’s a guy on the ground…”
“Huh?”

Many of you know that I had shoulder surgery last January to repair a ring of detached cartilage and muscle, a volleyball-induced mess that had been keeping me from all of my favorite hobbies and a chunk of my duties as a zookeeper. Though I didn’t know the extent of the injury before the surgery, [...]

Winning the Golden Heart takes more than luck, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the odds. If you’ve got a fence-sitting manuscript and you aren’t sure where it belongs, this information might sway your decision.