A couple of weeks ago I was in ecstasy in a darkened room with heavenly music all around me when, suddenly, the exasperated voice of my long-late grandmother said, “Not that song again!”

Not that I blame her for her attitude mind you. Back in 1960whatever when I got my hands on the single of “Let’s Hang On” I played it on my little mono record player until there was practically no vinyl left on the nearly smooth black surface of the recording. This was a song by the Four Season, actually by then it was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons as he was the only one left of the original lineup. I adored that song. But my constant playing of it created a bit of attention in my teenage home. Grandma got pretty sick of it, and Grandma was always a vocal sort.

So I wasn’t surprised at hearing her complaint while I was at my first Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons concert and I was bopping around and singing along to “Let’s Hang On”, which it turns out, is still one of my favorite songs.

I rediscovered the Four Seasons a few months ago after insisting to my younger friends that they’d enjoy going to “Jersey Boys”, the musical based on the Four Seasons. The play was great and my friends were amazed at my lip-synching with dead-on accuracy to every song in the show. After seeing “Jersey Boys” I went looking for Four Seasons music.

Now, once upon a long time ago I owned every single the band recorded, but never any of the albums oddly enough. Not that it matters, as I have no idea where those recordings have gotten to. Nor would I have any means of playing singles even if I could find them (do you guys even know what a single is?)

Ah, but while the music (and I) is old, it (and I) is still great. Finding the songs wasn’t hard at all. All I had to do was download the Four Seasons music to my iPod. How weird and wonderful that things change and stay the same.

I’ve returned to the days of playing “Let’s Hang On” constantly. And the ghost of my grandmother sighs. Loudly. Mostly because thanks to modern technology I’m a lot deafer than I was at 16.

  I’ve been known to check out and occasionally contribute to several romance message boards. Questions like “Which hero would you like to meet?” pop up now and then, and lively discussions ensue. I don’t generally participate in these, because, well, I live with some of my heroes full time (there’s one that I’m certain drinks my coffee when I’m not looking) and it’s not always a bed of roses – just like living with any man. Okay, they’re imaginary, but that’s only a statement I make to keep from being locked away in a softly-padded room.

I have two kinds of characters that hang out in my head. There are those I refer to as the ‘transients’ – they move in for a while, tell me their stories, then move out. These are the people who (mostly) populate my books. Then there are the ‘permanent residents’. A lot of the permanent residents have never had a word written about them – and believe me they complain about that. But their stories would take up multi-volume epics that I’m not sure anyone would be interested in but me – so I constantly remind them that I do this writing gig for a living.

Some of the most permanent residents were supposed to start out as transients but once they moved in there was no evicting them. The most active of this bunch of squatters is a guy named Laurent Wolf. There is no shutting Laurent up. He originated as a sort of homage to Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I needed a bad-guy point of view character in I HUNGER FOR YOU (his personality started to form when I wrote a description of him looking like Legolas gone bad). From there he went on to be the hero of his own book, MASTER OF DARKNESS and has appeared as a secondary character in a couple more of the Primes Series. He’s a motor-mouth, smart-mouth pest, but I love him dearly.

So, I have my own personal demons – uh, vampires – but what hero that lives in some other writer’s head would I like to hang out with? The answer is, Sam Vimes. Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Duke of Ankh-Morpork. Husband to Lady Sybil. Father to Young Sam. Stubborn, honest, tough wonderful Sam Vimes. If you don’t know Terry Pratchett’s Discworld fantasy series you don’t know Sam Vimes. And if you don’t read Discworld – why not?   

The hips, of course, but also the mind, and sensory experience. I’ve just returned from a train trip across the American West and I have learned an important bit of research that I’m sure will end up in a book – I’ve learned that it’s very difficult to brush teeth on a moving train. Wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t tried it.

I mention travel, because the things I see, experience, and deliberately research in my travels invariably end up in what I write. If I hadn’t spent time in Las Vegas I wouldn’t have known to describe the hot, dry night wind, having never felt it. If I hadn’t been to the Chedworth Roman villa in England I would never have gotten the idea for “(Like a) Virgin of the Spring”. If I hadn’t spent time in Los Angeles I wouldn’t be aware of the scent of jasmine that is mentioned in several of my vampire books. If I hadn’t been to Egypt – I would still have written about ancient Egypt because I’m barmy for that ancient time and place – but my description wouldn’t have been as accurate.

It is summer. Time to travel. Time to experience the new and different. You should go somewhere. Take one of my books with you to read along the way while you’re at it. I’m going to stay home and write for a while.