Author Answers with Sarah Strohmeyer

Welcome to Author Answers, this week with Sarah Strohmeyer.

Strohmeyer is the author of Bubbles Unbound, Bubbles in Trouble, Bubbles Ablaze, Bubbles A Broad, Bubbles Betrothed, The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives, and The Cinderella Pact, coming out in June. For more about her, you can check out her website or check out The Lipstick Chronicles, where she is a regular blog contributor.

1. Place you do most of your writing:
We have an old bedroom I use. It is totally cluttered with bills, promotional stuff, Diet Coke cans, wasabi paste, you name it.
2. While you write, do you do anything else (munch on carrots or drink tea or listen to heavy metal, for example?)
I could never listen to music while I write. I need (prefer?) total silence. I drink a lot of water, an occasional Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke, and chew a lot of gum. At 3 p.m., I turn on General Hospital and have trained myself to write with in the background. It's been so boring, lately, this has been easy.
3. Why did you decide to be a writer?
I don't know. I always wanted to be one. Maybe it was Laura Ingalls Wilder or Louisa May Alcott. Anyway, I wrote a pledge to myself at age ten that this would be my goal in life. After that it was just a matter of wrong turns until I finally had enough guts - and humiliation - to do what I had to do.
4. What author(s) inspire you?
Gee, almost every author. Nora Roberts inspires me with her discipline and story-telling. Sophie Kinsella with her timing. Richard Hawke (Tim Cockey) with his ability to build suspense. And, of course, my friends like Nancy Martin, Susan McBride and Harley Jane Kozak inspire me every day to keep going.
5. How long did you have to work on writing before your first book was accepted for publication?
Well, I'd been writing for quite some time as a newspaper reporter, so I think that kind of shifts the balance a bit. It took me a year to write BUBBLES UNBOUND, my first piece of fiction.
6. What made you keep working until it was done?
I had a newspaper editor I desperately loathed. I had two small children at home who needed me not to work on weekends and holidays. And I had - sappy music here - a dream of a little girl I had to fulfill. (Uh, that little girl would have been me at ten. Please see above.)
7. How did you feel when you first saw your name on the cover of a book?
Hey. It should be bigger! (No, just joking. Kind of.) I thought, I hope to see many more books like these.
8. If you had to actually live the life of one of the characters in your book(s) who would you want to be and why?
I think I'd like to be Nola Devlin in THE CINDERELLA PACT (coming from Dutton in June) because she loses a ton of weight (I wish!) and gets to fall for a guy who's the spitting image of Owen Wilson.