May: We met in 1979. Nikoo was six, and Jim was thirty something. (Just kidding - Jim was in his early twenties.) One morning, after a wild storm had ravaged the New England shoreline, Nikoo was out walking along the seawall in Stonington, Connecticut, and came upon a young man (early twenties - honest!) who was trying to salvage a battered small boat that had washed up on the rocks. Jim needed help dragging the boat up over the seawall and across the salt marsh. Anyway, by the time the two had secured the boat on higher ground, a spark had ignited between them ... or rather, between us. So it was instant electricity - and Jim's been chasing Nikoo ever since!

This is the story we like to tell about how we met. It isn't true, but we like to tell it anyway. :-) (-:

(By the way, Nikoo did help Jim secure the boat and sparks were flying when we were doing it - securing it. So that part did happen. J)

Vic: Do you remember your first date?

May: Nikoo does - Jim hasn't got the foggiest!

Actually, our first real date was a day at the beach. We went out for a walk along a stunningly beautiful stretch of sand named Napatree Point in Watch Hill, Rhode Island. We know there are some New Jerseyites out there who'd love to argue the point, but Napatree may be the best beach on the east coast. Imagine a curving point of land that was swept clean of gorgeous Victorian cottages during the '38 hurricane. All that's left are over three miles of clean, white sand, some small dunes of sea grasses where osprey nest, and a ruined 19th century fort at the end of the point. No road, very few people, surf on the ocean side and flat water on the bay side a hundred feet away - sigh ...

That date really worked out pretty well. (-:

Vic: How long have you been married?

May: We've been married since 1980 - as soon as Nikoo turned seven.

Vic: Jim, what is THE most romantic thing you have ever done for Nikoo?

Jim: The most romantic thing ... ahhh ... of the millions of romantic things that I've done ... ahhhh ... hmmm ... hmm. Well ... hmmmmm. Oh yes - I've got one! One time, when Nikoo and I had been married for only a couple of years, I arranged a little off-season getaway (hey, we were broke!) to Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. I took the BEST room in this very nice inn. It had colonial furnishings and a fireplace (that lit with a single match) and flowers in the room and champagne chilling. It rained like hell the whole weekend, but we didn't really mind ...

Vic: Nikoo, the same question to you! What is the most romantic thing you have ever done for Jim?

Nikoo: I hooked us into buying a time-share condo in St. Maarten, not long after we were married (pre-children days). We had a number of VERY romantic weeks down there - before the place got wrecked by a hurricane - and the management company folded - and the cost of maintenance sky-rocketed - and the owners-group decided to sue the developer- and - and ...

But those first years were wonderfully romantic - soft Caribbean breezes, palm trees swaying, blue water, island music. Hey, you can cliché us to death with those kinds of things.

Vic: To both: What do you do in your spare time? What really relaxes you?

May: We don't really have any spare time. We hardly ever watch TV, and our vacations now are generally work-related (though we almost always take the kids and do some R&R along the way). We do love movies, though, and we used to watch a lot of TV. (Could anyone out there fill us in on who shot JR?)

Vic: To both: What is your "Grand Passion"? What really makes your heart sing?

May: We are living our Grand Passion. Living and working with the one you love is the best life has to offer. We found our soul mates - and our hearts sing every day! (Actually, it's Nikoo's heart singing - and Jim's stomach growling.)

Vic: Brag time! Tell us about your family if you will. How does your family - i.e., children, parents, etc. - feel about the genre you write in?

May: We have two wonderful boys that we are very proud of. They're just plain great kids. One is in 8th grade - a straight-A student, solid character, plays violin, piano, clarinet, baritone sax, bass clarinet, soccer, and lacrosse. Our younger guy is also a straight-A student, solid character (actually, he's a REAL character - he loves Jim Carrey and Calvin and Hobbes), plays piano and violin, baseball, soccer, and lacrosse.

They're both very proud of us, though they think we're a little "different" than the parents of most of their friends. Can't imagine why! Though we NEVER (when they were babies) put a top on their playpens or slid the thing in front of the TV so that we could work. We don't care WHAT they tell Oprah!

Vic: Jim, do you ever get the "raspberries" about the genre you write in???? How do other males respond when they become aware of what you write? Have you ever encountered a negative response from another male, and if so how did you handle it?

Jim: Never - well, a little from my fellow English professors when the books came out. I always told them that they were just suffering from "Venus Envy"! *g*

Vic: (ROTF!! "Venus Envy"!!!!) Nikoo, are you the envy of the block? I mean, your DH writes romance, for Pete's sake! He brings you flowers every Friday, keeps a supply of chocolate truffles near your bedside and feeds them to you, woos you at every turn in the road, and NEVER leaves his underwear lying on the floor right next to the laundry hamper, right? Right??? Go ahead, feed our fantasy or shatter our illusions! LOL!

Nikoo: How did you know?!! That description fits Jim to a "T"! But I should tell you that he cleans the bathrooms, and had my birthday and our anniversary tattooed on his wrist so that he would never forget them. He is the perfect spouse - and he's making sure I get this all down right, too! What a guy!! He DOES eat a lot, and never gains a pound. I just HATE that.

Vic: Ok, I'm swooning!!! Now - fantasy time! Jim, it is Valentine's Day - if you could take Nikoo anywhere, any time period in history - past, present, or future - for THE most romantic Valentine's Day of her life, when and where would it be, and what would you do to make it one she would never forget?

Jim: It would be in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, in the year 2001. We will have just finished the manuscript we're working on, and our boys are cuddled up with us on the sofa, watching a movie. After the movie, and when the boys are tucked in, there will be time for shrimp cocktails and chilled champagne. But for Nikoo, I know it doesn't get any better than this.

Vic: Nikoo: Same question to you! (No peeking at each other's answers!!!)

Nikoo: Strawberries - champagne - shrimp - chocolate - tiptoeing to the bedroom so I wouldn't wake up the kids and the dog - wearing something comfortable (his flannel shirt). But we do this every day - I mean every year, but it's still the BEST!

Vic: To both: What's your key to a happy, long-term marriage?

May: A sense of humor. The ability to compromise. Giving more than you get. The decision, early on, to make it a 'forever' marriage. Oh, yeah - and great sex!

Vic: Jim, the VAST majority of the male population will not even read romance, so I think it's difficult for most of us female readers to fathom that you WRITE IT!!! What makes you so different from the "typical" male in this regard? Were you a romance reader before you began to write?

Jim: I was a romance reader before writing it - for about a week or two! *g* Actually, Nikoo and I read a whole bunch of wonderful series romances together in the early eighties. She'd read romance before, but the genre was taking off, and I wanted to know what it was all about. When we started to write together, though, Nikoo gave me a number of historical romances to read. They were great fun, and we both knew that writing romance fit right into our view of life ... so we decided to try it. Incidentally, we don't see the act of writing romance any differently than we see writing any kind of fiction. It's about characters.

But if I'm at all atypical, it's because I write - not because I write romance. But I do still like to wander around in Home Depots for hours. And I NEVER need a map when I'm driving.

Vic: Nikoo, which one of you first discovered that you could partner in writing romance? Were you surprised that you could collaborate with your husband in this genre?

Nikoo: I did - I did - I did. We've always LOVED to spend time together. In our past careers, when we had outside jobs that forced us spend so many hours in the day apart, we would always go crazy trying to develop activities that we could do together. For example, I learned to row on Boston Harbor while I was eight months pregnant - with three feet long rats swimming after the boat. (Actually, I was only three months pregnant, but the rats were there, honest. Jim even saw them - and then rowed like hell in the other direction.)

But I was the one who started us off writing together, one snowy weekend. The beginning was both a surprise and a learning experience, but we both knew that we had the ability to do something special when we wrote together.

Mary: Are readers surprised to discover that May McGoldrick is really two people - husband and wife? What's the oddest or funniest reaction you've ever received?

May: Fewer readers are surprised now because we've never tried to keep it a secret. We've never, however, been people who love the spotlight, so the relative anonymity that hiding behind a pen name gives us has been just fine. One time, though, at our first RT Convention, a very lovely bookseller from Texas spotted the name tag that Nikoo was wearing. She ran up and threw her arms around Nikoo, and gushed, "MAY!! We love your books!" and other nice things ... Nikoo kept trying to point to Jim, telling the woman, "He's May, too ..." but that dirty dog just slunk off toward the punch bowl as quick as his legs could take him.

Mary: What is the biggest challenge and the biggest pleasure about writing as a team? Do you each have a particular area of specialty in the writing (dialogue, battle scenes, love scenes, plotting, etc.)?

May: Two heads being better than one should be the theme song for every collaborative team. You are never alone. You always have someone to talk up or down your ideas with. But of course, having two heads doesn't necessarily mean that you have twice the brain - or you could write twice as fast. Feeding times are difficult - bathroom times are hell.

The biggest pleasure that we've found in the actual act of writing is the feeling of complementing each other. While we don't really have specialty areas, Nikoo could be characterized as the screenwriter type (she loves writing dialogue), and Jim is more the poet type (he loves imagery and language, descriptive passages - he also loves sleeping in late, long walks on the beach, old movies - anything to keep from working).

jaycee: Do you have any gender differences in your romance collaborations? What do you disagree on, if anything?

May: We definitely agree on things as we write, but the greatest thing that we disagree on - and this is not something we have revealed before - the most divisive thing we deal with in writing together is whether we should stop at noon for a large lunch or a quick bite to eat. Those of you who know us, know that Nikoo generally wins (because she fights dirty), but (after a quick bite) Jim generally gets to eat chocolate chip cookies at the computer during the afternoon - if he munches quietly.

Mary: Can you share the creative qualities indulging in really good chocolate brings to your writing? (I couldn't resist throwing this question in since we have a mutual love of chocolate.)

May: As ANYONE who is even mildly creative knows, chocolate in any form is the true 'nectar of the gods.' One little known bit of mythology - it was originally the Muses who conveyed the secret of the making of chocolate from Olympus to the poet Sappho. What she did with it is, of course, another story - but great lovers and other creative types have been enjoying its power to inspire ever since.

jaycee: We'd love to know who writes the hot sex scenes. Do either of you believe in a certain amount of sexual censorship?

May: We both write the sex scenes, and the thought of sexual censorship has never occurred to us (though our boys are definitely not old enough to read our books!). Actually, now that you mention it, Jim's not old enough to read our books.

jaycee: Working together, how do you separate your working schedule from your family time?

May: Our family always comes first. Period. But (thank God) the kids go to school, and we go to work. Often, as we are doing right now, we will work late at night after the kids are in bed if we're up against a deadline.

jaycee: Your very first novel, THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE, was the RT Reviewer's Choice nominee for Best First Historical Romance, and the winner of two NJRW Golden Leaf awards and the Florida RWA Laurel Wreath for Best Historical Novel in 1995. Can you share with us your feelings on hearing such praise for your entrance into the literary arena?

May: We were overwhelmed by the immediate response to our stories. Since then, we have always tried to write better and different stories, and we've had similar responses, winning such awards as the RT Top Pick, the Holt Medallion, and taking first place in the Southern Heat contest. To be honest, though, we enter fewer contests than we did when our first books came out. We've found that the pleasure we get from readers who write to us or who come to our signings is even more gratifying than winning contests. After all, readers are the people we're really writing for, and we can't tell you how many readers have become our friends over the last few years!

Mary: The recent Highland Trilogy consisting of THE DREAMER, THE ENCHANTRESS, and THE FIREBRAND was your first "series," although previous books have often had some connection to each other. What motivated you to write a trilogy and how has it been received?

May: As you say, all of our previous books have overlapping characters, but we wanted to try a trilogy that had a single plotline that ran through all three books, even though the heroines' love stories were self-contained in each individual book. It was VERY challenging to manage the details, but we had great fun doing it. The reception of those three books has been phenomenal. Since May, we've received well over a thoused about five different storylines, from time travel to mystery to romantic suspense. Eventually it evolved into a story where a guy runs into a woman who is wandering about in a storm in Rhode Island, only to find out that she was supposedly murdered two weeks earlier.

The challenges ...? Actually, it gave us a new understanding of the value of pre-planning your work. Because the web woven by the lives of these characters is intricate, and because you have to release information at intervals to the reader, the writer really needs to plan ahead carefully. If you do that, you can still let your creative energies loose as you write, without losing any important details or the pacing that you are trying to achieve.

And yes, we are definitely going to be writing historicals under the name May McGoldrick. In fact, we have another surprise that we'll be filling you in on in a month or two.

jaycee: How did you come to the "May" in May McGoldrick?

May: When we wrote our first novel, our editor at Penguin felt that we should have a feminine pen name. We tossed around approximately a hundred names or so, and then we thought of Jim's late grandmother, a strong-minded, book-loving woman who would have been the perfect heroine for any story. So we decided to use her name - hence, May McGoldrick was born (or re-born *g*).

When we wrote TRUST ME ONCE, we decided that it was so different from our historicals that we should come up with a pseudonym that wouldn't mislead readers who knew May McGoldrick's books. We decided on Jan Coffey because 'Coffey' is Nikoo's maiden name, and 'Jan' is an acronym for 'Jim And Nikoo'!

Mary: As your career has progressed, what have you learned the most about romance novels and romance readers?

May: The biggest things we have learned from the time we first started ... romance fiction is no different than any other fiction, in that it can and should stand up to critical scrutiny like any other fiction. It has its conventions and its specific focus, like any other genre (including the 'literary' genre), and the writing and the stories are, more often than not, darn good.

What we've learned about romance readers ... first, romance readers are the greatest book 'lovers' in America. Second, when it comes to historical romance readers, no group of readers is more knowledgeable about relationships and about the details of history than these readers.

jaycee: With the internet opening the communication between readers and authors, would you allow readers' opinions to influence your writing in any way? If so, how?

May: Every voice that expresses an opinion is important to us, and we can't help but take the criticism to heart as much as the kudos. But usually, by the time our books have 'hit the street,' we have written the next one and are on the book after that! And because we take chances sometimes, we understand that every book doesn't work for every reader. Also, we try to get better with every book, which means that we're constantly making choices about how to present characters and situations. For example, we rarely do any elaborate description of clothing anymore. For some readers, this might reduce the reading pleasure, but we feel that what our characters do and say are more important, and we want to spend the page space on those dimensions.

Nonetheless, whether we agree or disagree, we always listen to and consider the opinions of readers. We feel that writers who say they just write for themselves ... well, they should do just that. When we write our stories, we do it for the purpose of touching and entertaining real people.

jaycee: On the RBL board, we have members aspiring to be romance authors. What advice would you give them for finding an agent or basically getting started? Or what concerns did you face in your "beginning days"?

May: Our strongest advice would be to find an agent who is a member of AAR and who believes in you. We have been blessed with two agents who fit both of those characteristics. We know it's hard getting in, but the writing life (whether you publish or not) is a great life.

One thing we've overcome since our 'beginning days' is the fear of being seen as pushy. We believe that if someone is courteous and realistic in their approach, editors and agents respond. Waiting unrealistic periods for responses is the wrong way to go. Submit simultaneously, follow up in periods of weeks or maybe a month or so with a postcard and then weekly with postcards. Granted, most people in the industry are ferociously busy, but you deserve responses (either yea or nay) on the stories you submit. And then be nice and understanding if you ever get them on the phone.

Another thing you should do is not spend ten years rewriting the same book. Move on - you have more stories than that one.

jaycee: What's the next project you both have in the works?

May: Well, in July 2001 the Jan Coffey book, TRUST ME ONCE, will be published by Mira. Then, in September 2001, the May McGoldrick historical, THE PROMISE, will be out. Right now, we're trying to finish the manuscript of THE REBEL, which should be out in 2002. After that, we will write our 2nd Jan Coffey suspense thriller, and that will be out in July 2002.

Of course, all that is contingent on getting Jim's butt in the chair (-: