Welcome to New Faces, where you can meet some of the newest authors on the romance shelves. This week we welcome the unusual mother-daugher writing team of Michelle Place and longtime romance author Cheryl Zach, whose debut romance Robert's Lady is a Berkley/Jove release under the name Nicole Byrd.

Tell us a bit about yourselves.

Michelle: Hmm. The question, "Where are you from?" has always left me slightly befuddled. Simply because there is no simple answer! I was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland and raised in both Tennessee and California. And I really can't choose a favorite; I feel great kinship with all three places. When I began college, I majored in Interior Design. Why? Beats me. I was interested and I knew with all certainty that the one thing I would not be was a writer! Never mind that I read voraciously and that I was cramming every single English course that I could into my schedule. All my life I had been told, "Oh, you'll be a writer just like your mother." Not the thing to tell a child, especially a teenager. Even though I have always been incredibly proud of my mother, I still wanted to do my own thing. It just took me awhile (and a little maturity) to figure out that writing was my thing and I loved it. Sigh. Guess everyone was right after all. So I transferred to another school and changed my major to English. I haven't looked back since.

Cheryl: I'm a widow with two grown children, Michelle - who is also my writing partner--and a son, Quinn; both are married and both have babies - lucky me :) I also share my home with a blue point long-haired Siamese who loves to sleep curled up next to my desk while I write.
Born in Tennessee, I have also lived in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, California, Germany and Scotland, and am now back in Tennessee. My dad was career army, and growing up, I changed schools ten times in twelve years. I have a B.A. and M.A. in English (had a National Merit Scholarship) and formerly taught high school English.
I always loved books and wanted to write my own, and in college planned to be rich and famous in about a year; the fates of publishing decreed otherwise; I wrote and married and had babies and taught school and divorced and eventually remarried, writing and collecting rejection slips all the while. When I moved to Los Angeles with my husband and two kids, I decided to take a big gamble: I took a year off before looking for a new teaching position, despite the crimp this put into our budget, and every day sent my husband off to work and the kids off to school and wrote like crazy. After years of writing in half hour segments whenever I could snatch them, it was heaven. And thirteen months later - I cheated just a little! - I sold my first book.

Are you coming to your writing careers from other jobs?

Michelle: After graduating from college, I held several jobs to make ends meet. I worked retail during school and for a couple of years after graduation. Then, I was a nanny for a wonderful family. Two darling, incredibly precocious children whom I am sure you will all meet in a book someday! It was only after I became pregnant with my son (another darling, incredibly precocious child!) that my husband and I decided I should take a few months off before the birth to really concentrate on writing.

Cheryl: I taught school, mostly high school English but with brief spells of everything from elementary to university level. After we moved to California and I sold a book, I stayed home to write.

What made you choose romance as your genre of choice?

Michelle: I never really considered writing anything other than romance. It's what I read and what I love. I've read romance (contemporary, series, and especially, historical) since I was fifteen. To think that I might uplift and inspire readers as all the wonderful authors have inspired me--- that's pretty heady stuff and my dearest wish.

Cheryl: I've always been a romantic at heart. I grew up loving historical romance novels such as Elswyth Thane's Williamsburg novels, Gwen Bristol's CELIA GARTH, Anya Seton's novels, and many more. I love Dorothy Dunnett's Francis of Lymond series. I'm fascinated with history, especially English history, and was fortunate enough to live in Ayrshire, in southwestern Scotland, for slightly over three years. Although Scotland is a separate country with its own wild beauty and tumultuous history, and I enjoyed those years very much, my passion for England continued unabated. I have a connection to England; I'm not sure if it's a matter of heritage -- some of my ancestors, according to family tradition, did come from England--or something else. I don't know if I believe in reincarnation, but if it should be true, I know that I have lived in England in past lives, and I was happy.

How did you end up writing as a team?

Cheryl: After years of longing to get back to my original ambitions and write adult historicals, I made the time and began a novel. Michelle is very well read in historical romance, and I often asked her to critique scenes. She had so many good ideas, coming up with a better direction for the subplot and more, I suggested that she write a scene herself. She did, and it was so good, I thought “hey, this is fate... Look at the Douglases and the Barrymores and the Fondas and all the other acting dynasties; if there's an acting gene, why not a writing gene as well?"

How did writing together affect your mother-daughter relationship?

Michelle:Writing with my mother has been as easy and as difficult as I imagined it would be. Yes, that is contradictory but it's the truth, too. Mother and I are more similar than not. As you can imagine, that both helps and hurts us. (Ah, another contradiction.) We like many of the same things-Regency England, cats, tea, etc.-and these affinities make it easier to spend the great amounts of time together that our partnership requires. And we know each other so very well, better than most writing partners I would wager, that we can often grasp what the other wants to say or do before the other has even really begun. And maybe it's a genetic quirk or something but our voices blend really well...amazingly well. While my voice tends to be a bit lighter and more humorous, I don't find it at all difficult to adjust to Mother's voice, nor she to mine. When our editor, the wonderful Cindy Hwang of Berkely/Jove, first read ROBERT'S LADY, she had no idea who wrote what scene. And for two people to write together successfully, the voice must be smooth and uniform. I think the biggest challenge is to keep our mother/daughter relationship from encroaching on the author/author relationship, not the other way around.

When you disagree on a point in your book, how do you resolve it?

Michelle: Armwrestle. Ten paces on a mist shrouded field at dawn. Seriously, I will give you the nauseating truth. We really like each other. There are no screaming, blazing fights over motivation or conflict. Well, there was the argument over the publicity photo…but I was right and don't let her tell you any different! It all goes back to having very similar tastes. Now, when we do politely, calmly disagree, we discuss both opinions. We look at how they will affect the plot and then flip a coin. No. I don't know why I can't answer this seriously. I guess it's just so funny and All My Childrenish to imagine us squaring off over Robert's waistcoat or tortured past. When we really hit a wall and just can't see how we will agree (and boy, is that rare) I usually defer to her four Romance Writer of America RITAs, Hall of Fame membership, forty-book backlist and twenty-year writing career. Hard to argue with experience like that.

What research was involved for this first book together?

Cheryl: The Regency period has always been a favorite period; I did my master's thesis on Jane Austen's novels, and I was familiar with the history and the setting. While I lived in Britain, I visited the assembly rooms at Bath and got goose bumps thinking that I was walking the same floors on which Jane Austen danced! Michelle and I both read a great deal about the early nineteenth century.

Who are your influences as a writer? Other authors you admire?

Michelle: Oh, so many incredible writers have influenced me. I adore Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery, Madeleine L'Engle, Jude Deveraux, Judith McNaught, Julie Garwood, Sandra Brown, Georgette Heyer, and Nora Roberts. I admire Julia Quinn, Judith O'Brien, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Susan Wiggs, Patricia Potter and many, many others. Also, music is a great inspiration for me. I keep a selection of different CDs next to the computer. I find it easier to achieve a certain mood this way.

Cheryl: I'm mad about Georgette Heyer; as a young wife at home with my first baby, I escaped into her witty and delightful novels whenever I could take a moment from building block castles or reading Dr. Seuss. There are many contemporary writers I admire: Susan Wigg's THE CHARM SCHOOL, though not a Regency historical, was my favorite historical novel of 1999.

Michelle, how is your family adjusting to this new writing team?

Michelle: Honestly, they are thrilled. My husband and his family are so proud of me. Without my husband's support, there is just no way I could write. I feel the deepest sympathy for writers who do not have that unfailing support. Writing is such a mentally, emotionally exhausting job that without his loving encouragement, I don't know if I could face the challenge some days. Someone said that a working mother is a misnomer. I couldn't agree more.

Tell us about future books.

Happily, we have just signed a contract for a second historical with Berkley/Jove. We don't have a title or release date yet but our deadline is July 1st so we are pounding away on our keyboards. We're having such fun and hope that you enjoy your time with Robert and Katryn of ROBERT'S LADY.

How can readers contact you?

We love to hear from readers and are eager to hear from you! Our web page is in development and will hopefully be ready soon. In the meantime, we can be reached at: NicoleByrd@excite.com

Michelle and Cheryl, best of luck! Readers, we have a review of Robert's Lady on our Historicals page.

May 20, 2000