My Harlequin Moment: Kate Austin

I’m going to cheat just a little bit before I tell you my story, because I, like everyone who writes for Harlequin, probably has TWO favorite moments, one of them being the phone call telling us we’d sold our first book to Harlequin. In my case, that was an even bigger moment, because it wasn’t just my first book to Harlequin but my first book ever. And you can imagine how exciting that was!

But my other favorite moment – and, in truth, it is still and will probably always be my very favorite Harlequin moment – includes two of my favorite women – Stevi Mittman and Jennifer Greene – and two of my favorite activities – sitting on the stairs and singing (badly!).

Picture this.

Atlanta July 2006. Hot. Hot. Hot. And humid. Hundreds of women (and a few men) crammed into the Ritz-Carlton Hotel basement party room. Drinks. And more drinks.

The three of us lasted as long as we could, dancing, drinking, fanning our hot selves, yelling at friends over the noise. But eventually we determined on escape and ended up in the foyer, gravitating, almost automatically, to the stairs leading out of the basement (I’m sure the Ritz-Carlton calls it something else).

We were dressed up of course – high heels, makeup, formal clothing – and yet there we were, sprawled like teenagers on the stairs, disregarding the mess we might make of our perfect selves.

I bet most of you already know this but conversations are different on the stairs – more personal, less complicated, and definitely more entertaining. We looked up at everyone coming down or going up the stairs, as if we were children again, seeing everyone from an unexpected angle. And everyone talked to us. No barriers, no discomfort, everyone remembering what it was like to pick a step next to a friend and sit down. Talk. Share stories.

And then, sad but true, we began to sing. This might have been okay if we had tried to sing something simple, a song that didn’t require any musicianship. But no, not us. Instead, we threw ourselves into trying to remember all the verses of a song from The Sound of Music. Rodgers and Hammerstein at their very best. We didn’t pick “Edelweiss”, a nice, relatively simple folk song. Nope. We decided to sing a song that had not just complicated lyrics, but lyrics in three different languages. Yep, you guessed it. We decided we were going to sing “So Long, Farewell.”

None of us had the voice to carry it off. But we didn’t care. We just kept on singing and smiling and laughing with the throngs of women going up and down the stairs. In between singing, we complimented other writers on their beautiful dresses, their amazing shoes – all of us being shoe addicts – and then began to sing again. People would sit down next to us for a few minutes and join in. I don’t remember that anyone could sing any better than us (and I’m sure I would have remembered if Peggy Webb – an amazing musician – had joined us) but it didn’t matter.

We laughed so hard we almost cried. And I don't know about Stevi and Jennifer but I do know that I almost ruined the brand-new silk panties I was wearing under my dress!

We were Harlequin writers, sitting on the stairs at the Harlequin party at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta, and we could do whatever we wanted.

There is something very satisfying about sitting on the stairs. Maybe it’s the geometric neatness of it. Maybe it’s the childhood memories. Maybe it’s the unexpected angles through which you view people. And there’s an etiquette to sitting on the stairs. When someone joins you, they’ll sit on the stair below you, their head even with your shoulder. And if someone else then joins you, they’ll sit at your other shoulder, on the step just above you. No one sits on your stair.

I wonder if we learned this stair sitting etiquette as children? I remember sitting on the stairs at my granny’s house. I remember sitting on the stairs of some big old building downtown watching a parade. I remember sitting on the stairs at parties and I remember meeting some beautiful men on those stairs.

And I still sit on the stairs when I get a chance. I occasionally dream of having a two story house so that I can do it at home, rather than when I’m out. Because not every hotel is as accommodating about stair sitting as the Ritz-Carlton.

Did you sit on the stairs as a child? Do you sit on the stairs now? What memories do you have of sitting on the stairs? Did anything important happen to you sitting on the stairs?

Tell us.
Kate

About The Author:

Kate blames her mother and her two grandmothers for her reading and writing obsession — all of them were avid readers and they passed the books and the obsession on to her. And she reads everything, from fantasy to mysteries to literary fiction to romance. She’s addicted to books, and buying them is her biggest expense.

Kate Austin writes the same way — passion combined with a big dose of addiction. It's part of her day, every day. She loves writing, the process and the product, and is astonished and delighted that twenty years on, she's finally getting paid for it.