Meet Monica McCarty

MY FAVORITE...

:: MOVIE
A&E’s Pride & Prejudice

:: T.V. SHOW(S)
The Office (both American & British), Spartacus Blood and Sand, and True Blood.

:: BROADWAY SHOW
Les Miserables

:: HISTORICAL ROMANCE NOVEL
The Bride, Julie Garwood

:: CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE NOVEL
Heaven, Texas or Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

:: NOT A ROMANCE NOVEL
Persuasion, Jane Austen

:: OLD MOVIE STAR
Errol Flynn

:: ACTOR
Andy Whitfield

:: ACTRESS
Cate Blanchett

:: MUSICAL GROUP
Metallica

:: SONG
Voices by Godsmack

:: TRAVEL DESTINATION
The United Kingdom (but where else?)

:: FOOD
Mexican

:: DESSERT
Strawberry Shortcake

:: RESTAURANT
Cactus Taqueria, Berkeley, CA

:: SPORT
downhill skiing

:: SPORT TO WATCH
Baseball (big surprise)

:: COLOR
Blue

:: TOY
Anything Apple.

:: ITEM OF CLOTHING
Rainbow flip flops

:: MAGAZINE
Vanity Fair

:: BEACH OR MOUNTAINS?
Mountains

Monica's Bio

What do you get when you mix a legal career, a baseball career, motherhood, and a love of history with a voracious reader? In my case, a Historical Romance Author.

Like most writers, I’ve always loved to read. Growing up in California there was always plenty to do outside, but all too often I could be found inside curled up with a book (or two or three). I started with the usual fare: The Little House on the Prairie series, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, Watership Down, Nancy Drew, and everything by Judy Blume. Once I cleared off my bookshelf, I started swiping books from my mom. Some, like Sidney Sheldon’s The Other Side of Midnight, probably weren’t the most appropriate choice for a pre-adolescent—although they were definitely illuminating. I can still remember the look of abject horror on my mom’s Catholic-girl-face when I asked her what a virgin was. After that rather brief conversation, she paid a little closer attention to what had disappeared off her book shelf, and steered me in the direction of Harlequin and Barbara Cartland romances. I was hooked. I quickly read through the inventory of the local library and was soon buying bags of romances at garage sales.

In high school, with the encouragement of my father (who I think was a little concerned about the steady diet of romances), I read over eighty of the Franklin Library’s One Hundred Greatest Books ever written—including Tolstoy, Confucius, Plato, and the entire works of Shakespeare. Some of them were tough going for a teenager, but the experience would prove an invaluable foundation for college. After reading War and Peace, I wasn’t easily intimidated.

For some reason Monica decided to go
into writing and not fashion.

After graduation, I loaded up the VW (Jetta not Bus) and trekked down I-5 to attend the University of Southern California, majoring in Political Science and minoring in English (see why all that reading helped!). I joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, and when I wasn’t studying or at football games, did my best to support the local bartending industry. Ah, the good old days.

With that kind of fun, four years of college wasn’t quite enough. So leaving Tommy Trojan behind, I traveled back up north to Palo Alto for three more years of study at Stanford Law School. Once I survived the stress of the first semester, law school proved to be one of the best times of my life—garnering me a JD, life-long friends, a husband, and an unexpectedly intimate knowledge of baseball. (See “The Baseball Odyssey” below).

Law School was also where I fell in love with Scotland. In my third year, I took a Comparative Legal History class, and wrote a paper on the Scottish Clan System and Feudalism. So I immediately dropped out of law school and went on to write Scottish Historical Romances…well no, not quite. You see, I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. My father was a lawyer, I was a “poet” (i.e., not into math), and I love to argue. It seemed natural.

So I finished law school, got married, passed the CA bar, moved to Minnesota (with a few stops along the way), waived into the MN bar, worked as a litigator for a few satisfying years, moved back to CA, had a couple of kids, realized that a legal career and being a single parent for most of the year (due to husband's career) would be extremely difficult, and THEN decided to sit down and write.

And how did I end up writing romance? It’s not as divergent as it seems. What I loved about being a lawyer are the same things I love about being a writer—research and writing. The only thing missing is the arguing, but that’s what a husband and kids are for, right?

Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Me
(shamelessly borrowed from a popular tabloid magazine)

1. I was a Star Wars maniac. I've seen the original film over 100 times and used to have a mad crush on Mark Hamill (including hanging pictures of him in my school locker). Apparently I never outgrew this "trekkie" type of personality quirk because I did the same thing (except for the locker) with Lord of the Rings, including attending midnight showings to all three movies.

2. I don't like casseroles. "Cream of [fill in the blank]" makes my stomach . . . enough said. This amuses one of my CPs greatly. She's always threatening to invite me over to dinner for casserole night.

3. I played piano for almost 10 years and danced ballet for over 12 years. Alas, I was only passably talented at both.

4. I was a huge Elvis fan. I can still remember the day my dad came home and told me he died—I was crushed. I've seen every movie, read tons of books, own most of his music, and visited Graceland. Oh yea, I'm the same age as Lisa Marie, too.

5. I’ve lived in (at least) 9 different states and the District of Columbia: California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Kansas, Massachusetts, and Minnesota.

6. I would have been a star in Broadway musical theater, but for one important thing: I can’t sing.

7. I could happily live on burritos (and Mexican food in general). When living in Minnesota in the early 90s, I suffered such serious withdrawals that one time on returning to California to visit my parents I ate Mexican food—and nothing else—for nearly a week straight.

8. I was a huge Rolling Stones fan in high school. At one point in the 80s I owned every released album (which I think at the time was around 55). My mom still has most of them.

9. I dated Superman for a brief time in law school.

10. I’m a true American mutt: half Mexican and half British Isles mix (Irish, Scottish, Manx). Alas, I don’t speak Spanish or Gaelic, and from some of the looks I’ve gotten traveling around in the UK, I’m not sure I speak proper English either. Let’s just say that the “California twang” doesn’t always translate well.

In my second year of law school, I met my husband Dave—an all-American first baseman and College Baseball Player of the Year for Stanford. Right after our engagement in 1991, Dave was drafted third overall by the Minnesota Twins, beginning a strange journey that would last 15 years through 9 different baseball organizations, 7 different big league teams, and finally, an end to an 86-year-old curse.

But we didn’t know that then. Then we thought Dave would be a Minnesota Twin for the foreseeable future. So in 1993 after a short swing past AA Orlando and AAA Portland, we loaded up the truck and moved to…no, not Beverly Hills, but Minneapolis.

I worked for two years at a fantastic law firm in Minneapolis (I’d passed the California bar and waived into Minnesota’s) doing mostly copyright and antitrust litigation. Unfortunately, Dave’s career with the Twins didn’t last. He was traded to the San Francisco Giants (via the Cincinnati Reds) in 1995 and we moved back to California.

The Giants were the beginning of a long roller coaster ride for Dave in the major and minor leagues that continued with the Seattle Mariners, the Detroit Tigers, the Oakland A’s (twice), the Kansas City Royals, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (don’t ask), and the Boston Red Sox. Through it all, the kids and I stayed in California; commuting when we could to whatever city Dave happened to be living in at the time. But perseverance was rewarded when he was part of the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox. Dave’s baseball career ended in 2005, but the hysteria surrounding the World Series was an experience we’ll never forget.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any cards, balls, bats or jerseys to send you, but if you want to send him a note, here is a special email address for people to find him right here: He checks it about once a month. He’s also been known to pop in on my blog.