by Shiloh Walker

So what is a writer to do when the bad guy doesn’t want to be the bad guy? That’s the dilemma I had to face when I was writing the first of the Rafferty brother books, FRAGILE.

You see, there was only supposed to be the one book. Luke’s book. Quinn wasn’t going to get a book, because in Luke’s book, Quinn was supposed to be the bad guy. You know… the bad guy, the guy who doesn’t get the girl, the happy ever after. He suffers, we smile. All is good.

My problem started about a third of the way through the book…Luke’s book, yes. Quinn? He was suffering, all right. This shouldn’t have been a problem. It was going as planned—he was the bad guy. He wasn’t going to be the happy-go-lucky sort.

But I was kind of suffering, too. Because he also wasn’t the bastard I needed him to be to make him the bad guy. Plus, his twin… the hero of the book, Luke, he wasn’t too keen on how I was painting his brother as the bad guy. And the more I tried to make Quinn the bad guy, the harder it was to write the story.

Fine, I tell them. Have it your way, but the story isn’t going to work out—there isn’t anybody else who can be the bad guy, and we need a bad guy. It’s a suspense, remember?

Yeah, yeah. Well, it turns out… I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Quinn couldn’t have been the bad guy, because it turns out he had this core of strength I wasn’t prepared for. Yeah, so he was a little bit crazy there for a while, but a lot of us dance on that thin edge every now and then. He brushed a little closer than some of us, but then he had a darker time than many people. He pulled himself back, got himself together, and both Quinn and Luke turned out to be right. Quinn wasn’t bad guy material.

But that didn’t mean I was planning on giving him a book.

I wasn’t. I just…wasn’t. Even though I was told people would ask for his book. And uh… yes, that did happen. It wasn’t anything I had planned.

And then I had to start making the plans, because the questions about Quinn started coming almost as soon as I finished Quinn’s book.

I can do this, I figure. I mean, I figured out how to undo the mess I’d made out of the first book, right? And I conveniently forgot the headaches I had over that book before I finally stopped fighting them, before I stopped fighting the story.

So here I am, mapping out this plan for Quinn’s story. He’s what I’d call a tarnished knight and what he needs more than anything else is somebody he can save…makes sense. He’s somewhat damaged already because the one woman he’d actually had feelings for died and he wasn’t able to save her—if I put somebody in his life for him to save, maybe that can get him on the road to healing. Right?

Makes sense.

So I create this heroine. She’ got a quiet inner strength, but she’s not a fighter. She’s his complete opposite. She’s soft, she’s gentle…and now that I think about it? He would have terrified her. Anyway. I had this perfect plan. And a third of the way through the story?

It died on me. Can’t figure out the problem. Banging my head. Then I take a good hard look at the heroine and have one of my soon to be famous HEAD —> DESK moments. She is the problem. It’s not that she’s a bad heroine. She’s actually a pretty good one—she’s got room to grow, room to become a strong heroine. I may yet use her in a book.

But she was all wrong for Quinn and because I was trying to make her work? The book was stalling.

So there I am, deleting half of what I had written—and at this point, some work had already gone into the blurb…and the fact that I had gone and dumped most of the story? Well, the blurb no longer worked. They had to start from scratch… kind of like I was doing. And the story was due in…oh, three months, I think?

Oddly enough, once I dumped the story and started working on this new one? It started moving. I don’t even remember exactly where the idea for this new heroine came from. She was just sort of… there.

She was stronger—she had some weaknesses, some vulnerabilities, but she was also a fighter. She might find herself hip-deep in trouble, but she’d also be perfectly capable of getting herself out.

And more—she wouldn’t run from Quinn. He has a lot of darkness inside him and some of that is going to haunt him for a while. What he needed was somebody who wouldn’t just understand that darkness—but somebody who could walk with him through the darkness. She can do that. The heroine I’d originally given him? No. No way. She might try, but that kind of darkness…she isn’t ready to face that kind of darkness.

This story ended up taking on a lot of twists, a lot of turns, but once I’d figured out who needed to be in the story—and who didn’t—it was amazingly easy to get it written, and I swear, I can almost see the brothers smirking at me, too. Laughing at me. After all, I had to nerve to try to control the story in both books.

Quinn’s story is Broken—it’s one of the few stories I didn’t have to beat my head against the wall while trying to think up a title. He’s broken in the beginning of the story, damaged in so many ways. His heroine Sara has damage of her own and getting these two souls together took some doing. But it was worth it. If you’d like to read an excerpt, you can find one here. It’s now available in stores.

***

Leave a comment by Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 6:00 a.m. CST to win a copy of Broken. Book will be shipped with Amazon Prime to United States addresses only.

by Julia Justiss

Although I don’t “do” horror/paranormal/fantasy, when I thought about the curious evolution of my on-again, off-again series featuring the Wellingford family, the Lemony Snicket title, “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” came to mind.

Now, series are hardly new. Many authors do them. If they are lucky (or cursed; those who’ve done the on-top-of-each-other releases say the deadlines are insane,) they get release dates for their series that are back-to-back or nearly so, like Louise Allen has had with her “Scandalous Ravenhursts.” (Of course, Louise writes like superwoman, rivaling the Divine Nora in production, so the comment above about going crazy over tight deadlines might not apply.) But all the data say that readers love series and connected books; data further says that the closer together the release dates, the better readers are able to identify the series, become excited about the next book and (this is the really important part) remember to actually BUY it.

Yes, sales for series, reports Sue Grimshaw, Romance Buyer for Borders Group, are definitely higher if the books come out back-to-back, or nearly so.

This seems rather intuitive. So what does it say about an author whose first Wellingford book, THE WEDDING GAMBLE, her debut in June 1999, wasn’t followed by another connected story until THE PROPER WIFE in July 2001, with the third, A MOST UNCONVENTIONAL MATCH, not seeing print until July 2008?

One might think she was, in a bit of Regency-speak, “attics-to-let” or had “more hair than wit.” While that may also be true, the evolution of the Wellingfords wasn’t entirely up to me.

Since Sarah, heroine of that first book, was eldest in a fairly large family of siblings and Nicholas, her hero, had two best friends, all the prospects for a nice long series were in place. However, during the hiatus between July 1996 when GAMBLE, under its pre-pub title “Pressing Obligations,” won the Golden Heart and its eventual purchase and release as a full-fledged novel in June 1999, I wrote most of another, non-connected story, which became my second book, A SCANDALOUS PROPOSAL.

When GAMBLE sold, I was excited about the prospect of doing more Wellingford stories. My editor liked the idea as well, and took on the story of Sarah’s childhood love Sinjin and her best friend Clarissa in THE PROPER WIFE. But although my editor liked the proposal for the next, the senior editor didn’t. And so the story of Nicholas’s best friend Ned didn’t make its way to publication until this October when FROM WAIF TO GENTLEMAN’S WIFE debuts.

Key elements in the plot of Ned’s story hinge upon the Luddite unrest that revived in the English countryside at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. With enclosures robbing villagers and farm workers of the common lands where they could keep a pig or cow or small vegetable garden, the price of wheat dropping and that of bread skyrocketing, and with independent craftsmen in the clothing trades being put out of work by the development of the factory system, the poor grew poorer and more desperate.

The story was too political, the senior editor said.

But Ned and Joanna are helping the distressed small farmers and their children! I said. They solve a mystery! They develop a fabulous, passionate love!

Too political, she repeated.

Fortunately, she liked better some of the other story ideas I’d proposed at the same time as Ned’s book. So the Wellingfords languished at the back of my mind while I moved on to tell the stories of other strong, driven, challenged heroines (incidentally stumbling over what may someday be another interrupted series featuring spymaster Lord Riverton, who appears in MY LADY’S TRUST and MY LADY’S HONOR.)

While I toiled on these other works, I received a number of fan letters asking when I was going to do the story of Hal, Nicholas’s mostly-monosyllabic friend. I’d always planned on telling Hal’s story—and what a challenge to work with a character who has great difficulty expressing himself in words and must therefore let his actions do the talking!

While all this transpired, editors changed (I lost the wonderful Margaret Marbury, who bought my very first book and edited the next eight, when she moved up in the company—she’s now in charge of all single titles for Harlequin.) Lines fluctuated and after a stint with HQN, I went back to Harlequin Historicals, now under the charge of senior editor Linda Fildew and edited out of the London UK office. I was assigned another new editor, who expressed interest in seeing more Wellingford books.

First came the most-reader-requested story, that of Hal and Sarah’s sister Elizabeth (A MOST UNCONVENTIONAL MATCH.) Next was a Christmas anthology featuring the next eldest Wellingford sister, Meredyth, the spinster who’d stayed home to take care of hearth and siblings after Sarah and Elizabeth married(“Christmas Wedding Wish” in ONE CANDLELIT CHRISTMAS.) And finally this fall, the story of Nicky’s second best friend, Ned, FROM WAIF TO GENTLEMAN’S WIFE.

(I hope you won’t think it’s “too political.”)

So what’s up next for this long-interrupted “series?”

My current editors are big fans of series and are very encouraging that I keep the Wellingford family stories coming. So I’m currently working on the story of Greville Anders, the brother of WAIF’s heroine Joanna, who was fired from his job as estate manager of one of Nicky’s smaller properties. After an involuntary stay on a British man-of-war completely alters his perspective on the world and his place in it, Greville returns to England recovering from wounds, wondering about his future—and very, very happy to reside once more in a world that includes ladies, even if the daughter of his host frowns every time she looks at him. Ah, what’s romance without a challenge?

Also in the “thinking” stage is the story of younger Wellingford daughter Faith, unhappily married wife of a duke, who tangles with a fiery young Parliamentary reformer—the grown-up Davie who first appears in WAIF.

There are several more Wellingford sisters, plus the lone brother Colton, as well as assorted friends and connections, so the possibilities are good to keep the series going—maybe even with closer-together release dates!

That is, Faith and David’s story and the others will appear if the current books do well enough—without back-to-back releases—that my editors allow me to continue writing them.

Which, of course, depends on readers, so I hope you are kind.

So, what do you think? Do you love series? If so, what draws you to them? Leave a comment and I’ll enter you in a drawing to win a copy of the October release, FROM WAIF TO GENTLEMAN’S WIFE.

I get asked all the time where I come up with my story ideas – and my answer is, I have no clue. I don’t think many authors do. They inch into our minds during that time between sleep and wakefulness, they spring boldly into our imaginations when we listen to music, meeting someone can spark an idea, as can a TV show or movie. Ideas come from everywhere and anywhere.

The idea for my June release MOST WANTED, come from you, the reader.

MOST WANTED is a single author anthology with three stories, all of them connected to previous stories of mine from Aphrodisia – and I finally set about writing them because of the reader letters I was getting for more of Lexy and Devon (From The Crib) or more of my paranormal Hunters. As much as I love the characters and the stories, I don’t think I would’ve ever gotten around to actually writing them if it hadn’t been for readers asking for more.

HIDDEN CRAVINGS, the first story in the anthology, is a sequel to THE CRIB from the PURE SEX anthology. It’s the exact same hero and heroine. THE CRIB was my first story for Aphrodisia, and it was released in June 2006, when Aphrodisia was s till a fairly new line. There were plenty of reviews that said it wasn’t an erotic romance because it didn’t have a traditional HEA. I felt it was a happy ending, because that particular story was about Lexy’s personal issues. Issues she had to deal with in order to move on in her life-emotionally. And while it ended on a good note with the characters relationship wise, I can see how readers wanted more, because at the end of THE CRIB, Devon dropped Lexy off at the airport so she could fly back home. It was the right ending for that novella, but yes…there was certainly more tot he story of Lexy and Devon. So I was thrilled to get back to them and pick things up about a year after THE CRIB ends, when Devon shows up on Lexy’s doorstep to ask for her help.

UNRESTRICTED ACCESS is Jackson Barrows story. Jackson is a cop, and his partner was the hero in SEX AS A WEPAON from THE COP anthology. Jack didn’t get much page time in that story because he was recovering from a bullet in the butt. *grin*. Jackson is a typical cop in that he guards his own secrets well…I had no idea that he had such a need to please when I first met him-and neither did his pretty neighbor Jill.

The final story in the anthology is called NO ANGEL, and it ended up being one of my most favorite ever stories. The hero is Gabriel Mann, the work-hard, play-harder younger brother of Caleb Mann from SEXY DEVIL. (and shares some of the characters form PRIMAL MALE also) I have to tell you, when I sat down to write this story I had no idea what it was about aside from the fact that that Anna was a demon hunter, and Gabe, was a bit of a party- hard bad boy. But these two, as soon as I started writing, they had me. I finished the first draft of their story in 2 days. I didn’t even sleep! They hooked me and reeled me in, and completely took over my fingers.

All in all, the book was written with love, and I really hope readers feel that when they pick it up. To all of you who read -Thank you. You have the power to inspire me.

*Click on the covers to go to Bookpages with Excerpts from those books*

by Denise A. Agnew

Way last June I posted a blog around the net called Hot For SWAT (You’re either SWAT or you’re not.) Since then I’ve had two SWAT stories from my HEART OF JUSTICE series published, WITHIN HIS SIGHT, and IN HER DEFENSE. The next story coming up is UNDER HIS PROTECTION. Also in the series (but I’m still writing it) is WITHIN HIS EMBRACE. UNDER HIS PROTECTION will be released some time in May at Liquid Silver Books www.liquidsilverbooks.com

While I was researching SWAT and SRT (Strategic Response Teams or Special Response Teams), I found a variety of intriguing on line resources. I relied mostly on the expertise of officers who are currently or once were on a SWAT team. You can read about one of my sources, Jim Adams, on Danger Zone Authors at www.dangerzoneauthors.com. I interviewed Jim for our website, but Jim has also provided great answers for many of my questions. Writing scenes where a SWAT team is in action is one of the toughest things I’ve done, because you don’t want to get it wrong. (more…)

by Joanne Rock

Writing an amnesia story might sound like a rite of passage for a romance author.  The idea, after all, is a perennial favorite among readers and writers alike of the genre, ranking somewhere between marriage of convenience and Cinderella stories on the Top Ten well-loved themes.  But in forty books, I hadn’t penned even one.  Not that I don’t like the idea—I especially enjoy the premise in a suspense setting where the heroine could be in all the more danger because she can’t remember either a) who she is or b) some traumatic event in her past that’s key to the mystery.

Mostly, I avoided the premise in my own storytelling because the right situation never came to me.  Until I had the idea for my April Harlequin Historical, The Knight’s Return. 

Now, it happened in an odd way.  I’d just watched one of the Bourne movies and went to sleep thinking about what a cool character Jason Bourne is.  Not only is his past a mystery, but he’s obsessed with it because it holds so many clues to his present.  He must solve the mystery of his identity to understand what’s going on around him.  And while that’s a really neat concept, I also like Jason Bourne because he’s played by Matt Damon.  If you’ve seen Matt in Oceans Eleven or The Talented Mr. Ripley, you’ve seen him be a bit nerdy and bumbling.  Yet Jason Bourne is about as far from nerdy as you can imagine.  He has no sense of humor.  He’s intense and he’s deadly.  Kudos to Matt Damon on the acting range.

So as I was turning all that over in my mind, enjoying the superb characterization of Bourne, it occurred to me that I wished I’d written a character like that.  And just like that, I realized I could take a cue from the character and put an amnesia story to work at the same time.  But to ensure my story was very different from Bourne, I took my hero with no memory to the Middle Ages for one of my medieval historical stories.  There would be no vast government conspiracy against my knight hero, only a localized revenge plot.  Yet the essence of waking up with no memory and arsenal of deadly skills remains in tact.

From there, the story takes vastly different turns from any Bourne tale.  The Knight’s Return is a romance, not a thriller, and a historical one at that.  But I think the story of how the germ of an idea takes on a life of its own is fun to share.  Especially since, in reading The Knight’s Return, I bet you’d never guess what inspired it.  The fiery Irish princess heroine has a story all her own, and her back story is highly relatable to a modern reader (she gets pregnant before her relationship is recognized by her family).  But the way people respond to her back story is very twelfth century—she’s sent into exile as punishment.  Here’s the blurb:

Guarding the Princess…

Now, as Hugh leaves his beloved behind to head off to battle, can this brave Norman knight reclaim his birthright…and return home a conquering hero?

Click here for an excerpt.

To even further distinguish my tale from any modern thriller, my hero’s quest becomes more about love than revenge.  And isn’t that what we hope will happen in a romance?  That love becomes the biggest, most important element in our characters’ lives that no baser emotion can survive in the strength of that more noble feeling?

From those bits and pieces I wove this tale for you.  I loved every moment of Hugh and Sorcha’s story, but then I’m always thrilled for the chance to walk back in time and impose my vision of the past on my stories. 

A further creative challenge arose when I was given the opportunity to pen a connected story to The Knight’s Return for release as a Harlequin Historical “Undone,” a new ebook series billed as “sexy and scandalous short stories.”  Right up my alley, no?  But this meant working backward a bit as the Undone, A Night of Wicked Delight, would be released as a prequel to the full length book. 

So I asked myself, who might Hugh have left behind in his old life before amnesia set in?  After the amnesia, he takes off for Ireland to follow up on the only clue available to his identity.  But surely a strong and capable knight left behind dependents, people who would be left unprotected in his absence.  Voila!  Plot ideas galore.  I gave Hugh, the hero of The Knight’s Return, a cousin/ward under his protection back in England.  When her noble protector leaves, Lady Emma is defenseless against any number of undesirable suitors.  Here’s a blurb:

     Gareth of Domingart has abducted Lady Emma of Westleigh to get revenge on her cousin, the man who plundered his home and sold him into slavery. Gareth meant to simply hold Emma for ransom, yet once he brings the fiery noblewoman back to his keep, the urge to possess her becomes overwhelming…especially after Emma makes a startling demand:

     But once their revenge is complete, will Gareth and Emma be satisfied with only one night of pleasure…or can they have a future filled with wicked delight?

Sexy and scandalous indeed!  I hope you enjoy my new historical offerings and I’d love to hear what you think anytime at all…

Happy Reading!

***After living in six states and testing out at least that many careers, Joanne Rock now writes sexy contemporaries and medieval historicals, putting her varied life experience to entertaining use.  Her books have won numerous awards and have been released in 24 countries.  Learn more about Joanne at http://joannerock.com and don’t forget to check out her blog posts at Access Romance which are always accompanied by prize giveaways.***

by Shiloh Walker

Shiloh (10:52:06 AM): you around?

Lora (10:52:12 AM): Yeah

Lora (10:52:15 AM): whats up?

Shiloh (10:52:43 AM): not much. just got an idea …another one… floating around in my head that i’m sort trying to figure out if i wanna do it or not.

Shiloh (10:52:49 AM): can i bounce an idea of off you?

Lora (10:52:56 AM): Want my permission? *snicker*

Shiloh (10:53:01 AM): lol

Lora (10:53:04 AM): Sure babe. Go for it

Lora (10:53:12 AM): I’m just drinking my coffee and chilling out right now

Shiloh (10:53:24 AM): thinking of calling it Share and Share Alike. but it’s not gonna be a ménage, though it sounds that way. romantic suspense.

Shiloh (10:53:31 AM): two twins. or very close friends, can’t decide.

Shiloh (10:53:42 AM): share everything. went into the same career. grew up together. have shared lovers…

Okay. So that was the start of FRAGILE. Well, maybe not the exact start. The exact start was this little tagline that kept going through my head.

Blood is thicker than water. That line…and the two twins. But the idea kept stalling on me. And of course, I was supposed to be on a break. The idea for the story came back in the fall of 2006, right after I’d just had a carpal tunnel release on my left hand. I’d worked my schedule out so I could take the rest of November and all of December off so I could heal up my hand.

But it didn’t work out that way.

FRAGILE ended up inconveniencing me in so many ways. Intruded on my time off. The characters weren’t doing what I wanted them to do…and yes, for some odd reason, I kept expecting them to…well, cooperate.

I had the bare bones in mind for the main characters—Luke, the hero. Devin, the heroine. Quinn, the hero’s brother. In my head, I could see them fairly well and I thought the basics of their characters. No reason I shouldn’t expect them cooperate, right?

Wrong.

First, I had a heroine who a little more damaged than I’d expected.

Then I had a hero who was a little more stubborn than I expected.

I had bad guys doing things that I wasn’t anticipating and I had characters fighting me tooth and nail because they didn’t like what I was doing with their characters.

I had a storyline in mind that was supposed to go one certain, specific way. This storyline was the storyline I had pitched to my editor. This storyline was the storyline that I had sold to my editor when she made the offer to buy the book.

So of course the storyline does exactly what it wasn’t supposed to do. Thanks to stubborn characters, unexpected twists, and other assorted complications, the story ended up taking off in an entirely different direction.

This isn’t a new thing for me. One of the paranormals I wrote the summer before FRAGILE did the same thing to me. Even the story I’m writing now is doing that. Deviating so far from the course I’d originally set, I wonder why I continue to delude myself into thinking I have any control over the way a story plays out.

Sometimes, being a writer is a lot like being a backseat driver. You think you know the best way to go. You think you know if the driver is going to fast or not. You think you can sit back there and have some kind of control over…well, much of anything.

But in the end, once you’ve given your characters a voice, even though it’s only inside your own head, the characters are the ones driving the story. They are in control. They take on lives of their own, personalities of their own, and everything you thought you knew about them just doesn’t add up to jack. They go left when you want to go right. They take a slow meandering stroll when you’re trying to hurry.

Pretty much, they do everything they can to complicate the time you have with them. Complicate it to the point to when you’re about 2/3 the way done with the story, you start to wonder if the story shouldn’t just be scrapped so you can start back over at the beginning. Complicate it to the point that you are banging your head against the wall…or a keyboard…wondering why things have to be done this way, instead of that way. Why this character did that, and the other won’t do that.

Although I already know the answer to that.

It’s because the characters are driving the story. Even when Luke was still some nameless guy out there with a twin brother, he was already unique. He already had his own personality. Even when Devin was some nameless lady with a rough past and serious trust issues, she was already her own person. The story was already set-it was up to me to find the right way of telling the story.

When one of the characters turned left instead of going right, it was because they needed me to take them in a direction different from the one I’d planned. They needed me to see something through their eyes, so I could explain it to the reader. If I’d gone the way I wanted to go, I would have missed out on details I really needed to know. I would have missed out on secrets they needed to share with me.

When they take a slow, meandering stroll, it’s because that fast pace I was pushing was too fast, especially for the heroine with the serious trust issues. Rushing her was a lot like trying to rush a skittish animal into eating from your hand. It just doesn’t happen. She had to come around in her own time. The story had to come around in its own time.

The characters drive the story because they are the story. The only thing that comes from me fighting them is a headache. Wasted time as I end up backtracking once I finally figure out where I went wrong…I went wrong when I tried to fight the characters.

And now…I’ve got another stubborn character I need deal with.

If you decide to pick up FRAGILE, I hope you enjoy the journey the characters take you on. If they surprise you a little on the way, drop me a line and let me know…

Shiloh

http://shilohwalker.com

by Lauren Dane

All of my books begin with a wisp of an idea and Battlefront, now UNDERCOVER, is no different. It all started with a picture of Dominic Purcell.

I’d had a flash of a scene where a hardassed warrior woman punches out an ex-lover when she’s put under his command, living in my head for a while. And then I was reading my husband’s copy of Best Life magazine and I saw that picture and I said, “There he is.”

Essentially I had my hero, or one of them and the scene where he and Sera, my heroine, are reunited after being apart for ten years. He’s big and muscled, bald with markings of his rank and station in life on his skull. Basically, it wasn’t hard for me to write the scenes where he dominates her because he embodies a very dominant man and I only needed to fill in his personality.

Counter to that harsh, jagged-edged masculinity is Brandt, the other hero. Where Ash is arrogant and outwardly dominant, Brandt is the kind of man who wears tailored clothing over his tightly muscled form. Where Ash is bald and marked so publically, Brandt’s black hair hangs past his butt. He’s smooth and his dominance comes from the inside.

These two men form bookends to Sera, who is conflicted. And Sera, she’s only like Sera. Tall, thin, whip-smart and battle-hard. But she’s also beautiful in her own way and the longer she’s with these men, the more beautiful she feels. Her heart was broken by Ash. Ash, who was forced into a political marriage but despite being forced, it still left her alone. She’s had to rebuild herself into a woman who doesn’t need anyone. She’s the one who is needed. She is the one who leads, but despite her feelings of rage toward Ash, she loves him still. She’s put into a situation leaving her open to creating a relationship with Brandt and pretty soon, they’re all in a tangle of their own making, exacerbated by outside forces.

So I built the story, layer by layer. I wanted a futuristic setting because I liked building the world with its strict class layers and political intrigue. At the same time, I didn’t want to create a world with so many terms and names to attempt to be “futuristic” that I alienated and confused readers either. So a shoe is a shoe. A bra is a bra. Time is a bit different but the explanation is fairly simple. There’s a line to walk, just like with paranormals where the suspension of belief has to be carried off. But it’s also why I absolutely love to write paranormals and futuristics. It’s my world! I can do anything I want. There’s responsibility to make it a believable place, but it’s mine.

I had a great time writing the book. I loved each of the main characters, loved their flaws and their strengths too. When my agent read the proposal she wrote me back and said, “This is the one. I can feel it.”

She was right. As she often is, LOL. It took about five months to hear back but then it all happened very fast. My little scrap of a scene with the heroine punching out the hero combined with that picture of Dominic Purcell turned into nearly 100,000 words.

Sometimes a story is with you a long time. It takes years to sell it or it gets sold but doesn’t come out for a while after that. My novella Stripped in the Vegas anthology took four or five months total from being asked if I was interested in writing something, writing it and pitching and selling it. But then it took about a year and a half after we sold it to get it released! UNDERCOVER had been in my head in the form of that little scene, for about a year before I saw that picture. And now it’s here.

I hope you all enjoy it.