Who doesn’t want to know the recipe for the perfect guy? Well, consider me your literary Julia Child. I’m going to show you how the right ingredients can build you the perfect fictional boyfriend. 1.A healthy helping of humor – this can be the trickiest ingredient, as humor changes from person to person, and a class clown doesn’t always mean a great love interest. It doesn’t mean he can’t be a great guy either. But if the guy can make you laugh, and put you at ease, it’s always a plus in my book. I’ve always liked funny guys in real life. Even in movies or TV shows, it seems other girls are dreaming about the super buff popular guy, and I’m won over by the funny guy, who often times is also a bit of a nerd. Sometimes these guys sort of morph and you get buff funny guy, a la, Ryan Reynolds—be still my beating heart. In FALLING FOR HER FIANCÉ, it was important for my hero, Wes, to have a good sense of humor. He can make his best friend Dani (the heroine in the book) laugh and definitely keeps things interesting with challenges like riding a…

The characters in my books can be inspired by many sources: movies, television, songs, books, or simply people walking by on the street. I live in an inner-city suburb of Sydney, Australia, a trendy, grungy locale, so I see plenty of interesting characters on the streets, from full on Goths to well-off urbanites to dirty tramps — all of them grist to the mill of my imagination. When I’m developing my characters I like to create their full back story. I think about their favorite subject at school, their hobbies and pet peeves, what they like to cook. All these details might be irrelevant to the story but they help me to see my characters as complete people and not just cardboard cut-outs. I like to think that Nate, the hero in my new release REAL MEN DON’T BREAK HEARTS, is a “real man”. He’s enjoyed his fast cars, his women, his wealthy bachelor lifestyle, but he’s man enough to realize this isn’t enough for him, that he needs something more fulfilling. And he’s man enough to make some drastic changes to his life, even though he has his doubts. He’s willing to take a risk to be a better…