As I writer, I use music all the time to help me set a scene. It’s critical because, let’s face it, I’m often writing alone while still in my jammies, hair sticking up and wearing a non-flattering, fluffy pink housecoat. Yep. Pretty glamorous. So, imagine trying to write a really angsty or emotional scene while your kitten is all snuggled up in your lap, cozy-like. Or, trying to write a sexually charged scene while your kids watch Sponge Bob in the other room. It’s not going to happen. What I have to do is pop in my ear buds, find an appropriate song and play it – over and over and over again until it consumes me. If it’s an upbeat scene, I listen to dance music with a fast tempo, catchy lyrics and repetitive chords. Sometimes I even have to get up and dance around for before sitting down to write (this is not pretty – thank God I do it in the privacy of my own home). The slower tempo of ballads accompanied by acoustic guitars and pianos evoke the kind of sadness and melancholy I need to write heartbreak/achy scenes. And, the screaming electric guitars and frenzied…

March 2014 On Sale: February 22, 2014 Featuring: Sable; King Thorne 356 pages ISBN: 1909306614 EAN: 9781909306614 Kindle: B00IJYPH70 e-Book Add to Wish ListRomance ParanormalBuy at Amazon.com What’s new Today? Claimed By A Demon King by Felicity Heaton The moment the demon King Thorne of the Third Realm set eyes on the mortal huntress Sable, he knew she was his fated one. The fiery, dangerous female awakened hungers he had never experienced before, a dark craving and passion that has consumed him in their time apart. As the lunar cycle wanes, she enters his world again and nothing will stand in the way of him claiming his forever with her—not the relentless assault from the Fifth Realm or the dark elf male determined to seduce her out of his grasp. Intent on achieving the coveted position of commander at Archangel, Sable leads her small team into the dark underworld and the Third Realm, to a war where her allies are the very creatures she normally hunts—vampires, werewolves, and demons. Her eagerness to lead the deadly mission has everything to do with winning her promotion, and nothing to do with the kingdom’s brash, lethally seductive demon king—a king who stirred fierce…

Call me crazy, but I love to write alpha males. There’s something a whole lot of fun about a guy who can walk into a room, not speak a word and still let everyone know he’s the big dog. As much as I love alphas, they are challenging. They can be stubborn and arrogant and bossy. Most of the time, the good ones listen to reason. The good ones also march into battle with no idea if they’ll come out and they don’t care. All they want is to fix whatever problem lies in front of them. For me, that strength is the lure of the alpha male. When I began plotting my new Harlequin Intrigue, THE PROSECUTOR, I knew I wanted an alpha as the hero, but I wanted someone…well…different. This hero would be a prosecutor in his early thirties and wouldn’t have a military background. He wouldn’t know how to clean a gun or survive in a jungle for extended periods. But he had to be strong. Strong, but not overly-aggressive. He had to be ambitious, but not to the point where that ambition became a negative. In short, I wanted a guy who craved a courtroom battle…

Today we’re visited by Donna Thorland, author of THE REBEL PIRATE. She’s on a tour and we have an exclusive Q&A with her. What are your top 5 romance/women’s fiction novels of all time? I’m going to cheat a little, because some of my favorite books are part of a series… Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles is actually six books, but every one of them is a non-stop adventure with meticulous historical detail and extra servings of swashbuckling romance. There’s a love story at the center of it that doesn’t resolve until the last page, but when it does, it creates a true partnership of equals. In second place I’d put George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series. Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown’s School Days, is a cad, a rake, and an errant coward and his adventures simultaneously skewer and celebrate Victorian mores and British imperialism. They’re absolutely irresistible . . . except on the rare occasion when Fraser is describing cricket. I’m a Jersey girl at heart, so Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books deserve a place on the list. I ended up studying Classics in high school because I was fascinated by pre-Hellenistic Egypt but hieroglyphics weren’t on the syllabus, so…

I must admit that I’m a stickler for routines. I find routines to be easy and comforting when everything else is out of control. And between you and me, I usually have so many ideas and characters running through my mind that I’m obviously walking through life a little distracted. 🙂 Thanks to my routines I can get things done that I’d most likely otherwise forget while I’m daydreaming aka working (the benefits of being a writer). I actually get some of my best ideas while doing mundane daily tasks. Talk about your multi-tasking. Well, it just so happened that my writing was starting to take on a pattern of its own where I wrote about nothing but small towns and sexy cowboys. What can I say, I enjoy those stories immensely. Then one day my editor called. She wanted to talk. They were making major changes to Harlequin Romance / Mills & Boon Cherish. She wanted to know how I felt about writing stories with an urban/global/aspirational feel. I will say that my stomach literally quivered at the thought. I had so many small town/cowboy stories floating around in my mind. But there was that lure of trying something…

A Franki Amato Mystery January 2014 On Sale: January 4, 2014 Featuring: Glenda O’Brien; Veronica Maggio; Franki Amato ISBN: 1493690817 EAN: 9781493690817 Kindle: B00GK3LY92 Paperback / e-Book Add to Wish List Mystery Woman Sleuth, Romance Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com A fun mystery Limoncello Yellow by Traci Andrighetti From debut author, Traci Andrighetti, comes a tale of murder, mayhem, and meddling Sicilian grandmas… Francesca “Franki” Amato is a tough-talking rookie cop in Austin, Texas—until an unfortunate 911 call involving her boyfriend, Vince, and a German female wrestler convinces her once and for all that she just isn’t cut out for a life on the police force. So Franki makes the snap decision to move to New Orleans to work at her friend Veronica’s detective agency, Private Chicks, Inc. But Franki’s hopes for a more stable life are soon dashed when Private Chicks is hired by the prime suspect in a murder case to find out what really happened to a beautiful young boutique manager who was found strangled to death with a cheap yellow scarf. When she’s not investigating, Franki is hoping to seduce handsome bank executive Bradley Hartmann, but most of her time is spent dodging date offers from a…

The River Bend books have been in my head for years, and I’ve been searching for a way to write them. I initially thought of them as a series for Harlequin Special Edition, but when I looked deeper at the ideas I realized they needed more space and more complexity in story-telling than is possible in a series romance novel of less than 60,000 words. When I was invited to write for The Tule Group and Montana Born Books, it was so exciting to know that at last I’d found a home for these stories. Each of them centers around what happened on prom night in Marietta eighteen years ago,1996, and in the shorter novella that sets up the series we see that night from two more perspectives, those of high school teacher Kate and sheriff Harrison. Prom night is such an impossibly huge event in the mind of so many American high school kids. They hang so many expectations on it – that it’s going to be the best night of their lives, that it’s going to be the start of wonderful love, the launch of real life. For a lot of eighteen-year-olds, I suspect that prom night fizzles…

The River Bend books have been in my head for years, and I’ve been searching for a way to write them. I initially thought of them as a series for Harlequin Special Edition, but when I looked deeper at the ideas I realized they needed more space and more complexity in story-telling than is possible in a series romance novel of less than 60,000 words. When I was invited to write for The Tule Group and Montana Born Books, it was so exciting to know that at last I’d found a home for these stories. Each of them centers around what happened on prom night in Marietta eighteen years ago,1996, and in the shorter novella that sets up the series we see that night from two more perspectives, those of high school teacher Kate and sheriff Harrison. Prom night is such an impossibly huge event in the mind of so many American high school kids. They hang so many expectations on it – that it’s going to be the best night of their lives, that it’s going to be the start of wonderful love, the launch of real life. For a lot of eighteen-year-olds, I suspect that prom night fizzles…

Shadow Warriors #3 February 2014 On Sale: February 4, 2014 Featuring: Sarah Benson; Ethan Quinn ISBN: 0373278578 EAN: 9780373278572 Kindle: B00EFPXT68 Mass Market Paperback / e-Book Add to Wish List Romance Suspense Buy at Amazon.com Risk and rewards…in love Risk Taker by Lindsay McKenna A Navy SEAL fights the most important battle of his life — love — in New York Times bestselling author Lindsay McKenna’s Shadow Warriors miniseries. In the mountains of Afghanistan, her daring rescues have made Medevac pilot Sarah Benson a legend. She loves taking her helicopter where others fear to fly — the danger, the adrenaline…and the distraction from thinking about her own hurt heart. U.S. Navy SEAL Ethan Quinn is man enough to prize Sarah’s valor as well as her beauty. But his efforts to reach his beautiful colleague cannot pierce her armor. Can he prove that it’s possible to find love in a war zone? Romantic and military action blended in a great love story. takes risk taking to a whole new level Excerpt Chapter 1 They called her Blue Eyes. Ethan Quinn, a Navy SEAL, turned the ice-cold beer around in his hands as he sat diagonally across the canteen from her. The…

October 2013 On Sale: October 15, 2013 Featuring: Stacey McKinney; Cash Butler 90 pages ISBN: 0148498744 EAN: 2940148498742 Kindle: B00D5Z4NK0 e-Book Add to Wish List Romance Contemporary Buy at Amazon.com Someone to Watch Over Me by Jerrie Alexander Stacey McKinney returned to her home town to escape a stalker. When people around her turn up dead, she fears he’s found her. Is the maniac keeping his threat by killing off anyone who gets close to her? That isn’t the only risk in town. The man who broke her heart has also come home. Their attraction is stronger and hotter than ever, but he walked away once. She doesn’t trust he won’t do it again. A bullet ended Cash Butler’s career as an Army Ranger. His life on his horse ranch is without complications until he hears Stacey is in town. He was a kid when her dad used his wealth and power to drive him away. He’s not that kid any longer. When Stacey goes missing, a search proves her stalker followed her to Oak Hill. But he’s dead. Who killed him? And who has Stacey? Can A Person Ever Really Go Home Again? Previous Picks