In LOVE ME, LOVE ME NOT, Ana is a swan maiden: she can control the weather, heal with herbs, make magic arrows with her hair, and sing songs to make you fall in love. But that doesn’t mean everything, especially love, comes easy for her. Is this why Shakespeare said, “The course of true love never did run smooth”?!? Singing Magic Songs: Yes, Ana can sing songs to make you fall in love. Or songs to make your head explode. See? This is already complicated. Feather Cloak Complications: If you don’t fall in love, you can’t get your feather cloak. No cloak, means no turning into a swan, which means possibly going crazy and living in the woods eating fish heads like Ana’s Aunt Morag. Your future is looking kind of weird already. Magic Cupcakes!: So yummy! So tricky. Some spells make you fall in love, some make you fall out of love. So then…is it really love? Who knew chocolate frosting could be so philosophical? Magic can be a Little Unhygienic: Sometimes magic involves flower petals and water left under the moonlight. But sometimes it requires the swan-blood of your third great-grandmother that your family keeps in a jar….

So many fictional boyfriends, so little time. Here are a few of my favorites, in no particular order (okay, I’d cut you to get with Hardy Cates): Rowdy Yates from GETTING ROWDY by Lori Foster. With his sketchy past, and his penchant for hitting first and asking questions later, Rowdy is a great protective alpha. And the cover for this book is perfection. Flynn from WILLING VICTIM by Cara McKenna. Construction worker-boxer with a taste for rough role-playing, and while we never get inside his head, McKenna lays it all out there. A Boston bruiser I wouldn’t mind meeting in a dark alley. Hardy Cates from BLUE-EYED DEVIL by Lisa Kleypas. Rich, Texan, from the wrong side of the tracks, and so caring of the heroine. LK writes the caretaker alpha so well, and Hardy is my favorite of her heroes. Joey Miller from COLLISION COURSE by K.A. Mitchell. This is an M/M romance and while some people probably prefer the brooding Aaron of this pairing, I love, love, love the manipulative, puppy-eyed, totally grounded Joey. A surfing social worker, he’s the perfect match for a guy who’s been screwed over by the social services system. Lord Vere from HIS…

My favorite scene from HIGHLAND SPITFIRE is this one, at the wedding feast. One of the challenges of writing historical is to remember that these people are not modern ones. At least, that’s my personal challenge. I don’t want to write a story about a modern woman with just the ‘fun’ parts of history. Sure, I draw the line at some of the more unsavory bits that history has to offer but it’s important to me to try and make these people real to their time. A lot of people think that because you were born the daughter of a laird, you got to be waited on all day long. The truth was, a lady was someone who was highly educated and her role in the future of the clan was set from the moment she was baptized. This is very true for the laird’s son too. What they might have personally wanted really didn’t factor in. For sure there were nobles that were spoiled so badly that they lost touch with the real world but I don’t see that happening in the Highlands. Life was simply too hard to allow for any member of the clan to be so…