A special Halloween treat! Fresh Fiction Reviewer Miranda Owen is letting us know her favorite paranormal romance heroes! “I’m not the big bad wolf everyone makes me out to be.” – “Rocky Ride” by Vivian Arend In general, I prefer heroes who are more Clark Kent than your typical bad boy or antihero, but there are a few amazing exceptions. My main beef with bad boy heroes is when they take on “alphahole” qualities, say or do things to the heroine that are reprehensible and can’t be easily – if at all – taken back, and use their supposedly sexy bad boy status to get away with anything. I also feel cheated if the author has the bad boy hero experience a miraculous epiphany in the last few chapters or pages of a book and completely change his personality without any believable buildup to see how the character got to that momentous change. I much prefer when an author digs deep into the psyche of a bad boy, explains his thinking, and changes his perspective and how others view him, rather than a fundamental and all-encompassing change that seems hard to believe. One of my favorite examples of a bad…
Rain pounded the roof of the carriage, lending a cozy, intimate feel to the interior. The earl’s long legs were sprawled in front of him, and Fiona endeavored not to gawk at the wet buckskin trousers clinging to his thighs. She was not, however, entirely successful. To be fair, a certain amount of study was necessary if she were to draw him at some point—and she intended to. Her artist’s eye noted the proportions of his hips and thighs, the pronounced contours of his leg muscles, and the slight hollows on the insides of his knees. But as a woman, she noticed him, too—on a whole different level. The heat from his body. The scents of leather and soap. The light stubble on his chin. Swallowing, she considered moving to the seat oppo site him, but they had already soaked the velvet squabs of one bench and she saw no reason to sully the other. Instead, she resolved to make use of this time to advance her cause. Mustering as much dignity as she could, given her soggy gown and dripping hair, she squared her shoulders and faced the earl. “Now then,” she began. “I believe we were discussing the—”…
I’m a sucker for holiday stories. Movies, books, music…if it tells a story set around the holidays, I want to know more! Being a romance writer who celebrates hope and love with every book she writes, the happier the story the better. So I was thrilled when I was asked to write my first holiday novella back…oh, let’s just say a few years (okay, okay, fifteen years) ago. What could be more fun than getting to tell my very own holiday story? Well, it turns out that while it was a blast getting to dream up a fun little holiday adventure, writing a satisfying story when you only have one hundred pages to tell that holiday tale is a wee bit of a challenge! I’m used to having four times that many pages, and even then, there are always parts that I have to trim down or leave out altogether. How in the world was I going to pull this off? Suddenly this Christmas present was starting to feel a bit more like a trick from the Grinch. With the help of a few brainstorming author pals and possibly munching my way through far more Christmas cookies than was wise…
Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Jenny Hale! About: Child-wrangling, photo-taking, travel-loving romantic women’s fiction author seeks readers for her Christmas novel about single-mother Abbey Fuller, who loves her family more than anything and doesn’t regret a moment of having to put her dreams of being a designer on hold to raise her son, Max, and a quiet, workaholic hero, Nick Sinclair, who thinks he’s hiring Abbey for a small design job, only to find himself learning salsa dancing and up to his neck in Christmas festivities. What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match: The perfect date includes a roaring fire, plates of Christmas cookies, hot cocoa, and a book in hand… Seeks long hours spent turning pages, the only sound in the room being the Christmas carols playing softly in the background Likes sweet, family-oriented, romantic stories that will make you laugh and cry Willing to nibble candy canes while reading about cookie baking and other delicious desserts Enjoys simmering romance that will leave…
Happy Holidays from Holiday, Texas! The little town of Holiday doesn’t need much of a reason to throw a party. With a name like Holiday, every day is a celebration! But when it comes to Christmas, like most of their fellow Texans, they tend to go all out. Folks living in the state of Texas definitely have their share of holiday traditions. From the lighted boat parade at the Harbor Lights Festival in Corpus Christi to the festive twenty-six-foot weihnachtspyramide in Fredericksburg, some towns go Christmas crazy! And we haven’t even talked about the food yet. If you celebrate Christmas in Texas you’ll be just as likely to eat tamales or brisket as you are to chow down on a deep-fried turkey. Small towns, in particular, are a special place to spend the holidays, especially in the Hill Country of Texas. There’s nothing like strolling down Main Street, cup of wassail in hand, peeking in all of the shop windows as you go. If you’d rather ride, you can head to Bandera and go Christmas caroling on horseback. In Lockhart, you can rub elbows with carolers in period costumes during their annual Dickens’ Christmas. And if you’re in Gruene, Texas,…
Exclusive Interview with Ryan Quinn, the Hero of The Memory of You 1) Greetings Ryan! Thanks for joining us today. We know you have a lot going on–you’re a single father and public defender and you just had a big move back to your hometown. Can you tell us a bit about your day-to-day life? Thanks for having me. At the moment, my day-to-day life is a bit chaotic now that I’ve temporarily moved in with my folks while my divorce is finalized. I’ve started a new job and am trying to get my young daughter to embrace a new school and make new friends. Meanwhile, my meddling mother went and hired my high school sweetheart, Steffi, to remodel her house, so now I have to see Steffi every day, too. Emmy, my daughter, is taking to her, which is a risk because Steffi can’t be trusted to keep her commitments anymore than Emmy’s mom can. But I do love being home on Long Island Sound, and I look forward to getting back out on my old sailboat. 2) Emmy sounds great, but it seems like your divorce has been really hard on her. What has been her reaction to all…
Vampires. Mythical creatures or really great at hiding in plain sight? It’s definitely the latter, and though records of them have been around for as long as humans could write, we really know so little about this amazing race. Until now! In my new series, THE LIBRARIAN’S VAMPIRE ASSISANT, we discover what is myth and what is real. And as we dive deeper into Michael Vanderhorst’s (our ancient vampire, who works as an assistant librarian) world in book two, not only will he solve a juicy mystery and come to grips with his feelings for a certain librarian, but he will also reveal more shocking secrets about his kind. For example: 1. Vampires DO walk in the sun. It’s true! SEE PROOF HERE! They just really hate it as they are hypersensitive to the rays and the sun forces their bodies to work overtime, healing their skin. Sunscreen helps a little, but as Michael points out, Arizona—where he lives—is no match for SPF 100! Still, poor guy, keeps having to kill people in order to protect his favorite librarian! (She’s a huge danger magnet.) That means more trips to the desert for a little grave digging. SEE HERE! Now that’s a…
Horses. I love them. The bigger the better. Horses are featured prominently in my Highlanders of Balforss series. They frequently reflect and compliment the character of their owners and they are used symbolically to represent physical strength, power, loyalty, friendship, and love. In TYING THE SCOT, Alex’s horse, Goliath, is described as “the tallest thoroughbred anyone had ever seen. Seventeen hands high and a deep chestnut brown. Just seeing the spirited warmblood made Alex’s heart rate slow.” It is Goliath’s speed and endurance that help Alex save Lucy’s life. In BETTING THE SCOT, Declan’s horse, Gullfaxi is described as a “muscular dark gray gelding with a white main and tail.” Declan is influenced by his Viking heritage and holds great stock in Norse mythology. When Caya asks Declan why he named his horse Gullfaxi, he says, “Gullfaxi is the horse the Norse god, Thor, gave to his son. I ken the name means something like one with the golden mane.” In my latest novel, FORGETTING THE SCOT, horses play an even bigger role. Magnus’s horse Finbar has a personality of his own. Like Magnus, he is giant. Finbar is a Brabant, a Belgian breed of draft horse that would have…
Elise twisted just in time to catch a muscle at the back of Tate’s jaw twitch. The impact whenever she saw him was always a punch. Sandy-blond hair to his shoulders with a wave to it that made him look like he’d just ambled in from a day at the beach, a full, but well-trimmed beard slightly darker than the rest of his hair that made her wonder what his kiss would feel like and a lean, but muscled body that always crackled with a lethal energy. Dressed in a black T-shirt and faded jeans, he looked like the predator he was, and the way he was holding his body made it appear he was a nanosecond from tackling his primo. Which was insane. He’d barely spoken to her. Barely looked her in the eye since the first day they’d met. But here he was, trading some silent but deadly man-to-man communication she couldn’t translate. Given the amused expressions from Katy, Jade and Sara, she was the only one in need of subtitles. Tate’s nostrils flared, and he edged closer to Alek, shifting as he did to put himself between Alek and Elise. When he spoke, his words came out…
I read a tweet this week that went something like this: “Meghan and Harry have met, fallen in love, married, and are now having a baby in under three years, and I haven’t put up the fallen towel rack in my bathroom.” Life is hard and comparing our self to others is a difficult exercise, often ending in futility. In The Butterfly Bride, I was able to explore the quest of trying to be perfect in the most unlikely vessels, Frederica Burghley. Frederica is the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Simone. In the Regency, this was a scandalous pedigree but depending on how the duke acknowledges his daughter, she would not necessarily be rejected. But Frederica’s situation is worst. She is the love child of the duke and his courtesan, a black woman he setup as his exclusive mistress. Alas, 1820 was not 2018. In that year of our Lord, you can imagine the rejections, Frederica faces as she struggles for acceptance. Classism, racism, sexism, and ignorance are slights she endures. She does so not with grievances but from the perspective of being one of the lucky ones. For now, she’s escaped following in her mother’s footsteps of becoming a…