My name is Daralyse Lyons and I am the author of 20 novels and, today, I’ve decided to sit down with one of my characters, Laura Cutty, for a chat about life, love and how to keep the romance alive. Before we launch in, what you should know about Laura is that she’s married to a murderer. That’s right. Laura knew when she married him that Thomas Cutty was a killer. She accepts that about him, just as he accepts everything distasteful about her – like the way she cracks her knuckles when nervous or uses the last of the toilet paper without replacing the roll. Twelve years of marriage and two beautiful babies later, and Laura and Thomas have learned to love the life they built together – a life that depends on Laura never asking the question: Who did Thomas kill last night? So here I am, sitting across from Laura, each with our cups of hot cinnamon spice tea, and we’re talking about romance because I am regrettably single and she is blissfully attached and I figure I have a lot to learn from her. Me: Hi Laura. Thanks for sitting down with me today. Laura: No…

You had me at hockey playing cowboy… CAUGHT UP IN A COWBOY is the story of Rockford James, a hunky cowboy who also happens to play hockey for the NHL. Yeah, you heard that right… A hockey playing cowboy… Could he be any more delicious? The only thing that could make him any better would be if he had two handsome cowboy brothers who also played hockey… Oh wait… He does. The Cowboys of Creedence is a new series featuring the James brothers, who are all as hot on the ice as off. Feel free to One-Click now, or if you need any more convincing, here’s The Top Five reasons why hockey-playing cowboys are the best… There are hundreds of Pinterest boards dedicated to good looking men who are cowboys and hockey players. Whether you are looking for abs or chaps, you’ll find your McDreamy hero, times ten! They’re good with their hands—and they don’t mind getting a little dirty. They have great hand eye coordination, and know how to handle their stick. Speaking of stickhandling, these guys know how to score. They play to win and can go all night. These guys are bad-a** tough on the outside, but…

There’s just something about a hero who’s a bit wicked, but in all the right ways! In historical romance, he may be a titled noble with a bitter secret in his past or a rugged Highlander with a heart filled with regret. Perhaps he’s a rogue who has walled off his heart, a spy with secrets of his own, or a criminal whose love for the heroine pulls him from a dark place into a brighter future. He’s a man with flaws—some so profound they will stand in the way of his love for the heroine—but when he demonstrates his inner courage or compassion, he’s a hero I can root for on the road to happily ever after. When I’m writing a romance, I make some key decisions about the hero while the story is just a kernel of an idea. While planning my new Victorian historical romance, WHEN A LADY DESIRES A WICKED LORD, I knew from the start that the hero would be an adventurer, a man who’d left England to seek his fortune. I decided to make him an archaeologist gone rogue, a daring scholar like Indiana Jones but with far different motives. Benedict Weston, Viscount Marlsbrook,…

Hey, everyone!! So as you know, UNTIL THERE WAS US is available now and it is a second-chance romance. I love that trope!! It’s a fun trope to read and that got me thinking about some of my favorite movies that share it! So here are my top five quirky picks for second chance romance movies!! THE PHILADELPHIA STORY LOVE this movie! Classic Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. Can it get any better than that?? It’s fun, it’s witty, and just everything a second chance romance – with a hint of a love triangle – should be!! WHEN HARRY MET SALLY True, it’s technically a friends to lovers story, however, once they slept together and Harry tries to win Sally back, you have the makings of a great second chance! And really, I can watch this movie every day and never get bored! GREASE Summer romance. They think they’ll never see each other again and then BAM! First day of school and there they are! Need I say more? Although, admit it, you’re singing Summer Nights in your head right now, aren’t you? SCROOGED Okay, this is my all-time favorite Christmas movie but when you push all of…

When people find out I’ve set my Love Games series in the world of college athletics, they often ask if I played myself. I wish. Like most jock-types, my dreams of glory started early but were met with adversity. I had a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a pink skating dress my big sister sewed for me, but our local ice rink closed just as I was getting my skates under me. My father covered our back yard in asphalt and installed a regulation goal for my five older brothers. I could (and still can) hit a backwards bucket shot from anywhere within the three-point arc. Even in my First Communion dress. Sadly, I topped out at 5′ 4″, which made me an easy mark for any player blessed with greater height. I can’t tell you how many times I swatted air when trying to get at a jump ball in seventh grade. And spiking over a volleyball net? Forget it. I can bump and set with the best of them, but this girl can’t jump. Despite being vertically challenged, my love of all things sporty has never abated. I live for college football season each year. I can bemoan the…

Justice and Sandesh are heroes who fight for what’s right, but what can readers do to help champion justice in their own communities? I’m lucky enough to have wonderful people in my life who are active in volunteering in the community. I’d like to share some of the ways these people, and I myself, have contributed to justice and caring within our communities. Make care kits for the homeless-This is probably something more suited to people who live in or around big cities but recognizing the needs of our homeless not only helps restore their dignity, but it replenishes our humanity. Giving credit where credit is due, this idea was not suggested, but demonstrated to me by a couple of dear people in my life. Last year while visiting NYC with my friends, one of our group, author Margaret Reyes-Dempsey, handed out care packages that she’d put together for homeless people. She purchased needed supplies, including hand wipes and socks. She carried these care packages in a backpack distributing them as we went. Around the same time, my daughter, a public defender, did the same thing—handing out thick socks, hats, and gloves to people at her courthouse. Care kits that…

The older I get, the more I realize that those changes keep coming. Sometimes they bring joy. Sometimes they bring sorrow. Sometimes, it’s a little of both. Part of why I started Fierce Beyond 50 was to create a community for us to not only embrace those changes together—the good, the bad and the ugly. This past month, we explored some of the harder changes in life, a few strategies for combating brain fog and mental fatigue, and the importance of taking on new challenges that scare us a little bit. HOW ONE WIDOW’S RITUALS HELPED HER NAVIGATE THE STAGES OF GRIEF AND HEALING PROCESS Grief and healing is a personal journey for everyone, especially after the loss of a spouse. There is no one-size-fits all remedy. Journalist and speaker Meg Cox shares how she leaned on rituals during the grieving process and what she’s learned from widowhood. FITTING IN AND MAKING FRIENDS AFTER A MOVE It’s easy to feel untethered after a move to a new town. For women, it can be especially difficult since we are so relationship-oriented and many times we leave friends behind during relocation. I consider myself a pro at this, having moved more than 20…

Like Katie Capwell, the female protagonist in my new new novel, MAYBE SOMEONE LIKE YOU, my path to following my dreams wasn’t a straight line. No, it was more of a wild zigzag, like a trail made by a frantic mouse in a maze. The idea of becoming a writer was always teasing me with its alluring pull, but writers were “other” people—fancy people who wore blazers with elbow patches. (Okay, so my childhood idea of a writer stuck with me through adulthood, even though I knew better.) Upon graduating from UCLA, I began working in television casting. It was a (relatively) seamless flow from interning at NBC to working as an assistant to a casting director. The first show we cast fizzled, but the next show we worked on—one that people mistakenly called The Exiles in its infancy stage—became a huge hit. Soon, people were no longer calling it anything but its correct name, The X-Files. Through the years, I was promoted, and then I moved to a different casting company as a casting director. The job was amazing. No other position would’ve allowed me to meet so many individuals from all walks of life. They told me their…

Writers are like magpies. They gather their own experiences, couple them with tons and tons of research, and come up with a distinctive realm that they hope will draw readers into their stories. How do they do it? The old adage, “Write What You Know” holds a lot of merit. As an author, I try to follow it whenever I can. For example, I don’t set my stories in Paris, because I’ve never been there. I couldn’t do the city, or the people, justice. And as much as I love to read Regencies, I’ve only been to England once. That doesn’t make me an expert on all things British. However, I do know the United States, especially California. Being a native Californian, I’ve travelled up and down and all around this state. Coincidentally, that’s where my latest release, UNDERCOVER WITH THE NANNY, takes place. The heroine, Kate Munroe, lives in a little beach community near the border of California and Mexico. I haven’t been down that way in a long time. When I did my research, I found that the town of Imperial Beach was the closest to the Mexican border. I scoured pictures of it on the internet, and…

I’ve been fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling, and my travels have heavily influenced my writing. My first book, INTO THE SCOTTISH MIST, was a time-travel romance that was inspired by a road trip in Scotland in 2005. Okay, I didn’t time travel, but when I looked upon the sapphire-blue expanse of Loch Ness with the ruins of Urquhart Castle standing sentinel over it, the mist-enshrouded hills of Glencoe, and the numerous standing stones on Orkney, I thought that if magic was possible anywhere, it would be in Scotland. My second book, A STAR TO STEER HER BY, is a romance set on a schooner during a semester at sea program. It was inspired by my own experiences in a similar program in my sophomore year of college. My new book, UNDER A STORM-SWEPT SKY, came about after I hiked Scotland’s West Highland Way, a ninety-six-mile trail that runs from Milngavie, just outside of Glasgow, to Fort William. I’d been to Scotland a few times since that road trip over a decade ago, and in 2015 I decided I wanted to see that incredible landscape on foot. Research led me to a company that does guided treks on…