I didn’t set out to be an author. From childhood, my career goals were first an airline pilot, then a professional baseball player, and finally a physician. As I matured, I realized the first one was a fantasy, the second one highly unlikely (although I did play a bit of semi-pro baseball), while the third was what God had in mind for me. I didn’t realize God also planned for me to write, but events after the death of my first wife made that path clear to me. In none of these did I have an ultimate goal of fame and fortune—well, maybe the baseball thing, but nothing since then. But when I got my first writing contract, the dreams began. At my first writer’s conference, I was awestruck by the published writers there. These were people whose names were household words—maybe not in my household, but I was just getting started, so I could be excused for not knowing all of them. But surely they were celebrities in their hometowns. Most certainly they had to stop and give autographs in the grocery store or dry cleaners. And undoubtedly they lived in the lap of luxury. After all, they were…

Miranda Owen: What had you doing a series about demons, angels, and other biblical themes? Jeaniene Frost : I’ve loved all things paranormal since I was a child. Seriously, a story long told by my parents was that on my first day of Sunday school, I told the pastor that I thought the cross on the wall was to keep the vampires away. Not surprisingly, the first books I wrote featured vampires, but even then, I soon branched out to include other creatures like ghosts, ghouls, witches, revenants, wraiths, sorcerers, necromancers, and even a few demons. However, I first got the idea for the Broken Destiny series the same way I first got the idea for my Night Huntress series: from a dream. I have very vivid dreams, and they’ve ended up being plot fodder for more than a few books. In this particular dream, a young woman woke up trapped in a demon realm after spending the night in a bed and breakfast. Over the next few years, while I was writing my other novels, that story kept growing in my mind. Ironically, the young woman didn’t turn out to be my novel’s heroine. Instead, she was my heroine’s…

Kristen Donnelly: What drew you to writing an older heroine? Sophie Jordan: I’ve been reading romance since I was thirteen …and in that time I’ve read (and loved) countless fresh-right-out-of-the-school-room-historical heroines ranging from 18-21. I’ve read hundreds of them and will likely read hundreds more. As much as I enjoy them, I feel like there is a definite lack of heroines over thirty-five … and that’s what I wanted to write. Life doesn’t end at thirty … so why shouldn’t authors depict more mature women in romance novels? Basically … I wrote what I wanted to read, and that has pretty much been the ingredient to how I decide what to write next since forever. Kristen Donnelly: Was there an inspiration for this story? Sophie Jordan: I introduced Graciela and Colin in my previous novel, WHILE THE DUKE WAS SLEEPING, and they threatened to steal the scene a time or two. The fact that Graciela was older and Colin was younger was just a perk. Kristen Donnelly: You’ve written in a variety of subgenres within Romancelandia – do you have a favorite? Sophie Jordan: No! I don’t … that’s why I keep hopping subgenres. I love them all. Kristen Donnelly:…

It’s been almost 15 years since I immigrated from South Africa to Australia and began writing romance. In that time, I’ve published 30 books…and struggled with every one of them. It turns out the English language isn’t quite so simple as I once believed. You see, I grew up learning South African English, but I write Australian romance for American Publishers. Which means I’ve had to forget my 12 years of basic schooling, learn American spelling (color, not colour), while writing Australian lingo. Simple? Yeah, not really. Okay, not at all. Every day wording and expressions can get downright confusing. No matter how hard I try to write in Australian English, South Africanisms seem to creep in all the time. My characters often greet one another with “howzit, boet” instead of “g’day, mate”, and it’s only in re-reads or edits that I (or my editor) will pick up the error. The simple exercise of a character walking beside the road perplexes me. In South Africa, said character would walk along the pavement. In Australia, she or he would be on the footpath, but in America, it’s called a sidewalk. So please, someone tell me – where should my character walk?…

  Kyra opened the fridge, got a beer, and popped the top, unthinkingly taking a deep drink while she pondered her neighbor. Really, had she thanked him enough for the new hinge? Sure, she’d said thanks, but she really ought to thank him. Okay, she was not going to do that—she was not going to find an excuse to go over there and bother that man. Or was she? Because it wasn’t the worst thing to be neighborly and say thank you. Enough. She’d already sort of said thank you, and to say thank you now would be . . . flirty. Yep, flirty. And she was not the flirty type, even though Deenie had urged her to be more flirty. “You have to at least try,” she’d said one afternoon at the bistro when an older guy who smelled like cigars and sweat was hitting on Kyra. “You’ll make better tips. And are you really going to wait until you’re, like, forty before you date again? Because that’s too late. You’re practically done by then.” Forty did sound a little too late to reenter the dating scene. Ruby would be eighteen when Kyra was forty. Kyra could well imagine…

Everyone loves a great second-chance romance, right? Two lovers finding each other again. The idea that love conquers all. The romance of never getting over The One and having a chance to make it all right again. But there are challenges to writing these stories too and that made After You one of the harder Sapphire Falls books to write. Here are some reasons why J Someone was probably a jerk. Sometimes break-ups are amicable and people just grow apart and both admit it. But not usually. Usually someone does something that hurts or upsets the other. Which is real life. We all screw up and make mistakes. But when it’s characters in a book, the writer has to be careful so that readers don’t hate the character from the very beginning. They have to have understandable, and forgivable, reasons for the break-up.   They’re not always going to be happy to see one another. Obviously, in a romance, the characters have to spend time together in order to work through everything and figure out how they feel about one another. But they’re probably not going to be that happy to see each other at first. It’s a tough balance…

We all know the trends in romance fiction wax and wane, seemingly without logic or pattern. One day it’s all about the sexy vampires and military men, the next it’s motorcycle clubs, mixed martial artists, and bear shifters. It’s a tough genre to keep up with, given that it’s rich in tropes and archetypes, many of which fall in and out of favor at the apparent blink of an eye. For those of us who write romance, it can be a tough decision to make—what to write next? Will my fans support a switch of sub-genres? A new series? Do they want more of the same, since they’re invested in my existing characters and plots already? I tend to stick with subgenres, settings, and plot turns that I enjoy reading. I have been advised time and again NOT to do this. I should “follow the market” and write whatever it is people are paying money to read “these days.” The way I see it though, the “these days” trends change so fast, given how easy it is for anyone to write and toss a book up onto a retailer’s platform, then spend as much money as they have at their…

My favorite books of all time are the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. They follow three young girls, who become friends at about six-years-old, through high school and into adulthood. They’re set in a small town in Minnesota—hi, just like ARTIFICIAL SWEETHEARTS!—and take place at the turn of the twentieth century—not like ARTIFICIAL SWEETHEARTS. There are ten main Betsy-Tacy books, in which Betsy Ray is the central character, but then there are three satellite books, one-off stories that follow some of the more peripheral characters in the world of Deep Valley. One of these books is Carney’s House Party. Now, I didn’t read Carney’s House Party back when I was a kid. I read the book probably about fifteen years ago, and I LOVED it. Most of all, I loved Sam, the guy who falls for Carney. I fell for Sam. Hard. He was smart, funny, and easy-going, the perfect foil for rigid Carney, who was dead-set on staying with her high school boyfriend. Oh, honey. My kernel of inspiration for ARTIFICIAL SWEETHEARTS came from that book, hence Sam and hence Tinka, whose nickname comes from her family, just like Carney’s. The spark of an idea went like this:…

As a bridesmaid, there are potentially thousands of things the bride could ask a person to do, but one reigns supreme: Make sure the bride makes it down the aisle. So what happens if she doesn’t? It’s a question asked in FINDING LOVE AT THE OREGON COAST. Christina is preparing on the morning of her wedding with her bridesmaids (Liz, Anabeth, and Kadence) when she realizes some differences are too much to overcome in a relationship. No I do. No happy celebration afterwards. Instead, there are mounds of presents to return, a party with no bride and groom, and four young women left a little more disillusioned than they had been hours before. Oh, and one honeymoon trip that winds up being a solo venture. Thank goodness I haven’t shared Oregon Coast Christina’s plotline in my own life. I’ve had the pleasure of being a bridesmaid twice. The first time was for my lifelong bestie Tammy, who I’ve known since we were toddling around before kindergarten. The second time was for another lifelong bestie, Cindy (she had no choice, being my kid sister and all). Somewhere in between, they both were bridesmaids at my wedding. Everyone made it down the…

I am an indoor kid. I know this is a surprise for exactly zero people who know me, but I prefer some kind of barrier between me and anything resembling nature. I adore looking at it. It’s the being in it where things start to fall apart. While I was plotting and writing THE HUNTING GROUNDS I had to do a significant amount of research. I’ve visited Glacier National Park a few times when I was younger, and it made quite the impression on me, so it seemed natural enough to set the story there. It’s beautiful and sprawling and the perfect place to strand a group of hikers who won’t all make it back to civilization alive. Then there were the park rangers—in the course of my research and questions I posed, there is no way I’m not on some watch-list somewhere—and camping and all the nitty gritty details that need to go into a book to ground it effectively in reality. It was a total blast putting it together. Which is where this story starts to break down. In all my hours and days and weeks of research, I started to feel pretty on top of it. Surely…