We’ve all done it.  Tried to keep it a secret, hoping no one finds out.  Our furtive habit that so many people tell us we shouldn’t do, but we just can’t help ourselves.  Some of us start when we’re older, and others, like me, get started when we’re teenagers, getting hooked because of one of our friends. What am I talking about?  Reading romance novels, of course! How many of us have heard comments like “Why don’t you read something with real literary value?” or “That’s just escapist, fantasy fluff!” Hearing these comments over and over again can get pretty frustrating, and it’s tough not to get snippy when people outside the romance community (even booksellers!) make judgments about us for what we choose to read. But, friends, we’re not the first to criticized for our reading habits. Back in the 19th century, with printing and shipping costs lowering, as well as a more literate populace, inexpensive books known as penny dreadfuls or dime novels became wildly popular in the United States and England.  The books were full of adventure and excitement, their subjects running the gamut from detective stories, Gothic ghost tales, historical sagas to—yes—tales of the Wild West….

From Trish Jensen: My book that came out in September, AGAINST HIS WILL, featured a man who had no use for dogs. Or any animals, for that matter. I couldn’t stand my own hero for a long, long time because I’m an animal freak, and he wasn’t. The only thing that kept me going (and not bonking him over the head with a baseball bat) was that I absolutely knew the heroine would change his mind, and he’d end up loving that dang Bulldog he’d inherited against his will. I also knew he’d never abuse the dog even if he hated being the new unwilling human, because he’d be dead. (The hero, not the dog.) Well, he actually obeyed me, which most of my characters end up not doing. He fell in love with his dog. So I love him even more today than I did when I finished this story. But that was just a prelim to what I’m talking about here. In my next release, FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL… I’ve recognized that neither of those characters are me, either. Sherry doesn’t let anything get her down. Well, she can get very, very ticked on occasion, and loves…

In THE HALLOWED ONES, I wanted to explore the ideas of chaos and order. Most of the time, we tend to frown upon chaos and elevate order as a virtue. Chaos feels dangerous, opening up unknown possibilities. Order seems predicable, a way to keep us warm and safe. And it certainly feels that way to Katie, my Amish heroine. Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time when she can experiment a bit with the outside world. She wants to explore controlled chaos, the kind of exhilaration that we all want with pushing limits. She wants to venture to the nearby city, to meet people beyond her own small world, to wear jeans and read comic books. She’s read every book in the public library she can get her hands on. She yearns to know what’s beyond the confines of her fence. It’s the bright side of chaos that makes us feel alive, and Katie is no exception to those feelings. Before Katie can experiment with Rumspringa, the outside world is overtaken by chaos. Katie’s community is a safe haven, seemingly spared by the darkness. But she knows that evil and silence are waiting beyond her fence. There…

Imagine for just a moment that you’ve been snatched off an African highway by armed men and thrown into a hastily cleared out storeroom while they do God knows what to the rare wild dogs that you were transporting to the north of the country. The dogs that are your job, and your responsibility, and the thing that gives you purpose and represent two years of work now facing the bad end of a poacher’s weapon. And you’re locked in a room, sore and sweaty and gummy-mouthed with thirst, with your wrists bound with cable-tie, totally and utterly powerless. Imagine vacillating between blood-boiling rage and skin-chilling fear, and knowing that you need to escape to save your own life and also your dogs’. How long do you think it would take you to find your feet, clear your head and start thinking? Planning. I like to imagine, much like my heroine Clare, that I’d be useless for about an hour or so but that, as the post-adrenaline crash started to wear off, my mind would kick into gear and my brain would start focussing—really focussing with a kind of acuity we don’t get to use much in day-to-day life—and ideas…

Magical systems in a fantasy novel take as much thought as the settings and characters do. A magical structure will affect the characters just like the world’s history, religion, or government will. It will likely have an even greater effect on the plot of a novel. And the myriad ways a character’s talents can manifest is fascinating. A character might be able to shape shift (Patricia Briggs‘ Mercy Thompson), speak to or raise the dead (Laurell K. Hamilton‘s Anita Blake), cast spells (J.K. Rowling‘s Hermione Granger), create elaborate illusions (Erin Morgenstern‘s Celia Bowen), manipulate matter (Lois McMaster Bujold‘s Dag Redwing Hickory), or read people’s minds (Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse). They might have telekinetic (J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Gandalf) or pyrokinetic abilities (the original firestarter, Stephen King‘s Charlie McGee). Or they may be able to travel through time (Diana Gabaldon‘s Claire Randall) or control space travel (Ann Aguirre‘s Sirantha Jax). I realize some of my examples aren’t magic, but rather a special ability, and some of the novels are science fiction, not fantasy, but the concept is the same: SF/F authors spend a lot of time carefully considering their main characters’ special powers and how those powers work within the fictional world they’ve…

The first thing I came up with when writing my debut Regency romance novel was the title. SECRETS OF A WEDDING NIGHT. The pesky issue of a plot came later. : ) And when I was developing that plot, I knew I wanted a hero tortured by something in his past…and I wanted it so that there was something that only he could do to redeem himself. In a nod to one of Judith McNaught’s characters, Ian, from Almost Heaven (one of my all-time favorite heroes) I decided to make my Regency hero a genius at arithmetic, a master of numbers. (By the way, further from my own talents, he could not be.) I came up with the idea to have my hero, Devon Morgan, the Marquis of Colton, play in a high-stakes card game in order to win back his father’s signet ring. The ring had been taken from his father as a gambling debt by the unscrupulous lord of the London underworld, Gilbert Winfrey. You see, Devon’s father was not as skilled with numbers as his son turned out to be. In fact, Devon is still haunted by the fact that his father used to take him to…

Any book I like well enough to keep after reading it is one I’m likely to read again.  Okay, maybe not this year.  Or next year.  But sometime.  Walking around piles of books in the floor, though, recently convinced me I had to be stricter.  I realized I hadn’t pruned the romance shelves in a dozen years.   The mystery/suspense,  science fiction/fantasy, and general fiction shelves also hadn’t been touched in a long time, but I figured I’d start with the genre that had the biggest overflow. Looking at the books I kept, I realized they all had certain elements in common. They all had romance, of course, but they also involved adventure and action, which some friends and I like to call “boom.”  Maybe the characters have to step into uncharted territories in their lives or go to strange new places or dare things they dread.  Maybe they have paranormal gifts they need to master.  Maybe they’re called to face unexpected destinies.  In some way, though, they must stretch themselves, and that not only creates conflict but carries an element of risk that makes it adventurous. An example would be Kathleen Woodiwiss’s SHANNA.  The story of the hero and heroine’s…

I’m excited about the publication of my Special Edition A HOME FOR NOBODY’S PRINCESS!  This story features one of secret childhood fantasies. What if I were somehow given to the wrong parents?  What if my real parents were royalty?  What if I’m a princess?  Hahahaha!  Truth is I believe I have the best parents in the world. The other strong aspect about this story is feeling at home.  Some people make you feel more safe and secure than others.  I think feeling at home is more about the people than the place.  What do you think?  What place makes you feel at home?  What person makes you feel like home? One responder will be drawn to win a $10.00 Amazon Gift Card. P.S.  If you get a chance to read A HOME FOR NOBODY’S PRINCESS, please write me at leannebbb@ aol.com xo, Leanne Banks www.leannebanks.com To comment on Leanne Banks’s blog please click here.

Asking authors from whence come their ideas is almost guaranteed to receive smart-alecky answers similar to “from my coffee cup.” And we might not even be lying. With a combination of caffeine and the funny quotes on our mugs, we truly can develop entire books. In the case of THE BOYFRIEND FROM HELL and the Saturn’s Daughter series, the idea came from a cornfield. I kid you not. There is something transcendental about cruising hundreds of miles of highway and cornfields that is guaranteed to feed my subconscious. My brain consequently spews back rich idea manure. Mix in a few country songs from the radio and before long…I’m splatting alpha males into brick walls like bugs on the windshield. It was taking an idea from smushed bugs to series concept that really required work. Obviously, killing the potential hero in the first chapter is not the opening for a good romance novel. But it works beautifully for urban fantasy. Where else could the heroine kill her cheating boyfriend and accidentally damn him to hell? Oops!  And then the fun really starts when he comes back to haunt her in her mirror and swears he’s innocent. But with urban fantasy, the…

I’ve been asked more times than I can count now, “Why would you write about humans that could shift into panthers?” And each time I’m asked I have to think on the answer. It’s true that there is no love between myself and the feline species, however, there’s something about the jaguar that gets me every time I look at one. The jaguar, or panthera onca, it has a nice ring to it once you say it a few times. That coupled with the sleek and menacing look they have created the picture of the perfect new species. I figured this new species to be the best of both worlds—drop-dead gorgeous, perfectly sculpted body, fierce protective streak, charismatic and lethal when crossed. That’s an ideal description of The Shadow Shifters. I love the alpha hero, the take your breath away, dominating male that knows what he wants and doesn’t hesitate to go get it. Teaming him up with an in-your-face-independent female is always a task that gets the sparks flying. Dropping them both in a world that will fear what they really are amidst a growing political drug scandal is just the icing on the cake. In the first installment…