At Covet, we love heroes! Our authors love heroes. Our readers love heroes. Today we have invited  three of our Covet launch authors to share their heroes with you for a special episode of #HERO WARS! Then on Tuesday, August 21st visit the Covet Books Facebook Page to catch all the action when our alpha heroes duke it out! Are Jenna Bennett, Melissa Bourbon Ramirez, and Candace Havens up for the challenge? Let’s find out and learn a little about their books… About TALL, DARK, AND DIVINE by Jenna Bennett: Being the Greek god of love doesn’t mean you believe–or want–anything to do with that sappy emotion.  Sure, Eros runs his matchmaking business, Made in Heaven, but finding his own love has never been part of the equation.  When he spots the sweet baker who works across the street, he vows to match her with someone else before she stirs his sullen heart. Annie Landon has given up on finding Mr. Right. What she needs is Mr. Right Here, Right Now, and this so-called “Greek God” she’s heard is on the rebound sounds like the perfect kind of distraction. But picking up the bitter workaholic is easier said than done…especially…

It’s amazing to think that I’ve been a published author for just over 25 years. Unlike many authors, I didn’t grow up dreaming of being a writer, or ever even thought about it. The first thing I remember writing was a poem to my first crush. I think I used bit of that poetry in one of the Silhouette Romances I wrote some years ago. It was boredom that drove me to write. I had been reading a lot of romances and one night I sat down and starting writing my own. I lived that book 24/7. I was totally caught up in the story. I was the hero. I was the heroine. I was the villain. I wrote every chance I got, mostly in the bathroom, which was the only place where I could get any privacy during the day. I also wrote late at night, while my husband was at work and my three sons were asleep. I wrote about the things I loved – the Old West, horses, cowboys and Indians, until I discovered vampire novels and a whole new world opened up for me. Historicals have to be accurate depictions of the time period, but with…

Next year I’m planning to take a cruise.  I’ve only done it twice before–both times on Carnival, fun because both were readers’ cruises.  Six hundred and fifty readers and only twenty five authors!  It was like being a big celebrity, even though it only lasted a week.  It was terrific to talk books with people who love them as much as I do. Next year’s cruise will be different.  We’re going to the Greek Isles–or at least so we thought until last week when I found out the boat doesn’t stop at any real islands.  They kind of tricked us, but it was a very good deal, money-wise, since the cruise industry is after the accident in Italy and Greece has riots in the streets. So it’s going to be cheaper–if we live through it.  And there is always the possibility of storms that time of year.  I’m definitely taking my patch–which, incidentally, actually works.  Twelve-foot seas and you don’t feel a thing.  Kind of like being drunk without the hangover.  Gotta have a prescription for it, though, but it’s usually easy to get. Our last cruise was in the Caribbean–the setting for DEEP BLUE, a book that Kensington Publishing…

Lady criminologist, Miss Emma Wallingford, unknowingly finds herself tangled in the dangerous final mission of Lord Derick Aveline, a spy who also happens to be her long lost first love. But when deception, however sweet, is the name of the game, no one can be trusted. And every love—and every life—is at risk. Hello! Heather Snow here and I am thrilled to be continuing my blog tour for SWEET DECEPTION here at Fresh Fiction. Thank you for having me back again! What I am doing for this tour is pulling back the curtain of Sweet Deception a bit, sharing a few of my favorite passages from the book each day while letting you in on the thoughts behind them. You can keep up with the stops (or go back and read ones you missed) either on my website or my Facebook page. The past few days, I’ve shared quite a bit about my hero and how he literally rode onto the page, hijacked my story and immediately (and intentionally) got off on the wrong foot with my heroine—as those heroes are wont to do. So today, I thought I would start sharing some of the things I love about my…

Remember walking through the fun house at the state fair?  The path twisted and turned, the floor shook and changed under your feet, and once you could see the end, the trail turned you around, back for more fun. Welcome to the world of a newly published author. This March I signed my first contract with a new publisher.  Not just new to me, new to the world of romance.  My book, THE BULL RIDER’S BROTHER released June 4th as part of their launch into this venture.  Yep, three months to get my feet under me and figure out all the must do’s an author in 2012 has on their daily to do list.  Three weeks after signing the first contract, I sold a second book to a more established e-publisher. (Note – for you who are still looking for your first contract, spacing them a little better than I did is highly recommended.  Between edits, and promotion, and filling out publisher forms, I was swamped.) Now, six months later, I’m still learning.  I’ve signed a second contract for THE BULL RIDER’S MANAGER, a book I wrote during this time and submitted a second book to my second publisher. And…

Oddly enough, I didn’t start out by writing a book for the Brazen line. SEDUCING CINDERELLA was intended for the Indulgence line, and before this I’d never written category romance. Heck, I was so green I didn’t even know what a category romance was and I’d never heard the word “trope” before. I’d only ever written paranormal romance before, so this was a huge learning experience. With category romance there’s certain rules you need to follow and true category fans expect certain things, all of which I’d had no clue about. When I gave my manuscript to my beta readers, they both warned me that my love scenes were too explicit for the typical category, specifically for the Indulgence line, and that I’d most certainly hear from my editor that I’d have to dial them back. I was pretty bummed because I’m the kind of writer who likes to give her characters their head to do what comes naturally to them, and the idea of censoring them doesn’t sit well with me. However, I was fully prepared to do whatever Liz needed to make it right for the line it was publishing under. So I was absolutely ecstatic when Liz…

As soon as I heard that Entangled Publishing was coming out with a steamier category romance line, I knew I wanted to be part of it. After all, who doesn’t love the smexy? Brazen has been described as Indulgence’s naughty little sister, and the description fits! It takes the best of category romance and spices it up, all without losing the core story between two people. This is how WRONG BED, RIGHT GUY came into being. While the book is a story of opposites attract, the whole reason they’re thrown together in the first place is the heroine crawls into the wrong bed. That night rocks both their worlds and sets the rest of the book’s events into motion. Elle bolts, because good girls aren’t supposed to get all hot and steamy with bad boys. She learned that the hard way and has no intention of going through it again. Gabe, on the other hand, sees something in Elle that calls to him on a level he’s never felt before. He pursues her in an effort to see if it’s real, or just part of his imagination. Much hilarity and many smexy times ensue. I’m really, really excited to be…

A story is a living thing. It starts as a germ, not even an idea really, that turns into a bug gnawing in the recesses of a writer’s brain. As the bug grows, eating bits of fluff and the words of stranger’s conversations, it becomes less easy to ignore, until finally it wakes us in the dark hours of the morning, fat and bloated with untapped energy, this thing we must write down or go mad. And that is simply the original idea. The pressure lets off as the words hit the page, but the story still grows. Edit after edit. Draft after draft. Until the finished book only passingly resembles the first bloody words that affixed themselves to the page. HEARTS OF DARKNESS was an organic, struggle of a story to write. I started it during National Novel Writing Month in 2008 and now, almost four years later, have the finished book in my hand. There are crumbs that resemble my first rough sketches of scenes and characters, and there are gems that didn’t make the final cut. I’d like to share with you the earliest scrawls of my debut. Desi’s character changed in the final book, but the…

I’m very excited to be at Fresh Fiction to celebrate the release of West of Want, Book 2 in my Greek-mythology-inspired Hearts of the Anemoi series. This book tells the story of Zephyros Martius, Supreme God of the West Wind and Guardian of Spring, who falls in love with a human woman he nearly kills. I’m not sure why, but heroes are the characters who always come to me first when writing a book. They talk to me the loudest and explain themselves to me the clearest. So I really love writing my heroes, and thought I’d introduce Zephyros to you today by sharing five words that describe him, with the excerpts to back them up! Here we go: Tortured This situation was about to become shit meets fan. For gods’ sake, he currently didn’t have clothes, and until he warmed he’d be lucky to hold a conversation. Naked, nearly incapacitated, with no ability to dock the boat, and with a gravely injured woman on board, he had little likelihood of contriving a convincing story about how they’d gotten that way. His presence was a liability here. He was useless. Again. As the blue-masted boat neared, the captain called out,…

How do you keep things fresh? An important question for any author writing a long-running series. A BREW TO A KILL is our 11th Coffeehouse Mystery, and Holiday Buzz, releasing in December, will make it an even dozen. Fresh inspiration is the key to keeping stories crackling, and my husband and I continually go to a well that never runs dry—the city where we live. New York is also where the Coffeehouse Mysteries are set, in a quaint, landmark coffee shop that’s been a part of the colorful fabric of picturesque Greenwich Village for over a century. Our amateur sleuth, Clare Cosi, manages the place. She’s a single mom, in her forties, and though her daughter is grown, she often acts as a surrogate mom to the oddball collection of young baristas in her employ. For any author of crime fiction, New York is definitely a city that keeps on giving. Having lived here for three decades, I can tell you that it’s filled with quirky people as well as criminal minds. What Marc and I see and hear on the streets of our neighborhood often inspires the twists and turns in the Coffeehouse plotlines. The people of our city…