Hi everyone! Thank you for joining me today for my guest blog! I am so excited to be here on Fresh Fiction to talk about my work. My debut novel THE RAKE AND THE RECLUSE is a bit different from the usual romance. I know everyone like to think that about their book, and I like to believe there is something very different about my story, but I am talking about something else all together. THE RAKE AND THE RECLUSE is an illustrated novel. There are over one hundred photographs embedded within the story. The idea came with the advent of digital readers. I wanted to embrace new media and as a professional photographer I believed the obvious way to enhance my novel for digital media was to illustrate it. A bit about my hero. Gideon is the Duke of Roxleigh, he lives in the far north of England in 1880, and would happily stay there far from society and the pains of London living, but as one of the most powerful peers of the realm his duty calls. He is determined to satisfy the Queen by finding an acceptable wife and doing all the things a Queen requires of…

Ever read a romance that stopped you dead (hit you deep in the gut) because the moment was just too much? What was it that did this? Here’s a list of my fave show stoppers and what really happens when you try this at home. 1.       A lick behind the knee. Come on, seriously who does that? So… since I’m ever curious and always open to research in the name of romance, er…. Romance in the name of research… whatever. I’m always open to new things. I asked my partner in crime to take a lick. Now, you may think this is going somewhere naughty, but I promise it’s not. In earnest, the hubs proceeded to shove me into the nearest bedroom—thank goodness it was ours—and then took the opportunity to flip me backwards on the bed, hike my leg in the air and flatten his tongue against the back of my leg. Now, I’ll tell you ladies and gents don’t ask your hubs to help with research unless you give him a script and the set up. Believe me the knee lick in the book did things to my libido that poor hubs will never accomplish with the skills…

I’ve never been one to play the field. Really, I’m very faithful and loyal by nature, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that starting a second cozy mystery series wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The idea for it had been percolating in my mind for a while, and I was looking forward to having my way with it. But actually embarking on another writing relationship felt a bit like cheating on the one I was already involved in. Right from the start there were problems. I had trouble naming my main character. I don’t know about other authors, but I can’t move forward until I have a satisfactory name for my lead. “Rory…Rory McCain” a little voice in my head kept whispering. “I can’t call all my protagonists ‘Rory’,” I replied, getting a little testy with myself. “Besides, Rory already has a great gig of her own.” I went through all the baby name lists until I was bleary-eyed. I’d had less trouble naming my two kids and four dogs. Nothing seemed right or suitable for a strong, young woman who’d weathered a difficult childhood. A cutesy name would never do. After a ridiculous amount of…

Thanks so much to the crew here at Fresh Fiction for inviting me to stop by during my TEMPTED blog tour! TEMPTED is the third book in the Eternal Guardians series, and I’m thrilled readers are enjoying it so much. If you’re new to the series, don’t worry. You can easily pick up TEMPTED without reading the first two books and figure out what’s going on. The Eternal Guardians are seven warriors descended from the seven greatest heroes in all of ancient Greece who defend the mortal realm from threats of the Underworld. Tempted is Demetrius’s book. He’s the biggest of the Guardians, a descendant of the famed hero Jason, and he harbors a dark and deadly secret. One that could destroy the world. But when the princess of Argolea goes missing, he’s suddenly the only Guardian who can save her. Fairy tales are packed with heroines who need rescuing. Most girls grow up fantasizing about the hunky prince who’ll ride in on a white horse and save the damsel locked away in the tower. In the eyes of many, Isadora, the heroine in TEMPTED, is that heroine. She’s timid, she’s shy, no one thinks she’s strong enough to rule,…

You know you’ve got one of these. The power suit that you feel you can take on the world in. That dress that always gets you compliments. We take on a different attitude and persona when we wear certain outfits and our characters are the same. Clothing was especially important in the Tang Dynasty. Though the 8th century is often considered ancient or medieval, but in China this period was a Golden Age and the height of Silk Road trade—which meant it was also the height of fashion. Elegant ladies wore flowing robes and experimented with gravity-defying hair styles. Bodices were elaborately embroidered and court ladies showed of a scandalous amount of skin. They wore lip stains and face powder and polished their nails. Women weren’t the only clothes hounds. Men also wore embroidered robes and it was fashionable to don vibrant colors as a show of wealth. There were even ordinances passed to regulate the length of sleeves  when fashion started favoring excessively long ones. At times, merchants, who were considered lower class, were prohibited from wearing colors as it seemed they were imitating the noble classes by doing so. Yet the wily businessmen continued to do so, wearing…

Angels and similar creatures are my favorite paranormal characters. I’ve been fascinated with the idea of wings on the back of someone who otherwise appears human since I was a little girl. I remember being enthralled in school by Egyptian art that showed a woman with wings longer than her arms. On the Cartoon Network, I watched shows such as Bird Man (self explanatory) and The Centurions (one character could fly with mechanical wings). I often had, and still have, flying dreams. As a fledgling writer, I dabbled in vampires before I settled into angels. Vampires and romance is a fantastic combination, and I doubt I’ll ever grow tired of reading such stories. In college, I took Vampires in Literature, an English elective, and have been hooked since. The vampire myth has had sexual elements since the earliest tales, and the leap of vampires to romance heroes and heroines feels natural to me. Angels, on the other hand, are not inherently romance characters. Many consider them religious characters, and while that certainly can be true, popular culture and many romance authors have taken them far outside that box. For me, the inherent conflict between what an angel is supposed to…

World-building is one of the most difficult parts of writing a world that differs in any way from ours. It’s easy enough to figure out the main changes, like “magic works” or “dinosaurs are still around”—you probably have them in mind from the beginning, or odds are you wouldn’t be writing that particular world—but then you have to think about what smaller changes they’d cause. Do the people in your world have surgeons, or does magic solve all health issues. If not, why not? How does the freeway system adapt when people are riding stegosauruses? And so on. That’s hard. It’s also a lot of fun—like putting together a puzzle, but generally without that moment when you realize that the dog ate three of the pieces. When I was writing NO PROPER LADY, I got to do two separate and intertwined pieces of world-building. One was Simon’s world, which was 1888 as we knew it on the surface—only with all sorts of secret knowledge and magic underneath. (I drew a great deal on actual occult societies of the time, though I took considerable liberties in the service of fiction.) The other was Joan’s world: a world very different from either…

Most writers are readers (I hope), and avid ones, at that. But I think we often read from a slightly different perspective than the general public. Sometimes it’s hard for me to turn off The Writer, even when I’m reading for pleasure, and I often find myself lingering on certain phrases or character choices. Sometimes it’s the small things that make the writer in me smile and nod my head when I’m reading. Just wee bits of genius–things that are deceptively simple, or fractions of world-building that dazzle me. I love finding these treasures in other people’s books. The following is a short list of five of those small moments in urban fantasy that moved me to raise a proverbial glass of champagne and say, “Well played!” 1) Charlaine Harris, Southern Vampire series: Sookie’s Word-a-Day Calendar It really bothers me when an author’s voice overrides the character’s voice in first person. Sookie is a small-town waitress, not very smart (but not dumb either), and her voice is fairly consistent throughout the series. But what does a writer do when she wants to use words that her character shouldn’t know? In Harris’s case, she gives Sookie access to a Word-a-Day calendar….

WINGS OF FIRE is the latest book in my Guardians of Ascension series.  It’s a great title, isn’t it?  I can say that, because I had nothing to do with it. The creation of the title was a collaboration between my agent and my editor, and a back and forth that took some time.  I interjected ideas now and then, but mainly the inspiration came from them.  However, the moment the title became official, my mind started shooting off fireworks about what I could do with those words:  wings…of…fire!  Wings on fire, wings erupting in flames, powerful wings, and on and on it went until one day an entire plotline emerged around that title. I can’t give too much away, though!  If I told you what I did with all that fire, then you’d know how the story develops and ultimately how it ends.  So, I’ll leave it there, fearing to spoil the fun. I love writing paranormal romance, more than I can say!  When the genre emerged, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  I’m sure many of you who read paranormal probably feel the same way.  I can remember reading the first book of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark…

One would think when one is writing a book where the premise comes from a movie, the casting would already be complete. Yes, well that would make sense if the author was someone who did things the easy way. That author is not me. I vividly remember the moment of inspiration for LORD AND LADY SPY. I was watching the Pitt-Jolie film Mr. and Mrs. Smith (yes, that one. Poor Jennifer Aniston). And I started thinking, what if this story took place during the Regency? What if the hero and heroine were not assassins but spies? Out of work spies… I was intrigued by the idea of writing about a married couple where not one, but both partners, had a secret identity. Could I write steamy scenes for a couple who’s been married five years. I found that yes. Yes, I could. When I started writing LORD AND LADY SPY, I didn’t have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in mind for my characters. Well, I have to admit, Brad kind of sticks in a girl’s mind. But Adrian Galloway, Lord Smythe is a little more dangerous than Pitt and a little less pretty. I was thinking more Daniel Craig with…