Besides being a writer, I’m also a private investigator who co-owns a detective agency with her spouse. No surprise my current book, THE ZEN MAN, features a private eye man-and-woman team. And yes, I based my private eye hero, Rick Levine, on my husband. Not 100 percent, of course, but they do share some personality traits and background. What makes Rick Levine hot? Those killer blue eyes for starters. Also, his confident wisdom, vulnerability and wicked sense of humor. I thought it’d be fun to share an additional five hot private eye heroes from film and books for this blog. Although there are definitely hot female private eyes (Emma Peel, Honey West, Veronica Mars to name a few), I’m focusing on their male counterparts. Although rugged looks certainly count, sometimes what’s attractive lies below the surface. Here’s my list of five hot private eyes: Sherlock Holmes (created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). We’re talking superior intellect here. Sherlock solves crimes through astute logical thinking, the ability to don disguises, and keen forensic skills. According to his sidekick Dr. Watson, Sherlock is also a bit of an eccentric who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle and his tobacco in the toe…

Have you ever wondered if fiction mirrors life?  I have.  Not once, but twice. The first time was in 2004, shortly after I had pounded out the original draft (in pen) of a story in my head.  The process took a year and a half (2002-2003), after which I realized there was a sequel.  I joined a professional writing organization, attended conferences and learned I had written two stories, not one (+sequel makes 3).  After chopping, slicing and dicing, I began the intense research needed to bring the story to life. DUTY AND DESIRE, the debut in my ‘Winds of Fire’ series, begins with a five-hundred-million rupee (Indian currency) wedding where Sheetal (protagonist) is forced to marry Sanjeet (antagonist) in the wedding of the decade.  I had the characters, plot, locale, wedding attires for both characters—created by 2 of India’s leading fashion designers—in place. Then in 2004, Vanisha Mittal, heiress to London born, steel tycoon, Lakshmi Mittal, announced her wedding to Amit Bhatia, a Delhi born investment banker.  The wedding, estimated to cost about $78m, was honored by Forbes’ Magazine and the Guinness Book of World Records, as the most expensive wedding ever, and took place at the Palace of…

As a first-time romance novelist and a newbie blogger, I apologize in advance for not quite knowing how to approach my blog on Fresh Fiction. But I’ll start by thanking my Red Sage, my wonderful publisher, for taking a chance on CURSED. As I sat down to prepare my blog, I suffered the opposite of writer’s block. I had so many ideas jostling each other in my mind that I couldn’t seem to focus on just one. But then it hit me—with the force of a runaway train. Three years ago, I lost my job. I got laid off when a large hospital system acquired the hospital where I’d worked for 15 years. I became part of the huge pool of American workers pushing the unemployment rate into double digits for the first time since the dark days of the 1982 recession. I was without a job for about a year. And while it was terrifying to watch expenses pile up with nothing coming in, my twelve months of unemployment were the most liberating months of my life. I’ll never forget the day that my sister dared me to make good use of my enforced time off by doing something…

Back when MARIANA was first published, in the early 1990s, most paperback originals (as books published first in mass market paperback format were called) had only a few weeks or months of life in which to find their readers, before they were shunted off the bookstore shelves by the next season’s new releases, so it’s always heartening to see a book that came and went so briefly get a second chance to find the readers who might like it. But with each re-release, there always comes that moment when the proofs arrive to be corrected, and I read a sentence over and I see its flaws in hindsight, and I wonder whether I should maybe change it, just a little. The Russian writer Tolstoy once confided to his friend, Aleksandr Borisovich Goldenweiser: “I scarcely ever reread my published writings, but if by chance I come across a page, it always strikes me: all this must be rewritten; this is how I should have written it.” I’ve felt twinges of that, too, from time to time. Whenever I read one of my early books I feel a little like I’d imagine a carpenter feels when he looks back at the first…

“Those penniless Hadley brothers.” Weston, Grayson and Archer have heard themselves described as such their entire lives.  The comment usually occurs along with a slur about their recent behavior in society. You see, the Hadley brothers not only have pockets to let, they also like to stir up trouble at every opportunity. These gentlemen like to gamble, they enjoy a good brawl (often with one another) and they don’t believe in following society’s rules. Not at all. We first met Weston Hadley and his brothers in THE TAMING OF THE WOLF. They just happen to be Dashiel Thorpe’s younger, unclaimed, half-brothers, though society isn’t aware of the connection. If they are aware, no one brings it up. It’s simply too outlandish. The very thought that such a lofty lord would have siblings without a shilling to their names would shock the stockings right off the Duchess of Hythe. Dash’s father had an affair with Dash’s mother which is how Dash came to be, and then the viscount went on to marry and produce these three blights on society. In THE TAMING OF THE WOLF, Caitrin, Lord Eynsford’s witchy wife, sets about the process of uniting the three brothers with her…

Post a Comment Enter Our Contest Three of our Story Gardeners celebrate April showers by chatting up one of their favorite topics. Heroes. We know readers want to be the story’s heroine for a time, and they want to be with the hero. How do we create a wonderful hero? What kind of a hero makes a believer out of you? Cathy Maxwell: I was charmed by the recent video of the firefighters who were dressed in prom dresses and riding in a float to promote a beauty pageant fundraiser. When a nearby pickup truck caught on fire, they weren’t afraid to jump from their float and set to work–still wearing red and blue prom dresses. A hero isn’t about his pecs or his height or his bank account. Heroic status is about his attitude, about what he values and is willing to protect, and what he stands for. A six foot six guy without any of those things might as well be a rubber dummy no matter how odd looking we think he is. When it comes to heroes, character count. I’ll send a copy of my newest book, LYON’S BRIDE–the first of the Chattan Curse series—to the author…

To celebrate the release of TROUBLE ME, Book Three of my Rosewood Trilogy, I thought I’d introduce you to my newest hero, Rob Cooper. Rob Cooper is a cop who possesses a strong sense of right and wrong. He’s also a widower, who’s busy raising his six year-old daughter. His wife Becky died five years earlier and Rob grieves for her still–so much so that he hasn’t let himself get close to any woman since then. He realizes the situation is unhealthy, for him as well as his young daughter Hayley, but no woman has been able to capture his interest, let alone touch his heart. His world changes one wild, stormy night when Rob finds himself in a Norfolk hotel bar waiting out the storm so he can drive home to Warburg, Virginia, and a woman walks in and orders a drink, settling into a stool not far from his own. The woman is beautiful and though Rob of course has no intention of approaching her, the other male patrons are soon taking turns trying to their best pick-up lines. When one man becomes coarse and aggressive, Rob decides he’s had enough. He crosses over to where the woman…

Lots of people have asked me about the title of my latest romance. THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES is out in Presents Extra this week – on April 4th actually. And the title seems to have grabbed at people’s imaginations. THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES? What’s that about? It’s an unusual title – how did you come by that? they want to know. They’re intrigued and wanting to find out what the story is behind that atmospheric title. I have to admit that I’m really glad that Harlequin Mills & Boon have made a pretty radical rethink on their approach to titles a while back. They decided that those multiple, built up ‘buzzword’ titles no longer worked (thank goodness!) and the billionaire/blackmails/revenge/greek/whatever titles had to go. (You could hear the cheers from the authors for miles!) If they’d kept to that system of naming a book then I would probably have ended up with The Argentinian Billionaire’s One-Night Lovechild or some such and we all know there’s so much more to a book than just that! THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES was my own working title for this story, the one that gave me the right mood and atmosphere for…

Hi all ya’ll! Happy Easter everyone! Spring! Romance! Weddings! Doesn’t that all come to mind about now? Romance and weddings just naturally go together…add a touch of spring fever and boom, wedding bells are ringing and happy ever after is what it’s all about. Right? Not always. ONE HOT COWBOY WEDDING turns things around and upside down. It starts out with a wedding right at the start of the book and there’s doubts that HEA will ever even happen. Shhhh! It’s a secret! That line had run around in Jasmine’s mind all day on a continuous loop. She imagined two little girls playing out on the grassy lawn with their Barbie dolls and it was a secret where Barbie and Ken were going for supper. Then two middle school girls in her bedroom gossiping about boys, and it was a secret. Oh, the secrets she and Pearl had shared through the years, and now she had one that she couldn’t share with anyone, not even Pearl. “No one in Texas is ever going to know. Not even Pearl. I’ll go home and everything will be the same. I’ll wake up Monday morning, open the Chicken Fried Café, and business will…

I blame the Van Wickle Gates. See, my college has these giant iron gates that are only open for matriculation and commencement, per wacky ceremonial tradition, and also per wacky tradition, there’s some kind of urban (is it really urban on a college campus? Whatever) legend that, should you pass through them at any other time, lo, you will be CURSED and condemned to STAY AT COLLEGE FOREVER, or not graduate, or something. Said curse couldn’t really apply to me, because the time I walked through them the wrong way was after I’d been graduated, for which I blame my friends Jamey and Mike: we were coming back from the ceremony, discussing who’d won various bets regarding the valedictorian speeches ($5 each on “community,” “diversity,” a gratuitous mention of 9/11, and “Jesus Christ, my personal savior”, and I still think I could’ve swept the pool if we’d bothered to write this stuff down) and…we went the wrong way. As you do. Since I already graduated, clearly, the curse instead decreed that I’d never get away from academia in general, and…I really haven’t. Definitely not in my writing: my first book, NO PROPER LADY, is one of the few things I’ve…