What’s so special about a guy in a kilt? Getting him out of it, of course. In SINS OF THE HIGHLANDER, “Mad Rob” MacLaren peels off his own plaid to take a bath after a sleepless night. The poor guy has had to flee from his pursuers, sleep in a cave without a fire, and fight off a wolf-pack. Of course, he brought all this trouble on himself when he abducted his enemy’s bride from the altar. To make matters worse, he’s having difficulty thinking of Elspeth Stewart as simply a means to a vengeful end. Exclusive Excerpt from SINS OF THE HIGHLANDER: Rob stripped off his filthy clothes on the loch’s shore and left them in a pile as he walked to the water’s edge. He squatted down and splashed himself all over, sucking a breath over his teeth at the cold. Normally, he’d have skipped a bath in this weather, but Elspeth Stewart was getting clean somewhere inside Angus Fletcher’s cluttered wattle-and-daub home. He didn’t want to smell like a boar pit beside her. Rob scooped out a dollop of soap from the stone jar Angus had loaned him and smeared his whole body with it. He even…

Call me crazy, but I love January. For me, January means getting over that winter hump and looking ahead to spring. The thing I won’t do in January is set New Year’s resolutions. Maybe I’m a party-pooper, I don’t know. All I know is that the last New Year’s resolution I set was giving up chocolate. If you know me at all, you know the idea of this is laughable. I have a ferocious yearning for dark chocolate. I eat one piece every day. That one piece is enough to keep my cravings satisfied and it’s only 52 calories (I did my research on that calorie count). Yet, I still tried to convince myself I could give it up. Forever. Forever lasted 22 hours. In less than a day I’d blown my New Year’s resolution. For whatever reason, when I call a goal a resolution, I tend to fail at reaching that goal. Sad, but true. So, instead of setting resolutions, I like to think of the new year as a chance to look back on the previous months and take stock of what I’d like to do differently going forward. It’s also a chance for me to think about…

I’m a sucker for a marriage of convenience story. I love everything about them. I’ve written quite a few of them and read heaps, and one thing I love is that no two stories are the same. It all boils down to who the bride and groom are, under what conditions have they married and what expectations do they have about each other — and the marriage. Also, since I mostly write historicals set in the Regency, it’s very suitable to have MofC stories, as they were so common then. Marriages then were less about love and romance — they were practical arrangements, made to protect property, to consolidate wealth, to make alliances, to maintain class barriers, or to achieve a rise in class. It wasn’t always the upper classes who made convenient marriages, either. Poor people and those of the middle classes married for security, or to improve family status, too, Even a milkmaid had to have some sort of a dowry to attract a good match. And a good match meant security. But for me as a romance writer, marriages of convenience are glorious opportunities for fun. I love it when the expectations of the bride and groom…

One of my new year traditions is to take a look at the list of books I read in the past year. How many books did I read? In what genre? And most importantly, how did I like them? I immediately noticed that the majority of the books I added to my reading list were rated 4 or 5 stars, with the odd 3-star book here and there. There were no 1 or 2-star books. Does that mean I like all the books I read? Well, yes and no. It really just means that I don’t finish the books I’m not enjoying. You know those people who always finish a book they’ve started reading, no matter what? I’m not one of them. Sometimes, if I don’t like the author’s writing style, I will stop reading within the first 10 pages (Kindle samples are great!). If it’s a book I really want to like, then I might read as much as 100 pages before giving up. Either way, if it’s something I probably won’t rate more than 1 or 2 stars, then I don’t finish. There are just too many books out there that I haven’t read, and I have too…

Names in fiction, as in life, are important. While they may not tell you what sort of person someone is, they can tell a lot about where/when they were born. Tarquin and Fred may have been born at the same time, but I suspect into very different families. Diminutives maybe hint a little at the person – someone who insists on being called Anthony is probably a very different Anthony who tells everyone to ‘Call me Tone.’ So in fiction, what your character is called is a reflection of when and where he’s born. Sometimes the characters tell me their names – in my first book, Ilfayne just turned up with the name. Sometimes I give the character a placeholder name, and it sticks – in my second book (and the first where he was a secondary character) Hunter was named that as a placeholder, mainly at my husband’s insistence he be ‘Like Triple H, Hunter Hearst Helmsley. Only more badass’. It stuck. Only, Hunter’s a duke and it didn’t really fit his background or culture, so I had to come up with a reason he was given the nickname, because he refused to be called by his given name….

For me, what makes a story hot is when we see the attraction build between the main characters, bit by bit, as they get to know each other. And as the sexual excitement increases, they discover something new that makes their love life sizzle. There’s a lot of talk about how gorgeous the hero and heroine have to be. While they do have to be attractive, especially to each other, I don’t find it necessary to read that over and over again through the story. I’d rather see the attraction grow as they make new discoveries about each other–the sparks from the first kiss, the beauty of an exposed leg, the sensation from a touch in a newly discovered erogenous zone. Sexual tension should build before their first love scene, but I think it’s lots of fun to keep it up (so to speak) during each sexual encounter. In “Power Play,” when Sergio gets his payback, he arrives at Liz’s home on one page, strips her naked on the next, but then spends more than twenty pages seducing her through every room of her house. (I had intended this to be a short story, but once I started writing that…

Theoretically, I know that turning the calendar from December to January doesn’t really change anything. It’s just another month and here in Iowa it’s a dreary one at that. But I do love the idea of a new year, a fresh start and new beginnings. For me, I’m starting off the year with the release of a new book. DEMON CROSSINGS is a paranormal romance that’s based on Norse mythology and set in the Midwest. The basic premise is that centuries ago, Ragnarok (the apocalypse of Norse mythology) occurred when fire demons overran Asgard (home of the Æsir). Our ancestors considered the Æsir to be gods because of their ability to manipulate the fabric of space and time but the Æsir refugees who managed to escape to earth lost much of that ability. Their power was tied to Asgard and on earth they need to live in places where the wall between worlds is thinnest. The power that seeps through from the ruined Asgard is just enough to sustain them and enable them to fight the fire demons that occasionally cross into our world. So, DEMON CROSSINGS starts out with a shattered world and a broken people. Death everywhere and…

Back when I was first dating, men and women talked, went to dinner, went to a show.  We took our time getting to know each other.  Then the trend began to change and the whole objective of dating became for the guy to get the woman in bed. Conquest was everything.  And sometimes women played the same game.  Romance seemed to be fading, the chance to know someone’s inner thoughts and dreams before hoping into bed was drifting away. Today the dating scene has changed again and oddly enough, computer dating may actually be the salvation of romance.  People meet on-line, chat on line, text on their cell phones.  Sometimes they “date” for months without actually meeting. There are pros and cons to this new way of meeting people, but personally, I think getting to know someone slowly, savoring those little secrets you discover about each other over the weeks and months, can lead to a far more lasting relationship.  The percentage of people meeting through on-line dating is growing and so is the number of marriages between people who have met via the computer. So even though I’m a strong supporter of old-fashioned romance, I think there’s a place…

People are always asking which of my characters is my favorite.  Favorite?  I’ve written over twenty books.  Let’s pretend I had forty children… would I play favorites?  I sincerely hope not (though I’m also pretty sure I wouldn’t remember all their names).  At any rate, my answer to that question changed with THE DUKE IS MINE.  I do have a favorite character now: Rupert Forrest G. Blakemore, one of two heroes in Duke.  When the novel opens, Rupert is betrothed to my heroine, Olivia.  He lost air at birth and consequently he doesn’t speak in full sentences—but he has the clearest and most honorable approach to life of any character I have created.  He is a poet and, at the same time, a tremendously brave warrior. Rupert is not the only hero of THE DUKE IS MINE.  I think it’s clear from the back of the book (so no spoiler here) that Olivia ends up with Quin, the Duke of Sconce.  But Rupert is the prism through which that love happens.  He is the clear, untarnished voice of novel, and it’s through one of his poems that Quin learns to trust his feelings, to grieve and to let go, and…

Many thanks to Fresh Fiction for having me here to talk about my latest book! The fun part about writing my witchy series is putting a bit of myself in each character. Usually, it’s my demented sense of humor and my friends will tell you they hear my voice any time they read Jazz’s books. But if I had a choice for A DEMON DOES IT BETTER, who would I be? That’s really a toughie. I adore Deisphe with her bad kitty attitude and her caring nature for her patients. The idea of turning into a sleek leopard sounds like fun. Lili with her gift of magickal healing. A cozy house, good friends. But I’d have to say I wouldn’t mind being Cleo for a day. Can you imagine a cat with her history? She’s THAT Cleo! The female who had Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony as lovers along with ruling Egypt. I’m sure she wanted to be thrown into one of the slinky cats known during that ancient time, and instead is a fluffy gorgeous Persian. But maybe that’s what she likes since she has a good-sized tail to twitch at any admiring male. Cleo also loves children and…