When I first started writing Backstage Pass, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Yes, I knew the book would be about a smokin’ hot love affair between a sexy, albeit romantic rock guitarist (Brian Sinclair) and a professor who appeared stuffy on the outside but was a raging inferno of sexuality on the inside (Myrna Evans). When I least expected it, these four other guys showed up. They happen to be Brian Sinclair’s band mates, who make up the rest of his band, Sinners. I thought they were perfectly harmless. Just some secondary characters to progress the story. Boy, was I in for a surprise! I never expected them to take over in the first chapter. Don’t get me wrong. I love the guys in Sinners. All five of them. It’s just that writing about them is like herding cats. None of them pay any attention to what I say. They do exactly what they want, when they want to do it, and couldn’t care less about my plot. Behind door number two, we have Sed Lionheart, the lead singer. He has a collection of groupies he uses without apology and hides behind a façade of…

Once upon a time, in a Cambridge far, far away, there was a cranky grad student.  I realize that this isn’t necessarily a defining characteristic.  Many grad students are cranky.  Especially those who have lived through a Cambridge winter, where the ice lies slick on the cobbles, just lying in wait for the unwary academic trudging out of Widener Library with a large pile of books.  Large piles of books make loud splatting noises when they fall into puddles.  So, for that matter, do grad students. But I digress.  This cranky grad student was in pursuit of a PhD in English history, but she kept stubbing her toes on footnotes along the way.  She—okay, okay, I—decided to do something to remind myself of why I loved history.  What better way to do so than to write a historical romance novel? It would be, as the historian and historical novelist George MacDonald Fraser put it, not history as it was, but history as it should have been.  History with all the good bits.  History as we like to imagine it.  History full of swashbuckling and knee breeches and men in black masks who raise their quizzing glasses just so and drawl…

Will women’s fiction readers embrace a novel told from the male point of view? Can a woman even write in a man’s point of view effectively? The answer to both questions—absolutely! Two prominent examples from the recent past provide evidence. Sara Gruen’s bestseller Water for Elephants was written in the first person, male point of view, the story told from the perspective of a young man. It attracted scores of readers, many of them women. And Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead was written in first person from an elderly man’s perspective as he looked back on his life. Both books, to put it mildly, did very well, proving that a good story well told is the most important criteria for publishing success. Obviously, I’d be thrilled if my book, Sloane Hall, did even a fraction as well as those two successes. Sloane Hall might be inspired by Jane Eyre, but it’s told from the male protagonist’s point of view in the first person. The voice the reader hears throughout the book is that of John Doyle, a young Texas reform school “graduate” who finds work as a chauffeur for a Hollywood starlet about to make her first talking picture in…

There are times when I feel like I could never be lonely. There are too many people running around in my head. I often thought they were compensation for being shy. I might not have always had the courage to jump in a conversation with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I could sit back and create very exciting scenarios in my head. Many times I’d be walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant and I’d see a man or a woman that would instantly become a new character. Sometimes a single expression would be the start of a great adventure even if it never made it to the page. With my new release, SAZERAC SEDUCTION from eRedsage.com, the character seduced me with the sound of his voice. I heard him. The deep rich Cajun dialect whispered directly into my head causing me to shiver. I shut my eyes and let him in, let the sound envelope me like a blanket on a cold winter day. How could I not write his story? And of course with a sexy voice like that I had to give him a face and body to match. Remy is sex…

Life has a way of teaching me lessons. I’m thankful for that. I love to learn. I remember sitting in a religious gathering once where someone was talking about life after death. The speaker described paradise. In detail. Minutes and minutes of minute detail. Clearly he was intending to create an image of a place so fantastic, so magnificent, that anyone sitting in his audience would do whatever it took to be able to spend eternity in such a place. I sat there feeling more and more trapped. Because while I pictured myself in this magnificent place, floating, or whatever, in paradise, encased in love, living in a world without pain, I saw a major flaw. If I had all knowledge and understood all secrets as the man promised, I was going to be bored stiff! What was I going to do all day in paradise if I couldn’t keep learning? I crave learning more than I crave food. So, yes, I’m thankful for life’s lessons. I’m thankful I seem to be served them in abundance. It just takes me a little longer sometimes to feel the gratitude – and sometimes to get the message. I’m on a three month…

I began reading romance novels when I was young.  Hot, steamy Jude Deveraux historical novels from the hardcover section of my local library.  My mother had no idea they were romances; if she had, she wouldn’t have approved.  When I tried buying romance novels with my allowance from Wal-Mart, she would judge the cover as to whether or not it could be deemed acceptable reading material for me (not realizing the excerpt inside would have been a much better clue).  Years passed by, and friends would tease me about reading romances.  Store clerks would give me “the look” when the book I wanted to buy featured a half-naked man and woman locked in a torrid embrace on the cover.  I learned from all these experiences to only buy historical romance novels with pretty covers on them—you know, the ones with flowers or necklaces, or a picture of a manor house.  Or, if I really wanted one that had a sexy cover, I would turn it upside down in public, trying my best to hide everything with my hand. It took me a while to get over this.  But the older I got, the more I realized that I really didn’t…

Evangeline Mayer is a songwriter, former party girl, newly Made immortal, and woman in love. In love with two men, that is. Many people believe you can only love one person at a time, but with this much testosterone and rippling abs so near, how could she resist? Her longtime mortal boyfriend Sean Livingston is ruggedly handsome with a protective nature. He’s a kick-ass martial artist and the deejay every woman in the club wants to sink her nails into. He’s a family man and longs for a commitment with Evangeline, but he’s willing to take it slow for her. And the fact that he can make a mean cup of coffee doesn’t hurt. Evangeline’s immortal mate Will Cochran’s chocolate brown eyes are yummier than cake batter, and his absolute devotion to making her happy is the icing in the bowl. Beneath his cool demeanor lies a man who’s passionate about all things Jim Morrison and hitting the powdery slopes. And with a direct link to Evangeline’s mind, he knows exactly what pleasures drive her over the edge. With needs as big as hers, she needs two alpha males to satisfy her. If you could choose two mates, what traits…

It’s such a pleasure to guest blog here at Fresh Fiction today! Thanks so much to everyone for having me. As an author of contemporary women’s fiction, I think the most intriguing &mquot;what ifs&mquot; in writing a new story have to do with delving into the hearts and minds of the women who’ve embarked on a big emotional journey, particularly when that journey makes them rethink their past and re-imagine their future: In some cases—as in the still untitled book I have coming out next fall—the journey is a literal adventure. My heroine gets a month-long European vacation as her 30th birthday present from her eccentric aunt and heads overseas for a summer of new experiences…and some romance! But it’s also an internal voyage, requiring a dive deep into the well of her passions and her fears. In my debut novel, ACCORDING TO JANE, it took my heroine two decades to resolve one important thread on her path toward greater self understanding. Even with the assistance of the spirit of Jane Austen, whose ghost whispered dating advice only she could hear, my heroine still needed to learn to listen to the voice of her own heart before she could come…

I love writing. I love creating characters with nothing more than a blank page and an active imagination, then breathing life into those characters with my words and emotions. When I worked in corporate America, writing was my hobby and my lifeline. I spent far too many hours each day lost in the maze of cubicles, but because writing was my hobby, I could escape that gray world every time I thought about the story I was writing at the time. Now I’m blessed with the opportunity to write for a living. THE SPY WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS is my twenty-third book with Harlequin Intrigue, a number that astonishes and humbles me. I still love writing as much as I ever did, and I know how lucky I am to have the freedom to do something professionally that gives me so much pleasure personally. But… You knew a “but” was coming, didn’t you? But once I began to sell my books, I no longer had a hobby. I couldn’t exactly just switch my former vocation and avocation. Well, I could, but who wants to create spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations in their free time? So I decided that I needed a new…

Thank you for having me here at Fresh Fiction! I’m so happy to be here on my launch day, celebrating the release of my new novella Building Magic from Red Sage Publishing. This book is very different from my previous stories, and that’s what I’m here to talk about today, about changing the subgenre’s we write in or what I call ‘Flipping the Pancake’. My first book was Dark Harmony a full length dark, erotic, action adventure romance with vampires and martial arts action. Lots of blood, some great spooky scenes and steamy sex scenes, of course. It took lots of research, and some great goth music to keep me in the mood as I wrote about the shadows in this story. When it was complete and it was time for me to work on a new story, I wanted something completely different. Time to flip. My second story was Alien Revealed a sci-fi erotic novella complete with an alien spy, a starship military hero, out of this world technology and of course, a conspiracy, all topped off with more hot luscious sex. Lots of sci-fi movies, some great comic books and popping mood music kept me going. And when…