I’m delighted to be part of the Fresh Fiction family and appreciate the opportunity to blog today. I write for Harlequin Superromance and The Berkley Publishing Group and have published 32 books, including the two coming this spring. My work is known for its emotional depth and complex plots, usually based in research.
My next release, BE MY BABIES, out in March from Superromance, fits into those categories. It’s the story of Lily Wakefield, pregnant with twins, who’s escaping an abusive husband, and comes to Fairview, NY where her grandfather lives. There are so many twists and turns in this storyline that you’ll constantly be wondering what will happen next. I was. Yes, that’s right, most of the time as I wrote this book, the characters didn’t behave as I expected them to and I was left thinking, “Now what do I do?”
Research is always fun for me. I’ve ridden fire trucks and ambulances, followed around a federal public defender for a day, interviewed the FBI, used my extensive teaching experiences, and talked to police officers and fire chiefs about my next story. For BE MY BABIES, I borrowed a baby from a former student of mine. At the time, little Patrick was eight months old, the age of my twins when they appear in the second half of the book. My own babies are grown, so I’d forgotten many things about how babies behave. But Patrick taught me everything I needed to know: that he could hold his bottle, that he pulled off his socks, that he pumped his arms and made an adorable sound when he ate. I truly enjoyed my time with this child, and have had him back just for fun.
I’ve also based Lily and Simon’s relationship on what I know about how men and women relate to each other. Lily’s dealt a bad hand in life and when she tries to cope with it, she runs into obstacles, not the least of which is Simon McCarthy. He immediately resents her coming to town. Mostly he fears she’ll hurt her grandfather, but also that she’ll lay claim his newspaper, which Simon has been saving to buy. When he falls in love with Lily, Simon is fearful of the people in her old life coming back to claim her. I’ve found that often our worst fears come true, and in this case, it happens to Simon. How people behave when that happens is an underlying theme of this book. How people forgive the worst kind of hurt is also an undercurrent.
I hope you enjoy Lily and Simon’s rocky road to happily-ever-after and the part my babies play in it.
View my new trailer for BE MY BABIES on my Fresh Fiction page, or on my website, http://www.kathrynshay.com/ . Also, take a look there at my backlist and upcoming works, as well as my own personal blog.
No Comments
Comments are closed.