A special Halloween treat! Fresh Fiction Reviewer Miranda Owen is letting us know her favorite paranormal romance heroes!  “I’m not the big bad wolf everyone makes me out to be.” – “Rocky Ride” by Vivian Arend In general, I prefer heroes who are more Clark Kent than your typical bad boy or antihero, but there are a few amazing exceptions. My main beef with bad boy heroes is when they take on “alphahole” qualities, say or do things to the heroine that are reprehensible and can’t be easily – if at all – taken back, and use their supposedly sexy bad boy status to get away with anything. I also feel cheated if the author has the bad boy hero experience a miraculous epiphany in the last few chapters or pages of a book and completely change his personality without any believable buildup to see how the character got to that momentous change. I much prefer when an author digs deep into the psyche of a bad boy, explains his thinking, and changes his perspective and how others view him, rather than a fundamental and all-encompassing change that seems hard to believe. One of my favorite examples of a bad…

I have been spending a lot of time re-reading some of my favorite authors. And while I was re-reading and book swapping with friends, I came across an old Tami Hoag I had not read. After I got over the shock, and started reading, the heroine Genna made a great point. Why do women always go for the bad boy? In The Trouble With J.J., Genna doesn’t want to be attracted to Jared because she thinks he is. . . well. . . crazy. He is brash, wears weird clothes, has an earring, plays football for a living, and somehow has a love of plastic flamingos. What Genna wants is a stable, normal- corn flakes for breakfast, come home every day at five o’clock- kind of guy. Well this was a Bantam romance by Tami, so we know she goes for a walk on the wild side and takes a chance after all. But it got me thinking- what is up with my love affair of the bad boy. To read more about Sara’s fascination with the bad boy here click here. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

A big thank you to everyone at Fresh Fiction for inviting me here today to celebrate the release of HIGHLAND WARRIOR, the first book in my new back-to-to back trilogy, featuring the “bad boys” of the Highlands, Clan Campbell. Back-to-back means you won’t have to wait long to find out “what’s next?” HIGHLAND OUTLAW comes out at the end of this month and HIGHLAND SCOUNDREL at the end of March. Like my first trilogy, featuring Clan MacLeod, you’ll find plenty of sexy Alpha heroes and “ripped from the headlines” history, bringing to life actual people and events with a sensual fictional twist. Click here to read the rest of the blog. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

What is it about wild bad boys that is so appealing? One multi-published author friend of mine told me early on in my career that if a hero is perfect then the heroine is pretty dense not to fall for him right away. But bad boys are always tempting good girl heroines to cross over to their wicked side of the street. They create the conflict and sparks of opposites attracting. Click To Read More…. Visit FreshFiction.com to learn more about books and authors.

We all have one, which is to say a “The One.” You know what or rather who I mean. The O-N-E. Maybe he was your first love or your first big love. Maybe he was both. Maybe you broke up with him–but I’m betting my next book advance he broke up with you. Maybe you never really had him in the first place…but again, I’m betting you did. At least long enough for a part of him to sink into your psyche and your soul. Like that tattoo you rethink years later, you can obliterate the image but not the experience. That shiny white scar is yours–for keeps. Only by definition The One Who Got Away isn’t a keeper, or at least he hasn’t been so far. And yet who among us hasn’t been moved by those real-life stories of high school sweethearts who find each other on ClassMates.com or reunion night after years, decades apart and fall in love all over again, even marry, in mid- and sometimes late life? Buy EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE… today In EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE…, my latest Harlequin Blaze release, former FBI Special Agent Cole Whittaker and microbiologist Alexandra–Alex–Kendall meet again after five…

I’m not sure what it is about bad boys that make them such great characters. In real life, the bad boys – at least to the extent they’re shown in fiction – wouldn’t make such wonderful boyfriends or husbands. But in the imaginary worlds of novels, they’re just what the reader (or writer) ordered! I remember reading on somebody’s blog a very important sentence that changed everything for me, and it was something along the lines of “books are fantasies.” I’m not sure why that clicked for me, or why I hadn’t made the complete connection before, but it made everything very clear. We might not want the hardened criminal with a heart of gold, the devastatingly handsome demon, or the world-weary master vampire in real life. But we might want him in our fantasies. He represents adventure, excitement, and intrigue – and let’s face it, most people don’t have much of that in real life. Nor, if we were suddenly given the chance, would we want it! But in the safety of our imaginations, a rip-roaring adventure with the baddest of bad boys, is exactly what works. In my Michelle Maddox release, COUNTDOWN, my characters are forced to play…