I should preface this piece by saying I have always had a bug phobia. When the first book in Tiffany Roberts’ Spider’s Mate series came out, I thought – “yeah, right”. Who would find a romance with a half-man, half-spider hero appealing. Apparently, me – after a few intrepid forays into reading monster themed romances. I know, I know! Bugs – ick. Your mind might be going to Jeff Goldblum’s character in The Fly which is all kinds of gross. But hear me out. The buggy heroes I’ll be discussing here are human enough so that it’s not The Fly level ick, and they are a complex group of strong, heroic, devoted, patient, caring, and – as C.M. Nascosta describes one of her mothman heroes – “adorkable”. One day I was browsing Amazon and where Scifi and monster romance intersect, I found Susan Trombley’s Iriduan Test Subjects series and some other books that are connected to that series. As I usually do, I started backwards and read MY CHAMELEON MATE, and then MY ANT MONSTER MATE. Those two books led me down a rabbit hole and I started devouring the other books in the series. Again, I cannot stress enough how bug phobic I am. Something about…

Excerpt from SUDDENLY THIS SUMMER/ This Time For Keeps by Synithia Williams     CHAPTER ONE Michaela Spearstook a deep, fortifying breath as she stared at the front door of her parents’ house. She’d only been home a week, and hiding her concern behind a facade of cheer was harder than she’d anticipated. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She’d been able to push forward, smile and keep her chin up for most of her life. It was how she’d built a successful financial management empire that allowed her to come home and make sure her parents didn’t have to worry about a thing while her dad recovered from a kidney transplant. Yet, lately, keeping her head up, grinning and bear­ing it, not showing any sign that she couldn’t handle things was becoming harder and harder. Maybe because she’d always viewed her parents as strong and capable. They were the ones who’d encouraged her to never call in sick to work unless it was completely necessary and drilled into her head that there was no excuse for la­ziness. But seeing her dad recovering after living his life following those same principles made her question a lot of things….

1–What is the title of your latest release? NOBODY’S HERO, a Cottonbloom novella, and part of the RESCUED anthology. All the stories feature rescue dogs! We are donating the first two days of profit to Roxanne St. Clair’s animal rescue charity. 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? An ex-con tries to persuade an abandoned puppy and an innocent romance author he’s nobody’s hero. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? NOBODY’S HERO is part of my Cottonbloom series, so the quirky town is well established (at least in my imagination!) It’s divided by a river, half the town is in Mississippi and half in Louisiana. Hijinks and rivalries ensue. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? Considering she is a romance writer as well… YES! 5–What are three words that describe your hero? Guarded, Dangerous, Horny (LOL) He did recently get out of jail… 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? How many dogs out there need to be adopted from shelters! 7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done? I wait until I am totally done. If I don’t, then I’m not sure…