Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors as a reader you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Susanna Allen!   Writes: I write Regency era historical + shapeshifter romance: think Bridgerton but with werewolves (and werebears and werelions) A DUKE AT THE DOOR is the third in my Shapeshifters of the Beau Monde series, featuring a lion Shifter who refuses to Change out of his human skin, and the lady apothecary who is charged with restoring him to health. If Alwyn, Duke of Llewellyn doesn’t Change he will die; since this is the first Miss Tabitha Barrington has ever heard of verispelles (‘two skins’) she doesn’t know where to begin… but it all ends with an expanded found family, love and happily ever after.   About: I grew up in New Jersey, went to art school in Brooklyn and lived in Brooklyn and NYC (with a short sojourn in Paris) before moving to Dublin. Her feet still itch on occasion, but I counter that urge with long visits home at the holidays and the occasional short city break. I took up horseback riding as…

1–What is the title of your latest release? A MOST UNUSUAL DUKE 2–What is it about? Arthur Humphries, Duke of Osborn, made a vow he would never marry; Beatrice, the widowed Marchioness of Castleton, vowed never to wed again, having been married to a feral lupine Shifter. Threats to the wellbeing of both ensure they carry out George’s plan, but as they work together to put Arthur’s home place back to rights, will they be able to resist their growing attraction? (Nope.) Touchstone tropes are grumpy/frosty (my own spin on grumpy/sunshine) and found family.  3–What do you love about the setting of your book?  I am crazy about home renovation shows and the chance to write about a fixer-upper was so much fun. Given the time period, though, there is neither shiplap nor subway tile. 4–How did your heroine surprise you?  Beatrice has a bawdy sense of humor, aided and abetted by her sister-in-law Charlotte. She is slightly naive and doesn’t always get the saucy jokes Charlotte and her husband Ben make, but they make Beatrice want to laugh out loud — which, as a refined lady, she struggles against! 5–Why will readers love your hero?  Arthur is a big,…

More than meets the eye in A Wolf in Duke’s Clothing, Susanna Allen’s new Regency era Shapeshifter mash up. When I had the idea to combine the Regency Era and Shapeshifter genres, I was looking forward to playing with the clash between the two very different worlds: the manners and mores of the former and the sensuality and instinct of the latter. What I hadn’t bargained for was how much fun I would have coming up with names for my characters. Naming is important and it can be hard. It’s a big commitment and it informs the character’s whole fictional life. When writing contemporary romance, it’s a little easier as, say, the last name of a character would reflect their ethnic background—are they of Irish or Italian descent—and that in turn helped with deciding on the first name, and vice versa. I remember being totally stumped about what to call a secondary male in a work in progress and started scrolling through Nameberry for inspiration, which worked insofar as it planted a bunch of names in my subconscious and three days later my brain offered up the one that fit best.  Authors make great use of the baby-naming sites available…