Extra Type: Author Notes

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There are so many things I love about this book, most especially the setting in the senior’s complex. The older folks in this book were a ton of fun to write, especially Edith Garvey and loveable Harrison.

The kids were fun, too. In fact, this entire book is one hundred percent my jam because it’s filled with multi-generational, complex relationships that are imperfect at the beginning, and still imperfect at the end, but the characters have made their peace with that. To me, that feels like real life.

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I could go on, but really, I just want you to read it and tell me what you think. And if you can’t get enough of these folks, please check out Not In Her Wildest Dreams, which is the prequel about L.C.’s sister, Paige.

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Around the turn of the century, I wrote a manuscript called Hot Beds, Cold Feet. It was a murder mystery romance with a Wrong Girl/Golden Boy, Romeo/Juliet vibe that I particularly loved. It also has that small town gossipy-ness I also adore.

In the first book, the heroine, Paige, had a ne’er-do-well brother whom the hero, Sterling, loathes. Lyle was quite irredeemable in those early drafts, yet somehow earned his own story, tentatively titled Sweet Dreams. The agent I had at the time read Book Two and said, “I was surprised I liked him,” since Lyle was so awful in the early version of Hot Beds.

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In 2016, When I came to re-write both, I had learned a lot about storytelling and how to create characters with ‘rooting interest.’ That’s writer talk for ‘likeable.’ Hot Beds is now Not In Her Wildest Dreams. It’s no longer a murder mystery. It has a mystery plot, a subplot romance that involves Paige’s best friend, and a lot of small town secrets that get in the way of Sterling and Paige finding Happily Ever After. (But they do, hashtag-spoileralert)

You also learn why Lyle is the train wreck he is. In the much-revised version of Sweet Dreams, now called Only In His Sweetest Dreams, he calls himself L.C. and gets his chance at HEA. I hope you’ll check it out along with this one.

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When I started plotting His Christmas Miracle, I knew Nicki wanted to help Quincy and Atlas bond by doing Christmas activities together. She’s hired for the month of December, so I started plotting with a pencil on a calendar page various things she could do with them each day.

Along with Get a tree and Visit Santa, I wrote, Make an Advent Calendar. Once I thought about Nicki making one and counting down to Christmas with Atlas, I realized the whole book could be plotted as a countdown to Christmas. (In retrospect, I should have tagged each chapter, “Ten days ’til Christmas.” Only took me a year to realize that.)

However, the Advent calendar idea  led to me thinking it would be a cool Christmas craft for you, Dear Reader, to have a calendar you could print, color, and assemble with your little elves. Look for it under Extras!

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Mikolas was originally Maksym. I pictured him as a Russian and originally had him steal Viveka through the Bosphorus to the Red Sea. I wanted to revisit Clair and Aleksy from The Russian’s Acquisition.

Clair and Aleksy have been fan favorites. If you haven’t seen their Christmas epilogue, look for the link in the extras.

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For a number of reasons, my editor suggested I make some changes with Mikolas, including making him Greek. I actually adored the new setting in Greece and had a ton of fun making his mansion as over the top extravagant as imaginable. The bathroom has a forest in it!

As for Viveka, you will see why she is not only the perfect woman for Mikolas, but why she deserves his love when he is finally able to offer it.

Enjoy!

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As a reader, I love books that revisit characters from romances I’ve already read. I love knowing the couple I followed so breathlessly to their Happy Ever After is actually living happily ever after.

If you’ve read Proof Of Their Sin you may recall that Paolo had a sexy cousin, Vittorio. He’s an incorrigible bachelor and I seeded him into that story with the idea I could one day find him a wife (and revisit Paolo and Lauren.)

Little did I know what Vito was hiding under that veneer of aloofness! He’s intense and passionate and still determined never to marry, but so loyal to his family. I loved that I was able to bring out more of his relationship with Paolo and Lauren and show how envious he is of their happiness. He so deserves his own HEA!

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As for Gwyn, I adore her! I wasn’t sure I could get away with having her nude photos leaked online as a story opener, but my editor went for it. Poor Gwyn is a wreck, as anyone would be! And there is sexy, powerful Vito—her boss and the man most likely to fire her for something that is not her fault at all. Her life is pretty much over.

I hope you enjoy their journey and I especially hope you enjoy seeing how Paolo and Lauren are getting along. Hint: Lauren is pregnant with their third.

Update: I’ve since written about Gwyn’s stepbrother, Travis who reunites with his (secret) ex-wife, Imogen.

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When the fabulous team at Tule Publishing asked me if I wanted to write a Bad Boy short story, I said, “Sure!” It was coming up to the holidays, I had two other books I wanted to finish by the end of December, but I thought, It’s short.

Writing short does not make writing a story any easier! I have to thank my wonderful editor Sinclain Sawhney for helping me find the places that needed a little extra love and attention.

As for making Griffen a corporate raider from Chicago? I always look for things that are fresh to me. It keeps me excited about my own work. Thus, I now know way more about hostile takeovers than I ever needed to—or that made it into the book!

I hope you enjoy this hot, fast-paced story. If you like the hot books, be sure to check out Playing The Master, Mastering Her Role, and The Secret in Room 823.

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Most days I walk to pick up the mail. It’s a decent hike (with a hill), almost five kilometers round trip. I can’t tell you what the weather was like the day the central concept of this story struck, but I do remember where I was standing (outside the ice cream shop, but it was closed for winter.)

I was mentally working on the baby swap duet. I do a lot of plotting on my walks. This one was going to be the second and I had a strong sense of how the first book would go, but I had no idea what this one would look like beyond the couple being the other half of the mix up. I was going through all the different tropes: Royals? Mistresses? PA? Then amnesia struck. By that I mean the idea of amnesia as a plot device hit me.

What if the hero had amnesia and he didn’t even know he’d had sex with the heroine? What if he only finds out about his secret baby when he’s called for a DNA sample because they have to identify all the parents in this bizarre baby swap scenario?

I became so excited to write this book. I won’t include any spoilers about Cesar’s memory loss, but his amnesia is at the core of his conflict, making him suitably angry at the world.

Sorcha, meanwhile, is a tough, cheeky, tender-hearted heroine who loved Cesar long before she slept with him. Unfortunately, she knows what happens when a man is married to a woman he doesn’t love. He cheats! That’s what her father did and it destroyed her childhood. She doesn’t want anything to do with Cesar’s marriage of convenience suggestion.

But they have a son. So they must work things out.

If you want to read the first book in this duet, look for The Marriage He Must Keep. It tells the story of Alessandro and Octavia as they try to save their own marriage of convenience after their baby is swapped with Sorcha’s.

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Sometimes a story just sits in your head waiting with its foot tapping. That’s what this one did, characters patiently waiting as I took on The Sheikh’s Sinful Seduction, which pushed back Seduced Into The Greek’s World, and forced this story to stay off the page until the fall of 2014.

I kept referring to it as ‘The Photographer,’ not that I talk about my Works In Progress very much. But I knew that my heroine, who remained nameless until I was actually ready to write, would eventually pick up a camera. I had all kinds of scenes taking up bandwidth in my head, moments showing her accepting accolades for her photographs, bringing in a cast of thousands from my previous books.

Virtually none of those snippets made the final cut of the book. Such is the writing life. All the great strings of dialogue that make you feel like a genius at three a.m. don’t look quite as brilliant when you’re actually typing them.

What did stick was the kernel of this story–a revenge premise. I knew that Roman and Melodie would have a white-hot affair despite being mortal enemies and that they would have to find their way out of cruel betrayals. I loved the contrast of those opposite ends of the love-hate spectrum.

Roman is one of those heroes who guards himself so closely I didn’t know the depth of his backstory until I’d written two thirds of the book. Then he finally began to share and oh, he really deserves the right woman.

Melodie is one of those heroines who has been knocked around by life but hangs onto her ideals, wanting to believe the best in everyone, always hoping for the best outcome. That’s why Roman hurts her so badly. He dents her core sense of optimism, which is pretty unforgivable in her books.

Fortunately, he redeems himself. Which is the best part of reading a romance, right? I hope you enjoy this one.

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I started to write Cruel Summer for a contest offering free promotional services to the winner. As the story took shape, however, I fell for Gavin. He broke Chelsea’s heart, but he really was her destiny. I couldn’t bring myself to sign them away to strangers.

I decided to offer Cruel Summer to new readers as a sample of my writing. Cruel Summer is similar in tone to my Montana Born novellas, but has all the emotion and passion of my Presents, so it makes a great, no-risk calling card for readers who are wondering whether they’ll like my books.

And here’s a fun add-on. I don’t usually write to music, but I wound up mentioning a lot of summer oldies in this story.

You can listen to the playlist is here

Song list (in the order mentioned in the book):

Cruel Summer, Bananarama
Summer Breeze, Seals and Croft
Summer Nights, Grease (also known as Summer Loving)
Endless Summer Nights, Richard Marx
Summer Madness, Kool and the Gang
Boys Of Summer, Don Henley
Hot Fun In The Summertime, Sly & The Family Stone
Summer, War
Summer Love, Justin Timberlake
Suddenly, Last Summer, The Motels

Want to read Cruel Summer? Sign up for my newsletter and you’ll auto-magically receive a link to download it. If you’re unable to sign up for my newsletter, drop me an email through my contact page requesting a PDF copy.