Extra Type: Author Notes

I don’t always get to write a Dear Reader letter, but I invariably have something I wish I could say to you about each book. Here it is.

Notes on The Secret In Room 823

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When I was invited to write The Secret In Room 823, I was shopping with my  sister. We were between the bra shop (my weakness) and the shoe store (hers.) I picked up an email from my editor explaining the concept of The Chatsfield, suggesting the premise they wanted me to tackle, and advised that the deadline was tight. Would I like to participate?

First of all, you really do feel like the biggest deal when you’re walking between the shop that sells lingerie for a hundred dollars a piece to the shoe shop where you need your full two week paycheck to even look around, then pick up an email from your editor, in London, and she’s asking you to write for her. (As opposed to begging for her to take whatever hack stories you manage to scribble into existence.) Right there I was living the dream.

Then I read the concept to my sister and the eavesdropping shoe salesgirl lifted her brows. I mean, bondage? That just made your eyebrows go up, didn’t it?

It was a fairly short novella, I was already down to three days a week at my day job, but it was still going to be tight. Nevertheless, I couldn’t say, ‘No.’ (Another weakness of mine, if you want the truth.) I replied YES! to my editor. Then I turned to my sister and said, “I have to quit my job, don’t I?” and she said, “Yes,” in the way a sister does when she’s been telling you something all along and then you act like it just occurred to you.

So The Secret In Room 823 will always be special to me because it was the reason I decided to walk through a proverbial door from one life (working stiff) into another (fulltime writer.)

Notes on An Heir To Bind Them

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When it came to the Makricosta siblings, I knew what had happened to Nic in No Longer Forbidden? and I knew what had happened to Adara in More Than A Convenient Marriage? I knew Demitri, the youngest brother, was a hellion and I had a very good idea where his story would go.

Theo was a dark horse. I didn’t know his story. I only knew he needed a very special type of heroine, one who would bring out the kind of tenderness he didn’t know he possessed.

Jaya left India with some very bad memories. That gave her the right kind of reserve that, oddly, Theo is most comfortable with. And because he was so aloof, yet adhered to his own self-imposed standards, she trusted him and even fell for him a little bit.

This might have been the most distant pair of people in romance writing history if I hadn’t added one special ingredient to bring them together. Babies! Lots of them.

I didn’t intend the Makricosta series to even be a series, but once I had them in mind, I knew there had to be an arc through the four stories. Somehow these siblings all had to come together and make peace with their past. Adara is attempting to do that, inviting everyone onto Gideon’s yacht, when the boat is attacked. Theo must fly the babies to safety.

He doesn’t know where to turn, except to Jaya, but she has a baby of her own, and it’s his!

I love this story for the way Theo and Jaya create their own world. They aren’t capable of loving anyone else, so it’s very fortunate they found each other.

Nic and Rowan, from Book One, No Longer Forbidden? make an appearance along with Adara from Book Two, More Than A Convenient Marriage? (Gideon is still stuck on the ship.) But we get our first glimpse of Demitri and he’s a tomcat of the worst variety. Look for him in Seduced Into The Greek’s World.

Notes on A Debt Paid In Passion

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I had a firm vision for the opening of this book. The hero would hear that the heroine would not be prosecuted for embezzlement and he’d be furious—right up until she faints. Then he would learn she is pregnant and bam! Everything changes.

That’s pretty much all I had when I began writing it. By the time I turned it in, I had decided the theft was a misunderstanding, but my editor said, “What if she really stole the money?”

Hmm. This required a serious re-write but, Oh, the conflict and emotion! It became one of the hardest books I’ve written. Raoul is not only a deliciously angry hero thirsting for revenge, but one who needs to remain sexy as heck. Sirena is guilty, but she can’t be a pushover. These were hard balances to find, but it turned into a Top Pick from RT Book Reviews so I must have managed it.

A Debt Paid In Passion is not directly linked to Proof Of Their Sin, but Lauren and Paolo make a brief appearance. I imagine one day I’ll write the story of Sirena’s little sister, maybe even Raoul’s half-sister, but those are very distant goals.

Notes on More Than A Convenient Marriage?

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In No Longer Forbidden?, Nic is taken from his family and left at boarding school when he was six years old. The man he thought of as his father rejected him when he learned another man had fathered him.

In revealing this to Rowan, Nic mentions he had a sister and two brothers. Once I wrote that scene, I couldn’t help thinking about what kind of life those children would have had after Nic’s departure, growing up with a mother who has lost her son and a father brimming with bitterness.

Adara had a very difficult childhood and arranged her own marriage to escape it. I love how contained she is. It’s pure defensiveness and it makes for a very tough dynamic in breaking her down.

I adore Gideon. He’s one of my favorite heroes. He’s incredibly self-assured and completely undermined by Adara’s vulnerability. Theirs is a very tender story of recovery from a lifetime of pain and they really do deserve their happy ever after.

Nic and Rowan make an appearance in More Than A Convenient Marriage? as does Theo, the middle brother from Book Three, An Heir To Bind Them. Demitri, the youngest brother, comes along in Seduced Into The Greek’s World.

Notes on Proof Of Their Sin

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Proof Of Their Sin was my first book to get full distribution, meaning it came out in North America and I was able to visit it, sign copies, and take selfies with it. You know, normal stuff that everyone does, don’t they?

Proof Of Their Sin is also my first award winner. It won 2013’s Reviewers Choice for Best First In Series from RT Book Reviews. The attached picture shows me picking up the award in New Orleans with my daughter in attendance.

I was so thrilled that Paolo and Lauren received this attention. I adore their story—the angst of pining for each other for years. Paolo’s need to contain his high-octane personality. Lauren learning to step out of her shell. It was my first book on contract, which put enormous pressure on me, but I recall thinking about the midway point that I couldn’t believe I was being paid to do this. (I still can’t believe it. Best job ever. For reals.)

If you want to see more of Lauren and Paolo, they make a brief appearance in A Debt Paid In Passion, then a more integral role in Bought By Her Italian Boss, which features Paolo’s cousin, Vittorio. (And then Vittorio turns up in a book that is with my editor as I write this, so it is untitled, but features Travis and Imogen.)

Notes on The Healer

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I started The Healer when my children were small. I was frustrated by how little I was managing to write as I worked part-time, ran my daughter to school and soccer and my son to preschool and swimming lessons. I decided I had to go old-school, scribbling in a notebook before I went to bed.

Vaun leapt off a cliff and into that notebook the moment I cracked it. At first I wasn’t sure if he was a Scottish Highlander or a Viking, or something else entirely. While he fought to free Athadia from her captors, Athadia started healing anyone who touched her–almost uncontrollably. I realized I had more than a historical romance on my hands.

I scribbled scenes into that notebook for about a year. In that time, I had some interest in Hustled To The Altar and we moved not just houses but towns. Finishing The Healer got pushed back many times, but the first autumn in our new home I decided to complete it for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).

First, I spent October doing 30 Days Of World Building, exercises by Stephanie Bryant. I drew a map and wrote like the wind. I finished the first draft somewhere around a hundred and twenty thousand words. What a feeling!

I had an agent at the time. She read it, offered some feedback, I rewrote, added all that hotsy-totsy stuff with the villain and villainess. Other stuff came up in our lives, some really difficult, and The Healer got pushed onto the back burner again.

In late 2011, about the time I was seeing interest from Mills and Boon in London, I saw that a friend was writing for a company called Champagne Books. I asked her about them, sent a query, got a request and it was sitting with their editors when I sold to Mills and Boon. Champagne offered me a contract five weeks later. (I’ve since got it back and self-published it.)

I love, love, love this book. It’s an epic story so I’m not surprised it was an epic journey to reach publication. I want the whole world to read it and love it, but I know it calls to a special type of reader, one who wants to settle in for the long haul. If you like historical romance, if you like intrigue and double-crosses and grand tales of love that is meant to be, but must defeat great odds to get there, then give The Healer a try. Athadia will make you cry and Vaun will conquer your heart.

Notes on No Longer Forbidden?

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The very first manuscript I ever mailed off went to Harlequin Presents when they were still accepting submissions in Toronto, back in the eighties. Not even joking.

By the time I was a runner up in their Instant Seduction contest it was 2008. It took another four years after that before I received The Call for this book.

I can’t tell you what was going through my mind as I wrote Nic and Rowan’s story except to say I was committed, grittily determined that I would reach the finish line if not with this book, then the next. I was going to keep at it until it happened.

And honestly, when you’re getting revision letters and the changes are getting easier each time, you kind of get the message that you’re pretty close. Still, it was a huge kick to have an editor call and say she wanted to offer me a two book contract.

It was an enormously gratifying moment, even though she told me it wouldn’t come out in North American, only in the UK. I had to run to work so I couldn’t get drunk on bubbly. We celebrated that evening and then the real panic set in. Website, head shot, social media. I stepped onto the roller coaster and haven’t stopped since.

No Longer Forbidden? is the first book in the Makricosta Dynasty Quartet, which was an accidental series. I didn’t know Nic had siblings until he mentioned them in the scene after the memorial in the middle of this book. I started thinking about his brothers and sister. That led to More Than A Convenient Marriage?, which is Book Two, Adara and Gideon’s story.

An Heir To Bind Them, with Theo and Jaya, is Book Three and Demitri turned up with Natalie in Book Four, Seduced Into The Greek’s World, the following year.

Bonus! No Longer Forbidden? was eventually published in North America as a 2-in-1 with More Than A Convenient Marriage? 

Notes on Hustled To The Altar

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Hustled To The Altar was a Golden Heart Finalist (twice!) and got me an agent and wound up going to the final four in the Romantic Times American Title Contest, but it never found a home with a traditional publisher. In fact, there’s nothing like it in my backlist.

I’ve always loved it, though, so, about the time I made my First Sale to Harlequin, I self-published it.

Hustled To The Altar is a stand-alone, one of a kind, high energy romp that takes place in one day. It’s funny and silly and if I ever think of a suitable follow up, I’ll write it, but so far I’m stumped. Enjoy!

Notes on The Marriage He Must Keep

Sometime toward the end of 2014, I was finishing up my last book in my contract with Harlequin Presents and began to consider what I would propose next. I think the idea of a baby swap came to me from a gossip magazine. (I buy them for the Sudoku puzzles, I swear!)

I knew pure negligence on the hospital’s part wouldn’t do, not in this day and age where we have locked-down nurseries and vigilance to procedures. There had to be a villain. But whom?

I love my Italian heroes and I love the sinister richness of secrets and unexpected betrayals. Alessandro deeply trusts the villain in this story and is devastated by the treachery when it’s exposed, especially since it nearly costs his wife’s life. Coming back from that, earning Octavia’s trust all over again, is hard. (But he is a Presents hero, so he is up to the task!)

Octavia has been too trusting as well. When she realizes her marriage was more a power play than a true desire for her on Alessandro’s part, she’s heartbroken. And no longer willing to be a game piece in his power struggles. They have a long way to go, both emotionally scarred from past pain, but they have a son together so they try.

Given this is a baby swap story, I had two books to write. The other mother in the hospital is Sorcha and the father of her baby doesn’t even know they had sex! You’ll meet her and Cesar here and you can read their journey to HEA in The Consequence He Must Claim, releasing February 2016.