Extra Type: Author Notes

When I began writing On The Edge, I realized that as much as Rolf might have opinions on the way his new ski hill should look and run, he would have to have a project manager, someone with a technical mind and a willingness to wade through the building permits and other details that would put Rolf over the edge.

Nathaniel showed up about the time that Glory was flown out to see Blue Spruce Lodge for the first time. Glory eyeballs him as a potential hero, then realizes he thinks she’s hitting on her. Oops. But I started thinking of him as a potential hero, too. One whom I gave an adorably soft side to when I decided he had a three-year-old son, Aiden.

Later in that first book, Ilke showed up as ‘the other woman.’ I try to avoid cliche characters and started thinking about how she had come to Blue Spruce Lodge and why. It wasn’t because she has designs on Rolf. In fact, she doesn’t look to any man to advance her interests. She’s independent to a fault.

Which makes her pretty conflicted when she gets pregnant and is forced to quit skiing. As for Nate, he holds himself to ridiculous standards and getting a woman pregnant is a pretty big misstep. Both of these two were at the top of their game and now they’re tumbling into an abyss. I loved helping them find their way out of it.

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Coincidentally, I had just begun a proposal with a sheikh hero and a queen in hiding when my editor emailed to ask if I would like to collaborate with Tara Pammi, Maya Blake and Caitlin Crews on a sheikh quartet. Having enjoyed working with all of these authors on other projects, I was like, “Um, yes please.”

At the time the series was called “Kings of Khalia” and my title was tentatively “Sheikh’s Runaway Princess.” The quartet hinges on my heroine’s mother, the Queen of Khalia, having an affair with my hero’s father, King Jamil of Zyria. They’re both dead when, in Book One, Sheikh’s Baby of Revenge, Tara’s hero Adir is revealed to be the secret baby of this affair.

The news topples the current King of Khalia, thrusting Maya’s hero, Zufar, onto the throne in Book Two, Sheikh’s Pregnant Cinderella. His bride gets kidnapped by Adir, so he marries the maid–who later turns out to have a secret past of her own.

Book Three, Sheikh’s Princess of Convenience, opens at the wedding where my heroine, Galila, starts revealing all of these shocking details to a stranger. He turns out to be Jamil’s son, Karim, and he will do anything to keep his father’s long-ago affair a secret–including compromising Galila so she is forced to marry him!

I don’t want to reveal too many spoilers, but in the final book, Caitlin’s Sheikh’s Secret Love Child, Galila’s other brother, Malak, the black sheep of the family, is forced to wear a crown.

I didn’t mind shelving my queen to work on such a fun project. Besides, it’s wonderful knowing I have something to fall back on if I’m searching for inspiration down the road.

I had such a great time writing The Secret Billionaire’s trilogy with Jennifer Hayward and Rachael Thomas, but after we had all our books submitted, I didn’t feel quite done. We had invented a character, Sebastien, who makes the bet with all our heroes that they can’t go two weeks without their fortunes. I thought, Wouldn’t it be fun to see him win the heart of his own true love? I pitched it to my editor and she agreed! Enjoy!

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A Year Of Love In Marietta contains the first four books in my Love In Montana series.

When I began writing for Tule, I didn’t realize I was writing a series, but as I began each book, I built off the one before. It worked out that I wrote a book for each season: Hometown Hero (fall), Blame The Mistletoe (winter), The Bachelor’s Baby (spring), and His Blushing Bride (summer.)

Since the books followed each other almost in real time, I wrote a few extra scenes to help string them together and asked Tule to publish it as, essentially, one long novel of four different romances.

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If you’ve read the books individually, you can read the Bonus Scenes under the Extras here on my site.

Then be sure to check out Scorch, which takes place in Glacier Creek, but includes a visit with Piper and Bastian from His Blushing Bride.

His Christmas Miracle wraps it all up in a gorgeous, feel-good red bow.

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My kids will want credit for this idea, but it has been a team effort, it really has.

I had been wanting to write a series for a while, something longer with multi-generational characters, kids and dogs, plenty of relationships that needed massaging, but with a fabulous romance at the centre.

I had the name Rolf, a blisteringly arrogant hero, and Glory, a mousy heroine who didn’t feel she could live up to her ‘illustrious’ name. I wanted a setting or premise that would allow me to bring in jet setters like my Harlequin Presents characters, but also Regular Joes, like my Montana Born characters.

On a long car ride between our house and Calgary, where my daughter was going to school at the time, we brainstormed and she suggested a ski lodge. That immediately felt right, but it was two years before I started typing. I had a lot to think about, like how they wind up at the lodge and who all the rest of the books are about. I also yanked my brother-in-law into a convo about what would happen if there was an avalanche and what needs to be considered, soil-wise, for instance, to rebuild.

In that time, we updated our will. I was a published author now and had to designate someone to look after my literary estate. This got me thinking that my heroine might have a mom who wrote romance. Maybe my heroine looks after her mother’s posthumous publishing career. In fact, I soon decided, Glory also writes romance, but in secret. She was humiliated by a jock who read some of her writing aloud when she was in high school. She actually hates jocks like Rolf.

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Then, because sometimes I don’t know when to quit, I decided she should write a book in real time while I was writing her story. It’s called Blessed Winter and it unfolds along with Rolf and Glory’s romance as they slowly–very slowly!–learn to trust one another. Fun fact: I have also been wanting to write a sequel to Cruel Summer and here was my chance.

Once I was knee-deep in this story, I ran into a few plotting hang-ups, as sometimes happens. I  wound up brainstorming with my son on a plane to Winnipeg. We were visiting my sister and her husband. Their dog is the inspiration for Murphy so they get credit for that character and my son gets credit for the name ‘Dirk Basco.’ My brother-in-law gets credit for the line, “He sounds like a failed country singer.”

My husband helped me with some villainous motivation, was kind enough to read the first chapters of this book when we were looking for a title, and always gets credit for keeping me alive while I fall into books and forget to take care of the house, him, our kids, or myself.

Finally, I am forever in debt to the fabulous team at Tule for going along with my kookie book-in-a-book idea as well as the rest of the series.

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Blessed Winter: If you belong to my newsletter, you’ll have been given a link to download Cruel Summer. In that short story, there’s a brother-of-the-groom character named Brock. Readers have asked if I was going to write Brock’s story and guess what? Glory did! That’s Blessed Winter.

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I didn’t know what to expect when I was invited to write an episode for Secrets Of The A List. I understood it was a serial, but I still expected something more like the romances I usually write.

I was astonished at the detail in the outline that the publisher sent, and I was sucked in very quickly. I read it on my phone while I was on the treadmill at the gym. I was laughing out loud with delight at some of the twists and unexpected secrets that come to light.

I won’t spoil any of them here. I’ll only say it was a very different exercise. I’m used to writing sexual tension that moves the romance forward. This story had all the same demands for sexy, larger-than-life characters and the fast pace yet lush description of a Presents, but holds a different type of tension. Rather than writing toward a wrap up, there was always another revelation that prompts another ‘what will happen next?’

If you remember serial dramas like Dynasty and my personal favorite, Dallas, you’ll be totally drawn into Secrets of the A List.

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The spark of this story first came to life when I heard the Olympics were coming to Vancouver, probably in the early 2000’s. I knew my heroine was a downhill racer who’d been injured and the hero had a grudge against her.

I loved the idea of the hero blaming her for her father’s crime, ruining her life, only to learn she was innocent. Initially, he thought her father stole his design for an electric car, but when I finally came to write the story, that didn’t seem cutting edge enough. Dante is now an early visionary for self-driving cars.

I also have to give credit to a reader who wrote to me a few years ago and requested I write a Sicilian hero. I often plan my books out several titles in advance, but I have a corner of my whiteboard reserved for puzzle pieces like that. Tidbits that need to be fit into a book someday. Dante as a Sicilian was custom made for this story.

Enjoy!

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I was still in high school the first time I sat down thinking, “I’m going to write a book.” I scribbled about a hundred words, realized it was a daunting task, and set aside the goal for five years.

When I sat down to write a quartet featuring two sets of twins, I again realized the task wasn’t as easy as it sounds. In this case, however, I had deadlines. Faint-heartedness was not an option.

Here’s the thing about writing. You’re always looking for ways to up the stakes and provide a bit of suspense. This was why my editor suggested I move Trella’s story to the end of the quartet. Trella was the twin who was kidnapped. It would be nice to explore that last, she said. She was right. I was happy to make that change.

But as I wrote the other three books, I kept looking for fresh ways to show how Trella’s experience had impacted her siblings. By the time I got to writing her story, poor Trella had been through so much!

And yet, she’s resilient. I adore her. She’s brash and imperfect and extreme. She also deserves to be loved—not in spite of her flaws, but because of them. I was so, so happy to give her a prince of a man who deserves love every bit as much as she does.

I sincerely hope you enjoy Trella’s story and all the rest of the HEA’s in The Sauveterre Siblings.

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I would like to claim I knew exactly what I was doing before I began writing the Sauveterres. I knew about fifty percent of what I wanted to do and half of that changed after I sent the proposal to my editor.

I knew Ramon was an utterly shameless playboy, though. He’s the opposite of his cool and aloof twin, Henri. I also knew Isidora had a secret in her past concerning her father, but I wasn’t clear on how she would clash with Ramon.

Then, as I was writing the scene in His Mistress With Two Secrets, when we meet Ramon for the first time, I realized they needed a PR person. Isidora walked in minutes later. She’s a childhood friend of the girls’ and she hates Ramon.

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Why?

Well, she had a terrible crush on him from childhood, which was humiliating enough when he refused to take her seriously. Then, when she was eighteen, he did something truly unforgiveable. (He didn’t really, but he deliberately allowed her to think he had.) I won’t spoil it, but he was trying to spare her heart and instead, he broke it into little pieces.

They have a long way to go. I hope you enjoy their journey!

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I was so thrilled when I was asked if I wanted to work on an ‘Undercover Billionaire’ trilogy with amazing fellow authors, Jennifer Hayward and Rachael Thomas.

The premise is a wager that the men can’t survive without their fortune for two weeks. They have to hold down real jobs and can only contact each other. Rachael’s hero worked as a mechanic, Jen’s hero is a groom in a stable and my Stavros is a pool boy! He’s also a reckless, sexy playboy who needs to settle down.

For my heroine, I initially thought Calli had had an affair with Stavros in the past, and miscarried his baby. That didn’t work for a number of reasons, but after some excited brainstorming with my husband, poor Calli did wind up losing her baby. He was stolen! She marries Stavros in an effort to find the boy and get him back.

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We had so much fun writing these books. I even wrote a short online read about the man who sets up their challenges, so we know how the wager comes about. It’s called The Secret Billionaire’s Mistress and you can find it on Harlequin.com’s free online reads.