Extra Type: Author Notes

Read | Buy

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.

Read | Buy

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.

Read | Buy

When I sat down to write this book, I pitched a completely different hero to my fellow authors. Let me back up and describe the premise.

Like my other Montana Born books, this story is set in Marietta and is part of a multi-author series revolving around a celebrity wedding. A local girl (NancyLynn Pruitt) went on to become a famous soap opera star and comes back with something to prove. She’s staging a huge wedding and our assignment was to create characters Nancy uses for her wedding, so my fellow authors had heroines who are cake decorators and florists, etc.

I decided my heroine would be the high school music teacher who happens to conduct the Marietta community orchestra. My hero was going to be a rock and roll guy, a celebrity friend of the bride and groom, but I wasn’t feeling it.

Then I remembered that Liz in Blame The Mistletoe had mentioned her brother. He didn’t even have a name, but he traveled a lot. He was currently in South America for some unknown reason and he put himself through college by working at their mother’s nail salon.

What kind of guy is this, I wondered? Well, he’s drop-dead sexy, loves women and they love him back. He comes across as completely superficial, but soon reveals he has a lot more going on under the surface. I fell in head-over-heels love with Bastian and hope you will too.

Be sure to check out the bonus scenes here on my site.

Read | Buy

Much like Meg and Linc, I didn’t expect to be involved in a Bachelor Auction series. But the opportunity came up and I said, “Sure, sounds like fun!” Because that’s what I always say. Then I panic.

I had already set up Meg in Blame The Mistletoe as Blake’s sister and a potential character for a future book, should the opportunity arise, so I had my heroine at least. And I already knew she’d have some unresolved feelings about being adopted.

Finding her a bachelor was a little trickier. I knew I wanted him to be made in Montana, but also a tycoon, so I threw Linc on the oil rigs and up the corporate ladder to really toughen him up.

As for writing the story, it was like planning an actual event as a committee. It made me laugh as we authors worked through the logistics of where to set the stage and who would be the auctioneer. There are no photos of Grey’s Saloon, but I have a very clear mental picture of this bar that started as a bordello, with it’s upper lounge where the bachelors are all leaning against the rail like old-timey saloon girls.

Very apropos, right? We had such a great bunch of authors in this series, all finding these great touches that made it so fun and racy. I’ll be honest and admit that collaborating is a skill I’m still trying to master. I don’t have critique partners or beta readers. I write my story then I send it to my editor, then I fix what she tells me to fix. Checking in with others initially slowed me down, but I’ve learned to work around it and I really do love the results when it’s all done and dusted.

I hope you enjoy The Bachelor’s Baby and all the titles in the Bachelor Auction series. Look for the rest of my Marietta books now a branded as the Love In Montana series. Also, be sure to read the bonus scenes for this series here on my site.

Read | Buy

This book was a complete surprise for me. I had just begun writing what would become Seduced Into the Greek’s World when I received an email from my editor in London.

The team was putting together a multi-author series idea and wanted me to write one of the stories. The theme was the seven deadly sins, except they were calling them Seven Sexy Sins (the true taste of temptation!)

I’ll be honest. I might not have been quite so enthused if they’d given me any other sin but the one I got, which was lust. Talk about winning the lottery!

The first thing I did is what any romance author worth her salt would do. I googled ‘lust.’ What was the nature of it? What caused it?

A wiki article claimed that lust was provoked by the exotic. It’s mother nature’s way of keeping the gene pool varied and improving adaptability.

So, I made my characters polar opposites: a shy, pale, redheaded English virgin and a wickedly rakish sheikh. Cool, damp England against hot, dry desert. Fern is teaching his sister’s children; they all meet at his oasis.

Oddly, the whole time I was writing it, I had the song Midnight At The Oasis stuck in my head. Even more oddly, a reviewer told me she heard the song the whole time she was reading it. Let me know if it happens to you.

Read | Buy

I call this one ‘the book I rejected myself.’

I’d been working with the editors at Harlequin Mills & Boon since placing in the Instant Seduction contest in 2008. I had completed, submitted, and had them turn down half a dozen manuscripts. I knew my editor was eager to help me make the jump from ‘close’ to ‘published.’ She suggested I send her three ideas and we’d cherry pick the best. I did and she asked me to take the hero from one set up and the heroine from another and run with it.

Since I hadn’t envisioned that, it took me a while to find my feet. She was patient, looked at a few chapters, tweaked my direction, offered revision suggestions. Finally she sent me an email with exciting news. She was having another baby and I’d be moving to a different editor. Would I like to take one more stab at revising this current story, or start something fresh?

I was fairly disheartened and wound up speaking with her on the phone. I said I thought I should start over with something fresh if I was changing editors, and there was a funny pause on the other end of the line. I realized she thought I was really close with one. She said, “Okay, but promise me you’ll keep Aleksy on the back burner. He’s a wonderful hero.”

I hung up and realized, after literally hundreds of rejections from editors and agents from New York to London, I had just rejected myself.

It lit a fire in me. I was so mad at myself, I determined that my next book would be The One. And it was. I wrote No Longer Forbidden? which turned into my first sale. A few books later, I put together a proposal that included a freshly revised copy of Aleksy. They bought it quite promptly and here it is. Happy reading.

Read | Buy

My family laughed when I told them I was writing a Christmas book. I tend to be one of those people who freaks out and gets high-strung (even more high-strung than I usually am). The hyperventilating starts in October as people begin asking my plans and I pretty much walk around like a cat with a static charge until it’s all over.

Part of this built up when I was working at a day job while writing. Who enjoys adding more errands, shopping and baking to a schedule that is already bursting at the seams? Christmas was not been my favorite time of year and, quite frankly, for some years my main goal was to get through it without ruining it for everyone else.

In an effort to exorcise my angst, I gave Liz a similar Grinch-y view. She doesn’t hate Christmas, but she’s never had a great one. Her expectations are rock bottom until Blake shows her how great that time of year can be. Like life, you only get one shot at Christmas. It’s never going to be one-hundred percent perfect, but it can be pretty darned good if you focus on the best bits.

That made this a very therapeutic book for me. I hope you enjoy it.

Read | Buy

I can’t say it was on my radar to write a small town novella set in Montana. First of all, the length scared me. It’s funny that thirty thousand words might sound harder to write than fifty, but trust me, it can be. Also, Presents novels are pure escapist fantasy—which is why I love writing them. I can visit Paris and St. Petersburg, while wearing Versace, and incur neither the cost nor the jet lag.

I genuinely love living in our small town, though, which made writing Hometown Hero somewhat of a love letter to our little community. I felt both Chase’s ambition to make his mark in the bigger world and Skye’s devotion to Marietta, where she has deep roots. I struggled right along with them as they tried to figure out how they would make their relationship work when they were so far apart in their geographic wants. (Literally I struggled—I didn’t know how I was going to end this story.)

After it was all done and dusted, I was really pleased and found myself reluctant to leave Marietta and the characters I’d created. So I signed up for a second book. And a third. Then a fourth and a fifth in a series that’s now branded as Love In Montana. There’s even a spin-off book, Scorch, with Piper and Bastian from book four visiting the firefighters in Glacier Creek. I like to call Scorch book number four-point-five.

Be sure to check out the bonus scenes.

Read | Buy

Playing The Master and Mastering Her Role are erotic romances originally published by the short-lived HarlequinE. They were released together in The Dani Collins Erotic Romance Collection, but they can definitely be read as stand-alones.

In writing this duet, I wanted to explore the fantasy and freedom of alter ego and secret identity. In Mastering Her Role, the hero, Jason, dons the guise of Dominic to pursue his neighbor Arianne.

I’m mostly a contemporary romance author writing for Harlequin Presents and Tule’s Montana Born Books. If you like erotic romance, please also check out Taken By The Raider and The Secret In Room 823. I hope you’ll also check out my not-as-kinky, but still very sexy other works.