I loved writing Sophie in BOUND TO THE BOUNTY
HUNTER. How cool to be a female
private investigator. It also got me thinking. When I was little I dreamed of
being a flight attendant. I’d fly to glamorous places, eat exotic food and flit
away the days at beaches with talc sand. A charming prince would whisk me back
to his castle and I’d live happily ever after. Oh, to be under ten again. The
reality is flight attendants work extremely hard, and zoom around in a tube of
metal that could potentially crash. I salute you flight attendants. That career
choice was scratched off my list pretty darn quick when I took my first flight
at eighteen.
Olympic show jumping on my pony Chevy was pretty high on my list when I was
twelve. How on earth I thought my 14.2 hand high pony or I would get over one
jump is baffling. We would have ploughed through every jump. Scratch that for
The Chevers and me.
There was one person I knew who was living his dream. My brother, Bix. He’d come
home from university chatting about the most amazing rocks. Bix took to rocks
like I took to cheese balls. He turned his love of rocks into a career and
became a geologist. Alas, there are no jobs for a professional cheeseball eater.
When Bix asked if I’d help with his thesis, and being a sister who loved him,
plus he was paying me in cheeseballs, I jumped at the chance. I was two weeks
into my high school typing program and had mastered a sad dad was a fad
(that’s left hand typing skills down, people). How hard could it be?
Sweet, baby, Jesus.
I pounded out ‘Engineering geology of a section along the northern coast of the
Manukau Harbour, Auckland.’
There weren’t enough cheese balls on the planet.
I now know far too much about rocks.
As I am now living my dream writing hot, alpha males and feisty women.
Along the way I’ve worked in a delicatessen where my job was to slice hogs of
ham. I’ve been a stock taker of earrings in an earring shop. A big
earring shop. The Fake Gordon Ramsay (hub’s) has delivered screaming,
hungry babies to me while I worked the nightshift at a bank when our mortgage
doubled. Gordon and I didn’t see each other pretty much for three months. We’d
leave notes and pass screaming, hungry then snoring babies with full bellies
between windows like thieves. One of the hardest jobs, but also one I felt the
fiercest about was proofreading death certificates. I took that job
very seriously. No certificate was going out with spelling or mapping
errors and there were some shockers.
I’m proud of what I do, but also proud that the past jobs has given me patience,
humility, a deeper understanding of the human spirit, a determination to be more
patient and to stop and take a look at where I am and who I’m with instead of
belting towards the finish line where someone else will proof my certificate.
All the different jobs and experiences have made me who I am today.
The author was paid in cheeseballs for this article. Just kidding…
Harlan Franco, Colorado's busiest bounty hunter and security expert, lives by
his own rules: be in control, be detached, and never mix business with pleasure.
These rules are tested when the woman he's being paid to secretly guard is none
other than the sexy, unpredictable, pain in the butt, Sophie Callaghan––a woman
determined to stay away from him. If Sophie finds out he’s in her life on an
assignment, he'll never get the info he needs. But those lips, those curves,
that attitude… If he could only have her for one night where she'd play by his
rules.
Freedom-loving private investigator Sophie Callaghan is on a mission. The
daughter of a con-artist is not going to be used by a man again. What she
doesn't need is hot, broody, and controlling Harlan barging into her life. Her
brain may say no, but her body craves this bad boy.
After a night where both live out their darkest desires, Sophie tries to
fight the explosive chemistry between them. But the ties that bind her heart to
this bounty hunter are tight and tangled.
Romance Contemporary
[Entangled Select, On Sale: July 18, 2016, e-Book,
ISBN: 9781682812204 / eISBN: 9781633756502]
I love Princess Bride, Young and the Restless, Days of our Lives—the drama is
deliciously addictive. Big Bang Theory but will take Wolowitz over Cooper. Star
Trek not Star Wars. Undercover Boss, Secret Millionaire—any story that shows the
little guy making it. I follow the Buffalo Bills like a religion. I am
spellbound by showjumping and equestrian eventing. I love curling up and
reading all books—no genre is off-topic. I like ironing, hate peas, love
donkeys. I play a killer game of Scrabble, but usually lose. I will often be
heading towards the fridge for another Diet Coke. I eat nothing with legs and
believe wine goes with everything, oh and I’m an expert at finding new and
inventive ways to avoid exercise.
I live in the sparkly beachside suburb of Redondo Beach in California with my
fake Gordon Ramsay and two boys who speak in mystifying grunts.
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