May I Suggest in October ...

I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t believe it’s October. Where has this year gone? One thing I know for sure, we’ve had some great reads this year and it looks like the next few months are going to be even better. I’m looking forward to reading Kristen Painter’s new steampunk romance Miss Bramble and Leviathan. She’s one of my favorite people in the world, and I love her writing. "When Samhain put out a call for steampunk romance, my first reaction was to wonder if I could write it," Painter says. "I already knew I enjoyed steam punk, but writing it was something else entirely. Then I got to thinking about what genre steampunk was. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Historical? Paranormal? In my mind, it was a little bit of all of those plus the steam/tech aspect. The story felt like a challenge, and since I’m not one to back down, I went to work. Miss Bramble and the Leviathan is the result and I have to say, I really hope to go back to that world. It was so much fun!"

"I met my husband when I was 13, married him when I was 17 (I'm 40 now...) so I'm an old fashion romantic who still believes in love at first sight, being swept away by passion, two become one, and all that stuff," says Jessica Trapp the author of Defiant. I have read several medieval romances where the hero swoops in, conquers the castle and coerces the heroine into marriage. I thought it would be fun to do a role reversal where the heroine steals a man and forces him to marry her instead. Given the politics and roles of men/women during the middle ages, it was challenging to create a character who would actually believe that she could get away with doing this. Uncomfortable situations bring out the best and worst in people and I love fish out of water/marriage of (in) convenience stories, where two people are forced to share intimate space with no prior notice. Defiant is about true love and the roles men and women played six centuries ago in a society that limited whom they can wed."

Each author is inspired in a different way. For Linda Thomas-Sundstrom everything begins with a title. "Since I always create a title first, and then write the book from that perspective, inspired by the heading, I loved this title Vampire Lover," she says. "You see, it could be read two ways, right? Vampire Lover = a person who loves vampires. And Vampire Lover = the someone you go to bed with. Which version struck you first, when you saw the title? As it turned out, the second version is what drove the direction of this first Bite (pun intended! Ha!). Because my heroine, Kelsie Connor, not only doesn't know she's the last of a long line of Irish Slayers, she's totally in the dark when the vampire she was unknowingly born to kill, Hayden Flynn, finds her in a Miami night-spot. Think of the problems that might arise from that! Complete author fodder! Manna from vampire heaven! Sparks everywhere! I could hardly see through those sparks to type!"

Keena Kincaid’s Enthralled is the sequel to Ties That Bind, with both books sharing the same characters and external plot. "Midway through writing TIES," she says, "I realized that the external conflict—Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine's attempt to murder her husband, Henry II, and rule as regent through her eldest son—was not going to be wrapped up in the book. However, ‘Ties’ had two very strong secondary characters that easily made the leap to hero and heroine. Yet their story turned out to be very different than I envisioned it. During the Middle Ages, few people had a choice in whom they wed or even if they wed, particularly when land, title and power were in play. Enthralled is about the tension between what William and Ami want and what they believe they can have, and then the treacherous repercussions that follow their choice to put love above all else."

"My mother was my only parent, best friends and don't tell my husband, favorite date," says Karen White- Owens. "When I needed someone to accompany me to events, my mother always paid her own way, knew how to dress appropriately, and understood that no meant no. When I got married, it was one of the biggest adjustments either of us had to face. You’re All I Need sprang from some of the antics that I suspected my mother might pull if I decided to leave Michigan to be with my future husband. Employing family and friends to convince me to stay local would be her first line of defense. If that didn't work, I wouldn't put it passed her to pack her bags and follow me."

A speaking engagement in Arizona led to the inspiration for Brenda Novak's latest book, Killer Heat. "I had agreed to stay with one of the group's members so they wouldn't have to put me up in a motel. Once I arrived, I learned that this member didn't actually live in Prescott, where I'd be speaking. She lived in a place called Skull Valley. I didn't recognize the name so I had no idea it would be so remote. I was driven into the desert and sheltered in this wonderful woman's guesthouse, but she was a stranger to me and I arrived in the middle of the night, already disoriented as to where, exactly, I was. The main house, which I visited briefly, didn't feel very close to the guesthouse (probably because they had to drive me to it). That night the wind blew constantly, rattling the door on the screened porch. It sounded just like someone trying to break in. I lay awake listening and feeling very vulnerable because there was no phone service, Internet--or even cellular coverage. I was completely cut off in a strange and lonely place. What would I do if something terrible were to happen to me? I didn't even know which directly to run should I need help--I could easily have ended up wandering lost in the desert. Needless to say, that proved to be a very long night, especially when I began spinning a story in my head about the bones of several murdered women being found not far from where I was staying. I tried not to allow such ideas to flow, but the setting was just too perfect. A serial killer began to take shape in my mind...the serial killer in Killer Heat."

"A few years ago, when I was helping my father move out of my childhood home, he asked me to go through a box of old family papers," says author Miranda Neville. "Along with my grandfather’s World War I diaries, I discovered a curious volume listing family members and friends and their weights. Investigation revealed that for 70 years, beginning in 1850, there had been a weighing scale in the hall of the family house in Norfolk, England. After reeling with gratitude that the practice of weighing visitors had ceased long before my time, I decided I needed to put this piece of lunacy in a book. In my new historical The Dangerous Viscount (Avon, October 2010) the heroine's father has such a scale and insists on weighing people when they enter the house. Needless to say, his daughters are not happy about it. Especially when Diana is weighed in front of the hero."