Liz Crowe | The Genre Bender

Hi, I’m Liz. I have 29 books to my name, all published, some with small houses and some self-pubbed. When I first put virtual pen to paper (or, more exactly, took up the gauntlet thrown when I was told “well, just write something already”) I never really considered myself a “romance author.” Frankly, and to be completely honest, I don’t even consider myself a “romance reader.”

Don’t get me wrong. I read. I read a lot. I just don’t favor one genre over another, I guess.

However, when I put my apparently-long-neglected-muse to the task, what came out were tales of relationships. Not always lover to lover, but usually centered around a couple. My novels tend to be dense in characters, since I just abhor books that operate in a vacuum (unless, you know, THE MARTIAN, which I just listened to and adored soon to be a blockbuster movie with Matt Damon!). I want my main characters to live their lives like real people and so, there are parents, siblings, friends, and co-workers who have an affect on my main characters—sometimes they even get their own stories if I like them enough!

But they are, many times, classified as “romance” much to the chagrin of hard-core romance fans.

When I started The Love Brothers series last year, determined to make my first Self Published Project The Best Ever, I had a concept in mind—a family, a large family, a family that was not rich or terribly sophisticated but that loved each other fiercely and (usually) without question. This family would have 4 grown sons and 1 daughter and have a set of stubborn yet driven parents whose own beginnings were shaky, in a realistic way but whose years together did nothing but strengthen their ultimate bond.

Each installment in this series tells the story of one brother. You get baby brother braniac-turned hopefully successful novelist Aiden in LOVE GARAGE. The one true athlete, Kieran’s tale in COACH LOVE. The black sheep brother Dominic gets his turn in LOVE BREWING and the oldest brother, introduced and set up as a grumpy, bitter guy in Love Garage gets his (pretty darn sexy) tale in the SAFE LOVE novella—meant to be read as a companion to LOVE GARAGE. Of course all the characters are IN each book and there is a lot of overlapping as you might expect.

For the last novel, releasing this week, I decided to go in a different direction. While it could be argued (and it has been, trust me) that both LOVE GARAGE and COACH LOVE are “contemporary romance” only with that distinctive Liz Crowe twist (reality, ok, these guys are not perfect and there is some cheating and other bad behaviors), LOVE BREWING is more along the lines of a New Adult romance (a sort of back and forth thing that gets that trouble-making brother to his ultimate – dare I say it? – HEA). SAFE LOVE (the novella) is pretty sexy, while not erotica, definitely closer to erotic romance than any of the others.

FAMILY LOVE is more….I guess it’s fair to call it New Adult Women’s Fiction. Women’s fiction is supposed to be stores about the female experience. That you get here, twice over. First with the story of the matriarch, Lindsay Halloran Love in part one where you get that “rough start” back story for the family and then of the one Love sister, Angelique in part 2. I even wrote Angelique’s section in 1st person point of view, to really dig deep into her psyche and get at the core of her long- standing issues with her mother.

It’s a very compelling look at the mother/daughter dynamic in a family that is so testosterone riddled as to be humorous, at times. You get a nice look at the brothers, from their only sister’s point of view—a sister who, you should be warned, seems to take “bad life choices” to a new level for a lot of years until….well, that’s what you’ll find out when you read it!

I hope you enjoy it, and the whole series as much as I enjoyed writing it!

About Liz Crowe

Amazon best-selling author, mom of three, Realtor, beer blogger, brewery marketing expert, and soccer fan, Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville currently living in Ann Arbor. She has decades of experience in sales and fund raising, plus an eight-year stint as a three- continent, ex-pat trailing spouse.

Her early forays into the publishing world led to a groundbreaking fiction hybrid, “Romance. Worth the Risk,” which has gained thousands of fans and followers interested less in the “HEA” and more in the “WHA” (“What Happens After?”).

With stories set in the not-so-common worlds of breweries, on the soccer pitch, in successful real estate offices and at times in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are unique and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight, frustrate and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.

Don’t ever ask her for anything “like a Budweiser” or risk bodily injury.

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About FAMILY LOVE

A wealthy horse farmer’s rebellious daughter meets a sultry stable hand—but the result is far from the average tale of forbidden romance. When novelist Aiden Love publishes his parents’ story he has no idea the trauma it will cause.

The epic saga of one family’s turbulent beginning is entwined with the challenge of a mother’s relationship with her youngest child—the longed for only daughter, Angelique. But a secret Lindsay Halloran Love has kept for years could rip the tight-knit clan apart for good.

Resilient bonds of loyalty and blood are stretched to the breaking point, until tragedy strikes at the very heart and soul of the Love family, forcing everyone to take stock of what really matters.