Elizabeth Heiter | When Life Imitates Art: Romantic Suspense in My Life

You’ve probably encountered a character in a book who’s one hundred percent
convinced she won’t
end up with a particular person (or type of person). And as soon as she said it
(especially if the book was
shelved in the romance section), you probably thought to yourself, “I know who
you’ll end up with by
the end of the book!”

In my Profiler series, FBI profiler Evelyn Baine is extremely talented at her job and extremely serious. She got into it because her best friend went missing as a child and was never found. Now, all these years later, she sees every case as a chance to bring someone else the kind of closure she never got for herself. So, of course, FBI Hostage Rescue Team agent Kyle “Mac” McKenzie is someone she immediately dismisses as an impossibility: not only is dating a teammate forbidden by the FBI (and Evelyn would never put her career in jeopardy), but he also never seems to be serious. But as the series progresses, that “impossibility” becomes reality. In my latest romantic suspense trilogy, The Lawmen: Bullets and Brawn, every set of heroes and heroines has someone who thinks “this could never happen” about a relationship with the other. In Bodyguard with a Badge, Juliette Lawson is on the run from an abusive ex – who just happens to be a cop. When he sends hitmen after her, the only way out she can see is to turn the tables on the FBI agent who just rescued her, taking him hostage in order to facilitate her disappearance. So, agent Andre Diaz is completely off limits – trusting him could mean letting him get the upper hand and deliver her unintentionally right back to her ex. In the second book (POLICE PROTECTOR) in the trilogy, Cole Walker and Shaye Mallory have known each other since Shaye started as a forensic specialist near where Cole works as a detective. Cole protected Shaye once from a barrage of gang members’ bullets and the experience traumatized her enough to drive her out of police work. When she returns to it and immediately becomes a target again, Cole vows to protect her. Although he’s had a crush on her since the moment they met, he knows it could never go anywhere, because she belongs in a different world – a safe world. And that’s a place he’ll never belong. In the final book in the trilogy (SECRET AGENT SURRENDER), Marcos Costa and Brenna Hartwell were each others’ first crushes, back in childhood, in a foster care home. When that home burned down, they were separated and neither expected to see the other again. Years later, they run into each other, deep in the Appalachian mountains in a drug lord’s hideaway. Both are pretending to be someone they’re not, so falling for each other again – and revealing the truth about who they are and why they’re really there – could get them killed.

In fiction, love is stronger than the forces trying to keep two characters
apart. In my books, the
characters must fight to deserve their happy endings, but they eventually get
there. In real life, things
aren’t always so neat.

I always said I’d never date someone in the writing/publishing industry. It
would be too weird, too much
overlap between professional and personal. So, when I met my fiancé at my first
Thriller Writers
conference in New York City, I wasn’t thinking about romance at all. I ran into
him the very first day of

the conference and didn’t see him again until the final banquet was coming to a
close. We stopped to
chat for a minute and discovered that we lived about twenty minutes apart, back
in Michigan. We
agreed to meet up and talk business once we were back home.

That was four years ago. And in May, I’ll be marrying him. Luckily, despite my own “impossibility,” love was stronger in real life, too.