Anthologies - different voices, different stories - Donna Alward

This month I have my first ever reprint - Hired: The Italian's Bride is out in the anthology Mediterranean Men & Marriage.  When my author copies came, I was so excited.  The book is so BIG! And the cover is gorgeous.  The cover has this purpley colour but the back cover is a stunning navy.

One of the great things about being in books with other authors is then feeling like you've received free books.  :-)  I read both stories by Raye Morgan and Carol Grace and what really struck me is how different we all are!

When you read the title - Mediterranean Men & Marriage, I'll bet you're thinking what I'm thinking - hot Italians.  And you'd be kind of right.  All three stories have great Italian heroes at the core and North American women.  Cool!  But they are also very different.  For example, only Carol's story The Sicilian's Bride, is set in Italy.  Raye's The Italian's Forgotten Baby is on a hot, tropical island and mine is in Banff, a resort town in Alberta, Canada!

All three have a touch of glamour to them - Raye's in the form of the heroine, who is hiding from her father and the paparazzi, Carol's in the rich figure of the hero whose family owns a famous winery and was engaged to Miss Sicily, and my Luca has had his day in the scandal sheets as heir to a hotel kingdom and a bit of a playboy.

Our themes and hooks are also very different - Raye's is the first amnesia story I've read in a long time, and Carol's is a fish out of water/inheritance story, whereas mine is an office romance.

Raye's voice is vastly different from mine, but there were times when I read Carol's that we felt very similar in the rhythm of our sentence construction, which was really weird for me to read and cool at the same time.

I found both stories enjoyable, and hope lots of people get a chance to read them!