Non-Interview With A Hero

It's always a challenge as a book is releasing to find fresh angles for blog posts. Today I thought maybe I'd interview my hero, Roman Killian, from Vows Of Revenge. As soon as I started, however, I knew how it would go.

Me: How are you, Roman?

Him: Fine.

Me: Would you like to tell the readers a bit about your background? Why did you have a grudge against Melodie's family?

Him: No comment.

Me: But what about--

Him: I have a call to take. Excuse me.

Roman was a difficult hero to write, to be honest! Not only is he a security specialist with a locked down life, he was a foster child who never had control over his own backstory, let alone his front one. His mother's attempt to feed him by selling herself was the reason he was put into care and it tarred him the rest of his childhood. His history was reduced to a few pages in a folder that was shared with strangers without his permission. No wonder he's willing to help others keep their privacy in tact!

He later winds up learning to hack computers, gets arrested, and is helped/hired--he thinks exploited--by a security specialist who really gives him an education. This results in his writing a type of security software that has the potential to change his life. Unfortunately, he trusts the wrong investors, Melodie's brother and father. They steal it, threaten to claim he hacked the software if he goes to the police, then give him a sound beating for good measure.

It takes years, but he rallies. He's on the verge of annihilating them through old-fashioned competition when Melodie crosses his path. He's certain her flirting is a set up so she can spy on her father's behalf.

Except, Melodie hates her father as much as Roman does. I knew I wanted him to seek revenge against someone who was totally innocent. I love that moment when a hero realizes he has screwed up, bad. I also love those moments when a heroine knows she's being a fool, falling for this cad, but she has no willpower.

Here's a snippet from Melodie's point of view as she faces that maybe she doesn't hate Roman quite as much as she should, even though she really doesn't know him, and definitely knows better!

~ * ~

I knew that day in the limo that you weren’t really like them. I just…”

“Still hate me.”

“I’m trying to. If I don’t, then you’ll—”

“What?” he prompted quickly, demeanor changing.

He knew. She blushed and had to look away.

A muted noise sounded and they both looked to the clutch where she’d set it next to her glass. Her mobile vibrated inside it.

“Trenton is wondering where I am,” she guessed, then made a face, feeling as though she was with a friend after all, she supposed, because she found herself saying a very uncharitable, “I should text back that I’m 'being nice' to you.”

The banked sexual awareness between them flared like the catch of a match.

“That wasn’t—” she hurried to say.

“I know.” He sounded as though he was laughing at her, making her shoot a scowl his direction. “I’m not going to make another unwelcome pass, Melodie. No matter how much I want to.”

Which was a pass in itself, she noted dryly, but managed to say, “Good.” Even though she was suddenly reluctant to accept that. Her mind was expanding with one ballooning thought. What would it be like now, when they’d set aside the misjudgments and animosity?

“I should go,” she said briskly. Before she lost her mind.

“I’ll walk you down.”

“You don’t have to.” She picked up her clutch and headed toward the door.

He pocketed his room key off the bar and followed her. “Better if we both reappear without looking flushed and disheveled.”

“Right.” Flushed. Disheveled. Skin damp and whole body tingling in the aftermath of orgasm. That would be bad. “Yes,” she affirmed. “You’re probably right.”

“Only probably? Don’t give me an opening, Melodie. I will take it,” he said.

They stood at the door, his hand on the latch, his white shirt and black jacket filling her vision.

“An opening for what?” She was playing dumb, not like her at all.

His mouth lifted at one corner, knowing. “I said I wouldn’t make an unwelcome pass,” he said, then touched her chin, gently forcing her to tilt up her face until she couldn’t avoid his eyes. “If this is not welcome say so now.”

His touch was bringing her to life in ways she had thought were manifestations of an overactive imagination.

“I keep wondering—”

He covered her mouth and she knew. They were every bit as volatile as before. They stepped into the kiss with synchronicity, her arms going over his shoulders, his hands sliding to her lower back, pulling her hips into his. In heels she was eye level with his mouth and they both moaned with pleasure at how perfectly they fitted together.

The buzz sounded again from inside her purse.

They broke away.

She threw the clutch toward the sofa, missing. It hit the floor and slid while they stepped into tight contact again, lips meeting without hesitation or clumsiness. Her same distant thoughts of how and why penetrated, but she honestly didn’t care. He was the man who did this to her. She couldn’t turn away now that it had started. And there was no evidence of his trying to slow down things as his fingertips dug into her buttocks and he rotated to press her into the door.

~ * ~

It's not HEA from there. Roman keeps a lot of secrets! And for a woman like Melodie, who doesn't bond easily in the first place, this is a difficult relationship no matter how great the sex is. They still have a long ways to go.

Do you like the strong, silent type? What about a revenge romance? Do you love the comeuppance?

If you'd like Roman's full story, Vows Of Revenge goes on sale Tuesday, the 18th. You can pre-order here:

Amazon: US | CA | UK | AUS
Nook | Kobo | iBooks | BAM | GooglePlay | Harlequin | Mills & Boon

Have You Bid On Your Bachelor? - by Dani Collins

Have you seen the Bachelors being auctioned off in Marietta, Montana?

Who would you bid on in real life? Being the author, I should vote for Linc, in The Bachelor's Baby, but I have to admit Kate's Ryan is my fave.

Just like anyone participating in a Bachelor Auction, I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into when I signed up for this series, but it was so much fun to write this novella and work with all these authors--and meet all these bachelors! Even though a few of them showed up very reluctantly. Linc, for instance, but as he was told repeatedly, It's for a good cause.

You see, Kat's heroine, Molly, has a son, Josh, who was injured and is now in a wheelchair. She needs help so Sarah's heroine, Lily, organizes this fabulous fundraiser. My heroine, Meg, ropes Linc in and he's really not happy. Here's a snippet of his reaction when he catches up to her at the hardware store:

~ * ~

Excerpt from The Bachelor's Baby:

“Not funny,” a male voice growled behind her as Meg reached for a small box off a shelf in the hardware store.

Linc’s voice really was a turn on, all heavy and faintly abrasive, yet warm and rounded. Like good scotch, or an heirloom quilt.

He’d still been talking to Lily when Meg had left the grocery store, his neck red, his scowl a firmly fixed mask.

Meg didn’t know Lily that well, but had met her through Andie Bennet, who was made of awesome. She trusted Andie’s judgment, even though Lily was rumored to have been a stripper in another life and had only been in town a few years. Meg hadn’t lived here full-time since leaving for college and took all such gossip with a grain of salt.

Besides, despite Lily’s sometimes acerbic sense of humor, she struck Meg as the biggest heart of gold walking, especially given the fundraiser she was spearheading for Molly Dekker. Molly was another sweetheart—a kindergarten teacher and single mom whose only son had been injured last fall. Meg had genuinely wanted to help once she heard what Lily was trying to do for Molly.

The fact it had allowed her to lob another snowball in Linc’s direction was icing on the cake.

“What do you mean?” Meg asked with an innocent glance at him that actually made her heart skip as she took in his folded arms and planted feet. He was genuinely mad.

She cleared her throat and made herself face him, even though her blood stung a warning through her veins. At the same time, the worst of her girlish hormones fluttered, filling her with nervous excitement and giddy warmth.

“Why did you set that woman on me?” he asked.

“Lily? She asked me about Blake. She was disappointed to hear he’s engaged. She asked if I could think of any other eligible bachelors in town. I said I had just met a perfect one-date wonder.” Blink. Blink. Blink.

These baby blues had pulled Meg from basement cable interviews of small time activists to a relief position with a syndicated station. She wasn’t afraid to use them.

Linc was really tall. And had perfected his glower of intimidation. She privately admitted he worked that like a hot damn, but she’d made a career for herself in what was still a world heavily seeded to men. Outwardly, she didn’t falter.

“Can you tell me if these are self-screwing?” She held up the box in her hand.

His scruffed beard seemed to bristle as his jaw hardened. “Oh, you’ve got a handful of screw yourself,” he assured her.

She swallowed back a laugh, pretty sure that would get her into more trouble than she already stood in. Instead, she turned the box over in her hands. She hadn’t had this much fun in ages. “Maybe one nail would be simpler?”

“Why are you so angry?” he demanded.

“I’m not, I’m really not,” she insisted. “I think it’s funny.”

“You think tricking me into standing on a stage and have women bid on me like a stud bull is funny?”

“I didn’t think you’d agree,” she defended. “It was an impulse to mention you, since you walked right by us and you’re, I assume, single?”

He narrowed his eyes.

Seriously? He didn’t see the humor in this?

“Look, I just...” She couldn’t explain it. Not without getting into how she’d let go of something today. Found herself again. She felt cheerful and sassy. She wanted to flirt. He drew her.

But she’d made him mad.

“Come on,” she cajoled. “It’s not my fault you didn’t say no. It’s a good cause,” she tried.

“You don’t even know me.”

She had to look away. Her cheeks began to sting. She suddenly felt very gauche and juvenile. Rejection was always a tough one for her and all she’d wanted was to keep playing with him. Now he hated her.

“I’m out of practice,” she allowed quietly, genuinely sorry. “Honestly, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Practice?” he repeated. “Doing what?”

Seriously? She lifted a gaze that let him see how uncomfortable she was, while scolding him for being obtuse.

He let out a choke of disbelieving laughter. “This is you trying to get a man’s attention? Are you twelve?”

She looked away, frowning, trying to hide that her eyes began to burn along with the back of her throat. Pointing Lily at him had been meant in fun, but it was becoming personal and hurtful. She felt twelve. Hell, she felt seven, realizing for the first time what it really meant to be adopted: that your ‘real’ mom and dad hadn’t wanted you.

“Look—” she started to say, ready to apologize, but only saw his back. He was walking away.

~ * ~

Makes you wonder how The Bachelor's Baby happens, doesn't it? You can find out by clicking your preferred retailer below:

Amazon: US | Canada | UK  | iBooks | Nook | Kobo |

My fourth Montana Born novella, His Blushing Bride, will come out in May. If you'd like to be notified when it does, join my newsletter or visit me here:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Thanks for visiting!

~ Dani

Lisa Plumley: Single Fathers in Fiction

Okay, so I have an experiment for you. First, picture a handsome, hunky, tough-guy hero. Got him? Good. Next, put a baby in his arms. Can you picture it? Great! Now, what do we have? Well, if you're like me...instant awww! Adorable, right?
There aren't many things more appealing than a macho guy who's also nurturing and protective. I think that's why I love reading about (and writing about) single fathers. They're strong and capable (because they're romance heroes, duh!), yet they're also responsible and caring. Even if they sometimes seem a little out-of-their-depth about the details involved in taking care of children (occasionally to hilarious effect), these single-dad heroes are true heroes in every sense of the word. My newest single-father hero is a former rascally ne'er-do-well in the Old West who's doing his best to stay out of trouble for his daughter's sake. He doesn't know it yet, but temptation is right around the corner! After he wins a "bride for a week" in the town's latest raffle, he realizes he's in way over his head. Before he knows what's hit him...
Well, let me just introduce you to him, all right? After that, I hope you'll want to find out what happens for yourself!

Morrow Creek, northern Arizona Territory
June 1883

On an otherwise unremarkable day in Morrow Creek, Owen Cooper stood in the modest quarters where he lived atop his livery stable and made himself a solemn promise: he was going to learn to braid his daughter's hair even if it killed him.

It looked as though it might. Already, Owen had made more than one attempt. He'd been defeated every time. Still, ten-year-old Élodie appeared to believe he could finish the task.

With every appearance of certainty—in a braiding prowess Owen strongly doubted he possessed—Élodie stood with her back to him. With pint-size eagerness, she wiggled on her tiptoes. Then she craned her neck, trying to glimpse one of her pigtails.

"Are you done yet, Papa? Can I look?"

"Not yet. Keep holding still."

"I am! I'm pretending my feet are glued to the floor!"

Hmm. For an instant, Owen contemplated the potential merits of actually gluing Élodie's high-buttoned shoes to the floor, then allowing her to step into them like a pony in a stall. Such a tactic would doubtless make mornings like this one easier. As it was, Élodie had been fidgeting nonstop—even before she'd begged Owen, over breakfast, to take on this delicate maneuver. He squinted, newly determined to master this task.

"Remember, both braids are supposed to be exactly the same!" Élodie reminded him earnestly. "Nice and neat, too."

Nice and neat. Frowning at the twin fistfuls of coppery hair he'd been bundling and twisting in his hands for the past fifteen minutes, Owen shifted his feet. He felt his frown deepen. What he'd accomplished so far was poor, he realized. And raggedy. The horses he boarded at his stable sometimes boasted fancier plaits than the ones he'd created for his daughter.

He'd have to try harder. He could do it. After all, he'd already learned to do so many fatherly tasks that had fallen to him in the years since he'd lost Renée. Owen was proud of the progress he'd made, too. So when Élodie had begged him to braid her hair in a new fashion today, he'd thought the undertaking would be simple enough to accomplish, especially for a man like him—a man who was reasonably intelligent, occasionally clever, and always skilled with his hands.

Years ago, Owen had earned a good living with those hands. Not good in the sense of untarnished and pure, of course; those were concepts Owen had had only a passing acquaintance with until he'd met Renée, and she'd begun to reform him. What he'd earned with his hands and mind all those years ago had been a profitable living. A frivolous, fun-loving, profitable living.

The truth was, Owen had always enjoyed a talent for the disreputable. Minor thievery had come easily to him; so had running a swindle or delivering a punch or seducing a woman. These days, Owen regretted his rapscallion's past—but he saw it for what it was, too: a cockeyed blessing. If he'd been a better man, he knew, he might never have met Renée outside his favorite gambling house in Baltimore. As it was, he and Renée had taken instantly and wholeheartedly to one another…never mind that his future wife had been crusading to shut down the place.

Renée, scarcely nineteen and staunchly naïve, hadn't known then that the sizable nest egg Owen had brought to their marriage had been the result of gambling, conning, and generally charming the world at large. Owen, already a hell-raising bachelor at twenty-two, had been too smitten to risk enlightening her. She'd discovered his faults quickly enough, though—and had set out to reform him of them straightaway. Two years later, Owen and Renée had taken those savings with them from Baltimore, intending to start a new, more respectable life together with their toddler daughter in California.

Instead, his wife's journey westward had ended in the Arizona Territory, in the picturesque mountain town of Morrow Creek. After losing Renée, Owen had decided to stay there, too, with tiny Élodie. In the years since then, he'd done his best to care for his daughter the way Renée would have wanted him to.

That meant fancy pigtails and ribbons were his duty.

They were damnably difficult to master, though. Far more so than he'd imagined they would be. But Owen was not a man who entertained the notion of defeat. Not when it came to Élodie.

When it came to his daughter, Owen had to succeed. He was all Élodie had…and she was all he had. He would have died before giving up on her—even when it came to inconsequential matters like intricate braids and froufrou ribbons.

From the book THE BRIDE RAFFLE by Lisa Plumley
Imprint and Series: Harlequin Historicals - Publication Date 04/11
ISBN 9780373296354 - Copyright © 2011 by Lisa Plumley

See? Owen's doing his best for Élodie, and he's doing pretty well. But once traveling cookery book author Daisy Walsh shows up, all bets are off! I had a terrific time writing The Bride Raffle, the latest in my Morrow Creek series for Harlequin Historicals. There are seven interconnected books/short stories now, with more on the way! But if you haven't tried any of them yet, don't worry! Although all the books are set in the same Arizona Territory town and feature some overlapping characters, the individual books definitely stand alone. I hope you'll drop by my Web site to read the first chapter of The Bride Raffle today.

In the meantime, what are your favorite books with a single-father theme? Or, if you don't like books about single fathers, why not? I'm love to know. Let's dish!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Lisa Plumley is the USA Today bestselling author of more than two dozen contemporary, historical, and paranormal romances. Her newest historical romance, The Bride Raffle, was awarded 4 spurs from Love Western Romances, 4 stars from CataRomance.com, and 5 blue ribbons from Romance Junkies. Her most recent contemporary romance, Holiday Affair, was a featured selection of the Doubleday, Rhapsody, and BOMC2 book clubs and was awarded 4½ stars from Romantic Times magazine, 5 hearts from The Romance Reader, and 5 blue ribbons from Romance Junkies. You can find Lisa on Facebook or Twitter, or visit her Web site to read first-chapter excerpts from any of her books, sign up for new-book reminder e-mails, and more!

*****Leave a comment for the chance to win a book autographed by Lisa! Three winners will receive a copy of the UK edition of Mail-Order Groom. Good luck!

Can I Tempt You?

by Anna Campbell

I'm really delighted to share the cover and stepback (yes, I have a stepback - be still, my beating heart!) art for my January 2009 release TEMPT THE DEVIL. Isn't that such a sexy picture? That man has such a come-hither look in his eyes, not mention that sensual glint! Wow! Honestly, I'm rapt!

Now, would you like a sneak peek at what's behind that wonderful cover art? I've put an excerpt of TEMPT THE DEVIL up on my website this month and I hope it whets people's appetites for the story as a whole. If you'd like to read it, please go to: http://www.annacampbell.info/tempt%20devil.html

And while you're there, why not enter my contest to win an advance review copy of TEMPT THE DEVIL? All you have to do is answer a really simple question about the excerpt and you're in the running.

Now, what books are you currently looking forward to reading? I've got a wish list as long as my arm. Which is a pity as my to-be-read pile is as high as Mount Everest without me adding to it!

Two September releases I really enjoyed are Christine Wells's second Regency historical THE DANGEROUS DUKE and Tawny Weber's sexy Blaze RISQUE BUSINESS. Both highly recommended!

I've got an order in at Amazon for THE SINS OF LORD EASTERBROOK, the fourth instalment in Madeline Hunter's current historical series - the first three were fantastic and the second one just won a RITA Award. I've also got the new Kathleen O'Reilly on its way - COURTING DISASTER. Isn't that a great title? I just loved the O'Sullivan Brother trilogy that she wrote for Harlequin Blaze. Again, highly recommended. And of course, I'm eagerly looking forward to the latest Anne Gracie, HIS CAPTIVE LADY. She's such an amazing writer.

So plenty to keep me going. What's coming up for you book-wise?