Exciting Happenings!

As I mentioned some time ago, this is an exciting year for me! A number of new novellas, an awesome romantic suspense from Carina press, the launch of the exciting new SIN HUNTER series, vampires at Christmas and so much more! Yes, more! So what can we do to celebrate such an awesome year?

For starters you can join me for a series of incredible video chats over the course of the next few weeks. I’ll be meeting you face-to-face thanks to the wonders of technology and also sharing some of my favorite authors and friends. Come join the fun at our very first chat this Thursday as we preview THE LOST, the very first book in my new SIN HUNTER series.

I’ll be giving away a $10 gift card, a LOST T-shirt and a couple of cool reusable grocery bags so that you can help to protect the environment. You can either click here to join the chat this Thursday, May 5 at 8:30 EST or click on the widget below. Feel free to share the widget with your friends and let them share in the fun and prizes. You can also tweet or share this link: http://t.wbx.me/eemp7

Wicked Wednesday – Sexy Excerpt from AZTEC GOLD

AZTEC GOLD paranormal romanceIt’s wicked cold here in the Northeast, so I figured it’s time to offer up a sexy hot excerpt from AZTEC GOLD, my new release from Carina Press. I love that I had the opportunity to create a different kind of story, kind of like Indiana Jones meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer if I had to give you the two second elevator pitch. I hope you’ll like it as well.

The reviews are starting to come in for this novella and I’ve included them in this excerpt as well for you! If you can’t see the excerpt below, you can click on this link to read it.

AZTEC GOLD Paranormal Romance Excerpt

Guilty Pleasure Monday and a Happy Release Day!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I want to wish you all the very best for 2011 and hope you had a great holiday season.

We’re starting off the New Year with one of my favorite cuties: Bobby Cannavale! If I had to picture who would play Rafael Santiago from AZTEC GOLD, Bobby would be the man. I first saw Bobbie on THIRD WATCH where he played one of the paramedics and since then, he’s been in a number of other movies and television programs. Bobbie has that little boy charm in a wonderful man’s body! If you want to see him in a really cute role, check him out in SHALL WE DANCE with Richard Gere.

Hope you enjoyed today’s Guilty Pleasure, but here’s another special little thing for you today! It’s release day today for AZTEC GOLD, my new paranormal novella from Carina Press! I’ll be visiting a number of blogs during the month to celebrate and will also have a fun contest coming up for you.

To also celebrate the release of AZTEC GOLD, I’ve done a little video trailer for you! If you can’t see the video below, you can click here to see the video.

Bobby Cannavale Photo Credit: Tony [email protected]

Guilty Pleasures Monday – Naughty Santa and a Visit Down Under

Imagine it’s the day after Christmas in the Carrera-Bradford household (Yes, Liliana is too modern to just drop her family name). After days of visits to their Irish and Mexican families and celebrations packed with food, Jesse has to work off a few of those pounds. Since he’s still in Santa mode, why not a little red to keep the holiday cheer going and share his gifts with Liliana?

Jesse Bradford as Naughty Santa

Now I don’t know about you, but this Naughty Santa can come visit any day and not just on Guilty Pleasures Monday!

But it’s a double day of fun here since I’m also taking a trip down under to visit my friend and fellow author Jenny Schwartz at her wonderful blog. Take the trip with me and find out what inspired AZTEC GOLD, my vampire E-novella from Carina Press which will be available online on January 3 and also available as an audio book (more on that as soon as I know the release date).

You can click here to visit Jenny’s blog!

Kiss Me, Kill Me Tuesday – A Writer’s Inspiration

One of the things that has been coming up often on the ARE YOU STRONG ENOUGH blog tour are questions about how I get the inspirations for the books that I write.

Which makes me vaguely remember a quote somewhere about writers being able to talk to themselves without being labeled crazy (or at least not at first) and some very popular writer kinds of T-shirt quotes, such as:

    Watch out or you’ll end up in my novel.
    I kill off my enemies in my book. You’re on page 12.

Truthfully, those quotes are accurate. For example, a very nice waiter was the inspiration for the Ryder name. Roman mythology helped create Ryder’s lover, Diana. I confess to killing off at least one person who truly pissed me off in very gruesome fashion. Last, but not least, the names of friends and family have graced characters that I like, sometimes more than once.

But beyond that, where the ideas originate is difficult to say, although it is safe to say that a writer’s mind never stops observing and recording those things around them in order to use those observations in a story. Whether it’s a meal that you savor or where you eat it, a walk along a street with a different vibe, a new city that you visit… Any and all of those life experiences may germinate the kernel of an idea that takes root and grows into a story.

STRONGER THAN SINTake STRONGER THAN SIN for instance. You may have heard me mention on other blogs that the idea for the genetic engineering came about as a result of my science major geekdom. But my love of sports was what influenced the hero’s occupation. Rather than choosing baseball, which is more a game of physics and strategy, I needed the hero to suffer serious physical injury in a bone-crushing collision. Bazinga-he had to be a football player. Someone big and powerful cut down in the prime of his life.

Enter the heroine who I had already introduced in SINS OF THE FLESH, but who I came to love and needed her own big story. Was it coincidence that she was a doctor in book one? No because I needed someone who could offer medical assistance on the sly in that book. Was it coincidence that she was training to be an orthopedic surgeon? Not really either since I knew even then the second story was going to be about someone with a bone disease and I also had a friend with that profession who I could ask questions about treatments, etc.

My life experiences and influences eventually led to ex-football player Jesse Bradford and Dr. Liliana Carrera and their story.

Other life experiences, namely my love of history and travel, are what helped set up the evolution of the SINS series for books 3 and 4 – THE LOST and THE CLAIMED as well as the two books coming out from Carina – AZTEC GOLD and THE FIFTH KINGDOM. Although I’m a little crazed right now with trying to finish THE CLAIMED, I’m going to dig through some photos and get them scanned so you can see what inspired some of the story elements and locations that I chose for those books!

I guess what I’m trying to say in a very long way is that a writer’s inspiration comes from everything around them and in particular, from those things about which they find interesting or about which they are passionate. Why are those last two things so important? Because when a writer is interested or passionate about something, it shows in the words that they put on the page and bring the story alive for readers.

Thanks for dropping by today’s Kiss Me, Kill Tuesday. Don’t forget to visit the various stops on the ARE YOU STRONG ENOUGH blog tour to learn more about STRONGER THAN SIN and also, to possibly win of the giveaways.

Also take a moment to visit with my very good friend and fellow author Mary Kennedy at SOS Aloha today! Mary is chatting about Sherlock Holmes which is thoroughly appropriate since she has the wonderful Talk Radio Mysteries out on shelves. Just click here to visit!

Wicked Wednesday – Rogues and a Contest!

HOPE TARRI have the pleasure of having with me today the wonderful Hope Tarr who is telling us a little about her re-release of A ROGUE’S PLEASURE and offering a copy of her novel VANQUISHED to one lucky person. Hope is the award-winning author of thirteen historical and contemporary romances as well as a co-founder of Lady Jane’s Salon, New York City’s first and so far only monthly reading series for romance fiction. “Tomorrow’s Destiny,” Hope’s first novella, will release November 10th in a single title Christmas anthology, A HARLEQUIN CHRISTMAS CAROL, with Betina Krahn and Jacquie D’Alessandro. Visit Hope online at www.HopeTarr.com and find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Some of you may know that Caridad means Charity in English (my nickname by the way), so we’ve got 2 of the 3 virtues here today! Are there any Faiths out there to make it all three?

Without further ado – my friend and fellow author, Hope Tarr.

*****

A ROGUE'S PLEASURE Second chances at love, don’t you just…love them?

A ROGUE’S PLEASURE, my romance debut novel originally published in print with Berkley/Jove, is getting its own second chance at love as an e-book release with Carina Press, Harlequin’s digital-first imprint and like any proud mama I couldn’t be more pleased. The reissue, which sports gorgeous new cover art and an editing facelift, went live on August 16th, two weeks short of what would be the book’s tenth anniversary. How cool is that!?!

A ROGUE’S PLEASURE is a Regency romp that I’m thrilled to be able to share with a new generation of romance readers. To get the soiree started, close your eyes—okay, don’t close them since you need them open to read this—or better yet open your mind to the clip-clop of horses hooves instead of sirens and honking cars.

It is Regency England, 1812. Napoleon is wreaking havoc in Europe, including Spain and Portugal where ousting the rightful royals and setting his sibling, Joseph Bonaparte, on the Spanish throne has catalyzed a sweeping grassroots national resistance supported by Britain and its Allies. On the home front, private coaches traveling between the countryside and London are prime targets for the rogues of the road: highwaymen.

Put yourself in the shoes, or rather the Wellingtons, of my hero, Lord Anthony Grenville. Recently returned from the Peninsular War with a gamey leg and a bad case of combat stress masquerading as ennui, you are in your private coach en route to London with your fiancée, Lady Phoebe Tremont, and her shrew of a mother. To drown out the droning of your soon-to-be mother-in-law, you think not great thoughts but rather mundane ones. Will the inn’s beef be soured again? Sigh. Might there be a decent claret to bespeak in lieu of the usual ale? Must I really marry this pretty but deucedly dull girl? You are not only thinking such thoughts but lost to them when a shout of “Halt! Stand and deliver!” freezes the blood in your veins.

Chelsea Bellamy must raise the sum of 500 pounds to ransom her beloved brother. Having exhausted all other avenues, she has taken to the road disguised as the highwayman One-Eyed Jack, accompanied by her faithful manservant, the real One-Eyed Jack. Outnumbered though he is and hampered with womenfolk, still Anthony isn’t going down easily. He isn’t going down at all. Beneath his fancy frock coat, embroidered waistcoat, and frothy shirt, he has a soldier’s spine of steel—and a heart in need of saving.

*****

Thanks so much for joining me today at Caridad’s blog. Please post a comment by midnight EST Thursday August 26th and be entered to win an autographed copy of VANQUISHED, the launch for my Victorian-set “Men of Roxbury House” trilogy.

Huzzah,
Hope

Hope Tarr Photo Credit: Photo by BizUrban.com