Of Plans and Pretence and Virtual PA’s, by Trish Morey

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Amy in contest

by Trish Morey, author of Fiancee for One Night (Harlequin Presents, February 2012)

Do you consider yourself a planner?

Leo Zamos is. He has to be — he’s an international business broker, travelling the world and bringing deals and parties together, oiling the wheels of negotiation and give and take and never able to relax until the deal is done. He can’t afford to leave anything to chance. He lives for his plans. He lives for success.

Eve Carmichael has her own big plans — in the forefront of her mind is renovating her grandfather’s old house in Melbourne before it falls down around her. But another is to never meet Leo Zamos in the flesh again. Just one meeting and she’d abandoned good sense and ended up in a filing room clinch with him that ended all too soon and left her wondering and wanting more. But she doesn’t want more now. She has a young child to look after — an unplanned result of all that pointless wondering, but a result she wouldn’t change for quids.

Eve is a virtual PA now, working from home to support herself and her young son, and by chance and happenstance Leo is now her number one client. And if there’s one good thing about being a virtual PA, it’s that they conduct all their business via the internet. If they never meet, she figures, he’ll never know who she really is and she’s safe pretending they don’t have history. It makes perfect sense — until Leo lands in Melbourne needing more of Eve’s services than she’d ever expected possible.

Here’s an excerpt from the opening of Fiancee from One Night…

Leo Zamos loved it when a plan came together.

Not that he couldn’t find pleasure in other, more everyday pursuits. He was more than partial to having a naked woman in his bed, and the more naked the woman the more partial he was inclined to be, and he lived for the blood-dizzying rush from successfully navigating his Maserati Granturismo S at speed around the sixty hairpin turns of the Passa dello Stelvio whenever he was in Italy and got the chance.

Still, nothing could beat the sheer unmitigated buzz that came from conceiving a plan so audacious it could never happen, and then steering it through the ensuing battles, corporate manoeuvrings and around the endless bureaucratic roadblocks to its ultimate conclusion—and his inevitable success.

And right now he was on the cusp of his most audacious success yet.

All he needed was a wife.

You can see where this is going, right? Eve has to front up as Leo’s pretend fiancee for the night (because getting an actual wife within 8 hours was decidedly more tricky). But it’s what happens then that gets more interesting. You’ll have to buy the book to find out exactly what:-))

RT Book Reviews have awarded Fiancee for One Night a 4.5 star review, saying -

Broker Leo Zamos needs a fiancée to seal the deal on his latest coup so he turns to his über-efficient virtual PA, banking on her professional appearance — but she turns out to be a showstopper. Single mom Eve Carmichael needs the extra money Leo’s offering, and hopes Leo won’t recognize her from when they met years before. Morey takes readers on a lush tour of the land down under as she lets her romantic plot play out with characters who enrage and endear, and love scenes hotter than a blazing Australian summer.

I love it when plans go astray and get blindsided by life, and it’s kind of funny that both Leo and Eve found much, much more than they were planning on when life dealt them both a curve-ball.

Have you ever had your own plans come unstuck in spectacular style? And have you ever been grateful that they did? I’d love to hear your stories.

And to celebrate the recent acceptance of my 25th title for Harlequin Mills & Boon, one lucky reader commenter will win a signed copy of Fiancee for One Night, plus a book of their choice from my back list titles. Your choice!

Look forward to hearing your stories,

Trish

x

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Fear and Longing and Desert Sheikhs… by Sharon Kendrick

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Amy in heroes, sheikh

by Sharon Kendrick, author of Monarch of the Sands (Harlequin Presents, 2012)

There’s something about a Sheikh.  Something which captures our hearts as well as our imagination.  Something which makes a heroine shiver with a mixture of fear and longing.  Fear that this man can never truly be hers – because deep in his heart is a cultural darkness she feels she’ll never be able to penetrate.  And longing because, quite simply – he is the most masculine man she has ever met.  The classic novel The Sheik, first published in 1921 – illustrates this conflict of feelings perfectly, I think.

The sense of brooding presence and enormous power might help explain the enduring popularity of the Sheikh hero.  Or maybe it has more to do with their old-fashioned mastery – which women aren’t really supposed to want any more.

But of course, they do….

For me, it’s the ultimate fantasy.  The autocratic ruler leaping onto an enormous stallion and riding it bare-backed across the endlessly baked sands.  The arrogant leader who has experienced the harshness of the unforgiving desert terrain, and has survived it.   These are Sheikhs we can all recognise – I can picture the man and the horse as I write.

But what of someone who has the burden of Sheikhdom thrust on him unexpectedly?  Who has had little preparation for the mighty role he must now assume.

My latest hero is such a man. 

The characters of Zahid and Francesca were first introduced in a book I wrote a few years back called Italian Boss, Housekeeper Bride.  They made only a brief appearance – less than a page in total – but something about them obviously appealed to readers.  (Probably because they’d just had a row!). Every so often, someone would email me and ask if I’d written their story and after a while, I realised that I had to give them a life of their own.  And that’s how Monarch of the Sands was born.

There had been a definite equality between the two characters and I wondered how that might have come about.  Because everyone knows that it’s difficult to get to meet a desert King!  I decided that the only way Francesca was going to feel relaxed enough to be rude to the autocratic Sheikh, was if she’d known him for a long time.  And she had.  She’d known him ever since she was a little girl – a geeky misfit of a girl – and she had always adored him.

But Frankie’s all grown up now – and Zahid has changed, too.  The fact that he has inherited the crown made that change inevitable.  Frankie liked him better before – and Zahid found her much easier to deal with when she was a child.  But suddenly she’s all woman….  Although neither of them want it – they can’t deny the overwhelming physical chemistry which sizzles between them.

I loved the challenge of picking a moment in Francesca and Zahid’s  lives and working backwards until I had the beginning of their story.  And the result was Monarch of the Sands.

I hope you like it – and I’m wondering just what it is about a Sheikh hero which makes you go weak at the knees?

And while you’re pondering an answer, I’ll leave you with one of the most inspirational theme tunes in the history of the cinema.  As you watch and listen, just take a good look at Peter O’Toole’s eyes….

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Obituary for Penny Jordan at The Guardian

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Amy in on the web

by Amy Wilkins, Harlequin Digital

The Gurdian has posted an obituary for author Penny Jordan (real name Penny Halsall), who passed away on December 31, 2011. Click here to read the article.

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Once A Ferrara Wife… – What Can a Marriage Survive? By Sarah Morgan

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Amy in reunion stories

By Sarah Morgan, author of Once A Ferrara Wife… (Harlequin Presents, February 2012)

It’s a while since I wrote a marriage in trouble story and I’m very excited about this one! Once A Ferrara Wife… is an intense, emotional tale about two very different people who were joined by love, but found their love tested by life events.

In everyone’s life things happen that can’t be predicted or prevented and none of us really know how we’re going to react when we’re faced with a challenge. Good people are capable of doing and saying the wrong things, especially when under pressure. That doesn’t make them bad. It’s what makes them human, and human beings are flawed and imperfect (that’s what makes them interesting!)

In Once A Ferrara Wife…, neither of my characters are bad people, but they are flawed.

Laurel is a fitness instructor, a strong independent woman who has never relied on anyone in her life until she fell in love with Cristiano Ferrara, but he let her down so badly that she walked away. Briefly reunited at his sister’s wedding, they are forced to re-evaluate what went wrong. Unable to forgive or forget, Laurel intends to walk away again once the wedding is over but Cristiano has other plans…. He wants his wife back and he’s prepared to do whatever it takes to heal the rift in their marriage. He’s even willing to consider the fact that he might have been in the wrong….

This book contains scenes of serious grovelling (on the part of the hero!) and sizzling hot chemistry all set on the fabulously romantic island of Sicily. If the weather is cold where you are then I hope this will bring a little Mediterranean sunshine into your life and if that doesn’t work then hopefully the scorching heat between the hero and heroine will warm things up.

As I wrote this book I fell in love with the Ferrara family. I love their commitment to each other, their determination to fight to keep the family whole and healthy. I loved them so much that the moment I finished Once A Ferrara Wife… I started another story about the same family, this time featuring Cristiano’s brother, Santo. It will be out in May and is called The Forbidden Ferrara.

Happy reading!

Love Sarah

xxxx

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Question from Amy: Do you like marriage in jeopardy or reunion stories? Share your thoughts in the comments! :)

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Author Chantelle Shaw on “A Dangerous Infatuation”

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Amy in heroines, writing

by Chantelle Shaw, author of A Dangerous Infatuation (Harlequin Presents Extra, January 2012)

I wish I knew where ideas come from but imagination and the writing process are a mystery to me (apologies to anyone hoping for words of wisdom!)

I have no idea why Emma Marchant, the heroine in my latest book A DANGEROUS INFATUATION, came into my head. She arrived from nowhere and I immediately knew her as well as if we had been friends for years. I saw her in my mind — and I’m so pleased that the cover of the Presents Extra version of A DANGEROUS INFATUATION has Emma exactly as I imagined her — although looking more glamorous than in her nurse’s uniform!

So Emma is a district nurse working in cold, wintery Northumberland. She is also a single mum bringing up her little daughter alone after her husband — a fireman — was killed on duty.  Jack was regarded by everyone as a hero, but just before his death Emma had been devastated to learn that he had been unfaithful throughout their marriage and was planning to leave her.

Despite feeling hurt and betrayed Emma is determined that her daughter Holly will grow up to be proud of her father and she never reveals the truth of her marriage to anyone. She definitely has no time for gorgeous Rocco D’Angelo, who is the grandson of one of her elderly patients. Like Jack, Rocco is a charmer, but Emma has been bitten once and now she is on her guard and refuses to give in to the fierce attraction she feels for him.

As for Rocco — he enjoys being a wealthy playboy. There is only one important woman in his life and that is his beloved English grandmother. He’s not impressed with Cordelia’s sharp tongued nurse, who seems to think he has abandoned the old lady. But beneath Emma’s thick winter clothes he discovers a beautiful, sexy woman, who stirs his interest. The only trouble is, she’s prickly and defensive and won’t let him close.

His grandmother is too frail to live alone and Rocco decides that the ideal solution is to take her to his home on the Italian Riviera — accompanied by her nurse, and of course Emma’s adorable little daughter. Secrets in Rocco’s past mean that he has good reasons why he avoids commitment. He desires Emma, but all he wants is a temporary affair – isn’t it? Even if he wanted something more, he believes Emma is still in love with her first husband. How can he compete with the ghost of a hero?

A DANGEROUS INFATUATION is the story of Emma and Rocco’s journey to finding love despite the fact that they are both determined to steer clear of it. For Emma, it is about letting go of the past and finding the courage to trust. As for Rocco, he has to learn that all his money and charm won’t win him the prize he wants most. Does he have what it takes to win Emma’s heart?

In this book particularly, the storyline developed from the hero and heroine’s backstories. I ‘met’ Emma first and I really wanted to tell her story.

I’m fascinated to learn how other writers plan books? Do you start with a plot idea and then create characters to live out the story — or as with often happens to me, do characters pop into your head and their story gradually unfolds?

For readers, is it a great plot, or absorbing characters that make a book memorable for you?

Wishing everyone a happy new year of writing and reading, daydreaming and plotting!

Chantelle

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