Poll: What Kind of Royalty Do You Like to Read About the Most?

Posted on May 18, 2012 by Amy in poll, royalty

by Amy Wilkins, Harlequin Digital

The Harlequin Presents team is super excited about the new continuity The Santina Crown, which has launched this month with The Price of Royal Duty by Penny Jordan. It’s all about scandal, seduction and one of Harlequin Presents key themes: royalty!

But when you think about it, Harlequin Presents doesn’t just feature one kind of royals. So today we want to know your thoughts about which type of royalty you like to read about the most!

Can you think of another kind of “royalty”? We’ve given a space in the poll for other answers, too, and we’d love to hear why these royals got your votes in the comments!

p.s. Editor Carly Byrne will be blogging about what inspired the Santina series here on the blog Monday, so be sure to check back then and share your thoughts on what makes a good continuity. Plus, don’t miss the Santina Crown ‘tabloid’ page to learn more about what makes those Santinas so scandalous :)

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The Santina Crown: Q&A with Sharon Kendrick and Excerpt of “The Sheikh’s Heir”

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Amy in excerpt, miniseries, royalty, sheikh

The second book of the Santina Crown series, The Sheikh’s Heir by Sharon Kendrick, goes on sale in a couple weeks. Today we have a Q&A with Sharon about her book and the series, plus an excerpt from The Sheikh’s Heir! To learn more about The Santina Crown series, check out the Santina “tabloid” pages for a sneak peek behind the scandal… ~Amy

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Who is more scandalous – the Jacksons or the Santinas?

Most people think the Jacksons are more scandalous than the Santinas – probably because their exploits often seem to find their way into the press (and Bobby Jackson is a bit of an attention seeker).  They are certainly a very colorful family with a chequered history – but beneath their often outrageous image, there lies a fierce loyalty which binds them all together.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the sexiest hero of them all?

The jury wouldn’t have to be out for long to come to a verdict on this one!  His undeniable bravery, his legendary sexual prowess together with a face which a prize-winning female journalist once described as “rugged perfection” make Sheikh Hassan al Abbas the sexiest hero of all.

What secret would make the most shocking tabloid headlines about Hassan and Ella?

Sheikh Hassan al Abbas has refused to allow me to answer this question.

Where does Hassan take Ella for their one year anniversary?

He takes her to a traditional Bedouin tent situated on the edge of the Serhetabat desert, where their first child was delivered.  It is a very beautiful and simple place, where the royal couple can have some welcome peace away from the strictures of palace life – a place where the night-time skies are particularly beautiful.

We’d love to hear about your writing process, can you talk us through your daily routine?

 I rise early, make strong coffee and start to write immediately.  I’m at my freshest and most creative in the mornings.  I don’t stop until I get hungry and then I go downstairs and eat breakfast while watching some rubbish TV.

What do you think makes a good hero and heroine?

A good hero and heroine are a couple who have a real chemistry between them.  Who connect with each other on a very fundamental level, even if they’re as mad as hell with each other.   You have to explore what makes them tick.  You have to know and love them – so that the reader will be rooting for them all the way.

Did you have a favorite character in your story The Sheikh’s Heir?

I loved Hassan and I loved Ella, too.  I enjoyed the fact that they both came from completely opposite ends of the social spectrum, that they started off on a very bad footing and yet they…..ah, but I’d better not give the story away!

What is it that you love most about writing your stories?

I love the fact that my stories take me into the different worlds of the characters and it’s easy to lose myself in them.  The world of the imagination can be a pretty amazing place.

What projects are you working on at the moment?

 I’m just writing a book about a very sexy Neapolitan called Ciro D’Angelo, who is one of the trickiest and most chauvinistic heroes I’ve ever had….but I think that readers will adore him just as much as I do!

An Excerpt from The Sheikh’s Heir:

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Chantelle Shaw on Motivation and “After the Greek Affair”

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Amy in billionaire, Greek Tycoons

by Chantelle Shaw, author of After the Greek Affair (Harlequin Presents Extra, May 2012)

When I’m at the planning stage of a book I spend a lot of time thinking about what motivates my characters to behave the way they do. In my latest release for Harlequin Presents Extra, After the Greek Affair, both the hero Loukas and the heroine Belle are haunted by events in their pasts that continue to affect them.

Initially, Belle was delighted when Larissa Christakis, the sister of billionaire business tycoon Loukas Christakis, asked her to design her wedding dress. Larissa’s wedding is the society wedding of the year and the commission to design the bride’s dress is guaranteed to give Belle’s struggling design company Wedding Belle huge media attention.

Even before she met Loukas, Belle had heard of his reputation as a ruthless man who had fought his way out of poverty and who always demands his own way. Having grown up with a domineering step-father, Belle had reservations about her client’s brother. When she meets Loukas on his private Greek island she is blown away by his virile good looks – he is the sexiest man she has ever met! But within minutes of arriving on Aura, Belle discovers that Loukas has offered the commission to make Larissa’s dress to a designer he has chosen, and is prepared to bribe Belle to leave the island on the next ferry.

Loukas is infuriated by Belle’s accusation that he is a control freak. He has acted as a surrogate father to Larissa since she was a child, after their father was gunned down by a drug gang in the rough part of New York where they had lived. When their mother had died two years later, Loukas had given his word that he would take care of Larissa. Of course he is over-protective of his sister when he knows how dangerous the world can be.

Loukas doesn’t trust beautiful Belle because he has learned that her company has financial problems. But he acknowledges that his sister is no longer a child, and maybe he should allow Larissa to make her own decisions. He can’t deny he is attracted to Belle – and he senses that she is equally aware of the sizzling sexual chemistry between them.

That chemistry explodes into white-hot passion while Belle is on Aura, but she knows her affair with playboy Loukas is only temporary – and that’s all she wants. She loves designing fairytale wedding dresses, but after witnessing her mother’s unhappy marriage to her controlling step-father, Belle has vowed never to give up her independence for any man.

When it is time for Belle to leave Aura, Loukas tells himself he can let her go. Years ago he had been cruelly betrayed by Sadie, the women he had loved, and he’s not looking for a long-term relationship.  But he can’t forget Belle and visits her in London – only to be confronted with the shocking news that she is pregnant with his twins!

Loukas insists on marriage. Sadie had denied him his child, but now he is determined to be a father to his twins and he won’t take Belle’s refusal to be his wife for an answer. Belle is terrified of losing her independence by marrying a powerful man like Loukas, but she wants her babies to have a loving father that she never had.

Both Loukas and Belle have so much to learn about each other. At first Belle thinks Loukas’s determination to protect her is because he is trying to control her like her step-father had done. Loukas has to learn that although Belle is career minded like Sadie had been, her babies are her first priority. Only when they start to trust can they learn to let go of the past and open their hearts to love.

How important do you think motivation is? Do you think it is important as a reader or writer to understand what drives characters to act in a certain way?

For me, it’s all about getting inside the characters’ heads and really knowing them and understanding their beliefs, fears and concerns, and of course the events in their past that made them have those concerns.

Best wishes,

Chantelle

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Dedicated to… Whom? by Natalie Anderson

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Amy in contest, virgin heroines

by Natalie Anderson, author of First Time Lucky? (Harlequin Presents Extra, May 2012)

For me one of the hardest parts of writing comes after the book is finished. Ironically it’s only a couple of sentences I need—should be a cinch, right?

But the dedication, for me anyway, takes a lot of time and thought to get just right. I always like to reference something or someone that was personally relevant to me during the time I wrote the story.

When I was writing First Time Lucky?, my world had gotten a little chaotic—we’d gone through some massive earthquakes and were experiencing literally thousands of aftershocks. We had illness issues within the family, and we were about to move house. Frankly, it was full on—and there was a lot of ‘hard’ stuff to deal with every day for so many people. The city had literally broken apart.

It’s at times like these that you need hope and something to life the spirits – frankly, you need to read some romance!!! So I lost myself with my characters—plucky Roxie and the utterly gorgeous Gabe (honestly, that guy—he’s really, really good at helping Roxie out with a certain ‘to do’ item on her list!)…

And then we had the privilege of seeing something so special—the way people come together in a crisis—strangers helping strangers, communities pulling together. And nothing showed that more than the students of the university in our town. They got together—via Facebook—and formed a voluntary army to go to the most affected parts of the city and shovel up all the silt and sand and mess that bubbled out of the ground relentlessly with each major quake. It was dirty, hard work and those young people were at it day after day after day.

I sat in front of the telly watching the news at night and it was seeing those beautiful people of our future that brought the tears to my eyes. They were awesome. So I acknowledged them in one of the small ways I could. Here’s the dedication from First Time Lucky?

 For the University of Canterbury’s Student Volunteer Army—thanks for showing, in the most fantastic way, that the brightest lights on Christchurch’s horizon not only have brains and beauty, but also the most tremendous hearts. You’ve been such heroes, and you’ve proved how positive our city’s future will be.

For me, it’s a very special part of being published to be able to write dedications— I hope that those people to whom I dedicate my books do know how much I mean it.

Do you take note of the dedication in a book? I always do—and I love it how you can get all kinds, from quotations, to cryptic nicknames and messages of love.

If you’d written a book, to whom would you dedicate it? I would absolutely love it if you’d share a dedication that you would write—leave it in the comments below. I’m giving away a copy of First Time Lucky? to someone who does.

With very best wishes,

Natalie

Note from Amy: Natalie will be closing the giveaway Monday, so leave your comment this weekend if you’d like a chance to win. The contest is also open internationally — thanks Natalie!

UPDATE: The contest is now closed. Please check the comments for the contest winner!

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Living Dangerously, by Jennie Lucas

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Amy in author, contest

by Jennie Lucas, author of A Night of Living Dangerously (Harlequin Presents, May 2012)

Tomorrow is the day.

I’m kind of scared.

Or maybe a lot scared. I’ve been dreading this day since I turned 38. Actually, I’ve been dreading it since I was a teenager. I know some people stress about turning 30, but for me, 30 was no big deal.

40 is different.

Tomorrow, I will not only be older than all the Presents heroines, but older than the heroes. Statistically speaking, I will be in the middle of my life in a way that no amount of creative denial can deny. Like many of you, I grew up on romance novels and always knew I wanted that big happy ending – husband, work I loved, children.

Now what?

Marrying the man of my dreams, settling down, writing for Harlequin Presents, having children – it’s amazing to me how all my dreams came true. I’m gobsmacked by that, and deeply grateful.

But now…I need some new impossible dream to strive for.

What will that dream be? Honestly, I have no clue. I went to Seattle for a plot group weekend with three other authors in March and my mind went blank when they asked me to clearly state my goals for the upcoming year. I don’t have a goal. I just have a feeling.

I want to live more boldly.

I want to stop being afraid to take chances.

And I want to stop worrying what other people think of me. (Because you guys know the truth – I’m a total dork. I could trip over my own feet. So who do I think I’m fooling?)

Which do you think is harder – pursuing your dreams? Or even figuring out what they are in the first place?

I was thinking about that last summer, as I wrote my new Presents, A Night of Living Dangerously. Though she’s only in her 20s, Lilley Smith is feeling like a failure. She recently moved to San Francisco, determined to spend time with her new boyfriend, and (more importantly) to start a handmade jewelry business. But once she’s in San Francisco she finds herself avoiding both. Instead, she just spends all her time at her dead-end job, as the file clerk for an international luxury jewelry company, and trying to avoid the notice of her incredibly handsome CEO, Prince Alessandro Caetani.

Does that make Lilley a coward? Or is her body trying to tell her what her mind hasn’t accepted yet – that she was pursuing the wrong man, and the wrong dream?

When I was 20 years old, I once worked as a file clerk, too. I’d dropped out of college to become engaged to a man who was completely wrong for me. I felt broke and hopeless, spending eight hours a day alone, filing numbered files in a windowless room with concrete walls.

Twenty years later, so much has changed. As I type this, I’m sitting in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, overlooking the casino, where I see excited, hungry-eyed people playing desperately to win their heart’s desire.

What is my own heart’s desire now? I don’t know. I don’t.

But I will.

And I have a question, particularly for those of you gorgeous women who are over 40. How have your lives gotten better? What do you love the most? Do you find you care less what other people think? Do you feel more free to be who you really are?

What do you wish someone had told you, the day before you turned 40?

Love,

Jennie

P.S. The person who writes my favorite comment will receive a copy of Lilley Smith’s first story, when she was working as her cousin’s housekeeper in the south of France (in my novella The Count’s Secret Baby, in the August 2011 anthology The Secret Baby Scandal with awesome writer Kate Hewitt). So another good reason to give me your best advice – please!

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