Since Crossroads is out in just a few days (you know it’ll probably go on sale a day early at My Bookstore & More…eee!) I’m going to share our respective playlists for Derek & Nicole.  I can’t speak to Donna’s method of building a playlist, but mine can be split pretty evenly between songs that make me think of a character, songs that are thematic for a character, and songs I think the character would listen to.  That can make mine, at least, a bit chaotic…but hey.  It’s what I listen to when writing!

&

In Cry Sanctuary Brynn was introduced at pretty much the lowest point of her life.  Her orderly world has been upset, her five year plan has been destroyed, and oh yeah, she found out her sister was a werewolf when she got kidnapped to be used as leverage.  And because Brynn is not used to the role of damsel and victim, it’s hard to say what upset her more–being kidnapped and terrorized, or being kidnapped and terrorized soley as a means to an end.  Brynn Adler does not deal well with being a disposable commodity, and much of her discomfort in Sanctuary Lost can be blamed on the fact that the bad guys aren’t out to get her, they’re out to hurt her sister by things–and people–Abby loves.

Brynn and Abby have a very specific relationship dynamic, even if they don’t see it themselves.  In fact, in Sanctuary’s Price (book #3, due out in October), their best friend Dylan sums it up rather neatly:

Dylan is a smarty, which is one of the reasons I love him to death. But more on that later.

Donna and I like to make playlists for our characters, songs that they’d listen to or songs that fit the place they are during the book we’re writing.  So I took a screenshot of Brynn’s playlist, which is a bit of both:

(Yes, for anyone who follows me on twitter, putting this together is why I had my random Natalie Imbruglia karaoke dance break yesterday.)

If I had to pick one song from that list, it would totally be Deftones, Change.

Random Facts About Brynn:

• She loves Pop Tarts. A lot. Nothing is ever so bad that it can’t be helped by Pop Tarts.
• She’s addicted to HGTV.
• She spent four months as a vegetarian to make one of her hippy boyfriends happy.  Eventually she chose steak over him.
• In college she took archery as an elective but couldn’t hit the target.
• She decided she wanted to be in government when she was seventeen, and has spent the years since as a vocal, active liberal with strong feelings on gun control.
• …and now she’s involved with an ex-Special Forces badass with a grenade launcher in his closet.

Here’s your chance!  Got any questions about Brynn? Want to know what makes her tick? Wondering how she’s going to handle tripping over Joe’s weapons?  Wanna know what’s in store for her?  Ask!  I’ll answer!  (Okay, I might answer cryptically, but I’ll answer.)

Cry Sanctuary & Sanctuary Lost are available now.

Mackenzie Brooks has a heavy load on her shoulders in Crux. Not only does she start off the book on the run from a madman, but it’s through her eyes that readers discover the world of Southern Arcana. When she stumbles into the middle of a magical mystery, she’s completely out of her depth. Magic is the realm of fairy tales, fantasy and fanatics, and Mackenzie Brooks has always been a practical woman.

Writing Mackenzie was hard, but it was rewarding, too. No one can take the revelation of a world beyond their own completely in stride, so it’s lucky that she had a few advantages–and a hero who removed doubt from the equation by showing her magic in action.

The real reason Mackenzie is able to pick herself back up, though, is because she’s always known there was something a little off about the way she fit with the world. Maybe it was the little things: the fact that she almost never got sick, the fact that she excelled in dancing and sports due to natural grace that was just a little inhuman. Or maybe it was the dreams, the ones she could never completely remember but knew were important.

In the end, Mackenze rallies and is ready to take her fate into her own hands. And she’s not going to let any generation old conspiracy dictate who she spends the rest of her life with. Donna and I don’t play with the destined mate trope much, but in Crux the heroine does have a destined mate. The real question is what’s stronger: destiny or love.

Find out the answer on March 3rd at Samhain Publishing.

Noelle loved sex. She loved it fast and dirty and slow and sensual and a thousand ways in between.

She especially loved sex that was nothing but pure sensual indulgence. Plenty of her trysts took place outside the walls of the Garden, with only her own whims and pleasures guiding her choices. But sometimes she needed more, needed the release that could only be found with a warrior.

That’s right, I said it. I said it in the story, and I’m saying it here: this heroine loves sex. She’s not having it because she has to (though maybe in a way she does) or because it’s her job (though maybe in a way it is)… Noelle loves sex, and she’s okay with that.

Sometimes I want to read (or write) about a heroine who has no deep emotional conflict about her desires, who is comfortable with all the things she might want the hero to do to her in the dark (or the light, or the bathtub…) I think there’s a very powerful message in that, the message that we don’t need a man with a magic penis to show us the meaning of pleasure. And maybe the message that rockin’ orgasms and love are not necessarily connected. One can, in fact, exist without the other. And maybe finding the latter should be a lot harder than finding the former.

Noelle is a receptive psychic, one strong enough that she was raised in the Healer’s training facility on the space station Elysium. She can take other people’s pain and fear into herself and release it to the world, and doing so satisfies the power inside her. It’s a pampered, sheltered life living in the finest luxury while the galaxy around her goes to hell in a war that won’t end, but Noelle does her part by healing the psychic warriors who are forced to use their gifts to kill.

Part healer, part therapist, part courtesan… Noelle is a complicated woman with complicated needs. She lives a life of beautiful illusion, and in the end what she needs from her hero is not hot hot sex–not that she’d dissing it, of course, but he’s not the first to give her that. What she needs is reality, a chance to live in a world that isn’t the fabricated paradise of Elysium. And that’s what our dangerous and tired fighter pilot hero wants to give her: something real.

On Sale Now at Noble Romance

Poor Donna has admitted that Oliver was hell to write because he didn’t have much to say. If we’d had a heroine who was equally reticent, this book could have gone downhill fast. Luckily there’s nothing shy or withdrawn about Hazel Young. In fact, if Oliver had had something to say, he might have had trouble getting a word in edgewise. After all, with Ginny as one of her main influences growing up, there wasn’t much chance she was going to turn out quiet and demure.

Hazel also will always be special to me, because she helped me break my personal record of how many times I could use some variation of the word ‘fuck’ in one sentence. As seen here in this snippet from Wild Card:

Hazel’s snarl tore through the room. “Oliver fucking Russell can go fuck himself, with his fucking hands and his fucking growling orders and all of his fucking hotness.” And with that completely incoherent statement out of the way, the girl burst into hysterical tears.

In spite of Lottie’s attempt to raise a well behaved young lady, Ginny has obviously had an affect on her vocabulary.

But all joking aside, in Calling the Bluff Hazel is facing a pretty awful situation. Most of the single werewolf men in town are suddenly paying attention to her, but it has nothing to do with who she is. Hazel’s too much of a romantic to enjoy attention from men who are only interested in the fact that she’s due to have her first mating soon.

And there’s that unfortunate question of Oliver Russell. Hazel’s been in love with him for a long time (in fact, in the book she mentions the precise moment she lost her heart to him). She’s experimented a little bit with human men, but sex with other werewolves is a whole different ballgame…and one her instincts aren’t interested in experiencing with anyone but Oliver.

I love this picture because it pretty much sums up both halves of Hazel. She’s not tough and tomboy-ish in the same way Ginny is, but there’s that glint of something in her eyes that makes it clear that Lottie didn’t raise a perfectly behaved young lady, either. She’s strong and she’s going to grow up to be formidable, but right now she’s a young lady in trouble, and Oliver may be the only one who can help her. It just sucks that he’s the one who could break her heart, too.

Calling the Bluff: On Sale Now

And she said to me, “Well…is there any reason it has to be a vignette? Why don’t we write something longer?”

So the first Mystic Valley novel was born. Kiara Avery changed a bit when I decided she’d make a good nurse, just because I felt it would be too cruel to have her absorb so much pain and suffering from others. So she became more of a projector than receiver, and how that affected her, especially in relationships, shaped her quite a bit.

I definitely had Rashida Jones in mind from the start when it came to a physical representation of Kiara. That sort of slight frame and delicate look suited her in my mind, and is one of the things that ignited our hero’s protective instincts. LOL Kiara looks like you could easily break her, and maybe you could physically. But damn, that woman has a will of pure steel, and emotional fortitude to match. She needs it, you know, to make it through the book.

And to be a good match for Adrian, our determined, alpha-as-all-hell-on-fire hero. Though his alpha nature does make him want to take care of Kiara, he realizes there’s nothing weak or retiring about her. And, you know, that’s one of those life-injected-into-art things I’m very fond of–the contrast of inner and outer strength, and how a person you might think of as frail or easily endangered can be one of the strongest people you’ve ever met. It’s a concept I explored in a way with Abby in Cry Sanctuary, and one I’ll continue to touch on from time to time. I just find it fascinating.

I’m really glad Loose Id contracted this book, because I love love love the story and really wanted to share it. Adrian and Kiara have amazing chemistry, and an attraction that just blows them both away. I’m really excited to be sharing Kiara and Adrian with everyone, because I just adore them.

(Don’t forget to enter the Last Hope contest!)

When Bree first began to develop her concept of the lovely, carefree Leofric, I didn’t know he was going to need a heroine of his own. I thought he was a blast, but he was just “Zack’s drinking buddy.” I didn’t realize it was only a matter of time before he’d need a fascinating woman to distract him from Last Call’s best top-shelf whiskey.

Then Last Call took a different turn, and Zack’s happy ending got shuffled to something of a spin-off series. But we still needed to tie up the basic premise of Last Call. Enter Caitlin, my favorite naughty virgin.

I say “naughty virgin” because that’s exactly what she is. When Bree and I first conceived of the series, one of the things we definitely wanted to tackle was a drink for someone who needed to lose their pesky virginity. Let’s face it, a paranormal series is the perfect place to explore a story about virgin sacrifice and how that may not always be an outdated or figurative situation.

But when I started thinking about Leo’s heroine, I knew we’d be walking a fine line between “sweet young thing” and “OMG don’t let Leo NEAR HER.” Caitlin was actually sort of perfect. She’s the only non-witch in a line of witches who favor black magic, and an old family prophecy says that sacrificing the virgin psychic (that’d be her) at just the right time will garner untold power from the forces of darkness. To this end, her family has managed to keep her sequestered enough, but not entirely cut off from the world. So she’s very educated about her own body–and what she likes. She just hasn’t had sex with a guy yet.

And that’s really what Caitlin is all about. She’s sweet, but not that sweet, and just because she’s a virgin doesn’t mean she knows nothing about getting it on. She manages to give Leo a run for his money, and that’s saying something!

I had to do a lot of browsing in order to find the right combination of sex kitten and just plain cute. Then I happened across this picture of Lacey Chabert and I was like, “See? That’s cute. Poor Leo won’t know what hit him.”

And, ahem. He didn’t.

Virginia Howard has some issues when it comes to love and the inherent dependence that comes with it. She’s self-sufficient, but her real problem isn’t with having to depend on a man for practical matters. Her real terror involves letting herself love.

Wild Card wasn’t long enough to delve into how Ginny managed to deal with most of her issues, so we got to come in to the story right at a pivotal point–the moment where she’s fooled herself into thinking she can take what Jack Owens is offering and then walk away unscathed. She’s denied herself (and him) long enough, but she still doesn’t want to lose herself in him because she knows she’ll let him down.

Oh, Ginny.

From the start, I knew I wanted Ginny to have a sort of defiant sexuality. Everything about her would be challenging, a real “catch me if you can” kind of vibe. I found this picture of Laura Prepon which embodied that sort of earthy but prickly beauty, and it was exactly the mood I wanted to convey.

Bree likes to go on about her alpha men and how much they annoy her. I have to admit, I found myself suffering a little of this with Ginny. She’s hot and she knows it, and she’s so determined not to let her guard down… It was a little bit of a relief when Jack finally–

Ahem. But that would be a spoiler, I guess.

Life is often busy for a writer, and we hadn’t even decided to do these character profiles back when our first release, Moonshine, first came out. But recently I’ve been working on some revisions on Last Hope while Donna slaves away at edits on Crux, and it occured to me that we’d never gone back to the beginning to talk about Claire Franklin. Moonshine is the first of three Mystic Valley shorts that provide background on some of the characters of Mystic Valley. Claire and Lars plays a pretty large role in Last Hope, so it’s not surprising that doing revisions got me to thinking about this first couple.

First off, this picture is another of the ones I found on a stock photo site during late night browsing. I stopped right away and sent it to Donna without a word, who replied, “Why hello, Claire.” Yep, it was that obvious. Don’t let those big blue eyes fool you, though. A sweet little library sciences student she may be, but if you hurt someone she loves, Claire will kick your ass. And then she’ll kick your friends’ asses, just for good measure.

Claire Franklin is a young woman who has been fighting herself for as long as she can remember. On the surface, she and Lars are very much the tale of a good little girl who meets a man from the wrong side of town, but Claire would never have been the right woman for Lars if their story had been that simple. Claire is an incredibly strong shapeshifter, the kind of woman who would most likely grow up to garner considerable respect from the supernaturals around her–and maybe a healthy dose of fear.

Unfortunately, Claire was born to a pair of east coast socialites who had gotten so used to hiding their supernatural roots that they continued to downplay them as much as possible, even when magic became an every day occurance. Claire grew up having one command driven home over and over again: pretend to fit in.

Not fun for a young woman fighting to come to terms with the power inside her. Her internal struggle led her to make quite a few poor choices after she rebelled against her parents and went to college in the supernatural capitol of North America. Many people would probably say that traipsing into the Valley’s most dangerous shapeshifter bar in search of a good time was the very worst of those many mistakes.

As for whether it was… well, that’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

	Claire is tired of pretending to be polite, docile…human. She wants to unleash the animal inside her, and she wants to do it with a man who can really handle her. Then she meets Lars, a dangerous, sexy alpha, in a smoky bar. They share some moonshine, a potent shifter aphrodisiac, and have blisteringly hot sex. Their one night of intoxicated passion leaves her wanting more, but Lars isn’t interested in a woman who can only let loose while under the influence. Claire must then decide whether she’s ready–and willing–to truly embrace her wild side.
Read an Excerpt Online for Free

]]> http://moirarogers.com/blog/archives/435/feed 3 http://moirarogers.com/blog/archives/386 http://moirarogers.com/blog/archives/386#comments Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:30:32 +0000 Bree http://moirarogers.com/blog/?p=386

Zoe Bennett is a woman with a problem. An accident turned her into a werewolf a year and a half ago. Introduced to the realities of the supernatural by the co-worker who turned out to be a werewolf, Zoe got romantically entangled with him before she realized he was far more interested in hiding his new girlfriend from the stronger wolves in the pack than he was in teaching her what her new life entailed. Their rocky relationship didn’t long survive the first time she went into heat, and Zoe ended up a lone wolf in the big city.

And that made going into heat the second time pretty much the definition of torture.

Zoe was a fun heroine, and possibly one of my favorites. She’s a sweet, smart girl without a lot of baggage, even though by rights she has her share of things to be emo and broody about. Zoe’s a little shy, a lot tough, and will kick your ass at any first person shooter game you can name. She also makes good money in her day job as a network specialist and systems administrator, and is a Grade A Geek.

I may not be Zoe’s flavor of Geek (Systems administration? Kill me now…) but Donna and I both have a healthy strain of Geek Pride, so it’s no surprise that we had fun with Zoe and Connor’s tale of geek love. From the first minute he lays eyes on her (or more important, on her PEBKAC T-shirt) Zoe has Connor’s undivided attention. And she keeps it by being herself: smart, a little awkward, a little shy but a sweet, funny girl nonetheless.

I don’t know who the woman in this photo is. I came across it on a stock-photo site and all I could say was, “Hello, Zoe.” Everything about the picture is perfect, from the sort of sloppy hair to the anything-but-revealing sweater right down to the look in her eyes. I love this picture because the emotion and expression and everything is exactly how I imagined her.

Though I won’t lie–if I had to pick a second best picture, I would pick the picture on the cover. A brunette in jeans and a black T-shirt wrapped around a mysterious but muscular man… well, that’s Kamikaze.

	Zoe Bennett is an inexperienced werewolf in the grip of her mating cycle. With no pack and no mate, Zoe must brave the supernatural crowds of Last Call, the bar where your drink order tells everyone what you need. Kamikaze: Werewolf in heat, looking for a temporary mate. The chase is on, and security specialist Connor O’Malley intends to win, if only because the sweet young woman at the bar looks unprepared for what the night might bring, in and out of the bedroom. Little does he know that, when he catches her, he may not be satisfied being just a temporary mate.
Read an Excerpt Online for Free

]]> http://moirarogers.com/blog/archives/386/feed 3