Her Cinderella Complex - Jenna Bayley Burke

The title came first. I have always had an addiction to romance novels, and anything with Cinderella in the title simply does it for me. The title popped into my head, I wron it down, and so began the story of a runaway bride who gets to have her honeymoon anyway.

I refused to plot this story, so when it started I wasn’t sure where it would end. In fact, where the book starts now is two chapters later than it did when I drafted it, but that is for the best. The story begins with Heather coming to work for Curtis, and really sets the tone for the successful boss and his fiesty assistant.

The story was fun to tell, especially peeling back the characters layer by layer. Does it make me a bad person that I enjoyed the emotional agony I put them through? Nah.

I worked everything I love about romance novels into this book – office romance, marriage of convenience, a private island, romantic situations, the quirky heroine, and a swimming pool scene I still get excited about. When I saw that my references to Great Expectations made it past my editor I was in heaven!

Not since the first book have I enjoyed writing so much. Writing Her Cinderella Complex was fun from beginning to end!

Read an excerpt of HER CINDERELLA COMPLEX here:
http://samhainpublishing.com/excerpt/her-cinderella-complex

Jenna Bayey-Burke
http://www.jennabayleyburke.com/

Veronica Wolff ~ Master of the Highlands

I was a burnt-out and unfulfilled dot-com drone when I began Master of the Highlands. I’m a history buff who has always fantasized about what it would be to travel back in time, experience that world around me, meet those people. Writing time-travel fiction based on real historical figures and events was the closest I could come to escaping my world and being back there myself.

I knew I wanted to write a story set in the Scottish Highlands. I’m a big fan of Scottish history, where such high stakes bred so many stories of great courage and sacrifice. (Okay, and those kilts aren’t so bad either.)

I’d targeted roughly the seventeenth-century as my preferred era. Any later and the Jacobite rebellion would be unavoidable, and Diana Gabaldon has already delved into that so thoroughly and successfully. Much earlier than the 1600s, and I’d predate the technological and cultural developments that most interested me.

I began to research, devouring anything and everything I could find online, and I kept running across Ewen’s name. He never bowed to Cromwell’s redcoat forces. He was a swordsman without equal, who never sustained a wound in his ninety years of life. He’s credited with killing the last wolf in Scotland. Gracious, loyal, wise, tall, noble, imposing, and fearsome are among the many grand words that have been used to describe him. He’s referred to as “Ulysses of the Highlands.” Sir Walter Scott immortalized him in “The Lady of the Lake,” basing a critical fight scene on one of Ewen’s most famous, most brutal battles (which I also recreate!)

Ewen Cameron’s reputation in the history of the Highlands is nothing short of mythic, and yet, I wondered, where were all the movies about him? All the books? And so, as a hero for my first book, Ewen was a no-brainer.Narrowing the timeframe down wasn’t too difficult. The story behind his Battle of Achdalieu held great appeal. Ewen was so young then, leading his men to fight, facing down Cromwell’s forces, defending Cameron lands. The stories of his feats in battle were so outrageously heroic—and his own personal tragedy so shattering—that this 1654 battle quickly became my focal point.

Lily, my heroine, came readily from there, though you’ll forgive this first-time author some overlap (yes, the heroine also happens to be, you guessed it, a disenchanted dot-commer…) Now if only I could figure out how to get my own self back there for real!

Please visit my web site where you can read more about the real history behind Ewen’s story, see photos of Cameron country, and enter a contest to win a gorgeous 10 X 15 photograph from artist Rebecca Cusworth. http://veronicawolff.com/

Veronica

Dakota Cassidy

The idea for my book The Accidental Werewolf came to me after I attended the RWA conference in Dallas in 2004. I was there meeting my agent for the first time face-to-face and it so happened that we were also sharing the hotel with a Mary Kay Cosmetics convention.

I spent some time talking to the women who were attending, and being a big fan of all things girly, I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the colorful suits these women wore to indicate their levels of hierarchy in the company and the tiaras they donned for a big ball they were all attending. I’m an ex-small-time beauty queen, and I have to admit to a little tiara envy J

Almost two and a half years later I’d decided to take what I’d learned from that convention and turn it into a proposal. Now I write paranormal comedies, so it was only natural that when I decided to involve multi-level cosmetic sales in my book, I’d make up my own company and my own rules and really play up the sometimes over the top run to cosmetic greatness. Thus the fictional company Bobbie-Sue Cosemetics was created and my heroine Marty Andrews, a bit of a loner, rabid about her climb to makeup success, and an overall smart-mouth, who’s accidentally bitten by a werewolf, was born.

The Accidental Werewolf is a snarky, fun-filled romp and in part, an homage to all of us girly girls, and I so hope you’ll take a peek and come play in my zany werewolf world!

Dakota Cassidy