Love, Forever @lcrandallwriter

I just finished working with a wonderful group of talented authors on a project. That project, Love, Forever,  a sampler book of first chapters in books written by eleven writers, just released.  What better way to find a new author or a new book by a favorite one? And it's free!

The project took time and effort. Writers are busy people juggling deadlines and life just like everyone else. But writers truly care about their readers. These authors are no exception. We pooled our best efforts to bring readers a sampler of wonderful romances in a variety of genres.

Here are the blurbs:

This sampler collection of romance first chapters by established, award-winning, and bestselling romance authors is guaranteed to whet your happily-ever-after appetite and send you running back to Amazon to download the full novels to your hearts' content! This eclectic mix of sweet to steamy reads has you traveling from the past to the future, with historical, time travel, paranormal, contemporary, western, and futuristic romance beginnings. And we hope you will not stop at the beginning--and that you download and enjoy every one! 

Here is a sneak peek at the stories in Love, Forever: 

HEAT LIGHTNING (Book 1, Outlaw Ridge, Texas) by Joan Reeves 
Contemporary Romance. Amnesia stole her memory--her life! What Tessa doesn't remember may be the death of her. 

BREDE, (Rodeo Romance, Book 2) by Connie Vines 
Romantic Suspense. Trouble is something hard-edged rancher, Brede Kristensen, knows all about. A widower with a rambunctious young daughter, a ranch to run and an ornery cook who has just runoff, Brede doesn't need another problem. Yet in the midst of a violent storm, he finds an injured woman with no memory of her past--or the man who tried to kill her! 

FINDING MERCY (Return to Welcome #1) by Bonnie Edwards 
Contemporary Romance. Mercy Talbot left Welcome on a high, but she's returned a broke failure. She's messed up her career, love, and family ties. Now, she's found love and a new family. When her career is reborn, will she leave the man and child who've opened their hearts to her? 

TIME AND AGAIN by Nancy Fraser 
Time Travel/Romantic Suspense. Will Kate and Matt's accidental trip to the future bring them back together? Or, tear them even farther apart? 

THE GINGERBREAD HEART by Liz Flaherty 
Sweet Romance. Widowed Cass Logan has done her time as a caregiver. But when her boss, mystery-writer Eli Welcome, needs surgery, Cass is faced with following her heart...or walking away. 

ALL OF MY HEART by Sophie Jacobs, Book 1, A Harbor Falls Romance 
Contemporary Romance. Happy-go-lucky Suzie Hart has a perfect life and a secret. All goes well in her small town world until that secret rides up to her doorstep on a badass Harley and tosses her not-so-perfect world into some kind of big, bad tumble. 

KENTUCKY BLUE BLOODS by Jan Scarbrough 
Contemporary Romance. It's up to Reggie to save what's left of her family homestead and her proud Kentucky heritage. But when Parker shows up to collect his horses, all bets are off. Reggie's never been a gambler and Parker despises losing. But when Kentucky blue blood tangles with British blue blood, are they willing to take a gamble on love? 

ANORA'S PRIDE by Kathleen Lawless 
Western Historical romance. Anora King didn't plan to pretend she was married, but her new neighbors in Boulder Springs jumped to that conclusion. Jesse Quantrill is shocked to find himself lusting after a married woman. And wouldn't a romance between them be the town's biggest scandal ever? 

TWO DAYS UNTIL MIDNIGHT by Lynn Crandall 
Paranormal romance. A bird-shifter. A reclusive billionaire. A project that brings them together. A deadly curse that threatens to separate them forever. 

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SEXY KIND by Karen Kelley 
Romantic Comedy. Mala didn't plan to crash land on Earth. She only wanted to sneak in for a few days and maybe find a man--a real one, but she encounters more than she bargained for with the town sheriff. 

NIGHT KISS by Maddie James 
Time Travel/Paranormal Romance. Claire Winslow vacations on an East Coast barrier island, content with her life and her potential future--until the illusion of a man walking the misty shore haunts her. Then one kiss--a beautiful, soulful, stolen kiss in the night--and her life changes forever.

You can find Love, Forever at all your favorite retailers.  

Get to Know Lynn Crandall

The Write Way Café does something a little different today by interviewing one of the blog's partners. HiDee and Lynn have featured a large variety of talented authors on the blog for a number of years. Today, Lynn Crandall answers the questions we've asked others so you can get to know her a bit better.

When did you first have the thought you'd like to write a book? Was that first thought related to writing romance?
Casually, I made up stories to tell my younger sister when we were both very young. I wrote a short one-act play when I was twelve. My best friend and I were the only characters and we performed in front of our church. It took me awhile to discover my passion for writing, and in particular romance novels. That first book will never see the light of day. I wrote it in longhand with a pencil in a notebook and it took two weeks. Yeah, not good, but it was a start.

What was your path to getting this book written and published? What type of research did you do?
My first book was published by Kensington, then it took me a few years to juggle my way through family, a day job, and writing to produce another novel. That was titled Dancing with Detective Danger, a romantic suspense. For that story, I interviewed police officers and detectives to help me write about private investigator sisters and their private investigator and police officer heroes. The heroine and the hero carried emotional scars that I needed input from a counselor and real people who had experienced those particular traumas. I do Internet research to get background and familiarity with various elements of the story, but I really enjoy first-hand interviews.

Where did the idea for your story come from? 

Dancing with Detective Danger was an exploration of family working together and creating family out of people beyond their biological family. I feel our commonly held beliefs for how family occurs and behaves is often far from the real experience of family. I wanted to explore different ways of finding groups where we get a sense of belonging. All my subsequent books, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, and contemporary romance, carry that theme of what makes a family, within the context of the developing love relationship, of course.

Why did you pick the setting you did? 

I only write stories set in the Midwest. There is so much natural beauty everywhere, but I like the variety of the Midwest. So whether the setting is a fictitious town during a Michigan winter, a rural area of Minnesota, or a big city located on one of the Great Lakes, nature is a frame for the characters’ experience. More recently, I’ve been having fun pinning setting images, which include housing fitting the characters, natural landscapes, town scenes, and other relevant elements, in my Pinterest book boards.

Are your main characters completely imaginary or do they have some basis in real people? Do they reflect aspects of yourself? 

My main characters reflect their individual stories. They are imaginary, but sometimes they may be an amalgam of a variety of personality types. I believe people are born who they are, but are also shaped by their life experiences and behave out of patterns and beliefs, rather than their true selves. Part of their character arcs demonstrate dealing with their understanding of who they are and learning about their true selves and how they want to express their values. So, in a way, that experience for characters reflects my personal goals, abstractly.

Did you face any blocks while writing the book, and if so, how did you handle them? If not, what's your secret? 

I wish I had magical secrets that would prevent blocks. The closest thing I have to a secret is personal, and it is to write. It’s not unusual for me to get bogged down and not write, which makes things worse. Over and over, when I just sit down and dig in, my muse is there with things to say. And I always say a big thank you to my magical, invisible writing team for showing up, because the next day may begin the same way. I really admire writers whose writing is hard won and they just keep soldiering on regardless of level of support, amount of available time, or bouts of discouragement.

What have been surprises you've encountered while writing the book and after? 

With each book, I have been happily surprised at being able to write, and finding that I like what I’ve written. I get pretty attached to my characters and their trials. For instance, in Probabilities, as I was writing I realized I was going kill off a young boy’s mother. I really struggled with that. How could I take away his mother??!! I cried during writing the scenes regarding her death and the child’s life after. That was surprising.

What did you learn? For instance, what did you learn about yourself, your process, the writing world; about technique, skills, and your goals? 

I love words and streaming them together, and reaching for a way to produce the kind of immersive experience I want readers to get. I always strive to improve my skills. But beyond all that, what I’ve learned from writing is that for me it is a vehicle for personal growth, purpose, and having more and more joy becoming more and more who I really am.

Tell us about your writing space and how or why it works for you. 

I lust after the writing space Tom Selleck had in the movie Her Alibi. It was upstairs on the second or third floor in a kind of large attic room with windows and books and disorganized order all around. But…I have a desk in front of a window, two tall bookshelves to my left filled with books I turn to during writing, a shelf with little things that inspire me or tickle my imagination, and filing cabinets. I would love a writing space in a personal library, and a much bigger desk, which would still be orderly in my own disorderly way.

What are some of your favorite books and why? 

Books that have taken my breath away include Persuasion by Jane Austin because of the characters’ palpable aching for each other; Jane Eyre because of the absolute devotion the main characters have for each other; and the Dark Materials series by Philip Pulman for their tremendous depth. I credit Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series with teaching me everything I needed to know about myself. I could go on, because there are the Harry Potter books, the Greywalker series by Kat Richardson, and on and on.

What are you working on now? 

Presently I am writing a contemporary romance I’ve tentatively titled Love and Cherish. It is a runaway bride story that is challenging me.

Would you like to try your hand at writing a different genre? Which one and why? 

I have written romantic suspense, paranormal romance, contemporary romance, and a children’s book. I’ve enjoyed writing them all, but I am keenly interested in writing women’s fiction and plan to start one this summer. I also dream of writing dark fantasy.

If you were not a writer, what would your dream job be? 

I would never not be a writer. LOL But I also would like to study and be knowledgeable about art history.

What aspect of writing gives you the most trouble? 

I’ll admit, writing skillfully to show not tell keeps being a challenge.

Who is your favorite hero/heroine? 

I’m going to be selfish and pick from my own books. Even picking from those books is hard. I love them all. But because Quinn in Probabilities is not a typical romance novel hero, I have a soft spot for him.

Lynn Crandall lives in the Midwest and writes in the
company of her cat. She has been a reader and a writer all her life. Her background is in journalism, but whether writing a magazine or newspaper story or creating a romance, she loves the power stories hold to inspire, empower, and uplift.

Visit Lynn:

Website            Facebook            Twitter  

Amazon            Instagram            Pinterest

The Write Mood by @lcrandallwriter

My latest release, At Midnight, is an anthology of three love stories in which each author, Lainee Cole, Rena Koontz, and I, addresses the theme of an approaching deadline at midnight. My contribution, Two Days Until Midnight, focuses on a reclusive billionaire hero and a bird-shifter whose mission is to protect her flock’s habitat from a project headed by the billionaire. As in almost every story I’ve written, the protagonists face dire situations, their own kind of hell.

Here’s an excerpt:

Tamier’s shoulders sagged. It would have been better if the spell caster had killed him too that day in the ruins. The hole in his chest where his love of life should have been had never closed. It dragged him down every day. It stole his life. On his twenty-eighth birthday, two years ago, the cheetah inside him took away everything he’d worked for and wanted.

He stood and turned to the window, staring into the woods and groves of trees surrounding his house. About a mile away, the forest and hills surrounding his home turned into prairie, with tall prairie grasses. When the cheetah inside him took him over, he was drawn to the prairie to run, wild and fast.

His home was equipped with many amenities that made living here inside the three stories of stone and glass less troubling. But it didn’t relieve the loneliness.

            A memory of the spell caster’s grinning face taunted him. Tamier slammed his fist into the stone wall of his office. “I hate you!”

The familiar warning aura scratched like sandpaper under his skin. Stripping off his clothes, he ran down the three flights of stairs to the main level in his house and tore open the back door, racing the cheetah. Panting, he fought the transformation with every iota of his will. Pain shot through his bones, every one of them, twisting them into the shape of the beast. His body throbbed with each cell’s change. Helpless to stop it, Tamier watched paws replace his hands and feet, spotted fur replace his skin, and a thirst for speed bunch his muscles.

            He burst into a full charge, dust churning up behind him as he sprinted through the tall prairie grasses. His ears picked up tiny sounds of rabbits fleeing, of wind streaming around his sleek body, and grass swooshing as he sliced through. None of it, not the speed and agility to run faster than the wind, or the strength and coordination of his muscles, exhilarated him. He wouldn’t, couldn’t take pleasure in any of it.

            All he could do was attempt to outrun his curse until exhaustion returned him to his human form and he took refuge in the solitude of his home.

I love to write intrigue, suffering, and love’s triumph. But I’ve wondered lately if that kind of writing is true to myself or indicative of a generalized mood. I read an article that suggested a writer in a depressed mood would be inclined to write dark stories. Maybe it’s true. There are many stories of troubled genius writers. I’m not a genius and I’m not depressed. But it’s an interesting consideration to contemplate if I’m drawn to writing a certain type of story because of my interior life. I am an introvert. A deep, thoughtful story that showcases the emotional turmoil of characters is my kind of story, whether writing or reading. Now I could cringe to think I could be revealing my psyche in my characters. I’d rather believe I’m tapping into the existential prevailing mood of humanity.

Writers tap into what’s relevant to their writing. Inspiration and fuel for stories comes from personal experience, but probably also personality and curiosity play a role as well. Is there a Write Mood? What kind of stories do you write and read? Does your mood -- happy, optimism, sorrow, or fear -- play a role?

Find At Midnight on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers.

You're Most Alive When? by @lcrandallwriter

What makes you feel alive? The answer to that is probably different for different people. It can be simple, as I suspect it is for two of my sons as they sail down a snowy mountain on their boards.

But it also can be complex, because humans are complex and carry around old patterns that dictate how we live our lives.

I have often said that I like to put my characters in danger, push them to an edge and see how they manage to not only survive but thrive. I do not want to go through what my characters do. I feel alive when I take a sip of my morning coffee. I do not want to stand toe to toe with a killer or mob boss. But the heroine in my first Crimson Romance title, Dancing with Detective Danger, does. 

Heroine Sterling Aegar is not afraid of danger; in fact, she loves the thrill of it. Working as a private investigator with her sister Lacey, she can hold her own. When a gun is pointed at her, she breaths in more air and her heart pumps hard. The thrill is what lets her know she’s alive. The more peril, the better.

But she mistakes numbness for fearlessness. Too many deaths and losses early in life have convinced her that everyone leaves. Instead of accepting the risk of loving Detective Ben Kirby, her former lover, she has put him and any possibility of true love safely behind her emotional walls.

However, numbness of the spirit does not allow spontaneous, joy-producing living. Sterling has to confront old wounds and learn that “alive” changes when healing takes place. And at that point she can make genuine decisions, not follow patterns she believes keep her safe.

Sterling’s journey of facing inner conflict is a common aspect of living people face or ignore. But on a more lighthearted level, we can all finish the statement, You know you’re alive when… For myself, I feel most alive when I see a pattern for what it is and make a choice. It’s a rush I enjoy. But I also enjoy the rush of diving into the brisk waters of Lake Michigan. I know I’m alive when I slice through the water and every sense is touched. I know I’m alive when I watch kindness between people and can pause and admire it fullheartedly. (Yes, I made up that word.) I know I’m alive when I feel the wind and sun on my skin as I ride my bike. I could go on and on but I’d rather learn how you would finish the sentence.

You know you’re alive when…

Dancing with Detective Danger is on sale on Amazon for the month of February for $1.99 http://a.co/i0ur8cR

© Jeffrey Van Daele | Dreamstime Stock Photos

Where Ideas Come From

I’m one of the few writers who has never been asked where my ideas for stories come from. I’ve heard it’s a common question. Sitting at my computer thinking on ideas, I stopped and wondered about my answer to that question. Hmm…where do my ideas for fiction come from?

I’m pretty sure if someone had asked me this question a few years back I would have said my ideas come from life around me. There is so much diversity of life that the “What if” question can result in many story answers. What if planet Earth had two suns? What if two sisters who truly loved one another decided to work together? What if those sisters were orphaned at a young age? What would be their underlying issues that drive them?

So yes, life is full of ideas for stories. As an author, my problem is not so much having too few ideas but having ideas popping up all the time.

But sitting at my computer I realized my ideas come from some of my basic beliefs: Life is not what we think it is; average individuals are true heroes; internal problems drive us but typically are the way out of pain and lack of awareness.

I want to triumph the ordinary hero and heroine and illustrate how great humans can be, so my stories develop around characters with heart. I consider the man down the street who has clarity about how to live a life of inner strength and quality character. Or the young woman at the grocery store who feels different but faces what that does to her and comes out on the other side of it with more self-awareness and respect for herself. Those struggles are very human, and the way characters travel those types of journeys can speak to life lessons we all can benefit from.

Here’s an excerpt from Dancing with Detective Danger in which heroine Lacy Aegar faces her fear of letting down her walls of protection and getting hurt, a coping mechanism from childhood when her father was murdered.

“Dog?” Sterling started, just as the streak of black and brown fur rambunctiously rounded the corner. “Mr. Teeth! What is he doing here? He’s still limping?”

 

Ben crouched to corral the dog, and began scratching him affectionately under the chin. “The neighbors at the condo said his name is Joe, not Mr. Teeth. Somebody had to take him in. The animal control guys wanted to keep him, but he’s our only witness to the Witt murder.”

“Excuse me, did you say witness?”

“Yes, witness. And yes, he’s limping. The vet said he has a bruised muscle. Probably got kicked.”

Sterling watched uneasily, thinking of stepping out through the still open front door. “Well that might explain why Lacey and I could get away from him at the condo, he had a lame leg. You two seem to have hit it off.”

“He’s not so ferocious once you get to know him. He’s all bark. Besides, we have a lot in common. We’re both trying to get over broken hearts.”

Sterling’s temper instantly flared. “It won’t work, you know. Your little comments won’t change anything. You’re only driving me crazy!”

    

“I’m driving you crazy? I’m driving you crazy?” Ben stood to face her as Joe ambled away into the living room.

“Yes.” Slamming her hands on her hips, Sterling stared Ben down. “Your comments keep bringing up old stuff. Stuff we settled two years ago.”

In one second, he slammed the door shut and strode close to her. Standing inches from Sterling’s face, Ben peered down at her. “We never settled anything. You may have, I don’t know, but we never settled anything.”

Ben’s eyes locked hers and suddenly Sterling felt her walls tumble. The pain filling his face gripped her heart. She knew she caused it. She had never meant to hurt him so terribly. Doing the right thing shouldn’t be so painful. Caught between the fear of what could happen and the agony of the moment, Sterling closed her eyes and collapsed against his chest. “I’m so sorry, Ben.” Ben’s body, rigid and hard, instantly drew up the buried cravings for his touch from deep and low inside her. As she let her mind relax, she felt a matching response, the taut muscles of his chest molding to her body.

It’s in these moments when average individuals challenge their status quo that their lives can change, and that is exciting fodder for story ideas.

Dancing Detective Danger is presently $1.99 at  https://amzn.com/B00YDM8HQA 

https://youtu.be/UUbKNNxOe3w

Have you ever learned a life lesson from a book? What was it and what book?