Lately, some of the comments I’ve received from readers regarding one of the bad guys in Forged in Fire, my debut romantic suspense, has reminded me of an interview she did after her book All The Queen’s Men came out.

All the Queen’s Men featured black ops specialist John Medina, a secondary hero she’d introduced in Kill and Tell, a prior book.  John Medina was such a strong character in Kill and Tell, readers everywhere were clamoring for his love story and I was no exception. I couldn’t wait for John’s story. But when I finally read the book, the character that intrigued me the most wasn’t John Medina, rather it was an arms dealer named Louis Ronsard. And no, Louis wasn’t the hero of the book, far from it, he was the villain.

But Linda Howard made me care about him, she made me understand why he did the terrible things he did. She didn’t white-wash him. She didn’t back off and make him redeemable. She didn’t turn him into a hero.  He was a villain plain and simple, but he was a villain who did very bad things for a good reason. A reason most people understood, a reason most people identified with.

Everything Ronsard did was for love.

Everything he did was to protect a daughter he adored, a daughter who was dying.  To save his daughter, he was willing to do anything, sacrifice anyone. Indeed everything Ronsard did, good and bad, was driven by his love for his child.

And because we understood Ronsard’s choices, we embraced him. Linda Howard said in one of her interviews the question she got asked the most was when she was going to give Ronsard his own love story.  Apparently, the volume of fan mail Ronsard got surprised her. But she said he couldn’t be turned into a hero, because even though he’d been driven by identifiable emotions, what he’d done was inexcusable.  Unforgivable.

He wasn’t hero material, because he wasn’t redeemable, the things he’d done made him unheroic.

But I wonder. . . .

A couple of months ago I read Maya Banks’ Hidden Away, the third book in her KGI series. One of the villains in this book reminded me of Ronsard, but with one big difference. In Hidden Away, even though the villain was capable of great love and felt it toward his sister—most of his dark deeds were not done in the name of love, they were done because he was a sociopath and he was looking out for his own interests. But Maya Banks did something interesting with him; she made me hope he wasn’t the horrific monster that the book’s hero believed him to believe. I kept hoping, right up to the end, that he was an undercover agent and hadn’t really done what everyone accused him of doing. Why? Because I liked him. The love he felt for his sister, and what he’d done to strike back at the men who’d hurt her—these things resonated with me. He wasn’t your token Godless monster.

Although, in some ways it’s easier to read about a Godless monster, one who is incapable of true feeling. It’s easier, because we can’t imagine doing something similar. We can’t identify with their actions, or motivations, so they’re safe. But when it comes to villains doing horrific things because of love, well we identify with that. And if we put ourselves in their shoes, yeah—that’s when the uncomfortable questions arise. What would we do to keep our loved ones safe?

Russ, the villain in Forged in Fire, is more like Hidden Away’s villain than Ronsard. He does terrible things because the outcome benefits him. But he does have one big soft spot. He has a family he adores, a family he would do anything for.  And when this weakness is used against him, he will do anything, sacrifice anyone—including himself—to save the people he loves.

Reader response to Russ has surprised me, as much as the response to Ronsard apparently surprised Linda Howard. I’ve received dozens of emails from people saying they felt bad when he died. Or that he made them uncomfortable, because they found themselves liking him. They kept forgetting what he’d done in the past.

This is a cold-blooded killer who’d sacrificed hundreds of people to his own self-interest. Who had no qualms about killing children if their deaths benefitted him, yet people felt sorry for him.

Because he was capable of love, capable of giving his life for those he loved, readers identified with him. Some of them actually liked him.

Apparently, all it takes to turn a cold-blooded killer into a sympathetic villain is a little love.

What’s the last sympathetic villain you’ve read? Are there any villains you would have liked turned into heroes and given their own story? I have to confess, I was one of the ones who wanted to read Ronsard’s story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Trish McCallan has been writing for as long as she can remember.

In grade school she wrote children’s stories, illustrated them with crayons and bound the sheets together with pencil-punched holes and red yarn.  She used to sell these masterpieces at her lemonade stand for a nickel a book. Surprisingly, people actually bought them. Like, all of them. Every night she’d write a new batch for her basket.

As she got older her interest shifted to boys and horses. The focus of her literary masterpieces followed this shift. Her first full length novel was written in seventh grade and featured a girl, a horse and a boy. At the end of the book the teenage heroine rode off into the sunset . . . with the horse.

These days she sticks to romantic suspense with hot alpha heroes and roller-coaster plots. Since she is a fan of all things bizarre, paranormal elements always find a way into her fiction. Her current release, Forged in Fire, was the result of a Black Dagger Brotherhood reading binge, a cold, a bottle of NyQuil and a vivid dream.

You can find Trish at www.trishmccallan.com.

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Beth Brown doesn’t believe in premonitions until she dreams a sexy stranger is gunned down during the brutal hijacking of a commercial airliner. When events in her dream start coming true, she heads to the flight’s departure gate. To her shock, she recognizes the man she’d watched die the night before.

Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters comes from a bloodline of elite warriors with psychic abilities. When Zane and two of his platoon buddies arrive at Sea-Tac Airport, he has a vision of his teammates’ corpses. Then she arrives—a leggy blonde who sets off a different kind of alarm.

As Beth teams up with Zane, they discover the hijacking is the first step in a secret cartel’s deadly global agenda and that key personnel within the FBI are compromised. To survive the forces mobilizing against them, Beth will need to open herself to a psychic connection with the sexy SEAL who claims to be her soul mate.

FORGED IN FIRE is exclusively available through Amazon.

Click here to buy!

Read the first chapter! 

FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS…Trish McCallan’s is letting us giveaway a digital copy of Forged in Fire to a lucky commentor. This giveaway is open worldwide and will run through the month of February until 11:59pm Feb 29, 2012.

To enter the giveaway, answer the author’s question…

What’s the last sympathetic villain you’ve read? Are there any villains you would have liked turned into heroes and given their own story?

I have to say I really like the title for my blog. I came up with it and then just admired it for a few moments, kind of wishing it were actually true. That’s because my research process is nothing like a fine art. It’s one of those things that’s born out of necessity. Lately, my research process involves writing around the research and then going back when I absolutely can’t move the story forward without looking up some crucial information. And that was the definitely the case with The Rogue Pirate’s Bride.

Research wasn’t always thus. Once upon a time, before I had a husband and a toddler, I enjoyed research. I read whole non-fiction books on topics like Underwear in the Nineteenth Century, Regency Cant, Cooking Through the Ages. I enjoyed these books and savored them.

And thank God I read them when I did because I surely do not have time to read them now!

But as an author of historical romance, I have to carve out time for research. It’s part of the job description. And this is doubly the case when you’re writing a book about something you know nothing about. Something like sailing and ships in the nineteenth century. Something like rogue pirates.

Now you may say, Shana, why would you choose to write a pirate book when you have a small child and very little time to write and know nothing about pirates? That, dear reader, would fall under the topic of Logic, and this blog is about Research.

In all honesty, I’ve wanted to write a book with a pirate hero for years. And I went in to it thinking that I’d just research as I wrote (which is my strategy most of the time). Usually when I’m writing a scene and I come to a fact I need to look up or verify, I put XX in the text and keep writing. Later, when I have time (like at 2 in the morning), I search for all the XXes and look those facts up. I started The Rogue Pirate’s Bride this way. And pretty quickly it read like this:

Bastien hurried down the XX and walked along the XX to the XX. He nodded to the XX and stopped to inspect the XX. But his mind was on Raeven, locked in the XX. 

Not riveted by the story? Me neither. All of those lovely details are so important to set the scene and evoke the feel of the period and the setting. So I did what every great writer does.

I called my dad.

I’m lucky enough to have a father who knows a lot about sailing and ships. And I’m lucky that he agreed to sit down with me and listen to large sections of The Rogue Pirate’s Bride to help me with all those pesky details. Sure, I went to the library and checked out a stack of books on ships and sailing, but it’s not quite the same as having an expert just one text away.

So that’s it. That’s my research process. There’s nothing romantic or mysterious about it. Nothing fine-artish. It’s kind of like everything else in my life–fast, furious, and by the seat of my pants.

What about you? Have you ever gotten yourself in over your head and had to call on Dad (or someone else) to bail you out?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Shana Galen is the author of five Regency historicals, including the Rita-nominated Blackthorne’s Bride. Her books have been sold in Brazil, Russia, and the Netherlands and featured in the Rhapsody and Doubleday Book Clubs. A former English teacher in Houston’s inner city, Shana now writes full time. She is a happily married wife and mother of a daughter and a spoiled cat and lives in Houston, Texas, where she is working on her next regency romance series! For more information please visit www.shanagalen.com, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

THE ROGUE PIRATE’S BRIDE BY SHANA GALEN – IN STORES FEBRUARY 2012

 

Revenge should be sweet, but it may cost him everything…

Out to avenge the death of his mentor, Bastien discovers himself astonishingly out of his depth when confronted with a beautiful, daring young woman who is out for his blood…

Forgiveness is unthinkable, but may be her only hope…

British Admiral’s daughter Raeven Russell believes Bastien responsible for her fiancé’s death. But once the fiery beauty crosses swords with Bastien, she’s not so sure she really wants him to change his wicked ways…

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca (February 7, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402265557
• ISBN-13: 978-1402265556

BUY THE BOOK… Amazon | Barnes & Noble

FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS…Thanks to Sourcebooks, we’re giving away TWO copies of  The Rogue Pirate’s Bride. This giveaway is open to all with a US/Canadian mailing address (No P.O Boxes) will run through the month of February until 11:59pm Feb 29, 2012.

This time around I asked Linda what made her choose to write paranormal out of all the genres out there today. Here’s her response…

Thank you The Book Faery Reviews for having me here!

I’ve been asked why I chose to write paranormal and I’d have to say that it was more that paranormal chose me.

My favorite books growing up were fairy tales and my comic books were Casper the Ghost and Wendy the Little Witch. Yes, it dates me. Hm, I wonder what they’d be worth now if I’d kept them.

We have a house ghost named Frank, so yes, paranormal is all around me. I think he’s a secret cook since utensils tend to disappear at odd times then reappear in the same spot later on. We missed a potato masher for a year until it showed up without warning.

I tend to put a magickal spin on my life. Can be scary at times, but it’s also fun. I don’t have dogs. I have hellhounds. Our parrot has some wild tendencies and even our tortoise has her own methods.

I loved reading the gothic romances back in the 70s and 80s. Some even had ghosts in the attic. But paranormal romances weren’t out there. Then ideas for several paranormals came to mind and I worked them up. When I mentioned them to my then agent I heard “you’re killing me here! I can’t sell those!” I offered to send her the ideas along with wine. :}

But let’s talk timing. My agent sent them on to my editor and the day they landed on her desk was the day she came up with a calendar of books. She said my romance set in Salem, MA was perfect for Halloween and Under His Spell was out there. Not a true paranormal but I loved the elements. Along with that was A Man for Maggie, a murder suspense involving a psychic, No Room at the Inn, which was my Christmas version of Brigadoon, Twist of Fate, what I called another type of Quantum Leap, and Bells Rings and Angel’s Wings, my spin on It’s A Wonderful Life. But readers weren’t totally ready for paranormal romances. The best thing about these books are that they’re back out there as ebooks.

Even if the books weren’t selling back then the idea of paranormal was still there in the back of my mind. There was an idea lingering that would whisper you really need to listen to me.

So I did. Witches who’d been around since the 1300s formed in living color and I knew I had to write the stories.

I talked to pagan friends, researched historical facts to add as background information, and the magickal world I already lived in had become even richer to my senses.

I have snarky bunny slippers that roam the house and harass the dogs. A gargoyle that I sometimes find in my lingerie drawers. A witch who thinks my coffee is hers. Another witch who reminds me romance is a good thing. A hexster who whispers in my ear when I feel the need to get even with someone. One who lets me know I may be short but to stand up for myself as in ‘hey, I’m supposed to be waited on next” and a healer who’s sorry her power won’t cure my cold. One who loves it when I go shopping and so on.

And this is why paranormal chose me.

What about you? What does paranormal do for you? 

- Linda

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Linda Wisdom has published more than 70 novels with 13 million copies sold worldwide including traditional, paranormal, humor, action/adventure romance, and romantic suspense. Her bestselling books have been nominated for RT Book Reviews awards and the Romance Writers of America Rita Award. She lives with her husband in Murrieta, California. For more information, please visit www.LindaWisdom.com.

A DEMON DOES IT BETTER BY LINDA WISDOM – IN STORES JANUARY 2012

A madhouse is not place for a curious witch…

After more than a century, Doctor Lili Carter, witch healer extraordinaire, has returned to San Francisco and taken a job at Crying Souls Hospital and Asylum, where something peculiar and wicked is happening. Patients are disappearing, and Lili wants to know why.

And double dangerous for a demon…

Lili finds herself undeniably attracted to perhaps the most mysterious patient of all—a demented but seriously sexy demon named Jared. What’s behind the gorgeous chameleon demon’s late-night escapades?

Before long, Lili and Jared are investigating each other—and creating a whole new kind of magic.

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca (January 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402236727
• ISBN-13: 978-1402236723

BUY THE BOOK… Amazon | Barnes & Noble

FROM THE BOOK FAERY REVIEWS…Thanks to Sourcebooks, we’re giving away TWO copies of  A DEMON DOES IT BETTER. This giveaway is open to all with a US/Canadian mailing address (No P.O Boxes) will run through the month of February until 11:59pm Feb 29, 2012.

Mr. Darcy. Heathcliff. Mr. Rochester. Any character as played by Jared Leto.

These are the tormented souls who populate our romance novels. Well, they populate the romance novels that populate my shelf, anyway. If we’re looking at the classics or historicals, we’re usually talking about an educated man who lives alone. He’s probably of noble stock, and, thinking he has something to prove, he tortures himself with work, sneers at societal norms and the delicate dance of courtly life, and pines for a woman he can’t have. Or the one he can have, but doesn’t think he deserves.

In the cases of Rochester, Darcy, and Heathcliff, these men could also use some serious social skills training, too. I mean, wow. One of my favorite lines in Jane Eyre is this one, spoken by Mr. Rochester,

“You—you strange—you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh. You—poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are—I entreat to accept me as a husband.”

Honestly, what kind of proposal is that? “You’re not pretty, and you’re broke and you’re short. Wanna get hitched?” That part about loving her as his own flesh would be totally romantic if he hadn’t just spent the entire book proving he loathes himself.

Yet I love that line. I can’t explain it. Something about Mr. Rochester just does it for me, and has since my sophomore year in high school. Also, Michael Fassbender playing Mr. Rochester was, quite simply, delicious. (He does tormented very well, but then, he’s half Irish, and we Irish—even mutt Irish like me—are a broody lot.)

In modern movies, the broody hero drinks too much coffee, sleeps too little, and desperately needs a shower and a shave. He listens to the likes of Evanescence, Tori Amos, or any artist that my husband would refer to as “depressed, whiny boy music.” Maybe he plays the guitar and composes his own music. Perhaps he’s a cop who has seen too much, a man who rides his motorcycle too fast in order to outrun his demons.

He is a lost soul, searching the cold, cruel world for his other half. His wounded heart just needs the love of a good woman to be whole.

And we eat it up.

But here’s my question: Would you actually want to date this kind of man?

The answer is…no.

Sure, the brush of his shadow beard against the hollows of your neck is…oh, hell’s bells, it’s intoxicating. Just hearing the roar of his motorcycle is enough to give you palpitations. He strums his guitar and he may as well be strumming his fingers against your skin. He’s not into sports of any kind, unless you count being winded from early onset emphysema as sport. Instead, the two of you will talk about Rilke or Keats or Shelley or Lord Byron. He’ll probably have something deep to say that will blow your mind.

We love a dark hero in romance novels. I certainly do. But, as it turns out, the hero of my own personal romance isn’t some dark and broody character. He watches The Simpsons and loves football. The music he listens to has far more to do with naked chicks than it does the meaning of our existence. He couldn’t play the guitar if his life depended on it. He laughs loudly and often.

At the end of the day, that’s what I want to come home to.

But gads, I do enjoy visiting the brooding hero every once in a while.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Meggan makes her home in the Wild West with her lawman husband, two children, and a menagerie of pets. She is a member of Romance Writers of America and the Sacramento Valley chapter. When she’s not writing, she can be found playing with her kids, hiking in the mountains, or reading a book.

Follow Meggan… Blog | Facebook

When her father loses her in a poker game, Lexie Markland is sent to work in the household of Nicholas Wetherby for one year to pay off the debt. Innocent, but not naïve, she is savvy enough to know she must maintain her distance from this man, who frustrates her with his relentless teasing but whose kisses bring her to her knees. Because although she may be just another conquest to him, it’s not just her heart in jeopardy should she succumb to Nicholas’ considerable charms.

Since his brother’s death almost a year before, nothing has held Nicholas’ attention for long—not women, not booze, not even an excellent hand at cards. Nothing, that is, until he meets the woman he won in a drunken night of poker. Intrigued by his prize and her chilly reserve, he makes it his mission to crack Lexie’s cool demeanor. But even as passion explodes between them, the question remains: will Nicholas be able to take the ultimate risk…and gamble on love?

• Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
• Publication date: 12/15/2011
• Format: eBook

BUY THE BOOK… Amazon Kindle | Barnes and Noble Nook

After a few years in Minneapolis and Chicago, I began to understand.  It wasn’t about ignoring winter, merely escaping it for a week.  I still disagreed, because I relish all four seasons.  Baltimore just had its first snow (a mere smattering) this week, and I’m craving more.  When I celebrated a milestone birthday and took my last cruise (see the pretty ship to the right?  Meet the Celebrity Solstice, which is everything you’d ever want in a cruise ship, and then some), we went in January to avoid hurricane season.  It felt weird to shed my coat and squeeze into a bikini three days into the new year.

But as I read travel spotlights about cruise season in every magazine and newspaper, is it just the promise of warmer climes which lures people on cruises?  Heck, no!  A cruise is an escapist fantasy come to life.  The minute you step foot on board, you leave your troubles, your deadlines, your real life behind, even in today’s uber-connected world (especially when using the ship’s internet costs $1/minute).  It’s sort of like entering a very happy bubble for seven days.

In the middle of the ocean, surrounded by thousands of miles of water and hundreds of people you 1) don’t know and 2) won’t ever see again, you can be anyone.  Cautious people who won’t even take the stairs two at a time find themselves swimming with sting rays.  You don’t have to be the responsible mom, or the multi-tasker extraordinaire.  No expectations, no accountability, and no diet!  The breakfast buffet had 3 different types of eggs benedict every single day.  So yummy.  Above all else – even if you weren’t raised on The Love Boat like me – a cruise is romantic.

Books are every bit as much an escape.  More so, because they don’t cost thousands of dollars and require a passport!  So let me take you on a vicarious trip to the Caribbean.  In my book Cruising Toward Love, being cooped up on a cruise ship (no matter how lavish) for a week forces two people to escape their past and rediscover their love for each other.  Yes, they kiss on deck, and get snuggly in a hot tub and I can’t even mention the things they do on their balcony!  Get your feet wet with this blurb:Warm, salty breezes, twinkling stars, the steady beat of calypso drums and free flowing rum punch all put you in a sexy frame of mind.  Every physicality is sensuous: the silky sand beneath your toes, the warm kiss of the sun sizzling the coconut scented sunscreen on your skin, even the air touching body parts that have been hidden under wool and fleece since Halloween.  Ooh, and they put chocolates on your pillow every night!  Love feels possible, attainable.  You can take a reckless shot, aim Cupid’s arrow at someone out of your league, because you’ve got nothing to lose in this floating fantasy world.

Can an unexplained breakup and ten years of heartache be cured by the romance – and endless buffets – of a tropical cruise?  When her sister is left at the altar, small town librarian Zoe Balis jumps at the chance to take the bride’s unused ticket for the honeymoon cruise.  But she didn’t count on sharing a cabin with the man who broke her heart ten years ago!

Army medic Nate Hyatt never told Zoe goodbye when he enlisted – or the real reason why he dumped her on prom night after a year as high school sweethearts.  And he never stopped dreaming about the girl he left behind.  Could this voyage be his chance to fix the worst mistake he ever made?  After all, a Caribbean cruise should be romantic… if he can convince her to move past ten years of bitterness and hurt.

Once aboard the luxury liner, Zoe befriends a bored Internet mogul with more heart than tact.  Nate vents his problems to a ship’s photographer battling PTSD.  The four team up on an island hopping treasure hunt.  The stakes grow higher with each of Zoe’s mysterious brushes with death.  They race to discover why she’s a target and who’s behind it, while still competing in the treasure hunt. Zoe’s never gotten over her first love, and is tempted to let Nate back into her life.  But she already lost him once.  She’s not willing to risk loving a man whose career keeps him in a combat zone.  Can Nate breach her defenses and suture her broken heart?  Grab a deck chair and see if they survive the stormy relationship seas as they cruise toward love!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Christi Barth spent years performing in musicals, singing about love and giving people a happy ending in every performance.  Then as a wedding planner she spent every day immersed in romance.  Now she writes it!  Cruising Toward Love is her third book.  While the cruise depicted in this book is wholly fictional, she does love to float around the Caribbean, eating and drinking and relaxing…while safely shaded under a huge hat and wearing SPF 50.  Christi lives in Maryland with the absolutely best husband in the world (sorry ladies, but it’s true!).

During the 18 years that have passed since publication of the first of my 13 novels, the question that readers have posed to me most often is, by far, “Where do you get your ideas?” And the question is perfectly logical. Creativity is sometimes described as “making something out of nothing,” so the making of a novel invariably begins with the mere “nothing” of an idea.

We’ve all heard those classic words of advice to aspiring writers: Write what you know. And I have heeded that advice. Many interests that have developed over the course of my life have found their way into my books—theater, music, architecture, running, and more. These interests have equipped me with minor areas of ready-made “expertise” that can add color, depth, and credibility to the storytelling. As to the “germ” of each story, the inspiration, it seems to be waiting for me when the time comes to start a new project. When a new story is looming, I “raise my creative antenna” and put myself in a more receptive mode for ideas. The inspiration may come from a news story, from an overheard snatch of conversation, from a catchy phrase that seems promising as a title, or from something that I’ve been sitting on all my life. But it’s always out there. The trick for the writer, of course, is to learn to recognize it.

Further, because most of my writing has been in the mystery genre, the initial idea for a story may stem from an interest in a particular motive, means, or opportunity for killing a fictitious, though no less hapless, victim. One of my novels, Boy Toy, involved mushroom poisoning, a topic about which I had no prior knowledge. That’s where old-fashioned research comes into play (far easier now in the age of the Internet), equipping the writer with sufficient knowledge to create a fictive reality with credible authority. In my new mystery, The MacGuffin, I needed a crash course in thermodynamics before I could concoct a believable plot regarding alternative energy and pepper it with the right buzzwords.

The idea is only the beginning, of course. The inspiration phase just seems to happen; the perspiration phase that follows involves considerably more effort and discipline. But it’s the initial idea—that “ah-hah!” moment—that jump-starts the process and gives writers the impetus to roll up their sleeves and get down to the work of storytelling.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Michael Craft is the author of a dozen prior novels and three stage plays. As a mystery writer he has been known for many years as the author of the popular “Mark Manning” series, set in the Midwest, as well as the “Claire Gray” series, set in California. Three of his novels have been honored as national finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. His latest mystery novel, The MacGuffin, features a new protagonist, architect Cooper Brant. In recent years, Michael Craft has broadened his creative focus to include playwriting and screenwriting. He lives in Rancho Mirage, California. 

You can visit his website at www.michaelcraft.com or connect with him at Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001138388778&sk=info.

A cold-case murder fifteen years ago halted promising developments in the quest for clean energy when the rumored prototype of a groundbreaking water engine was stolen or destroyed. Now the race is on to repower America, and Cooper Brant, still grieving that long-ago murder of his father, suddenly finds his family visited by a second violent death, raising the stakes to unearth lost secrets. When Coop discovers how the two crimes are linked, a grim message becomes clear. He’s next.

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Questover Press (July 17, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0615499716
• ISBN-13: 978-0615499710

BUY THE BOOK… Amazon Paperback | Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Paperback

Three HQN Authors Talk About The Art of the First Kiss 

While Harlequin is known primarily for romance, they also offer hotter fare. Today, authors Stephanie Draven, Laura Kaye and Leia Rice are here to talk a little bit about kisses and duel for the hottest. You decide!

The Fever and The Fury…“You do want to go to bed with me, don’t you, Phaedra?”

“Yes.” It was just the one tremulous word, but it was all the permission he needed. He drew her palm to his mouth. Her hand was damp, her pulse leaping beneath his lips. She was so eager. So wanting. Still, she resisted him. “Luke, you know I can’t consent to it. I can’t give you pleasure.”

“Then stop me from taking it,” he said, dragging his teeth up the pale underside of her arm, kissing the soft spot inside her elbow. She seemed entirely undone by this tenderness: she succumbed to it with a helplessness he’d never seen in any woman. It was unfair, some part of him thought. He was taking advantage of her innocence and inexperience. Someone should stop him, because he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

“Luke,” she whispered in warning.

“Stop me,” he said, his lips working up her shoulder and fastening at the pulse just behind her ear, the silk of her dark hair tickling his nose.

When her mouth fell open to speak, his thumb traced her lips and he was rewarded with another moan. His muscles tightened, every part of him straining with the thrill of torturing her for a change and in such a delicious way. “Stop me from kissing you, Phaedra. If you can.”

Stop him, she thought. Stop him!

But as his mouth inched its way along her jawline and found her lips, his honeyed kiss filled her mouth with sweetness. If her existence depended on it—and it may have—she couldn’t have stopped him. Instead, her lips parted and she offered no resistance to the tongue that touched her own.

The intimacy of being kissed by Luke was a revelation. The unanticipated joy of it rocked her to the soles of her feet. How was it that mortals could experience this and ever want to do anything else? She didn’t return his kiss, but let him plunder her mouth. And she wished that he would go on doing it forever.

The Revolutionary Mistress…Pulling the sleeve of her dress down, Rene leaned over and gently kissed the slope of her shoulder.  He kissed the curve of her neck, the line of her jaw, and finally, his lips were on hers.  He parted Mariette’s mouth with his tongue, probing it inside and around her own.  Almost instantly, the kiss went from something soft and gentle, to something ravenous and hungry.

Mariette moaned inside of the kiss.  She moaned at the touch of his fingers over her corset, which he also pushed down so that her breast popped free of its confines, skin meeting with the chilly air.  Her nipple immediately tightened, hardening into a sensitive nub that Rene began to roll between his thick fingers.

“Now what do you want from me?” He asked after breaking the heated kiss. 

In the Service of the King…Shayla’s mind erupted into a cacophony of joyous confusion. She’d been specifically told there would be no kissing. The king did not kiss. But, holy hell! Did the king ever kiss.

His large frame bent down over her, surrounding her in his heat. His full lips sucked and pulled at hers and his tongue demanded entrance and exploration, which she freely granted. His hard muscles bunched and thrummed around her, setting her body on fire everywhere they touched. The scent of powerful masculinity filled her nose, and the exquisite flavor of his tongue in her mouth intoxicated her. And, oh God, every time she felt the passing hardness of his fangs as they kissed made her whimper and moan. Her body readied itself immediately for his, moistening, opening.

Having shielded herself from physical relationships, she was astounded to learn her body had the ability to produce this crazy, urgent euphoria. Her brain scrambled to process each new, maddening sensation. In that moment, she would’ve done anything to maintain the feeling. Was it always like this?

Kael growled low in his chest as his mouth came at her again and again, and Shayla felt the vibration of the feral sound against her breasts. She squeezed her thighs together, seeking friction to satisfy even a little of her now uncontrollable lust. Her mouth was so filled with his probing tongue it was difficult to get enough oxygen, but his kisses convinced her she could live without it as long as he continued to devour her so intensely.

Never had she imagined the expression of physical love could make her feel so wanted, so needed.

His obvious pleasure throbbed against her stomach and flooded her with unbelievable feelings of power, and just a little fear. Because they were off the grid now, outside the bounds of the rules and expectations she’d been taught during her training. And she was thrilled it might mean he was as affected by her as she was by him. Wherever the king was leading them, she was only too happy to follow. In truth, she felt powerless to do otherwise.

Sooooo, what say you? Which kiss was the hottest?

About the Authors…Stephanie Draven is a multi-published award-nominated author of myth-inspired paranormal romance. Writing for HQN Nocturne, Stephanie’s Mythica series asks the question: What if the monsters of ancient mythology still walked the earth…and what if you found out that you were one of them? Currently a denizen of Baltimore, that city of ravens and purple night skies, Stephanie lives there with her favorite nocturnal creatures–three scheming cats and a deliciously wicked husband. And when she is not busy with dark domestic rituals, she writes her books.

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Laura Kaye Voted Breakout Author of the Year in the 2011 GraveTells Readers’ Choice Awards, Laura is the bestselling and award-winning author of a half-dozen books. Hearts in Darkness is a finalist for the EPIC eBook Award for Best Novella, Forever Freed won the NJRW Golden Leaf Award for Best Paranormal of 2011, and North of Need, the first book in the Hearts of the Anemoi series, was named Grave Tells’ Best Book of 2011 and won their 5-STAR Gold Heart Award, and won Sizzling Hot Read of the Year at Sizzling Hot Books. Laura lives in Maryland with her husband, two daughters, and cute-but-bad dog, and appreciates her view of the Chesapeake Bay every day.

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Leia Rice is an avid lover of everything Parisian, Ancient Grecian and Ancient Roman. She wishes that women would still wear the pretty dresses and petticoats that they did back in the 18th century, but she’s well aware how much of a pain they must have been. Leia writes historical fiction, romance and erotica in these  areas, because she cannot get enough of each respective time period.

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Riley Bennett takes the spotlight as a reformed street pharmacist turned dogmatic Aryan Super Soldier. He leads an underground organization dubbed The Order whose sole purpose is to stamp out the spread of crime and corruption so glorified throughout the Urban Culture.

His second in command is one Zoey Fontaine. An teenage ex-heroin addict who was rescued and rediscovered herself within The Order. Her meteoric rise through the ranks of the organization is only measured by her inner strife and struggle to cope with the responsibility of holding everyone she love’s lives in her fingertips.

The third star in this contemporary Urban Tragedy is known only as Savage. Based on how his brutal dictatorship in the streets and blood thirsty terror tactics illustrate his rule of inner-city Washington D.C. The Police murdered his family at a young age, so through fear and violence he surgically strikes back at civilized society. All the while building an empire built on stacks and stacks of dirty blood money.

Surprisingly, I seem to fabricate my characters from personality traits I find particularly intriguing. Is it bizarre to base an entire character on one singular emotion? Or even a handful of emotions that seem to guide the character’s reactions in any situation? I found that the emotion seems to float to the surface of a story much better when an emotion portrays a character, instead of a character portraying an emotion.

When planning a Story, I always develop a base set of events, as any other should at the onset of a story. Yet I found that letting the plot guide itself as you write is MUCH easier than trying to connect all the dots at the end of a story. It saves the author the trouble of utilizing lame or unimaginative connective sub-plots to eliminate any holes that might arise in the story.

To be perfectly honest, Real Eyez Realize Real Liez was first written and developed within the ever so luxurious NC-DOC. Where I wasn’t allowed maps, or any sort of research material. So I really had to pick a city out of a hat, and D.C. didn’t work at first, but after swerving and grinding around the curbs of the storyline I started really utilizing the landscape of Washington, D.C. To my advantage. In particularly, the landmarks, waterways and where potential Gang Territory might arise. It all fell into place with a nearly flawless sort of grace. 

One Of My Favorite Excerpts:

A: Emily: “Jimmy, what’s in your hand?”

Jimmy: “The bullet that killed my brother,” he opened his palm to show her the jagged piece of lead with blood and bits of shredded flesh still clinging to it. “I couldn’t let him die with the Other-side’s trash in em.”

Emily: “Fuckin-Aye” Emily mumbled over the steering wheel.

Thank you all for your time and attention, though success wouldn’t feel like much without my readers. Each and every word is for your own interpretation. If I can open JUST ONE pair of eyes through my work, it would prove a complete and utter success… You can find my work on Amazon.com, Createspace.com and Barnes&Noble.com. The second and third installments are en route directly: ) Happy Reading.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR…It took a series of felonious events to get me into the life, and 25 months in the luxurious N.C. department of corrections to get me out. Now I’m breaking off everything I learned on state-sponsored vacation for the World to read.

In 30 days flat I opened my soul and vomited Real Eyez onto paper. Despite death threats from fellow inmates and racially biased C.O.’s trashing my work at every opportunity; I brought the story from Prison to share with you all. I wrote this for all my White Boys on the wrong side of the fence. For everyone outnumbered fifty to one and fighting for everything they own down to the clothes on their backs. Always remember that when you’re all alone and the hour is the darkest; stand tall and tell them that you brought your Pride with you, and it’s going to die with you.

To avoid confusion, the message isn’t about hate, it’s about Pride. Pride and Brotherhood above all else. Celebrating your heritage is not racist. That being said, for all the competition out there… Go ahead and kill yourselves now, because when my pen runs out I’m going to scribble these lines in blood… – FROM AMAZON

FIND THE AUTHOR ON FACEBOOK.

The War for the heart of Urban America won t televise from some foreign shore. It ll be fought in your living room with dope, cash, blood and bullets. The American way of life has strayed into the shadows and one by one we re losing our children to the illusion of Hood Dreams and a Gangsta s Paradise. Only one man stands strong enough to hold back the tide. A renegade Aryan Prodigy and his crew, and an unfathomable amount of guns are all that protects the last shreds of civilization in the streets. The name Riley Bennett will echo through the ages as he who so loved his people that he d rather see the World in flames than see them suffer. The War is coming… Whither we re ready for it or not…

• Paperback: 309 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace.com (May 16, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1461166438
• ISBN-13: 978-1461166436

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Comedy is an outlaw. In that, it doesn’t have to follow any rules except one: be funny. Comedy, like love and fear (the other two outlaws), is personal and defies explanation. Just as someone prefers one mate over another, or fears snakes and not heights; what is funny to one person is not funny to someone else. This explains my trouble with writing a chapter on comedy writing. I know what I think is funny, but it’s harder to understand what the audience thinks. I recently posted this very question on Facebook and called friends for their opinions. Every person responded with a different piece they felt was the funniest.

Do a Google search on comedy and you will find dozens of articles on comedy writing (Trust me- I’ve been reading them to try to figure out what I do). Nearly all the articles cover mechanics and structure. What they don’t tell you is how to become funny.

Here’s the part you don’t want to know: comedy is work. Stop laughing, it’s true. You have to train yourself to see the humor in things. I need to warn you: the training will make you an asshole. Once you’ve learned to make a joke out of anything, you won’t be able to quit. You’ll become the smart-ass. The kind of person who asks the urologist if your semen will be clear after the vasectomy. On the other hand, your partner won’t try to drag you into too many let’s-talk-about-how-you-feel conversations anymore. So, you’ve got that going for you.

Part of that training requires reading; a lot of reading. This includes the news. There are a couple of reasons why you need to read the news everyday:

•  People are stranger than you think. If your zany characters are eclipsed by the news, then you aren’t pushing hard enough. As soon as you think you’ve developed a character that is going to be your comedic vehicle to drive your jokes, someone will do something even crazier. Herman Cain quoted the Pokemon movie in his farewell address. If I wrote that a year ago, you would’ve thought I was insane.
• You have to remain current. Humor has a relatively short shelf-life. The edgiest material is what is happening right now. You are doing really well if you can begin to predict a funny situation before it happens.
• You need cultural anchors. What I mean by cultural anchors is your references have to be widely understood. Prior to 2009, the tea party had a different meaning than it does now. Before the tea party movement, we weren’t debating the merits of the Boston Tea Party (maybe historians were, but nobody listens to them). Today, the tea party has had a polarizing effect in our culture. Your humor has to consider that. Dennis Miller gets away with dropping obscure cultural references mixed with a robust vocabulary; you can’t. I love Dennis Miller. I think he’s a brilliant comedian, but you need a dictionary and an encyclopedia to follow along with him.
• Language trends change every few years and the news typically reflects it. Remember a few years ago when the media merged celebrity couple names to make one name? Now every political incident is a something-gate. In the ‘90s, there was a period when we dropped Jewish words into normal conversation. The good news is, keeping up with language trends doesn’t require any effort. Just by reading you will pick up the trends organically.

Here’s an exercise if you want to start writing comedy. Pick up the paper, find and article, and write a joke about it. The object of the exercise is to find the humor in something that is not funny.

Here’s a link to an article I had published doing this exercise. The article is dated, but is still relevant for the idea of the exercise. The idea came to me as I was cooking dinner and listening to the news. I don’t remember the focus of the news piece; I remember George Bush had just done something which had implications against Iraq. I remember thinking when are we going to stop screwing these people? That was it. I sat down and wrote this article.

http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s2i41779

The exercise nearly paid off. Years later, I was interviewing for The Onion to be a staff writer. As part of the interview process, I was given a list of fake headlines and I was to write a newscast for each headline on the spot. Ultimately, I didn’t get the job, but it was a personal victory for me to be able to write a funny newscast without any preparation. Here’s an example of one of the articles I wrote:

http://www.thespoof.com/news/magazine/panda_wants_abortion_3227.htm

You may have noticed based on the two articles above that I talk about sex. I have news for you, folks: Comedy isn’t pretty. Psychologists have described humor as the sudden release of tension. On a physical level, laughter is our body’s response to surprise of an unforeseen stimulus. One of the tools a comedian uses to create tension is to discuss something uncomfortable; enter the sex, fart, and poop jokes. Pushing the audience into an uncomfortable area raises their tension levels. The punchline is the release valve to bleed off that tension. In the Panda Wants Abortion newscast, I wrote dialogue for an artificial insemination protester. Here I’ve brought the audience into a slightly uncomfortable situation. The joke is we know what artificial insemination is, so the audiences’ brains are creating a framework of what that means. The punchline is the protester was objecting to the use of artificial semen. This is one of the mechanisms of a joke: build tension, put their minds on a specific path, and nail them with a left hook while they aren’t looking. This isn’t the only comedic style and you don’t necessarily need to make the audience uncomfortable, but it illustrates a basic framework of a joke.

A question I get from aspiring comedic writers is: How do you know if you’ve gone too far? You don’t. The concept is subjective because what is funny is personal. It’s the same argument as what is pornography and what is art. In my book, Donations to Clarity, I wrote several chapters with questionable content. I wrote a character who was a homophobe and a character who impersonated a homosexual. These are two subject areas I needed to be careful of. In the ‘80s, comedians could beat up homosexuals all day long. Eddie Murphy made a career out of roasting homosexuals and Richard Simmons. That doesn’t fly in 2011. You can still make fun of Richard Simmons, but not because he’s gay. The hair and the striped shorts are still free game.

One of my rules for comedy writing is to not to insult anyone- directly. Offended? I don’t care if they’re offended, and you shouldn’t either.  You don’t want to insult. In this case, making homosexuals feel like I’m picking on them. And it’s not about gay rights or embracing everyone. To me, comedy is about enjoyment. My goal is to take the audience out of their lives for a small time, and give them something to laugh about. That does not include abusing a subset of the population. Along with this, I was worried about how I portrayed women. I’d never written women before, and I was concerned I was too degrading to them.

I could get away with writing a book without the homophobe and the homosexual impersonator. I couldn’t really write a book without any women in it. Because I chose to write the characters anyway, I did a couple of things to protect myself:

• I wrote the homophobe and the homosexual impersonator as idiots. In the case of the homophobe, the way I developed the character, it made sense for him to dislike gays. It would have been incongruous if I’d written him any other way.
• I asked a few homosexual friends and women read the chapters. I explained what my concerns were and asked for their honest opinions. A funny thing happened: not only did I get their blessings, but they gave me insight to develop the characters better.

Now that doesn’t mean I was completely protected from criticism. I recently had a female reader email me claiming I degraded women. If you read my book, you know I made the guys idiots and the women were the only sane characters. Normally I don’t respond to these emails, or I send a quick note with several suggestion of what they can do with their opinion. This particular woman hit a sensitive button for me; I wanted to know why she felt the way she did. And wow, did she! I got a page and a half on how I degraded women because I had a female character pee a little when Bigfoot scared her.

Which brings me to my next point: if you’re going to write comedy, you’d better have a thick skin. You need a thick skin to be a writer. It needs to be thicker for comedy because you are going to piss someone off. Comedy isn’t pretty. No matter how careful you are, you are going to offend someone. And they will write you and tell you all about it. The good news is they’re just giving you a new character to put in the next book. It’s the circle of life.

The last point I want to make in this article is dialogue. As a comedic writer, most of your  jokes will be between characters talking. There are other styles you’ll use, such as situational and environmental. You could even write physical comedy (slapstick). I wrote some slapstick in my book. Slapstick is a unique style that requires a muscular writing style, which I’m not going to get into in this article. What were we talking about? Dialogue! Here’s my advice for dialogue. Go to your neighborhood bar; not a nightclub or meat market, unless you are specifically seeking something from that element. I mean a nice Irish pub; blue-collar, middle class. Hit it at happy hour for a couple of weeks and just watch. You’ll begin to see trends. There’s a group of regulars. They usually get there as soon as the place opens, and they stay after the happy hour crowd leaves. Some times they go home to eat, and then come back to the bar. These are your tickets. They are golden fountains of verbal diarrhea. Get to know them. They will tell you the funniest and strangest stories you’ve ever heard. My idea for the weight of the human turd conversation in my book stemmed from this.

In reality, the guy I was talking to thought we were all going to die by being binged in the melon by rocks falling from space. It was a surreal conversation. This guy was really worried about being knocked off by space pebbles. Although I didn’t use the space rocks in the book, it inspired me to add a similar conversation to the book.

Also go to cop bars. Police officers have fantastic stories. I’ve gone into cop bars, explained I was a comedy writer looking for material, and I would buy a drink for anyone who told me a funny story. I have never walked out of a cop bar with less than three hilarious stories.

Before I let you go, I’ll give you another comedy trick. One way to keep your comedy and your dialogue current and relevant is to use the internet. I’ve attached several links to websites full of ideas. One website, Overheard in _______ is just conversations people have overheard in public places. Part of comedy is the examination of the human condition. Because you, the writer, can’t be everywhere; use the internet to expand your research.

http://www.overheardeverywhere.com/

http://overheard-lib.livejournal.com/

Another great site is Texts From Last Night. This is a website of texts between people. Most of the people are young, maybe college age. It’s a great resource for picking up attitudes and dialogue from the 20s to early 30s age group.

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

One of my favorite sites is Shit My Dad Says. The site is run by a 30ish comedic writer who posts the shit his dad says. His father, a retired doctor and veteran, is this grumpy, tough-as-nails, no bullshit kind of guy. If you don’t think this site is funny; comedy writing may not be for you.

http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

Now, I am not telling you to steal lines from these sites. Use the sites to develop your character’s dialogue, pick up new terminology, and inspire you to write something funnier.

Now, go away and write something funny.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Noah Baird, author of Donations to Clarity, is often thought of as funny by dogs and small children. Women also laugh at him, but only when he’s naked.

Noah Baird wanted to attend the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, but his grades weren’t good enough (who knew?).  However, his grades were good enough to fly for the U.S. Navy (again, who knew?), where he spent 14 years until the government figured out surfers don’t make the best military aviators. He has also tried to be a stand-up comedian in Hawaii for Japanese tourists where the language barrier really screwed up some great jokes. On the bright side, a sailboat was named after the punchline of one of his jokes.

He has several political satire pieces published on The Spoof under the pen name orioncrew.  Noah received his bachelors in Historical and Political Sciences from Chaminade University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He knows nothing about hoaxing Bigfoot. Donations to Clarity is his first novel.

You can visit his website at www.noahbaird.com or his blog at www.noahbaird.wordpress.com.

Connect with him at Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Noah-Baird-Writer/100193913390453.

The plan was simple: hoax bigfoot, then sell tours to bigfoot enthusiasts. The plan wasn’t brilliant, and neither were Harry, Earl, and Patch. The three chemical-abusing friends only wanted to avoid the 9 to 5 rat race, but their antics attract the attention of a real bigfoot. When the misogynistic Earl is mistaken for a female bigfoot by the nearsighted creature and captured; it is just the beginning of their problems.

The U.S. Government has a plan to naturalize the mythical creatures living within the U.S. borders.  The problem is the plan needs to be carried out carefully.  You can’t just drop little green men and Sasquatch in the middle of Walmart without warning Ma and Pa Taxpayer. The naturalization program is not ready to be set into motion, and the rogue bigfoot is bringing too much attention to itself, including a feisty investigative reporter who uncovers the truth of the government conspiracy and two bigfoot researchers. No longer able to contain the situation, government agents are tasked with eliminating the bigfoot and all witnesses.

Between bong hits and water balloon fights, Harry and Patch come up with a plan to save Earl and the lovestruck bigfoot. Where do you hide a giant, mythical creature? In an insane asylum, because who is going to listen to them?

Along the way, the three friends learn Star Wars was a government training film for children, the truth behind Elvis meeting President Nixon, and the significance of the weight of the human turd.

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Second Wind Publishing, LLC (July 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1935171445
• ISBN-13: 978-1935171447

BUY THE BOOK… Amazon | Barnes & Noble

1. Diets rarely work. Achieving permanent weight loss is extremely uncommon. After dieters reach their goal, they usually re-gain most or all of the weight they lost. They may even be heavier than when they started; if they lost muscle mass, their metabolic rate will be lower than before their diet.
2. Trying to lose weight does not mean having be hungry. Most diets which demand “No fat! No snacks!” have made us hungry, but hunger is part of why such diets don’t work. How long can one resist being hungry? Then when we finally eat, we overeat. In addition, hunger indicates falling blood sugar levels and rising insulin levels. High insulin levels affect enzymes that control fat metabolism and tell the body to store food rather than burn it and not to burn body fat.
3. “Counting calories is the way to lose weight” is a fallacy. Conventional diets say that all that matters when you want to lose weight is the number of calories consumed minus the number burned by physical activity. Although calories do have an effect, they are not the primary determining factor in how much we weigh. Our hormones, such as insulin, cortisol, leptin and others, are what really determine our weight, and we can control them. If your hormones are saying, “Deposit that food! A famine is in the land!” you will not be able to lose weight even if the number of calories you consume is very low.
4. Skipping breakfast, or other fasting, tells your hormones that you are at risk of being food deficient because you are living in a land of famine; this inhibits weight loss. Eating moderate amounts of food at three hour intervals (or two hour intervals if you get hungry that soon) is the best way to lose weight, and you’ll never be hungry! Eat breakfast within an hour of arising in the morning, and have small protein-containing snack between meals and a protein-containing bedtime snack.
5. “Fat is bad for your health – clogs the arteries – and should be eliminated” is a fallacy. This idea was derived from the calorie math described in #3 because fat contains nine calories per gram compared to four calories per gram for proteins and carbohydrates. (This is where the almost-no-fat, plenty-of-carbohydrate diets got their start). However, our bodies need fats of the right kind to make hormones, build cell membranes, and deal with inflammation.
6. The right fats promote weight loss! This sounds heretical, right? (And it doesn’t mean you should load up on unhealthy types of fat). Yet it is a scientific fact. Fats help with weight in two ways: (1) A meal or snack that contains fat will keep us satisfied much longer than a low-fat meal or snack, especially since these may be high in carbohydrates. Therefore, a person consumes less food! (2) Some fats, especially those that contain omega-3 fatty acids, reduce inflammation. With less inflammation, leptin, our master weigh control hormone, functions more efficiently. When it is functioning optimally and a person overeats, leptin will boost the metabolic rate and decrease appetite, thus automatically returning the person to a healthy weight. People whose weight fluctuates in a five pound range regardless of what they eat have a normally functioning leptin system.
7. Individuals may deny – or be unaware of – having problems with inflammation, but this is a fallacy if they are heavy. Sometimes inflammation is obvious; it causes redness, warmth, and/or pain. However, chronic inflammation can be silent. Overweight individuals may not know it, but they are experiencing silent inflammation. As we gain weight, our bodies do not add more fat cells. The fat cells we already have become larger and are just filled with more fat. They leak as they are stretched more and more. Then immune cells called macrophages come in to clean up the mess. The macrophages release inflammatory chemicals in the cleanup process. Some of these interfere with leptin functioning. In optimally healthy people, leptin is responsible for automatically maintaining weight at the right level. When leptin is made ineffective by inflammation, the dysfunction is called leptin resistance, meaning that even though a person might have normal or high levels of leptin, the leptin does not work to suppress appetite and speed metabolism to maintain a healthy weight.
8. Although #7 sounds like a like a depressing vicious cycle, there are ways to break the cycle. Briefly, these include consuming the right fats to reduce inflammation, eating to keep blood sugar and insulin levels stable, and eating anti-inflammatory foods. The additional good news is that as the slimming process begins, leptin resistance abates. Then when an individual reaches optimal weight and has inflammation under control, the struggle to maintain a healthy weight will end. The newly-functional leptin system will control both appetite and weight.
9. There are two commonly held fallacies about eating carbohydrates: (1) Very low or no-carbohydrate diets are the best way to lose weight, and (2) A diet low in fat and high in complex carbohydrates is the best way to lose weigh. The USDA Food Pyramid promoted this second type of diet, and the weight of Americans increased every year when the Food Pyramid was our national standard. The truth is that we need carbohydrates for good health. Strictly limiting carbohydrates deprives us of the phytochemicals they contain which help reduce inflammation and allow our leptin to function properly. Furthermore, carbohydrates are not all alike. Simple carbohydrates are not all bad and starches are not all good for us. The glycemic index is a measure of how each carbohydrate affects blood sugar levels. This test is done using human volunteers, unlike calorie testing which is done with a machine (calorimeter). The best way to lose weight is to maintain stable blood sugar and insulin levels by eating carbohydrates with low or moderate glycemic index scores and balance these carbohydrates with protein.
10. Exercise, if excessive, prolonged, or done when we are hungry, can keep us from losing weight or even cause us to deposit fat. (Read the whole story about this here: http://www.foodallergyandglutenfreeweightloss.com/exercise_right.html). Moderate exercise, such as walking, gardening, house cleaning, or moderate bicycling or swimming, is the best way to lose weight because it does not “unsettle” our hormones. In addition, moderate exercise decreases leptin resistance, which was discussed in #7, thus making weight loss easier and normal self-regulating weight control possible.

There may be other things that you never knew about weight loss, but ten is the limit for this list. To find out more about how to lose weight permanently without hunger or struggle, read Food Allergy and Gluten-Free Weight Loss or visit http://www.foodallergyandglutenfreeweightloss.com. The principles in the ten points above apply to everyone. This book will help people with food allergies or gluten intolerance lose weight while staying on their special diets, and it will help non-food-sensitive people lose weight as well.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Nickie Dumke enjoys helping people with food allergies and gluten intolerance find solutions to their health and weight problems. She began writing books to help others with multiple food allergies over 20 years ago and the process culminated in The Ultimate Food Allergy Cookbook and Survival Guide. She says, “This book contains everything I know to help with food allergies,” and it has helped many people come back from near-starvation. Her other books address issues such as how to deal with time and money pressures on special diets, keeping allergic children happy on their diets, and more. A few years ago, while listening to the struggles of an allergic friend on the Weight Watchers™ diet, she remembered her own weight struggles* many years ago and thought, “There has to be a better way.” This was the beginning of a new quest, and she is now helping those who are overweight due to inflammation (often due to unsuspected food allergies) or high-in-rice gluten-free diets, as well as those who are not food sensitive but want to lose weight permanently, healthily, and without feeling hungry and deprived. Her unique approach to weight and health presented in Food Allergy and Gluten-Free Weight Loss is based on body physiology and reveals why conventional weight-loss diets work against rather than with our bodies and therefore rarely result in permanent weight loss. *

(Nickie’s weight loss story, briefly, is that in her early 20s she could not lose on a calorie-counting diet in spite of repeatedly further reducing the number of calories she ate and swimming vigorously and often. Then she found a diet based on blood sugar control, lost weight without being hungry, and still weighs what she did in her mid-20s). Nickie has had multiple food allergies for 30 years and has been cooking for special diets for family members and friends for even longer. Regardless of how complex your dietary needs are or how much or little cooking you have done, she has the books and recipes you need. Her books present the science behind multiple food allergies and weight control in an easily-understood manner. She has BS degrees in medical technology and microbiology. She and her husband live in Louisville, Colorado and have two grown sons.

You can visit Nickie’s websites at http://www.foodallergyandglutenfreeweightloss.com and http://www.food-allergy.org.

Food Allergy and Gluten-Free Weight Loss gives definitive answers to the question, “Why is it so hard to lose weight?” It is because we have missed or ignored the most important pieces in the puzzle of how our bodies determine whether to store or burn fat. Those puzzle pieces are hormones such as insulin, cortisol, leptin, and others. Individuals with food allergies or gluten intolerance face additional weight-loss challenges such as inflammation due to allergies or a diet too high in rice. This book explains how to put your body chemistry and hormones to work for you rather than against you, reduce inflammation which inhibits the action of your master weight control hormone, leptin, and flip your fat switch from “store” to “burn.” It includes a flexible healthy eating plan that eliminates hunger, promotes the burning of fat, and reduces inflammation and tells how to customize the plan so it fits you, your allergies or intolerances, and your need for pleasure in what you eat. Information about cooking for special diets, 175 recipes, a list of sources for special foods, and extensive appendix and reference sections are also included.

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Allergy Adapt, Inc. (March 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887624198
• ISBN-13: 978-1887624190

BUY THE BOOK… Amazon | Food Allergy and Gluten-Free Weightloss Site