Tempting Faith
March 2009
An AP wire story about a natural disaster in Booger Hollow, West Virginia inspired Tempting Faith, the story of Faith Wheeler, a Los Angeles-based entertainment reporter tempted to publish a scoop that could build her career. The only trouble is that her scoop could tear down the career of someone she cares for very much, actor Zander Baron, a man who knows exactly how to tempt her into keeping her silence.
When I lived in Maryland, I made frequent visits to West Virginia, and I fell in love with the natural beauty of the region and the quirkiness of its inhabitants. West Virginia was a natural choice for the home state of my heroine.
Mr. Fix-It
September 2008
My favorite family vacation was spent in Mississippi, but Alabama occupies a special place in my heart as well. Lucas Black is one of the best things to come from the state of Alabama, and when I conceived of Mr. FixIt, he perfectly fit the image I’d formed in my mind of my hero, Carter Radcliffe. Carter’s heart and soul, however, were borrowed from a wonderful man named Mike Taylor, who proves that old-fashioned leading men still exist.
I have no personal experience being a bestselling romance novelist, so to build my my heroine Khela Halliday, I relied on stories shared by my personal Mount Olympus of romance novelists: Beverly “Zeus” Jenkins, Rochelle “Aphrodite” Alers, Brenda “Juno” Jackson, Francis “Apollo” Ray and Donna “Athena” Hill. These five goddesses of multicultural fiction provided the material from which I crafted Khela. They’re also the authors who forged the path I’ve chosen, and without their dedication and hard work, my travels would be so much harder.
I had the great good fortune to tour with my idols in 2007. I highly recommend the experience.
During the tour, I met two fascinating people, Detrick and Khela. I’d never met anyone named Khela, so with her permission, I borrowed her name for my heroine. Detrick, another name that struck my fancy, became Carter’s best friend.
Mr. FixIt twists stereotypes. Khela is the wealthy professional dogged by male golddiggers, and Carter is the handsome man who finds that women only want him for his looks.
Blame It On Paradise
March 2008
In May 2006, I saw a woman whose beauty was so unusual, I had to ask her where she was from. Born in the South Pacific, she had the long, straight, black hair and high cheekbones reminiscent of Native Americans, the dark brown skin typical of Africans, and the narrow nose and gray eyes usually seen in Caucasians. This woman turned every head, both female and male, as she walked through the airport, yet she seemed oblivious to the effect she had on those watching her.
After speaking with her, I learned that she was an international attorney educated at Columbia, although she’d wanted to attend Stanford. She was fluent in five languages, and she was engaged to an American attorney in Boston, who looked like he could be the genetic hybrid of Brad Pitt and Mark Wahlberg.
This woman and her fiancée sparked the creative flame that led to Blame It On Paradise. Many of the details of my conversation with her turn up in the book, which is a story of mistaken identity that leads to a man finding out exactly who he is and what he wants in life and love.
Always You
September 2007
The third installment of my Winters sisters series, Always You was my chance to try something different: romantic suspense.
Chiara Winters, the youngest and never-seen member of the Winters family, was only mentioned in my first romance, Suddenly You, and heard by phone in my second romance, Only You. With Always You being the last book in the series, I wanted to do something that would fit in with Chiara’s unexplained physical and emotional distance from her family.
The thread of suspense in Always You came from an Internet story I’d read on rootkits, which are essentially forms of hidden software that can infiltrate a computer without the user’s knowledge. Chiara, who works for a computer software company, becomes embroiled in her employer’s dangerous spy technology secrets.
Chiara is very loosely based on my youngest sister, who has always been quite the enigma to me and the rest of my sisters.
Crush March 2007 I love Tom Jones. From that first episode of This Is Tom Jones, the variety show that debuted in the United States in 1971, I have adored that handsome, kind, wonderful Welsh singer. The infatuation that began when I was still in kindergarten exploded years later, when I was a rookie reporter in Boston. I interviewed Sir Thomas, who has since been knighted, before a concert. My professional veneer fell away five minutes into the interview, when, completely incapable of holding it in for even one second longer, I spilled the long-held contents of heart and confessed my adoration for him. He handled it surprisingly well, even going so far as to arrange for me to shoot photos of him during the concert right at the base of the It was one of the best and most memorable experiences of my life in terms of realizing one of my adolescent dreams — to meet my heartthrob. Reporting also allowed me to meet and spend time with U2. As impressed as I was by U2’s music, it was lead singer Bono’s humanitarian endeavors that made me truly admire the group. In 2000, when I was working nights in the sports department at the Boston Herald, I started writing my rocker-reporter Cinderella story. I looked no further than Tom Jones and Bono for the raw material to create Lucas Fletcher, my hero. A co-worker, the sole female reporter in Herald sports, combined with my Cape Verdean and Brazilian friends to build my tomboyish heroine, Miranda. An English librarian who schooled me in classic literature when I was a kid inspired my love for Great Britain, while my engagement to an Englishman led to my first visits to the UK. From my first wine gum and roast chicken flavored crisp, to the insults hurled at me for supporting the “wrong” side at a football game (soccer to those on my side of the Atlantic), I loved every second of every visit I’ve made to the United Kingdom. Wales, for reasons formed early on in my consciousness, is the most romantic country in the world, and I have a particular affinity for the ruins of Castle Conwy, which is why I rebuilt it in fiction and gave it to Lucas. Lucas, the fantasy prince, and Miranda, the unlikeliest of Cinderellas, share many magical moments, some of which I’ve experienced in Great Britain and the United States, and some I’ve only dreamt of. Only You November 2006 Kyla Winters, the younger sister of Cady Winters from my first romance Suddenly You, takes center stage in my second Winters sister novel, Only You. Kyla is very loosely modeled on my second youngest sister, a woman who is possessed of brains, beauty and a biting sense of sarcasm that makes me laugh until I cry—except when it’s directed at me, in which case it only makes me cry. Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrwick Brown on CSI, was the physical model for Dr. Zweli Randall, the cardiologist who is more than Kyla’s intellectual and spiritual match. In creating the love affair between Kyla and Zweli, I called on my fondness for the romance in movies starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, and Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, with a modern ethnic sensibility. One of my favorite parts of the book are Kyla’s blind dates. Each man is based on a real man with whom I was set up on a blind date. Misery shared is misery diminished, which is why I chose to share my experiences, albeit fictionally, with others. Zweli is so named in honor of a young man with whom I worked during my first reporting job in Boston. He was funny, handsome, smart, outrageously charming, and he had one of the most beautiful smiles I’ve ever seen on a man. Suddenly You June 2005 Suddenly You is my first contemporary romance, and it was borne of mourning. My grandmother, who was dying of brain cancer, had received the diagnosis of a tumour in the worst way possible—her doctor woodenly gave the news to her as he gave it to me via telephone. My fury at the doctor temporarily overrode my grief over the diagnosis. My grandmother’s death was quite hard to bear, and Suddenly You is the method I chose to manage my mourning. Family and friends allowed me to steal openly from their lives in shaping my characters and certain events. I gave my heroine, Cady Winters, my infuriating experience with my grandmother’s doctor, but everything that happens between her and oncologist Keren Bailey is pure invention.
