Characters Who Forge Their Own Destinies by Sara Brookes

When I started writing Blood Fever and Forged in Fire (since the books are connected; the arc Blood Fever started was more than could be told in one book) I never intended for there to be a love triangle. Evande was to be with Logan, end of story.

But Quinn was persistent and he wasn't going to go quietly, or lose what he saw as the love of his life. I would start a scene with the three characters with the full intent of it going one way and by the end of the chapter, find it completely different.

When this continued time and time again, I gave up fighting. It caused me to have to go back and re-work a bunch of scenes so it didn't seem as if the building relationship Evande had with both men was forced. That was the last thing I wanted. It also meant a lot of late nights revising, but in the end, it was totally worth listening to the characters.

Blurb for FORGED IN FIRE:

As vampire, Evande Austin tries to adjust to her new found abilities, she can't fight her new reality. She never intended to fall in love with two men. But she also never intended to take Fae blood to keep her alive either.

Trouble lurks in the shadows and Evande fears she will not be able to control the raging blood fever that burns through her because of Quinn. Thanks to Logan, the man who gives her anchor, Evande is able to maintain a thread of sanity in the blinding chaos.

When the Elders strike out and her future tumbles around her feet, Evande realizes the two men give her a bond she is unable to survive without. They need her just as much as she needs them. Giving into them both could just be the one thing that saves everyone.

But one thing remains clear—nothing comes without a cost.

Caught in the fires of passion and destruction, Evande struggles for a balance that could either burn or forge her anew.

Warning: This is a molten title that contains elements some readers may find objectionable: Violence, blood, foul-language from a smartass Fae king, a newbie vampire unashamed of his kinks and a scintillating m/f/m bath scene that's hot enough to steam mirrors.

Sara Brookes is an award winning, multi-published author who has always been fascinated by the strange, the unusual, the twisted and the lost (tortured heroes are her personal favorite). She is an action movie junkie, addicted to coffee and has been known to stay up until the wee hours of the morning playing RPG video games. Despite all this, she is a romantic at heart and is always a sucker for an excellent love story. Born and bred in Virginia, Sara still lives there with her husband and daughter.

She loves to connect with her readers on her website: http://www.sarabrookes.net/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Sara_Brookes
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brookesofbooks

Ought-To-Be or Naughty-To-Be? That Is The Question! by Sharon Buchbinder

From my childhood through my young adulthood, my mother wore the mask of the "Perfect Mother, Girl Scout Troop Leader, and Sunday School Teacher." But her behavior when at home, away from the scrutiny of other adults, was anything but perfect. One of the first short stories for which I won an honorable mention from Spinetingler Magazine (yes, horror!) was called Goody Two Shoes. I'll let you read the story so as not to spoil the surprise, but it was my first public foray into exploring the roles women play and the masks women wear.

My first full length erotic romance suspense novel, Desire and Deception, explores these same themes. Similar in heat levels to noir movies like Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Desire and Deception differs from these notable noir examples because it ends on an upbeat note. In Desire and Deception, polar opposites sex siren Isabel (Izzy) Ramirez and goody-two-shoes Sarah Wright-Rosen become fast friends and seem destined to be BFFs until Izzy's terrible secret is unearthed--literally and figuratively. Convinced that she is unworthy of redeption, because she believes she cannot be anything but the "bad girl", Izzy goes down a take no prisoners' path, halted only by her younger lover, Sean Richards.

For her part, having been raised by an alcoholic in a "you're-only-good-if-you-enable-me" paradigm, Sarah discoveres shades of gray in her formerly black and white world. She also learns the powers of forgiveness and love can transform not only how she sees the world, but also her own self-image. In the end, Izzy becomes more like a "good girl" Sarah--and Sarah becomes more like her "bad girl" friend. Izzy is the larger than life embodiment of all that is forbidden to "good girls": she embraces her sexuality and desires and takes control of her life and the men in it--and pleases herself. Sarah is "everywoman": she works hard, plays by the rules, collaborates and works by consensus. She believes she can only be "good" one way--by constantly trying to please others.

This binary, yes/no reasoning is faulty, but I believe many women struggle with this duality in our lives. Many of us are labeled almost from birth and are told either implicitly or explicitly who we are. Any of these sound familiar? Troublemaker, Better Become a Cop; Not-Too-Smart, Better Marry Well; Smart, But Fat and Ugly. The question is not to be or not to be, but who are we supposed to be versus who do we want to be? Our role models may or may be good ones, depending on how healthy our parents' upbringing was. If you come from a dysfunctional household, one with crime spoken daily, can you break out of that mold? Or are you ever going to be able to explode from those constraints? Likewise, if your home appeared to be the epitome of perfection to the outside world, but was hell behind closed doors, can you ever overcome the damages of a self-righteous hypocrite? Can we let go of the labels once they are so deeply ingrained? Izzy and Sarah discover their true selves through the redemptive power of love and realize that they can be what they want to be--in spite of their pasts.

What do you think, dear readers? Is the die cast with our gender and family roles? Or can we break the mold of "Ought-To-Be" or "Naughty-To-Be?" Stop by my website at http://www.sharonbuchbinder.com/ and send me your thoughts at sbuchbinder51@yahoo.com