A Womanizing Cop Meets His Match: An interview with romantic suspense author Chantel Rondeau

1) Please tell us about Crime and Passion.

It's a romantic mystery/suspense about a womanizing cop who has finally met his match in a sarcastic, sassy woman who is new to town. They are having plenty of problems getting together, because Madeline found a body on the beach, and Donovan is the prime suspect. Madeline believes in his innocence, but the murderer is threatening her life for cooperating with the police. Also, the other officers believe Donovan is the killer. Proving his innocence and catching the true culprit could be a problem for the pair. 

2) Please tell us about your main characters.

Donovan Andrews is a decorated police officer, having been on the force for twenty-one years. He takes exception to men who don't treat their wives and children properly, and this is what causes all of his troubles. Madeline Scott is a grade school teacher who's currently working as a dog walker until she finds a teaching position. She moved to the California coast a few months earlier to heal from the trauma of calling off her wedding after finding her fiance in bed with her maid of honor. The last thing she needs is a new man in her life, especially one with a reputation for the ladies that Donovan has.

3) What was behind your choice of professions for your main characters?

Donovan being a police officer is integral to the plot, since you don't often see a twenty-one year veteran of the force accused for murder, but in this case, the mounting evidence against him is hard to refute. Madeline's job was more one of pure fun. I love the interactions surrounding her job throughout the book and also, I'm an animal lover.

4) What sort of challenges do mixing romance and suspense pose?

Sometimes it is hard to get the characters together like I want too when writing suspense. Of course, the romance is important too, but it's not always simple to be like, "Hey, bad people, back off a bit so my characters can fall in love." However, it is a fun challenge that I really do enjoy. For me, the romance is the most satisfying part of any story, so it is important to me that the suspense doesn't take over too much.

5) What aspects of the combination heighten the intensity the respective elements?

I think having characters who are desperately in love makes everything more intense. Donovan knows that Madeline is next on the killers list, Madeline knows the killer is trying to frame Donovan for the crimes. Because they are also falling in love (with Madeline trying hard to not like Donovan) that compounds the problems. It makes it more than a simple witness to a crime dealing with the responding officer. The stakes are much higher than they would be otherwise.

6) Do you any links to any particular excerpts you'd like to share?

The first three chapters are available to read at my website http://www.chantelrhondeau.com/2012/10/romantic-suspense-murder-on-beach.html

7) Where can readers find out more about you?

Website: http://www.chantelrhondeau.com
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Chantel-Rhondeau/e/B008ZSM1KQ/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
Twitter http://twitter.com/ChantelRhondeau
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ChantelRhondeau
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6444354.Chantel_Rhondeau
E-mail: ChantelRhondeau@gmail.com

Want the book?

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Because There Is No Polite Way Of Asking a Handsome Gentleman If He Sent a Magical Wooden Man To Kill You: My Regency paranormal release, A Woman of Proper Accomplishments

Helena Preston, the eldest daughter of a Bedfordshire gentleman, would rather risk spinsterhood than marry a man unwilling to accept her for who she is, much to the consternation of her mother and sister. She feels marrying an ugly or poor husband would be a mere inconvenience; marrying an irritable fool would be a genuine tragedy. Intrigued more with books and scholarship than finding a husband, the young woman has yet to attract any interest from eligible bachelors.

Joseph Morgan is a scholar who studies spiritus, the rare ability to imbue life into objects. With his arrival, Helena finds herself in the delightful position of having the attention of a handsome, educated gentleman of status, but she begins to worry Mr. Morgan is more interested in seduction than marriage. Soon after meeting the scholar, an unfortunate encounter with a sinister highwayman ends in rescue by the stoic and handsome Captain Thomas Southward.

As bothersome as juggling the attention of two potential suitors can be, Helena is still the target of a criminal. When evidence suggests her assailant is a wooden man created by spiritus, Mr. Morgan falls under suspicion. Unfortunately, she can think of no polite way to accuse a gentleman of sending a pile of animated wood to kill her.

A Woman of Proper Accomplishments is currently available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, iTunes/iBooks and Kobo.

Love: Old Testament Style: An interview with Rachelle Ayala

Today I'm talking with Rachelle Ayala about her Old Testament-inspired romance, MICHAL'S WINDOW.

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1) Tell us about your book.

MICHAL'S WINDOW is an epic love story between the often maligned daughter of King Saul and the beloved king of Israel, David. In a time when women, even royalty, were considered property, Michal asserted herself with her love for David. Ultimately, it is a story that resonates with women everywhere, who must make difficult choices in the face of cultural and sexual pressure.

2) What inspired you to write this book?

Michal struck me as being a strong and unusual woman. She dared to risk her father's alienation to save the man she loved, and later, she dared to rebuke her husband, the king when he danced wildly in the streets of Jerusalem. No other woman in the Bible loved a man. No other woman was married to two men at the same time, and no other woman suffered the fall from cherished princess to dishonored wife.

3) The Old Testament stories of David and his wives, even if one were to include material from the Apocrypha, are relatively sparse on low-level detail. How did you go about filling in the gaps? 

*Laughes* That was easy. Whenever I read the Bible, I daydream. I run a live movie through my mind to visualize the events. The Bible is extremely graphic, but people pass over major tragedies in a few words. I put myself back in time and place, and soon David and his wives are as alive to me as Desperate Housewives. Their personalities fill in, they bicker, they scheme, and most of all, they try to figure out what their lives mean.

4) What sort of themes do you explore in this work?

The surface theme is love and redemption. Michal stands for the nation of Israel. She is loved by her husband, rejected, and redeemed at the end. Her trials and struggles mirror that of the Jewish nation. Some of her choices disturbed me, but given the prophetic nature of Michal, I was constrained to finish the story the way I did. If you know the Bible well, you'll see types and figures in many of the characters. The entire history of Israel from the calling of Abraham in Genesis to the last call in Revelations 22 is portrayed by Michal's fictional life.

5) In addition to the obvious use of the Old Testament, what other sort of research did you do to bring this ancient period to life?

I gathered many reference books, too numerous to list, of life in ancient Israel. My most useful reference was a travelogue I found online, J. W. McGarveyLands of the Bible (1881). The Bible remained my primary source, and I focused on 1st and 2nd Samuel, Psalms and the books of Jeremiah through Malachi.

6) What are your thoughts on these recent archaeological discoveries (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/international/middleeast/05jerusalem.html?pagewanted=all) that some suggest are the palace of King David?

I so wish that time machine I ordered two centuries from now would arrive so I can go back to the time of King David and explore his palace and his surroundings. Joking aside, I'm excited that archaeologists have unearthed part of David's kingdom. Of course, skeptics will be skeptics, but David and his wives are as real to me as any people who jump off the page of Scripture.

7) Although the Old Testament has inspired countless dramatic presentations throughout the years for a variety of religions, its religious nature often makes it inherently riskier for story adaptations. Were you concerned about that when you wrote the story? This can be both a difficulty in religious readers worried about potential liberties and non-religious readers being wary of religiously inspired stories (something that influenced the failure of NBC's recent modern take on the King David story, Kings).

I'd like to think my bookw will appeal to both the religious reader who enjoys a more fleshed out, true-to-life presentation as well as the non-religious reader who may want to dip their toe into a fascinating and gritty story based on Biblical characters. I wrote the story that came to me. Did I censor myself? Possibly. I removed several sex scenes. I lived most of my life as an atheist and only twelve years as a Christian, so I feel comfortable writing in a way that does not preach and push a particular viewpoint. I noticed early on that the Philistines were intimately entangled in the lives of the Israelites. Their society was as multicultural as ours is, hence I incorporated Philistine characters to fill out some of the minor roles and expanded on one particular man, Ittai, who has since become a reader favorite.

8) Please tell us about your other projects.

Like all creative people, I have more story ideas than time to write. My next novel, BROKEN BUILD is a contemporary romantic suspense about software engineers in Silicon Valley. Fast cars, fast CPUs, and fast women spanning three weeks around Black Friday 2012. After that, I'm mulling a psychological thriller about two sisters in love with one man and perhaps a romantic triangle between a concert violinist, a man with a valuable violin, and a dashing rogue of a violin maker. But who knows what story idea will grab ahold of me and refuse to let go.

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Thanks, Rachelle.

MICHAL'S WINDOW is available for purchase at Amazon.

Author Bio:

Rachelle Ayala was a software engineer until she discovered storytelling works better in fiction than real code. She has over thirty years of writing experience and has always lived in a multi-cultural environment. The tapestry of characters in her books reflect that diversity.

Rachelle is currently working on a romantic suspense involving software engineers. She is a very happy woman and lives in California with her husband. She has three children and has taught violin and made mountain dulcimers.

Visit her at: http://www.rachelleayala.com or follow @AyalaRachelle on Twitter.

Forced Perspective: The difference between Heroes and Villains, A Guest Post by Liana Brooks

Today I have a guest post from Liana Brooks as part of her blog tour to promote her super-hero/villain romance novella, EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE. It was just released by Breathless Press. 

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In photography there is a technique called Forced Perspective that manipulates perception to change how you view objects, like making the moon look like a light bulb, or making a distant lighthouse look like a toy. In the movies, this is the trick that makes Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen look like one is Hobbit-sized and the other is tall. It's the trick that historians use to make you remember King John (1166-1216) as a horrible, whiny man-child who never moved past Prince John (a different person entirely, the prince lived from 1905-1919).

Forced Perspective is what defines a hero and creates a villain.

Consider for a moment the long list of things that are considered impolite - even outright criminal - by modern society: punching a stranger in the face, breaking into to someone's home, spying on someone, eavesdropping, murder... Any person caught committing these offenses would be considered a criminal. Done with enough flair and pomp the person might be considered a villain.

Unless the person in question wears black spandex, drives a funky car, and calls himself Batman.

Let's pretend that vigilante justice is excusable because "Batman never kills anyone" and then consult the actual text of Batman's life. Class, please open your comic books to Batman Incorporated Volume 2 wherein Batman is fighting the immortal Lord Death Man... and shoves him into a rocket so Lord Death Man can resurrect and die for the rest of eternity.

Holy overkill, Batman! Why didn't someone stop to consider the advantages of rehabilitation?

Batman should be the ultimate villain in our modern era. He's the one percent. A man who runs roughshod over the law not because of divine right, mutation, or superior morals but because he has more money than everyone else. Let me repeat that. Batman is a hero because he's rich.

That's it. That's his superpower. "By the trust fund invested in me I get to run this town!" Yet, through the miracle of Forced Perspective, Batman has been a superhero since 1939. This product of the children's welfare system is 73 this year, and still acting like an angsty 15-year-old who didn't get a date to prom.

Seriously, Bruce? Most people call a therapist.

This is how Forced Perspective works in literature. It makes a hero out of someone who ordinarily wouldn't be considered a good person. Robin Hood was a thief. Luke Skywalker was a terrorist. Superman was an alien who came and forced his views of right and wrong on our people.

I admit, I had fun playing with Forced Perspective in EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE. I took someone who was technically a criminal, technically a super villain, and made him almost a hero. Doctor Charm gets what he wants through sneaky and underhanded ways, but when his back is up against the wall he makes the right choice.

Choice is the theme throughout the Heroes and Villains series. When you have superpowers, whose side are you on?

Feel free to leave a note for me in the comment section. Defend Bruce Wayne, tell me what superpower you would have, and whose side you'd be on if you had the power. And, don't forget, I'm running the EVFIL in the Wild contest until May 5th. Send me a picture of EVFIL on your e-reader for a chance to win a $10 gift certificate to Sock Dreams!

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Thanks, Liana.

More from Liana can be found at her author website, Twitter, and Facebook.


Her book can be purchased from Breathless Press and Amazon.


EVEN VILLAINS FALL IN LOVE has a Facebook and Goodreads page.


Liana Brooks was born in San Diego, California. Years later she was disappointed to learn that The Shire was not some place she could move to, nor was Rider of Rohan an acceptable career choice. Studying marine biology  so she could play with sharks seemed to be the only alternative. After college Liana settled down to work as a full-time author and mother because logical career progression is something that happens to other people. When she grows up, Liana wants to be an Evil Overlord and take over the world.


In the meantime, she writes sci-fi and SFR in between trips to the beach. She can be found wearing colorful socks on the Emerald Coast, or online at www.lianabrooks.com.

Six Sentence Sunday #17: Marriage Priorities in 1811 England

Please check out other samples from participating Six Sentence Sunday authors at http://www.sixsunday.com/.

For today's Six Sentence Sunday, I return to my Regency paranormal romance WIP, A Woman of Proper Accomplishments. Here, the protagonist's mother is making it clear what she considers important in a potential husband:

“Do not be such a silly girl,” her mother said. She waved a hand and then pointed toward the door. “Men exist to trouble women. If you seek perfection from a husband, you should put yourself on the shelf. There is not a perfect husband in the world, but there is a handsome one downstairs worth two thousand pounds a year.” She smiled.

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