Stopping by today, we have the fabulous historical romance author, Kelly Bowen! She chats just a bit about herself and her love for romance, then dishes on her latest release, A Good Rogue Is Hard To Find (the titles of her books crack me up, people. Could there BE a better name for a book?).
What type of romance do you love most and why?
My very favorite type of romance is when the plot uses a friends-turned-lovers trope. It doesn’t matter what genre of romance it is, I love the depth of the relationship that two characters have when they’ve already seen the best and worst of each other. And the sexual tension between friends discovering something more is deliciously intense.
Two things people don’t know about me:
1. I coach volleyball.
2. I am a certified open water diver. Which is ironic, considering I live about as geographically far away from an ocean that you can get (and I’m not counting Hudson’s Bay as an ocean!)
Favorite romance novel of all time:
One of my favorite romances of all time is Kris Kennedy’s Defiant. I love strong heroines who aren’t waiting for rescue, and strong heroes who are a match for such a heroine. The love story that develops and winds through this awesome adventure was mesmerizing.
HE THOUGHT HE’D SEEN IT ALL . . .
The rogue’s life has been good to William Somerhall: He has his fortune, his racehorses, and his freedom. Then he moves in with his mother. It seems the eccentric Dowager Duchess of Worth has been barely skirting social disaster-assisted by one Miss Jenna Hughes, who is far too bright and beautiful to be wasting her youth as a paid companion. Now home to keep his mother from ruin, William intends to learn what’s afoot by keeping his friends close-and the tempting Miss Hughes closer still.
. . . UNTIL HE MEETS HER
He’s tall, dark, and damnably intelligent-unfortunately for Jenna. She and the duchess are in the “redistribution business,” taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and it’s going great – until he shows up. But even as William plots to make an honest woman out of her, Jenna will use all her wiles to reveal just how bad a rogue he can be . . .
Publisher’s Weekly says, “Bowen’s impish sense of humor is expressed by lively, entertaining characters in this wickedly witty Regency. Pure romantic fun in the con-game comedy vein.”
Wait, what? It’s been a full week since A Man of Character debuted? I can hardly believe it.
Thank you for the overwhelmingly positive response I’ve received! I’ve shed more than one tear in the last seven days, but luckily they’ve all been happy tears.
Thank you everyone who’s bought the book, everyone who’s reading the book, and to everyone who’s taken the time to leave a review on Amazonor GoodReads.
Y’all rock.
Here’s a sampling of what I’ve heard this week:
“Mrs. Locke, I just finished your novel, “A Man of Character.” I just wanted you to know that it was one of the best books that I have read this year. I look forward to reading Eliza’s story, and I hope you will write William’s story as well. Thanks for the pleasure of your words.”
“Loved the story. I read way past my bedtime. It was an interesting and thought-provoking romance. Looking forward to more books from this author.”
“I don’t usually read romances, but I couldn’t quit reading this one. It arrived in the mail late Thursday, and I finished it Friday morning. This novel has a clever premise, cool characters, a neat twist toward the end (a perfect set-up for the sequel), and a great sense of humor. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and can’t wait for Margaret Locke’s next work.”
“I loved it! This fun and thought-provoking romance novel offers a great balance of comedic elements, sweetness, and sizzle. Throw in a handful of handsome eligible men, a touch of magic, and journey of self-discovery, and you have a wonderful story. The book was a joy to read, both for the creative content and craft (it is very well-edited and formatted — the author obviously knows her stuff and invested the time necessary to develop an excellent product). I am very impressed and am looking forward to the next book! (I hope it’s about Eliza. I loved her character!)”
Those are words that feed the writer’s soul – especially a nervous Nellie newbie like me!
I hope you’ll continue to help me spread the word about A Man of Character, whether through sharing about it on Facebook, tweeting about it, or good, old-fashioned telling someone about it directly. Word-of-mouth is everything in the book world, and something on which indie authors are especially dependent.
Thank you again, from the bottom of my romance writer’s heart. You know how to make a girl feel special!
Construction of the Statue of Liberty’s Pedestal. CC2.0 photo by National Parks Service, Statue of Liberty ca 1875.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -205 words
Nobody notices me. Nobody marks my presence. My absence.
They never have. Never will. I like it that way, or so I tell myself.
Invisibility served me well as a child, when my older brother, Jimmy, took papa’s guff, crying out as I hid in the corner. Unscathed.
Invisibility served me well as a young man, when they needed recruits for the War. Called up every man between fourteen and eighty, they did. But not me. Nope, not Tommy Tuckerson.
I didn’t count. I never have. Never will.
Look at them, standing there, top hats on their heads, acting as if they were somebody. Building the American Dream, they say.
Been working here months, and not one of them knows my name. Not one called me down to be in the photo-graph.
I’ll show them.
A lifetime of invisibility is enough. I surrender. I give my life over in defeat. I accept my nothingness, a lack that has always been, a lack that will always be.
Will they notice, I wonder, when my body hits the ground? Will they stop their labors, their self-congratulations?
Or will my blood be one last testament to a life wasted, one quickly washed away?
This is no dream, boys.
I’m thinking next week I need to go back to humor. My last few stories have dragged me down, man. Then again, when given the theme of “defeat,” a happy tale hardly sprang to mind (which tells me I need to work harder at thinking outside of the box). Still, this is my 200 (+/-10) word effort to encapsulate the theme and the photo prompt into one cohesive, short (very short) story. What do you think?
Visit Flash Friday Fiction for other authors’ tales and much more! (The Dragon Emporium is now open; go check it out!)
Hello, and welcome to another Writer Wednesday. A few weeks ago, I noticed no author had claimed this date. As I was prepping to solicit participants, it occurred to me that since my debut novel, A Man of Character, was coming out the day before, I could interview myself! Bwah ha ha … so, well, here it goes: my answers to three of questions, just like I’ve been asking everybody else.
Which type of romance do you love best? Why?
I’m a historical romance lover at heart. They’re the first type of romance novels I ever read, and the ones that suck me in, time and time again. I think that’s because a) I love history, and love learning about / imagining what it was like to live in other eras and places, and b) the distance of time helps render the story all the more magical for me. I’ve always been a sucker for the whole “Once Upon A Time” thing.
Recently I’ve branched out and read a number of contemporaries, because I stumbled across fabulous authors like Katy Regnery and Kathryn Barrett (and many more!) and wanted to read their books.
But my heart belongs to Regency England. I’ll pick up a novel about that era any day.
Name one interesting thing you learned in researching/writing your last book.
I needed a fancy place in New York City to which a wealthy businessman might take a date. Not being a big city person at all, I had no clue, so I asked a college friend who now lives there (thanks, Liz!). “Rao’s,” she answered right away. I’d never heard of it. But I spent an afternoon happily Googling away, learning as much as I could, and thus the fictitious Joey’s was born (yes, that’s an homage to Joey Tribbiani of Friends fame–my husband loves him).
A few days after this restaurant-researching adventure, I went grocery shopping (the boring real life of an author) and discovered Rao’s pasta sauce sitting there among the zillion spaghetti sauce options. Although it was a bit pricey, I had to try it–and it’s now become my family’s favorite sauce. The things you learn.
Name two things people don’t know about you.
1. I skipped first grade. But I’m convinced the only reason I did well enough on the tests to do so is because the man administering the exams was really cute (yes, I remember that!). It motivated me. I was six, people. Guess I knew my heart was in romance from a very early age.
My husband channeling Elvis at our wedding reception.
2. OK, I’m cheating a bit, because if you know me in real life, you know I’m a ’50s Elvis fan. I didn’t give a fig about Elvis until my senior year in college, though. That was 1995, and because it was Elvis’ 60th birthday, his old movies and Elvis documentaries were playing all over TV. That young Elvis, with his oddly innocent, yet oh-so-seductive face, that voice, and that hip swivel … I was a goner.
Which I was extra grateful for two years later, because if I hadn’t fallen for Elvis, I wouldn’t have made an Elvis website (hey, I needed something to do to escape the stress of grad school, and teaching myself HTML in the baby days of the web seemed ideal). If I hadn’t had that website, I wouldn’t have met my husband. By freaky chance, we met online (way before that was common) when I asked a question about Elvis, and he answered. We emailed. We discovered we were at the same university, both in grad school (what are the chances?). We met for lunch. We kept meeting. I found my happily-ever-after.
Elvis brought my husband and me together. Thank ya, thank ya verra much.
What’s your favorite romance novel of all time, and why?
The book I come back to again and again, though, the one romance I kept when I (stupidly) purged my entire collection in my mid 30s, is Lynn Kurland‘s Stardust of Yesterday. Something about that story just hooked me like no other–probably the time-traveling element, since that idea has always intrigued me, as well as the new-to-me idea of ghost as hero. The fact that the ghost hero and definitely in-the-flesh heroine literally couldn’t touch each other for great parts of the book heightened the romance and tension for me.
So there you have it.
Interested in knowing about my own new romance release (It still feels bizarre to say that!)?
Check out the blurb for A Man of Character, my paranormal romantic comedy in which a bookstore owner learns that the perfect fantasy might just be reality:
What would you do if you discovered the men you were dating were fictional characters you’d created long ago?
Thirty-five-year-old Catherine Schreiber has shelved love for good. Keeping her ailing bookstore afloat takes all her time, and she’s perfectly fine with that. So when several men ask her out in short order, she’s not sure what to do…especially since something about them seems eerily familiar.
Caught between fantasy and reality, Cat must decide which—or whom—she wants more.
Blending humor with unusual twists, including a magical manuscript, a computer scientist in shining armor, and even a Regency ball, A Man of Character tells a story not only of love, but also of the lengths we’ll go for friendship, self-discovery, and second chances.
You can find A Man of Character on Amazon – available for Kindle or in paperback. And if you read it, I’d love to know what you think!
Thanks for hanging with me today! Come back next Wednesday for another exciting (and far less myopically self-centered) Writer Wednesday!
(Fellow authors, I do have openings for Wednesdays starting in June, so if you’d like to participate, just shoot me an email.)
Hey there, and welcome back to Writer Wednesday!
HE THOUGHT HE’D SEEN IT ALL . . .
