IT’S RELEASE DAY! Romancing the Holidays Volume 2 in paperback and ebook is now on sale!! We all need a little escape from reality sometimes, and as a writer, I hope that this anthology of short stories will help you get into the holiday spirit. The holidays are sometimes a reminder of the people or traditions that one has lost, but through the magic of storytelling, we are never alone.
A cynical seer tries to prevent a powerful warlock from committing murder, but the more they learn about each other, they realize that more than a house fire is fated to spark this Halloween.
“She’d seen Dr. Kyle’s face in her mind’s eye for years, but her visions hadn’t prepared her for the heat of his direct gaze nor the distraction of his angled jaw. From the curls of his faux hawk to his perfect teeth, beaming at her from behind those lush, parted lips, and every smooth-as-caramel, baby-faced feature in between, he was fresh and friendly. Adorable, even.
She supposed the wrath and violence in her visions had prevented her from truly appreciating his appearance because before this moment, she would have described Dr. Marcus Kyle as dangerous, vicious, and volatile. Now that he was before her in the flesh, the phrase “cutie pie” came to mind.
And holy mother of Earth and Rain, she wanted a bite.”
We are one week out from book launch! Romancing the Holidays, courtesy of First Coast Romance Writers, releases Sept 22. But today, it’s time to give you an inside scoop of my contribution to the anthology, Fated by Fire. In this snippet, you get our hero’s point of view. Let’s meet the infamous Dr. Marcus Kyle, and see if he’s as monstrous as Jenavieve believes.
There’s two types of writers out there: pantsers, who write by the seat of their pants, and plotters, who plan out every detail of their book. I’m a pantser who forces herself to plot. In order to get from point A to a logical point B, I need to know what point B actually is, but how my characters get to that destination is typically discovered as I write it. Specifically for Fated by Fire, I knew that Jen and Marcus would know of one another before physically meeting and that their forced proximity would spark feelings of fear and resentment. I knew that Marcus would be motivated to prove Jen wrong, and that Jen would need a powerful motivation, like a vision of Marcus killing people at a Halloween party, to keep her glued to his side in the attempt to change their fate. However, I didn’t know how her vision would resolve in reality until I wrote the story and discovered the ending for myself.
When I develop my hero and heroine, I always do so as a pair, so that I can mirror, balance and create conflict in their personalities and backstories. For Jen and Marcus in particular, I really wanted to explore the ideas of fate vs. freewill and the inaccuracy of first impressions. A powerful seer, Jen met Marcus years ago in her visions, but never in person. In her mind’s eye, she sees him as a monster in a parody of Carrie, wearing the blood of his slaughtered witches and warlocks with trembling glee. But the cutie pie who stops to help her change a flat tire is the opposite of what she expects. Their false preconceptions of one another allowed me to really light fire to their “enemies to lovers” romance, and I enjoyed every minute of bringing their fated romance to life.
My favorite scenes to write are always the firsts: first look, first touch, first kiss, first everything. In Fated by Fire, Marcus and Jen are no exception:
“Jen slung both her arms around Marcus’ neck and pressed her mouth to his.
He stopped dancing. His hands around her waist gripped firmly onto her hips, and Dylan Kelley’s donated heart contracted in a double thump that physically hurt her chest. Now Dylan’s heart would give out on her, and in this moment, from sheer embarrassment and confusion and self-doubt—what did it say about her that she craved this man—she was okay with the prospect of cardiac arrest.
But then Dr. Marcus Kyle returned her kiss, and her heart didn’t just beat; it soared.”
Melody Johnson: Blog 