The question I frequently get is why did I decide to set a romance series in the world of race car driving? My initial response is to want to relay the story of a road trip with my friend Barbara to the Smokey mountains where we almost drove off a cliff (seriously! I have pics) and spent our time plotting a racing story we were sure neither one of us would ever write. But I did, obviously. Because (and here’s the real answer) when I was looking to start a new series, it was a clear-cut, easily recognizable world that readers would understand, whether they were a NASCAR fan or not, and I wanted to build a sense of community and brotherhood.

But deeper than that, racing has that key player most romances have- a strong man who either is seeking power, has power, or has recently lost power. Whether it’s Diesel Lange from my fifth book in the Fast Track series, Slow Ride, who has been injured in a crash, or a Duke who has lost his fortune in a Regency historical, we’re drawn to those brooding men who push away the women who try to help them. Greek billionaire or wealthy driver, we want to know that money can’t buy everything and that life without a partner to share it with is lonely. We want to root for the guys who fight for their success. Sometimes it’s a noble cause, like in the case of cops and firefighters, but sometimes it’s just because as human beings we like to win. We want to stand on top of the winning car and have champagne sprayed on our heads, and we want to stand next to successful significant others and know hard work got us there.

If a man is passionate about what he does for a living, chances are he’ll be passionate about a number of things- and yes, I’m talking about boom-boom here because sex and romance go hand in hand in my book(s). I want to create heroes who are aggressive and determined and yet down-to-earth. The kind who love their mamas and respect women and fight to be the first across the finish line.

In my Fast Track world that is who they are- men who work hard, play hard, and love deeply. So I hope you’ll enjoy the final book in my series, JACKED UP, about the most ordinary of all the men I’ve featured, Nolan Ford, and the woman he falls for, Eve Monroe. I wanted to end the series with the same type of guy I started with- reliable, solid, who knows who he is and where he’s going, who can command a car at 160 mph or jack up a whole car in 9 seconds, and stay calm in the eye of a female storm.

There will be one last glimpse into this world, when Nolan’s brother Rhett has a short story out next year, than it will be on to a whole new setting for me. I’m sorry to leave the track in my writing, but here’s a picture of me and my two wonderful friends at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, getting my racing fangirl on.

Cheers!

Erin

www.erinmccarthy.net

I write across several genres and heat levels. I love the variety. I love being able to tell different kinds of stories with different kinds of characters. It’s one of my very favorite things about this job.

Sometimes a story calls for a lighthearted approach with lots of humor and warmth. I don’t know if there are enough of these books out there these days and I love to write them.

Other times, well other times there’s a darker story to be told. With CHAOS BURNING, I wasn’t even aware of just how dark the story would be until I got about a third of the way in. I’d started out to tell the story of a group of witches dealing with the threat of magickal theft they’d been confronted with in HEART OF DARKNESS. But in the middle of a scene, the Magister popped out of my head and onto the page.

The Magister, this ancient evil that had been spoken of very rarely and only then in whispers and half truths—took my story from dark to very dark. The enemy changed from something the witches knew about, could see and wage war against to a big, giant unknown of epic, world ending proportions.

The entire flavor of the story shifted. My characters, who’d been confronted by one sort of enemy, now had an entirely different sort of challenge, which ended up changing their dynamic and their relationship on the page as well.

I don’t really have a muse or anything like that. I have three kids and a busy life and a husband who also has a busy life and so my house and my life is managed (barely) chaos. But one thing I’ve found to be totally true for myself, over and over, is that there are aspects to writing a book that are wholly organic. Each story grows as I write it. I have a basic idea of what I need to write, but I find out new things about my characters and their story all throughout the process.

LAID BARE, for instance was NOT originally meant to be a ménage. There was supposed to be one scene with Cope, not Ben. But as I wrote, Ben just became more integral to the story. His friendship with Todd deepened as did his feelings toward Erin.

I try to ride the line between not getting distracted by shiny things (I’m so bad at this, like a freaking magpie) and listening to my gut, because my subconscious is working on the book too and it’s good to let a book take its own lead sometimes.

And so I did with CHAOS BURNING. It’s not the book I’d planned on originally, but I believe it’s a far better book than my original idea. I think the story is dark, but it needed to be. And in the end, I’m thrilled. I hope you all are too.

One winner will receive a signed copy of CHAOS BURNING chosen from the comments ?

Lauren Dane

www.laurendane.com
twitter.com/#!/laurendane
www.facebook.com/LaurenDane

DEAD MAN’S TUNNEL will be on the shelves by the time you read this, and I can enjoy a brief moment of elation. The journey from idea to book is a long and perilous one. A single wrong turn, and I’m off into the wilderness, with the unsettling possibility of never being seen or heard from again.

But now there it sits on the shelf, that idea, that ephemeral, passing thought that somehow has been transformed into a real book, with a neat cover, glowing praise, and an ageless picture of me on the back. There it sits in all its glory and with a life all its own.

So it’s a moment of euphoria, perhaps even astonishment, for its having been completed at all. But in light of the mysterious workings of the mind, it’s also a moment of humility, because in all likelihood the next questions I’ll be asked will be the most difficult for me to answer, perhaps impossible to answer with authority: Where did the idea come from? Why this rather than that?

The only thing I can say with confidence is that good writing is about feelings, that without them, writing ceases to matter for much more than making grocery lists. This being true, it follows that emotional intensity is what I must seek if I want my books to matter. Setting, subject, character, and plot must somehow merge in an up swelling of feelings so powerful as to sweep the readers into a world more real, sometimes more terrifying, than the ones they occupy.

And this is what I found one day when reading an article about Johnson Canyon Tunnel, a railroad tunnel located in the Arizona desert, the only tunnel in the U.S. to have had a twenty-four hour military guard for the duration of WWII. Having been dug through solid basalt, the tunnel claimed a three percent grade, the steepest in the U.S. Steam engines, with brakes screeching, roared in over rickety trestles to hit a deadly curve mid-point in the tunnel.

Box cars scattered at the bottom of the canyon still testify to the dangers of the approach. The tunnel claimed many lives in its making and holds the distinction of having burned twice and exploded once. Abandoned for decades now, for a more sane route, it is little more than a passing curiosity for hikers and rail buffs.

But when I read about this tunnel, a tingle gathered at the base of my spine, a feeling I knew my readers could also experience, because who doesn’t know how voices echo in an iron-clad tunnel in the middle of a mountain, how the overburden presses down like an invisible weight, how it sucks away one’s breath in its stillness? Who doesn’t know how the dampness clings to the skin, or how creosote and fear smell in the darkness? Who doesn’t know how the gut twists at the sound of a train thundering into the portal and there’s nowhere to run?

These were the feelings I had, the kind that tests a person’s grit, even one like Hook Runyon.

So where did the idea for DEAD MAN’S TUNNEL come from? A place called Johnson Canyon Tunnel. And why did I choose to write about it? Because I had a feeling, one that wouldn’t go away.

www.sheldonrussell.com

Imagine my surprise: I saw bits and pieces of The Alamo (with Jason Patric and Billy Bob Thornton) for the first time this weekend and actually liked it. I never thought that would be the case, which helps to explain why I didn’t see it in the theatre.

No one’s ever described me as a Thornton fan. I came a lot closer to becoming one after seeing him in this.

He played Davy Crockett, who evidently preferred being called David, as a very different man from the legend we all grew up with. For example: Thornton’s Crockett wasn’t an overtly brave man, at least when it came to going into battle.

As a result, he became a far more interesting character to me.

Far as I’m concerned, true heroes are those who are afraid of taking right action and take it anyway. I tend to assume someone who feels no fear and simply rushes into a dangerous situation—while admirable—probably just lacks the imagination to recognize all the potential problems involved.

Therefore, it’s no more courageous for them to enter into the fray than it is for me to get out of bed in the morning. Although walking past a mirror before combing my hair can take a whole lot of gumption. Trust me.

I’m my mother’s daughter. So I see every possible danger—real and imagined—in every situation. This is my family’s form of survival training. Because I’m familiar with fear, I can relate to characters who feel it as well. Their ability to force themselves to still charge forward gives me hope that I might be able to respond in like fashion in a similar situation.

You gotta love a character who gives you hope for yourself . . . or the whole human condition.

WHAT ABOUT YOU, DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE CHARACTER FROM A BOOK OR MOVIE? IF SO, PLEASE TELL US WHO AND WHY HE OR SHE FASCINATES YOU. A FREE COPY OF MY DEBUT NOVEL, MRS. GOODFELLER, WILL BE RANDOMLY AWARDED TO ONE PERSON WHO LEAVES A COMMENT BELOW BEFORE THE NEXT WRITERSPACE BLOG IS POSTED.

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Jaycie Cash blogs on a regular basis for Writerspace.com Her debut novel, MRS. GOODFELLER, is available through most major e-Book outlets, including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. She’d love for you to like her Facebook Author page.