SILENT SCREAM, my eleventh book, will be released on May 25!  I’m very excited about this book because the hero – firefighter David Hunter – is a character whose story I’ve wanted to tell for a very long time.  My readers have wanted me to tell his story too.  Nearly every request I get for a specific character is for David. 

David Hunter was a character who leapt onto my computer screen in my first book, DON'T TELL.  He wasn’t supposed to be a major character, but nobody told him that!  He was my first hero’s little brother, “little” referring only to age.  There is nothing small about David Hunter.  He’s got a huge heart, huge muscles, and well, I’ll let your imaginations just take it from there, LOL.  He’s got a face so handsome that women walk into poles and trip over their own feet because they’re watching David and not where they’re going. 

He’s funny, sweet, loves his mother, is very good with his hands, and for years was loyal to the same woman, even though she didn’t love him back.  After his second appearance in NOTHING TO FEAR, David becomes a firefighter, performing heroic rescues in COUNT TO TEN.  He devotes his spare time to volunteering in battered women’s shelters and works with underprivileged kids.  David was almost too good to be true.

So when it was time to write his story, I was a little puzzled.  What would be the obstacle he’d overcome?  My heroes and heroines are riddled with soul-tortured angst.  Would David be different?

I was frowning over this to a friend who lets me talk through my plots when I’m stuck.  I said, “He’s too good to be true.”  And she waggled her brows and said, “I wonder what he’s hiding.”

And there it was.  David was too good to be true.  His years of service and his unrequited devotion really hid a terrible, guilty secret.  I realized as I started developing David’s character that my knowledge of him was only skin deep.  I knew things about him, but I did not know him. In the previous four books in which he’d appeared, I’d never once been inside his head.  There was a lot I didn’t know about David Hunter.

David is a multi-layered, complicated man.  He had a lot to lose.  But enter Olivia Sutherland, with whom he’s shared a night of explosive passion in the past, and suddenly he has everything to gain.  He and Olivia find themselves chasing a vicious blackmailer who’s killed and will not hesitate to kill again.  This villain witnesses a group of college kids committing arson – only someone gets killed in the fire.  The blackmailer takes this tragedy and twists it for his own gain – and will wipe out anyone who stands in his way.

I loved writing David’s character.  He was a revelation! I hope you all love him too.  Today I’ll be giving away one copy of SILENT SCREAM to a randomly drawn poster. 

Do you like your heroes be tortured souls?  Who are your favorite tortured heroes?

For more on David, check out my website www.karenrosebooks.com for an excerpt, an awesome video, and an opportunity to win free books for you and your friend in my “Give a Friend a Rose” Sweepstakes!