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By Monica Murphy

Ah 2020—this has been one wild year, am I right? It feels like our world has been turned completely upside down, and not in a good way.

It’s been stressful, to say the least, and I have to say that I’m grateful for a lot of things, but I’m focusing on one in particular—reading books. Specifically romance. More than anything, reading romances is helping me get through these tough times (well, streaming services are helping too, but I’m concentrating on the book world right now). I’ve read some pretty great books this year, and I’m so grateful for the escapism these stories have provided for me.

They make me forget as we go through a horrific pandemic. They help take my mind off the raging fire that’s burning only a few miles away from my house. And they help soothe my stress as I worry over my kids’ mental states while they deal with the most unusual school year we’ve ever experienced.

Not only has reading helped me escape, but so has writing. I’ve written more books this year than I have in a while, and that’s thanks to being on lockdown. We go nowhere. We don’t do much of anything. No book signings to attend. No cheer team for me to coach currently, since there’s no football season at the high school this fall (fingers crossed it happens this winter!). So guess who benefits from that? My readers!

I hope they’re able to find escape in my stories. I know I do when I’m writing them. Instead of being at a football game on Friday nights like I was all last fall, I’m reliving those moments in The Callahans series. And that’s what we’re looking for right now, am I right? A little escape. Some normalcy.

Here’s to reading. And escaping.

Monica Murphy is the author of the new book Addicted To Him.

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What can you tell us about your new release, Scarred By Pain?

Scarred by Pain is part of the Royal Bastards MC world. Taron 'Knuckles' Brown is the newly appointed Sergeant at Arms who doesn't quite seem to fit in with the rest of the members. He believes he isn't deserving of love, that is until he meets Dyanara. She herself has suffered at the hands of her family and when she meets Knuckles, she sees him as so much more than how he sees himself. It's an explosion of emotions and has become my favorite book to write.

What or who inspired you to become an author?

I was bullied all throughout elementary and high school. A teacher once told me to write what I felt in a journal and instead, I started writing short stories. At the age of sixteen, I wrote my first book, a vampire story. I got so lost in that make-believe world, I just kept writing and haven't stopped ever since.

What's on your top 5 list for the best books you've ever read?

Top five books are hard but these are the ones I've read the most:
Pride & Prejudice by Judith McNaught
Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught
Mr. O by Lauren Blakely
The Second Child by John Saul

It's a mixture of Romance and Horror, for sure.

Say you're the host of a literary talk show. Who would be your first guest? What would you want to ask

Laurell K. Hamilton would be my first guest and I'd ask her how in the world she keeps track of all her characters. Who inspires her, and if any of her characters have ties to her life.

What's your favorite thing about writing?

Creating different worlds where my characters could play and my readers could indulge.

What is a typical day like for you?

I am a Human Resources Manager. So for the most part I work full time at a resort in Florida. I get home, take care of my family, feed the dog, and then sit down in my comfy chair and put some words down. I feel like I'm getting somewhere in a storyline or in my work if I type at least 1000 words a day.

What scene from Scarred By Pain was your favorite to write?

There's this one scene where Knuckles has to go visit a powerful Voodoo Priestess by the name of Madame Laveaux. She lives deep in the bayou and he's afraid of what he may find when he meets her. Their interaction, and the way she sets him in his place, was one of my favorite scenes. I also enjoy learning new languages when writing. The book is filled with Spanish and Creole phrases.

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

One can only help those who make an effort to help themselves. I live by that motto on a day to day basis.

Crimson Syn is the author of the new book Scarred By Pain.

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What can you tell us about your new release, Testing Truth?

Testing Truth is a steamy cyborg romance featuring a cyborg warrior, a human princess and a dangerous mission.
Testing Truth makes me laugh. It makes me cry. There are friendships and family, love, sexy times, some violence, a few battles, a grand adventure and it has that happy optimistic ending I expect from romance novels.

What or who inspired you to become an author?

I’ve always written. I was a daily diary writer since I could hold a crayon.  When I was in high school, a teacher approached me about writing an article for the region’s daily newspaper. That was the first time I realized people could earn money from writing.  Before that, I thought of writing as a hobby, not as a possible career. That shift in thinking changed my life.

What's on your top 5 list for the best books you've ever read?

Loretta Chase’s Lord Of Scoundrels is my benchmark book. It is the book I re-read when I think my stories are ‘good enough’ and need motivation to step up my game. (grins) Lord Of Scoundrels has so many layers to it. Every time I re-read it, I notice different things in the story.

Laurann Dohner’s Burning Up Flint was my very first cyborg romance. Before reading that book, I loved cyborgs but I thought of them as villains. Burning Up Flint showed me cyborgs could be awesome heroes.

Eve Langlais’ C791 was another early cyborg romance favorite. It has that delightful conflict between machine and man, logic and emotion that I adore in cyborg romances.

Kit Rocha’s Beyond Shame was my first introduction to darker-toned romances. It was gritty and violent and so-very-sexy. My cyborg romances all have a darker tone and the Beyond series gave me the bravery to go there.

Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians is the first story in her Ice Planet Barbarians world. That series is a master class on how to build an ever-evolving world with its core long series and many spin-offs.

Say you're the host of a literary talk show. Who would be your first guest? What would you want to ask

I’m camera-shy so I doubt I’ll ever be a host of a literary talk show. (grins)

But if I did have the honor of filling that role, I would invite Susan Stoker on the show. She is a New York Times Bestselling Author and has written a gazillion Navy Seal contemporary romances. She has the type of writing career I want to have. She has a tight niche and a large and extremely faithful family of readers.

The first questions I’d ask her are how she grew that family of readers, how she keeps that family tight even though it is quite large, how she keeps them excited about new releases.

What's your favorite thing about writing?

I’m a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants, having no set plot before I start writing. One of my favorite moments is when I slip in a detail in the beginning of a story and toward the end of the story, I find out why that detail was so important. That is sheer magic.

What is a typical day like for you?

I tend to devote 9 to 9 as writing time. Yep. I’m a 12 hour a day type of writer. At least 5 of those hours are used for fresh writing or revisions. The rest of the time is chatting with reading buddies, doing promotion, and completing admin tasks.

What scene from Testing Truth was your favorite to write?

There were so many scenes I enjoyed writing in Testing Truth. Truth, the cyborg hero, is rarely serious and was an absolute blast to write. The first scene I found fun was, in Chapter One, when they are seeking to make one of their ships look in need of repairs and they’re just banging the nuts and bolts out of it, releasing all their frustrations while they’re doing that.

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”

I like to take risks with my stories, try different things, and leave my emotions, nice or not-so-nice on the page. That’s scary—to show that part of me. But I think if I don’t feel the emotion while writing a scene, reading buddies won’t feel it.

Cynthia Sax is the author of the new book Testing Truth.

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What can you tell us about your new release, Naughty Brits?

I'm not sure how most anthologies start, but I feel like most of them probably don't start in a sunny pool at a writing retreat (and a fair bit of time after the wine had been opened at that!) We were in the pool talking through a friend's London-set story, and we all gradually began riffing on the idea of romances set across the pond--and the things two people in love could or couldn't get away with in the British Museum. And thus the anthology--with its host of cozy taverns, foggy evenings, and brooding heroes--came to be. My novella, Supplicant, is a second-chance romance with a stern professor and a poor American girl, but the anthology also features a duke in disguise written by Sarah MacLean in her first ever contemporary romance (!!), a sexy bodyguard written by Sophie Jordan, a brooding celebrity written by Louisa Edwards, and an ex-soldier with a tragic past written by fantasy author Tessa Gratton in her first ever romance!

What or who inspired you to become an author?

For a long time growing up, I thought I wanted to write non-fiction, either as a journalist or as a theologian, but after I wrote a novel for a senior class project, I knew that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. All other kinds of writing work to describe reality, but as a novelist, I would get to shape it. And also write lots of kissing scenes. So I chose fiction and never looked back!

What's on your top 5 list for the best books you've ever read?

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Idea of You by Robinne Lee
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
How Not to Fall by Emily Foster
(bonus best book: Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon!!!)

Say you're the host of a literary talk show. Who would be your first guest? What would you want to ask

Is necromancy an option? If so, I'd really like to have Charles Dickens on so he can apologize for all the mean things he said about Elizabeth Gaskell. If necromancy is not an option, I'd really love to talk with Kresley Cole. (She wasn't on my top 5 books because I literally cannot pick which book of hers is my favorite! They're all my favorite! All of them!) She writes across genres, iterating on tropes and themes in a fun, freewheeling style, and she's nailed the art of subverting and updating tropes while still capturing the essential magic of the original. There's something so playful about the way she approaches storytelling, and it's something I aspire to every time I sit down to write.

What's your favorite thing about writing?

Working in pajama pants!

Truly, though, my favorite part is the process of starting a new story. I love research, I love input, and so when I'm starting a new project, there's always a phase when I'm ordering all the research books and making folders and making notes--and beginning to dream while I'm doing it all. It feels like the beginning of a college semester to me. All that potential and new knowledge just waiting to be discovered.

What is a typical day like for you?

2020 has meant that very little is typical now--especially with kids schooling from home--but in general, I wake up right before it's time to plonk my kids in front of their first virtual class, and then spend the next few hours yawningly doing emails and assorted marketing work. After lunch, my brain has woken up enough to write, and I write from about 1 - 4, break for dinner and family time, and then come back and write from 10 PM - 1 AM. All told, I spend about six hours a day on the words themselves (either drafting or editing) and two or three hours on the business end. I find that the business side of writing is an invasive weed, and it will start cannibalizing writing time if it goes unchecked, so I try to be deliberate about how much time and energy I give it.

What scene from Naughty Brits was your favorite to write?

Normally the high-heat scenes are my favorite, but in this case, it was the scene where my professor and my heroine meet for the first time and start arguing about a depiction of the goddess Ishtar. I wanted to capture the energy that happens when attraction is based on someone's intelligence; I wanted to convey how it was their mutual intelligence and expertise that first captured their attention. Of course, the tricky part of writing characters smarter than I am is that I have to find a way for them to sound smarter than I am on the page--which meant lots and lots of research. Another favorite of mine!

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

Gloria Anzaldúa, who was a scholar, activist and poet, said "I change myself, I change the world." I find that to be incredibly galvanizing as well as clarifying--transformation starts with me, which means there's no reason not to start at the present moment. And as I work to transform myself, the transformation inevitably ripples out to the people around me. Through my writing, through my actions, through my speech. It's such a simple yet powerful recipe for making the world a more equitable, inclusive and just place.  Which in a lot of ways is the heart of the romance genre. Hope and justice.

Sierra Simone is one of the authors of the new book Naughty Brits.

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What can you tell us about your new release, Homebound?

Homebound is a love story that spans nearly twenty years, centered in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. Told from the heroine's point of view, each chapter contains a present section and past section that ties together with a chapter title that's an Appalachian saying. I actually got the idea from my grandmother, who had crazy sayings for everything. Sometimes it was easy to figure out the lesson in the proverb; sometimes...I thought she was making stuff up!

What or who inspired you to become an author?

I've been making up stories in my head ever since I was a little girl. I was always the kid with a book instead of the kid with a sports schedule. While my brother and sister got new bikes for Christmas, I got a book subscription. I guess an author was always hiding inside me.

What's on your top 5 list for the best books you've ever read?

This is like asking, "Which of your children is your favorite?" LOL The answer is similar: it depends on the day and my mood. 😛 If I have to pick only 5 of all time, I'll go with the Anne of Green Gables series (I'm sort of cheating by naming a series as a single choice) by LM Montgomery, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover, Archer's Voice by Mia Sheridan, and Asking for It by Lilah Pace.

Say you're the host of a literary talk show. Who would be your first guest? What would you want to ask

I would probably invite an unpublished author. There's something so dazzling about the time before hitting that publish button in spite of all the anxiety. The literary world is still full of possibility, and the author's excitement is so palpable. I would probably ask them what they would write—not in another book, but in a letter to themselves.

What's your favorite thing about writing?

I get to play pretend as a job! What's not to love about that?

What is a typical day like for you?

I have three teens, so my days tend to revolve around their school/activity schedules. The alarm goes off at 5:30am, and I don't usually get to bed until around 10pm. I sneak in writing time whenever/wherever I can, but if it gets really hectic, I find it almost impossible to focus.

What scene from Homebound was your favorite to write?

Probably the scene where Jesse and Lenore meet again for the first time in five years. It took me several tries to get it "right," but there's so much electrical tension, wonder, and awe between them.

Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?

Fight for something. It's actually a quote from the Marianas Trench song, Ever After. I think it pertains to everything in life though. We can either float on the current or swim in the direction we choose.

Kata Čuić is the author of the new book Homebound.

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