If you are a regular follower of this blog, then you know how amazing the people from The Hachette Book Group are. Brianne from Hachette is on virtual tour with author, Jami Alden, and today they are here talking about Ms. Alden’s new book and it sounds fantastic!!!! So, please, help me welcome both Jami Alden and Brianne.
Like so many romance readers, my first romance novel was by Kathleen Woodiwiss – The Flame and the Flower, to be exact. I was thirteen. I spent the next month working my way through her entire back list. Shortly thereafter I discovered Judith McNaught, Johanna Lindsey, Karen Robards, Catherine Coulter, Shirlee Busbee among others, and devoured their lavish historical epics full of overbearing alpha males and the women who brought them to their knees. I was hooked. My high school teachers marveled at my ability to read romance novels under the desk and still score straight A’s. I started to imagine myself, living in a cabin in the mountains somewhere, writing romance novels.
It took me quite awhile to pursue my dream. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in English Literature, I worked in a variety of soul sucking admin jobs before I began my career in marketing. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but at least my writing appeared on several web sites and in many software marketing brochures. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to fit the phrase “and her loins melted like hot wax” into any of them.
During my stint as the world’s surliest receptionist, I took my first stab at writing. The result was a very melodramatic western historical which reads like a bad Elizabeth Lowell rip off. Its currently languishing on my hard drive, forever stuck on page 330.
Then in fall 2001 I had an incredible stroke of luck and got laid off from my marketing job. I decided it was time to stop saying I wanted to be a writer and to actually give it a serious go. Fortunately my husband, a socially well adjusted alpha male, is a very generous patron of the arts.
Four years later, I sold my first book and I’m pretty much living the dream of getting paid to write romance. I don’t live in a cabin in the mountains, but I do live in a rural-ish town near San Francisco (hey, we have deer and bunnies in our yard, along with the occasional coyote) with my husband, sons, and two dogs who patiently listen to my dialogue and help me work out plot points. When I’m not writing sexy romance, I enjoy running, reading, yoga and watching Food Network and bad reality TV.
1. Beg for Mercy was originally going to be set in California. However, once I started doing research about California’s death row and the appeals process I realized my heroine would be about sixty years old before the action in the book could take place! I quickly realized I had to change the setting to a state where things moved a bit faster. Hence, the book takes place in Seattle.
2. I’m pretty sure I’m the only parent in my son’s preschool class who has called the Washington State Penitentiary to inquire about visitation rules for death row inmates.
3. When my boys, ages 3 and 5 first saw the cover they asked if I had written a book about Avatars.
4. At least fifty pages of this book were written in a remote cabin in Alaska in the middle of winter. How remote? It’s 25 miles from the nearest town and you have to fly in a plane and/or ride a snow machine to get there.
5. I rarely get emotional over my own writing, but I teared up a little when I wrote the scene that reveals my villain’s backstory.
Megan Flynn thought she was falling in love. Cole Williams wasn’t just handsome and passionate, he was one of the good guys. Or so she thought, until he arrested her brother-the only family she has left-for a murder she knows he couldn’t have possibly committed. Now, with her heart broken and her brother’s life hanging in the balance, Megan will risk everything to prove his innocence. Even if that means throwing herself into the path of a sadistic killer with a hauntingly familiar MO.
Seattle Detective Cole Williams had given up on making Megan see reason where her brother is concerned. But when she insinuates herself into the most shockingly brutal case Cole has ever worked, he can’t stand idly by. Plunged into a secret world where the city’s elite indulge their darkest desires, Cole will do whatever it takes to bring down a madman who has made Megan his most coveted prey.
This does sound like a great book and even better is that it's part of a trilogy.
Sounds like a great read.