Playing the Part: Exclusive Excerpt
"Long fingers winding through her hair to anchor her in the perfect spot for him to deepen the kiss."
Fire Inside: Exclusive Excerpt
"I stared into his eyes trying to breathe as his hand at my midriff slid back down, slow, light..."
Shapeshifted: Exclusive Excerpt
"Once upon a time, I dated a zombie and a werewolf. So, you know, the usual."
Sweet Salt Air: Exclusive Excerpt
The truth could cost them their friendship, but it could also free their love.
Find your future faves with this delightfully convenient shopping list of romance novels coming out in June. We’ve divided them up by subgenre to make it easier for those who’ve got a very specific obsession and there are some great books to look forward to—from steampunk vampires and Dommes to e-serials and a very special motorcycle club. Don’t forget to take this printable version with you when it’s time to shop!
| Heroes and Heartbreakers June 2013 Shopping List! | ||||||
| Paranormal/Urban Fantasy/SfR | ||||||
 |
My love affair with the novella began when as an undergrad I discovered I much preferred “Bartleby the Scrivener” to Moby Dick and “The Dead” to Ulysses. Part of the attraction of the literary novellas was the length, of course, but as I branched out into novellas in romance fiction, I found other advantages. Not only could I read a complete novella while waiting for soccer practice to end or while my students were doing their department-mandated in-class writing, but I could also try new writers with a minimum investment of time. I reserved a special shelf for keeper anthologies and expanded my auto-buy list with authors I first fell in love with through novellas.
The only problem was that novellas in historical romance tended to be seasonal because anthologies usually centered on a holiday theme, most often Christmas but sometimes Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day or June weddings. Imagine my delight when the digital revolution led to a renaissance of historical romance novellas. Old favorites were being reissued in digital format, and new ones were being offered as ereads only. I could choose from novellas that were prequels to established series or introductions to upcoming series, novellas that gave me the story complete with HEA of a secondary character, novellas that served as a snack to tide me over while waiting for a new novel from a favorite author. My Kindle was filling up with novellas from Miranda Neville, Meredith Duran, Kate Noble, Grace Burrowes, and others. Heaven!
Soon I had so many novellas that I was faced with a difficult decision. Which of my many cherished romance fiction novellas would I archive and which would remain on my ereader to be reread as I waited in the doctor’s office or in an endless supermarket checkout line? I am still in the process of making choices, but these are the six novellas that I’ll never delete, the ones I reread again and again. (I consider Christmas novellas a category of their own. That explains the absence of Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, and Carla Kelly from this list.)
Find your future faves with this delightfully convenient shopping list of romance novels coming out in May. We’ve divided them up by subgenre to make it easier for those who’ve got a very specific obsession and there are some great books to look forward to—from summer romances and New Adult to sexy angels and reunited lovers. Don’t forget to take this printable version with you when it’s time to shop!
| Heroes and Heartbreakers May 2013 Shopping List! | ||||||
| Paranormal/Urban Fantasy/SfR | ||||||
 |
Aleksandr Voinov’s books not only rip you out of your comfort zone, they open the door and roughly push you through. No parachute. No safety harness. He demands you explore the dark and brutal side of love right along with his well defined and complex characters. Unlike many erotic romance authors, Voinov doesn’t subscribe to the notion that the end of the story necessitates a happily ever after. While his characters may resolve the main conflict in the story, we aren’t given any reassurances that they will ever overcome the emotional, mental, or physical obstacles strangling them in order to have a functioning relationship.
Voinov’s strength lies in his characters. They are often underdogs, seemingly stuck in non-negotiable circumstances, forced into submission by the results of their own actions. Their journey to self discovery and awareness is often a minefield of pain, despair, and blood. But they are also survivors who are often forced to submit in some way, but you would never mistake that for defeat. Their choices aren’t always the best, but they are the best choices to make from what they are offered.
Voinov himself has said the perfect ending for his books is when “the characters make it out alive, but at a terrible cost, usually by the skin of their teeth. I want to see what's at the core of them, and stripping them down to that core is rarely pleasant for them. But it does make them wiser, and often stronger people.”
See? Not one “...and they lived happily ever after.”
Heroes and Heartbreakers is pleased to announce we're looking for you!
(Or your writing, actually.)
Starting today, we are once more accepting submissions to our original romance story program. Please take a moment to review our submissions guidelines, and send us your short romance stories for consideration.
We are looking for great stories in all romance subgenres (erotica, paranormal, historical, contemporary, romantic suspense, etc.) as well as the New Adult genre.
Find your future faves with this delightfully convenient shopping list of romance novels coming out in January. We’ve divided them up by subgenre to make it easier for those who’ve got a very specific obsession. Don’t forget to take this printable version with you when it’s time to shop!
| Heroes and Heartbreakers January 2013 Shopping List! | ||||||
| Paranormal/Urban Fantasy/SfR | ||||||
 |
If I could fill a Christmas basket for each of you with my favorite Christmas historical romances of 2012, I’d include a book for each day of Christmas week: four new releases and three reissues.
Lady Louisa’s Christmas Knight, Grace Burrowes
I love Grace Burrowes’s large, loving Windham clan—eight siblings and parents who are as fascinating as their children. Lady Louisa’s book is the sixth in the series. It features not only a Windham heroine who is smart and different and determined to avoid matrimony (for what seems to her very good reason), but an even more unusual her—a pig-farming knight who is clearly her social inferior. Secrets abound, and the delighted reader is soon cheering for these two practical lovers to attain an HEA that is everything their poetry-loving hearts deserve. Library Journal named this book one of the best romances of 2012.
[They hero and heroine certainly sound refreshingly different...]
If I were headed for a desert island and were allowed to take only one Christmas romance, I’d take one by Carla Kelly. The problem would be choosing just one. Of course, I could take Carla Kelly’s Christmas Collection, published last year by Cedar Fort. It includes four of her novellas previously published in the Signet Regency Christmas anthologies: “The Christmas Ornament” (A Regency Christmas, 1998), probably the most light-hearted of Kelly’s stories, with an Oxford scholar as hero and a pair of matchmaking fathers; “Make a Joyful Noise” (A Regency Christmas Carol, 1997), with a hero who finds his heroine when his mother gives him the task of recruiting new voices for a choral competition; “An Object of Charity” (A Regency Christmas Present, 1999), with a ship’s captain who’s coming home to an estranged family and the niece and nephew of his first mate, killed in action, for whom the captain feels responsible; and “The Three Kings” (A Regency Christmas II, 1990), in which the hero and heroine travel through war-torn Spain.
Find your future faves with this delightfully convenient shopping list of romance novels coming out in December. We’ve divided them up by subgenre to make it easier for those who’ve got a very specific obsession. Don’t forget to take this printable version with you when it’s time to shop!
| Heroes and Heartbreakers December Shopping List! | ||||||
| Paranormal/Urban Fantasy/SfR | ||||||
 |
||||||
 |
||||||
One of the most enduring tropes in romance is when an Alpha male is brought to his knees (often literally!) by a sexy female. And when the Alpha male is a member, either past or present, of a military group, that dynamic is even more alluring.
Lora Leigh is set to rerelease four of her previously-released short stories, and in three of them, the Alpha male must rescue his female of choice from some danger. In all four, however, the men are in turn sexually felled by their very capable heroines.
The phrase “double feature” is usually applied to films. You know, like when drive-in theaters used to show two movies together like Them! and I Married a Monster from Outer Space (Well, um, I don’t actually know if those two movies were ever billed together, but I so would have been there!).
Ahem. Anyway, by coincidence I read two m/m science fiction romance novellas back to back. Upon finishing the second one I thought, “Hey, these two stories would make a great double feature!” By that I mean that they have characters, settings, and romances that pair nicely together for when you’re in the mood for edgy, intense stories.
More specifically, both stories feature heroes who are as grittylicious as they come.
Bitter Harvest by Kim Knox is a near future, post-apocalyptic tale in which a sexually transmitted nano-virus has nearly wiped out human civilization. Infected people form colonies that are hive-like in structure. The surviving humans of the year 2050 carve out a bleak existence in various compounds. Infected, rage-driven mutants continually stalk the compounds in search of more victims.
I love novellas. When I don't have a lot of time or, let's be honest, much of an attention span, the perfect fix is to lose myself in a short story. An instant happily ever after. And if we're really lucky, we still get great characters, a complete story arc, and a believable romance. Whatever reading mood you're in, these novellas offer something for every genre lover and are all stand-alone ebooks, even more convenient for the ereader fans who don't have to cart around a single book to get a complete and satisfying story.
For the fans who like their historicals with heat, Improper Relations, by new author Juliana Ross, gives us a very simple premise that pushes all my buttons when it comes to a story that will make me swoon: a touch of forbidden love, drawn out sexual tension that actually builds with each encounter, a rakish hero, and an inexperienced but eager heroine.
“Why?” I blurted out. “Why me?”
“You intrigue me, that's why. You give every appearance, on the outside, of conforming entirely to the identity my mother has conferred on you. The drab drudge of a lady's companion. The poor relation who lives in the shadows. The ghost who –”
“Stop! Just stop. I know who I am, what I am. I've no ambition to be anything more.”
“But you do. I can see that so clearly now. When I think of the way you responded to me in the library, I know you're more than that.”
He was wrong. He had to be wrong. “You mistake me. Boredom has driven me here – that, and simple curiosity.”
“About what? Come now, Hannah—what are you curious about?”
“Everything.”
I didn’t really begin reading romances until after I’d been out of college for a few years. With my literature degree in writing and editing, I’d read my share of novels, but there’s a point during the curriculum where reading changes from pleasure to pressure. And then I discovered novellas.
In the span of my crazy, busy life, novellas gave me the passion-filled, hopeful stories I craved on my multi-tasking-addled advertising brain. When I had more time, I invested in full-length novels; but during the week when there was only time for quickies, I voraciously consumed novellas. They were a great way to introduce me to a ton of new authors.
In the years since, I’ve cultivated and expanded my tastes, and have a great method for finding new authors and titles. But I still love novellas. My favorite books to purchase for my e-reading are novellas, because the faster-paced story is the perfect match for readers on the go. Here are some great stories and authors to get you started … I’m starting with some newer authors and following it up with some oldies but goodies.
