Today we welcome Rebecca Rogers Maher to Heroes and Heartbreakers. Rebecca’s Snowbound With a Stranger has just been released, and is a delicious way to keep warm! She’s here to talk about just why snowbound love is so...hot. Welcome, Rebecca!
Last spring, I was deeply entrenched in research on a post-apocalyptic romance I called The Real Housewives of the Apocalypse. It was a fantastic premise that required me to learn how to shoot a rifle, forage for food, stockpile emergency supplies, and read a metric ton of terrifying literature about climate-induced natural disasters and the socio-political collapse that follows.
Guess what?
It turns out the apocalypse is pretty depressing. By June, I could barely get out of bed.
To cheer myself up, I decided to stay right there in that bed and write a snowbound romance. That’s how my current release—Snowbound with a Stranger—was born, but it wasn’t the start of my obsession with snowbound stories. I’ve loved those since I first started reading romance novels (when I was like five years old). Here’s why:
1. It’s All The Fun of the Apocalypse, Without the Pesky Death and Pestilence.
The best part about post-apocalyptic stories is that the stakes are absurdly high. There is nothing and no one left. The many mistakes of the human race have finally caught up with us, and the future of the entire world rests on our protagonists’ shoulders. This makes every word—every move, every feeling and thought—absolutely necessary and important. All our senses are heightened and everything that happens MATTERS. It’s exhilarating.
It’s also quite exhausting. The first few days are cool, yeah, but then you have to deal with the endlessness of it all, and that, frankly, is a huge bummer.
Snowbound stories give you the intensified emotion of those first few days without all the carnage and loneliness that follows. After all, once the storm stops, the characters can leave their cabin or cave or whatnot and go home. Which brings up a very delicious problem…
2. It Might Not Last.
Sure, the hero and heroine have hit it off like gangbusters while trapped for three days in the rear section of a downed plane, but once they go back to Omaha, will they retain the spark? We don’t know. And they don’t know either. Which makes everything they do feel precious and stolen and hyper-sexy. Especially since…
3. There’s No One Else There to Get in the Way.
No sensible best friend to tell you to be careful. No workplace drama to distract you from the hero’s smoldering glances. No TV shows to take your mind off the fact that he smells like wood burning. Just a hero and heroine, alone, with nothing to do but find new and creative ways to keep warm. And anyway…
4. You’re At the Edge of the World.
Separated from family, friends, cars, homes, money and most modern conveniences, and surrounded everywhere by a quiet sea of white, the snowbound hero and heroine are basically in a different world. One that doesn’t quite exist and therefore perhaps does not have the same rules and consequences as that other world they usually inhabit. So they can do things they normally might not do. Like rip each other’s clothes off twelve hours after meeting for the first time. Because…
5. The Power of Nature Takes Over.
All that howling wind? The extreme cold? The sense that at any moment you could be buried alive? It gets the blood stirring. Brings out the animal in us. Makes us act a little crazy and makes us want to have a little fun while we still can. All while wrapped up in a warm blanket. With a roaring fire. And preferably a cup of hot chocolate heating up in a kettle somewhere. You know, for afterwards. When you get hungry.
Which reminds me, where did I leave the marshmallows?
I bought a pile of them to roast while I did “research” for this post, which basically meant reading as many snowbound stories as I could get my hands on. Sadly, I’ve hit the bottom of my stack.
And I need more. Right away.
Thanks for reading. And may we all from now on grab life by the snowballs.
To enter for a chance to win a copy of Snowbound with a Stranger, make sure you’re a registered member of the site, and then share your favorite snowbound stories in a comment.* Tell me why you love them!
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, fill out entry at http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2012/06/author-rebecca-rogers-maher-on-why-snow-beats-the-apocalypse-every-time beginning at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) June 6, 2012. Sweepstakes ends at 9:59 a.m. ET on June 12, 2012 (the “Promotion Period”). Void outside of the 50 US and DC and where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules at http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/page/official-rules-rebecca-rogers-maher-snowbound-with-a-stranger-comment-sweepstakes. Sponsor: Macmillan, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.
Rebecca Rogers Maher lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and children. She is the author of the Recovery Trilogy—I’ll Become the Sea, Snowbound with a Stranger, and the forthcoming Fault Lines (September 2012)—from Carina Press.
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Snowbound with a Stranger is now available from Carina Press.
