My guest is award winning author who describes herself as a woman with a varied and checkered past. And boy, oh boy, she has. Nina Bruhns writes about dangerous passions whether it is in her romantic thriller trilogy Passion For Danger series (Berkley Sensation), Nocturne, or romance for Silhouette and Harlequin. It’s her trademark or brand, if you will. She does an excellent job with it.
Nina admits, “…I like to push the envelope in my stories. I think much of the appeal of romance is the seductive fantasy it allows women to indulge in safely. A woman whose days are filled with diapers or spreadsheets, PTA or sales meetings, wants to be swept away in a romantic fantasy for a few hours, into a world where she can quench her thirst for love and romantic adventure, and fulfill her dreams of a man who instinctively satisfies her deepest yearnings. I love writing about feisty heroines who do things I would never dare to do in real life. My heroes are dark and dangerous men who ooze sensuality–but who know how to treat a lady.”
I had the opportunity to attend a workshop she was part of about writing danger. It was a lot of fun and I learned so much. Applying the knowledge is a bit more difficult, but I’m getting it down. I had the opportunity to meet Nina. She has a lovely smile, a savvy knowledge of writing and the market. Nina is also a fun person to talk to with a great sense of humor—which is also reflected in her writing.
Nina says the trilogy she’s written for Nocturne is one she’s wanted to write for sometime. And by the way, she really is an archaeologist (an Egyptologist).
Thank you so much to Sia for having me as a guest here at Over Coffee!
Many of my readers don’t know that I am an Egyptologist—-I’d say in real life, except that it’s kind of the other way around. Writing novels is my real life these days, and despite the three college degrees, traveling around Egypt doing archaeological digs and surveys has been relegated to the realm of my imagination. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing...
This week the second book in my IMMORTAL SHEIKHS trilogy, SHADOW OF THE SHEIKH, was released by Harlequin Nocturne (book 1, LORD OF THE DESERT, came out in August).
The series takes place in modern Egypt, in a setting filled with all sorts of fun mythological and paranormal elements. These are truly books of my heart. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to write these stories! But when I first started writing romance my editor would not even look at ideas with exotic settings, let alone ancient gods, immortals, and shape-shifters. Wow, how things have changed!
In this series, I have absolutely loved being able to use my knowledge of this amazing ancient culture to bring it back to life for my readers...with a cool twist. It is all still happening today. My strong, independent heroines, three American sisters, become immersed in the mysterious world of the last surviving Egyptian demigods. And boy, do they find things they never imagined existed. Including, of course, love.
Did I mention the vampire?
When I was on my first archaeological expedition to northern Sudan (which was part of Egypt in ancient times) we stayed in a tiny village on the Nile. The area around this village was supposed to have the most vampires in all of Africa. Okay, then. Freaked out? Me? Just a little.
Trust me, I’m no vampire expert. But when my editor suggested I make one of my lead characters a vampire (the hero of book 3, VAMPIRE SHEIKH, coming in February, who appears in all three books), I remembered that village (who could forget!), and thought how interesting it would be to incorporate the incredibly sexy archetype of the vampire lord into the ancient Egyptian pantheon. So I took the few references I found to vampirism in Pharaonic times and shaped them into a plausible addition to the existing mythology, which I then used to build the paranormal world in the trilogy.
The result is a blend of vamp and Egyptian mystery which I think make the stories really unusual and interesting. When you combine that with three hunky shape-shifting sheikhs and three sizzling hot romances, I think my readers will really enjoy this trilogy!
I hope you’ll let me know what you think!
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Series Premise: The Immortal Sheikhs…
The three Haliday sisters are not afraid of mummies. Nor of silly ancient Egyptian curses. Get real. This is the twenty-first century! Besides, anthropologist Gemma, historian Gillian, and archaeologist Josslyn Haliday spent their childhoods sharing their sleeping tent with mummies and telling each other stories of fantastic shapeshifters and vampires, as they accompanied their Egyptologist father on his digs…ever since the fateful day their mother mysteriously disappeared into the sands of Egypt twenty years ago.
Brave, modern women all three, it would never occur to any of them to fear the dead…or the living dead.
But that is all about to change…
Shadow Of The Sheikh Back Cover Blurb:
Sheikh Shahin Aswadi—the harbinger of death, a ghostly figure who rides the wind in the form of a powerful black hawk. No mortal has dared approach his hidden oasis encampment for nearly a century. They are all terrified by the ruthless legend of al Shahin.
All but intrepid anthropologist Gemma Haliday. Determined to find her missing sister, Gemma has foolishly disregarded the dire warnings of local villagers…and walks straight into a trap Shahin has laid for her.
He takes the beautiful mortal captive, determined to use her, then gift her to his vampire lord, Seth-Aziz, as a blood sacrifice.
But one taste of Gemma’s lips and he knows he must possess her for fully and for all time. And he wants her to burn for him as he burns for her, with a desire as hot and vast as his desert home. Excerpt TRAILER
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A native of Canada, Nina grew up in California and currently resides in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.
