Can Love Work Miracles?

My guest, Caridad Piñeiro, is a multi-published and award-winning author whose love of the written word developed when her fifth grade teacher assigned a project—to write a book that would be placed in a class lending library. She has been hooked on writing ever since. I, for one, am thrilled.

Caridad is another bestselling author who writes dangerous but intriguing heroes. She writes paranormal romance but her past two books are paranormal with a touch of sci-fi, which makes for an absorbing story.

Personally, what I enjoy about Caridad’s books—aside from hot heroes and intriguing storylines—is her use of common themes we all face. The power of love and the chance of redemption. I like the way she presents characters that at first glance would be considered bad or wicked—but are they really? Or have circumstances pulled and shaped them into the person they appear to be today?   



First of all, thank you for having me on your wonderful blog again, Sia! It’s been too long since we shared some time at the RT Conference.


I’ve been traveling all around the blogosphere to celebrate the release of STRONGER THAN SIN which is a very special book for me since it’s my 25th publication. It seems like yesterday that my first book came out in 1999 and I want to thank all of you who have been on this fabulous ride with me.

But STRONGER THAN SIN is special to me for another reason: Jesse Bradford, the hero in the novel. From the moment the idea came to me that Jesse would be a wounded warrior with an unsavory past, I knew that STRONGER THAN SIN would not only be a paranormal suspense, but also a powerful story of redemption. Especially since I’m a firm believer that thanks to the power of love anyone can be redeemed.

In Jesse’s case, he was a hard-working young man who made it through college by playing football and then became a superstar on the gridiron. Unfortunately, with money, fame and fortune, Jesse lost sight of his family values and became as well known for his antics off the field as on. When an injury causes Jesse to love the only thing he has left – football – he’ll do anything to be able to play again including radical gene therapy.

But somewhere along the way things go horribly wrong. Jesse is forced to confront the man he has become versus the man he once was, especially when he meets a woman who makes him wish for more.

I really enjoyed writing the story of how Jesse rediscovers the honorable and caring man he had been at one time and how he redeems himself on behalf of those he loves. I guess that’s because I’m a hopeful romantic and believe that anything is possible with love.

• How about you? Do you believe someone can change for the better? Do you believe that love can work miracles?

Stronger Than Sin:
Dr. Liliana Carrera has had a few rough months. First her fiancé’s depression turns her into his punching bag. Then her brother – a gun for hire – involves her in a dangerous assignment to save world famous cellist Caterina Shaw. Now Liliana has even made a new life for herself and has found a new friend in her brother Mick’s newlywed wife. With stability returning to her life, Liliana turns her attention to keeping Caterina healthy and overcoming the trauma of the violent incidents which have colored her life in recent months.

Jesse Bradford had wanted only one thing when he approached Wardwell Laboratories in order to participate in their gene therapy trials – to stop the deterioration of his bones brought so he could return to his career as a football player. Jesse had never imagined that the cure would be worse than the disease.

Liliana knows of Jesse’s checkered past as a high profile celebrity and sees the rage in Jesse. Both bring back painful memories and awaken fear in Liliana. But she cannot be blind to Jesse’s suffering and just walk away. Especially when Liliana begins to see the honorable and caring man struggling to emerge. Together, Liliana and Jesse will battle to recover Jesse’s humanity and explore the dangerous love taking hold in their hearts. Excerpt  Trailer  Caridad has all sorts of background info here too.

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Caridad Pineiro is the NY Times and USA Today bestselling author of paranormal romance and romantic suspense. Look for STRONGER THAN SIN, the second book in an exciting new paranormal romance series, on November 1 2010 from Grand Central Publishing. In 2007, a year marked by six releases from Harlequin and Pocket Books, Caridad was selected as the 2007 Golden Apple Author of the Year by the New York City Romance Writers. Caridad's novels have been lauded as the Best Short Contemporary Romance of 2001 in the NJ Romance Writers Golden Leaf Contest, Top Fantasy Books of 2005 and 2006 by CATALINA Magazine and Top Nocturne of 2006 by Cataromance. Caridad has appeared on various television shows, such as the FOX News Early Edition in New York, and articles featuring her novels have been published in several leading newspapers and magazines, such as CATALINA, the New York Daily News, NJ Monthly and the Star Ledger. For more information on Caridad, please visit http://www.caridad.com/ or http://www.thecallingvampirenovels.com/. Facebook Fan Page

                                               CONTEST

 

The Mystery of Egypt

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



Buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Chapters Indigo.ca

Is an avid world traveler and adventurer with two graduate degrees in archaeology -- all great fodder for her stories, giving them broad dimension, vivid settings and characters that are out of the ordinary. Her novels have earned two RITA nominations, and won numerous other awards, including three prestigious Daphne du Maurier Awards of Excellence for Overall Best Mystery Suspense Novel of the Year, five Dorothy Parker Awards, several RT BookClub Awards and a National Readers Choice Award.

A native of Canada, Nina grew up in California and currently resides in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina.

Magic – Do you believe?

I’m pleased to have para romance author, Donna Grant, visiting Over Coffee again. I had the chance to meet Donna at a conference and spent quite a bit of time with her. What a fun time.

There are moments in her books that I can’t help but burst out laughing at something one of the characters have said or done. After meeting Donna, I fully understand where the humor comes from. She’s a beautiful and gracious southern lady with a backbone of steel and an impish sense of humor. You will definitely meet the Cajun side of her when you read her books—hot, spicy, and satisfying.

Donna's topic today is magic.

First, thank you, Sia, for asking me to return for another guest blog!

It seems in every culture throughout history there has been mention of magic. Some would say it doesn’t exist, some would argue it does. How can something so widely spoken about not be real? And if it is real, how do you prove it?

The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that I can include all kinds of paranormal elements in my worlds. The world in my new Dark Sword series is most definitely filled with magic. Both my heroines and heroes hold magic, though in different ways.

My heroes are warriors with primeval gods inside them giving them immortality as well as enhanced senses and the ability to control something be it water, people’s minds, or the very air you breathe. The gods also transform my Warriors. Each god favors a color, so when unleashed, the heroes turn the color of their god. They also have fangs and claws, and some even have horns and wings. It has been fun matching heroes to their powers.

My heroines are Druids, blessed with certain magical abilities that will aid the heroes in defeating the evil spreading over their world. There are two sects of Druids in the series – the mie, or pure Druids, who practice healing and using their magic for good. Then there are the droughs who go through a ritual that binds their souls with evil to create black magic.

In WICKED HIGHLANDER (Nov 2, 2010) the heroine, Marcail, is a Druid. Marcail has magic that allows her to take someone’s feelings from them into herself. She uses this several times throughout the books at great cost to herself since she gets violently ill when she does take away someone’s hurt, anger, or pain. More than that, deep in her mind is the spell to bind the gods inside the Warriors. Her grandmother buried the spell so deep that it will take Marcail falling in love to unlock it.

• My question is: If you could have magic, what kind would you have?

Wicked Highlander:

A HEART IN CHAINS...


The most reckless and fierce of the MacLeod brothers, Quinn is a prisoner of the god inside him, tormented by his inability to save his family from slaughter. His fury governs him, and day by day he loses himself to the darkness in his soul. But Quinn has a profound yearning for a woman’s love...


A PASSION UNBOUND...


Raised by Druids, the achingly beautiful Marcail is as spellbinding as the ancient magic that surges through her body. To Quinn, she is the most desirable woman he has ever known. But to his enemy Deirdre, she is the perfect bait to lure Quinn into her trap. Once the two lovers are in her wicked grasp, their passion will be put to the ultimate test... Excerpt and trailer.

The Dark Sword series unleashes the magic, passion, and fury of three legendary brothers - cursed by fate but bound by desire for the women they love...

Buy: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million
 
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Donna Grant is the award winning author of more than twenty novels spanning multiple genres of romance – Scottish Medieval, historical, dark fantasy, time travel, paranormal and erotic.
 
Donna was born and raised in Texas, but loves to travel. Her adventures have taken her throughout the United States as well as to Jamaica and Mexico. Growing up on the Texas/Louisiana border, Donna's Cajun side of the family taught her the “spicy” side of life while her Texas roots gave her two-steppin' and bareback riding.

Donna’s love of the romance genre and the constant stories running through her head prompted her to sit down and write her first book. Once that book was completed, there was no turning back.

Donna sold her first book in November 2005 while displaced from Hurricane Rita, a storm that destroyed portions of the Texas Gulf Coast. Since then, Donna has sold novels and novellas to both electronic and print publishers. Her books include several complete series such as The Druid’s Glen, The Shields, The Royal Chronicles and the Sisters of Magic.

Despite the deadlines and her voracious reading, Donna still manages to keep up with her two young children, three cats and one long haired Chihuahua. She's blessed with a proud, supportive husband who's learned to cook far more than frozen chicken nuggets.

Find Donna: Website, Blog, Facebook, Twitter