Guest Post with Author Carolyn Crane and Giveaway

Meet Carolyn Crane author of Behind the Mask.

I am a RITA-winning author of romantic suspense, urban fantasy, and other tales of love and adventure (and erotic & dark romance as NYT bestselling author Annika Martin). My books have been published by Random House and Samhain, and I also go the indie route. I work a straight job as a marketing writer, I love to read in bed and run, I’m passionate about helping animals, and I make my home in Minnesota with my husband and two cats.

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So you created an awesome secondary character and now he’s ruining your book!

Have you ever read a book where there’s a really exciting secondary character and you’re sitting there wishing the book was about THAT character?

It happens!

And from the author’s perspective, I can tell you how: it’s because when you’re trying to make a character really intriguing and interesting, a lot of times he or she turns out bland, I think because you’re trying too hard. But then when you’re not trying, a lot of time the character turns out really exciting. I think that happens a lot just in life, that your best stuff comes when you aren’t trying.

My first brush with this was when I was writing the Disillusionists Trilogy, my UF series. I wanted to put in this villainish guy to threaten my heroine, so I added Simon, a hugely reckless and threatening gambler. And wow, the readers loved him (he was supposed to be somebody to hate!) And I kind of loved him, too. So much that I gave him his own novella and kind of rehabilitated him to be not just a villain.

With the Associates, usually in every book there’s a side character who kind of pops, and nowadays I’ll let it happen, but severely limit their stage time.

In this book, it’s Dax, the tortured visionary billionaire leader of the Associates. He does these awful things for good reasons, and then he goes out and has risky sexual encounters with strangers to balance himself out. I also like Rio in this book, my stylish, dangerous, slightly suicidal assassin. He wears a nice suit and is super deadly and mysterious.

Nowadays the side character who pops for me ends up being my next hero, and it’s exciting for me to write about.

What about you? Has it ever happened to you in real life that when you’re not really trying, something turns out great?

TO SAVE HER PROSTITUTE TWIN SISTER SHE HAS TO SWITCH PLACES WITH HER...

When her estranged sister is won in a card game by a brutal drug cartel, Zelda knows what she has to do: take her place. Save her. Focus on infiltrating the shadowy group--and try not to think about why she left the spying game years ago. She’s slept with dangerous criminals before; she can do it again.

Hugo Martinez is one of South America’s most lethal and wanted men, a legendary mercenary living on a windswept mountain. Even at the height of the war he wasn’t in the habit of taking women captive, but the American whore has seen his face. And he and the orphan boy need a cook. He shouldn’t want this woman, but there’s something so unusual about her…

Meanwhile, Zelda finds herself falling for her captor…but is he the killer she’s been hunting all these years?

Purchase: | iTunes |

Check out The Associates series:

  

Check out what's up for grabs.

Up For Grabs:

• 1 $75 Gift Card (Amazon/B&N)
• 32 eBook copies of either Against the Dark, Off the Edge or Into the Shadows

To Enter: 

• Please fill out the Rafflecopter form.

Good Luck! 

Special thanks to Carolyn Crane for sponsoring this tour-wide giveaway.

a Rafflecopter giveaway