Please welcome the fabulous Sarah Mayberry to the blog today. If you haven’t read her yet, you should. She’s one of my favourite authors, and I’ve read every single book she’s ever published. Hot Island Nights is the solitary Contemporary Romance Top Pick this month. Check out my review of it here.
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Do you believe that some relationships are Meant To Be?
I was thinking about this question this weekend, spurred on by the fantastic Yvonne Lindsay book I’m reading. Stand In Bride’s Seduction is about one of those classic romance novel situations – an identical twin is asked by her sister to stand in for her with her fiance while the first sister rushes off to deal with a mysterious crisis. Of course, the first sister and the hero have no chemistry, but things are hugely different with the stand-in sister – even though they’re identical twins, there’s just something about the second sister that cooks the hero’s goose.
Which, as I said, got me thinking. There are lots of scientific theories about sexual attraction and love and pheromones, but as a romance reader (and writer!) I tend to favor the idea that some couples are just meant to be. I know of a real life example of this – my good friend and her husband met while they were both working overseas and the night of their first date, she went home and told her flat mate that he was the man she was going to marry. Two weeks later, he proposed, and she said yes. Ten years later, they have three children and a great marriage.
As a big believer in love, I am seriously invested in the idea that sometimes you just know that the person standing across the room from you is The One. It appeals to me on so many levels, even though I know that in real life love probably sneaks up on most of us in small increments as intimacy deepens.
As a writer, I like to play with the idea that sometimes my characters are aware on a deeply unconscious level that the other person is The One – but for reasons of their own they’re not quite ready to plunge head-first into all that that represents. Sometimes that unwelcome awareness manifests itself as a niggling sort of irritation with the other person - why are they unsettling me so much? Why do I feel so uncomfortable when they’re around? – and other times it manifests itself as straight-up I-can’t-stand-you conflict.
In my current release, Hot Island Nights, my hero and heroine definitely do not hit it off on their first meeting, even though on a very primitive level they are aware of each other. Elizabeth is tired and jet-lagged and keyed up, having flown all the way from England to hunt down the man she believes is her biological father, while Nate is hung-over and deeply reluctant to get sucked into someone else’s personal crisis. As Elizabeth eventually discovers, Nate may look like a care-for-nothing surfie with a hot body and no conscience, but in reality he is doing his best to cope with the aftermath of serious trauma.
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Hot Island Nights
Author: Sarah Mayberry
Publisher: Harlequin Blaze
Pub. Date: September 1, 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0373795703
Retail: $4.99
Pages: 224
Elizabeth Morgan didn’t intend to abandon her very proper life. But that’s the best way to find her true—and less proper—self. So here she is in Australia, standing in front of a man who’s clad only in a towel. Nathan Jones is so tempting he could be the ideal candidate to help this good girl be very bad!
Sure enough, thanks to Nathan’s talented hands, Elizabeth is living all her sensual fantasies. And while the sex is great, something more is developing. She trusts him, and wants to share her secrets with him, and… Suddenly this feels more like a real relationship than some fun in the sun. Luckily, there’s a cure for too much commitment—more wickedness!
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These two people need each other – they just don’t know it in those first few moments. But they also can’t stay away from or stop thinking thinking about each other. And when Elizabeth discovers the extent of Nate’s problems – and they’re sizable – she faces a tough choice: disengage and move on from the messy, difficult challenge he represents, or dig in and do her best to help him come to terms with his past. A hard decision to make at the best of times, but when her fling with Nate is supposed to be a holiday romance, it becomes even more daunting.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories about instant attraction, love at first sight and The One. Do you believe in any of the above? If not, why not? And if you do, what makes you believe? I’ll be giving away 2 (two copies) of Hot Island Nights to two random posters – just comment and you’ll be in the running to win. So, over to you… I’m looking forward to your responses.
Other books by Sarah Mayberry:
In a contemporary, we’d expect at least mention of the current electronic accoutrements such as cell phones, computers and modern conveniences. Though the town may be fictitious the containing environs (state, country) would not. We’d expect our hero and heroine to display sensibilities of the current day as opposed to those of the 1950s.
In historical romances, we see women who are spies, seek adventure on the open seas, are intrepid almost to a fault. These heroines may throw all caution to the wind–and sometimes a portion of common sense–putting themselves in harm’s way not unlike some of the people we see in those slasher films who come upon a dark and desolate house in the middle of nowhere. We, the movie watcher, tell them not to go in (somethings yelling it at the screen), but do they listen? Nope. They go in and get themselves killed. Of course, nothing so horrible happens to our intrepid heroine, but something bad happens nonetheless.
In most contemporary novels I have read, the hero and heroine (mostly the hero) are almost like religious zealots when it comes to birth control. It’s not even enough that the heroine is taking birth control. Here is where political correctness and social responsibility comes into play. Do I believe that, on the whole, men are truly like this? No, not so much. But then this is romance fiction written by woman, on the most part, for woman, and we get to write about the kind of hero we want, not who necessarily exist in real life. And same goes for the depiction of our heroine, ten parts beautiful, gutsy and intelligent all rolled into one spectacular package.
When I was down in Orlando attending the RWA National Conference, I met the very lovely 
I have to say Carina Press is completely impressing me with the caliber of books they’re putting out every month. You might have seen from the post below that 
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