A Bliss-ful Day in the Lair

hosted by Beth

Please help me welcome the fabulous Karina Bliss to the lair! Karina's latest release for Harlequin Superromance is STAND-IN WIFE. Here's the back cover:

Playing with dynamite, a girl could get burned…

What the hell does he know about love and marriage? And exactly how did he, Ross Coltrane - a special forces elite soldier and demolitions expert, for God's sake - end up playing middle man to his kid brother and the estranged wife who'd cheated on the guy? And most important, why is he suddenly noticing how beautiful his sister-in-law is? He's never thought about his brother's wife… that way …before.

And then he figures it out and everything makes sense: this tantalizing woman is the other twin! The two identical sisters have pulled a twin swap and duped everyone around them. Furious much? Oh, yeah. Poised to bring down their plan, Ross hesitates. Something about Viv's courage, compassion and optimism get to him. Except he's not a man who has feelings. Everyone calls him the Iceman. He doesn't know how to be anything else….

And check out this excerpt on Karina's website: http://www.karinabliss.com/standinwife.html and another one on eHarlequin: http://www.eharlequin.com/store.html?itemid=24193&cid=416 You won't be disappointed!

Here's Karina:

Every book idea I’ve had has started as the hero’s story.

I thought every writer worked that way until I participated in a miniseries with Tara Taylor Quinn, Kathleen O’Brien and Janice Kay Johnson. Each of us was given free rein with our focal character. Tara and Kathleen chose heroine-centric books; Janice and I opted for hero-centric books. No one talked about it, we simply ‘knew’ whose story it was going to be.

That made me think about who carries the book for me as a reader – you guessed it. It’s the hero. I’ve talked to other readers who’ve said to give any book an A grade, the writer has to get the heroine right first.

The strange thing about my bias toward the hero is that you’d expect the opposite from my background. I’m the eldest of five girls and I went to a single-sex girls’ school. How come I find it so much easier to slip into a guy’s point of view? I think it’s because I don’t judge the hero’s actions/reactions as much as I judge my heroine’s which makes him easier for me to write. Or maybe it’s because I’m ‘being’ another character instead of shoe-horning myself into my heroine. Probably it’s because coming from an all-female background invested men with a mysterious, magical quality that translates well into writing dream heroes!

Having said all that, something weird happened with my ninth book for SuperRomance. A free-spirited heroine popped into my head and said, “Look I don’t care what you think your creative process is, missy, this is my story. So give me your strongest alpha hero and watch me bring that man to his knees.”

So I did, and she did.

In Stand-In Wife, Vivienne Jansen says things like this to the hero, Ross Coltrane: "I'm a very truthful person, but if the greater good is best served by a lie then I'll tell it."
Which is how this single New York-based costume designer ends up in a twin swap with her sister - a nurse and single mother of two. You can read an excerpt on my website: www.karinabliss.com

So who’s the most important character for you in a romance? The hero or the heroine?

Karina's giving away a signed copy of STAND-IN WIFE today so let's hear from you!