Wednesday Promo- Lynn Romaine

I live in Bloomington, Indiana, and have a Master's Degree in Information (which makes it easy to do research). I did not start writing fiction until eight years ago when I wrote my 1st book, Leave No Trace, in four months, signed a contract in eight hours and had it published! I thought it would always be that easy but not so. I'm at work on my 5th book, gradually moving away from romance and more into womens lit and perhaps even literary fiction at some point. I have an amazing daughter who works with traumatized kids, a great ex-husband who's famous in our small town, and two cats. I am committed to making a difference in the world and have a nonprofit organization called Red Pants for the World, focusing right now on building schools in difficult parts of the world (Afghanistan and Haiti) -

Thanks for the opportunity to share my writing and my inspiration -

Why do you write Romantic Suspense?
I've always read romantic suspense - from the time I picked up Madam Will You Talk by Mary Stuart at my elementary school library. I moved quickly to Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and continued to love romance mixed with a big dose of suspense. Perhaps you could say it comes from a childhood where my grandmother spent hours scaring me death with horrific tales of her family - snakes biting women, men killed in barroom brawls, and so on. Even her giant gothic house with three stories, 20 rooms and a scary basement, contributed to suspense as a backdrop for my life. When my sister died at 17 (I was 15) the gritty, desperate part of my writing was born. I naturally began looking at life from how to overcome a horrific event - like my sister's violent death in a car crash. All of my books have that as a theme - they begin with a large terrible event in the past that shapes the heroine going forward - and the books are always working out how to survive and be happy after those events, even as threats continue to come at one.

What do you want people to learn while reading your books?
I want people to discover that perhaps their interpretations (or the stories) of their lives are not true. I want them to see they can make up a new meaning about their lives and create a life worth living, even in the face of difficult or impossible circumstances. I want them to be inspired to take on their own lives and have them be great.

What do you have coming up?
I have a new contract for my 1st book, Leave No Trace, coming out in late 2010 with The Wild Rose Press. My 4th book, Night Noise is in edits but I may not submit it to TWRP as I believe I am shifting genres to more womens lit and less romance. I don't think the book is appropriate for TWRP who focus on romance. My fifth book, The Reckoner, also may be too gritty and not enough romance for TWRP. It takes place in Winnipeg and is about a 30 something woman who had a horrific event happen at 14 that made her murder someone. Her life is about reconciling that and trying to live her life Reckoning things - when she gets caught 15 years after the murder. As you can tell, the romance is secondary - mainly her husband who first is confronted by the story of the murder and then eventually has to deal with it himself.

I also have a seventh book signing coming up at Barnes & Noble for my third book, released 09/2009 by The Wild Rose Press entitled Long Run Home. I've attached the cover of Long Run Home which you can find at the following stores:
www.thewildrosepress.com
www.amazon.com
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.lynnromaine.com

Blurb for Long Run Home
SAMANTHA NEALLY is in hiding. Abandoned by her mother at eleven, she was implicated in an ecoterrorist firebombing at eighteen. Since then, she's been living in the Nevada desert, lonely and afraid. But all that is about to change when undercover FBI agent Joe Roper turns up. He insinuates himself into her world and sends her to jail. Forced to turn state's evidence, Sam goes to work with Roper. Laying a trap for her former friends, she's unaware that the real danger to her life lurks in the desert, someone ready to commit murder to keep her quiet.

Excerpt from Long Run Home

Roper caught a snapshot glimpse of his suspect. She jerked down her red baseball cap and grabbed a bag of corn chips as she disappeared behind a pyramid of cereal boxes. He moved cautiously, keeping twenty-five feet back.

She looked smaller today, thinner, not gaunt, but with the kind of muscle tone he associated with honed athletes. A sliver of something stirred in his groin. He threw a quick roadblock around his mind. What the hell business did he have feeling attracted to her? Or even curious? Getting the job done depended on keeping his perspective.

A few stragglers wandered down dreary aisles, the worn wood floor a product of busier times. But the world offered too many choices these days, and a dingy little grocery store in Benton, Nevada could not compete.

Roper waited two beats before circling past the Rice Krispies. He stopped short. She stood at the other end of the aisle, staring at dog food bags as if the choice was the decision of a lifetime. As she bent down, her Navaho jacket rode up, revealing the backs of strong thighs.

Dog food. Aside from her German shepherd, she lived alone. There was the neighbor, Charlie Lemon, who ran a small ranch a mile and a half up the road from her. A full-blooded Paiute, the man clearly was on the down side of sixty. Charlie was her only visitor in the past three months of surveillance. The Bureau had dismissed a sexual relationship between them.

Craning her head, she took Roper in with a quick glance but continued studying dog chow. From a distance, she looked tough, like any woman resilient enough to survive alone in high-country desert. Bundled up against early September cold weather, she seemed indifferent to her own appearance.