Inspired by Laura Hunsaker

 Recently I saw on Twitter someone complaining about reading books that utilize a popular actor/singer/famous person and the same day, unrelated to the tweets, I saw an author advertising her hero as inspired by Dean Winchester. I have to admit, I enjoy if there's an "inspired by" type of character in a book. I don't want a full-on knock-off of Taylor Swift as my heroine, but if there's a pop music superstar in a book, I'm not mad about it.

But the Dean Winchester thing got me thinking. I love Supernatural. The acting is fantastic, the characters are amazing, and the series has been around for so long, that obviously I'm not the only one! If you haven't seen the show, basically two brothers take over the family business after their dad goes missing. The family business? It's hunting monsters. 

I am a huge sucker for good Paranormal Romance (PNR). I love the monsters, the monster hunters, and everything in between! So if I see a book advertised as loosely based off of a show I like, it's not a turn off, and I'm apparently the target audience! (I will say that I don't mean fan fiction, no shade, but that's not what I'm talking about here). I want all the Sam and Dean Winchesters of the Paranormal Romance world, and I'm definitely going to one click that book if it's advertised as such. 

So as a reader, if you were to read a story where the hero is loosely inspired by an actor, or a TV or movie character, would that bother you? And if it does, what is it that bugs you? Is it that you don't want a pre-conceived image of the character in your head? Or is it that you may not like the character on the show/movie? 

Also, I'm sharing this image in case you don't know who the Winchesters are. And if you already know, just enjoy how beautiful they are, and how cool the Impala is.

In my Fatal Instincts series, while it isn't paranormal, there are monster hunters. My heroes are feds who hunt the human kind of evil. And if you want to read my latest, Dangerous Past, it's coming out soon! Jay Sutherland hunts monsters, they just aren't paranormal. And Lark is the daughter of a serial killer. Does that make her a monster too?

She’s running from her past…



Lark Seawell is the daughter of a serial killer. His reputation has long been a shadow looming over her since his arrest when she was a child. Especially since she’s the one who called the police. She has spent her entire life trying to live as anonymously and quietly as possible. She is not her father’s legacy.



He wants to be her future...



FBI agent Jay Sutherland is visiting a friend in a small mountain town when free spirit Lark asks for help with her injured dog. He is instantly enamored with her, and their one night stand stays with him far into the next morning, though Lark is long gone. When his partner realizes that she is the daughter of The Highwayman, Jay refuses to believe Lark is anything like her father.



What happens when she stops running…



When a trail of dead bodies follows Lark on her cross-country drive, the FBI believes she’s the killer. How can the sweet woman who rescues injured animals and makes him feel things he hasn’t felt in years be a murderer? The bodies don’t lie. Jay knows there’s more at play. If he’s wrong, and Lark is as much a monster as her father, he may be the next target…



Sunshiney heroine, gruff hero, one night stand leads to more…

three novellas or a novel

It was a sad day when my cat died. I’d lost Pepper, at 3½ years old, to a congenital time bomb, where there was no fixing it. I frankly was heartbroken. For assorted reasons, I had believed her spirit had returned to me three times in different cats. Looking for comfort, I asked for a dream that would help me understand if reincarnation was real. I wanted to believe she’d come back. I wanted to believe life was fair.

The dream that came was not about her. It was about reincarnation. It was about the question of fairness. From where do such dreams come? I have no idea. This one told a story, had characters, and some very intense images. The next morning, thinking it through, I decided a dream like that, even though it wasn’t exactly a typical romance, was a gift that should be shared, for others to make of it what they would.

My dreams only provide bare bones of a story. In fleshing it out, I added Montana, a Native American element, and a bit about ranch living. Given my own life, I like writing about ranches, but for a supernatural novella, there was another plus. There is little more earthy and practical than ranch life. To juxtaposition that with the mystical was like adding contrasting colors to a painting to make it more vivid. 

When I finished When Fates Conspire, I knew there was a second story. The Dark of the Moon was more involved with the ranch and had an older heroine. Finishing it, there needed to be a third.  Although the three romances each stand alone, the thread through them needed an ending, an explanation. That became Storm in the Canyon. 

I consider the three to be more metaphysical romances than paranormal. Yes, there are spirit guides, demons, shape-shifters, spiritualism, plasma bolts, energy hot spots, reincarnation, monsters, druids, and sorcerers... Okay, maybe they are paranormal romances, but hey, no werewolves, zombies or vampires. (The metaphysical world is made up of happenings people claim to experience where paranormal can be anything.)

With three novellas, I decided (partly to get a paperback) to turn them into one book, Diablo Canyon. Therein lay a problem. When you offer three novellas or the book, even when you explain it in blurbs, the reader can mistakenly buy all four. No writer likes unhappy readers. I could have taken the novellas off-line, but I had a reason to keep them. 

Although I find writing page after page of a sexual encounter to be boring, I like some steam in the books I read or write. Novellas, as I write them, have little word space for steam. For Diablo Canyon, I added it. 

Knowing how some readers dislike heat, I kept the novellas. When Fates Conspire, The Dark of the Moon, and Storm in the Canyon as they were—with the closed door. In all other aspects, the novellas and the novel tell the same story. I’ve never done this before, probably won’t again, but it was an interesting experience—the hard part was making sure readers understand the options.