Romancing the Guardians
Today our guest is Lyn Horner from Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of western historical and contemporary romances, all with paranormal elements. We have conducted an interview with her about her contemporary series, Romancing the Guardians.
Why did you blend authentic Old West settings into your book series?
I believe authentic settings draw a reader into my stories. This requires research, often a lot of research, to get a true picture of the time and place I’m writing about.
What is your new book about and why did you write it?
My newest book is PROFILING NATHAN. This is book 5 in my Romancing the Guardians series. The hero, Nathan Maguire, is an ex-con who just wants to make a living inking tattoos, but FBI profiler Talia Werner turns his life upside down. To save her pretty neck from a serial killer, he must help catch the murderer. His deadly psychic gift comes in handy.
Which are the awards and nominations you have earned that you are most proud of?
Two of the books in my Texas Devlins series received crowned heart reviews from InD’Tale Magazine in 2013. One was also a Rone Award nominee in 2014. An anthology I contributed to, Rawhide ‘n Roses, was a Rone Awards finalist in 2015. Most recently, RESCUING LARA (Romancing the Guardians, Book One) won 1st place in its category in the 2015 Paranormal Romance Guild Reviewer’s Choice Awards. I placed high in the PRG awards in previous years, but I am especially proud of this 1st place win.
Where else do you make your writing contributions?
I blog on my website Lyn Horner’s Corner and on Sweethearts of the West, a team blog dedicated to sharing stories of the Old West.
Which is one short excerpt of steamy romance you have ever read and inspires you?
One of my favorite authors is Linda Howard. She inspires me in many ways including with her sexy, emotional love scenes. This one is from Shades of Twilight. The hero and heroine have met again after years apart. He blames her for a tragedy in the past, but wants her at the same time.
“She couldn’t look at him, but she had the sudden panicked thought that he might have had more to drink than she’d imagined, and gone to sleep while she’d been undressing. What a comment that would be on her practically nonexistent charms!
Then the whisper came, low and rough, and she realized he hadn’t fallen asleep, after all. “C’mere.”
She closed her eyes, trembling as relief threatened to buckle her knees, and edged toward the whisper.
“Closer,” he said, and she moved until her knees bumped the side of the bed.
He touched her then, his hand sliding up the outside of her left thigh, callused fingertips sliding over the softness of her skin and rasping nerve endings to life, leaving a trail of heat behind. Up, up, he moved his hand over the column of her thigh and around to the roundness of her bottom, his long fingers cupping the cool undercurve of both cheeks and burning them with his heat. She quivered and tried to control the sudden, fierce need to rub her bottom against his hand. She didn’t quite succeed; her hips moved in a barely perceptible shimmy.”
From here, the scene becomes quite graphic so I will stop rather than offend anyone who prefers “clean” romances.
How different is writing a romantic suspense series with flashes of psychic phenomena? What difficulties did you encounter?
First, having experienced prophetic dreams years ago, I believe we all possess some kind of psychic power, untapped by most of us. Putting this belief into practice, I featured psychic characters in my western romances, so carrying on in this vein poses no problem with my contemporary romantic suspense novels.
However, describing far-flung modern locals does present difficulties. In my Romancing the Guardians series, the settings range from Ireland to Texas; from the Navajo Nation in Arizona to Colombia, South America; from New York City to Florida; to France in book six, my current work in progress. All of which involves a great deal of research.
Additionally, my characters must speak in modern English, not in old-time cowboy lingo. Not always easy to remember, I discovered while writing the first Romancing the Guardians book, RESCUING LARA. After five books, it comes easy now. Which is not to say I won’t enjoy writing more westerns in the future.
