BookWenches

First off I'd like to thank Bookwenches for having me as guest blogger today. They really don't know what they've let themselves in for but hey, if you don't tell them I won't ;)

Heroes in romance. It's been noticed in a few quarters that I tend to write a specific sort of hero, in a physical sense. Most (but not all, I do occasionally step away from this) of my guys are heavily built, like a rugby player, and shaven headed. The sort of guy, if I saw him on the street, I'd think 'thug' and 'dangerous'. Then probably cross the road and scuttle away to safety.

Not your usual sort of romance hero eh? So why do I write them that way? Well, a couple of reasons. I read a lot, an awful lot. I'm a book omnivore. If it stays still long enough, I'll read it but I have a particular love for paranormal romance novels and have been reading them since before they were that well known. One thing has always struck me about the hero's. They're almost universally tall, impossibly handsome and have long hair.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule and I delight in finding them, but until recently these were the only sort of guy I was reading about in novels (in some cases I was half wondering if I'd read the story before only to realise no, the character just reminded me of one I'd already read).

So in my little mad writer's brain here the seed was planted. What about the other guys? The not so handsome ones, the 'thugs' in essence.

So Knuckles and his brothers were born. Knuckles is the hero of Sunlight and Slavery and he's a Gargoyle. He's quiet and a loner, not as glib as most men so he can seem slow to some. Like most of my boys he's built like a brick shed and is shaven headed. Put him in a dark jacket and he'd scream 'security'.

But you know? Big men are softies. The other reason behind my writing of men like this is because Mr. Carter is tall, built like a shed and shaved all his hair off a couple of months ago. He's the afore-mentioned guy you'd probably cross the street to avoid, yet where kids are concerned, he's a walkover.

Seeing such a big man wrapped around our daughter's little finger from the moment she was born really brought it home to me that looks can be decieving and you shouldn't judge a book, or a man, by it's 'cover'. So I write men with twists to their personality and try to bring out the softer side of the more traditional 'thug' stereotype.

So, give me a non-traditional hero anyday. Make him a bad boy, but always give him a heart. Make it hard to reach, but accessible for the right woman and you've got a reader for life!

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Mina Carter's books in the Moonlight & Magic series can be purchased from Changeling Press. She is also published by Lyrical Press, Cobblestone Press, Noble Romance, and Blade Publishing. If you want to know more about Mina and her work, please visit her website at http://mina-carter.com/