Guest Blogger: Roxanne St. Claire

Cindy here - letting you know how delight we are to have our guest blogger, Roxane St. Claire, join us in the convertible. I met Rocki a few years ago when she and I were both writing for Silhouette Desire. She's one of those women you'd really like to hate because she's so talented and gorgeous and cool. :o) But you just can't do it because she's also a really neat person, too. Case in point: last summer in Atlanta, I was with Rocki on a 'field' trip with the Kiss Of Death chapter of RWA when we visited a gun shop and took a few turns on the indoor shooting range. Rocki was scared to death of the guns. Shaking in her boots, knocking in her knees scared but she soldiered on and she went through all the stations and fired those weapons even though her hands were sweating and her pulse was pounding. You've just got to admire that kind of courage. It's no big deal to do something that doesn't rattle you but it's a very big deal to face that fear down and defeat it. Way to go Rocki. And now, here she is.....

Some (Day) Dreams Never Die

Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Riders for inviting me to take a top-down spin! There are so many great friends and writers on this blog, and I admit to being a major lurker from time to time. When Cindy Gerard asked me to guest blog, I only had one question: When?

Like my friend, Cindy, most of the writers on this blog, and many of its readers, I write about…men. Not just any kind of man, but the kind I think of as “out of my league” men. Fearless, funny, fantasy men. Men so tough and tasty on the outside and sweet and gooey on the inside that they are like human Tootsie Rolls just waiting for you to take a lick. Men who cut a sly glance, a sneaky smile, a wink that whispers you’re the one, sweetheart. And we almost believe them.

Men like this, who is the inspiration for Adrien Fletcher, the hero I’m writing right now.

They are, of course, born in my imagination. (That’s really Gabriel Aubry, by the way. When my husband spied him on my computer screen and asked who he was, I said, that, my love, is what you get to wake up to when you are Halle Barry J.)

But I digress…inspiration for heroes is everywhere. Somewhere in my past, in a movie, on the street, in an elevator, in a classroom, at a party, stopped at a red light in a convertible…a man attracted my attention and gave me a reason to weave a fantasy about him when I tried to fall asleep that night. Those fantasies, I believe, were the foundation for my romance writing today.

This morning, while answering reader mail, I was thinking about a particular hero in the Bullet Catchers series I write, after a fan emailed that she was anxiously awaiting his story. His name is Dan Gallagher, and he has definitely captured some attention, even though he’s only been a peripheral secondary character in the series so far. It was early when I wrote back to her, pre-coffee, and I sort of blurted out the truth about Dan Gallagher. He’s based on a real guy. In fact, several of the Bullet Catchers are inspired by real men I’ve known and talked to, and one I actually kissed. In eighth grade.

Yep, three of my heroes are loosely inspired by those larger-than-life, cuter-than-Christmas, so-cool-you-drool boys who ruled my elementary school, and my heart, lo those many years ago. The names have been changed…ever so slightly…but their essence remains the same.

There was the husky, quiet one named Mark Roper. Today he is Max Roper, a big, bad bodyguard who tries to steer clear of emotion in Thrill Me To Death.

There was the dry-witted Italian boy named Danny Ferrari, who morphed into a wise-cracking, kitchen-friendly quasi-mobster in Take Me Tonight.

And then there was Jimmy Gallagher, he of the grass green eyes and the insanely cute crooked smile. Somehow he grew up to be Dan Gallagher, the current odds-on favorite to be the hero who cracks the shell around Lucy Sharpe, the former spy who owns the Bullet Catcher agency.

No, not all of my heroes are culled from the eighth yearbook, I assure you! It started when I introduced Max as a DEA agent and a secondary character in my very first book (an unpublished manuscript at the time), Tropical Getaway. I did it as a sly joke to amuse one person only – my BFF from grade school who remains a dear friend today. Purely for fun, I based him on a boy we’d both fluttered over a thousand times together. It worked. When she read the manuscript, sitting by my pool, she spewed her margarita all over the page and proclaimed that “some dreams really die hard.”

Yes they do. For me, some of those childhood fantasies, those first crushes, those early days of breathless admiration across the cafeteria fueled the fire for my romance writing. And I sense I’m not alone in turning my girlhood boy craziness into a lifetime of loving the fantasy of romance.

So, tell us, ladies. Who was he? What was his name? Was there a boy you imagined could grow up to be your hero? And any writers out there…will you own up to being inspired by a middle school stud? I’ll give an autographed copy of one Bullet Catcher book – winner’s choice – to one commenter who dares to share and gets us to giggle the way we did when that certain someone strolled by your locker, and smiled.

Thanks again to the Riders for the invite – I’ll stick around all day and would love to chat on the comment board!

All the best,

xoxo

Rocki

PS. You want to know which one I kissed, don’t you? It was Dan Ferrari, while dancing to “Ooh Ooh Child” at my first boy-girl party. Sadly, I can tell you what I was wearing. And I can also tell you that I had one thought during that blissful slow dance in heaven: “Oh, my. That is not a belt buckle.” I never kissed him again, nor any of those other young Bullet Catchers. But I do get to live that fantasy every time I write. My friend was right, of course. Some dreams don’t ever die. They just grow up to be romance novels.