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To Booksellers Dear Bookseller, Reviewer, Book group leader, My goal as a Romance author is to give good value. I expect to provide my readers with six to eight hours of amusement, at least a couple of really good laughs, a romantic frisson or two from the sensual scenes, something to think about when the book is finished. My first book was FORCED MATE. It’s a chess title for a race between the two Kings to make a pawn his Queen, and was written as a loving spoof of the Historical Romance genre. I took every traditional situation in an abduction/obligatory-travel romance and made the hero an all-powerful, alpha-male alien, a god-Prince with a nasty reputation. In Forced Mate, I introduced Rhett (Hero of Knight’s Fork) as the ultimate altruist. He tried to stop one of his big brothers from having unwise sex. (He does that a lot, that's partly why his brothers get mad at him.) So, his big brother thumps him. As a result, Rhett is arrested, imprisoned and threatened with torture and death. He keeps quiet about who he really is, and risks his life to protect the bad-ass older brother who hit him. INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL is a chess term for a no-win situation. Having refused to become Tarrant-Arragon’s equerry, ’Rhett walks a diplomatic tightrope with the exceedingly dangerous Tarrant-Arragon after Tarrant-Arragon has forcibly marooned Djetth (the wild brother) on a tropical island with the slightly overweight and bitchy Princess Martia-Djulia who can’t or won’t remove her own wet ballgown to save her life. Tarrant-Arragon has his reasons for shooting down the unhappy couple, and they are mostly political. Martia-Djulia balked at the altar of her shotgun Royal wedding (to Djetth), but she needs a husband before she creates a bigger scandal as a result of a really bad choice of bed partner for a defiant one-night stand. KNIGHT’S FORK (the chess position) is about tough choices in an impossible situation where you can only save one of two (or more) threatened pieces. Often, with a Knight's Fork, it's the Queen and a Castle that are threatened. KNIGHT’S FORK --the book-- is a quest story, but just as Jason and the Argonauts set out to steal a fabulous golden fleece, then discover that it's just a ratty old ram skin once it's removed from the magical tree, Rhett's quest doesn't turn out the way he expected, and he gets exactly what he went on the quest to avoid. The official cover art for KNIGHT’S FORK (which you can see on Amazon) captures a lot of the undercurrents and symbolism about the aloof and sexually unattainable Rhett. Thank you very much for your support. Rowena Cherry #1. Forced Mate,
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