Welcome to Patti Hultstrand

It is so nice to have Patti with me today.





She's published everything from magazines and catalogs, to books and short stories. She's been a graphic designer for over 20 years and is a single mother.

Today she is talking about Romance. A word thats dear to my heart!!


TO SAVE OR TO BE SAVED – THAT IS THE QUESTION IN ROMANCE STORIES





One of my favorite questions ever asked of me:
You've successfully slain the dragon! How will you toast your marshmallows?
PJ Hultstrand, author of Time Conquers All:
On his dead and burning carcass as I drink and dance around the bonfire in victory.

The reason the answer to the question above is so important is it really does play into how I write my heroines and heroes in my romance stories. Many women now days want to be empowered and feel in control of their own destinies. However, even more women still hide behind the man in their lives or feel they must have a man to take care of them.
While I am attempting to save my home from the cruel clutches of the bank, my lawyer made the statement the other day that I could either win the lottery or marry a rich old man to take care of me. I know my mother would love that idea of having her daughter taken care of financially; I have not been that swooning damsel in distress for quite some time. There is nobody coming in on his white horse. Besides the fact that I live in a no-horse community, I have no dilutions that some great guy is going to come into my life and sweep me off my feet!
As young girls, didn’t most of us love Prince Charming and the fairy tales where the hero swooped in and saved the princess or the woman in the story? I am no different, I dreamt of being a ballerina, but even longer, I dreamt of being a princess. Even into high school I wore tiaras as a baton twirler and some guys in my life referred to me as their princess.
This could be embarrassing now that I am 47 and divorced, except that the princess I wanted to be all those years ago finally came out in the pages of my Chasing Time book series. But, this princess isn’t the one I had inside me when I was a young, naïve girl; this princess doesn’t expect to be saved by any man!
Instead, Princess Tamea does her fair share of doing the saving. She has saved King Parker from assassins several times, saved him from issues of his troubled mind on multiple occasions, and it is with this same must save the man mentality that I start book one with Tamea’s desire to do the saving.
Around the India region of the world in the late 1500’s, anyone else would have had to come in with sword swinging, riding a camel. It was only the upper class of citizens that could afford a great white horse. A smelly, brown camel that would rather spit at you, kind of takes away from the ROMANCE of the story. I guess it’s a good thing Tamea is a princess from a rich enough country to afford for her to come into the scene to save Parker on that proverbial WHITE HORSE to save his ass.
And believe me, she would slay that dragon and then roast marshmallows on his dead and burning carcass as she drinks and dances around the bonfire in victory!


Here's her cover and an excerpt to whet your appetitie.







Excerpt

Tamea scanned for the presence and instinctively knew it was stalking them. The dagger hilt rested in her left palm, ready if it was needed. Her intentions included getting him into the room and making love to him for the rest of the night. She did not appreciate whoever was interrupting her plan. She continued to glance behind them after they got off the bike and Parker retrieved his saddlebags.

The attack did not come from any hand-to-hand exchange. Multiple gunshots fired from an unseen assailant, out of reach for Tamea’s dagger. Even her throwing knives were useless at that distance.

Parker went down, his blood splattered onto the black leather jacket she wore. He tore at her body on his way to the ground, pulling her with him as she realized the utter uselessness of her metal weapons. If she had her crossbow, it may have been different. She was helpless in saving him from bleeding onto the ground.

“No!” she screamed at the hidden assailant. The question that followed came out in flawless Cantonese. “Who the hell are you to take his life this way?”

His assassin had heard Tamea’s question and had understood it, even in that foreign tongue, but was disinclined to show her what she was up against. The sniper had not been worried about her shooting him back, because her only weapons would be bladed and small, allowing them to remain concealed. He also knew her range with the throwing knives, so made certain not to be exposed. This time he planned to beat them both by succeeding in killing Parker. He left her a calling card and melted back into the denser forest.

Tamea put her backpack under Parker’s head and ran in the direction the shots had come from within the trees. Her years of military training compelled her to locate the assassin. She moved through the foliage in a desperate need to lash out at whoever robbed her of the precious moments she planned to savor with Parker. But this was not how she wanted to leave him. Tamea wanted him to live out his life, as it was meant to be.

You can see more of these excerpts here on the Monday 14th and here on Wednesday 16th June.