HelenKay Dimon

Tomorrow I’ll give a sneak peek at my June Intrigue, NIGHT MOVES, but for today…

I just got word that HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO is a finalist in the Book Buyers Best Contest. Wahoo! This is the third year in a row one of my books has finaled in this contest. I’m loving OCCRWA, the sponsor of the contest, right now.

Many lovely readers have written and asked about Under The Gun. Specifically, you all want to know if Holden and Adam, the two other Recovery Project agents in the book, are getting stories. Good news: yes!! Holden, Adam and two agents you haven’t met yet will be featured in a four-book miniseries I’m doing for Intrigue. The first, Holden’s story, is tentatively scheduled for January 2011. The books are set to come out back to back, so I’m thinking you’ll see them January through April.

I thought you might like to see how Holden and Mia meet. This is unedited, but you’ll get the idea:

Holden Price leaned his head back against his couch and threw his baseball in the air for what felt like the hundredth time. Much more of this and his catching hand would go numb.

Being on paid leave was not his idea of a good time. More like torture.

Up until two months ago he’d worked undercover with the Recovery Project, an off-the-books government agency fronting as an antique salvage operation. He found missing people for a living, those on the run who didn’t want to be found and those who were desperate for rescue.

One case gone wrong and pencil-pushing higher-ups disbanded the Project and subpoenaed his boss, Rod Lehman, to Capitol Hill for top secret congressional subcommittee hearings. It all sounded like a load of bureaucratic crap to Holden.

He spent his twenties in the Army and the first four years of his thirties at the Project. Without the routine of work the last few weeks dragged. He couldn’t remember ever being this bored.

The ball thumped against his palm before he whipped it into the air again. The seam turned end over end as it traveled halfway to his family room ceiling. It ran out of ompf and began falling back down just as the lights on his outside alarm system flickered to life on the panel next to the door.

Shrill beeps filled the room and kept right on cycling. When tires squealed outside the large double window across from him, Holden lifted his head. Saw the blinding headlights weaving and shifting straight up his lawn.

The sights and sounds refused to register in his brain. By design, his cabin sat in the middle of nowhere. He dealt with dangerous people and life threatening situations. The unsettling mix had convinced him long ago to set up a sanctuary, a place of peace known only to a few friends who also happened to be gun-carrying colleagues.

And now someone was violating the safety zone he created, using more than three thousand pounds of automobile as a weapon to do it.

He scrambled off the cushion and grabbed for the gun in his side table. He hit the floor on his right shoulder just as the sedan smacked into and through his front door. The crashing boom rattled the cabin’s foundation.

The wood creaked and splintered. Studs crumbled. The lights dimmed as the exposed wires fell from the smashed ceiling panels and pushed the electricity to the breaking point.

With dust flying and pieces of furniture scattered everywhere, Holden sat still, his back to what was left of the couch and his gun aimed at the bowed head in the front seat of the car. Long blond hair mixed with the broken windshield glass even as the white knuckle grip continued its hold on steering wheel.

His attacker was a she.

And possibly dead.

She also didn’t have an air bag, which he found odd. Not that any part of the last two minutes had been normal.

I was a divorce lawyer for many years. I get that ex-spouses and ex-girlfriends/boyfriends are out there and can be pretty compelling in terms of their overall nastiness. But I am kind of stunned at how many nasty ex-whatevers I’m seeing in novels these days. There is rarely a time where an ex is just an ex. The ex-girlfriends and ex-wives tend to come back and demand custody of the kids or manipulate and scheme to get the hero back. The ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends tend to be abusive asshats. It’s not a pretty “ex” picture.

Now, let me be honest here and say that I’ve written these characters. I’ve mined this overused territory. I’m hoping I made my folks into something more than one-dimensional placeholders, but who knows. What I do know is that I went out of my way to have a decent ex-boyfriend in HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO. I did this to prove I could and for a much more self-serving reason: I wanted the ex to be a hero in a future book…and he is.

The ex-boyfriend, Eric Kimura, in HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO is the hero in my upcoming November release, IMPULSIVE. I wanted to see if I could write an ex who wasn’t an asshat, who was actually underappreciated by his ex (Deana, the heroine in HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO and not her finest moment), but never whimpy. In IMPULSIVE, Eric eventually finds love but his ex, now with someone else, is around. In fact, Eric goes to her wedding in the first scene and does something a tad impulsive, hence the title.

Eric starts off angry at his ex and still a bit in love with her. His dumping was sort of a public thing, so people pity him and he hates that because he’s a guy who is in control. Being an ex is part of who he is at the start of the book, but he’s never an asshat. Not in the ex-boyfriend asshat sort of way. He’s not abusive or jerky. So, I’m convinced it can be done. I’m hoping readers think the same thing when they buy Eric’s story.

Did I mention I’m a speaker at a literary event this weekend?

Linda Wisdom, Tessa Dare and I are on a panel called Romance: Love Between the Pages at 1:00 p.m. at Literary Orange, a big author/reader event sponsored by the Orange County Library System. There are panels and booksignings all day long. Dean Koontz is a keynote speaker. If you’re in the area, definitely stop by and see us.

For those who celebrate the holiday and those who just like big chocolate bunnies…

Happy Easter!

The blog is back up and running. Having some spam issues, but we’ll work those out.

Now for more important issues…the winner of the blog contest for March is Liza from comment #4 on my March 16th post, Release Day!! Congratulations!! I will send the Amazon gift certificate to the email you provided when you left the comment, so be sure to look for it.

You may have noticed we had a little blog issue here yesterday. The good folks who created this website and keep it up and running are working on the problem.

Until then, I am blogging at the Intrigue Authors Blog at eharlequin today. Stop by and say hello.

Also…I’ll announce the winner of my monthly blog contest for March here tomorrow. Just want to make sure the blog (and comments) are all okay before I start giving stuff away.