This week, I turn things over to Ronlyn Howe for an interview with the talented and wonderful Christy Reece. Ronlyn, take it away...
Meet Christy Reece, the creator of Last Chance Rescue, a highly trained group of mercenaries with one priority and purpose, to rescue victims. With worldwide connections and a phenomenal success rate, LCR operatives find and rescue victims when all other avenues have been tried and failed. They do whatever it takes, no matter the risk, to rescue the innocent. (description of LCR taken from Christy’s website www.christyreece.com ) I was lucky enough to get to know Christy shortly after the first LCR book (RESCUE ME) hit the stands and I instantly wanted more. Lucky for me and all her other fans, she’s delivered one book after another of the LCR gang and their exciting rescues. And, I was also lucky enough to be able to interview Christy on her newest release as well as try to weasel some details of her next book out of her.
SWEET JUSTICE is the seventh installment of the LAST CHANCE RESUCE series. Did you ever imagine it would come to nine books?
No, I never anticipated when I was writing RESCUE ME that this would be a nine book series. However, each time I wrote a book, I'd become interested in a secondary character, so I'm very grateful I had the opportunity to write eight more books about characters that I fell in love with in previous LCR books.
Since we're on Pamela's blog, the home of MTM, did you have any specific men (celebrities or civilians) in mind for the physical characteristics of any of your characters as you were writing them?
I rarely have celebrities in mind when I'm writing. My book characters are real to me, so putting a famous face on any of them just wouldn't work. There was a commercial a couple of years ago with a tall, extremely handsome man with smoky blue eyes that could have been Cole Mathison, but I haven't seen him in anything else. And when I was writing NO CHANCE, I saw a model in a magazine that to me was Skylar James, but that's as famous as I usually get in imagining my characters.
However, I often have Gerard Butler's face in my mind because...well, you know. (:
SWEET JUSTICE is a reunion romance between Honor Stone (who we first met in SECOND CHANCE) and Seth Cavanaugh, the man who broke her heart. Was it difficult to have the past baggage of their previous relationship and work in the forgiveness aspect?
I knew how much they loved each other from the beginning, so bringing them back together and having them deal with their pain just added another dimension to the story. And with them needing to focus on the case but battling their feelings created even more conflict.
Speaking of the case, we meet your most vile villain to date (IMO) in SWEET JUSTICE, and that's saying something because you have had some really nasty bad guys in your previous books. Dare I ask how you're so good at creating these monsters? ;-)
LOL Alden Pike is awful, isn't he.
One thing I like to do is make the mission of bringing down the villain personal to my hero and heroine. And that means, having some sort of connection to them. In all my LCR books, the villain has some sort of relationship to either the hero or heroine or in the case of RESCUE ME, my heroine just wants to keep young girls from experiencing what she went through. Using that criteria--which ups the stakes considerably--I also want to match him/her up with my hero and heroine. The villain must be a worthy opponent in strength or intelligence or both. Then I build my villain. Each time the reader sees the villain, I want something new about him/her revealed and I want the reader to be a little bit more determined to continue to read in hopes of seeing the creep get his just deserts. (:
Can you tell us an "inside scoop" on the next book, SWEET REVENGE, which is coming out on October 6th?
(Editor's note: These are some hot covers! Love the colors, too!)
SWEET REVENGE is the story of LCR operative Dylan Savage and Jamie Kendrick. The book begins with Dylan rescuing Jamie from Stanford Reddington's house. She was actually rescued near the end of LAST CHANCE, but the reader only saw what happened outside the house. This time, we get to see what happened inside, in Dylan's perspective.
When it's clear that Reddington isn't going to be prosecuted and that he's involved with even more heinous things than what he did to her, Jamie devises a way to get to him and asks LCR to train her. Dylan trains her but his intent is to gain her trust so she'll tell him how she plans to get to Reddington.
In the midst of their training, they fall in love. Then, everything comes to a head and Jamie storms out the door. A couple of months later, they both get a shock. (:
Jamie is probably the most tenacious heroine I've ever written. She just would not stop or back down. Dylan might have surprised me even more than Jamie. So totally hot and heroic but with a SWEETness that made me smile.
What type of surprises have you run into while writing the LCR gang?
And oh wow, that's the hardest question for me to answer. There's not an LCR book that hasn't surprised me numerous times. Since I write only by a loose outline, I rarely know what's going to happen until it appears on my computer screen. I guess the best surprise was that Eden St. Claire worked for an organization called Last Chance Rescue. I was in the middle of writing RESCUE ME when I learned she worked for a rescue organization. From there, it developed and the LCR series was launched.
Thanks so much for taking the time to answer all my questions! Is there any other little tid bits or gems that you'd like to share with us?
Just want to thank everyone who buys and reads my books. Being a published author is a dream come true for me but wouldn't mean near as much if there weren't readers who enjoy my books!
Once again, many thanks to Christy Reece for taking the time to answer my questions. If I know Christy, she’ll be popping in to say hi here as well, so if you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask away.