Carly Phillips dares to write an unconventional heroine

Carly Phillips, author of Dare to Hold (out today!), shares how she met the challenge of writing an unconventional heroine for Dare hero Scott in the latest in her Dare to Love series.

Carly: When I was trying to sell my first book to Harlequin Temptation, an editor gave me words of wisdom that have stuck with me through today. As this editor was Brenda Chin, this doesn't surprise me that I'm still using her advice. Write a heroine that readers love, they wish they were her — and then put her in a situation that forces her to overcome adversity and be strong, and readers will relate to her. Fifteen years later this still makes sense to me.

A romance heroine needs certain characteristics in order to be appealing to readers. For me, it's always been about her inner strength. It doesn't matter what the profession, what her background, or even the choices she's made in the past as long as going forward, she decides to stand on her own two feet. Of course, she also must be strong enough to admit that it's OK to need someone, no matter how hard that admission might be.

In writing the Dare series, in Dare to Love, I started with a heroine who was in danger of losing her job, so she gathered her courage and claimed she could get the business of the Miami Thunder football team because she knew the team's president. In fact, she'd only met him once but they'd shared an intense connection. The hero, trying to avoid her for his own reasons, doesn't return her call and yes, she loses her job. Who can relate to that? Most people. Of course the hero steps in to right his wrong and offers her a job, thus bringing them together. Still, I'd call this heroine a more conventional one.

Six books later, in Dare to Hold, I wrote a story that I never planned. I didn't set out to write an unconventional heroine. In fact, I didn't set out to write a pregnant heroine, either. Dare to Hold was always Scott Dare's book and of course he needed a heroine. Sometimes a character appears and decides for themselves what will happen in the next story. And from the moment Scott Dare laid eyes on Meg Thompson in Dare to Touch, no matter that she was pregnant and had an abusive ex, Scott wanted Meg. And Dare men always go after what they want.

Writing an unconventional heroine, however, brings new challenges, especially in a hot, hot contemporary romance where the love scenes are key. How to make a pregnant heroine willing to sleep with a man she's attracted to but doesn't know well still likable? How to deal with a hero who goes into that situation knowing the woman he's attracted to is pregnant with another man's baby? Not easy. So I fell back on what I learned 15 years ago … make her strong, make her able to stand on her own, give her a sympathetic situation … and make sure the hero has a rescue complex so that he's naturally drawn to the vulnerability beneath the tough exterior she tries to present.

The other way to address the unconventional heroine is to immediately drive sympathy by giving her an ex who wants her to get rid of the baby and will do anything to make sure that happens. Thanks to said ex, her job teaching children could be in jeopardy, her income, her ability to support herself and her child. All these things bring out the hero's protective instincts and up her likability in the reader's eye as she bounces back from each emotional hit, trying to remain strong … while accepting help. As I said, a challenge.

As a writer, I love a challenge. OK, that might be a bit of an overexaggeration. I love a book that writes itself but that's not reality. Reality is banging my head against two distinct personalities and hoping the book meshes at the end. In Dare to Hold, I hope I've accomplished my goal and given you an unconventional heroine who defies her own odds.

Here's the blurb about Dare to Hold:

Some women always get it right. Kindergarten teacher, Meg Thompson, on the other hand, consistently makes the wrong decisions -- and she is currently single, pregnant and alone. Meg is determined to make changes in her life, to be a better mother than her own had been. No revolving door of men. No man, period. Just a single-minded focus on her baby. Her resolution would be easier to keep if not for hot cop, Scott Dare. He insinuates himself in her life, making Meg want to believe in happily ever after, even if history has taught her to know better.

When Scott Dare hears Meg's friends are determined she have a night of hot sex, before her life changes forever, he decides that man must be him. Their one night is mind blowing and life altering. And Scott, a man already burned by his ex-wife, finds himself all in anyway. While protecting Meg from her violent ex and becoming part of her increasingly complicated life, he's falling hard and he can't seem to find distance. Not when their bodies respond to each other with such heated intensity and he's drawn to her unique combination of strength and vulnerability.

But Meg's future is one Scott has accepted he'll never have, even if his growing feelings say otherwise ...

Find out more about Carly and her books at www.carlyphillips.com.