Intro on Author: Dani Collins, Awakened On Her Royal Wedding Night

  Let's welcome author              Dani Collins

Award-winning and USA Today Bestselling author Dani Collins thrives on giving readers emotional, compelling, heart-soaring romance with laughter and heat thrown in, just like real life. While she is best known for writing contemporary romance for Harlequin Presents and Tule’s Montana Born, her latest release is The Prospector’s Only Prospect, a Western Historical romance from Entangled Amara. When she’s not writing—just kidding, she’s always writing. Dani lives in Southern BC, Canada with her high school sweetheart husband.

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1. 
   What is your writing Kryptonite?

Are you asking what can derail my writing? Lack of goals. Whenever I catch up to my deadlines and don’t have a bunch looming, I feel a little lost. I need to have the big decisions made on what comes next, then I keep my head down and keep doing the work.

 

2. Do you have unpublished or half-written manuscripts?

I have a couple. When I first sold to Harlequin Mills & Boon, I had several completed manuscripts that weren’t a good fit for Presents/Modern. They were small town, fantasy and erotica so I self-published them. I’ve been working on something that is more Women’s Fiction for a while, so it’s merely a Work In Progress, not ‘unfinished.’ I have another Single Title that I’m considering self-publishing. I don’t like to sit on completed works. If I’ve written a book, I want it available to readers ☺

 

3. What kind of research do you do and for how long before you write a book?
   
   
   

The type and amount of research depends on the book. For a Harlequin Presents, I pop online as I go, looking at images of private jets and yachts and red carpet gowns. If the setting is real, I’ll read up on it for inspiration. I can easily get lost for a day in learning about wine-making, then cut the scene where they walk through the vineyard, so I try to stick to finding exactly what I need to know and get back to my word count.

I’ve also written Historical so that’s a different animal. In that case, I spend more time digging for all sorts of fodder. For The Prospector’s Only Prospect, I found newspaper clippings from the time and got inspiration from that. I also try to be accurate around clothing and other details like what sort of canned foods were available and how did they make beds? With Historicals, I tend to write until I need to know something, then stop to search for the answer, then carry on.

 

 

4. Tell us about your book...

Awakened on Her Royal Wedding Night takes place in the fictional island kingdom of Nazarine, but for this one I researched beauty contests and dueling with swords. Claudine escapes danger by diving off a boat and washes up on Crown Prince Felipe’s private beach. For sexy plot reasons, he persuades her to marry him, but he has an evil twin who threatens Claudine’s life.

 

The men settle things in the courtyard with antique ‘schiavonas’, which are cut-and-thrust swords. I chose them because it was the type of sword with a fancy pommel with a basket guard for the hand which I could then inlay with gemstones—something that I thought would be owned by royalty and displayed for centuries.

 

I won’t tell you who won, but if you love a wounded hero who fights for the honor of the woman he loves, and makes sacrifices that ultimately win her heart, you’ll enjoy this one.

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