ANNA DESTEFANO |How does a story like The Firefighter's Secret Baby happen anyway???

I've been in love with heroes my whole life. Show me a romance fan who hasn't. We want to believe in the hero in all of us, and most especially in the hunky leading men that Harlequin and Silhouette bring to life on their covers every month, right? But how exactly does a novel like The Fireman's Secret Baby get dreamed into being???

My Atlanta Heroes series started as a challenge to myself to find a way to write action and suspense into my "home and family" Superromance stories--because I've also fallen in love with suspense and intrigue as I write more and more novels. Plus, I wanted to write about everyday heroes that a reader might see in her own life. Lawyers and nurses and doctors and public defenders who put so much on the line to help others, but don't always get their share of the drool-worthy romance novel covers. I've had a blast hearing from readers who've fallen hard for my "manly" Atlanta men and their feisty heroines. It's been a great three years--including winning last year's Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Book 2 of Atlanta Heroes, To Protect the Child.

Along the way, my series created a family of three firefighter brothers, yet they'd never gotten their own chance to save lives and dreams and hearts. Firefighters were too obvious, I guess, and I was looking for my everyday guys to step up and take charge of saving the day. To the point that my editor finally sat me down to ask--what gives?

"Why haven't you written the firemen? WHY? It's a heroes series, for heaven's sake."

It occurred to me that perhaps I'd teased everyone for far too long.

And she'd loved to see something with a rough rescue hero having to deal with a little baby.

"Baby's are always great. What do you have against babies?"

It occurred to me that I used to write a lot of babies but had gotten away from it when I started writing more suspense into my stories. And that keeping my editor entertained was important to my career...

So, firemen and babies (and why not a secret baby, I figured, while I was at it) and suspense, because that's what Atlanta Heroes has turned out to be--my own fun world of action and suspense within the Superromance line. Cool. And since I was falling in love with the USA network's In Plain Sight at the time, why not add a heroine on the run from the mob and her federal protection, and maybe that could be why the cute little baby turns up as a secret that knocks our hunky hero onto his fire and rescue butt?

"Sure," my brave editor said, "we can do that at Super--as long as you make all that come together in the first scene of the first chapter, because we want an opening that will rock!!!"

Long story short (too late???) that's how The Firefighter's Secret Baby came to be, so if you read it and become a fan, be sure to think kindly of my editor, because it was all her idea ;o)

Check out the excerpt in my April Fresh Fiction Contest (where you can win a $20 Amazon gift certificate) and let me know if I hit the mark with the opening. Or if I didn't. Or if you've been following Atlanta Heroes for a while now. Or if you have any questions at all. I love to hear what readers think of the creative writing process and the stories that somehow find their way onto the page and into readers' homes. You're the best for giving our heroes life, so they can live on in your imagination ;o)

Comment out here today to be in the running to win one of the FIVE signed copies of The Firefighter's Secret Baby I'm giving away.

Oh, and over at my author blog. I'm running a release contest for the rest of the month, where you can comment as often as you like for your chance to win more Atlanta Heroes and another gift certificate.

Atlanta Heroes goodies for everyone!

Because everyone's a hero in my book ;o)

--Anna


To comment for a chance to win on How Does A Story Like The Firefighter's Secret Baby happen anyway??? please click here.

Anna DeStefano | Legacies Are Amazing Things

As a writer, I hope creativity will be one of the gifts I pass on to my son. It can be a scary venture, weaving story together from nothing, then sharing that vision with the world. But the results can be nothing short of amazing. Whatever your passion and gift, everyone can find a creative outlet to challenge and sustain them. The wonder of seeing others respond to your gift is a miracle you should experience at least once in your life.

By definition, a legacy is a gift of property, or anything handed down from the past. My paranormal romantic suspense series from Dorchester is an exciting escape into the lives of psychic twins who are just discovering the power of their legacy: the ability to feel and control what others are feeling, and to harness others' dreams. They spent Book One-Dark Legacy -fighting to keep a secret team of government scientists from shaping their minds into direct-strike psychic weapons. In Book Two, Secret Legacy, Sarah and Maddie Temple are still on the run. Only now the government has a psychically gifted child in its grasp-another piece of the Temple Legacy the twins never knew existed. Instead of fighting to escape the danger their powers have brought them, the twins must embrace and risk what they are, or an innocent life will be lost.

At it's core, my psychic series is about exactly what I want to pass on to my child, and hopefully his children one day-dreams. I'm having a blast as I draft Secret Legacy, delving deeper into the dream theory I could only touch on in Book One. Instead of spooky forests, Sarah Temple is dreaming of oceans and currents and being drawn toward either darkness or light. Is it nightmare that she's seeing? A premonition of danger to come? Or the chance to redeem her questionable gifts, for the sake of a child she's never met, and an unsuspecting world that doesn't realize how close to reality psychic warfare has become?

Success hinges on whether Sarah can embrace her dreams, rather than hiding from what she was created to be. And whether she can learn to trust the people who would help her grow into her full power, including Secret Legacy's hero, Dr. Richard Metting-Sarah's soul mate, and the person she's most determined to run from.

There's a key message at the core of this series (and at the center of all of our lives, I suspect): we were born to bring something to the world no one else can. We're here to create and share what is uniquely us, and to fight for that individuality--every dark and light part of it. Artists from the beginning of time have shown us the beauty that results when a person bravely embraces her latent gift to create. But there have been countless masterpieces lost, too, because one sensitive soul after another was too frightened of trying and failing, to even begin.

Read the rest and learn how to win Anna's contest