ICYMI - Between The Pages ~ Live with Karen Rock (PT2)

In Case You Missed It... 

Between The Pages ~ Live with Karen Rock 

February, 28, 2017 on our Facebook Page 

(Part Two)

To read part one of the interview, go here:

http://stillmomentsezine.blogspot.ca/2017/03/icymi-between-pages-live-with-karen-rock.html 

Let’s chat about your new release, A Cowboy to Keep. Please share with us the back cover blurb. 

Karen Rock Can't stop running from the past.  Dani Crawford has a secret…and if bounty hunter Jackson Cade finds out, he could ruin everything. The scarred yet handsome cowboy has tracked a dangerous criminal to the dude ranch Dani manages, and to get rid of Jack she'll have to help him catch his man. But the closer they get to cornering their quarry the more Dani wants Jack to stay. Spending time with him is making her long for things she can never have thanks to a past mistake. And if the truth comes out she may be spending her future behind bars rather than safe in her cowboy's arms…
Karen Rock Harlequin does such a good job with these blurbs!
Still Moments Magazine Do you have any input on the blurb?
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine We fill out something called an Art Fact Sheet which is an 8 page or so document where we discuss the book and they do ask us to write a blurb... but I must not be very good at it because they always go with their own- lol
Still Moments Magazine lol!
Deanna Marie Vrba I wish I had a cover like that
Karen Rock It's one of my favorites for sure- I've been really lucky and HQ art department is incredible!
Karen Rock My all time favorite is Wish Me Tomorrow- my first cover :)
Still Moments Magazine The cover is awesome!
Donamae Clausen Kutska Awesome cover
Karen Rock Thank you! I appreciate the HQ Art Dept so much!
D'Ann Linscott-Dunham nice cover. I have the same title.
Dixie-Lee Rabbe Campbell Do you get to be there for the cover shoot ? love it ! 

A Cowboy to Keep is the prequel to your Rocky Mountain Cowboys series. Where did the inspiration for this series come from, and where will it take the reader?

Karen Rock As I wrote A Cowboy to Keep, I became so invested in Jack Cade and his mission to hunt down the killers who’d murdered his younger brother Jesse. I wanted to know more about Jesse and the rest of the Cade family Jack left behind to exact retribution and to atone for the mistake he feels he made that cost his brother his life. Losing a member of a family, especially in a tight nit family like the Cades, affects everyone differently. I wanted to write a series about them and explore how they’ve been affected by Jesse’s loss. The Cade’s are ranchers who are passionate cowboys committed to working and protecting their land in Colorado’s central Rockies. Each book focuses on one of Jack Cade’s siblings and how love transforms their lives. One running story line throughout the series is that their widowed mother Joy, might have a second chance at love if her grown children would stop objecting to her being wooed by the head of their rivals and feuding neighbors the Lovelands. Part of the series will also tell stories for each of the Lovelands as well. The Lovelands are men of few words, but deep convictions. They are cool-headed and ones who always repay a grudge… something they feel they have against the Cades from a decades long feud that originated with a kidnapping, a jewel theft, and murder, a mystery that will also be solved over the course of the series.
Still Moments Magazine This series sounds so interesting. I like the family connections and the drama within the family.
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine There's lots of drama! It's interesting to pick up a story after something traumatic happens and be a part of each character's journey towards healing and finding their happily-ever-after :)
Karen Rock I also like the overarching romeo and juliet story of the two heads of the feuding family's having a late-in-life romance- lots of fun to see their grown children objecting and trying to interfere!
Still Moments Magazine Karen Rock Reading about the mother's love interest will be fun.
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Joy (the mother) is a great character and she's dealt with a lot after losing her son- it's fun to see her regain her happiness and mojo when Boyd Loveland comes courting... if only her kids would stop getting in the way :)
Still Moments Magazine Karen Rock What a great peek at a future book in the series!
Karen Rock Her love story is actually one that evolves over the course of several books- so in the first book the couple meets and begins to be interested and the kids interfere and convince her to back off- in the second book, she's decides to begin dating Boyd- in the third book they become engaged and then in the fourth there may or may not be a wedding- I won't spoil it- but lots of drama from the kids that keeps you guessing if these two will find their HEA.- meanwhile her kids are falling in love and pairing off right and left- so Joy really deserves her HEA
Lynn Brooks I'm excited to meet the rest of the Cade's!
Still Moments Magazine Me too!
Karen Rock I can't wait for you to meet them, too! I've already written James and Jared's stories and am working on Jesse's twin brother Justin's story now. I love these brothers and their sister, Jewel is such a spit fire- she's going to be fun, too, because she can out ride, out shoot, out rope any of her big brothers and they're all just a little bit scared of their dainty sister- haha
Lynn Brooks LOL I bet she keeps them on their toes!
Still Moments Magazine Karen Rock You are such a tease, lol. I want to read them all now!
Karen Rock Lynn Brooks Oh she does! She's got this left hook shoulder jab they automatically flinch from if they say something sassy to her- lol
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Yay
Donamae Clausen Kutska So interesting!

I’ve had the pleasure of reading A Cowboy to Keep and thoroughly enjoyed it. Without giving away too much, I’ll just say that your two main characters are flawed and carry secrets that haunt them. How do you come up with your characters’ personality traits and motivation? Do you create them in your own mind’s eye, or do they come together on their own?

Karen Rock Thanks, Darlene! I love Jack and Dani for the flaws that make them human and relatable. When I was younger I liked romances that had billionaires and luxurious settings. As I get older, I find myself drawn to what real people struggle through because there’s something so inspiring about being able to connect with characters’ journeys and to become inspired when they overcome real life obstacles. My characters come from real life and they come to me in the planning stages of the books when I’m writing up synopsis and proposing them to Harlequin. They do become more fleshed out as I write the book, but who they are, at their core, is something I know before I begin the book.
Still Moments Magazine I like that Dani never saw Jack's visual flaws. She saw the inside of Jack.
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine You picked up on that! See- that's why you are such an amazing reviewer :) Yes- that was crucial to me- to have Dani be the one person in Jack's life to help him see past his own scars and recognize that there was so much more than good in him than might seem on the surface. I like how he gets more confidence from working at the ranch and stops turning his head when people speak to him to hide his scar
Karen Rock I like "the hero next door" kind of characters the best :)
Donamae Clausen Kutska So do I.

This book has a great twist of suspense. You keep the reader guessing which character is the bad guy. Do you find it difficult to add in an element of suspense, or do you enjoy meddling with the readers?

Karen Rock LOL. I don’t enjoy meddling exactly; it’s more that I don’t want to spoil the surprise by making it easy for readers to guess. That’s what keeps those pages turning and takes us away from our everyday lives. Adding in suspense is a challenge in that it’s important for me not to skimp in any way on the romance. I still wanted it to be as deeply emotional and romantic as any of my previous contemporaries and I’m proud of the result.
Still Moments Magazine You do a great job of weaving the suspense into the romance. Well done. I kept wondering who the bad guy was.
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Thanks :) And the fact that there could have been (or might be) more than one added that extra layer of writer angst to keep everything moving fast without giving anything away!
Donamae Clausen Kutska Suspense is the best.

I’ve been fortunate to read several of your books, and I enjoy the way you put the reader into your setting. Your descriptive voice sets the scene perfectly. Do you come up with these setting yourself, or do you write about places you’ve been?
Karen Rock Thanks for that, Darlene! Some of the settings in past books are places I’ve been to- like the Adirondacks, SoHo, Brooklyn, Texas, North Carolina, St. Thomas- whereas others are places I’ve researched and want to visit, like Colorado and the Bering Sea. It’s always easier to write what you can picture from your personal experiences, but luckily the internet lets us have access to settings that helps us make them come alive on the page. The Bering Sea was the trickiest one, and I watched a lot of THE DEADLIEST CATCH for that book (HIS LAST DEFENSE- out in April) as most of the book takes place on a crab fishing boat trolling the most dangerous waters in the world.
Still Moments Magazine Wow, you are quite the traveler! No wonder you can easily place the reader in your settings. They are very vivid. Well done!
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Thank you so much! I take lots of pictures- lol
Donamae Clausen Kutska Neat places to go.

Karen, what can we look forward to with your next writing project? 
Karen Rock My next release is a Harlequin Blaze- HIS LAST DEFENSE- in April 2017. It’s a second chance love story between a female crab fishing boat captain and her ex, a USCG swimmer who saves her life and might steal her heart, too. After that, in November, the first official book in the ROCKY MOUNTAIN COWBOYS series begins with the tentatively titled A COWBOY’S WAY. It’s a holiday book where the Cades, who just want to ignore the holidays since it makes Jesse’s loss more painful, are surprised by a child they hadn’t known Jesse had and his mother Sofia. Sofia challenges the strict order James, the second oldest of the five Cade boys, imposed on the ranch in reaction to Jesse’s death and later wins his heart. After that comes a friends to lovers story about a legally blind former barrel racer her best friend, pro NFL star Jared Cade who refuses to let her quit her sport or him. I’m currently writing the third book in the series featuring Jesse’s twin, Justin Cade, and between now and 3/9/18, will have written five more books in total, two more for the ROCKY MOUNTAIN COWBOYS SERIES, bringing the total to five, and three for a new, sexy-romantic suspense series, set in a Dallas male strip club, that I’m writing for Kensington Press; it’s titled DANCES IN THE DARK and the first book is JUICED as well as the other two books in the series will be published in 2018- lots of spicy thrills ahead in that series.
Jennifer Snow :):):):)
Karen Rock Jennifer Snow Thanks, Jen
Still Moments Magazine Oh my, we have to wait until November for the next Rocky Mountain Cowboy?! That's too long :) But thankfully you have His Last Defense coming soon! So I'll forgive you for the wait ;)
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Oh good! We could have released the first book in the Rocky Mtn series earlier- but it just felt like it needed to be a holiday story of healing so... we wait... and His Last Defense is a powerful romance- if you've ever watched THE DEADLIEST CATCH- you'll like this because it's set on the Bering Sea and lost of high stakes action and romance on the deadliest waters in the world!
Karen Rock The other three bks in the Rocky Mountain series should release in 2018 as well as my Dances in the Dark series- so that's going to be a crazy year of releases!
Still Moments Magazine Karen Rock You've sold me and this book is going on my reading list!
Still Moments Magazine Karen Rock You are going to need a well deserved vacation in 2018
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Yay. I won't let you down- this book at the most action the highest stakes and the swooniest moments I've ever written. I love how it turned out :) It's also a second chance love story and I adore those.
Lynn Brooks A male strip club series?? Sign me up!!
Karen Rock Still Moments Magazine Hah! Exactly. My husband was looking at sales on cruises for March next year!
Karen Rock Lynn Brooks I know, right? It's super sexy and suspenseful- and let's just say the setting is all kinds of inspiring to me- lol
Lynn Brooks hahaha ... I bet!!!
Pam Jones-hamblin That sounds like a book I won't want to put down! Dances in the Dark will be a keeper!
Karen Rock Thanks, Pam! I've got the first three chapters written so far and am loving it!
Donamae Clausen Kutska I do enjoy cowboy books and romantic suspense.

Where has the time gone?! I’m sorry to say that our interview with Karen has come to an end. Thank you so much, Karen, for taking the time to chat with us today, and for being our first victim…cough, cough…our first guest! I can’t wait to check out your next book, and to have you stop by again to chat about it. Please let us know where visitors can go to learn more about your books. 
Karen Rock I’m sorry it must end, too! It’s been fun to chat with you all. You can learn more about my books on my webpage at http://www.karenrock.com and follow me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/karenrockwrites Also, a great place to follow me for news about contests and new releases is on my Amazon author page at http://amzn.to/1NSRVrT or my Goodreads author page at http://www.goodreads.com/karenrockauthor I strongly urge you to click those links! I also have a $20 Amazon gift card contest on Goodreads right now. After reading A COWBOY TO KEEP, take the quiz at https://www.goodreads.com/.../1126059-a-cowboy-to-keep... I don’t have many entries so this could be an easy win! To download and read the first three chapters of A COWBOY TO KEEP on Goodreads free, go to http://bit.ly/2i3lxK6
Karen Rock Thanks so much for having me and it's been wonderful to chat with everyone. I hope you'll check out A COWBOY TO KEEP and my April release- HIS LAST DEFENSE :)
Still Moments Magazine His Last Defense is going on my reading list...hint hint, lol!
Karen Rock Have a good night and look for Darlene's pick for a winner of a copy of A COWBOY TO KEEP!
Donamae Clausen Kutska I'm glad I discovered you!
Karen Rock Thanks everyone! It's been great visiting with you.

On March 5, through a random draw of comments during the live chat, two names were chosen for the giveaways from Karen Rock and Still Moments Magazine. The winners were...
Donamae Clausen Kutskaof winner of a copy of A Cowboy To Keep.
Pam Jones-Hamblin winner of a family tree charm key chain.