Behind the scenes: Rebel Heart

Cynthia has been a key character in every one of the previous Pearls of Desire books, and she’s about to get her love story at last. Rebel Heart is the first part of that - the story of how she met her destined mate, many years before the events that brought her to Maui.

The story behind the story

I was playing around with different ways to convey Cynthia’s backstory but couldn’t quite decide how to approach it. Then I was asked to join the Shades of Pink charity anthology to raise money for breast cancer research. The anthology of short stories was a great excuse for me to make time to write Cynthia’s backstory while supporting an important cause. So I wrote up Rebel Heart and proudly took part in the anthology. That set was a limited time release that only ran for one month, after which authors were free to publish their stories independently. So that’s what I’ve done, and you can get your own copy of REBEL HEART as a single today!

Characters and plot

From the very beginning, I knew Cynthia and her mate would be a Lady and the Tramp type of couple. She’s the rich heiress from a noble dragon family, while Cal is a wolf shifter and a bit of a rogue (but a rogue who’s an alpha at heart - hence the title of their follow-up story). I also have a secret thing for bad boy bikers with good hearts, as you can probably tell. In real life, I’d be more like Cynthia, fretting about my broken down car on the side of the road. In many ways, Rebel Heart plays out the ultimate fantasy of meeting a handsome, mysterious stranger and getting swept off your feet. There’s a lot of forbidden in this story, which makes the simmering attraction between Cal and Cynthia even hotter. So when they finally get a chance to act on their desires… well, make sure you keep a fan running as you go on to read Rebel Alpha

I love the Maui setting of the Pearls of Desire series, but Cynthia and Cal’s love story takes place over a decade earlier and thousands of miles away in the Adirondacks, a place I love. If you’ve never been there on a crisp autumn night when the stars are shining and moonlight is rippling over the waters of a long, winding lake - well, I hope this story takes you there along with the wolf shifter of your dreams! It’s a great escapist story that I hope you will enjoy.