My goal as a Romance author is to give good value. I expect to provide my readers with six to eight hours of amusement, at least a couple of really good laughs, a romantic frisson or two from the sensual scenes, something to think about when the book is finished.
KNIGHT’S FORK will be released in October, but I hope that if you haven’t read my previous books you may be willing to take a look, because Rhett is in both of them.
#1. Forced Mate,
#2. Insufficient Mating Material,
#3. KNIGHT’S FORK
My first book was FORCED MATE. It’s a chess title for a race between the two Kings to make a pawn his Queen, and was written as a loving spoof of the Historical Romance genre. I took every traditional situation in an abduction/obligatory-travel romance and made the hero an all-powerful, alpha-male alien, a god-Prince with a nasty reputation.
I introduced Rhett as the ultimate altruist. He tried to stop one of his big brothers from having unwise sex. (He does that a lot, that’s partly why his brothers get mad at him.) So, his big brother thumps him. As a result, Rhett is arrested, imprisoned and threatened with torture and death. He keeps quiet about who he really is, and risks his life to protect the bad-ass older brother who hit him.
In INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL, ’Rhett volunteers his unsolicited opinion to the exceedingly dangerous Tarrant-Arragon after Tarrant-Arragon has forcibly marooned Djetth (the wild brother) on a tropical island with the slightly overweight and bitchy Princess Martia-Djulia who can’t or won’t remove her own wet ballgown to save her life.
Tarrant-Arragon’s has his reasons for shooting down the unhappy couple, and they are mostly political. Martia-Djulia balked at the altar of her shotgun Royal wedding (to Djetth), but she needs a husband before she creates a bigger scandal as a result of a really bad choice of bed partner for a defiant one-night stand.
In case you were wondering, Insufficient Mating Material is a chess term for a no-win situation.
Knight’s Fork (the chess position) is about tough choices in an impossible situation where you can only save one of two (or more) threatened pieces. Often, with a Knight’s Fork, it’s the Queen and a Castle that are threatened.
KNIGHT’S FORK –the book– is a quest story, but just as Jason and the Argonauts set out to steal a fabulous golden fleece, then discover that it’s just a ratty old ram skin once it’s removed from the magical tree, Rhett’s quest doesn’t turn out the way he expected, and he gets exactly what he went on the quest to avoid.
I love the official cover art for KNIGHT’S FORK (which you can see on Amazon and which captures a lot of the undercurrents and symbolism about the aloof and sexually unattainable Rhett.)
Although Rhett’s quest story was inspired by the Greek myth of Perseus (who was sent to get the Gordon’s head), the official cover is like the Greek myth of Tantalus… the hero who was doomed to be half submerged (up to his neck) in water that he could never drink. So, I created an imaginary Tarot card, which I called The Tantalized Male, although it is based on The Hanged Man. It draws on the ideas of still waters running deep, of everyone having a dark side, of the chess-like battle between the White Knight and his inner Dark Knight.
Why a Tarot card? Insufficient Mating Material ends with a violent scene in a fortune teller’s parlour. Knight’s Fork is what happens next as –too excited to go to bed—the rogue Royal family turns on Rhett to discover the truth about his sex life, if they can.
Rowena Cherry
http://www.rowenacherry.com
“If you’ve made up your mind to impale someone, do it with conviction.”
~Rhett, Knight’s Fork
