Great news and guest blogger Beth Cornelison

A few quick things before I introduce my guest blogger today:

1- The Knight Agency is giving away an iPad and thirteen free e-books to go on it to one lucky winner who signs up for our newsletter.  Details are here.  Good luck to you all!  (Wish I could enter.)

2- I want to wish a HUGE congratulations to P.N. Elrod, whose story “Beach Girl” won an Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Readers’ Choice Award!  To see what this means to her, you can check out her blog, written when the story was published.  So sweet.  So well-deserved!

3- The Knight Agency is also hosting a chat this Thursday, December 15th at 9 pm ET with THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS co-authors Cec Murphey and Marley Gibson, complete with giveaways…because we’re just that cool.  Details are here.

4- New in digital this week are reissues of Christie Golden’s wonderful Chronicles of Verrold, INSTRUMENT OF FATE and KING’S MAN AND THIEF (or click here for IOF on Kindle or Apple; here for KING’S MAN on Kindle, Apple).  She’s a New York Times bestseller for her Warcraft and Star Wars tie-ins.  Read her original work and see why!

Now, I’m pleased to present Beth Cornelison, whose new release, which I talked about earlier this week, is currently available at all etailers.  It’s a story that’s close to my heart, perhaps because my husband is also a hot, motorcycle-riding man.

A different sort of hero or why I love Kevin Fuller by Beth Cornelison

            After publishing umpteen (that’s a real number, isn’t it?) books with Harlequin and other mainstream publishers, I recently took the plunge into the indie publishing waters (via the services of The Knight Agency). TRUST IN ME is a small-town contemporary romance set in South Carolina and features a different sort of hero than the usual romance hottie.

In TRUST IN ME, after breaking free from her overbearing father and cheating fiancé, Claire Albritton wants nothing more than to take control of her life and learn to fight her own battles. Kevin Fuller believes he must rescue damsels in distress, and Claire is decidedly out of her element in small town South Carolina. When trouble inevitably finds Claire, Kevin’s white knight protection and heroics are exactly what Claire doesn’t want. But his kisses…that’s another matter.

I had mixed feelings as I wrote Kevin’s character. As much as I love, love, love him (did I mention how much I love him? 🙂 ), he’s not the typical romance hero. I wondered, Would readers accept him and fall in love the way I did? Would they dismiss him for the very things I felt made him special?

Don’t get me wrong, Kevin has plenty of the stuff that makes a hero sexy (he’s got the hot  body, the motorcycle, the killer smile, above average looks). He’ll also put himself in harm’s way to save the heroine, stand by his beliefs at all costs, and work relentlessly to reach his goals. Yep, he’s got integrity in spades. He also has a wry sense of humor that he uses as a shield to protect himself from personal pain, and soft spot for the underdog.

So what makes him so different? A few things. Kevin is no million mogul or Arab sheik. He’s a hardware store manager who’s deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck thanks to his mother’s medical bills. Kevin is a pacifist, more Boy Scout than warrior. He’s also mostly beta, a best friend and warm place to land instead of a brooding Alpha.

While plenty of romance authors, and subgenres for that matter, employ the beta hero with great success, Kevin represents my farthest venture into betaland, and so I’m holding my breath. Will readers love him as much as I do? Will they see that Kevin is just what Claire wants and needs, her perfect match, and fall for him as she does?

I hope so. For me, Kevin is much more down-to-earth and realistic than a millionaire entrepreneur or Alpha secret agent. He’s the nice guy we all wish for our daughters, the man of morals and a work ethic we admire in the news. He’s the good guy we cheer for when he wins in the end, the happy ending that gives us all hope. Frankly, he’s the kind of guy we need more of in this world…and that’s why I love him.

TRUST IN ME is available for Kindle, Nook and other ereaders from the usual ebook retail sites.