Sourcebooks Casablanca Romance Authors

A couple of months ago, I blogged about fictional sisters , and more recently, about fictional mothers . Today, fictional brothers get their day in the sun--and a complicated, conflicted lot they are too! One thing that fascinated me about brotherly relationships is the extent to which competition shapes their dynamic--and probably has since the dawn of time. Sisters can be competitive too, but when brothers go head to head over something they want, the threat of violence and even bloodshed tends to loom large. Just ask Cain and Abel! Some brotherly rivalries are a match for that Biblical pair in drama and intensity, like that of bellicose Thor and manipulative Loki, who both aspire to the throne of Asgard--and know that only one of them can have it. Or Adam and Charles Trask in East of Eden , who compete for everything from their father’s affection to the beautiful but soulless Cathy Ames--a rivalry that continues into the next generation with Adam’s sons, Caleb and Aron. ...

Posted By Robin Kaye I love Italian families. Having come from one, I can close my eyes and see my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, hear my grandparents yelling at each other in Italian. And I can smell the menestra boiling on the stove. After reading Mary Margaret Daughtridge’s exceptional blog about “Idea or Inspiration?” I thought back to the first spark of inspiration for Romeo, Romeo . I was taking an on-line class about point Of view and was supposed to write a scene in first person. I remember thinking I didn’t have time. I had a 20-quart pot of sauce on the stove, I’d just thrown in the meatballs, sausage and Brocole, and I only had ten minutes before I needed to stir the sauce. With the smell of sauce heavy with a good Cabernet Sauvignon filling my head, and wearing my “The Trouble With Italian Food Is 3 Days Later, You’re Hungry Again” apron, I sat at my computer and pounded out a scene written in a chubby Italian daughter’s POV. Rosalie Angelina Ronaldi stormed into my brain...

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone. That's true, right? It should be. After all none of us like listing to someone who whines all the time. We all just talked about needing a happy ending. But isn't bad news that sells newspapers? It's the same for novels. Bad news, or conflict on every page according to Donald Maas, is a must. It is what keeps a reader turning the pages. It is boring if everyone is happy, sad to say. I learned very early as a writer, as soon as everyone is happy, the story is over, epilogues excepted of course. Is it perhaps that other old truism. Misery loves company? That we are happy to see that other people have troubles worse than ours? I think it is that only more. We want to know that our hero and heroine deserve their happy ending, that it didn't just fall into their laps, but that they, like most of us, had to work for their success, whether defeating a villain or an earthquake or a bad decision. We want to know that...