Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a celebrity crush (current crush: David Giuntoli from Grimm.) See his yumminess here: David looking serious.

When I was a child, Gene Kelly was my dream man. When I was a teenager, it was Matt Dillon. For a while, I switched over to musicians like the oh-so-yummy ’80s icon  John Taylor from Duran Duran. But leading men were like magnets to me, and eventually I fell for the brilliant but fairly rude and brooding, Russell Crowe quite early in his career. Meaning before LA Confidential and Gladiator. He blew me away with his riveting performance in The Sum of Us followed by Romper Stomper.  I’ve always written little short stories and played around with a variety of genres, but it was after reading Judith McNaught’s Whitney, My Love (which almost killed me the romantic tension was so brutal) that I realized romance was my genre of choice. So I played around with a story and used Russell as my inspiration.

What happened, as it often does in writing, is that my character took over and didn’t want to be Australian or rude or impulsively violent. So I went with it, and Aidan was born! An Irishman with a gentle if somewhat wounded soul. Coming up with Bethany – the complete opposite of a movie starlet – was fun. She also took over her story adding things – like her love of baking – that I never had in her character bio or my outline.

As I await, proudly, for A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON to become available to you, I am editing one book and writing another. One is a ghost story, the other story about two very wounded people that find each other. I believe both of them will be a lot of fun to read.  I’d better get back to work so I can finish the book I’m currently reading, later on, tonight. It’s a good one! Karen Rose: Did You Miss Me?