Guest: Jennifer Bernard ... x2!

We’ve got author Jennifer Bernard with us today, as you can see. She’s talking about hot firemen in romances! Whee! And you’ll notice something totally different. Ms. Bernard sent me her post. And I did everything. And then, she was like “I changed my mind!” … So… since I did everything I’m not about to undo it… so we get double posty goodness. Yay!

First of all, thanks to Limecello for having me on the blog! A little about me: I write contemporary romance. My first series is all about the sexy, single Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel, California. (Well, they won’t be single for long!) The Fireman Who Loved Me just came out, and Hot for Fireman will be out on May 29. So if you like smokin’ hot, heroic firefighters, and who doesn’t …

See, that’s the problem with my first heroine, Melissa. She has these crazy ideas about what sort of man she ought to date. She has her “type” and she’s sticking to it. I can relate. For years I thought I knew my type. He’d be highly educated, sharp, witty, a magnet for money. He’d have dark hair because … hell, I don’t know why. He just would, okay?

Shows what I know. It turns out those guys were all wrong for me. When I got married last year, it was to someone I never would have pictured in my younger, more idiotic days. My husband is a carpenter, not a professor. He’s smart, but not academic. Funny, but not in that sharp, edgy way. On paper, he has no similarity to my “type.” Instead, he’s the kindest, strongest, most loving man I’ve ever known. I thank God on a daily basis that I grew up enough to see that he’s perfect for me.

In The Fireman Who Loved Me, Melissa is a news producer who thinks her type is someone artsy and intellectual … a novelist or a sculptor. Date a fireman? Someone so masculine, so physically oriented, so … hunky? Perish the thought! When she meets Fire Captain Brody, at first all she sees is muscles and testosterone. Even though they have crazy chemistry, she doesn’t consider him dating material because he’s “not her type.” Luckily, she soon discovers she’s got it all wrong. There’s a lot more to Brody – and to all the sexy firemen of San Gabriel — than she realized, and the more she knows Brody, the more she falls for him.

To me, that’s the heart of romance. It’s about learning to really see the object of your affections – as he or she truly is, not as they might seem on the surface. It’s about breaking down the barriers between two people – their pasts, their wrong ideas, their fears. And even though we romance writers end our stories with the perfect HEA, the process keeps going after the wedding. I imagine I’ll still be discovering my husband’s hidden quirks our whole life together. (I don’t have any myself, of course.)

And once more with feeling… (and you know, book information ):

Fearless, smoking hot and single: meet the Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel. These firemen might be heroes, but it’s their bad luck in love that makes them legendary.

News producer Melissa McGuire and Fire Captain Harry Brody couldn’t be more different, though they do have one thing in common: they’re both convinced they’re perfectly wrong for each other.

But when Melissa’s matchmaking grandmother wins her a date with Brody at a bachelor auction… Sparks fly. Passion flares. Heat rises. (You get the picture.)

Add a curse, a conniving nightly news anchor, a stunningly handsome daredevil fireman, a brave little boy, a couple of exes, and one giant fire to the mix and Melissa and Brody’s love may not be the only thing that burns.

You can also read an excerpt of the book here. (Warning, it opens as a .pdf)

And this is what Ms. Bernard wants to know: So I’m not sure what to believe about “types” any more. Was I simply wrong about my type? Did my type change over the years? Is the whole idea of types off base? What do you think?

Post the second!

I’m so excited to be here on Limecello’s blog with some Deep Thoughts about a Very Important Topic: FIREMEN. This is a subject close to my heart because my first series just started coming out and it’s all about the smoking hot, single Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel. The Fireman Who Loved Me is available now and Hot for Fireman will be out on May 29. Even though you probably already know many reasons to love firemen, in case you needed convincing, here’s a few more.

Ten Reasons to Love Firemen

1. They go for twenty-four hours straight. (Am I talking about their shifts? Maybe. Maybe not.)

2. They still make house calls.

3. They do amazing things with their equipment. Oh yeah.

4. Where there’s fire, there’s heat. In so many ways.

5. They know exactly where to put their hoses and what to do with them.

6. They might get sweaty, but they sure clean up nice.

7. Firemen have a saying: “We put the wet stuff on the red stuff.”  I don’t know about you, but that just sounds dirty to me.

8. They can cook, clean, and keep their engines purring.

9. Sometimes they work with their shirts off.  (At least they do in this photo, and that’s good enough for me!)

10. I know there’s something I’m forgetting … what was it … oh right! They can save your life. Or your house. Or your kitten.

This list is just the tip of the hotness iceberg. There are so many reasons to admire and respect the members of our firefighting forces.  I adore firemen and I have a lot of fun writing about them, doing my research (oh yeah!) and looking for photos to illustrate my blog posts about them.

Jennifer Bernard is a graduate of Harvard and a former news promo producer. The child of academics, she confounded her family by preferring romance novels to all other books. She left big city life for true love in Alaska, where she now lives with her husband and stepdaughters.  She’s no stranger to book success, as she also writes erotic novellas under a naughty secret name only occasionally mentioned at family gatherings.

If you’d like to win a signed copy of The Fireman Who Loved Me, please leave me a comment with a reason to love firemen.

And with all this talk of firemen… I just can’t resist. Especially since there’s never any talk of booze. We need more booze up in here. So I give you… booze and a fireman! Unfortunately you’ll have to click over because the booze makes it all age restricted, so I can’t embed it. Meh.