A cunning Scottish lady bests an English baron
of legendary control in a game
of business and seduction…
Merciless and powerful, Ashton Lennox is a wealthy man because he puts business before everything else, especially love. As a member of the infamous League of Rogues, he’s no stranger to scandal. His bedroom conquests are as legendary as his fortune. As he searches for a way to bring down an old enemy bent on destroying the lives of his friends, the last thing he needs is a Scottish widow getting in his way.
A FIERY WOMAN WHO WON’T BACK DOWN…
The daughter of a Scottish lord with a dark and treacherous past, Rosalind Melbourne has spent years distancing from her past. After escaping her tyrannical father and marrying an aging English lord, she has become a powerful widow with a business empire at her command. Her business dealings are everything to her, leaving her no time for love. Especially not with her business rival Ashton, a man with a scandalous reputation as striking as his blue eyes.
A GAME OF WITS TURNS TO A GAME OF SEDUCTION…
Ashton is fascinated by the strong-willed, intelligent and sensual lady who, up until now, had outsmarted him at every turn. Rosalind wishes she could deny she is falling for the brooding, handsome baron. How can she possibly trust him when doing so could cost her what she values most—her freedom? When Ashton discovers Rosalind might hold the key to saving the League of Rogues, he knows he will do anything to woo his wicked lass. As their pasts return to haunt them and dark forces rise to keep them from exposing a deadly spymaster, their game of love turns to a game of survival…
Warning: This book includes a brooding baron who’s wild in bed, a crafty Scottish lass who never knows when to quit, a wicked game of strip chess, and a merry band of rogues whose first instinct is to run they hear wedding bells ring.
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AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Wicked Rivals- Lauren Smith
If you found a genie, what would be your three wishes?
To have a clone which would help me write more books!
An endless supply of chocolate ice cream which would
never make me gain weight *wink
To have a private mansion on the Gold Coast and run down to the beach every morning to dip my feet in the water and breathe in the salty air.
What do you hope readers will take away from
reading WICKED RIVALS?
One of the best things about this book is that is a romance story about true equals. The heroine, Rosalind, isn’t a wilting flower, swooning over a brawny man who sweeps her away. Instead this is a story about a powerful woman who runs her own life and her own companies in a time where that was rare but actually possible for some women. And her hero while still brawny and able to sweep her away, instead has to woo her with his heart and their shared passion of business. I want the readers to come away from reading about Ashton and Rosalind with a sense of fulfillment and a sense of pride for both characters. They overcome stereotypes and clichés that sometimes burden the romance genre. This book is different, but no less steamy or passionate. This is simply a real love story and I want readers to feel joy at having read a book where sometimes the hero and heroine save each other equally.
Tell us Seven things we may not know about your writing life...
I’m an early riser, I get up about five am and take long walks with my dogs and my mother and we chat about plots on my current book.
I handwrite all my first rough drafts in Five Star Brand, five subject notebooks. There’s something magical about getting a giant college ruled notebook and turning to a crisp new page to start a story.
It’s just plain magic.
I never read a romance until I was in law school, so I’m fairly new to the romance genre as far as being a reader. I was raised on sci-fi, fantasy, classics, and literary fiction.
My first completed novel was not a romance but an epic fantasy novel that was over 150,00 words (That means it would have been over 600 pages if it had been published).
I love to write Easter eggs into my novels and novellas. So for example a character that appears in my regency novels may be an ancestor to a modern day character in a contemporary series. It’s up to the fans to find out and make the connections if they read more than one series.
I eat, sleep and breathe writing. Literally, I think about it all day, every day, even on Christmas. My mother had to remind me to put away my computer before we dove into our Christmas turkey last year.
I was inspired to write the Regency set League of Rogues series during my time spent studying abroad at Cambridge. All of the heroes in the book series met at Cambridge and attended the same sub-college I did which was Magdalene College.
What can we expect from WICKED RIVALS ?
Wicked Rivals is the best mixture of traditional Regency stories with balls and high teas, but it is also full of action and unexpected passion. Each story in the League series also has a unique spin that separates it from other historical romance series. All of the heroes from the very first book always appear in each book. So you never have to say goodbye to a rogue once he’s fallen in love and gets married. The relationships between the men in the League are so close that they are integral to each other’s lives. So each book is more full not just with the love story but with the stories of all the men in the League and their friendships as they battle a common enemy. And it’s always fun to see the friends tease each other when the next single man in their group falls in love.
Was there any particular research that you did for WICKED RIVALS ?
Yes. I had to heavily research women bankers in the 1700s and the 1800s. There’s this great big assumption that women had no power and rights. Legally that’s fairly true, but practically that wasn’t true at all. Women had more power and control in their day to day lives than you might expect, and it’s not because men let them have it, but because strong women pushed for that control. I researched the history of women who owned and operated country banks and businesses without husbands or male relatives in control and was delighted to find that such women did exist. I wanted my heroine to be strong and have this amazing background based on true historical women of the day who were forging amazing progress for women’s equality.
(oh, WOW! I'm always blown away when the heroine has a "job" of any type in a historical romance so this is a MUST for me to read)
When you start writing, do you already have an ending in mind, or do you just let the narrative go where it takes you?
I almost always have an ending in mind. I let the narrative take me where it wills, but it always finds a way to the ending I had in mind, sort of like destiny for my stories. I am what they call a “panster” because I write by the seat of my pants. That means I don’t plot out the entire book, but that being said, I always have a vague idea of where I’m going with the plot and I let the characters tell me what happens scene to scene along the way.
Do you already have a set number of books that
you plan to write in the series?
There will be six books that I call the primary League of Rogues novels involving the six main heroes who at the end of book six stop the series villain named Hugo Waverly. After these six are over, I’m going to continue writing books set in the series with the siblings of the League members so there will be at least another 10-15 League of Rogues novels in addition to the primary six books.
What’s next for you?
I’m currently editing a book called The Rakehell’s Seduction which is a Regency novel that’s from a different series but it has a connection of a character (one of those Easter eggs I mentioned) to the League of Rogues universe. Then I’m working on a dragon shifter romance trilogy and a cyborg romance.
Amazon Best-Selling Author Lauren Smith is an attorney by day, author by night, who pens adventurous and edgy romance stories by the light of her smart phone flashlight app. She’s a native Oklahoman who lives with her three pets: a feisty chinchilla, sophisticated cat and dapper little schnauzer. She’s won multiple awards in several romance subgenres including being an Amazon.com Breakthrough Novel Award Quarter-Finalist and a Semi-Finalist for the Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Award. Connect with Lauren:
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