Susan Krinard’s Sinfully Alpha Hero…

Susan Krinard’s Sinfully Alpha Hero…

Susan Krinard blends two great genres in her HQN novels: paranormal and historical romance. In her latest book Lord of Sin (HQN, Sept. 2009), Susan brings us a witch heroine and an alpha hero who have both vowed never to love again…but as Susan’s guest-post will tell you, fate has other plans for these two!

by Susan Krinard, author of Lord of Sin

I enjoy writing all kinds of heroes and heroines in my romance novels. Sometimes my heroes are quieter, less “alpha” characters, thoughtful and sensitive; sometimes my heroines are even more “alpha” than the males!

But, like most romance writers and readers, I have a soft spot for the tough, seemingly untouchable male who is determined never to be roped in by any female.

In my September book, Lord of Sin, St John (Sinjin), Earl of Donnington, is just such a character. Having loved, and lost, a treacherous lover in a painful incident before his accession to the earldom (Lord of Legends), he’s sworn not to marry until he’s reaches his 40′s. He seals his personal vow by starting up the “Forties Club”, friends and acquaintances who have made the same decision: to live for pleasure and abjure all thought of marriage until their 40th year.

For Sinjin, this means keeping a string of mistresses and seducing any eligible married Society female he can win with his good looks and compelling personality. But there’s one woman he can’t have: Nuala, Lady Charles Parkhill, charter member of the Widows’ Club. Like the Forties, the Widows have vowed never to marry again, but to maintain their independence as women of means, able to indulge their eccentricities and interests as they please.

Nuala, however, is more than merely eccentric. She’s a witch, born of generations of English witches and doomed to an endless existence of service until she atones for the magical execution of the witch-hunter who killed her husband in the 17th century. Posing as a maid, she’d been a part of the strange and wondrous events that, against all odds, had not only brought together two deserving lovers, but had also involved the death of Sinjin’s brother and the madness of his lover, lady Pamela. Nuala still suffers guilt over that tragedy, though she herself wasn’t responsible for it. When, during the new London Season, Sinjin recognizes the regal, red-haired woman he’d briefly met just before his brother’s death—a woman he knows to be not entirely human—he blames her as well. He’s drawn to her beauty and longs to possess her even as he determines to punish her. And when the ghost of a witch-hunter attempts to use him for its own scheme of revenge, his motives take a deadly turn.

Will Sinjin abandon his vow never to love again, or will his own inner demons destroy both himself and the woman he wants more than anything he’s ever wanted in his life?

Sinjin has been one of my favorite “alpha” characters, the epitome of what I enjoy most in creating this kind of hero: a little arrogant, determined not to need anyone, but vulnerable and tormented under his pose of indifference and cynicism. I have a quieter, more rugged loner hero in my Spring ’10 book, Bride of the Wolf. Heath Renier has a number of alpha characteristics, but he’s content to stay out of society completely and go his own way. To my way of thinking, “alpha” males, like alpha wolves, are leaders who keep their position with strength and force of personality, whereas a “lone wolf” has no such ambitions. In my novels, however, they’re inevitably fighting their own inner battles. Only love has the power to heal them.