Good morning! Welcome to DAY 3 of the Fractured Paradise release party. This morning I'm sharing FUN FACTS about me, the characters and the making of Fractured Paradise. Some of the facts you may already know. Hopefully some will be new to you as well.
Ready? Here we go!
About Alexa:
*I'm a HUGE sports fan. I grew up watching my brother play baseball, watching football with my father and keeping score for my high school basketball team. I'm a die-hard Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots fan, and the family all loved Rocky. BUT if I could only watch one sport for the rest of my life it would be soccer. (Of course my favorite soccer teams are English. Liverpool, Chelsea and Sunderland!)
*I would pack up and move anywhere in Great Britain without a second thought if I had some way to support myself. (Anybody got any ideas???)
*I have a REALLY bad habit of writing a story and then thinking of connecting stories for all the secondary characters. Yes, it means I'll always have stories to write, but I don't mean just one or two secondary characters here and there. I mean ALL.
About Rachel Grant, the heroine:
*
Rachel got picked on as a kid. A teacher in her grade school took her under her wing and introduced her to the "beautiful world" of computers. Rachel stayed in touch with that teacher, but by the time she was in middle school she was a well-known hacker.
*
Rachel was approached by Interpol, the FBI and the CIA for her computer skills before she took the job at the International Protective Network.
*
Rachel gets annoyed when people doubt her technical abilities and she's not above hacking into someone's personal accounts to prove it!
*Rachel was "dumped on" her grandparents as a child while her mother traveled with Rachel's beauty pageant contestant sister, Vicki.
About Aidan Camden, the hero:
*I tried to make
Aidan a Scotsman, with the story set in Edinburgh, but Aidan wouldn't hear of it. He's a Sunderland lad through and through.
*
Aidan wanted to work in a big city and so he went to London, where he worked several jobs in tourism before landing a gig as a tour guide.
*
Aidan always had big dreams and always felt living in Sunderland was holding him back. He left at 18.
Miscellaneous Facts:
*All of the secondary characters in this story have the names of my young relatives in Sunderland.
*Although she's only on the phone,
Rachel also makes an appearance in my December Honor Guard story,
Simple Treasures.
*
Gemma Barnes works in the hotel Rachel uses and becomes an instant friend.
*
Adam McAndrew, a secondary character here, affected me so much I'm pretty sure I'll be writing his story one of these days.
*At one point, Rachel contacts her best IPN friend,
Ian MacKenzie. Ian made his first appearance in
Her Highland Champion.
So, what did you already know and what did you learn? What surprised or intrigued you most?
Stay tuned to the party, folks! Remember to comment to be in the running for PRIZES and this afternoon I'll be sharing the deets on my fictional company that each of my Honor Guard stories includes.
And we're back for more partying! Fractured Paradise is the 2nd book that discusses the International Protective Network, or IPN. Because this fictional organization is so important to me and my Honor Guard stories, I thought I'd share a bit about it. 
I've always been interested in reading books and seeing TV shows and movies that deal with justice organizations such as the FBI, CIA, soldiers, police, detectives. I wrote a few stories before with characters in each of these organizations, but getting the details right is difficult if all you have to go on is Hollywood. So, when I had the opportunity to write for Decadent Publishing, I decided to create my own business.
The International Protective Network is a world-wide organization
of bodyguards. When other legal
agencies can't guarantee a person's safety, the IPN can get the job done. The
headquarters are located 
In Fractured Paradise, the IPN operative is Rachel. She is a senior technical analyst. She's been known to get information on just about anyone and honestly, no one asks how she gets it. She worked for a computer company in the States until Russell and Mary MacLeod contacted her and asked her to join their company. Knowing exactly what it was like to feel all alone, as many of the IPN clients feel, Rachel accepted the job offer in hopes of helping people fight for justice. She moved to Edinburgh the week after her online interview.
I'm already hard at work planning 3 new IPN stories for next year (one in Scotland, one in Thailand and one in Mexico)! Plus, you've got Simple Treasures coming out next month with a Scotsman who hopes to join the ranks of IPN operatives.
*I'm a HUGE sports fan. I grew up watching my brother play baseball, watching football with my father and keeping score for my high school basketball team. I'm a die-hard Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots fan, and the family all loved Rocky. BUT if I could only watch one sport for the rest of my life it would be soccer. (Of course my favorite soccer teams are English. Liverpool, Chelsea and Sunderland!)
*Rachel was approached by Interpol, the FBI and the CIA for her computer skills before she took the job at the International Protective Network.
*Aidan always had big dreams and always felt living in Sunderland was holding him back. He left at 18.
Technical analyst Rachel Grant arrives in Sunderland intent
on tidying up her grandmother’s cottage, but the disaster she discovers
requires more than a gentle sweep of a dust rag. Determined to please the most
important person in her life, she trades her computer keyboard for a hammer and
nails to make the repairs. She doesn’t count on the chilly reception from the
locals who want to claim Nan’s home as their own.
She dropped her suitcases and flexed her fingers. She’d come to do a little dusting, a little washing, and poof, she would have the cottage ready for her grandmother’s return. But this eyesore required extensive renovations. As a technical analyst for the International Protective Network, Rachel worked with computers and digital research. Manual labor was way out of her comfort zone. 
As a granddaughter, I managed to get through my grief by doing the physical writing and working through my emotions in the story. As a writer, I revised the manuscript, which started out as a 250-page contemporary romance (no suspense), and submitted it to contests (in which it finaled and won a couple) and a lovely editor rejected it but gave me some great feedback. I then put it aside for a few years and wrote other contemporary and romantic suspense stories. It was last year, when I signed my first contract with Decadent Publishing, that I started to think about revising Fractured Paradise for the Honor Guard line. I cut it down, added in a suspense element (and an International Protective Network employee) and submitted it earlier this year. In my mind, the book had become a way for me to honor not only my grandmother, but also my British heritage in general. When it came time to write the dedication for the book, choosing my grandparents was not even a question.
