Who doesn’t love a possessive morally gray man that has set his eyes on you and only you? I think my pull to the gray side of the law formed at an early age. Most girls dream of princess dresses and tea parties, yet me and my sister talked about owning a strip club and if we were smart enough to plan a robbery. Guess where the inspiration for my mafia sisters came from? Yeah, I guess I was set to write mafia romance books before I even knew it was a thing.
Hold your horses….
Now before you go all gasping and jaw dropping, getting your panties in a twist… we were ten and eleven at the time. I’m pretty sure we didn’t come any further than agreeing to putting on gloves and wearing masks. Fancy Venetian ones with glitters and sparkles, duh.
Luckily, we did inherit enough brain cells to understand that was a very very bad idea, but that little wink to the gray side of morality always stayed.
And so it begins…
You can imagine the excitement I experienced when I was all grown up, reading at least a book a week and found out there was a section of Mafia Romance Books. Up until that moment I knew romance books as my mother’s Harlequin collection that was flooding with cowboys and doctors. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a country girl at heart, but after I passed the respectable age of sixteen, I needed a bit more spice in my book choice. Or smut.
Crossing to the dark side…
The first mafia romance books I picked up was the Buttons Series by Penelope Sky. I remember laying in bed with my husband sound asleep while I was reading word by word with flushed cheeks. It was an eye-opener in many ways that are not appropriate to discuss without a clear confirmation you have reached the respectable age of 18, but it also ignited the fire I always had to write my own mafia romance books. Wait, my stories didn’t have to be clean and suitable for my mother’s bookshelf? I could dip my toes in the gray shade of the law and write about things like murder, organized crime and morally gray characters? Yes please!
No turning back now…
It’s safe to say that after that day, I opened up a can of worms that come in the form of men we run away from in real life, but adore on paper. I try to balance on the fine lin of just enough possessiveness, jealousness, protectiveness and an acceptable amount of red flags. The alpha males that talk to us like they are our biggest enemy, but will burn down the world to protect the women holding their hearts in their bloody palm.
Let’s just say I started writing mafia romance books, because it was the only way to put every dark inch of my soul out in the world without ending up behind bars.
So to speak.
P.S. We never started a strip club, but I lived out my dream writing The Sisters of Sin Series.
