The Chocolate Cafe with Mary Connealy

There are a lot of people I look for at ACFW, but the Seekers are a group I make SURE to find each time. And author, Mary Connealy, is one of the reasons I've stalked the Seekers as much as I have over the past 4 years. (Well, Mary told me that I wasn't working hard enough to be a stalker and I "needed to apply myself" - so I need to stalk harder :-)

I read Petticoat Ranch in 2009 and immediately fell in love with the style, humor, and male/female banter. It was one of the first books in CBA I'd read which really hit at the humor aspect I wanted to write. (Siri Mitchell was another initial influence). 

Mary's characters have such vibrancy and each book is an adventure. So... let's see who one of her most memorable characters is?

I love Dare Riker, the hero of Fired Up because he is deeply honorable. So deeply honorable that he is tormented to realize that he completely missed the Glynna Greer was being abused by her husband and left her to be beaten a second time. It's destroyed his belief in himself and he no longer wants to be a doctor. Ever since he trained to help a doctor in the Civil War he's taken some smug satisfaction in practicing medicine without 'wasting a bunch of time' in college. Believing he's just as good as any doctor. But now he sees himself as a liar and a fraud and he's ashamed of himself.
 
But he has such a natural gift for nurturing and healing that everytime someone gets sick or hurt near him, he just can't help stepping in and taking care of them.
 
It's enough of a dilemma to drive a poor defenseless doctor mad!

I do like him a bunch - but why does Glynna end of liking him?

He's smart. Hard working. Kind. Intensely loyal. A natural caretaker. A driven student, learning all he can about medicine, more than most men who have been to college by reading everything he can get his hands on. Honest. Cute. Once he realizes Glynna's in trouble nothing matters but saving her. Including Luke's ranch.
 
Leaving her behind the second time he is called to her house, once he knows Flint beat her, knowing he will die if he tries to take her...and being willing to do that if it would save her, but knowing it wouldn't save her at all, nearly tears him in half.
 
Plus he is smoking hot and he wants to get his hands on Glynna so bad it is driving him mad and Glynna wants him right back.
 
What's not to love?

Wooweee! Romance with rifles! Passion with pistols. No doubt, Fired Up will take you on a fun and furious ride through another Connealy classic. If you'd like to hear more about character creation with Mary Connealy, you can check out her posts at Seekerville. You can also learn more about her books at her website.

Quotes for the day: (and Mary will probably appreciate these :-)

“Writing historical fiction is a legitimate use of Multiple Personality disorder.” 
- Peggy Ullman Bell

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.” 

-Clarence Kelland