ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KAYE DACUS is the author of contemporary and historical romances with Barbour Publishing and Harvest House Publishers. She holds a Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, is a former Vice President of American Christian Fiction Writers, and currently serves as President of Middle Tennessee Christian Writers. She loves action movies and British costume dramas; and when she’s not writing, she enjoys knitting scarves and “lap blankets” (she’s a master of the straight-line knit and purl stitches!). Kaye lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and even though she writes romance novels, she is not afraid to admit that she’s never been kissed. To learn more about Kaye and her books, visit her online at
kayedacus.com.
Additional places to find Kaye:
http://twitter.com/kayedacushttp://www.facebook.com/kayedacus
A CASE FOR LOVEby Kaye Dacus
Published by Barbour Publishing
ABOUT THE BOOKWelcome back to Bonneterre, Louisiana, for the delightful conclusion to the Brides of Bonneterre series.
The Alaine Delacroix that all of Bonneterre knows is the carefully polished image she puts forth every day on her noontime news-magazine program. When her parents’ home and small business is threatened by the biggest corporation in town, Alaine is forced to choose between her image and fighting for the life her family has built.
Lawyer Forbes Guidry is used to making things go his way. But when he’s asked to take on a pro bono case for a colleague, he’ll learn that he can’t control everything—including his feelings for his new client: Alaine Delacroix.
Alaine’s only option to help her family is hiring Forbes, but can she bring herself to trust the handsome, disarmingly charming lawyer? And will Forbes Guidry be able to make a case for love before losing his job and family? Can both trust that God will present a solution before it’s too late?
Readers, buy your copy of A Case for Love today!Also available at
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AUTHOR INTERVIEW1. What gave you the inspiration for this story?In
Stand-In Groom, the first book in the Brides of Bonneterre series, with hidden identities and secret celebrity weddings, I needed a puppet-master, someone local who knew all the players and was in a position of power to be able to pull their strings. Enter Forbes Guidry.
The idea for a character like Forbes didn’t start with
Stand-In Groom, however.
Before I ever had the idea for a story about a wedding planner falling in love, I had an idea that I might one day write a contemporary-set story loosely based on the storyline of
Pride and Prejudice. The hero would be a local politician running for state office—orchestrated by his wealthy aunt—and the heroine would be someone who worked for some kind of advocacy group that was trying to either get him on board with the worthy cause they advocated or get him defeated
When it came time to come up with a proposal of two more books to go with
Stand-In Groom I already had the idea for
Menu for Romance. I knew it was time to resurrect that P&P idea. And even though the story idea I initially sent in was dismissed and a new storyline not involving politics was called for, the character who would become Forbes remained the same throughout the entire process. But now he was a lawyer (as of
Stand-In Groom) and he was a self-professed control freak (as of
Menu for Romance). So I needed someone who could handle him. And I realized I had already introduced the perfect foil for Forbes in
Menu: Alaine Delacroix, the local TV society reporter. And the story took off from there.
2. How much of your own experiences influenced your characters? What aspects became traits that were theirs and theirs alone?There’s always something of me in each of my characters—Anne’s and Meredith’s desire to create events that will please the attendees; Major’s love of food; Forbes’s control-freakishness; Alaine’s concern with what other people think of her. For the most part, though, their professions and their experiences with falling in love are uniquely their own as, so far, I have not written a character who’s had any job that I’ve ever had (though I have done lots of event planning over the years and even worked in a restaurant my senior year of high school), and I’ve never experienced falling in love with someone who was also falling in love with me. I think I have a tendency to give my characters traits I would like to have so that as I explore those traits when I’m writing those characters, I will hopefully pick up a little bit of it myself.
3. If your hero/heroine were an ice cream flavor, what would he/she be and why?If Alaine were an ice cream flavor, she’d be cinnamon-honey. Being half-Portuguese, she’s very exotic looking, she has a bit of “spice” to her personality, but underneath her take-on-the-world exterior, she’s really sweet and natural inside.
Forbes would be hand-cranking two ice cream makers: one filled with vanilla ice cream and one filled with chocolate. Straightforward and unpretentious, he expects everything around him to be clear-cut and black-and-white; no frills, no add-ons; nothing unexpected.
4. Are there any themes in A Case for Love
that you hope the reader sees? Are there any themes that weren't overt but developed as the story progressed?I’m the world’s worst at trying to figure out what the themes in my books are until someone else points them out to me! On the surface, the story in
Case juxtaposes the story in
Menu somewhat. In
Menu for Romance, Forbes helps Major to see that Major has not been living up to the commandment that calls for us to honor our parents. Yet in
A Case for Love, Forbes makes the decision to stand in opposition to his parents. But in reality, both of these stories show different ways in which we honor our parents. In Major’s case, it’s by not being embarrassed by a parent with a disability. In Forbes’s case, it’s taking a stand to try to remind his parents of the very ethics, morals, and Christian values they raised him to have.
A theme I didn’t expect that started developing in
Menu for Romance and became much clearer in
A Case for Love is the search for identity all of us go through in our twenties or thirties—when we come to a point when we realize we have to separate ourselves from the children we once were to independently functioning adults, especially in a family that’s as close as my fictional Guidry family is. It’s a theme of learning to stand alone, separate from being daughter/sister/granddaughter, yet learning to reweave those relationships into something supportive and sustaining that will be there eternally.
5. What were your most difficult parts to write? Your favorite?Most difficult? FORBES GUIDRY. That control freak did not want to let go and let me get inside his head. I think it’s because he knew I was going to start taking away his control over everything in his life and he didn’t like it, not one bit. Eventually, we negotiated a settlement and he was much more forthcoming. But, oh my goodness, how he frustrated me the first couple of months I was trying to write this book.
My favorite part of every book I write—but especially in
A Case for Love—is the ending, the final scene in which the hero and heroine finally come back together and work everything out and get their happy ending.
6. When is your next book coming out and what is the story?My next book coming out is
Ransome’s Crossing, book two of the Ransome Trilogy from Harvest House, which is set to release June 1, 2010. It’s a continuation of the story from
Ransome’s Honor, picking up the day after that book left off. The focus shifts more onto William’s younger sister Charlotte and her desire to leave England to join her secret fiancé in Jamaica. To do so, she disguises herself as a midshipman and signs on as part of the crew of one of the ships in the convoy William is leading to Jamaica. Charlotte is quickly going to discover that the peril of life at sea isn’t the most dangerous part of her Atlantic crossing.
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Thank you, Kaye, for being in the spotlight with us.
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KAYE DACUS
