GUEST AUTHOR: Adite Banerjie

Today I'd like to welcome Adite Banerjie to my blog.

I first met Adite online, through Facebook and Goodreads, when she reviewed some of my books.

She was always encouraging of my work so imagine how thrilled I was to spot recently that she'd sold to Mills and Boon India!

Congrats again, Adite.

Now, over to you...

An Alpha Indian Tycoon, Anyone?

Tall, dark, handsome billionaires, sexy, spirited heroines and spectacular settings are stuff that romantic fantasies are made of. There is an Alpha hero for every romance reader – the hunky cowboy, the suave tycoon, the sheikh with the six-pack abs and even the hot-as-hell vampire. It’s little wonder then that zillions of women all over the world can’t do without their fix of romance reading.

And here I was, a newbie romance writer, taking on the challenge of creating a hero who could go mano-a-mano with all the beloved Mills & Boon Alpha hunks.  Scary prospect. But it had to be done. After all, my short story entry to the Harlequin India Aspiring Authors Auditions had been declared a winner and I had a 50,000-word story to write! 

Holy cow! The thought was daunting enough to freeze my fingers on the keyboard.  There are legions of Alpha heroes that I admire and some. Here’s just a small selection: the brooding and passionate Rick Blaine of Casablanca, the awesome and arrogant Rhett Butler, the suave and sexy Edward Lewis (played to perfection by Richard Gere) in Pretty Woman and Bollywood’s charming and playful Raj in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge.

And who can resist the Mills & Boon playboy tycoons... the Greeks, the Italians and Russians? The all-powerful, proud, protector heroes who have the world at their feet; feared by their rivals and revered by their loyalists. But of course, when the right woman comes along they reveal that behind that gruff and devil-may-care exterior they are real softies! As Annie West, romance author writes: “Above all, the Alpha Hero will stand by her (the Heroine) when she needs him, he will be a loving, loyal partner. And if the road to happiness is a little rocky to begin with, all the better. After all, we want our romances with a little spice, don’t we?”

Perhaps it was time to give the Tycoon a cultural makeover. Add a little Indian spice! As I started writing my book, the Hero Krish Dev began to take shape. He turned out to be the quintessential Alpha Male—the aloof and reluctant heir to his father’s business empire—who holds true to his beliefs and is steeped in Indian values. Clearly this tycoon would be more than a match for my feisty, revenge-driven Heroine, Maya Shome.

Here’s a sneak peek at what happens when they first set eyes on each other…

She scanned the Ballroom looking for her quarry and couldn’t help notice that the choice of floral decoration was the exquisite lavender rose.  A sharp pang twisted through her, reminding her of Papa, who had perfected the art of growing these beautiful, exotic flowers. She reached out to touch a delicate petal. The presence of Papa’s special flower was like a good omen; as if he was watching over her. She felt lucky tonight.

“Beautiful!” drawled a deep, gravelly voice.

Maya’s eyes darted towards the man standing a couple of feet away from her. Awareness zinged through her as her eyes clashed with a pair of dark, dancing eyes set in a face that was all sharp angles, framed by thick cropped hair. It should have made for an all too severe effect but for the deep cleft that dented his chin. His lopsided sexy smile had her pulse doing a crazy dance. He left her in no doubt that she was the object of his appraisal.

Flustered, she dragged her eyes away from his sexy cleft chin and tried to gather her scattered wits. “It’s a shame to present such beauty with so little imagination.”

“You would have done it differently?”

She stole a quick look at him. The light stubble only accentuated his chiselled jaw while his cream-coloured silk shirt parted ever so slightly to reveal a superbly toned body.

“Maybe,” she replied, annoyed at herself for being so easily waylaid by his sex appeal which he no doubt regularly used with deadly precision on women at parties like these.

“You’re right.” He turned his mesmerising dark eyes on her again. “Exotic beauties need to be treated with more delicacy and…”  He gave her a slow look-over, “imagination.”  Her body thrummed with awareness.

 He smiled knowingly, almost as if he’d felt her instinctive jolt of reaction, and held out his hand, “I am Krish.”

“Maya.”

“It will be a pleasure to get to know you,” he murmured almost to himself, as he turned the handshake into something less formal, more intimate, touching his lips to her fingers. Maya felt the tremor of awareness go up a notch higher on her internal Richter scale.

You can read Krish Dev and Maya Shome’s story in The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal which releases in India in September. And I hope you will enjoy their story as much as I did, writing it.

Adite Banerjie

http://aditebanerjie.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Adite-Banerjie-Writer/279376375533797