WICKED by Sasha White ~ a Psyche award nominee.

Bad-boy divorce attorney Karl Dawson has seen all the ways love can go wrong. That’s why he’s given up on it. Jaded and feeling restless, he has playmates, not girlfriends. A leather-clad Dominant, he comes and goes in the city’s after-dark playgrounds as he pleases. That’s how he likes it.

Lara Fox is an independent jack-of-all-trades who can do anything she sets her mind to – except that falling-in-love thing. She’s got a need for control too strong for most men, and an inability to walk away from a challenge. Including a challenge like Karl. He’s cocky, arrogant, and demanding. That’s how she needs it.

They’re perfect for each other. But what begins as a sensual battle of wills turns into a journey neither is prepared for when Lara is threatened and emotional walls start to crumble.

*****

YAY! I'm thrilled that WICKED has been nominated for the Psyche award. Thanks so much TRS for the great review, and the nomination! I wanted to share with everyone why WICKED has a bit of a special place in my heart...


Some people are planners, and some aren’t. Writing isn’t very different from life in that way. Me-I’ve never been a planner. I try to, but it doesn’t work for me. Spontaneity speaks to me. I like to go with what I’m feeling at the time. In life, and in books. And no, this doesn’t always work out well, but the majority of the time it does. And there are the times that it works out more than well. The times when something magical happens. WICKED is one of those times.

BOUND, my first single title novel, is about Katie Long, and her yen to be free (in many aspects of her life). In the middle of the book there’s a scene where her and her girlfriends go out drinking, and they meet some guys while shooting pool. They flirt, they buy the girls drinks... I’m sure most of you know how it goes, right? One of the guys was a hottie named Karl, who propositions Katie, the heroine of the book. *** Y’see, I lust after actor Karl Urban, and for this particular .... fantasy, he was almost how he was Eomer in Lord of the Rings. (blond, rough, warrior, yummy) ***

There’s a line in the scene with him where he “purrs” in her ear and my critique partners fell in love with him, calling him Mr.Purr. After BOUND I never gave him another thought really, because I don’t do sequels. Or I never had before. I moved on to my next novel , which was TROUBLE, with a totally different hero and heroine, with no thought of them connecting to Bound at all. The hero in TROUBLE is Val., and in his first scene his best friends walks into the room and says something to him. It;s a short maybe three line conversation, and I’d just written it as ‘his best friend’. Then when I was editing the scene, (I edit as I go, so this was the next day) I realized I needed to name his friend. I thought “Hey, both stories take place in Vancouver, I’ll name him Karl, no need to create a new character.” (Yes, it was pretty much just a lazy thing oat that point.) It wasn’t until I was halfway through TROUBLE that I realized Karl was really cool, and he needed his won story. I had no idea what it would be, but I really thought he was too cocky, and he needed be taken down a notch. And thank Go my editor trusts me, because when I suggested I write Karl’s story instead of the idea I’d already sold her there were no arguments about switching things after the contracts had been signed or anything. She simply said, “Go for it.” And that’s how WICKED was born.

Strangely enough, all of my Berkley books are connected through characters and settings, and it wasn’t planned that way. It just happened. Which tells me that not planning tends to work for me, in writing as in life. What works best for you?